The Long Roll
rested in the open beneath the August stars. Pelham had a log beneath a
Lombardy poplar, with a wide outlook toward the old field of Manassas.
Here he talked with one of his captains. "Too many men lost! I feel it
through and through that there is going to be heavy fighting. We'll have
to fill up somehow."
"Everybody from this region's in already. We might get some
fifteen-year-olds or some sixty-five-year-olds, though, or we might ask
the department for conscripts--"
"Don't like the latter material. Prefer the first. Well, we'll think
about it to-morrow--It's late, late, Haralson! Good-night."
"Wait," said Haralson. "Here's a man wants to speak to you."
Running up the hillside, from the platform where were the guns to a
little line of woods dark against the starlit sky, was a
cornfield--between it and the log and the poplar only a little grassy
depression. A man had come out of the cornfield. He stood ten feet
away--a countryman apparently, poorly dressed.
"Well, who are you?" demanded Pelham, "and how did you get in my lines?"
"I've been," said the man, "tramping it over from the mountains. And
when I got into this county I found it chock full of armies. I didn't
want to be taken up by the Yankees, and so I've been mostly travelling
by night. I was in that wood up there while you all were fighting. I had
a good view of the battle. When it was over I said to myself, 'After
all they're my folk,' and I came down through the corn. I was lying
there between the stalks; I heard you say you needed gunners. I said to
myself, 'I might as well join now as later. We've all got to join one
way or another, that's clear,' and so I thought, sir, I'd join you--"
"Why haven't you 'joined,' as you call it, before?"
"I've been right sick for a year or more, sir. I got a blow on the head
in a saw mill on Briony Creek and it made me just as useless as a bit of
pith. The doctor says I am all right now, sir. I got tired of staying on
Briony--"
"Do you know anything about guns?"
"I know all about a shotgun. I could learn the other."
"What's your name?"
"Philip Deaderick."
"Well, come into the firelight, Deaderick, so that I can see you."
Deaderick came, showed a powerful figure, and a steady bearded face.
"Well," said the Alabamian, "the blow on your head doesn't seem to have
put you out of the running! I'll try you, Deaderick."
"I am much obliged to you, sir."
"I haven't any awkward squad into which to put you. You'll have to
learn, and learn quickly, by watching the others. Take him and enroll
him, Haralson, and turn him over to Dreux and the Howitzer. Now,
Deaderick, the Horse Artillery is heaven to a good man who does his
duty, and it's hell to the other kind. I advise you to try for heaven.
That's all. Good-night."
Day broke over the field of Groveton, over the plains of Manassas.
Stonewall Jackson moved in force westward from the old battle-ground.
South of Bull Run, between Young's Branch and Stony Ridge, ran an
unfinished railroad. It was bordered by woods and rolling fields. There
were alternate embankments and deep railroad cuts. Behind was the long
ridge and Catharpin Run, in front, sloping gently to the little stream,
green fields broken to the north by one deep wood. Stonewall Jackson
laid his hand on the railroad with those deep cuts and on the rough and
rising ground beyond. In the red dawn there stretched a battle front of
nearly two miles. A. P. Hill had the left. Trimble and Lawton of Ewell's
had the centre, Jackson's own division the right, Jubal Early and Forno
of Ewell's a detached force on this wing. There were forty guns, and
they were ranged along the rocky ridge behind the infantry. Jeb Stuart
guarded the flanks.
The chill moisture of the morning, the dew-drenched earth, the quiet
woods, the rose light in the sky--the troops moving here and there to
their assigned positions, exchanged opinions. "Ain't it like the
twenty-first of July, 1861?"--"It air and it ain't--mostly
ain't!"--"That's true! Hello! they are going to give us the railroad
cut! God bless the Manassas Railroad Company! If we'd dug a whole day we
couldn't have dug such a ditch as that!"--"Look at the boys behind the
embankment! Well, if that isn't the jim-dandiest breastwork! 'N look at
the forty guns up there against the sky!"--"Better tear those vines away
from the edge. Pretty, aren't they? All the blue morning glories.
Regiment's swung off toward Manassas Junction! Now if Longstreet should
come up!"--"Maybe he will. Wouldn't it be exciting? Come up with a yell
same as Kirby Smith did last year! Wonder where the Yankees are?"
"Somewhere in the woods, the whole hell lot of them."--"Some of them
aren't a hell lot. Some of them are right fine. Down on the Chickahominy
I acquired a real respect for the Army of the Potomac--and a lot of
it'll be here to-day. Yes, sir, I like Fitz John Porter and Sykes and
Reynolds and a lot of them first rate! They can't help being commanded
by The-Man-without-a-Rear. That's Washington's fault, not
theirs."--"Yes, sir, Ricketts and Meade and Kearney and a lot of them
are all right."--"Good Lord, what a shout! That's either Old Jack or a
rabbit."--"It's Old Jack! It's Old Jack! He's coming along the front.
Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! He's passed. O
God! I wish that Bee and Bartow and all that fell here could see him and
us now."--"There's Stuart passing through the fields. What guns are
those going up Stony Ridge?--Pelham and the Horse Artillery."--"Listen!
Bugles! There they come! There they come! Over the Henry Hill."
_Attention!_
About the middle of the morning the cannonading ceased. "There's a
movement this way," said A. P. Hill on the left. "They mean to turn us.
