The Long Roll
their worst. And never use the word defeat."
He jerked his hand into the air. "Do your best for the wounded, doctor,
do all that is humanly possible, but do it _here_! I am going now to the
centre to see General Lee."
Behind the wood, in a grassy hollow moderately sheltered from the
artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young
surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical
director. "Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws.
They've just brought their colonel in--Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish
you would look at his arm."
The two looked. "There's but one thing, colonel."
"Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with." He straightened
himself on the boards where the men had laid him. "Sedgwick, too!
Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads
and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All
right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't
remember him,--my father and mother loved to talk of him--old Uncle
Edward. All right--it's all right."
The two doctors were talking together. "Only a few ounces left. Better
use it here?"
"Yes, yes!--One minute longer, colonel. We've got a little chloroform."
The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. "Is that all you've got?"
"Yes. We took a fair quantity at Manassas, but God only knows the amount
we could use! Now."
The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that had not been
torn by the exploding shell. "No, no! I don't want it. Keep it for some
one with a leg to cut off!" He smiled, a charming, twisted smile,
shading into a grimace of pain. "No chloroform at Yorktown! I'll be as
much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! Yes, yes, I'm in earnest,
doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; I'm ready."
On the knoll by Sharpsburg Lee and Jackson stood and looked toward the
right. McClellan had apparently chosen to launch three battles in one
day; in the early morning against the Confederate left, at midday
against its centre, now against its right. A message came from
Longstreet. "Burnside is in motion. I've got D. R. Jones and twenty-five
hundred men."
It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thousand men
he came over the stone bridge across the Antietam. They were fresh
troops; their flags were flying, their drums were beating, their bugles
braying. The line moved with huzzahs toward the ridge held by
Longstreet. From the left came tearing past the knoll the Confederate
batteries. Lee was massing them in the centre, training them against the
eastern foot of the ridge. There had been a lull in the storm, now
Pelham opened with loud thunders. Other guns followed. The Federal
batteries began to blaze; there broke out a madness of sound. In the
midst of it D. R. Jones with his twenty-five hundred men clashed with
Burnside's leading brigades.
Stonewall Jackson pulled the forage cap lower, jerked his hand into the
air. "Good! good! I will go, sir, and send in my freshest troops."
"Look," said Lee. "Look, general! On the Harper's Ferry road."
All upon the knoll turned and gazed. Air and light played with the
battle smoke, drove it somewhat to one side and showed for a few seconds
a long and sunlit road, the road from Harper's Ferry. One of the staff
began a low uncontrollable laughter. "By God! I see his red battle
shirt! By God! I see his red battle shirt!"
Lee with a glance checked the sound. He himself looked nobly lifted,
grave and thankful. The battle smoke closed, obscuring the road, but the
sound of marching men came along it, distinguishable even beneath the
artillery fire. "Good, good!" said Jackson. "A. P. Hill is a good
soldier."
Tawny with the dust of the seventeen miles, at a double quick and
yelling, the crimson battle flags slanting forward, in swung the Light
Division! D. R. Jones rallied. Decimated, out-worn, but dangerous, the
aiding regiments from the left did well. The grey guns worked with a
certain swift and steadfast grimness. From all the ridges of the
Antietam the blue cannon thundered, thundered. Blue and grey, the
musketry rolled. Sound rose into terrific volume, the eddying smoke
blotted out the day. Artillery Hell--Infantry Inferno--the field of
Sharpsburg roared now upon the right.
The Horse Artillery occupied a low ridge like a headland jutting into a
grassy field. Below, above, behind, the smoke rolled; in front the flame
leaped from their guns, the shells sped. There was a great background of
battle cloud, lit every ten seconds by the glare from an opposing
battery. John Pelham stood directing. Six guns were in fierce and
continuous action. The men serving them were picked artillery men. To
and fro they moved, down they stooped, up they stood, stepped backward
from the gun at fire, moved forward at recoil, fell again to the loading
with the precision of the drill ground. They were half naked, they were
black with powder, glistening with sweat, some were bleeding. In the
light from the guns all came boldly into relief; in the intermediate
deep murk they sank from sight, became of the clouds, cloudy, mere
shapes in the semi-darkness.
Stonewall Jackson, returning to the Dunkard church and passing behind
this headland, turned Little Sorrel's head and came upon the plateau.
Pelham met him. "Yes, general, we're doing well. Yes, sir, it's holding
out. Caissons were partly filled during the lull."
"Good, good!" said Jackson. He dismounted and walked forward to the
guns. Pelham followed. "I don't think you should be out here, general.
They've got our range very accurately--"
The other apparently did not notice the remark. He stood near one of the
guns and turned his eyes upon the battle on the right. "Longstreet
strikes a heavy blow. He and Hill will push them back. Colonel Pelham,
train two guns upon that body of the enemy at the ford."
