"Come, humble sinner, in whose breastA thousand thoughts revolve—"
It made a low thunder, so many soldiers' voices. Always, on these nights, in some glade or meadow, with some regiment or other, there was found the commander of the 2d Corps. Beneath the cathedral roof of the forest, or beneath the stars in the open, sat Stonewall Jackson, worshipping the God of Battles. Undoubtedly he was really and deeply happy. His place is on the Judean hills, with Joab and David and Abner. Late in this November there came to himanother joy. In North Carolina, where his wife had gone, a child was born to him, his only child, a daughter.
In the first half of October had occurred Jeb Stuart's brilliant Monocacy raid, two days and a half within McClellan's lines. On the twenty-sixth McClellan began the passage of the Potomac. He crossed near Berlin, and Lee, assured now that the theatre of war would be east of the Blue Ridge, dispatched Longstreet with the 1st Corps to Culpeper. On the seventh of November McClellan was removed from the command of the Army of the Potomac. It was given over to Burnside, and he took the Fredericksburg route to Richmond.
The Army of the Potomac numbered one hundred and twenty-five thousand men and officers and three hundred and twenty guns. At Washington were in addition eighty thousand men, and up and down the Potomac twenty thousand more. The Army of Northern Virginia in all, 1st and 2d Corps, had seventy-two thousand men and officers and two hundred and seventy-five guns. Lee called Stonewall Jackson to join Longstreet at Fredericksburg.
On the twenty-second the 1st Corps quitted, amid smiles and tears, many a "God keep you!" and much cheering, Winchester the beloved. Out swung the long column upon the Valley pike. Advance and main and rear, horse and foot and guns, Stonewall Jackson and his twenty-five thousand took the old road. The men were happy. "Old road, old road, old road, howdy do! How's your health, old lady? Haven't you missed us? Haven't you missed us? We've missedyou!"
It was Indian summer, violet, dream-like. By now there had been burning and harrowing in the Valley; war had laid his mailed hand upon the region. It was not yet the straining clutch of later days, but it was bad enough. The Indian summer wrapped with a soft touch of mourning purple much of desolation, much of untilled earth, and charred roof-tree, and broken walls. The air was soft and gentle, lying balmy and warm on the road and ragged fields, and the haze so hid the distances that the column thought not so much of how the land was scarred as of the memories that thronged on either side of the Valley pike. "Kernstown! The field of Kernstown. There's Fulkerson's wall. About five hundred years ago!"
Stonewall Jackson,riding in the van, may be supposed to have had his memories, too. He did not express them. He was using expedition, and he sent back orders. "Press forward, men! Press forward." He rode quietly, forage cap pulled low; or, standing with Little Sorrel on some wayside knoll, he watched for a while his thousands passing. Stuart's gay present had taken the air but once. Here was the old familiar, weather-worn array, leaf brown from sun and wind and dust and rain, patched here and patched there, dull of buttons, and with the lace worn off. Here were the old boots, the sabre, the forage cap; here were the blue glint of the eye and the short "Good! good!" as the men passed. The marching men shouted for him. He nodded, and having noted whatever it was he had paused to note, shook Little Sorrel's bridle and stiffly galloped to the van again.
Past Newtown, past Middletown, on to Strasburg—the Massanuttons loomed ahead, all softly coloured yet with reds and golds. "Massanutton! Massanutton!" said the troops. "We've seen you before, and you've seen us before! Front Royal's at your head and Port Republic's at your feet."
"In Virginia there's a Valley,Valley, Valley!Where all day the war drums beat,Beat, Beat!And the soldiers love the ValleyValley, Valley!And the Valley loves the soldiers,Soldiers, soldiers!"
Past Strasburg, past Tom's Brook, past Rude's Hill—through the still November days, in the Indian summer weather, the old Army of the Valley, the old Ewell's Division, the Light Division, D. H. Hill's Division, moved up the Valley Pike. All were now the 2d Corps, Stonewall Jackson riding at its head. The people—the people were mostly women and children—flocked to the great highroad to bring the army things, to wave it onward, to say "God bless you!"—"God keep you!"—"God make you to conquer!"
The 2d Corps passed Woodstock, and Edenburg, and Mt. Jackson, and came to New Market, and here it turned eastward. "Going to leave you," chanted the troops. "Going to leave you, old road, old road! Take care of yourself till we come again!"
Up and up and over Massanutton wound the 2d Corps. The air was still, not cold. The gold leaves drifted on the troops, and the red. From the top of the pass the view was magnificent. Down and down wound the column to the cold, swift Shenandoah. The men forded the stream. "Oh, Shenandoah! Oh, Shenandoah! when will we ford you again?"
Up and up the steeps of the Blue Ridge to Fisher's Gap! All the air was dreamy, the sun sloping to the west, the crows cawing in the mountain clearings. The column was leaving the Valley, and a silence fell upon it. Stonewall Jackson rode ahead, on the mountain path, in the last gold light. At the summit of the pass there was a short halt. It went by in a strange quietness. The men turned and gazed. "The Valley of Virginia! The Valley of Virginia!Which of us will not see you again?"
The Alleghenies lay faint, faint, beneath the flooding light. The sun sent out great rays of purple and rose. Between the mountain ranges the vast landscape lay in shadow, though here and there a high hilltop, a mountain spur had a coronet of gold. The 2d Corps, twenty-five thousand men, high on the Blue Ridge, looked and looked. "Some of us will not see you again. Some of us will not see you again, O loved Valley of Virginia!"Column Forward! Column Forward!
The three beautiful Carys walked together from the road gate toward the house. Before them, crowning the low hill, showed the white pillars between oaks where the deep coloured leaves yet clung. The sun was down, the air violet, the negro children burning brush and leaves in the hollow behind the house quarter. Halfway to the pillars, there ran back from the drive a long double row of white chrysanthemums. The three sisters paused to gather some for the vases.
