The Long Roll
screen. The trees were cut, the earth was torn up; there was a howling
as of unchained fiends. There passed what seemed an eternity and was but
ten minutes. The great blue guns slightly changed the direction of their
fire. The storm howled away from the group by the road, and the men
again lifted Jackson. He stood now on his feet; and because troops were
heard approaching, and because it must not be known that he was hurt,
all moved into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road came
on--Pender's brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and asked
who was wounded. "A field officer," answered one, but there came from
some direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He sprang from
his horse. "Don't say anything about it, General Pender," said Jackson.
"Press on, sir, press on!"
"General, they are using all their artillery. It is a very deadly fire.
In the darkness it may disorganize--"
The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. "You must
hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out to the last, sir."
"I will, general, I will," said Pender.
A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid upon it.
The little procession moved toward Dowdall's Tavern. A shot pierced the
arm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the litter. It tilted.
The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring afresh the wounded
limb, striking and bruising his side. They raised him, pale, now, and
silent, and at last they struggled through the wood to a little
clearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, too, came the doctor, a
man whom he loved, and knelt beside him. "I hope that you are not badly
hurt, general?"
"Yes, I am, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying."
In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield,
painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. "He isn't
badly hurt?"
"Yes. Badly hurt."
Crutchfield groaned. "Oh, my God!" Stonewall Jackson heard and made the
ambulance stop. "You must do something for Colonel Crutchfield, doctor.
Don't let him suffer."
A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece of shell.
Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the guidance
through the night of the advance upon the roads to the fords, was
killed. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of Chancellorsville,
fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness chanted a battle chant
indeed to the moon, the moon that was pale and wan as if wearied with
silvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a litter, just back of his
advanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. Stuart was far toward
Ely's Ford, riding through the night in plume and fighting jacket. The
straining horses, the recalling order, reached him.
"General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! I in command!
My God, man! all changed like that? _Right about face! Forward! March!_"
There was, that night, no grey assault. But the dawn broke clear and
found the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolled
in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet two
miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strong
entrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men.
Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight. In the dawn, the 2nd Corps, swung from
the right by a master hand, struck full against the Federal centre,
struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May morning broke a
thunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal on peal, crash on
crash! The grey shells struck the Chancellor house. They set it on fire.
It went up in flames. A fragment of shell struck and stunned Fighting
Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The grey
musketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.
In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the
scrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered
the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack against
his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right and
Anderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again a
unit.
Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His
beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very
grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson was
badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and this
Wilderness remembered. "_Forward. Charge!_" cried Jeb Stuart. "Remember
Jackson!" He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!
Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at their
head, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. "_Old
Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_"
By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced,
Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all,
was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers
bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of
Northern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well,
you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"
He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospital
near Dowdall's Tavern. "_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could I
have directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country to
be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is
due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
R. E. Lee._"
An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in the
deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said,
"General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God."
For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, at
the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then they
rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of the
Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern shore
and the road to Richmond--Richmond no nearer for McDowell, no nearer for
McClellan, no nearer for Pope, no nearer for Burnside, no nearer for
Hooker, no nearer after two years of war! In the Wilderness and
thereabouts Hooker lost seventeen thousand men, thirteen guns, and
fifteen hundred rounds of cannon ammunition, twenty thousand rifles,
three hundred thousand rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army of
Northern Virginia lost twelve thousand men.
On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from the
Wilderness to Guiney's Station. Here was a large old residence--the
Chandler house--within a sweep of grass and trees; about it one or two
small buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to its doors with
wounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in a rude cabin among
the trees. The left arm had been amputated in the field hospital. He was
thought to be doing well, though at times he complained of the side
which, in the fall from the litter, had been struck and bruised.
At daylight on Thursday he had his physician called. "I am suffering
great pain," he said. "See what is the matter with me." And presently,
"Is it pneumonia?"
That afternoon his wife came. He was roused to speak to her, greeted her
with love, then sank into something like stupor. From time to time he
awakened from this, but there were also times when he was slightly
delirious. He gave orders in a shadow of the old voice. "You must hold
out a little longer, men; you must hold out a little longer!... Press
forward--press forward--press forward!... Give them canister, Major
Pelham!"
Friday went by, and Saturday. The afternoon of this day he asked for his
chaplain, Mr. Lacy. Later, in the twilight, his wife sang to him, old
hymns that he loved. "Sing the fifty-first psalm in verse," he said. She
sang,--
"Show pity, Lord! O Lord, forgive--"
The night passed and Sunday the tenth dawned. He lay quiet, his right
hand on his breast. One of the staff came for a moment to his bedside.
"Who is preaching at headquarters to-day?" He was told, and said, "Good!
I wish I might be there."
The officer's voice broke. "General, general! the whole army is praying
for you. There's a message from General Lee."
"Yes, yes. Give it."
"He sends you his love. He says that you must recover; that you have
lost your left arm, but that he would lose his right arm. He says tell
you that he prayed for you last night as he had never prayed for
himself. He repeats what he said in his note that for the good of
Virginia and the South he could wish that he were lying here in your
place--"
The soldier on the bed smiled a little and shook his head. "Better ten
Jacksons should lie here than one Lee."
It was sunny weather, fair and sweet with all the bloom of May, the
bright trees waving, the long grass rippling, waters flowing, the sky
azure, bees about the flowers, the birds singing piercingly sweet,
mother earth so beautiful, the sky down-bending, the light of the sun so
gracious, warm, and vital!
A little before noon, kneeling beside him, his wife told Stonewall
Jackson that he would die. He smiled and laid his hand upon her bowed
head. "You are frightened, my child! Death is not so near. I may yet get
well."
The doctor came to him. "Doctor, Anna tells me that I am to die to-day.
Is it so?"
"Oh, general, general!--It is so."
He lay silent a moment, then he said, "Very good, very good! It is all
right."
Throughout the day his mind was now clouded, now clear. In one of the
latter times he said there was something he was trying to remember.
There followed a half-hour of broken sleep and wandering, in the course
of which he twice spoke a name, "Deaderick." Once he said "Horse
Artillery," and once "White Oak Swamp."
The alternate clear moments and the lapses into stupour or delirium were
like the sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted at last, the
prey at last of a shoreless sea. At times he came head and shoulders out
of the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey-blue eyes full on one of
his staff. All the staff was gathered in grief about the bed. "When
Richard Cleave," he said, "asks for a court of enquiry let him have it.
Tell General Lee--" The sea drew him under again.
It hardly let him go any more; moment by moment now, it wore out the
strong swimmer. The day drew on to afternoon. He lay straight upon the
bed, silent for the most part, but now and then wandering a little. His
wife bowed herself beside him; in a corner wept the old man, Jim.
Outside the windows there seemed a hush as of death.
"Pass the infantry to the front!" ordered Stonewall Jackson. "Tell A. P.
Hill to prepare for action!" The voice sank; there came a long silence;
there was only heard the old man crying in the corner. Then, for the
last time in this phase of being, the great soldier opened his eyes. In
a moment he spoke, in a very sweet and calm voice. "Let us cross over
the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." He died.
* * * * *
The bells tolled, the bells tolled in Richmond, tolled from each of her
seven hills! Sombre was the sound of the minute guns, shaking the heart
of the city! Oh, this capital knew the Dead March in Saul as a child
knows his lullaby! To-day it had a depth and a height and was a dirge
indeed. To-day it wailed for a Chieftain, wailed through the streets
where the rose and magnolia bloomed, wailed as may have wailed the
trumpets when Priam brought Hector home. The great throng to either side
the streets shivered beneath the wailing, beneath the low thunder of the
drums. There was lacking no pomp of War, War who must have gauds with