Part 88 (1/2)
Lee reached the field and took command. Mahone's men came to the rescue marching with swift, steady tread. They took their position on the crest which commanded the open s.p.a.ce toward the captured trenches.
As Wright's brigade moved into position, the Black Battalions were ordered to charge. They had been hurried through the crater and into the trenches on the right and left. At the signal they swarmed over the works, with a voodoo yell, and in serried black waves, charged the men in gray. In broad daylight the Southerners saw for the first time the plan of the dramatic attack.
The white men of the South shrieked an answer and gripped their muskets.
The cry they gave came down the centuries from three thousand years of history. It came from the hearts of a conquering race of men. They had heard the Call of the Blood of the Race that rules the world.
Without an order from their commanders, with a single impulse, the whole Southern line leaped from their cover and dashed on the advancing Black Legions in a counter charge so swift, so terrible, there was but a single crash and the yell of white victory rang over the field. The Blacks broke and piled pell mell into the trenches and on into the h.e.l.l hole of the crater.
Fifty of Lee's guns were now pouring a steady stream of sh.e.l.ls into this pit of the d.a.m.ned.
The charging gray lines rolled over the captured trenches. They ringed the edge of the crater with a circle of flaming muskets. The writhing ma.s.s of dead, dying, wounded and living, scrambling blacks and whites, was a thing for devil's joy. At the bottom of the pit the heap was ten feet deep in moving flesh. In vain the terror-stricken blacks scrambled up the slippery sides through clouds of smoke. They fell backward and rolled down the crumbling walls.
Young John Doyle stood on the brink of this crater, his eyes aflame with revenge. His musket was so hot at last he threw it down, tore a cartridge belt from the body of a dead negro trooper, seized his rifle and went back to his task.
Sickened at last by the holocaust, the officers of the South ordered their men to cease firing. They had charged without orders. They refused to take orders. The officers began to strike them with their swords!
”Cease firing!”
”d.a.m.n you, stop it!”
Their orders rang around the flaming curve in vain. They seized the men by their collars and dragged them back. The gray soldiers tore away, rushed to the smoking rim and fired as long as they had a cartridge in their belts.
It was the poor white man who got beyond control at the sight of these yelling black troops wearing the uniform of the Republic. Had their souls leaped the years and seen in a vision dark-skinned hosts charging the ranks of white civilization in a battle for supremacy of the world?
CHAPTER XLV
When the smoke had lifted from the field of the Black Battalions, Lee stood in Richmond before a secret meeting of the leaders of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided. The meeting was called by request of the Commander. He had an important announcement to make.
Facing the anxious group gathered around the Cabinet table he spoke with unusual emphasis:
”Gentlemen, the end is in sight unless I can have more men. So long as I can burrow underground my half-clothed and half-starved soldiers will hold Grant at bay. I may hold him until next spring. Not longer. The North is using negro troops. They have enrolled nearly two hundred thousand. Their man power counts. We can arm our negroes to meet them.
They will fight under the leaders.h.i.+p of their masters. I speak as a mathematician and a soldier. I do not discuss the sentimental side. I must have men and I must have them before spring or your cause is lost.”
Robert Toombs of Georgia leaped to his feet. His words came slowly, throbbing with emotion.
”Any suggestion from General Lee deserves the immediate attention of this Government. He speaks to-night as an engineer and mathematician. He has told us the worst. It was his duty. I honor him for it.
”But I differ with him. He can see but one angle of this question. He is a soldier in field. It is our duty to see both the soldier's and the statesman's point of view. And our cause is not so desperate as the science of engineering and mathematics would tell us.
”The war of the revolution was won by Was.h.i.+ngton in spite of mathematics. The odds were all against him. We have our chance. This war is now in its fourth year. The outlook seems dark in Richmond. It is darker in Was.h.i.+ngton. What have they accomplished in these years of blood and tears? Nothing. Not a slave has been freed. Not a question at issue has found its solution. The millions of the North are in despair and they are crying for peace--peace at any price. The Presidential election is but a few weeks off. They have nominated Abraham Lincoln again for President. They had to, although he is the most unpopular man who ever sat in the White House. All the mistakes, all the agony, all the horrors of this war, they have unjustly heaped on his drooping shoulders.
”McClellan is his opponent _on a peace platform_.
”The Republican Party is split as ours was before the war. John C.
Fremont is running on the Radical ticket against Lincoln. Unless a miracle happens General George B. McClellan will be elected the next President. If he is, the war ends in a draw.
”It's a fair chance. We can take it.