The Long Roll
sleeping. It was too cold, and there was need for watchfulness, and the
plain was too unhappy--the plain was too unhappy.
The smoke vanished slowly from the air. The night lay sublimely still,
fearfully clear and cold. About ten o'clock Nature provided a spectacle.
The grey troops, huddled upon the hillsides, drew a quickened breath. A
Florida regiment showed alarm. "What's that? Look at that light in the
sky! Great shafts of light streaming up--look! opening like a fan!
What's that, chaplain, what's that?--Don't reckon the Lord's tired of
fighting, and it's the Judgment Day?"
"No, no, boys! It's an aurora borealis."
"Say it over, please. Oh, northern lights! Well, we've heard of them
before, but we never saw them. Having a lot of experiences here in
Virginia!"--"Well, it's beautiful, any way, and I think it's terrible. I
wish those northern lights would do something for the northern wounded
down there. Nothing else that's northern seems likely to do it."--"Look
at them--look at them! pale red, and dancing! I've heard them called
'the merry dancers.' There's a shooting star! They say that every time a
star shoots some one dies."--"That's not so. If it were, the whole sky
would be full of falling stars to-night. Look at that red ray going up
to the zenith. O God, make the plain stop groaning!"
The display in the heavens continued, luminous rays, faintly
rose-coloured, shifting from east to west, streaming upward until they
were lost in the starry vault. Elsewhere the sky was dark, intensely
clear, the winter stars like diamonds. There was no wind. The wide,
unsheltered plain across which had stormed, across which had receded,
the Federal charges, was sown thick with soldiers who had dropped from
the ranks. Many and many lay still, dead and cold, their marchings and
their tentings and their battles over. They had fought well; they had
died; they lay here now stark and pale, but in the vast, pictured web of
the whole their threads are strong and their colour holds. But on the
plain of Fredericksburg many and many and many were not dead and
resting. Hundreds and hundreds they lay, and could not rest for mortal
anguish. They writhed and tossed, they dragged themselves a little way
and fell again, they idly waved a hat or sword or empty hand for help,
they cried for aid, they cried for water. Those who could not lift their
voices moaned, moaned. Some had grown delirious, and upon that plain
there was even laughter. All the various notes taken together blended
into one long, dreary, weird, dull, and awful sound, steady as a wind in
miles of frozen reeds. They were all blue soldiers, and they lay where
they fell.
There was a long fringe of them near the stone wall and near the railway
embankment behind which now rested the Light Division and Taliaferro and
Early. The wind here was loud, rattling a thicker growth of reeds.
Above, the long, silent, flickering lights mocked with their rosy hue,
and the glittering stars mocked, and the empty concave of the night
mocked, and the sound of the Rappahannock mocked. A river moving by like
the River of Death, and they could not even get to the river to drink,
drink, drink....
A figure kneeling by a wounded man, spoke in a guarded voice to an
upright, approaching form. "This man could be saved. I have given him
water. I went myself to the general, and he said that if we could get
any into the hospital behind the hill we might do so. But I'm not strong
enough to lift him."
"I air," said Billy. He set down the bucket that he carried. "I jest
filled it from the creek. It don't last any time, they air so thirsty!
You take it, and I'll take him." He put his arms under the blue figure,
lifted it like a child, and moved away, noiseless in the darkness.
Corbin Wood took the bucket and dipper. Presently it must be refilled.
By the creek he met an officer sent down from the hillside. "You twenty
men out there have got to be very careful. If their sentries see or hear
you moving you'll be thought a skirmish line with the whole of us
behind, and every gun will be opening! Battle's decided on for
to-morrow, not for to-night.--Now be careful, or we'll recall every
damned life-in-your-hand blessed volunteer of you!--Oh, it's a fighting
chaplain--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir! But you'd better all be very
quiet. Old Jack would say that mercy's all right, but you mustn't alarm
the foe."
All through the night there streamed the boreal lights. The living and
the dying, the ruined town, the plain, the hills, the river lay beneath.
The blue army slept and waked, the grey army slept and waked. The
general officers of both made little or no pretence at sleeping. Plans
must be made, plans must be made, plans must be made. Stonewall Jackson,
in his tent, laid himself down indeed for two hours and slept, guarded
by Jim, like a man who was dead. At the end of that time he rose and
asked for his horse.
It was near dawn. He rode beneath the fading streamers, before his
lines, before the Light Division and Early and Taliaferro, before his
old brigade--the Stonewall. The 65th lay in a pine wood, down-sloping to
a little stream. Reveille was yet to sound. The men lay in an uneasy
sleep, but some of the officers were astir, and had been so all night.
These, as Jackson checked Little Sorrel, came forward and saluted. He
spoke to the colonel. "Colonel Erskine, your regiment did well. I saw it
at the Crossing."
Erskine, a small, brave, fiery man, coloured with pleasure. "I'm very
glad, sir. The regiment's all right, sir. The old stock wasn't quite cut
down, and it's made the new like it--" He hesitated, then as the general
with his "Good! good!" gathered up the reins he took heart of grace.
"It's old colonel, sir--it's old colonel--" he stammered, then out it
came: "Richard Cleave trained us so, sir, that we couldn't go back!"