Pelham moved toward the further guns. The howitzer nearest Jackson was
fired, reloaded, fired again. The men beside it stood back. It blazed,
thundered, recoiled. A great, black, cylindrical shell came with a
demoniac shriek. At the moment the platform was lit with the battle
glare. Its fall was seen. It fell, smoking, immediately beside Stonewall
Jackson. Such was the concussion of the air that for a moment he was
stunned. Involuntarily his arm went up before his eyes; he made a
backward step. Pelham, returning from the further guns and still some
yards away, gave a shout of warning and horror; from all the men who had
seen the thing there burst a similar cry. With the motion almost of the
shell itself, a man of the crew of the howitzer reached the torn earth
and the cylinder. His body half naked, blackened, brushed, in passing,
the general. He put his hands beneath the heated, smoking bottle of
death, lifted it, and rushed on to the edge of the escarpment fifty feet
away. Here he swung it with force, threw it from him with burned hands.
Halfway to the field below it exploded.
Pelham, very pale, protested with some sternness. "You can't stay here,
general! My men can't work with you here. It doesn't matter about us,
but it does matter about you. Please go, sir."
"I am going, colonel. I have seen what I wished to see. Who is the man
who took up the shell?"
Pelham turned to the howitzer. "Which of you was it?"
Half a dozen voices were raised in answer. "Deaderick, sir. But he
burned his hands badly and he asked the lieutenant if he could go to the
rear--"
"Good, good!" said Stonewall Jackson. "He did well. But there are many
brave men in this army." He went back to Little Sorrel, where he stood
cropping the dried grass, and stiffly mounted. As he turned from the
platform and the guns, all lit again by the orange glare, there came
from the right an accession of sound, then high, shrill, and triumphant
the Confederate yell. A shout arose from the Horse Artillery. "They're
breaking! they're breaking! Burnside, too, is breaking! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaiiihh! Yaaaaaiiihhh!"
CHAPTER XLIV
BY THE OPEQUON
The battle of Sharpsburg was a triumph neither for blue nor grey, for
North nor South. With the sinking of the sun ceased the bloody,
prolonged, and indecisive struggle. Blue and grey, one hundred and
thirty thousand men fought that battle. When the pale moon came up she
looked on twenty-one thousand dead and wounded.
The living ranks sank down and slept beside the dead. Lee on Traveller
waited by the highroad until late night. Man by man his generals came to
him and made their report--their ghastly report. "Very good, general.
What is your opinion?"--"I think, sir, that we should cross the Potomac
to-night."--"Very well, general. What is your opinion?"--"General Lee,
we should cross the Potomac to-night."--"Yes, general, it has been our
heaviest field. What is your advice?"--"General Lee, I am here to do
what you tell me to do."
Horse and rider, Traveller and Robert Edward Lee, stood in the pale
light above the Antietam. "Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac
to-night. If General McClellan wants to fight in the morning I will give
him battle again.--And now we are all very tired. Good-night.
Good-night!"
The sun came up, dim behind the mist. The mist rose, the morning
advanced. The September sunshine lay like vital warmth upon the height
and vale, upon the Dunkard church and the wood about it, upon the
cornfields, and Burnside's bridge and the Bloody Lane, and upon all the
dead men in the cornfields, in the woods, upon the heights, beside the
stream, in the lane. The sunshine lay upon the dead, as the prophet upon
the Shunamite's child, but it could not reanimate. Grey and blue, the
living armies gazed at each other across the Antietam. Both were
exhausted, both shattered, the blue yet double in numbers. The grey
waited for McClellan's attack. It did not come. The ranks, lying down,
began to talk. "He ain't going to attack! He's cautious."--"He's had
enough."--"So've I. O God!"--"Never saw such a fight. Wish those
buzzards would go away from that wood over there! They're so
dismal."--"No, McClellan ain't going to attack!"--"Then why don't we
attack?"--"Go away, Johnny! We're mighty few and powerfully
tired."--"Well, _I_ think so, too. We might just as well attack. Great
big counter stroke! Crumple up Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts over
there! Turn their right!"--"'T ain't impossible! Marse Robert and Old
Jack could manage it."--"No, they couldn't!"--"Yes, they
could!"--"You're a fool! Look at that position, stronger 'n Thunder Run
Mountain, and Hooker's got troops he didn't have in yesterday! 'N those
things like beehives in a row are Parrotts 'n Whitworths' 'n Blakeley's.
'N then look at _us_. Oh, yes! we've got _spirit_, but spirit's got to
have a body to rush those guns."--"Thar ain't anything Old Jack couldn't
do if he tried!"--"Yes, there is!" "Thar ain't! How _dast_ you say
that?"--"There is! He couldn't be a fool if he tried--and he ain't
a-going to try!"
The artillerist, Stephen D. Lee, came to headquarters on the knoll by
Sharpsburg. "General Lee sent for me. Tell him, please, I am here." Lee
appeared. "Good-morning, Colonel Lee. You are to go at once to General
Jackson. Tell him that I sent you to report to him." The officer found
Stonewall Jackson at the Dunkard church. "General, General Lee sent me
to report to you."
"Good, good! Colonel, I wish you to take a ride with me. We will go to
the top of the hill yonder."
They went up to the top of the hill, past dead men and horses, and much
wreckage of caissons and gun wheels. "There are probably sharpshooters
in that wood across the stream," said Jackson. "Do not expose yourself
unnecessarily, colonel." Arrived at the level atop they took post in a