Part 84 (1/2)
ON THE MARCH, _September 14th_.
GENERAL,--I regret to say that McClellan has, in some unaccountable fas.h.i.+on, discovered the division of the army as well as its objectives.
We have had hard fighting to-day on South Mountain, D. H. Hill and Longstreet both suffering heavily. The troops fought with great determination and held the pa.s.ses until dusk. We are now falling back on Sharpsburg. Use all possible speed in joining me there.
LEE.
Stonewall Jackson rose. ”General Hill, arrange your matters as rapidly as possible. Sharpsburg on the Antietam. Seventeen miles.”
CHAPTER XLIII
SHARPSBURG
”Sharpsburg!” said long afterwards Stephen D. Lee. ”Sharpsburg was Artillery h.e.l.l!”
”Sharpsburg,” said the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia.
”Sharpsburg! That was the field where an infantryman knew that he stood on the most dangerous spot on the earth!”
Through the pa.s.ses of the South Mountain, over Red Hill, out upon the broken ground east of the Antietam poured the blue torrent--McClellan and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with a narrow grey sea--not thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two colours.
There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods.
It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left. Before him was Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts.
From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked from Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. He looked to the Harper's Ferry Road, but he did not see what he wished to see--A. P. Hill's red battle s.h.i.+rt. ”Artillery h.e.l.l” had begun. There was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All the country side, all the little Maryland villages and farmhouses blenched beneath that sound.
Lee put down his field gla.s.s. He stood, calm and grand, the smoke and uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge Guns came by, going to some indicated quarter of the field. In thunder they pa.s.sed below the knoll, the iron war-beasts, the gunners with them, black with powder and grime! All saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance of his chief of staff. ”Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob.”
The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and how ghastly battles surged about small country churches! The Prince of Peace, if he indwelled here, must have bowed his head and mourned. Sunrise struck upon its white walls; then came a sh.e.l.l and pierced them. The church became the core of the turmoil, the white, still reef against which beat the wild seas in storm.
Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle flags were bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in time, regular as a beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his fourteen thousand men. He crossed the turnpike, he came down on the Dunkard church. ”Yaii! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!” yelled the grey sea,--no time at all, only fierce determination. Sometimes a grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there was no other music, save the thunder of the guns and the long rattle, never ceasing, of the musketry. There were battle flags, squares of crimson with a starry Andrew's cross. They went forward, they shrank back. Standard-bearers were killed. Gaunt, powder-grimed hands caught at the staves, lifted them; the battle-flags went forward again.
Doubleday struck and Ricketts. They charged against Stonewall Jackson and the narrow grey sea. All the ground was broken; alignment was lost; blue waves and grey went this way and that in a broken, tumultuous fray.
But the blue waves were the heavier; in ma.s.s alone they outdid the grey.
They pushed the grey sea back, back, back toward the dark wood about the Dunkard church! Then Stonewall Jackson came along the front, riding in a pelting, leaden rain. ”Steady, men. Steady! G.o.d is over us!” His men received him with a cry of greeting and enthusiasm that was like a shriek, it was so wild and high. His power upon them had grown and grown. He was Stonewall Jackson! He was Stonewall Jackson! First, they would die for those battle-flags and the cause they represented; second, they would die for one another, comrades, brethren! third, they would die for Stonewall Jackson! They lifted their voices for him now, gaunt and ragged troops with burning eyes. _Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Virginia! Virginia! Virginia! the South! the South!_ He turned his horse, standing in the whistling, leaden rain. ”Forward, and drive them!”
Lawton and D. H. Hill leaped against Meade. He was a staunch fighter, but he gave back. The wood about the Dunkard church appeared to writhe like Dante's wood, it was so full of groaning, of maimed men beside the tree trunks. The dead lay where they fell, and the living stepped upon them. Meade gave back, back--and then Mansfield came in thunder to reinforce the blue.
The grey fought as even in this war they had hardly fought before. They were so gaunt, they were so ragged, they were so tired! But something ethnic was coming more and more rapidly to the front. They were near again to savage nature. The Maryland woods might have been thicker, darker, the small church might have been some boulder altar beside some early Old World river. They were a tribe again, and they were fighting another and much larger tribe whom they had reason, reason, reason to hate! Their existence was at stake and the existence of all that their hearts held dear. They fought with fury. About each were his tribesmen--all were brothers! Brother fought for brother, brother saw brother fall, brother sprang to avenge brother. Their lips were blackened from tearing cartridges; their eyes, large in their thin, bronzed faces, burned against the enemy; their fingers were quick, quick at the musket lock; the spirit was the spirit behind hurled stones of old, swung clubs, thrown javelins! They had a loved leader, a great strong head man who ruled them well and led them on to victory. They fought for him too, for his scant and curt praise, for his ”Good, Good!”
They fought for their own lives, each man for his own life, for their tribe, their possessions, for women at home and children, for their brethren, their leader, their cause. Something else, too, of the past was there in force--hatred of him who opposed. They fought for hate at Sharpsburg, as they fought for love. The great star drew, the iron thong fell. Led and driven, the tribe fought gigantically.
The battle became furious. Within the din of artillery and musketry human voices, loud, imperative, giving orders, shouting, wailing, died like a low murmur in the blast. Out of the wildly drifting smoke, now dark, now flame-lit, forms emerged, singly or in great bodies, then the smoke drew together, hiding the struggle. There was blackness and grime as from the ash of a volcano. The blood pounded behind the temples, the eyeb.a.l.l.s started, the tongue was thick in the mouth, battle smell and battle taste, a red light, and time in crashes like an earthquake-toppling city! The inequalities of the ground became exaggerated. Mere hillocks changed into rocky islands. Seize them, fortify them, take them before the blue can! The tall maize grew gigantically taller. Break through these miles of cane as often before we have broken through them, the foemen cras.h.i.+ng before us down to their boats! The narrow tongues of woods widened, widened. Take these deep forests, use them for shelter, from them send forth these new arrows of death--fight, fight! in the rolling murk, the red light and crying!
Before the Dunkard church Starke, commanding Jackson's old division, was killed, Jones was wounded, Lawton wounded. Many field officers were down, many, many of lesser rank. Of the blue, Mansfield was killed, Hooker was wounded, and Hartsuff and Crawford. The grey had pressed the blue back, back! Now in turn the blue drove the grey. The walls of the white church were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But the sh.e.l.ls came too, the sh.e.l.ls pierced the roof and entered. War came in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince of Peace was crowded out.
The artillery was deafening. In the midst of a tremendous burst of sound D. H. Hill flung in the remainder of his division. Sumner came through the smoke. The grey and blue closed in a death grapple. From toward the centre, beneath the howling storm rose a singing--
The race is not to them that's got The longest legs to run.
”Hood's Texans! Hood's Texans!” cried the Stonewall and all the other brigades on the imperilled left. ”Come on, Hood's Texans! Come on!
Yaaaii! Yaaaaaiih!”
Nor the battle to those people, That shoots the biggest gun.