"See, sir," said Stonewall Jackson, "that you don't emulate him in all
things." He looked sternly and he rode away with no other word. He rode
from the pine wood, crossed the Mine Road, and presently the narrow
Massaponax. The streamers were gone from the sky; there was everywhere
the hush of dawn. The courier with him wondered where he was going. They
passed John Pelham's guns, iron dark against the pallid sky. Presently
they came to the Yerby House, where General Maxey Gregg, a gallant
soldier and gentleman, lay dying.
As Jackson dismounted Dr. Hunter McGuire came from the house. "I gave
him your message, general. He is dying fast. It seemed to please him."
"Good!" said Jackson. "General Gregg and I have had a disagreement. In
life it might have continued, but death lifts us all from under earthly
displeasure. Will you ask him, Doctor, if I may pay him a little
visit?"
The visit paid, he came gravely forth, mounted and turned back toward
headquarters on Prospect Hill. In the east were red streaks, one above
another. The day was coming up, clear and cold. Pelham's guns, crowning
a little eminence, showed distinct against the colour. Stonewall Jackson
rode by, and, with a face that was a study, a gunner named Deaderick
watched him pass.
All this day these two armies stood and faced each other. There was
sharpshooting, there was skirmishing, but no full attack. Night came and
passed, and another morning dawned. This day, forty-eight hours after
battle, Burnside sent a flag of truce with a request that he be allowed
to collect and bury his dead. There were few now alive upon that plain.
The wind in the reeds had died to a ghostly hush.
That night there came up a terrible storm, a howling wind driving a
sleety rain. All night long, in cloud and blast and beating wet, the
Army of the Potomac, grand division by grand division, recrossed the
Rappahannock.
The storm continued, the rain and snow swelled the river. The Army of
the Potomac with Acquia creek at hand, Washington in touch, lay
inactive, went into winter quarters. The Army of Northern Virginia,
couched on the southern hills, followed its example. Between the two
foes flowed the dark river. Sentries in blue paced the one bank,
sentries in grey the other. A detail of grey soldiers, resting an hour
opposite Falmouth, employed their leisure in raising a tall signpost,
with a wide and long board for arms. In bold letters they painted upon
it THIS WAY TO RICHMOND. It rested there, month after month, in view of
the blue army.
At the end of January Burnside was superseded. The Army of the Potomac
came under the command of Fighting Joe Hooker. In February Longstreet,
with the divisions of Pickett and Hood, marched away from the
Rappahannock to the south bank of the James. In mid-March was fought the
cavalry battle of Kelly's Ford--Averell against Fitz Lee. Averell
crossed, but when the battle rested, he was back upon the northern
shore. At Kelly's Ford fell John Pelham, "the battle-cry on his lips,
and the light of victory beaming from his eye."
April came with soft skies and greening trees. North and south and east
and west, there were now gathered against the fortress with the stars
and bars above it some hundreds of thousands under arms. Likewise a
great navy beat against the side which gave upon the sea. The fortress
was under arms indeed, but she had no navy to speak of. Arkansas and
Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina, vast lengths of the Mississippi
River, Fortress Monroe in Virginia and Suffolk south of the
James--entrance had been made into all these courts of the fortress.
Blue forces held them stubbornly; smaller grey forces held as stubbornly
the next bastion. On the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, within fifty
miles of the imperilled Capital, were gathered by May one hundred and
thirty thousand men in blue. Longstreet gone, there opposed them
sixty-two thousand in grey.
Late in April Fighting Joe Hooker put in motion "the finest army on the
planet." There were various passes and feints. Sedgwick attempted a
crossing below Fredericksburg. Stonewall Jackson sent an aide to Lee
with the information. Lee received it with a smile. "I thought it was
time for one of you lazy young fellows to come and tell me what that
firing was about! Tell your good general that he knows what to do with
the enemy just as well as I do."
Flourish and passado executed, Hooker, with suddenness, moved up the
Rappahannock, crossed at Richard's Ford, moved up the Rapidan, crossed
at Ely and Germanna Fords, turned east and south and came into the
Wilderness. He meant to pass through and, with three great columns,
checkmate Lee at Fredericksburg. Before he could do so Lee shook himself
free, left to watch the Rappahannock, and Sedgwick, ten thousand pawns
and an able knight, and himself crossed to the Wilderness.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE WILDERNESS
Fifteen by twenty miles stretched the Wilderness. Out of a thin soil
grew pine trees and pine trees, scrub oak and scrub oak. The growth was
of the densest, mile after mile of dense growth. A few slight farms and
clearings appeared like islands; all around them was the sea, the sea of
tree and bush. It stretched here, it stretched there, it touched all
horizons, vanishing beyond them in an amethyst haze.
Several forest tracks traversed it, but they were narrow and worn, and
it was hard to guess their presence, or to find it when guessed. There
were, however, two fair roads--the old Turnpike and the Plank Road.
These also were sunken in the thick, thick growth. A traveller upon them
saw little save the fact that he had entered the Wilderness. Near the
turnpike stood a small white church, the Tabernacle church. A little
south of the heart of the place lay an old, old, abandoned iron
furnace--Catherine Furnace. As much to the north rose a large old
house--Chancellorsville. To the westward was Dowdall's Tavern. Around