The Long Roll
Longstreet won't get through Thoroughfare until to-morrow--_Break
ranks!_ Oh Lord, yes! with pleasure."
Under foot there was rough, somewhat rolling ground. In the dark night
men dropped down without particularity as to couch or bedchamber. Nature
and the time combined to spread for them a long and echoing series of
sleeping rooms, carpeted and tapestried according to Nature's whim,
vaulted with whistling storm or drift of clouds or pageantry of stars.
The troops took the quarters indicated sometimes with, sometimes without
remark. To-night there was little speech of any kind before falling into
dreamless slumber. "O hell! Hungry as a dog!"--"Me, too!"--"Can't you
just _see_ Manassas Junction and Stuart's and Trimble's fellows gorging
themselves? Biscuit and cake and pickles and 'desecrated' vegetables and
canned peaches and sardines and jam and coffee!--freight cars and wagons
and storehouses just filled with jam and coffee and canned peaches and
cigars and--" "I wish that fool would hush! I wasn't hungry
before!"--"and nice cozy fires, and rashers of bacon broiling, and
plenty of coffee, and all around just like daisies in the field, clean
new shirts, and drawers and socks, and handkerchiefs and shoes and
writing paper and soap."--"Will you go to hell and stop talking as you
go?"--"Seems somehow an awful lonely place, boys!--dark and a wind. Hear
that whippoorwill? Just twenty thousand men sloshin' round--and Pope may
be right over there by the whippoorwill. Jarrow says that with McCall
and Heintzelman and Fitz John Porter, there are seventy thousand of
them. Well? They've got Headquarters-in-the-saddle and we've got
Stonewall Jackson--That's so! that's so! Good-night."
Dawn came calmly up, dawn of the twenty-eighth of August. The ghostly
trumpets blew--the grey soldiers stirred and rose. In the sky were yet a
star or two and a pale quarter moon. These slowly faded and the faintest
coral tinge overspread that far and cold eastern heaven. The men were
busied about breakfast, but now this group and presently that suspended
operations. "What's there about this place anyhow? It has an awful,
familiar look. The stream and the stone bridge and the woods and the
hill--the Henry Hill. Good God! it's the field of Manassas!"
The field of Manassas, in the half light, somehow inspired a faint awe,
a creeping horror. "God! how young we were that day! It seems so long
ago, and yet it comes back. Do you remember how we crashed together at
the Stone Bridge? There's the Mathews Hill where we first met Sykes and
Ricketts--seen them often since. The Henry Hill--there's the house--Mrs.
Henry was killed. Hampton and Cary came along there and Beauregard with
his sword out and Old Joe swinging the colours high, restoring the
battle!--and Kirby Smith, just in time--just in time, and the yell his
column gave! Next day we thought the war was over."--"I didn't."--"Yes,
you did! You said, 'Well, boys, we're going back to every day, but by
jiminy! we've got something to tell our grandchildren!' The ravine
running up there--that was where Bee was killed! Bee! I can see him now.
Then we were over there." "Yes, on the hilltop by the pine wood.
'Jackson standing like a stone wall.' Look, the light's touching it.
Boys, I could cry, just as easy--"
The August morning strengthened. "Our guns were over there by the
charred trees. There's where we charged, there's where we came down on
Griffin and Ricketts!--the 33d, the 65th. The 65th made its fight there.
Richard Cleave--" "Don't!"--"Well, that's where we came down on Griffin
and Ricketts. Manassas! Reckon Old Jack and Marse Robert want a _second_
battle of Manassas?"
The light grew full. "Ewell's over there--A. P. Hill's over there. All
together, north of the Warrenton turnpike. Where's Marse Robert and
Longstreet?"
Colonel Fauquier Cary, riding by, heard the last remark and answered it.
"Marse Robert and Longstreet are marching by the road we've marched
before them. To-night, perhaps, we'll be again a united family."
"Colonel, are we going to have a battle?"
"I wasn't at the council, friends, but I can tell you what I think."
"Yes, yes! We think that you think pretty straight--"
"McCall and Heintzelman and Fitz John Porter have joined General Pope."
"Yes. So we hear."
"And others of the Army of the Potomac are on the way."
"Yes, undoubtedly."
"But are not here yet."
"No."
"Well, then, I think that the thing above all others that General Lee
wants is an immediate battle."
He rode on. The men to whom he had been speaking looked after him
approvingly. "He's a fine piece of steel! Always liked that whole
family--Isn't he a cousin of ----? Yes. Wonder what he thinks about that
matter! Heigho! Look at the stealing light and the grey shadows!
Manassas!"
Cary, riding by Ewell's lines, came upon Maury Stafford lying stretched
beneath an oak, studying, too, the old battlefield. The sun was up; the
morning cool, fresh, and pure. Dismounting, Cary seated himself beside
the other. "You were not in the battle here? On the Peninsula, were you
not?"
"Yes, with Magruder. Look at that shaft of light."
"Yes. It strikes the crest of the hill--just where was the Stonewall
Brigade."
Silence fell. The two sat, brooding over the scene, each with his own
thoughts. "This field will be red again," said Stafford at last.
"No doubt. Yes, red again. I look for heavy fighting."
"I saw you when you came in with A. P. Hill on the second. But we have
not spoken together, I think, since Richmond."
"No," said Cary. "Not since Richmond."
"One of your men told me that, coming up, you stopped in Albemarle."
"Yes, I went home for a few hours."
"All at Greenwood are well and--happy?"
