The Long Roll
then read it aloud, figure, mien, and voice as quiet as if he were
repeating some every-day communication.
ON THE MARCH, _September 14th_.
GENERAL,--I regret to say that McClellan has, in some unaccountable
fashion, discovered the division of the army as well as its objectives.
We have had hard fighting to-day on South Mountain, D. H. Hill and
Longstreet both suffering heavily. The troops fought with great
determination and held the passes until dusk. We are now falling back
on Sharpsburg. Use all possible speed in joining me there.
LEE.
Stonewall Jackson rose. "General Hill, arrange your matters as rapidly
as possible. Sharpsburg on the Antietam. Seventeen miles."
CHAPTER XLIII
SHARPSBURG
"Sharpsburg!" said long afterwards Stephen D. Lee. "Sharpsburg was
Artillery Hell!"
"Sharpsburg," said the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia.
"Sharpsburg! That was the field where an infantryman knew that he stood
on the most dangerous spot on the earth!"
Through the passes of the South Mountain, over Red Hill, out upon the
broken ground east of the Antietam poured the blue torrent--McClellan
and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with a narrow grey sea--not
thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's
Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two
colours.
There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods.
It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked
the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left. Before him was
Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts.
From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked from
Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. He
looked to the Harper's Ferry Road, but he did not see what he wished to
see--A. P. Hill's red battle shirt. "Artillery Hell" had begun. There
was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All the country side, all
the little Maryland villages and farmhouses blenched beneath that sound.
Lee put down his field glass. He stood, calm and grand, the smoke and
uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge Guns came by, going to some indicated
quarter of the field. In thunder they passed below the knoll, the iron
war-beasts, the gunners with them, black with powder and grime! All
saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at
the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at
the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up
with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance
of his chief of staff. "Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob."
The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and how ghastly
battles surged about small country churches! The Prince of Peace, if he
indwelled here, must have bowed his head and mourned. Sunrise struck
upon its white walls; then came a shell and pierced them. The church
became the core of the turmoil, the white, still reef against which beat
the wild seas in storm.
Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle flags were
bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in time, regular as a
beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his fourteen thousand men. He
crossed the turnpike, he came down on the Dunkard church. "Yaii! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!" yelled the grey sea,--no time at all, only fierce
determination. Sometimes a grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there
was no other music, save the thunder of the guns and the long rattle,
never ceasing, of the musketry. There were battle flags, squares of
crimson with a starry Andrew's cross. They went forward, they shrank
back. Standard-bearers were killed. Gaunt, powder-grimed hands caught at
the staves, lifted them; the battle-flags went forward again.
Doubleday struck and Ricketts. They charged against Stonewall Jackson
and the narrow grey sea. All the ground was broken; alignment was lost;
blue waves and grey went this way and that in a broken, tumultuous fray.
But the blue waves were the heavier; in mass alone they outdid the grey.
They pushed the grey sea back, back, back toward the dark wood about the
Dunkard church! Then Stonewall Jackson came along the front, riding in a
pelting, leaden rain. "Steady, men. Steady! God is over us!" His men
received him with a cry of greeting and enthusiasm that was like a
shriek, it was so wild and high. His power upon them had grown and
grown. He was Stonewall Jackson! He was Stonewall Jackson! First, they
would die for those battle-flags and the cause they represented; second,
they would die for one another, comrades, brethren! third, they would
die for Stonewall Jackson! They lifted their voices for him now, gaunt
and ragged troops with burning eyes. _Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall
Jackson! Virginia! Virginia! Virginia! the South! the South!_ He turned
his horse, standing in the whistling, leaden rain. "Forward, and drive
them!"
Lawton and D. H. Hill leaped against Meade. He was a staunch fighter,
but he gave back. The wood about the Dunkard church appeared to writhe
like Dante's wood, it was so full of groaning, of maimed men beside the
tree trunks. The dead lay where they fell, and the living stepped upon
them. Meade gave back, back--and then Mansfield came in thunder to
reinforce the blue.
The grey fought as even in this war they had hardly fought before. They
were so gaunt, they were so ragged, they were so tired! But something
ethnic was coming more and more rapidly to the front. They were near
again to savage nature. The Maryland woods might have been thicker,
darker, the small church might have been some boulder altar beside some
early Old World river. They were a tribe again, and they were fighting
another and much larger tribe whom they had reason, reason, reason to
hate! Their existence was at stake and the existence of all that their
hearts held dear. They fought with fury. About each were his
tribesmen--all were brothers! Brother fought for brother, brother saw
brother fall, brother sprang to avenge brother. Their lips were
blackened from tearing cartridges; their eyes, large in their thin,
bronzed faces, burned against the enemy; their fingers were quick, quick
at the musket lock; the spirit was the spirit behind hurled stones of
old, swung clubs, thrown javelins! They had a loved leader, a great
strong head man who ruled them well and led them on to victory. They
fought for him too, for his scant and curt praise, for his "Good, Good!"
