The Long Roll
music, to the horn and to the drum. The long rays that the sun was
sending made a dazzle of bayonet steel, thousands and thousands and
thousands of bayonets. The gleaming lines went here, went there,
crossed, recrossed, formed angles, made a vast and glittering net. Out
of it soared the flags, bright hovering birds, bright giant blossoms in
the air. Batteries moved across the plain. Officers, couriers, galloped
on fiery horses; some general officer passed from end to end of a
forming line and was cheered. The earth shook to marching feet. The
great brazen horns blared, the drums beat, the bugles rang. The gleaming
net folded back on itself, made three pleats, made three great lines of
battle.
The grey leaders on the hill to the south gazed in silence. Then said
Lee, "It is well that war is so terrible. Were it not so, we should grow
too fond of it." Longstreet, the "old war horse," stared at the
tremendous pageant. "This wasn't a little quarrel. It's been brewing for
seventy-five years--ever since the Bill-of-Rights day. Things that take
so long in brewing can't be cooled by a breath. It's getting to be a
huge war." Said Jackson, "Franklin holds their left. He seems to be
advancing. I will return to Hamilton's Crossing, sir."
The guns on the Stafford Heights which had been firing slowly and singly
now opened mouth together. The tornado, overpassing river and plain,
burst on the southern hills. In the midst of the tempest, Burnside
ordered Franklin to advance a single division, its mission the seizing
the _unoccupied_ ridge east of Deep Run. Franklin sent Meade with
forty-five hundred Pennsylvania troops.
Meade's brigades advanced in three lines, skirmishers out, a band
playing a quickstep, the stormy sunlight deepening the colours, making a
gleaming of bayonets. His first line crossed the Richmond road. To the
left was a tiny stream, beyond it a ragged bank topped by brushwood.
Suddenly, from this coppice, opened two of Pelham's guns.
Beneath that flanking fire the first blue line faltered, gave ground.
Meade brought up four batteries and sent for others. All these came
fiercely into action. When they got his range, Pelham moved his two guns
and began again a raking fire. Again the blue gunners found the range
and again he moved with deliberate swiftness, and again he opened with a
hot and raking fire. One gun was disabled; he fought with the other. He
fought until the limber chests were empty and there came an imperious
message from Jeb Stuart, "Get back from destruction, you infernal,
gallant fool, John Pelham!"
The guns across the river and the blue field batteries steadily shelled
for half an hour the heavily timbered slopes beyond the railroad. Except
for the crack and crash of severed boughs the wood gave no sign. At the
end of this period Meade resumed his advance.
On came the blue lines, staunch, determined troops, seasoned now as the
grey were seasoned. They meant to take that empty line of hills,
willy-nilly a few Confederate guns. That done, they would be in a
position to flank Longstreet, already attacked in front by Sumner's
Grand Division. On they came, with a martial front, steady, swinging.
Uninterrupted, they marched to within a few hundred yards of Prospect
Hill. Suddenly the woods that loomed before them so dark and quiet
blazed and rang. Fifty guns were within that cover, and the fifty cast
their thunderbolts full against the dark blue line. From either side the
grey artillery burst the grey musketry, and above the crackling thunder
rose the rebel yell. Stonewall Jackson was not down the river; Stonewall
Jackson was here! Meade's Pennsylvanians were gallant fighters; but they
broke beneath that withering fire,--they fell back in strong disorder.
Grey and blue, North and South, there were gathered upon and above the
field of Fredericksburg four hundred guns. All came into action. Where
earlier, there had been fog over the plain, fog wreathing the hillsides,
there was now smoke. Dark and rolling it invaded the ruined town, it
mantled the flowing Rappahannock, it surmounted the hills. Red flashes
pierced it, and over and under and through roared the enormous sound.
There came reinforcements to Meade, division after division. In the
meantime Sumner was hurling brigades against Marye's Hill and Longstreet
was hurling them back again.
The 2d Corps listened to the terrible musketry from this front. "Old Pete's
surely giving them hell! There's a stone wall at the base of Marye's Hill.
McLaws and Ransom are holding it--sorry for the Yanks in front."--"Never
heard such hullabaloo as the great guns are making!"--"What're them
Pennsylvanians down there doing? It's time for them to come on! They've got
enough reinforcements--old friends, Gibbon and Doubleday."--"Good
fighters."--"Yes, Lord! we're all good fighters now. Glad of it. Like to
fight a good fighter. Feel real friendly toward him."--"A
thirty-two-pounder Parrott in the battery on the hill over there exploded
and raised hell. General Lee standing right by. He just spoke on, calm and
imperturbable, and Traveller looked sideways."--"Look! Meade's moving. _Do
you know, I think we ought to have occupied that tongue of land?_"
So, in sooth, thought others presently. It was a marshy, dense, and
tangled coppice projecting like a sabre tooth between the brigades of
Lane and Archer. So thick was the growth, so boggy the earth, that at
the last it had been pronounced impenetrable and left unrazed. Now the
mistake was paid for--in bloody coin.
Meade's line of battle rushed across the open, brushed the edge of the
coppice, discovered that it was empty, and plunging in, found cover. The
grey batteries could not reach them. Almost before the situation was
realized, forth burst the blue from the thicket. Lane was flanked; in
uproar and confusion the grey gave way. Meade sent in another brigade.
