The Long Roll
altered, and the man was seen as he rode in the plane above. A shell
from Ricketts came screaming, struck and cut down a young pine. In
falling, the tree caught and hurt a man or two. Another terror followed
and exploded overhead, a fragment inflicting upon a bugler of the 65th
a ghastly wound. "Steady, men, steady!--all's well," said Old Jack. He
threw up his left hand, palm out,--an usual gesture,--and turned to
speak to Imboden, whose profanity he had apparently forgiven. As in any
other July hour a cloud of gnats might have swum above that hill, so, on
this one summer day, death-dealing missiles filled the air. Some
splinter from one of these struck the lifted hand. Jackson let it fall,
the blood streaming. Imboden uttered an ejaculation. "It's nothing,"
said the other; then, with slow earnestness, "Captain Imboden, I would
give--I will give--for this cause every drop of blood that courses
through my heart." He drew out a handkerchief, wrapped it around the
wound, and rode on down the right of his line.
Up to meet him from the foot of the hill, out of the dun smoke hiding
the wrestle, came at a gallop a roan horse bearing a rider tall and well
made, black-eyed and long-haired, a bright sash about his waist, a
plumed hat upon his head. Panting, he drew rein beside Little Sorrel. "I
am Bee.--General Jackson, we are driven--we are overwhelmed! My God!
only Evans and Bartow and I against the whole North and the Regulars! We
are being pushed back--you must support.--In three minutes the battle
will be upon this hill--Hunter and Heintzleman's divisions. They're hot
and huzzaing--they think they've got us fast! They have, by God! if our
troops don't come up!" He turned his horse. "But you'll support--we
count on you--"
"Count only upon God, General Bee," said Jackson. "But I will give them
the bayonet."
Bee struck spur into the roan and galloped across the plateau. Out of
one of the furrowing ravines, a sunbaked and wrinkled trough springing
from the turnpike below and running up and across the Henry Hill toward
the crest of pine and oak, came now a handful of men, grey shadows,
reeling, seeking the forest and night. Another followed--another--then a
stream, a grey runlet of defeat which grew in proportions. A moment
more, and the ravine, fed from the battle-ground below, overflowed. The
red light shifted to the Henry Hill. It was as though a closed fan, laid
upon that uneven ground, had suddenly opened. The rout was not hideous.
The men had fought long and boldly, against great odds; they fled now
before the storm, but all cohesion was not lost, nor presence of mind.
Some turned and fired, some listened to their shouting officer, and
strove to form about the tossed colours, some gave and took advice. But
every gun of the Federal batteries poured shot and shell upon that
hilltop, and the lines of blue had begun to climb. The disorder
increased; panic might come like the wind in the grass. Bee reached the
choked ravine, pulled up his great roan. He was a man tall and large,
and as he rose in his stirrups and held his sword aloft, standing
against the sky, upon the rim of the ravine, he looked colossal, a
bronze designed to point the way. He cried aloud, "Look! Yonder is
Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" As he
spoke a shell struck him. He fell, mortally wounded.
The eyes of the men in the cleft below had followed the pointed sword.
The hilltop was above them, and along the summit, just in advance of a
pine wood, ran a stone wall, grey, irregular, touched here by sunlight,
there by shadow, and shrouded in part by the battle smoke. Some one had
planted upon it a flag. For a full moment the illusion held, then the
wall moved. A captain of the 4th Alabama, hoarse with shouting, found
voice once more. "God! We aren't beaten! Talk of Birnam wood! The stone
wall's coming!"
Up and out of the ravine, widening like an opening fan, pressed the
disordered troops. The plateau was covered by chaos come again.
Officers, raging, shouted orders, ran to and fro, gesticulated with
their swords. A short line was formed, another; they dissolved before a
third could be added. All voices were raised; there was a tumult of
cries, commands, protestations, adjurations, and refusals. Over all
screamed the shells, settled the smoke. Franklin, Willcox, Sherman, and
Porter, pressing the Federal advantage, were now across the turnpike.
Beneath their feet was the rising ground--a moment more, and they would
leap victorious up the ragged slope. The moment was delayed. With a
rending sound as of a giant web torn asunder, the legions of Hampton and
Cary, posted near the house of the free negro Robinson, came into action
and held in check the four brigades.
High upon the plateau, near Jackson's line, above the wild confusion of
the retreating troops, appeared in the blaze of the midday sun, hatless,
on steeds reeking from the four miles' gallop from that centre where the
battle did not join to this left where it did, the generals Johnston and
Beauregard. Out of the red lightning, the thunder, the dust and the
smoke, above the frenzied shouting and the crying of the wounded, their
presence was electrically known. A cheer rushed from the First Brigade;
at the guns Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans
took up the cry, tossed it with grape and canister across to the
opposite hill. Bee, Bartow, and Evans, exhausted, shattered, wavering
upwards toward the forest, rest, cessation from long struggle, heard the
names and took fresh heart. The two were not idle, but in the crucial
moment turned the scale. Black danger hemmed their cause. The missing
brigade of the Shenandoah was no man knew where. At Mitchell's and
Blackburn's fords, Ewell, D. R. Jones, Bonham, and Longstreet were
engaged in a demonstration in force, retaining upon that front the
enemy's reserve. Holmes and Jubal Early were on their way to the
imperilled left, but the dust cloud that they raised was yet distant.