They have ploughed this wood with shells, and now they're coming to sow
it. All right, men! General Jackson's looking!--and General Lee will be
here to-night to tell the story to. I suppose you'd like Marse Robert to
say, 'Well done!' All right, then, do well!--I don't think we're any too
rich, Garrett, in ammunition. Better go tell General Jackson so."
The men talked, Hill's men and Ewell's men on Hill's right--not volubly,
but with slow appreciation. "Reynolds? Like Reynolds all right. Milroy?
Don't care for the gentleman. Sigel--Schurz--Schenck--Steinwehr? _Nein.
Nein!_ Wonder if they remember Cross Keys?"--"They've got a powerful
long line. There isn't but one thing I envy them and that's those
beautiful batteries. I don't envy them their good food, and their good,
whole clothes or anything but the guns."--"H'm, I don't envy them
anything--our batteries are doing all right! We've got a lot of their
guns, and to-night we'll have more. Artillery's done fine to-day."--"So
it has! so it has!"--"Listen, they're opening again. That's Pelham--now
Pegram--now Washington Artillery--now Rockbridge!"--"Yes sir, yes sir!
We're all right. We're ready. Music! They always come on with music.
Funny! but they've got the bands. What are they playing? Never heard it
before. Think it's 'What are the Wild Waves Saying?'"--"I think it's
'When this Cruel War is Over.'"--"Go 'way, you boys weren't in the
Valley! We've heard it several times. It's 'Der Wacht am Rhein.'"--"All
right, sir! All right. Now!"
Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, after the third great blue
charge, Edward Cary, lips blackened from tearing cartridges, lock and
barrel of his rifle hot within his hands, his cap shot away, his sleeve
torn to ribbons where he had bared and bandaged a flesh wound in the
arm, Edward Cary straightened himself and wiped away the sweat and
powder grime which blinded him. An officer's voice came out of the murk.
"The general asks for volunteers to strip the field of cartridges."
There were four men lying together, killed by the same shell. The head
of one was gone, the legs of another; the third was disembowelled, the
fourth had his breast crushed in. Their cartridge boxes when opened were
found to be half full. Edward emptied them into the haversack he carried
and went on to the next. This was a boy of sixteen, not dead yet,
moaning like a wounded hound. Edward gave him the little water that was
in his canteen, took four cartridges from his box, and crept on. A minie
sang by him, struck a yard away, full in the forehead of the dead man
toward whom he was making. The dead man had a smile upon his lips; it
was as though he mocked the bullet. All the field running back from the
railroad cuts and embankment was overstormed by shot and shell, and
everywhere from the field rose groans and cries for water. The word
"water" never ceased from use. _Water!--Water, Water!--Water!--Water!_
On it went, mournfully, like a wind.--_Water!--Water!_ Edward gathered
cartridges steadily. All manner of things were wont to come into his
mind. Just now it was a certain field behind Greenwood covered with
blackberry bushes--and the hot August sunshine--and he and Easter's Jim
gathering blackberries while Mammy watched from beneath a tree. He heard
again the little thud of the berries into the bucket. He took the
cartridges from two young men--brothers from the resemblance and from
the fact that, falling together, one, the younger, had pillowed his head
on the other's breast, while the elder's arm was around him. They lay
like children in sleep. The next man was elderly, a lonely,
rugged-looking person with a face slightly contorted and a great hole in
his breast. The next that Edward came to was badly hurt, but not too
badly to take an interest. "Cartridges?--yes, five. I'm awful
thirsty!--Well, never mind. Maybe it will rain. Who's charging now?
Heintzelman, Kearney, and Reno--Got 'em all? You can draw one from my
gun, too. I was just loading when I got hit. Well, sorry you got to go!
It's mighty lonely lying here."
Edward returned to the front, gave up his haversack, and got another. As
he turned to resume the cartridge quest there arose a cry. "Steady, men!
steady! Hooker hasn't had enough!" Edward, too, saw the blue wall coming
through the woods on the other side of the railroad. He took a musket
from a dead man near by and with all the other grey soldiers lay flat in
the grass above the cut. Hooker came within range--within close range.
The long grey front sprang to its feet and fired, dropped and loaded,
rose and fired. A leaden storm visited the wood across the track. The
August grass was long and dry. Sparks set it afire. Flames arose and
caught the oak scrub. Through it all and through the storm of bullets
the blue line burst. It came down on the unfinished track, it crossed,
it leaped up the ten-foot bank of earth, it clanged against the grey
line atop. The grey gave back, the colours fell and rose; the air
rocked, so loud was the din. Stonewall Jackson appeared. "General Hill,
order in your second line." Field's Virginians, Thomas's Georgians
charged forward. They yelled, all their rifles flashed at once, they
drove Hooker down into the cut, across the track, up into the burning
brushwood and the smoke-filled woods. But the blue were staunch and
seasoned troops; they reformed, they cheered. Hooker brought up a fresh
brigade. They charged again. Down from the woods plunged the blue wave,
through the fire, down the bank, across and up. Again din and smoke and
flame, all invading, monstrous. Jackson's voice rose higher. "General
Hill, order in General Pender."
North Carolina was, first and last, a stark fighter. Together with Gregg
and Field and Thomas, Pender drove Hooker again down the red escarpment,
across the railroad, through the burning brush, into the wood; even
drove him out of the wood, took a battery and dashed into the open
beyond. Then from the hills the blue artillery opened and from the
plains below volleyed fresh infantry. Pender was borne back through the