"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn, thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of "Dismissals from the Army." There it was, dismissed for doing his duty, and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady until ten o"clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a pile of old lumber near by, and pa.s.sed very nearly three hours in wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I was told, educated at Uncle Sam"s expense to fight, elegantly shoulder-strapped, pa.s.sed in to drive quills in a quiet department, "remote from death"s alarms," and I wondered if some spirited clerks and schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."
"I see, Captain, that you don"t understand it," interrupted an officer.
"Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,--who is married to a plantation of n.i.g.g.e.rs, or who has other Southern sympathies or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting against our "Southern brethren,"--to take a snug salary in some peaceful department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where gra.s.shoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his country"s honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains, and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by pa.s.sing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."
"Well, if I don"t understand it," resumed the Captain, "it is high time that Uncle Sam understood it. If these men are half-hearted, they will write no better than they fight, and I guess if the truth could be got at, they are responsible for most of the clogging in the Commissary and Quarter-Master Departments. But you"ve got me off my story. At ten o"clock I staved in, just as I was, my uniform shabby, and my boots with a tolerably fair representation of Aquia mud upon them. Pa.s.sing from one orderly to another, I brought up at the Adjutant-General"s office, and there I was referred to the head clerk"s office, and there a pleasant-looking, gentlemanly Major told me that the matter would be certainly set straight as soon as the court-martial records were forwarded; that they had telegraphed for them again and again; and that at one time they were reported lost, and at another carried off by one of General Burnside"s Staff Officers. As I had heard of records of the kind being delayed before, I intimated rather plainly what I thought of the matter, and told him that I wanted to see the Secretary himself. He smiled, and told me to take my place in the rear of an odd-looking mixed a.s.semblage of persons in the hall, who were crowding towards an open door. It was after two o"clock and after I had stood until I felt devotional about the knees, when my turn brought me before the door, and showed me Mr. Secretary himself, standing behind a desk, tossing his head, now on this side and now on that, with quick jerks, like a short-horned bull in fly time, despatching business and the hopes of the parties who had it from their looks, about the same time. Right manfully did he stand up to his work; better than to his word perhaps, if reports that I have heard be true."
"A pretty-faced, middle-aged lady approached his desk, and I thought that I could see a rather awkward effort at a smile hang around the upper corners of his huge, black beard, as his eye caught her features through his spectacles, and he received her papers. But the gruff manner in which he told her the next moment that he would not grant it, showed I was mistaken.
""But I was told, Mr. Secretary," said the woman, in tremulous tones, "that my papers were all right, and that your a.s.sent was a mere formality. I have three other sons in the service, and this boy is not"----
""I don"t care what you have been told," retorted the Secretary, in a manner that made me so far forget my reverence that my toes suddenly felt as if disposed to propel something that, strange to say, had the semblance of humanity, and was not distant at the time. "You had better leave the room, madam!" continued the same voice, somewhat gruffer and sterner, as the poor woman burst into tears at the sudden disappointment. "You only interrupt and annoy. We are accustomed to this sort of thing here."
"I looked at him as he took the papers of another for examination, and wondered whether we were really American citizens--sovereigns as our politicians tell us when on the stump, and whether he was really a public servant. But I couldn"t see it.
"Now, civility is a cheap commodity, and, in my humble opinion, the least that can be expected of men filling public positions is that they should possess it in an ordinary degree.
"Three o"clock came, but it was not my turn yet. In fact, the treatment of the lady had so disgusted me, that I was quite ready to leave when a servant announced that business hours were over. That evening, I found out to my great satisfaction that men considerably more influential than myself had held the Secretary to the promises he had made them, and that notwithstanding all his backing and filling the order for their return would be issued."
The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,--an offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own confession, repeatedly been guilty,--was the sole result of its labor.
His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers and men.
--Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The social status of a large country semi-civilized--whether you regard the intelligence of its people or the condition of its society--is being suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked nerve and ability to execute--emanc.i.p.ation. The blessings of a purer civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.
And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a meadow several miles in length, and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,--from the window of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley, threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,--was ma.s.sa"s study, and that ma.s.sa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested with a peculiar sanct.i.ty. Not so with its present occupants, who could not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered "those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder had driven away this vender of the divinity of the inst.i.tution of slavery.
