The Long Roll
there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappahannock below
Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jackson's down there. The
balloon people say so. General Lee's got an idea that Port Royal's our
point of attack. The mass of his army's there. The gunboat people say
so. Longstreet may be behind those hills. Well, we'll crush Longstreet!
We'll build our bridges under cover of this fortunate fog, and go over
and defeat Longstreet and be far down the road to Richmond before a man
can say Jack Robinson!"
"Jack Robinson!" said the brigade from McLaws's division--Barksdale's
Mississippians--drawn up on the water edge of Fredericksburg. They were
tall men--Barksdale's Mississippians--playful bear-hunters from the cane
brakes, young and powerfully made, and deadly shots. "Old Barksdale"
knew how to handle them, and together they were a handful for any enemy
whatsoever. Sixteen hundred born hunters and fighters, they opened fire
on the bridge-builders, trying to build four bridges, three above, one
below the town. Barksdale's men were somewhat sheltered by the houses on
the river brink; the blue had the favourable fog with which to cover
operations. It did not wholly help; the Mississippians had keen eyes;
the rifles blazed, blazed, blazed! Burnside's bridge-builders were
gallant men; beaten back from the river they came again and again, but
again and again the eyes of the swamp hunters ran along the gleaming
barrels and a thousand bronzed fingers pulled a thousand triggers. Past
the middle of the day the fog lifted. The town lay defined and helpless
beneath a pallid sky.
The artillery of the Army of the Potomac opened upon it. One hundred and
forty heavy guns, set in tiers upon the heights to the north, fired each
into Fredericksburg fifty rounds. Under that terrible cover the blue
began to cross on pontoons.
A number of the women and children had been sent from the town during
the preceding days. Not all, however, were gone. Many had no place to go
to; some were ill and some were nursing the ill; many had husbands,
sons, brothers, there at hand in the Army of Northern Virginia and would
not go. Now with the beginning of the bombardment they must go. There
were grey, imperative orders. "At once! at once! Go _where_? God knows!
but go."
They went, almost all, in the snow, beneath the pallid sky, with the
shells shrieking behind them. They carried the children, they half
carried the sick and the very old. They stumbled on, between the frozen
hills by the dark pointed cedars, over the bare white fields. Behind
them home was being destroyed; before them lay desolation, and all
around was winter. They had perhaps thought it out, and were headed--the
various forlorn lines--for this or that country house, but they looked
lost, remnant of a world become glacial, whirled with suddenness into
the sidereal cold, cold! and the loneliness of cold. The older children
were very brave; but there were babes, too, and these wailed and wailed.
Their wailing made a strange, futile sound beneath the thundering of the
guns.
One of these parties came through the snow to a swollen creek on which
the ice cakes were floating. Cross!--yes, but how? The leaders consulted
together, then went up the stream to find a possible ford, and came in
sight of a grey battery, waiting among the hills. "Oh, soldiers!--oh,
soldiers!--come and help!"
Down hastened a detachment, eager, respectful, a lieutenant directing,
the very battery horses looking anxious, responsible. A soldier in the
saddle, a child in front, a child behind, the old steady horses planting
their feet carefully in the icy rushing stream, over went the children.
Then the women crossed, their hands resting on the grey-clad shoulders.
All were over; all thanked the soldiers. The soldiers took off their
caps, wished with all their hearts that they had at command fire-lit
palaces and a banquet set! Having neither, being themselves without
shelter or food and ordered not to build fires, they could only bare
their heads and watch the other soldiers out of sight, carrying the
children, half carrying the old and sick, stumbling through the snow, by
the dark pointed cedars, and presently lost to view among the frozen
hills.
The shells rained destruction into Fredericksburg. Houses were battered
and broken; houses were set on fire. Through the smoke and uproar, the
explosions and detonations and tongues of flame, the Mississippians beat
back another attempt at the bridges and opened fire on boat after boat
now pushing from the northern shore. But the boats came bravely on,
bravely manned; hundreds might be driven from the bridge-building, but
other hundreds sprang to take their places--and always from the heights
came the rain of iron, smashing, shivering, setting afire, tearing up
the streets, bringing down the walls, ruining, wounding, slaying! McLaws
sent an order to Barksdale, Barksdale gave it to his brigade.
"Evacuate!" said the Mississippians. "We're going to evacuate. What's
that in English? 'Quit?'--What in hell should we quit for?"
Orders being orders, the disgust of the bear-hunters did not count. "Old
Barksdale" was fairly deprecating. "Men, I can't help it! General McLaws
says, 'General Barksdale, withdraw your men to Marye's Hill.' Well, I've
got to do it, haven't I? General McLaws knows, now doesn't
he?--Yes,--just one more round. _Load! Kneel! Commence firing!_"
In the late afternoon the town was evacuated, Barksdale drawing off in
good order across the stormed-upon open. He disappeared--the Mississippi
brigade disappeared--from the Federal vision. The blue column, the 28th
Massachusetts leading, entered Fredericksburg. "We'll get them all
to-morrow--Longstreet certainly! Stonewall Jackson's from twelve to
eighteen miles down the river. Well! this time Lee will find that he's
divided his army once too often!"
