The Long Roll
little copse, wildly torn and blackened, a wood in Artillery Hell. "Take
your glasses, colonel, and examine the enemy's line of battle."
The other lifted the field-glass and with it swept the Antietam, and the
fields and ridges beyond it. He looked at the Federal left, and he
looked at the Federal centre, and he looked along the Federal right,
which was opposite, then he lowered the glasses. "General, they have a
very strong position, and they are in great force."
"Good! I wish you to take fifty pieces of artillery and crush that
force."
Stephen D. Lee was a brave man. He said nothing now, but he stood a
moment in silence, and then he took his field-glass and looked again. He
looked now at the many and formidable Federal batteries clustered like
dark fruit above the Antietam, and now at the masses of blue infantry,
and now at the positions, under artillery and musketry fire, which the
Confederate batteries must take. He put the glass down again. "Yes,
general. Where shall I get the fifty guns?"
"How many have you?"
"I had thirty. Some were lost, a number disabled. I have twelve."
"Just so. Well, colonel, I could give you a few, and General Lee tells
me he can furnish some."
The other fingered a button on his coat for a moment, then, "Yes,
general. Shall I go for the guns?"
"No, not yet." Stonewall Jackson laid his large hands in their worn old
brown gauntlets, one over the other, upon his saddle bow. He, too,
looked at the Federal right and the guns on the heights like dark fruit.
His eyes made just a glint of blue light below the forage cap. "Colonel
Lee, can you crush the Federal right with fifty guns?"
The artillerist drew a quick breath, let the button alone, and raised
his head higher. "I can try, general. I can do it if any one can."
"That is not what I asked you, sir. If I give you fifty guns can you
crush the Federal right?"
The other hesitated. "General, I don't know what you want of me. Is it
my technical opinion as an artillery officer? or do you want to know if
I will make the attempt? If you give me the order of course I will make
it!"
"Yes, colonel. But I want your positive opinion, yes or no. Can you
crush the Federal right with fifty guns?"
The artillerist looked again, steadying arm and glass against a charred
bough. "General, it cannot be done with fifty guns and the troops you
have here."
Hilltop and withered wood hung a moment silent in the air, sunny but yet
with a taste of all the powder that had been burned. Then said Jackson,
"Good! Let us ride back, colonel."
They turned their horses, but Stephen Lee with some emotion began to put
the case. "You forced me, general, to say what I did say. If you send
the guns, I beg of you not to give them to another! I will fight them to
the last extremity--" He looked to the other anxiously. To say to
Stonewall Jackson that you must despair and die where he sent you in to
conquer!
But Jackson had no grimness of aspect. He looked quietly thoughtful. It
was even with a smile of sweetness that he cut short the other's
pleading. "It's all right, colonel, it's all right! Everyone knows that
you are a brave officer and would fight the guns well." At the foot of
the hill he checked Little Sorrel. "We'll part here, colonel. You go at
once to General Lee. Tell him all that has happened since he sent you to
me. Tell him that you examined the Federal position. Tell him that I
forced you to give the technical opinion of an artillery officer, and
tell him what that opinion is. That is all, colonel."
The September day wore on. Grey and blue armies rested inactive save
that they worked at burying the dead. Then, in the afternoon,
information came to grey headquarters. Humphrey's division, pouring
through the gaps of South Mountain, would in a few hours be at
McClellan's service. Couch's division was at hand--there were troops
assembling on the Pennsylvania border. At dark Lee issued his orders.
During the night of the eighteenth the Army of Northern Virginia left
the banks of the Antietam, wound silently down to the Potomac, and
crossed to the Virginia shore.
All night there fell a cold, fine, chilling rain. Through it the wagon
trains crossed, the artillery with a sombre noise, the wounded who must
be carried, the long column of infantry, the advance, the main, the
rear. The corps of Stonewall Jackson was the last to ford the river. He
sat on Little Sorrel, midway of the stream, and watched his troops go
onward in the steady, chilling rain. Daybreak found him there,
motionless as a figure in bronze, needing not to care for wind or sun or
rain.
The Army of Northern Virginia encamped on the road to Martinsburg.
Thirty guns on the heights above Boteler's Ford guarded its rear, and
Jeb Stuart and his cavalry watched from the northern bank at
Williamsport. McClellan pushed out from Sharpsburg a heavy
reconnoissance, and on his side of the river planted guns. Fitz John
Porter, in command, crossed during the night a considerable body of
troops. These advanced against Pendelton's guns, took four of them, and
drove the others back on the Martinsburg road. Pendleton reported to
General Lee; Lee sent an order to Stonewall Jackson. The courier found
him upon the bank of the Potomac, gazing at the northern shore. "Good!"
he said. "I have ordered up the Light Division." Seventy guns thundered
from across the water. A. P. Hill in his red battle shirt advancing in
that iron rain, took, front and flank, the Federal infantry. He drove
them down from the bluff, he pushed them into the river; they showed
black on the current. Those who got across, under the shelter of the
guns, did not try again that passage. McClellan looked toward Virginia,
but made no further effort, this September, to invade her. The Army of
Northern Virginia waited another day above Boteler's Ford, then withdrew
a few miles to the banks of the Opequon.