They fought for their own lives, each man for his own life, for their
tribe, their possessions, for women at home and children, for their
brethren, their leader, their cause. Something else, too, of the past
was there in force--hatred of him who opposed. They fought for hate at
Sharpsburg, as they fought for love. The great star drew, the iron thong
fell. Led and driven, the tribe fought gigantically.
* * * * *
The battle became furious. Within the din of artillery and musketry human
voices, loud, imperative, giving orders, shouting, wailing, died like a low
murmur in the blast. Out of the wildly drifting smoke, now dark, now
flame-lit, forms emerged, singly or in great bodies, then the smoke drew
together, hiding the struggle. There was blackness and grime as from the
ash of a volcano. The blood pounded behind the temples, the eyeballs
started, the tongue was thick in the mouth, battle smell and battle taste,
a red light, and time in crashes like an earthquake-toppling city! The
inequalities of the ground became exaggerated. Mere hillocks changed into
rocky islands. Seize them, fortify them, take them before the blue can! The
tall maize grew gigantically taller. Break through these miles of cane as
often before we have broken through them, the foemen crashing before us
down to their boats! The narrow tongues of woods widened, widened. Take
these deep forests, use them for shelter, from them send forth these new
arrows of death--fight, fight! in the rolling murk, the red light and
crying!
Before the Dunkard church Starke, commanding Jackson's old division, was
killed, Jones was wounded, Lawton wounded. Many field officers were
down, many, many of lesser rank. Of the blue, Mansfield was killed,
Hooker was wounded, and Hartsuff and Crawford. The grey had pressed the
blue back, back! Now in turn the blue drove the grey. The walls of the
white church were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay
at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But
the shells came too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came
in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince of Peace was crowded
out.
The artillery was deafening. In the midst of a tremendous burst of sound
D. H. Hill flung in the remainder of his division. Sumner came through
the smoke. The grey and blue closed in a death grapple. From toward the
centre, beneath the howling storm rose a singing--
The race is not to them that's got
The longest legs to run.
"Hood's Texans! Hood's Texans!" cried the Stonewall and all the other
brigades on the imperilled left. "Come on, Hood's Texans! Come on!
Yaaaii! Yaaaaaiih!"
Nor the battle to those people,
That shoots the biggest gun.
The Texans came to the Dunkard church. Stonewall Jackson launched a
thunderbolt, grey as steel, all his men moving up as one, against the
opposing, roaring sea. The sea gave back. Then Sumner called in
Sedgwick's fresh troops.
Allan Gold, fighting with the 65th, took the colours from the last of
the colour guard. He was tall and strong and he swung them high. The
glare from an exploding shell showed him and the battle flag. Gone was
the quiet school-teacher, gone even the scout and woodsman. He stood a
great Viking, with yellow hair, and the battle rage had come to him. He
began to chant, unconscious as a harp through which strikes a strong
wind. "Come on!" he chanted. "Come on!
"Sixty-fifth, come on!
Come on, the Stonewall!
Remember Manassas,
The first and the second Manassas!
Remember McDowell,
Remember Front Royal,
Remember the battle of Winchester,
Remember Cross Keys,
Remember Port Republic,
The battle of Kernstown, and all our battles and skirmishes,
Our marches and forced marches, bivouacs, and camp-fires,
Brother's hand in brother's hand, and the battle to-morrow!
Remember the Seven Days, Seven Days, Seven Days!
Remember the Seven Days! Remember Cedar Run.
The Groveton Wood, and the Railroad cut at Manassas
Where you threw stones when your cartridges were gone, where you
struck with the bayonet,
And the General spoke to you then, 'Steady, men, steady!'
Remember Chantilly, remember Loudoun and Maryland Heights.
Harper's Ferry was yesterday. Remember and strike them again!
Come on, 65th! Come on, the Stonewall!"
Back through the cornfield before the Dunkard church fell the blue. Dead
and dying choked the cornfield as the dead and dying had choked the cane
brake. Blade and stalks were beaten down, the shells tore up the earth.
The blue reformed and came again, a resistless mass. Heavier and
heavier, Fighting Joe Hooker, with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts and
Sumner, struck against Stonewall Jackson! Back came the grey to the
little Dunkard church. All around it, wood and open filled with
clangour. The blue pressed in--the grey were giving way, were giving