Unity and Molly gathered them. Judith sat down on the bank by the road, thick with dead leaves. She drew her scarf about her. Molly came presently and sat beside her. "Dear Judith, dear Judith!" she said, in her soft little voice, and stroked her sister's dress.
Judith put her arm about her, and drew her close. "Molly, isn't it as though the earth were dying? Just the kind of fading light and hush one thinks of going in—I don't know why, but I don't like chrysanthemums any more."
"I know," said Molly, "there's a feel of mould in them, and of dead leaves and chilly nights. But the soldiers are so used to lying out of doors! I don't believe they mind it much, or they won't until the snow comes. Judith—"
"Yes, honey."
"The soldiers that I have dreadful dreams about are the soldiers in prison. Judith, I dreamed about Major Stafford the other night! He had blood upon his forehead and he was walking up and down, walking up and down in a place with a grating."
"You mustn't dream so, Molly.—Oh, yes, yes, yes! I'm sorry for him. On the land and on the sea and for them that are in prison—"
Unity joined them, with her arm full of white bloom. "Oh, isn't there a dreadful hush? How gay we used to be, even at twilight! Judith, Judith, let us do something!"
Judith looked at her with a twisted smile. "This morning, very early, we went with Aunt Lucy over the storeroom and the smoke-house, and then we went down to the quarter and got them all together, and told them how careful now we would all have to be with meal and bacon. And Susan's baby had died in the night, and we had to comfort Susan, and this afternoon we buried the baby. After breakfast we scraped almost the last of the tablecloths into lint, and Molly made envelopes, and Daddy Ben and I talked about shoes and how we could make them at home. Then Aunt Lucy and I went into town to the hospitals. There is a rumour of smallpox, but I am sure it is only a rumour. It has been a hard day. A number of sick were brought in from Fredericksburg. So much pneumonia! An old man and woman came up from North Carolina looking for their son. I took them through the wards. Oh, itwas pitiful! No, he was not there. Probably he was killed. And Unity went to the sewing-rooms, and has been there sewing hard all day. And then we came home, and found Julius almost in tears, and Molly triumphant with the parlour carpet all up and ready to be cut into squares—soldiers sleeping in the snowy winter under tulips and roses. And then we read father's letter, and that was a comfort, a comfort! And then we took Susan's little baby and buried it, and did what we could for Susan; and then we walked down to the gate and stopped to gather chrysanthemums. And now we are going back to the house, and I dare say there'll be some work to do between now and bedtime. We're doing something pretty nearly all the time, Unity."
Unity lifted with strength the mass of bloom above her head. "I know, I know! But it's in me to want a brass band to do it by! I want to see the flag waving! I want to hear thesoundof our work. Oh, I know I am talking foolishness!" She took Judith by the hands, and lifted her to her feet. "Anyhow, you're brave enough, Judith, Judith darling! Come, let us race to the house."
The three were country-bred, fleet of foot. They ran, swiftly, lightly, up the long drive. Twilight was around them, the leaves drifting down, the leaves crisp under foot. The tall white pillars gleamed before them; through the curtainless windows showed, jewel-like, the flame of a wood fire. They reached the steps almost together, soberly mounted them, and entered the hall. Miss Lucy called to them from the library. "The papers have come."
The old room, quiet, grave, book-lined, stored with records of old struggles, lent itself with fitness to the papers nowadays. The Greenwood Carys sat about the wood fire, Judith in an old armchair, Unity on an old embroidered stool, Molly in the corner of a great old sofa. Miss Lucy pushed her chair into the ring of the lamplight and read aloud in her quick, low, vibrant voice. The army at Fredericksburg—that was what they thought of now, day and night. She read first of the army at Fredericksburg—of Lee on the southern side of the Rappahannock, and Burnside on the northern, and the cannon all planted, and of the women and children beginning to leave. She read all the official statements, all the rumours, all the guesses, all the prophecies of victory and the record of suffering. Then she read the news of elsewhere in the vast, beleaguered fortress—of the fighting on the Mississippi, in Louisiana, in Arkansas, in the Carolinas; echoes from Cumberland Gap, echoes from Corinth. She read all the Richmond news—hot criticism, hot defence of the President, of the Secretary of War, of the Secretary of State; echoes from the House, from the Senate; determined optimism as to foreign intervention; disdain, as determined, of Burnside's "On to Richmond"; passionate devotion to the grey armies in the field—all the loud war song of the South, clear and defiant! She read everything in the paper. She read the market prices. Coffee $4 per lb. Tea $20 per lb. Wheat $5 per bushel. Corn $15 per barrel. Bacon $2 per lb. Sugar $50 per loaf. Chickens $10. Turkeys $50.
"Oh," cried Molly. "We have chickens yet, beside what we send to the hospitals! And we have eggs and milk and butter, and I was looking at the turkeys to-day. I feelwicked!"
"A lot of the turkeys will die," said Unity consolingly. "They always do. I spoke to Sam about the ducks and the guinea-hens the other day. I told him we were going to send them to Fredericksburg. He didn't like it. 'Miss Unity, what fer you gwine ter send all dem critturs away lak dat? You sen' 'em from Greenwood, dey gwine die ob homesickness!' And we don't use many eggs ourselves, honey, and we've no way to send the milk."
Miss Lucy having read the paper through, the Greenwood ladies went to supper. That frugal meal over, they came back to the library, the parlour looking somewhat desolate with the carpet up and rolled in one corner, waiting for the shears to-morrow. "The shepherds and shepherdesses look," said Unity, "as though they were shivering a little. I don't suppose they ever thought they'd live to see a Wilton carpet cut into blankets for Carys and other soldiers gone to war! It's impossible not to laugh when you think of Edward drawing one of those coverlets over him! Oh, me!"