In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were pa.s.sing a pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to form part of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.
"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor----"
"What has happened to him?" from several at once.
"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."
His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the Doctor, and the officer continued--
"And the loss of our men and his horse has all happened through the carelessness,--to treat it mildly,--of the exhorting Colonel. He is in command of the station, and yesterday afternoon the Doctor was on duty at his head-quarters. In came one of the black-eyed beauties that live in a house near the ford, about half a mile from the station, boo-hooing at a terrible rate--that the youngest rebel of her family was dying with the croup--and that no doctor was near--and all that old story. The Colonel was fool enough to order the Doctor to mount his horse and go with the woman. Well, the Doctor had got near the house, when out sprang two Mississippi Riflemen from the pines on either side of the road and levelled their pieces at him. The Doctor had to dismount, and they sent him back on foot. Luckily the Colonel, who, as black Charley says, has been praying for a star for some time past, had borrowed the Doctor"s dress sword on the pretence that it was lighter to carry, but on the ground, really, that it looked more Brigadier-like, or he would have lost that too. I was on duty down by the river hardly two hours after it happened, and as there is no firing now along the picket line the soldiers were free-and-easy on both sides. All at once I heard laughter on the other side, and looking over, I saw a short, thick-set Grey-back riding the stolen horse near the water"s edge. Presently two other Grey-backs sprang on either side of the horse"s head, and with pieces levelled, in tones loud enough for us to hear, demanded his surrender.
""Why, shentlemen Rebels, mein Gott, you no take non compatants, me surgeon," said the Grey-back on the horse, in equally loud voice.
""No, d--n you! Dismount! We don"t want you. You can be of more service to the Confederate cause where you are. But we must have the nag."
""Mine private property," he replied, as he dismounted.
""In a horn," said one of the Grey-backs, pointing to the U. S. on the shoulder of the beast. "That your private mark, eh?"
""You no shentlemen. By G--t, no honor," retorted the Grey-back who personated the Doctor, as he swelled himself and strutted about on the sand in such a high style of indignation as to draw roars of laughter from both sides of the river.
"That rather paid us with interest for the way we sold them the day before. You know they have been crazy after our dailies ever since the strict general order preventing the exchange of the daily papers between pickets. Well, that dare-devil of a law student, Tom, determined to have some fun with them. So when they again, as they often had before, came to the river with hands full of Richmond papers, proposing exchange, Tom flourished a paper also. That was the old signal, and forthwith a raw-boned Alabamian stripped and commenced wading toward a rock that jutted up in the middle of the river. Tom stripped also, and met him at the rock. Mum was the word between them, and each turned for his own sh.o.r.e, the Grey-back with Tom"s paper, and Tom with several of the latest Richmond prints. A crowd of Rebel officers met their messenger at the water"s edge and received the paper. The one who opened it, bent nearly double with laughter, and the rest rapidly followed as their eyes lit on the stars and stripes printed in glowing colors on the first page of the little religious paper that our Chaplains distribute so freely in camp, called "The Christian Banner." One old officer, apparently of higher rank than the rest, cursed it as he went up the bank as a "d----d Yankee sell,--" which did not in the least lessen our enjoyment of Tom"s success.
"But with our two men and the Doctor"s horse they have squared accounts with us since, and all through the fault of the Colonel."
In response to inquiries as to how, when, and where, the officer continued--
"There was a narrow strip of open land between a belt of woods and the river. The Colonel posted our two men on the inside of the woods, where they had no open view towards the enemy at all. That rainy night this week the Rebs came over in boats and gobbled them up. The Colonel attributed their loss to their own neglect, and next morning their place was supplied by four old soldiers, as he called them, from his own Regiment. That same day at noon, in broad daylight, they were taken."
"And if he were not a firm friend at Division Head-quarters there would be a dismissal from the service for cause," said an officer of the crowd.
"Our Corps Commander is too much of a soldier to let it go by," resumed the officer, "if our Brigadier can force it through Division Head-quarters, and bring it to his notice."
The order that introduced into the service the novelty of carrying eight days" rations on a march, had been discussed for some time in the Regiment. That night the Regiment was withdrawn from the picket line, and preparations were forthwith made for a practical ill.u.s.tration of the order on the morrow.
