The Long Roll
down the road to join the command. The proceeding gave an effect of
disordered ranks. Jackson beckoned the courier. "Go tell Colonel Munford
that his men are straggling badly."
The courier went, and presently returned. Munford was with him.
"General, I thought I had best come myself and explain--they aren't
straggling. We were all separated in the dark night and--"
"Yes, sir. But I ordered you to be here at sunrise. Move on now, and
drive in the enemy's pickets, and if you want artillery Colonel
Crutchfield will furnish you."
Munford and the 2d Virginia went on, disappearing around a bend in the
road. The sound of the artillery coming up was now loud in the clear
air. Jackson listened a moment, then left the shadow of the pine, and
with the two attending officers and the courier resumed the way to White
Oak Swamp.
Brigade by brigade, twenty-five thousand men in grey passed Savage
Station and followed Stonewall Jackson. The air was fresh, the troops in
spirits. Nobody was going to let McClellan get to the James, after all!
The brigades broke into song. They laughed, they joked, they cheered
every popular field officer as he passed, they genially discussed the
heretofore difficulties of the campaign and the roseate promise of the
day. They knew it was the crucial day; that McClellan must be stopped
before sunset or he would reach the shelter of his gunboats. They were
in a Fourth of July humour; they meant to make the day remembered. Life
seemed bright again and much worth while. They even grudgingly agreed
that there was a curious kind of attractiveness about all this flat
country, and the still waters, and the very tall trees, and labyrinthine
vivid green undergrowth. Intermittent fevers had begun to appear, but,
one and all, the invalids declared that this was their good day.
"Shucks! What's a little ague? Anyhow, it'll go away when we get back to
the Valley. Going back to the Valley? Well, we should think so! This
country's got an eerie kind of good looks, and it raises sweet potatoes
all right, but for steady company give us mountains! We'll drop
McClellan in one of these swamps, and we'll have a review at the fair
grounds at Richmond so's all the ladies can see us, and then we'll go
back to the Valley pike and Massanutton and Mr. Commissary Banks! They
must be missing us awful. Somebody sing something,--
"Old Grimes is dead, that good old man,
Whom we shall see no more!
He wore a grey Confederate coat
All buttoned down before--"
"Don't like it that way? All right--"
"He wore a blue damn-Yankee coat
All buttoned down before--"
The Stonewall Brigade passed a new-made grave in a small graveyard, from
which the fence had been burned. A little further on they came to a
burned smithy; the blacksmith's house beside it also a ruin, black and
charred. On a stone, between two lilac-bushes, sat a very old man.
Beside him stood a girl, a handsome creature, dark and bright-cheeked.
"Send them to hell, boys, send them to hell!" quavered the old man. The
girl raised a sweet and vibrant voice: "Send them to hell, men, send
them to hell!"
"We'll do our best, ma'am, we'll do our best!" answered the Stonewall.
The sun mounted high. They were moving now through thick woods, broken
by deep creeks and bits of swamp. All about were evidences enough that
an army had travelled before them, and that that army was exceedingly
careless of its belongings. All manner of impediments lay squandered;
waste and ruin were everywhere. Sometimes the men caught an odour of
burning meat, of rice and breadstuffs. In a marshy meadow a number of
wrecked, canvas-topped wagons showed like a patch of mushrooms, giant
and dingy. In a forest glade rested like a Siegfried smithy an abandoned
travelling forge. Camp-kettles hacked in two were met with, and boxes of
sutlers' wares smashed to fragments. The dead horses were many, and
there was disgust with the buzzards, they rose or settled in such
clouds. The troops, stooping to drink from the creeks, complained that
the water was foul.
Very deep woods appeared on the horizon. "Guide says that's White Oak
Swamp!--Guide says that's White Oak Swamp!" Firing broke out ahead.
"Cavalry rumpus!--Hello! Artillery butting in, too!--everybody but us!
Well, boys, I always did think infantry a mighty no-'count, undependable
arm--infantry of the Army of the Valley, anyway! God knows the moss has
been growing on us for a week!"
Munford sent back a courier to Jackson, riding well before the head of
the column. "Bridge is burned, sir. They're in strong force on the other
side--"
"Good!" said Jackson. "Tell Colonel Crutchfield to bring up the guns."
He rode on, the aide, the courier, and Maury Stafford yet with him. They
passed a deserted Federal camp and hospital, and came between tall trees
and through dense swamp undergrowth to a small stream with many arms. It
lay still beneath the blue sky, overhung by many a graceful, vine-draped
tree. The swamp growth stretched for some distance on either side, and
through openings in the foliage the blue glint of the arms could be
seen. To the right there was some cleared ground. In front the road
stopped short. The one bridge had been burned by the retreating Federal
rearguard. Two blue divisions, three batteries--in all over twenty
thousand men--now waited on the southern bank to dispute the White Oak
Crossing.
Stafford again pushed his horse beside Jackson's. "Well, sir?"
"I hunted once through this swamp, general. There is an old crossing
near the bridge--"
"Passable for cavalry, sir?"
"Passable by cavalry and infantry, sir. Even the guns might somehow be
gotten across."
"I asked, sir, if it was passable for cavalry."
"It is, sir."
Jackson turned to his aide. "Go tell Colonel Crutchfield I want to see
him."
