The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
they knew it meant fight."
As the old man rode up, the division charged. Carried away in the
excitement he charged with them, guiding his horse by the flashes of
the guns. As they rushed on the breastworks a gray figure on a
chestnut horse rode diagonally across the front of the moving column
at the enemy's gun. The horse went down within fifty yards of the
breastwork. The rider arose, waved his sword and led his men on foot
to the very ramparts. Then he staggered and fell, pierced with a
dozen minie balls. It was Cleburne, the peerless field-marshal of
confederate brigade commanders; the genius to infantry as Forrest was
to cavalry. His corps was swept back by the terrible fire, nearly
half of them dead or wounded.
Ten minutes afterwards General Travis stood before General Hood.
"General Cleburne is dead, General"--was all he said. Hood did not
turn his head.
"My compliments to General Adams," he said, "and tell him I ask that
battery at his hands."
Again the old man wheeled and was gone. Again he rode into the black
night and the blacker smoke of battle.
General Adams's brigade was in Walthall's division. As the aged
courier rode up, Adams was just charging. Again the old man was swept
away with the charge. They struck the breastworks where Stile's and
Casement's brigades lay on the extreme left of the federal army.
"Their officers showed heroic examples and self-sacrifice," wrote
General Cox in his official report, "riding up to our lines in
advance of their men, cheering them on. One officer, Adams, was shot
down upon the parapet itself, his horse falling across the
breastworks." Casement himself, touched by the splendor of his ride,
had cotton brought from the old gin house and placed under the dying
soldier's head. "You are too brave a man to die," said Casement
tenderly; "I wish that I could save you."
"'Tis the fate of a soldier to die for his country," smiled the dying
soldier. Then he passed away.
It was a half hour before the old man reached Hood's headquarters
again, his black horse wet with sweat.
"General Adams lies in front of the breastworks--dead! His horse half
over it--dead"--was all he said.
Hood turned pale. His eyes flashed with indignant grief.
"Then tell General Gist," he exclaimed. The old man vanished again
and rode once more into the smoke and the night. Gist's brigade led
the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the
left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The
Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging
lines. "In passing from the left to the right of the regiment,"
writes Colonel Ellison Capers commanding the South Carolina regiment
above named, "the General (Gist) waved his hat to us, expressed his
pride and confidence in the Twenty-fourth and rode away in the smoke
of battle never more to be seen by the men he had commanded on so
many fields. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the
right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart. On
pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force
of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured
and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own
men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire
brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and Gordon's brigade charged
on and reached the ditch, mounted the works and met the enemy in
close combat. The colors of the Twenty-fourth were planted and
defended on the parapet, and the enemy retired in our front some
distance, but soon rallied and came back in turn to charge us. He
never succeeded in retaking the line we held. Torn and exhausted,
deprived of every general officer and nearly every field officer, the
division had only strength enough left to hold its position."
The charging became intermittent. Then out of the night, as Hood sat
listening, again came the old man, his face as white as his long
hair, his horse once black, now white with foam.
"General Gist too, is dead," he said sadly.
"Tell Granbury, Carter, Strahl--General! Throw them in there and
capture that battery and break that line."
The old man vanished once more and rode into the shock and shout of
battle.
General Strahl was leading his brigade again against the breastworks.
"Strahl's and Carter's brigade came gallantly to the assistance of
Gist's and Gordon's" runs the confederate report sent to Richmond,
"but the enemy's fire from the houses in the rear of the line and
from guns posted on the far side of the river so as to enfilade the
field, tore their line to pieces before it reached the locust
abatis."
General Carter fell mortally wounded before reaching the breastworks,
but General Strahl reached the ditch, filled with dead and dying men,
though his entire staff had been killed. Here he stood with only two
men around him, Cunningham and Brown. "Keep firing" said Strahl as he
stood on the bodies of the dead and passed up guns to the two
privates. The next instant Brown fell heavily; he, too, was dead.
"What shall I do, General?" asked Cunningham.
"Keep firing," said Strahl.
Again Cunningham fired. "Pass me another gun, General," said
Cunningham. There was no answer--the general was dead.
Not a hundred yards away lay General Granbury, dead. He died leading
the brave Texans to the works.
To the commanding General it seemed an age before the old man
returned. Then he saw him in the darkness afar off, before he reached
the headquarters. The General thought of death on his pale horse and
shivered.
"Granbury, Carter, Strahl--all dead, General," he said. "Colonels
command divisions, Captains are commanding brigades."
"How does Cheatham estimate his loss?" asked the General.
"At half his command killed and wounded," said the old soldier sadly.
"My God!--my God!--this awful, awful day!" cried Hood.
There was a moment's silence and then: "General?" It came from
General Travis.
The General looked up.
"May I lead the Tennessee troops in--I have led them often before."