"If Edward gets a furlough this winter," said Judith suddenly, "we must give him a party. With the two companies in town, and some of the surgeons, there will be men enough. Then Virginia and Nancy and Deb and Maria and Betty and Agatha and all the refugeeing girls—we could have a real party once more—"
"Just leaving out the things to eat," said Unity; "and wearing very old clothes. We'll do it, won't we, Aunt Lucy?"
Aunt Lucy thought it an excellent idea. "We mustn't get old before our time! We must keep brightness about the place. I have seen my mother laugh and look all the gayer out of her beautiful black eyes when other folk would have been weeping!—I hear company coming, now! It's Cousin William, I think."
Cousin William it was, not gone to the war because of sixty-eight years and a rich inheritance of gout. He came in, ruddy as an apple, ridden over to cheer up the Greenwood folk and hear and tell news from the front. He had sons there himself, and a letter which he would read for the thirtieth time. When Judith had made him take the great armchair, and Miss Lucy had rung for Julius and a glass of wine, and Unity had trimmed the light, and Molly replenished the fire, he read, and as in these days no one ever read anything perfunctorily, the reading was more telling than an actor could have made it. In places Cousin William himself and his hearers laughed, and in places reader and listener brushed hand across eyes. "Your loving son," he read, and folded the sheets carefully, for they were becoming a little worn. "Now, what's your news, Lucy? Have you heard from Fauquier?"
"Yes, yesterday. He has reached Fredericksburg from Winchester. It is one of his old, dry, charming letters, only—only a little hard to make out in places, because he's not yet used to writing with his left hand." Miss Lucy's face worked for a moment; then she smiled again, with a certain high courage and sweetness, and taking the letter from her work-basket read it to Cousin William. He listened, nodding his head at intervals. "Yes, yes, to be sure, to be sure! You can't remember Uncle Edward Churchill, Lucy, but I can. He used to read Swift to me, though I didn't care for it much, except for Gulliver. Fauquier reminds me of him often, except that Uncle Edward was bitter—though it wasn't because of his empty sleeve; it was for other things.—Fredericksburg! There'll be another terrible battle. And Warwick?"
"We heard from him to-day—a short letter, hurriedly written; but oh! like Warwick—like Warwick!"
She read this, too. It was followed by a silence in the old Greenwood library. Then said Cousin William softly, "It is worth while to get such letters. There aren't many like Warwick Cary. He's the kind that proves the future—shows it isn't just a noble dream. And Edward?"
"A letter three days ago, just after you were here the last time."
The room smiled. "It was what Edward calls a screed," said Molly; "there wasn't a thing about war in it."
Unity stirred the fire, making the sparks go up chimney. "Five pages about Massanutton in her autumn robes, and a sonnet to the Shenandoah! I like Edward."
At ten o'clock Cousin William rode away. The Greenwood women had prayers, and then, linked together, they went up the broad, old shallow stairs to the gallery above, and kissed one another good-night.
In her own room Judith laid pine knots upon the brands. Up flared the light, and reddened all the pleasant chamber. She unclad herself, slipped on her dressing-gown, brushed and braided her dusky hair, rippling, long and thick, then fed again the fire, took letters from her rosewood box, and in the light from the hearth read them for the thousandth time. There was none from Richard Cleave after July, none, none! Sitting in a low chair that had been her mother's, she bowed herself over the June-time letters, over the May-time letters. There had been but two months of bliss, two months! She read them again, although she had them all by heart; she held her hand as though it held a pen and traced the words so that she might feel, "Here and so, his hand rested"; she put the paper to her cheek, against her lips; she slipped to her knees, laid her arms along the seat of the chair and her head upon them, and prayed. "O God! my lover hast Thou put far from me.—O God! my lover hast Thou put far from me."
She knelt there long; but at last she rose, laid the letters in the box, and took from another compartment Margaret Cleave's. These were since July, a letter every fortnight. Judith read again the later ones, the ones of the late summer. "Dear child—dearest child, I cannot tell you! Only be forever sure that wherever he is, at Three Oaks or elsewhere, he loves you, loves you! No; I do not know that his is the course that I should take, but then women are different. I do not think I would ever think of pride or of the world and the world's opinion. If you cried to me I would go, and the world should not hold me back. But men have been trained to uphold that kind of pride. I did not think that Richard had it, but I see now all his father in him. Darling child, I do not think that it will last,but just now, oh, just now, you must possess your heart in patience!"
The words blurred before Judith's eyes. She sunk her head upon her knees. "Possess my heart in patience—Possess my heart in patience—Oh, God, I am not old enough yet to do it!"
She read another letter, one of later date. "Judith, I promised. I cannot tell you. But he is well, oh, believe that! and believe, too, that he is doing his work. He is not the kind to rest from work, he must work. And slowly, slowly that brings salvation. You are a noble woman. Be noble still—and wait awhile—and wait awhile! Itwillcome right. Miriam is better. The woods about Three Oaks are gorgeous."
She read another. "Child, he is not at Three Oaks. Now you must rest—rest and wait."
Judith put the letters in the rosewood box. She arose, locked her hands behind her head and walked softly up and down the room. "Rest—rest and wait. Patience—quietude—tranquillity—strength—fortitude—endurance.—Rest— patience—calm quietude—"
It worked but partially. Presently, when she lay down it was to lie still enough, but sleepless. Late in the night she slept, but it was to dream again, much as she had dreamed during the Seven Days, great and tragic visions. Dawn waked her. She lay, staring at the white ceiling; then she arose. It was not cold. The earth lay still at this season, yet wrapped and warmed and softened with the memories of summer. Judith looked out of the window. There was a glow in the eastern sky, the trees were motionless, the brown path over the hills showed like a beckoning finger. She dressed, put a cloak about her, went softly downstairs and left the house.
