The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
the confederates, stood the federal general. A sharp-shooter in
either line could have killed the commanding general in the other.
And now that prophesying silence which always seems to precede a
battle was afloat in the air. In the hollow of its stillness it
seemed as if one could hear the ticking of the death-watch of
eternity. But presently it was broken by the soft strains of music
which floated up from the town below. It was the federal band playing
"Just Before The Battle, Mother."
The men in gray on the hill and the men in blue in the valley
listened, and then each one mentally followed the tune with silent
words, and not without a bit of moisture in their eyes.
"Just before the battle, Mother,
I am thinking most of thee."
Suddenly Hood closed his glasses with that nervous jerk which was a
habit with him, straightened himself in the saddle and, riding back
to General Stewart, said simply: "We will make the fight, General
Stewart."
Stewart pressed his General's hand, wheeled and formed his corps on
the right. Cheatham formed his on the left. A gun--and but few were
used by Hood in the fight for fear of killing the women and children
in the town--echoed from the ridge. It was the signal for the battle
to begin. The heavy columns moved down the side of the ridge, the
brigades marching in echelon.
At the sound of the gun, the federal army, some of whom were on duty,
but the larger number loitering around at rest, or engaged in
preparing their evening meal, sprang noiselessly to their places
behind the breastworks, while hurried whispers of command ran down
the line.
General Travis had been given a place of honor on General Hood's
staff. He insisted on going into the ranks, but his commander had
said: "Stay with me, I shall need you elsewhere." And so the old man
sat his horse silently watching the army forming and marching down.
But directly, as a Mississippi regiment passed by, he noticed at the
head of one of the companies an old man, almost as old as himself,
his clothes torn, and ragged from long marching; shoeless, his feet
tied up in sack-cloth and his old slouch hat aflop over his ears. But
he did not complain, he stood erect, and gamely led his men into
battle. As the company halted for a moment, General Travis rode up to
the old man whose thin clothes could not keep him from shivering in
the now chill air of late afternoon, for it was then past four
o'clock, saluted him and said:
"Captain, will you do me the favor to pull off this boot?"
Withdrawing his boot from the stirrup and thrusting it towards the
old man, the latter looked at him a moment in surprise but sheathed
his sword and complied with the request. "And now the other one?"
said Travis as he turned his horse around. This, too, was pulled off.
"Just put them on, Captain, if you please," said the rider. "I am
mounted and do not need them as much as you do?" and before the
gallant old Captain could refuse, he rode away for duty--in his
stocking feet!
And now the battle began in earnest.
The confederates came on in splendid form. On the extreme right,
Forrest's cavalry rested on the river; then Stewart's corps of
Loring, Walthall, French, from right to left in the order named. On
the left Cheatham's corps, of Cleburne, Brown, Bate, and Walker.
Behind Cheatham marched Johnston's and Clayton's brigade for support,
thirty thousand and more of men, in solid lines, bands playing and
flags fluttering in the afternoon wind.
Nor had the federals been idle. Behind the breastworks lay the second
and third divisions of the 23rd Corps, commanded in person by the
gallant General J. D. Cox. From the railroad on the left to the
Carter's Creek pike on the right, the brigades of these divisions
stood as follows: Henderson's, Casement's, Reilly's, Strickland's,
Moore's. And from the right of the Carter's Creek pike to the river
lay Kimball's first division of the Fourth Corps. In front of the
breastworks, across the Columbia pike, General Wagner, commanding the
second division of the Fourth Corps, had thrown forward the two
brigades of Bradley and Lane to check the first assault of the
confederates, while Opdyck's brigade of the same division was held in
the town as a reserve. Seven splendid batteries growled along the
line of breastworks, and showed their teeth to the advancing foe,
while three more were caged in the fort above and beyond the town.
Never did men march with cooler courage on more formidable lines of
defense. Never did men wait an attack with cooler courage.
Breastworks with abatis in front through which the mouth of cannon
gaped; artillery and infantry on the right to enfilade; siege guns in
the fort high above all, to sweep and annihilate.
Schofield, born general that he was, simply lay in a rock-circled,
earth-circled, water-circled, iron-and-steel-circled cage, bayonet
and flame tipped, proof against the armies of the world!
But Hood's brave army never hesitated, never doubted.
Even in the matter of where to throw up his breastworks, Schofield
never erred. On a beautiful and seemingly level plain like this, a
less able general might have thrown them up anywhere, just so that
they encircled the town and ran from river to river.
But Schofield took no chances. His quick eye detected that even in
apparent level plains there are slight undulations. And so, following
a gentle rise all the way round, just on its top he threw up his
breastworks. So that, besides the ditch and the abatis, there was a
slight depression in his immediate front, open and clear, but so
situated that on the gentle slope in front, down which the
confederates must charge, the background of the slope brought them in
bold relief--gray targets for the guns. On that background the hare
would loom up as big as the hound.
