The Long Roll
understand making allowances or forgiving. He'll rebuke a man in general
orders, hold him up--if he's an officer--before the troops, and all for
something that another general would hardly notice! He'll make an
officer march without his sword for whole days in the rear of his
regiment, and all for something that just a reprimand would have done
for! As you say, he made the very man we're talking of do that from
Bloomery Gap to Romney--and nobody ever knew why. Just the other day
there were some poor fools of twelve-month men in one of our regiments
who concluded they didn't want to reenlist. They said they'd go home and
cried out for their discharge. And they had forgotten all about the
conscription act that Congress had just passed. So, when the discharge
was refused they got dreadfully angry, and threw down their arms. The
colonel went to the general, and the general almost put him under
arrest. 'Why does Colonel Grigsby come to me to learn how to deal with
mutineers? Shoot them where they stand.'--Kernstown, too. There's hardly
a man of the Stonewall that doesn't think General Garnett justified in
ordering that retreat, and yet look at Garnett! Under arrest, and the
commanding general preferring charges against him! Says he did not wait
for orders, lost the battle and so on. With Garnett it is a deadly
serious matter--rank and fame and name for courage all in peril--"
"I see. But with Richard Cleave it was not serious?"
"Not in the least. These smaller arrests and censures--not even the best
can avoid them. I shouldn't think they were pleasant, for sometimes they
are mentioned in reports, and sometimes they get home to the womenfolk.
But his officers understand him by now, and they keep good discipline,
and they had rather be led by Stonewall Jackson than by an easier man.
As for Richard Cleave, I was with him on the march to McDowell and he
looked a happy man."
"Ah!"
The conversation dropped. The scout, having said his say, easily
relapsed into silence. His visitor, half reclining upon his cloak
beneath an old, gnarled tree, was still. The firelight played strangely
over his face, for now it seemed the face of one man, now that of
another. In the one aspect he looked intent, as though in his mind he
mapped a course. In the other he showed only weariness, dashed with
something tragic--a handsome, brooding, melancholy face. They stayed
like this for some time, the fire burning before them, the moon flooding
the forest, the owl hooting from his hole in some decaying tree.
At last, however, another sound intruded, a very low, subdued sound like
a distant ground swell or like thunder without resonance. It grew; dull
yet, it became deep. Allan knocked the ashes from his pipe. "That is a
sound," he said, "that when you have once heard you don't forget. The
army's coming."
Stafford rose. "I must get back to General Ewell! Thank you, Gold, for
your hospitality."
"Not at all! Not at all!" said Allan heartily. "I am glad that I could
put that matter straight for you. It would blight like black frost to
have Stonewall Jackson's hand and mind set against you--and Richard
Cleave is not the least in that predicament!"
The Army of the Valley, advance and main column, and rearguard,
artillery and wagon train, came down the moon-lighted road, having
marched twenty miles since high noon. On either hand stretched pleasant
pastures, a running stream, fair woods. Company by company the men left
the road, were halted, stacked arms, broke ranks. Cessation from motion
was sweet, sweet the feel of turf beneath their feet. They had had
supper three hours before; now they wanted sleep, and without much
previous ado they lay down and took it--Stonewall Jackson's "foot
cavalry" sleeping under the round moon, by Mt. Solon.
At the mill there was a meeting and a conference. A figure in an old
cloak and a shabby forage cap dismounted, ungracefully enough, from a
tired nag, and crossed the uncovered porch to the wide mill door. There
he was met by his future trusty and trusted lieutenant--"dear Dick
Ewell." Jackson's greeting was simple to baldness. Ewell's had the
precision of a captain of dragoons. Together they entered the small mill
office, where the aides placed lights and writing materials, then
withdrew. The generals sat down, one on this side of the deal table, one
on that. Jackson took from his pocket a lemon, very deliberately opened
a knife, and, cutting the fruit in two, put one half of the sour
treasure to his lips. Ewell fidgeted, then, as the other sucked on,
determined to set the ball rolling. "Damn me, general! if I am not glad
to have the pleasure at last--"
Jackson sent across the table a grey-blue glance, then gently put down
one half of the lemon and took up the other. "Why the deuce should he
look at me in that damned reproachful fashion?" thought Ewell. He made
another start. "There's a damned criss-cross of advices from Richmond.
I hate uncertainty like the devil, and so I thought I'd ride across--"
"General Ewell," said Jackson gently, "you will oblige me by not
swearing. Profanity, sir, is most distasteful to me. Now, you rode
across?"
Ewell swallowed. "Rode across--rode across--I rode across, sir, from
Swift Run Gap, and I brought with me two late dispatches from General
Johnston and General Lee. I thought some expression, perhaps, to them of
your opinion--following the late victory and all--"
The other took and read, laid down the dispatches and applied himself to
his lemon. Presently. "I will telegraph to-night to General Johnston and
General Lee. I shall advise that you enter the Valley as first intended.
As for Richmond--we may best serve Richmond by threatening Washington."
"Threatening Washington?"
"At present you are in my district and form part of my command. You will
at once move your troops forward a day's march. Upon receipt of advices
from General Johnston and General Lee--and if they are of the tenour I
expect--you will move with promptness to Luray."