The path across the meadow, through the wood, up the lone tree hill—she would see the sunrise, she would get above the world. She walked quickly, lightly, through the dank stillness. There was mist in the meadow, above the little stream. The wood was shadowy; mist, like ghosts, between the trees. She passed through it and came out on the bare hillside, rising dome-like to the one tree with the bench around it. The eastern sky was burning gold. Judith stood still. There was a man seated upon the bench, on the side that overlooked Greenwood. He sat with his head buried in his hands. She could not yet tell, but she thought he was in uniform.
With the thought she moved onward. She never remembered afterwards, whether she recognized him then, or whether she thought, "A soldier sleeping through the night up here! Why did he not come to the house?" She made no noise on the bare, moist earth of the path. She was within thirty feet of the bench when Cleave lifted his head from his hands, rose, stood still a moment, then with a gesture, weary and determined, turned to descend the hill—on the side away from Greenwood, toward a cross-country road. She called to him. "Richard!"
It was rapture—all beneath the rising sun forgotten save only this gold-lit hilltop, with its tree from Eden garden! But since it was earth, and Paradise not yet real, and there were checks and bars enough in their human lot, they came back from that seraph flight. This was the lone tree hill above Greenwood, and a November day, though gold-touched, and Philip Deaderick must get back to the section of Pelham's artillery refitting at Gordonsville.—"What do you mean? You are a soldier—you are back in the army?—but you have another name? Oh, Richard, I see, I see! Oh, I might have known! A gunner with Pelham. Oh, my gunner with Pelham, why did you not come before?"
Cleave wrung her hands, clasped in his, then bent and kissed them. "Judith, I will speak to you as to a comrade, because you would be the truest comrade ever man had! What would you do—what would you have done—in my place? What would you do now, in my place, but say—but say, 'I love you; let me go'?"
"I?" said Judith. "What would I have done? I would have reëntered the army as you have reëntered it. I would serve again as you are serving again. If it were necessary—Oh, I see that it was necessary!—I would serve disguised as you are disguised. But—but—when it came to Judith Cary—"
"Judith, say that it was not you and I, but some other disgraced soldier and one of your sisters—"
"You are not a disgraced soldier. The innocent cannot be disgraced."
"Who knows that I was innocent? My mother, and you, Judith, know it; my kinspeople and certain friends believe it; but all the rest of the country—the army, the people—they don't believe it. Let my name be known to-morrow, and by evening a rougher dismissal than before! Do you not see, do you not see, Judith?"
"I see partly. I see that you must serve. I see that you walk with dangers. I see that—that you could not even write. I see that I must possess my soul in patience. I see that we must wait—Oh, God, it is all waiting, waiting, waiting! But I do not see—and Irefuseto see, Richard—anything at the end of it all but love, happiness, union, home for you and me!"
He held her close. "Judith, I do not know the right. I am not sure that I see the right, my soul is so tempest-tossed. That day at White Oak Swamp. If I could cleanse that day, bring it again into line with the other days of my life, poor and halting though they may have been, though they may be, if I could make all men say 'His life was a whole—one life, not two. He had no twin, a disobedient soldier, a liar and betrayer, as it was said he had.'—If I could do that, Judith! I do not see how I will do it, and yet it is my intention to do it. That done, then, darling, darling! I will make true love to you. If it is not done—but I will not think of that. Only—only—how to do it, how to do it! That maddens me at times—"
"Is it that? Then we must think of that. They are not all dead who could tell?—"
"Maury Stafford is not dead."
"Maury Stafford!—What has he to do with it?"
Cleave laughed, a sound sufficiently grim. "What has he not to do with it?—with that order which he carried from General Jackson to General Winder, and from General Winder—not, before God! to me! Winder is dead, and the courier who could have told is dead, and others whom I might have called are dead—dead, I will avow, because of my choice of action, though still—given that false order—I justify that choice! And now we hear that Major Stafford was among those taken prisoner at Sharpsburg."
Judith stood upright, her hand at her breast, her eyes narrowed. "Until this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask. I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these months I have thought of it as a mistake—as one of those misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for what it was till now!"
She looked about her, still with an intent and narrowedgaze. "The lone tree hill. It is a good place to see it from. There is nothing to be done but to join this day to a day last June—the day of Port Republic." Raising her hands she pressed them to her eyes as though to shut out a veritable lightning glare, then dropped them. She stood very straight, young, slender, finely and strongly fibred. "He said he would do the worst he could, and he has done it. And I said, 'At your peril!' and at his peril it shall be! And the harm that he has done, he shall undo it!" She turned. "Richard! he shall undo it."
Cleave stood beside her. "Love, love! how beautiful the light is over Greenwood! I thought, sitting here, 'I will not wait for the sunshine; I will go while all things are in shadow.' And I turned to go. And then came the sunshine. I must go now—away from the sunshine. I had but an hour, and half of it was gone before the sunshine came."
"How shall I know," she said, "if you are living? There is a battle coming."
"Yes. Judith, I will not write to you. Do not ask me; I will not. But after each battle I have managed somehow to get a line to my mother. She will tell you that I am living, well and living. I do not think that I shall die—no, not till Maury Stafford and I have met again!"
"He is in prison. They say so many die there.... Oh, Richard, write to me—"
But Cleave would not. "No! To do that is to say, 'All is as it was, and I let her take me with this stain!' I will not—I will not. Circumstance has betrayed us here this hour. We could not help it, and it has been a glory, a dream. That is it, a dream. I will not wake till I have said good-bye!"