"All at Greenwood are well. Southern women are not precisely happy. They
are, however, extremely courageous."
"May I ask if Miss Cary is at Greenwood?"
"She remained at her work in Richmond through July. Then the need at the
hospital lessening, she went home. Yes, she is at Greenwood."
"Thank you. I am going to ask another question. Answer it or not as you
see fit. Does she know that--most unfortunately--it was I who carried
that order from General Jackson to General Winder?"
"I do not think that she knows it." He rose. "The bugles are sounding. I
must get back to Hill. General Lee will be up, I hope, to-night. Until
he comes we are rather in the lion's mouth. Happily John Pope is hardly
the desert king." He mounted his horse, and went. Stafford laid himself
down beneath the oak, looked sideways a moment at Bull Run and the hills
and the woods, then flung his arm upward and across his eyes, and went
in mind to Greenwood.
The day passed in a certain still and steely watchfulness. In the August
afternoon, Jeb Stuart, feather in hat, around his horse's neck a garland
of purple ironweed and yarrow, rode into the lines and spoke for ten
minutes with General Jackson, then spurred away to the Warrenton
turnpike. Almost immediately Ewell's and Taliaferro's divisions were
under arms and moving north.
Near Groveton they struck the force they were going against--King's
division of McDowell's corps moving tranquilly toward Centreville. The
long blue column--Doubleday, Patrick, Gibbon, and Hatch's
brigades--showed its flank. It moved steadily, with jingle and creak of
accoutrements, with soldier chat and laughter, with a band playing a
quickstep, with the rays of the declining sun bright on gun-stock and
bayonet, and with the deep rumble of the accompanying batteries. The
head of the column came in the gold light to a farmhouse and an apple
orchard. Out of the peace and repose of the scene burst a roar of grey
artillery.
The fight was fierce and bloody, and marked by a certain savage
picturesqueness. Gibbon and Doubleday somehow deployed and seized a
portion of the orchard. The grey held the farmhouse and the larger part
of the fair, fruit-bearing slopes. The blue brought their artillery into
action. The grey batteries, posted high, threw their shot and shell over
the heads of the grey skirmishers into the opposing ranks: Wooding,
Poague, and Carpenter did well; and then, thundering through the woods,
came John Pelham of Stuart's Horse Artillery, and he, too, did well.
As for the infantry, grey and blue, they were seasoned troops. There was
no charging this golden afternoon. They merely stood, blue and grey, one
hundred yards apart, in the sunset-flooded apple orchard, and then in a
twilight apple orchard, and then in an apple orchard with the stars
conceivably shining above the roof of smoke, and directed each against
the other a great storm of musketry, round shot, and canister.
It lasted two and a half hours, that tornado, and it never relaxed in
intensity. It was a bitter fight, and there was bitter loss. Doubleday
and Gibbon suffered fearfully, and Ewell and Taliaferro suffered. Grey
and blue, they stood grimly, and the tornado raged. The ghosts of the
quiet husbandmen who had planted the orchard, of the lovers who may have
walked there, of the children who must have played beneath the
trees--these were scared far, far from the old peaceful haunt. It was a
bitter fight.
Stafford was beside Ewell when the latter fell, a shell dreadfully
shattering his leg. The younger man caught him, drew him quite from poor
old Rifle, and with the help of the men about got him behind the slight,
slight shelter of one of the little curtsying trees. Old Dick's face
twitched, but he could speak. "Of course I've lost that
leg! ----! ---- ----! Old Jackson isn't around, is he? Never mind! Occasion
must excuse. Go along, gentlemen. Need you all there. Doctors and
chaplains and the teamsters, and Dick Ewell will forgather all
right ----! ----! Damn you, Maury, I don't want you to stay! What's that
that man says? Taliaferro badly wounded ----! ---- ----! Gentlemen, one
and all you are ordered back to your posts. I've lost a leg, but I'm not
going to lose this battle!"
Night came with each stark battle line engaged in giving and receiving
as deadly a bombardment as might well be conceived. The orchard grew a
place tawny and red and roaring with sound. And then at nine o'clock the
sound dwindled and the light sank. The blue withdrew in good order,
taking with them their wounded. The battle was drawn, the grey rested on
the field, the loss of both was heavy.
Back of the apple orchard, on the long natural terrace where he had
posted his six guns, that tall, blond, very youthful officer whom, a
little later, Stuart called "the heroic chivalric Pelham," whom Lee
called "the gallant Pelham," of whom Stonewall Jackson said, "Every army
should have a Pelham on each flank"--Major John Pelham surveyed the
havoc among his men and horses. Then like a good and able leader, he
brought matters shipshape, and later announced that the Horse Artillery
would stay where it was for the night.
The farmhouse in the orchard had been turned into a field hospital.
Thither Pelham's wounded were borne. Of the hurt horses those that
might be saved were carefully tended, the others shot. The pickets were
placed. Fires were kindled, and from a supply wagon somewhere in the
rear scanty rations brought. An embassy went to the farmhouse. "Ma'am,
the major--Major Pelham--says kin we please have a few roasting ears?"
The embassy returned. "She says, sir, just to help ourselves. Corn,
apples--anything we want, and she wishes it were more!"
The six guns gleamed red in the light of the kindled fires. The men sat
or lay between them, tasting rest after battle. Below this platform, in
the orchard and on the turnpike and in the woods beyond, showed also
fires and moving lights. The air was yet smoky, the night close and
warm. There were no tents nor roofs of any nature. Officers and men