The Opequon, a clear and pleasing stream, meandered through the lower
reaches of the great Valley, through a fertile, lovely country, as yet
not greatly scored and blackened by war's torch and harrow. An easy ride
to the westward and you arrived in Winchester, beloved of
Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson and the 2d Army Corps. As the autumn
advanced, the banks of the Opequon, the yet thick forests that stretched
toward the Potomac, the great maples, and oaks and gums and hickories
that rose, singly or in clusters, from the rolling farm lands, put on a
most gorgeous colouring. The air was mellow and sunny. From the
camp-fires, far and near, there came always a faint pungent smell of
wood smoke. Curls of blue vapour rose from every glade. The land seemed
bathed in Indian summer.
Through it in the mellow sunlight, beneath the crimson of the gums, the
lighter red of the maples, the yellow of the hickories, the 2d Army
Corps found itself for weeks back on the drill ground. The old Army of
the Valley crowed and clapped on the back the Light Division and D. H.
Hill's troops. "Old times come again! Jest like we used to do at
Winchester! Chirk up, you fellows! Your drill's improving every day. Old
Jack'll let up on you after a while. Lord! it used to be _seven_ hours a
day!"
Not only did the 2d Corps drill, it refitted. Mysteriously there came
from Winchester a really fair amount of shoes and clothing. Only the
fewest were now actually barefoot. In every regiment there went on, too,
a careful cobbling. If by any means a shoe could be made to do, it was
put in that position. Uniforms were patched and cleaned, and every day
was washing day. All the hillsides were spread with soldiers' shirts.
The red leaves drifting down on them looked like blood-stains, but the
leaves could be brushed away. The men, standing in the Opequon, whistled
as they rubbed and wrung. Every day the recovered from hospitals, and
the footsore stragglers, and the men detached or furloughed, came home
to camp. There came in recruits, too--men who last year were too old,
boys who last year were not old enough. "Look here, boys! Thar goes
Father Time!--No, it's Rip Van Winkle!"--"No, it's Santa Claus!--Anyhow,
he's going to fight!" "Look here, boys! here comes another cradle. Good
Lord, he's just a toddler! He don't see a razor in his dreams yet!
Quartermaster's out of nursing-bottles!" "Shet up! the way those
children fight's a caution!"
October drifted on, smooth as the Opequon. Red and yellow leaves drifted
down, wood smoke arose, sound was wrapped as in fine wool, dulled
everywhere to sweetness. Whirring insects, rippling water, the
wood-chopper's axe, the whistling soldiers, the drum-beat, the
bugle-call, all were swept into a smooth current, steady, almost
droning, somewhat dream-like. The 2d Corps would have said that it was a
long time on the Opequon, but that on the whole it found the place a
pleasing land of drowsy-head.
Visitors came to the Opequon; parties from Winchester, officers from the
1st Corps commanded by Longstreet and encamped a few miles to the
eastward, officers from the headquarters of the commander-in-chief.
General Lee came himself on Traveller, and with Stonewall Jackson rode
along the Opequon, under the scarlet maples. One day there appeared a
cluster of Englishmen, Colonel the Honourable Garnet Wolseley; the
Special Correspondent of the _Times_, the Honourable Francis Lawley, and
the Special Correspondent of the _Illustrated London News_, Mr. Frank
Vizetelly. General Lee had sent them over under the convoy of an
officer, with a note to Stonewall Jackson.
MY DEAR GENERAL,--These gentlemen very especially wish to make your
acquaintance. Yours,
R. E. LEE.
They made it, beneath a beautiful, tall, crimson gum tree, where on a
floor of fallen leaves Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson's tent was
pitched. A camp-stool, a wooden chair, and two boxes were placed. There
was a respectful silence while the Opequon murmured by, then Garnet
Wolseley spoke of the great interest which England--Virginia's mother
country--was taking in this struggle.
"Yes, sir," said Jackson. "It would be natural for a mother to take an
even greater interest."
"And the admiration, general, with which we have watched your
career--the career of genius, if I may say so! By Jove--"
"Yes, sir. It is not my career. God has the matter in hand."
"Well, He knows how to pick his lieutenants!--You have the most ideal
place for a camp, general! But, I suppose, before these coloured leaves
all fall you will be moving?"
"It is an open secret, I suppose, sir," said the correspondent of the
_Times_, "that when McClellan does see fit to cross you will meet him
east of the Blue Ridge?"
"May I ask, sir," said the correspondent of the _Illustrated News_,
"what you think of this latest move on the political chess-board--I mean
Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation?"
"The leaves are," said Jackson, "a beautiful colour. I was in England
one autumn, Colonel Wolseley, but I did not observe our autumn colours
in your foliage. Climate, doubtless. But what was my admiration were
your cathedrals."
"Yes, general; wonderful, are they not? Music in stone. Should McClellan
cross, would the Fredericksburg route--"
"Good! good! Music in stone! Which of your great church structures do
you prefer, sir?"
"Why, sir, I might prefer Westminster Abbey. Would--"
"Good! Westminster Abbey. A soldier's answer. I remember that I
especially liked Durham. I liked the Galilee chapel and the tomb of the
Venerable Bede. St. Cuthbert is buried there, too, is he not?"
"I really don't remember, sir. Is he, Mr. Lawley?"
"I believe so."
"Yes, he is. You haven't got any cathedrals here, General Jackson, but
you've got about the most interesting army on the globe. Will
McClellan--"
"I like the solidity of the early Norman. The foundations were laid in