They said good-bye, still in the dream, as lovers might, when one goes forth to battle and the other stays behind. He released her, turned short and sharp, and went down from the lone tree hill, down the side from Greenwood, to the country road. A piece of woods hid him from sight.
Judith stood motionless for a time, then she sat down upon the bench. She sat like a sibyl, elbows on knees, chin in hands, her gaze narrowed and fixed. She spoke aloud, and her voice was strange in her own ears. "Maury Stafford in prison. Where, and how long?"
Snow lay deep on the banks of the Rappahannock, in the forest, up and down the river, on the plain about the little city, on the bold heights of the northern shore, on the hills of the southern, commanding the plain. The snow was deep, but somewhat milder weather had set in. December the eleventh dawned still and foggy.
General Burnside with a hundred and twenty thousand blue troops appointed this day to pass the Rappahannock, a stream that flowed across the road to Richmond. He had been responsible for choosing this route to the keep of the fortress, and he must make good his reiterated, genial assurances of success. The Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, and a line of hills masked the onward-going road and its sign,This way to Richmond. "Well, the Rappahannock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak and desolate with fir woods?—hares and snow birds are all the life over there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappahannock below Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jackson's down there. The balloon people say so. General Lee's got an idea that Port Royal's our point of attack. The mass of his army's there. The gunboat people say so. Longstreet may be behind those hills. Well, we'll crush Longstreet! We'll build our bridges under cover of this fortunate fog, and go over and defeat Longstreet and be far down the road to Richmond before a man can say Jack Robinson!"
"Jack Robinson!" said the brigade from McLaws's division—Barksdale's Mississippians—drawn up on the water edge of Fredericksburg. They were tall men—Barksdale's Mississippians—playful bear-hunters from the cane brakes, young and powerfully made, and deadly shots. "Old Barksdale" knew how to handle them, and together they were a handful for any enemy whatsoever. Sixteen hundred born hunters and fighters, they opened fire on the bridge-builders, trying to build four bridges, three above, one below the town. Barksdale's men were somewhat sheltered by the houses on the river brink; the blue had the favourable fog with which to cover operations. It did not wholly help; the Mississippians had keen eyes; the rifles blazed, blazed, blazed! Burnside's bridge-builders were gallant men; beaten back from the river they came again and again, but again and again the eyes of the swamp hunters ran along the gleaming barrels and a thousand bronzed fingers pulled a thousand triggers. Past the middle of the day the fog lifted. The town lay defined and helpless beneath a pallid sky.
The artillery of the Army of the Potomac opened upon it. One hundred and forty heavy guns, set in tiers upon the heights to the north, fired each into Fredericksburg fifty rounds. Under that terrible cover the blue began to cross on pontoons.
A number of the women and children had been sent from the town during the preceding days. Not all, however, were gone. Many had no place to go to; some were ill and some were nursing the ill; many had husbands, sons, brothers, there at hand in the Army of Northern Virginia and would not go. Now with the beginning of the bombardment they must go. There were grey, imperative orders. "At once! at once! Gowhere? God knows! but go."
They went, almost all, in the snow, beneath the pallid sky, with the shells shrieking behind them. They carried the children, they half carried the sick and the very old. They stumbled on, between the frozen hills by the dark pointed cedars, over the bare white fields. Behind them home was being destroyed; before them lay desolation, and all around was winter. They had perhaps thought it out, and were headed—the various forlorn lines—for this or that country house, but they looked lost, remnant of a world become glacial, whirled with suddenness into the sidereal cold, cold! and the loneliness of cold. The older children were very brave; but there were babes, too, and these wailed and wailed. Their wailing made a strange, futile sound beneath the thundering of the guns.
One of these parties came through the snow to a swollen creek on which the ice cakes were floating. Cross!—yes, but how? The leaders consulted together, then went up the stream to find a possible ford, and came in sight of a grey battery, waiting among the hills. "Oh, soldiers!—oh, soldiers!—come and help!"
Down hastened a detachment, eager, respectful, a lieutenant directing, the very battery horses looking anxious, responsible. A soldier in the saddle, a child in front, a child behind, the old steady horses planting their feet carefully in the icy rushing stream, over went the children. Then the women crossed, their hands resting on the grey-clad shoulders. All were over; all thanked the soldiers. The soldiers took off their caps, wished with all their hearts that they had at command fire-lit palaces and a banquet set! Having neither, being themselves without shelter or food and ordered not to build fires, they could only bare their heads and watch the other soldiers out of sight, carrying the children, half carrying the old and sick, stumbling through the snow, by the dark pointedcedars, and presently lost to view among the frozen hills.
The shells rained destruction into Fredericksburg. Houses were battered and broken; houses were set on fire. Through the smoke and uproar, the explosions and detonations and tongues of flame, the Mississippians beat back another attempt at the bridges and opened fire on boat after boat now pushing from the northern shore. But the boats came bravely on, bravely manned; hundreds might be driven from the bridge-building, but other hundreds sprang to take their places—and always from the heights came the rain of iron, smashing, shivering, setting afire, tearing up the streets, bringing down the walls, ruining, wounding, slaying! McLaws sent an order to Barksdale, Barksdale gave it to his brigade. "Evacuate!" said the Mississippians. "We're going to evacuate. What's that in English? 'Quit?'—What in hell should we quit for?"
Orders being orders, the disgust of the bear-hunters did not count. "Old Barksdale" was fairly deprecating. "Men, I can't help it! General McLaws says, 'General Barksdale, withdraw your men to Marye's Hill.' Well, I've got to do it, haven't I? General McLaws knows, now doesn't he?—Yes,—just one more round.Load! Kneel! Commence firing!"