Hood thought a moment, then nodded and the horse and the rider were
gone. It was late--nearly midnight. The firing on both sides had
nearly ceased,--only a desultory rattling--the boom of a gun now and
then. But O, the agony, the death, the wild confusion! This was
something like the babel that greeted the old soldier's ears as he
rode forward:
"The Fourth Mississippi--where is the Fourth Mississippi?" "Here is
the Fortieth Alabama's standard--rally men to your standard!" "Where
is General Cleburne, men? Who has seen General Cleburne?" "Up, boys,
and let us at 'em agin! Damn 'em, they've wounded me an' I want to
kill some more!"
"Water!--water--for God's sake give us water!" This came from a pile
of wounded men just under the guns on the Columbia pike. It came from
a sixteen year old boy in blue. Four dead comrades lay across him.
"And this is the curse of it," said General Travis, as he rode among
the men.
But suddenly amid the smoke and confusion, the soldiers saw what many
thought was an apparition--an old, old warrior, on a horse with black
mane and tail and fiery eyes, but elsewhere covered with white sweat
and pale as the horse of death. The rider's face too, was deadly
white, but his keen eyes blazed with the fire of many generations of
battle-loving ancestors.
The soldiers flocked round him, half doubting, half believing. The
terrible ordeal of that bloody night's work; the poignant grief from
beholding the death and wounds of friends and brothers; the weird,
uncanny groans of the dying upon the sulphurous-smelling night air;
the doubt, uncertainty, and yet, through it all, the bitter
realization that all was in vain, had shocked, benumbed, unsettled
the nerves of the stoutest; and many of them scarcely knew whether
they were really alive, confronting in the weird hours of the night
ditches of blood and breastworks of death, or were really dead--dead
from concussion, from shot or shell, and were now wandering on a
spirit battle-field till some soul-leader should lead them away.
And so, half dazed and half dreaming, and yet half alive to its
realization, they flocked around the old warrior, and they would not
have been at all surprised had he told them he came from another
world.
Some thought of Mars. Some thought of death and his white horse. Some
felt of the animal's mane and touched his streaming flanks and cordy
legs to see if it were really a horse and not an apparition, while
"What is it?" and "Who is he?" was whispered down the lines.
Then the old rider spoke for the first time, and said simply:
"Men, I have come to lead you in."
A mighty shout came up. "It's General Lee!--he has come to lead us
in," they shouted.
"No, no, men,"--said the old warrior quickly. "I am not General Lee.
But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was--"
"It's Ole Hick'ry--by the eternal!--Ole Hick'ry--and he's come back
to life to lead us!" shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the
air.
"Ole Hickory! Ole Hickory!" echoed and re-echoed down the lines, till
it reached the ears of the dying soldiers in the ditch itself, and
many a poor, brave fellow, as his heart strings snapped and the
broken chord gurgled out into the dying moan, saw amid the blaze and
light of the new life, the apparition turn into a reality and a smile
of exquisite satisfaction was forever frozen on his face in the mould
of death, as he whispered with his last breath:
"It's Old Hickory--my General--I have fought a good fight--I come!"
Then the old warrior smiled--a smile of simple beauty and grandeur,
of keen satisfaction that such an honor should have been paid him,
and he tried to speak to correct them. But they shouted the more, and
drowned out his voice and would not have it otherwise. Despairing, he
rode to the front and drew his long, heavy, old, revolutionary sword.
It flashed in the air. It came to "attention"--and then a dead
silence followed.
"Men," he said, "this is the sword of John Sevier, the rebel that led
us up the sides of King's Mountain when every tyrant gun that belched
in our face called us--rebels!"
"Old Hick'ry! Old Hick'ry, forever!" came back from the lines.
Again the old sword came to attention, and again a deep hush
followed.
"Men," he said, drawing a huge rifled barreled pistol--"this is the
pistol of Andrew Jackson, the rebel that whipped the British at New
Orleans when every gun that thundered in his face, meant death to
liberty!"
"Old Hickory! Old Hickory!!" came back in a frenzy of excitement.
Again the old sword came to attention--again, the silence. Then the
old man fairly stood erect in his stirrups--he grew six inches
taller and straighter and the black horse reared and rose as if to
give emphasis to his rider's assertion:
"Men," he shouted, "rebel is the name that tyranny gives to
patriotism! And now, let us fight, as our fore-fathers fought, for
our state, our homes and our firesides!" And then clear and distinct
there rang out on the night air, a queer old continental command:
"Fix, pieces!"
They did not know what this meant at first. But some old men in the
line happened to remember and fixed their bayonets. Then there was
clatter and clank down the entire line as others imitated their
examples.
"Poise, fo'k!" rang out again more queerly still. The old men who
remembered brought their guns to the proper position. "Right
shoulder, fo'k!"--followed. Then, "Forward, March!" came back and
they moved straight at the batteries--now silent--and straight at the
breastworks, more silent still. Proudly, superbly, they came on, with
not a shout or shot--a chained line with links of steel--a moving
mass with one heart--and that heart,--victory.