CHAPTER XX.
_The Army again on the Move--Pack Mules and Wagon Trains--A Negro Prophetess--The Wilderness--Hooped Skirts and Black Jack--The Five Days"
Fight at Chancellorsville--Terrible Death of an Aged Slave--A Pigeon-hole General"s "Power in Reserve."_
It was some weeks after a Rebel Picket, opposite Falmouth, had surprised one of our own, who had not as yet heard of the change in the usual three days" provender for a march, by asking him across the river "whether his eight days" rations were mouldy yet?" that the army actually commenced its movement. While awaiting the word to fall in, this ma.s.s of humanity literally loaded with army bread and ammunition resembled, save in uniformity, those unfortunate beings burdened with bundles of woe, so strikingly portrayed in the Vision of Mirza. To the credit of the men, it must be stated, however, that the greatest good-humor prevailed in this effort to render the army self-sustaining in a country that could not sustain itself.
Another novel feature in the movement was the long strings of pack mules, heavily freighted with ammunition, which were led in the rear of the different Brigades. Wagon trains were thereby dispensed with, and the mobility of the army greatly increased. Stringent orders were issued also as to the reduction of baggage, and dispensing with camp equipage and cooking utensils.
In lively ranks, although each man was freighted with the prescribed eight days" provender and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, our Division, of almost 9,000 men, moved, followed by two ambulances to pick up those who might fall by the way, in the rear of which were five additional ambulances for the especial use of Division Head-quarters. For a General of whom reporters had said that "he was most at home in the field," the supply of ambulances, full of creature comforts, was unusually heavy. On we moved over the familiar ground of the Warrenton Pike, in common with several other Army Corps in a grand march; our Division, with its two ambulances; our General with his five,--and our proportionate number of pack horses and mules. The obstinacy of the latter animal was sorely punished by the apparent effort during that march to teach it perpetual motion. Halt the Division did statedly, but there was no rest for the poor mule. Experience had taught its driver that the beast would take advantage of the halt to lie down, and when once down no amount of tugging and swearing and clubbing could induce it to rise. Hence, while the command would enjoy their stated halts by the wayside, these strings of mules would be led or driven in continuous circles of steady toil.
Despite the vigilance of their drivers, a mule would occasionally drop, and his companions speedily follow, to stand a siege of kicks, cuffs, and bayonet p.r.i.c.ks, and to be reduced, or what would be more appropriate in their case, raised at length by the application of a mud plaster to the nostrils, which would bring the beast up in an effort to breathe freely; from which may arise the slang phrase of "bringing it up a snorting."
Onward they marched, those wearers of the cross, the square, the circle, the crescent, the star, the lozenge, and the tripod; emblemed representatives of the interests of a common humanity in the triumphal march that the world is witness to, of the progress of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation. Landed aristocracies of the Old World may avow their affinity to the aristocracy of human flesh and blood that has so long cursed the New; but now that the suicidal hand of the latter has caused the forfeit of its existence, we are the centre of the hopes, fears, and prayers of the universal brotherhood of man in the effort to blot out for ever the only foul spot upon our national escutcheon.
"De Lor bress ye. I know yez all. Yez, Uncle Samuel"s children. Long looked for come at las," said an old wench on the second day of our march, enthusiastically to the advanced ranks of our Division, as they wound around the hill in sight of Mt. Holly Church, on the main road to Kelly"s Ford, curtesying and gesturing all the while with her right hand, as if offering welcome, while with her left she steadied on her head the cast-away cover of a Dutch oven. A pair of half-worn army shoes covered her feet, and the folds of her tow gown were compressed about the waist, beneath a black leathern belt, the bra.s.s plate of which bearing the letters "U. S.," wore a conspicuous polish.
"Ma.s.sa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him.
Golly he"um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."
The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own, lacks practical ill.u.s.tration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner"s insurrection developed their strong faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might
"Ma.s.sa tink it day ob doom, But we ob Jubilee."
The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.
A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly"s Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker"s advent to command was attended by a sharp and stirring order that speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty.
Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres, and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to have required as much of them as of the educated hors.e.m.e.n and superior horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill, and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.
While on the top of this ridge, Rush"s regiment of lancers, with lances in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive designation of "Pig Stickers."