In the late afternoon the town was evacuated, Barksdale drawing off in good order across the stormed-upon open. He disappeared—the Mississippi brigade disappeared—from the Federal vision. The blue column, the 28th Massachusetts leading, entered Fredericksburg. "We'll get them all to-morrow—Longstreet certainly! Stonewall Jackson's from twelve to eighteen miles down the river. Well! this time Lee will find that he's divided his army once too often!"
By dark there were built six bridges, but the main army rested all night on the northern bank. December the twelfth dawned, another foggy day. The fog held hour after hour, very slow, still, muffled weather, through which, corps by corps, all day long, the army slowly crossed. In the afternoon there was a cavalry skirmish with Stuart, but nothing else happened. Thirty-six hours had been consumed in crossing and resting. The Rappahannock, however,wascrossed, and the road to Richmond stretched plain between the hills.
But the grey army was not divided. Certain divisions had been down the river, but they were no longer down the river. The Army of Northern Virginia, a vibrant unit, intense, concentrated, gaunt, bronzed, and highly efficient, waited behind the hills south and west of the town. There was a creek running through a ravine, called Deep Run. On one side of Deep Run stood Longstreet and the 1st Corps, on the other, almost at right angles, Stonewall Jackson and the 2d. Before both the heavily timbered ridge sank to the open plain. In the woods had been thrown up certain breastworks.
Longstreet's left, Anderson's division, rested on the river. To Anderson's right were posted McLaws, Pickett, and Hood. He had his artillery on Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, and he had Ransom's infantry in line at the base of these hills behind a stone wall. Across Deep Run, on the wooded hills between the ravine and the Massaponax, was Stonewall Jackson. A. P. Hill's division with the brigades of Pender, Lane, Archer, Thomas, and Gregg made his first line of battle, the divisions of Taliaferro and Early his second, and D. H. Hill's division his reserve. His artillery held all favourable crests and headlands. Stuart's cavalry and Stuart's Horse Artillery were gathered by the Massaponax. Hills and forest hid them all, and over the plain and river rolled the fog.
It hid the North as it hid the South. Burnside's great force rested the night of the twelfth in and immediately about Fredericksburg—Hooker and Sumner and Franklin, one hundred and thirteen thousand men. "The balloon people" now reported that the hills south and west were held by a considerable rebel force—Longstreet evidently, Lee probably with him. Burnside repeated the infatuation of Pope and considered that Stonewall Jackson was absent from the field of operations. Undoubtedly he had been, but the shortest of time before, down the river by Port Royal. No one had seen him move. Jackson away, there was then only Longstreet—strongly posted, no doubt. Well! Form a great line of battle, advance in overwhelming strength across the plain, the guns on Stafford Heights supporting, and take the hills, and Longstreet on them! It sounded simple.
THE VEDETTETHE VEDETTE
The fog, heavy, fleecy, white, persisted. The grey soldiers on the wooded hills, the grey artillery holding the bluff heads, the grey skirmishers holding embankment and cut of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, the grey cavalry by the Massaponax, all stared into the white sea and could discern nothing. The ear was of no avail. Sound came muffled, but still it came. "The long roll—hear the long roll! My Lord! How many drums have they got, anyway?"—"Listen! If you listen right hard you can hear them shouting orders! Hush up, you infantry, down there! We want to hear."—"They're moving guns, too! Wish there'd come a little sympathizing earthquake and help them—'specially those siege guns on the heights over there!"—"No, no! I want to fight them. Look! it's lifting a little! the fog's lifting a little! Look at the guns up in the air like that! It's closed again."—"Well, if that wasn't fantastic! Ten iron guns in a row, posted in space!"—"Hm! brass bands. My Lord! there must be one to a platoon!"—"Hear them marching! Saw lightning once run along the ground—now it's thunder. How many men has General Ambrose Everett Burnside got, anyhow?"—"Burnside's been to dances before in Fredericksburg! Some of the houses are burning now that he's danced in, and some of the women he has danced with are wandering over the snow. I hope he'll like the reel presently."—"He's a good fellow himself, though not much of a general! He can't help fighting here if he's put here to fight."—"I know that. I was just stating facts. Hear that music, music, music!"
Up from Deep Run, a little in the rear of the grey centre, rose a bold hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the left, Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants talked together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop above Deep Run. With suddenness the fog parted, was upgathered with swiftness by the great golden sun.
That lifted curtain revealed a very great and martial picture,—War in a moment of vastness and grandeur, epic, sublime. The town was afire; smoke and flame went up to a sky not yet wholly azure, banded and barred with clouds from behind which the light came in rays fierce and bright, with an effect of threatening. There was a ruined house on a high hill. It gave the appearance of a grating in the firmament, a small dungeon grating. Beyond the burning town was the river, crossed now by six pontoon bridges. On each there were troops; one of the long sun rays caught the bayonets. From the river, to the north, rose the heights, and they had aniron crown from which already came lightnings and thunders. There were paths leading down to the river and these showed blue, moving streams, bright points which were flags moving with them. That for the far side of the Rappahannock, but on this side, over the plain that stretched south and west of the smoke-wreathed town, there moved a blue sea indeed. Eighty thousand men were on that plain. They moved here, they moved there, into battle formation, and they moved to the crash of music, to the horn and to the drum. The long rays that the sun was sending made a dazzle of bayonet steel, thousands and thousands and thousands of bayonets. The gleaming lines went here, went there, crossed, recrossed, formed angles, made a vast and glittering net. Out of it soared the flags, bright hovering birds, bright giant blossoms in the air. Batteries moved across the plain. Officers, couriers, galloped on fiery horses; some general officer passed from end to end of a forming line and was cheered. The earth shook to marching feet. The great brazen horns blared, the drums beat, the bugles rang. The gleaming net folded back on itself, made three pleats, made three great lines of battle.