By dark there were built six bridges, but the main army rested all night
on the northern bank. December the twelfth dawned, another foggy day.
The fog held hour after hour, very slow, still, muffled weather, through
which, corps by corps, all day long, the army slowly crossed. In the
afternoon there was a cavalry skirmish with Stuart, but nothing else
happened. Thirty-six hours had been consumed in crossing and resting.
The Rappahannock, however, _was_ crossed, and the road to Richmond
stretched plain between the hills.
But the grey army was not divided. Certain divisions had been down the
river, but they were no longer down the river. The Army of Northern
Virginia, a vibrant unit, intense, concentrated, gaunt, bronzed, and
highly efficient, waited behind the hills south and west of the town.
There was a creek running through a ravine, called Deep Run. On one side
of Deep Run stood Longstreet and the 1st Corps, on the other, almost at
right angles, Stonewall Jackson and the 2d. Before both the heavily
timbered ridge sank to the open plain. In the woods had been thrown up
certain breastworks.
Longstreet's left, Anderson's division, rested on the river. To
Anderson's right were posted McLaws, Pickett, and Hood. He had his
artillery on Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, and he had Ransom's infantry
in line at the base of these hills behind a stone wall. Across Deep Run,
on the wooded hills between the ravine and the Massaponax, was Stonewall
Jackson. A. P. Hill's division with the brigades of Pender, Lane,
Archer, Thomas, and Gregg made his first line of battle, the divisions
of Taliaferro and Early his second, and D. H. Hill's division his
reserve. His artillery held all favourable crests and headlands.
Stuart's cavalry and Stuart's Horse Artillery were gathered by the
Massaponax. Hills and forest hid them all, and over the plain and river
rolled the fog.
It hid the North as it hid the South. Burnside's great force rested the
night of the twelfth in and immediately about Fredericksburg--Hooker and
Sumner and Franklin, one hundred and thirteen thousand men. "The balloon
people" now reported that the hills south and west were held by a
considerable rebel force--Longstreet evidently, Lee probably with him.
Burnside repeated the infatuation of Pope and considered that Stonewall
Jackson was absent from the field of operations. Undoubtedly he had
been, but the shortest of time before, down the river by Port Royal. No
one had seen him move. Jackson away, there was then only
Longstreet--strongly posted, no doubt. Well! Form a great line of
battle, advance in overwhelming strength across the plain, the guns on
Stafford Heights supporting, and take the hills, and Longstreet on them!
It sounded simple.
The fog, heavy, fleecy, white, persisted. The grey soldiers on the
wooded hills, the grey artillery holding the bluff heads, the grey
skirmishers holding embankment and cut of the Richmond, Fredericksburg
and Potomac Railroad, the grey cavalry by the Massaponax, all stared
into the white sea and could discern nothing. The ear was of no avail.
Sound came muffled, but still it came. "The long roll--hear the long
roll! My Lord! How many drums have they got, anyway?"--"Listen! If you
listen right hard you can hear them shouting orders! Hush up, you
infantry, down there! We want to hear."--"They're moving guns, too! Wish
there'd come a little sympathizing earthquake and help them--'specially
those siege guns on the heights over there!"--"No, no! I want to fight
them. Look! it's lifting a little! the fog's lifting a little! Look at
the guns up in the air like that! It's closed again."--"Well, if that
wasn't fantastic! Ten iron guns in a row, posted in space!"--"Hm! brass
bands. My Lord! there must be one to a platoon!"--"Hear them marching!
Saw lightning once run along the ground--now it's thunder. How many men
has General Ambrose Everett Burnside got, anyhow?"--"Burnside's been to
dances before in Fredericksburg! Some of the houses are burning now that
he's danced in, and some of the women he has danced with are wandering
over the snow. I hope he'll like the reel presently."--"He's a good
fellow himself, though not much of a general! He can't help fighting
here if he's put here to fight."--"I know that. I was just stating
facts. Hear that music, music, music!"
Up from Deep Run, a little in the rear of the grey centre, rose a bold
hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff
behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the left,
Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants talked
together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop above Deep
Run. With suddenness the fog parted, was upgathered with swiftness by
the great golden sun.
That lifted curtain revealed a very great and martial picture,--War in a
moment of vastness and grandeur, epic, sublime. The town was afire;
smoke and flame went up to a sky not yet wholly azure, banded and barred
with clouds from behind which the light came in rays fierce and bright,
with an effect of threatening. There was a ruined house on a high hill.
It gave the appearance of a grating in the firmament, a small dungeon
grating. Beyond the burning town was the river, crossed now by six
pontoon bridges. On each there were troops; one of the long sun rays
caught the bayonets. From the river, to the north, rose the heights, and
they had an iron crown from which already came lightnings and thunders.
There were paths leading down to the river and these showed blue, moving
streams, bright points which were flags moving with them. That for the
far side of the Rappahannock, but on this side, over the plain that
stretched south and west of the smoke-wreathed town, there moved a blue
sea indeed. Eighty thousand men were on that plain. They moved here,
they moved there, into battle formation, and they moved to the crash of