"And then?"
"With promptness to Luray. I strongly value swiftness of movement."
"I understand that, sir. Double the distance in half the time."
"Good! When instructions are given, it is desirable that those
instructions be followed. I assume the responsibility of giving the
proper instructions."
"I understand, general. Obey and ask no questions."
"Just so. Be careful of your ammunition wagons, but otherwise as little
impedimenta as possible."
"I understand, sir. The road to glory cannot be followed with much
baggage."
Jackson put out his long arm, and gently touched the other's hand.
"Good! I should be surprised if we didn't get on very well together. Now
I will write a telegram to General Lee and then you shall get back to
Swift Run Gap. The fewer hours a general is away from his troops the
better." He rose and opened the door. "Lieutenant Meade!" The aide
appeared. "Send me a courier--the one with the freshest horse. Order
General Ewell's horses to be saddled."
This was the seventeenth. Two days later the Army of the Valley, moving
down the Valley pike in a beautiful confidence that it was hurling
itself against Banks at Strasburg, swerved to the east about New Market,
with a suddenness that made it dizzy. Straight across its path now ran
the strange and bold wall of the Massanuttons, architectural freak of
Nature's, planted midway of the smiling Valley. The army groaned.
"Always climbing mountains! This time to-morrow, I reckon, we'll climb
it back again. Nothing over on the other side but the Luray Valley!"
Up and up went the army, through luxuriant forests where the laurel was
in bloom, by the cool dash of mountain waters, past one-time haunts of
stag and doe, through fern, over pine needles, under azure sky,--then
down it sank, long winding after winding, moss and fern and richest
forest, here velvet shadow, there highest light, down and down to the
lovely Luray Valley, to the crossing of the Shenandoah, to green meadows
and the bugles ringing "halt"!
How short the time between tattoo and reveille! The dawn was rosy,
still, not cold, the river running near, the men with leave to rid
themselves of the dust of yesterday's long march. In they plunged, all
along the south fork of the Shenandoah, into the cool and wholesome
flood. There were laughters, shoutings, games of dolphins. Then out they
came, and while they cooked their breakfasts they heard the drums and
fifes of Ewell's eight thousand, marching down from Conrad's Store.
The night before at Washington, where there was much security and much
triumph over the certain-to-occur-soon-if-not-already-occurred Fall of
Richmond, the Secretary of War received a dispatch from General Banks at
Strasburg in the Valley of Virginia, thirty miles from Winchester.
"My force at Strasburg is 4476 infantry, two brigades; 1600 cavalry,
10 Parrott guns and 6 smoothbore pieces. I have on the Manassas Gap
Railroad, between Strasburg and Manassas, 2500 infantry, 6 companies
cavalry, and 6 pieces artillery. There are 5 companies cavalry,
First Maine, near Strasburg. Of the enemy I received information
last night, direct from New Market, that Jackson has returned to
within 8 miles of Harrisonburg, west. I have no doubt that Jackson's
force is near Harrisonburg, and that Ewell still remains at Swift
Run Gap. I shall communicate more at length the condition of affairs
and the probable plans of the enemy."
In pursuance of his promise General Banks wrote at length from
Strasburg, the evening of the 22d:--
"Sir. The return of the rebel forces of General Jackson to the
Valley after his forced march against Generals Milroy and Schenck
increases my anxiety for the safety of the position I occupy....
That he has returned there can be no doubt.... From all the
information I can gather--and I do not wish to excite alarm
unnecessarily--I am compelled to believe that he meditates attack
here. I regard it as certain that he will move north as far as New
Market, a position which ... enables him also to cooperate with
General Ewell, who is still at Swift Run Gap.... Once at New Market
they are within twenty-five miles of Strasburg.... I have forborne
until the last moment to make this representation, well knowing how
injurious to the public service unfounded alarms become...."
The general signed and sent his letter. Standing for a moment, in the
cool of the evening, at the door of headquarters, he looked toward the
east where the first stars were shining. Fourteen miles over there was
his strongest outpost, the village of Front Royal occupied by Colonel
Kenly with a thousand men and two guns. The general could not see the
place; it lay between the Massanuttons and the Blue Ridge, but it was in
his mind. He spoke to an aide. "To-morrow I think I will recall Kenly
and send him down the pike to develop the force of the enemy."
The small town of Strasburg pulsed with flaring lights and with the
manifold sounds of the encamped army. Sutlers showed their wares, guard
details went by, cavalrymen clanked their spurs through the streets,
laughter and talk rang through the place. A company of strolling
players had come down from the North, making its way from Washington to
Harper's Ferry, held by three thousand Federals; from Harper's Ferry to
Winchester, held by fifteen hundred; and from Winchester to Strasburg.
The actors had a canvas booth, where by guttering candles and to the
sound of squeaking fiddles they gave their lurid play of the night, and
they played to a crowded house. Elsewhere there was gambling, elsewhere
praying, elsewhere braggarts spoke of Ajax exploits, elsewhere there was
moaning and tossing in the hospitals, elsewhere some private, raised