The grey leaders on the hill to the south gazed in silence. Then said Lee, "It is well that war is so terrible. Were it not so, we should grow too fond of it." Longstreet, the "old war horse," stared at the tremendous pageant. "This wasn't a little quarrel. It's been brewing for seventy-five years—ever since the Bill-of-Rights day. Things that take so long in brewing can't be cooled by a breath. It's getting to be a huge war." Said Jackson, "Franklin holds their left. He seems to be advancing. I will return to Hamilton's Crossing, sir."
The guns on the Stafford Heights which had been firing slowly and singly now opened mouth together. The tornado, overpassing river and plain, burst on the southern hills. In the midst of the tempest, Burnside ordered Franklin to advance a single division, its mission the seizing theunoccupiedridge east of Deep Run. Franklin sent Meade with forty-five hundred Pennsylvania troops.
Meade's brigades advanced in three lines, skirmishers out, a band playing a quickstep, the stormy sunlight deepening the colours, making a gleaming of bayonets. His first line crossed the Richmond road. To the left was a tiny stream, beyond it a ragged bank toppedby brushwood. Suddenly, from this coppice, opened two of Pelham's guns.
Beneath that flanking fire the first blue line faltered, gave ground. Meade brought up four batteries and sent for others. All these came fiercely into action. When they got his range, Pelham moved his two guns and began again a raking fire. Again the blue gunners found the range and again he moved with deliberate swiftness, and again he opened with a hot and raking fire. One gun was disabled; he fought with the other. He fought until the limber chests were empty and there came an imperious message from Jeb Stuart, "Get back from destruction, you infernal, gallant fool, John Pelham!"
The guns across the river and the blue field batteries steadily shelled for half an hour the heavily timbered slopes beyond the railroad. Except for the crack and crash of severed boughs the wood gave no sign. At the end of this period Meade resumed his advance.
On came the blue lines, staunch, determined troops, seasoned now as the grey were seasoned. They meant to take that empty line of hills, willy-nilly a few Confederate guns. That done, they would be in a position to flank Longstreet, already attacked in front by Sumner's Grand Division. On they came, with a martial front, steady, swinging. Uninterrupted, they marched to within a few hundred yards of Prospect Hill. Suddenly the woods that loomed before them so dark and quiet blazed and rang. Fifty guns were within that cover, and the fifty cast their thunderbolts full against the dark blue line. From either side the grey artillery burst the grey musketry, and above the crackling thunder rose the rebel yell. Stonewall Jackson was not down the river; Stonewall Jackson was here! Meade's Pennsylvanians were gallant fighters; but they broke beneath that withering fire,—they fell back in strong disorder.
Grey and blue, North and South, there were gathered upon and above the field of Fredericksburg four hundred guns. All came into action. Where earlier, there had been fog over the plain, fog wreathing the hillsides, there was now smoke. Dark and rolling it invaded the ruined town, it mantled the flowing Rappahannock, it surmounted the hills. Red flashes pierced it, and over and under and through roared the enormous sound. There came reinforcements to Meade, division after division. In the meantime Sumner was hurling brigades against Marye's Hill and Longstreet was hurling them back again.
The 2d Corps listened to the terrible musketry from this front. "Old Pete's surely giving them hell! There's a stone wall at the base of Marye's Hill. McLaws and Ransom are holding it—sorry for the Yanks in front."—"Never heard such hullabaloo as the great guns are making!"—"What're them Pennsylvanians down there doing? It's time for them to come on! They've got enough reinforcements—old friends, Gibbon and Doubleday."—"Good fighters."—"Yes, Lord! we're all good fighters now. Glad of it. Like to fight a good fighter. Feel real friendly toward him."—"A thirty-two-pounder Parrott in the battery on the hill over there exploded and raised hell. General Lee standing right by. He just spoke on, calm and imperturbable, and Traveller looked sideways."—"Look! Meade's moving.Do you know, I think we ought to have occupied that tongue of land?"
So, in sooth, thought others presently. It was a marshy, dense, and tangled coppice projecting like a sabre tooth between the brigades of Lane and Archer. So thick was the growth, so boggy the earth, that at the last it had been pronounced impenetrable and left unrazed. Now the mistake was paid for—in bloody coin.
Meade's line of battle rushed across the open, brushed the edge of the coppice, discovered that it was empty, and plunging in, found cover. The grey batteries could not reach them. Almost before the situation was realized, forth burst the blue from the thicket. Lane was flanked; in uproar and confusion the grey gave way. Meade sent in another brigade. It left the first to man-handle Lane, hurled itself on, and at the outskirt of the wood, struck Archer's left, taking Archer by surprise and creating a demi-rout. A third brigade entered on the path of the first and second. The latter, leaving Archer to this new strength, hurled itself across the military road and upon a thick and tall wood held by Maxey Gregg and his South Carolinians. Smoke, cloud, and forest growth—it was hard to distinguish colours, hard to tell just what was happening! Gregg thought that the smoke-wrapped line was Archer falling back. He withheld his fire. The line came on and in a moment, amid shouts, struck his right. A bullet brought down Gregg himself, mortally wounded. His troops broke, then rallied. A grey battery near Bernard's Cabin brought its guns to bear upon Gibbon, trying to follow the blue triumphant rush. Archer reformed. Stonewall Jackson, standing on Prospect Hill, sent orders to his thirdline. "Generals Taliaferro and Early, advance and clear the front with bayonets."