Crutchfield appeared. "Where are your guns, colonel?"
"General, their batteries on the ridge over there command the road, and
the thick woods below their guns are filled with sharpshooters. I want
to get the guns behind the crest of the hill on this side, and I am
opening a road through the wood over there. They'll be up
directly--seven batteries, Carter's, Hardaway's, Nelson's, Rhett's,
Reilly's, and Balthis'. We'll open then at a thousand yards, and we'll
take them, I think, by surprise."
"Very good, colonel. That is all."
The infantry began to arrive. Brigade by brigade, as it came up, turned
to right or to left, standing under arms in the wood above the White Oak
Swamp. As the Stonewall Brigade came, under tall trees and over earth
that gave beneath the feet, flush with the stream itself, the grey
guns, now in place upon the low ridge to the right, opened, thirty-one
of them, with simultaneous thunder. Crutchfield's manoeuvre had not
been observed. The thirty-one guns blazed without warning, and the blue
artillery fell into confusion. The Parrotts blazed in turn, four times,
then they limbered up in haste and left the ridge. Crutchfield sent
Wooding's battery tearing down the slope to the road immediately in
front of the burned bridge. Wooding opened fire and drove out the
infantry support from the opposite forest. Jackson, riding toward the
stream, encountered Munford. "Colonel, move your men over the creek and
take those guns."
Munford looked. "I don't know that we can cross it, sir."
"Yes, you can cross it, colonel. Try."
Munford and a part of the 2d Virginia dashed in. The stream was in truth
narrow enough, and though it was deep here, with a shifting bottom, and
though the debris from the ruined bridge made it full of snares, the
horsemen got across and pushed up the shore toward the guns. A thick and
leafy wood to the right leaped fire--another and unsuspected body of
blue infantry. The echoes were yet ringing when, from above, an unseen
battery opened on the luckless cavalry. The blue rifles cracked again,
the horses began to rear and plunge, several men were hit. There was
nothing to do but to get somehow back to the north bank. Munford and his
men pushed out of the rain of iron, through the wood for some distance
down the stream, and there recrossed, not without difficulty.
The thirty-one guns shelled the wood which had last spoken, and drove
out the skirmishers with whom it was filled. These took refuge in
another deep and leafy belt still commanding the stream and the ruined
causeway. A party of grey pioneers fell to work to rebuild the bridge.
From the crest on the southern side behind the deep foliage two Federal
batteries, before unnoted, opened on the grey cannoneers. Wooding, on
the road before the bridge, had to fall back. Under cover of the guns
the blue infantry swarmed again into the wood. Shell and bullet hissed
and pattered into the water by the abutments of the ruined bridge. The
working party drew back. "Damnation! They mustn't fling them minies
round loose like that!"
Wright's brigade of Huger's division came up. Wright made his report.
"We tried Brackett's ford a mile up stream, sir. Couldn't manage it. Got
two companies over by the skin of our teeth. They drove in some pickets
on the other side. Road through the swamp over there covered by felled
trees. Beyond is a small meadow and beyond that rising ground, almost
free of trees. There are Yankee batteries on the crest, and a large
force of infantry lying along the side of the ridge. They command the
meadow and the swamp."
So tall were the trees, so thick the undergrowth, so full the midsummer
foliage that the guns, thundering at each other across the narrow
stream, never saw their antagonists. Sharpshooters and skirmishers were
as hidden. Except as regarded the pioneers striving with the bridge,
neither side could see the damage that was done. The noise was
tremendous, echoing loudly from the opposing low ridges and rolling
through the swamp. The hollow filled with smoke; above the treetops a
dull saffron veil was drawn across the sky. The firing was without
intermission, a monotonous thunder, beneath which the working party
strove spasmodically at the bridge, the cavalry chafed to and fro, and
the infantry, filling all the woods and the little clearings to the
rear, began to swear. "Is it the Red Sea down there? Why can't we cross
without a bridge? Nobody's going to get drowned! Ain't more'n a hundred
men been drowned since this war began! O Great Day in the Morning! I'm
tired of doing nothing!"
General Wade Hampton of D. H. Hill's division, leaving his brigade in a
pine wood, went with his son and with an aide, Rawlins Lowndes, on a
reconnoitring expedition of his own. He was a woodsman and hunter, with
experience of swamps and bayous. Returning, he sought out Jackson, and
found him sitting on a fallen pine by the roadside near the slowly,
slowly mending bridge. Hampton dismounted and made his report. "We got
over, three of us, general, a short way above. It wasn't difficult. The
stream's clear of obstructions there and has a sandy bottom. We could
see through the trees on the other side. There's a bit of level, and a
hillside covered with troops--a strong position. But we got across the
stream, sir."
"Yes. Can you make a bridge there?"
"I can make one for infantry, sir. Not, I think, for the artillery.
Cutting a road would expose our position."
"Very good. Make the bridge, general."
Hampton's men cut saplings and threw a rude foot-bridge across the
stream where he had traversed it. He returned and reported. "They are
quiet and unsuspecting beyond, sir. The crossing would be slow, and
there may be an accident, but cross we certainly can."
Jackson, still seated on the fallen pine, sat as though he had been
there through eternity, and would remain through eternity. The gun