It left the first to man-handle Lane, hurled itself on, and at the
outskirt of the wood, struck Archer's left, taking Archer by surprise
and creating a demi-rout. A third brigade entered on the path of the
first and second. The latter, leaving Archer to this new strength,
hurled itself across the military road and upon a thick and tall wood
held by Maxey Gregg and his South Carolinians. Smoke, cloud, and forest
growth--it was hard to distinguish colours, hard to tell just what was
happening! Gregg thought that the smoke-wrapped line was Archer falling
back. He withheld his fire. The line came on and in a moment, amid
shouts, struck his right. A bullet brought down Gregg himself, mortally
wounded. His troops broke, then rallied. A grey battery near Bernard's
Cabin brought its guns to bear upon Gibbon, trying to follow the blue
triumphant rush. Archer reformed. Stonewall Jackson, standing on
Prospect Hill, sent orders to his third line. "Generals Taliaferro and
Early, advance and clear the front with bayonets."
_Yaaaiih! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaihh!_ yelled Jubal Early's men, and did as they
were bid. _Yaaaaiiih! Yaaiiihhh! Yaaaaiiihhhh!_ yelled the Stonewall
Brigade and the rest of Taliaferro's, and did as they were bid. Back,
back were borne Meade's brigades. Darkness of smoke, denseness of forest
growth, treachery of swampy soil!--all order was lost, and there came no
support. Back went the blue--all who could go back. A. P. Hill's second
line was upon them now; Gibbon was attacked. The grey came down the long
slopes like a torrent loosed. Walker's guns joined in. The uproar was
infernal. The blue fought well and desperately--but there was no
support. Back they went, back across the Richmond Road--all who could
get back. They left behind in the marshy coppice, and on the wooded
slopes and by the embankment, four thousand dead and wounded. The Light
Division, Taliaferro and Early, now held the railroad embankment. Before
them was the open plain, and the backward surge to the river of the
broken foe. It was three o'clock of the afternoon. Burnside sent an
order to Franklin to attack again, but Franklin disobeyed.
Upon the left Longstreet's battle now swelled to giant proportions.
Marye's Hill, girdled by that stone wall, crowned by the Washington
Artillery, loomed impregnable. Against it the North tossed to
destruction division after division. They marched across the bare and
sullen plain, they charged; the hill flashed into fire, a thunder
rolled, the smoke cloud deepened. When it lifted the charge was seen to
be broken, retreating, the plain was seen to be strewed with dead. The
blue soldiers were staunch and steadfast. They saw that their case was
hapless, yet on they came across the shelterless plain. Ordered to
charge, they charged; charged very gallantly, receded with a stubborn
slowness. They were good fighters, worthy foes, and the grey at
Fredericksburg hailed them as such. Forty thousand men charged Marye's
Hill--six great assaults--and forty thousand were repulsed. The winter
day closed in. Twelve thousand men in blue lay dead or wounded at the
foot of the southern hills, before Longstreet on the left and Stonewall
Jackson on the right.
Five thousand was the grey loss. The Rockbridge Artillery had fought
near the Horse Artillery by Hamilton's Crossing. All day the guns had
been doggedly at work; horses and drivers and gunners and guns and
caissons; there was death and wounds and wreckage. In the wintry, late
afternoon, when the battle thunders were lessening, Major John Pelham
came by and looked at Rockbridge. Much of Rockbridge lay on the ground,
the rest stood at the guns. "Why, boys," said Pelham, "you stand killing
better than any I ever saw!"
They stood it well, both blue and grey. It was stern fighting at
Fredericksburg, and grey and blue they fought it sternly and well. The
afternoon closed in, cold and still, with a red sun yet veiled by drifts
of crape-like smoke. The Army of the Potomac, torn, decimated, rested
huddled in Fredericksburg and on the river banks. The Army of Northern
Virginia rested with few or no camp-fires on the southern hills. Between
the two foes stretched the freezing plain, and on the plain lay thick
the Federal dead and wounded. They lay thick, thick, before the stone
wall. At hand, full target for the fire of either force, was a small,
white house. In the house lived Mrs. Martha Stevens. She would not leave
before the battle, though warned and warned again to do so. She said she
had an idea that she could help. She stayed, and wounded men dragged
themselves or were dragged upon her little porch, and within her doors.
General Cobb of Georgia died there; wherever a man could be laid there
were stretched the ghastly wounded. Past the house shrieked the shells;
bullets imbedded themselves in its walls. To and fro went Martha
Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave
out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre
house--her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When
all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door
a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with
as little reck as may be conceived of shell or minie.
The sun sank, a red ball, staining the snow with red. The dark came
rapidly, a very cold dark night, with myriads of stars. The smoke slowly
cleared. The great, opposed forces lay on their arms, the one closely
drawn by the river, the other on the southern hills. Between was the
plain, and the plain was a place of drear sound--oh, of drear sound!
Neither army showed any lights; for all its antagonist knew either might
be feverishly, in the darkness, preparing an attack. Grey and blue, the
guns yet dominated that wide and mournful level over which, to leap upon
the other, either foe must pass. Grey and blue, there was little