Below the two generals were broken troops, men raw to the field,
repulsed, driven, bleeding, and haggard, full on the edge of headlong
flight; lower, in the hollow land, McDowell's advance, filling the
little valley, islanding the two fighting legions, and now, a mounting
tide, attacking the Henry Hill. At Beauregard's order the regimental
colours were advanced, and the men adjured to rally about them. Fiery,
eloquent, of French descent and impassioned, Pierre Gustave Toutant
Beauregard rose in his stirrups and talked of _la gloire_, of home, and
of country. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana listened,
cheered, and began to reform. Johnston, Scotch, correct, military, the
Regular in person, trusted to the hilt by the men he led, seized the
colours of the 4th Alabama, raised them above his grey head, spurred his
war horse, and in the hail of shot and shell established the line of
battle. Decimated as they were, raw volunteers as they were, drawn from
peaceful ways to meet the purple dragon, fold on fold of war, the troops
of Bee, Bartow, and Evans rallied, fell into line, and stood. The 49th
Virginia came upon the plateau from Lewis Ford--at its head Ex-Governor
William Smith. "Extra Billy," old political hero, sat twisted in his
saddle, and addressed his regiment. "Now, boys, you've just got to kill
the ox for this barbecue! Now, mind you, I ain't going to have any
backing out! We ain't West P'inters, but, thank the Lord, we're men!
When it's all over we'll have a torchlight procession and write to the
girls! Now, boys, you be good to me, and I'll be good to you. Lord,
children, I want to be proud of you! And I ain't Regular, but I know
Old Virginny. Tom Scott, you beat the drum real loud, and James, you
swing that flag so high the good Lord's got to see it!--Here's the West
P'inters--here's the generals! Now, boys, just see how loud you can
holler!"
The 49th went into line upon Gartrell's right, who was upon Jackson's
left. Beauregard paused to speak to that brigadier, advanced upon Little
Sorrel in front of the 65th. An aide addressed the latter's colonel.
"General Bee christened this brigade just before he fell. He called it a
stone wall. If he turns out a true prophet I reckon the name will
stick." A shell came hurtling, fell, exploded, and killed under him
Beauregard's horse. He mounted the aide's and galloped back to Johnston,
near the Henry House. Here there was a short council. Had the missing
brigade, the watched for, the hoped for, reached Manassas? Ewell and
Early had been ordered up from Union Mills. Would they arrive upon this
hill in time? What of the Stone Bridge, now left almost undefended? What
of Blackburn and Mitchell's fords, and Longstreet's demonstration, and
the enemy's reserves across Bull Run? What best disposition of the
strength that might arrive? The conference was short. Johnston, the
senior with the command of the whole field, galloped off to the Lewis
House, while Beauregard retained the direction of the contest on the
Henry Hill. Below it the two legions still held the blue wave from
mounting.
Ricketts and Griffin upon the Mathews Hill ceased firing--greatly to the
excitement of Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New
Orleans. The smoke slightly lifted. "What're they doing? They've got
their horses--they're limbering up! What in hell!--d'ye suppose they've
had enough? No! Great day in the morning! They're coming up here!"
Ricketts and Griffin, cannoneers on caissons, horses urged to a gallop,
thundered down the opposite slope, across Young's Branch and the
turnpike. A moment and they were lost to sight, another and the
straining horses and the dust and the guns and the fighting men about
them showed above the brow of the Henry Hill. Out they thundered upon
the plateau and wheeled into battery very near to the Henry House.
Magnificence but not war! They had no business there, but they had been
ordered and they came. With a crash as of all the thunders they opened
at a thousand feet, full upon the Confederate batteries and upon the
pine wood where lay the First Brigade.
Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans, wet with
sweat, black with powder, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing,
did well with the bass of that hill-echoing tune. A lieutenant of the
Washington Artillery made himself heard above the roar. "Short range!
We've got short range at last! Now, old smoothbores, show what you are
made of!" The smoothbores showed. Griffin and Ricketts answered,
Jackson's sharpshooters took a part, the uproar became frightful. The
captain of the Rockbridge Artillery was a great-nephew of Edmund
Pendleton, a graduate of West Point and the rector of the Episcopal
Church in Lexington. He went back and forth among his guns. "Fire! and
the Lord have mercy upon their souls.--Fire! and the Lord have mercy
upon their souls." With noise and a rolling smoke and a scorching breath
and a mad excitement that annihilated time and reduced with a
thunderclap every series of happenings into one all-embracing moment,
the battle mounted and the day swung past its burning noon.
The 11th and 14th New York had been pushed up the hill to the support of
Ricketts and Griffin. Behind them showed in strength other climbing
muskets. In the vale below Hampton and Cary had made diversion, had held
the brigades in check, while upon the plateau the Confederates rallied.
The two legions, stubborn and gallant, suffered heavily. With many dead
and many wounded they drew off at last. The goal of the Henry Hill lay
clear before McDowell.
He had brigades enough for the advance that should set all the bells of
Washington ringing for victory. His turning column at Sudley Ford had
numbered eighteen thousand men. But Howard was somewhere in the vague