There were really two federal lines, an outer and an inner one. The
outer one consisted of Bradley's and Lane's brigades which had
retired from Spring Hill before the Confederate army, and had been
ordered to halt in front of the breastworks to check the advance of
the army. They were instructed to fire and then fall back to the
breastworks, if stubbornly charged by greatly their superiors in
numbers. They fired, but, true to American ideas, they disliked to
retreat. When forced to do so, they were swept away with the enemy on
their very heels and as they rushed in over the last line at the
breastworks on the Columbia pike the eager boys in gray rushed over
with them, swept away portions of Reilly's and Strickland's troops,
and bayoneted those that remained.
It was then that Schofield's heart sank as he looked down from the
guns of the fort. But Cox had the forethought to place Opdyck's two
thousand men in reserve at this very point. These sprang gallantly
forward and restored the line.
They saved the Union army!
The battle was now raging all around the line. There was a succession
of yells, a rattle, a shock and a roar, as brigade after brigade
struck the breastworks, only to be hurled back again or melt and die
away in the trenches amid the abatis. Clear around the line of
breastworks it rolled, at intervals, like a magazine of powder
flashing before it explodes, then the roar and upheaval, followed
anon and anon by another. The ground was soon shingled with dead men
in gray, while down in the ditches or hugging the bloody sides of the
breastworks right under the guns, thousands, more fortunate or daring
than their comrades, lay, thrusting and being thrust, shooting and
being shot. And there they staid throughout the fight--not strong
enough to climb over, and yet all the guns of the federal army could
not drive them away. Many a gray regiment planted its battle-flag on
the breastworks and then hugged those sides of death in its efforts
to keep it there, as bees cling around the body of their queen.
"I have the honor to forward to the War Department nine stands of
colors," writes General Cox to General Geo. L. Thomas; "these flags
with eleven others were captured by the Twenty-third Army Corps along
the parapets."
Could Bonaparte's army have planted more on the ramparts of Mount St.
Jean?
The sun had not set; yet the black smoke of battle had set it before
its time. God had ordained otherwise; but man, in his fury had shut
out the light of heaven against the decree of God, just as, equally
against His decree, he has now busily engaged in blotting out many a
brother's bright life, before the decree of its sunset. Again and
again and again, from four till midnight--eight butchering hours--the
heart of the South was hurled against those bastions of steel and
flame, only to be pierced with ball and bayonet.
And for every heart that was pierced there broke a dozen more in the
shade of the southern palmetto, or in the shadow of the northern
pine. After nineteen hundred years of light and learning, what a
scientific nation of heart-stabbers and brother-murderers we
Christians are!
It was now that the genius of the confederate cavalry leader,
Forrest, asserted itself. With nearly ten thousand of his intrepid
cavalry-men, born in the saddle, who carried rifles and shot as they
charged, and whom with wonderful genius their leader had trained to
dismount at a moment's notice and fight as infantry--he lay on the
extreme right between the river and the railroad. In a moment he saw
his opportunity, and rode furiously to Hood's headquarters. He found
the General sitting on a flat rock, a smouldering fire by his side,
half way down the valley, at the Winstead House, intently watching
the progress of the battle.
"Let me go at 'em, General," shouted Forrest in his bluff way, "and
I'll flank the federal army out of its position in fifteen minutes."
"No! Sir," shouted back Hood. "Charge them out! charge them out!"
Forrest turned and rode back with an oath of disgust. Years
afterwards, Colonel John McGavock, whose fine plantation lay within
the federal lines and who had ample opportunity for observation, says
that when in the early evening a brigade of Forrest's cavalry
deployed across the river as if opening the way for the confederate
infantry to attack the federal army in flank and rear, hasty
preparations were made by the federal army for retreat. And thus was
Forrest's military wisdom corroborated. "Let me flank them out," was
military genius. "No, charge them out," was dare-devil blundering!
The shock, the shout and the roar continued. The flash from the guns
could now plainly be seen as night descended. So continuous was the
play of flame around the entire breastwork that it looked to the
general at headquarters like a circle of prairie fire, leaping up at
intervals along the breastworks, higher and higher where the
batteries were ablaze.
In a black-locust thicket, just to the right of the Columbia turnpike
and near the Carter House, with abatis in front, the strongest of the
batteries had been placed. It mowed down everything in front. Seeing
it, General Hood turned to General Travis and said: "General, my
compliments to General Cleburne, and say to him I desire that battery
at his hands."
The old man wheeled and was gone. In a moment, it seemed, the black
smoke of battle engulfed him. Cleburne's command was just in front of
the old gin house, forming for another charge. The dead lay in heaps
in front. They almost filled the ditch around the breastworks. But
the command, terribly cut to pieces, was forming as coolly as if on
dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep
blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. It was Cleburne's battle
flag and well the enemy knew it. They had seen and felt it at Shiloh,
Murfreesboro, Ringgold Gap, Atlanta. "I tip my hat to that flag,"
said General Sherman years after the war. "Whenever my men saw it