Yaaaiih! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaihh!yelled Jubal Early's men, and did as they were bid.Yaaaaiiih! Yaaiiihhh! Yaaaaiiihhhh!yelled the Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Taliaferro's, and did as they were bid. Back, back were borne Meade's brigades. Darkness of smoke, denseness of forest growth, treachery of swampy soil!—all order was lost, and there came no support. Back went the blue—all who could go back. A. P. Hill's second line was upon them now; Gibbon was attacked. The grey came down the long slopes like a torrent loosed. Walker's guns joined in. The uproar was infernal. The blue fought well and desperately—but there was no support. Back they went, back across the Richmond Road—all who could get back. They left behind in the marshy coppice, and on the wooded slopes and by the embankment, four thousand dead and wounded. The Light Division, Taliaferro and Early, now held the railroad embankment. Before them was the open plain, and the backward surge to the river of the broken foe. It was three o'clock of the afternoon. Burnside sent an order to Franklin to attack again, but Franklin disobeyed.
Upon the left Longstreet's battle now swelled to giant proportions. Marye's Hill, girdled by that stone wall, crowned by the Washington Artillery, loomed impregnable. Against it the North tossed to destruction division after division. They marched across the bare and sullen plain, they charged; the hill flashed into fire, a thunder rolled, the smoke cloud deepened. When it lifted the charge was seen to be broken, retreating, the plain was seen to be strewed with dead. The blue soldiers were staunch and steadfast. They saw that their case was hapless, yet on they came across the shelterless plain. Ordered to charge, they charged; charged very gallantly, receded with a stubborn slowness. They were good fighters, worthy foes, and the grey at Fredericksburg hailed them as such. Forty thousand men charged Marye's Hill—six great assaults—and forty thousand were repulsed. The winter day closed in. Twelve thousand men in blue lay dead or wounded at the foot of the southern hills, before Longstreet on the left and Stonewall Jackson on the right.
Five thousand was the grey loss. The Rockbridge Artillery had fought near the Horse Artillery by Hamilton's Crossing. All day the guns had been doggedly at work; horses and drivers and gunners and guns and caissons; there was death and wounds and wreckage. In the wintry, late afternoon, when the battle thunders were lessening, Major John Pelham came by and looked at Rockbridge. Much of Rockbridge lay on the ground, the rest stood at the guns. "Why, boys," said Pelham, "you stand killing better than any I ever saw!"
They stood it well, both blue and grey. It was stern fighting at Fredericksburg, and grey and blue they fought it sternly and well. The afternoon closed in, cold and still, with a red sun yet veiled by drifts of crape-like smoke. The Army of the Potomac, torn, decimated, rested huddled in Fredericksburg and on the river banks. The Army of Northern Virginia rested with few or no camp-fires on the southern hills. Between the two foes stretched the freezing plain, and on the plain lay thick the Federal dead and wounded. They lay thick, thick, before the stone wall. At hand, full target for the fire of either force, was a small, white house. In the house lived Mrs. Martha Stevens. She would not leave before the battle, though warned and warned again to do so. She said she had an idea that she could help. She stayed, and wounded men dragged themselves or were dragged upon her little porch, and within her doors. General Cobb of Georgia died there; wherever a man could be laid there were stretched the ghastly wounded. Past the house shrieked the shells; bullets imbedded themselves in its walls. To and fro went Martha Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre house—her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be conceived of shell or minie.
The sun sank, a red ball, staining the snow with red. The dark came rapidly, a very cold dark night, with myriads of stars. The smoke slowly cleared. The great, opposed forces lay on their arms, the one closely drawn by the river, the other on the southern hills. Between was the plain, and the plain was a place of drear sound—oh, of drear sound! Neither army showed any lights; for all its antagonist knew either might be feverishly, in the darkness, preparing an attack. Grey and blue, the guns yet dominated that wide and mournful level over which, to leap upon the other, either foe must pass. Grey and blue, there was little sleeping. It was too cold, and there was need for watchfulness, and the plain was too unhappy—the plain was too unhappy.
The smoke vanished slowly from the air. The night lay sublimely still, fearfully clear and cold. About ten o'clock Nature provided a spectacle. The grey troops, huddled upon the hillsides, drew a quickened breath. A Florida regiment showed alarm. "What's that? Look at that light in the sky! Great shafts of light streaming up—look! opening like a fan! What's that, chaplain, what's that?—Don't reckon the Lord's tired of fighting, and it's the Judgment Day?"
"No, no, boys! It's an aurora borealis."
"Say it over, please. Oh, northern lights! Well, we've heard of them before, but we never saw them. Having a lot of experiences here in Virginia!"—"Well, it's beautiful, any way, and I think it's terrible. I wish those northern lights would do something for the northern wounded down there. Nothing else that's northern seems likely to do it."—"Look at them—look at them! pale red, and dancing! I've heard them called 'the merry dancers.' There's a shooting star! They say that every time a star shoots some one dies."—"That's not so. If it were, the whole sky would be full of falling stars to-night. Look at that red ray going up to the zenith. O God, make the plain stop groaning!"
The display in the heavens continued, luminous rays, faintly rose-coloured, shifting from east to west, streaming upward until they were lost in the starry vault. Elsewhere the sky was dark, intensely clear, the winter stars like diamonds. There was no wind. The wide, unsheltered plain across which had stormed, across which had receded, the Federal charges, was sown thick with soldiers who had dropped from the ranks. Many and many lay still, dead and cold, their marchings and their tentings and their battles over. They had fought well; they had died; they lay here now stark and pale, but in the vast, pictured web of the whole their threads are strong and their colour holds. But on the plain of Fredericksburg many and many and many were not dead and resting. Hundreds and hundreds they lay, and could not rest for mortal anguish. They writhed and tossed, they dragged themselves a little way and fell again, they idly waved a hat or sword or empty hand for help, they cried for aid, they cried for water. Those who could not lift their voices moaned, moaned. Some had grown delirious, and upon that plain there was even laughter. All the various notes taken together blended into one long, dreary, weird, dull, and awful sound, steady as a wind in miles of frozen reeds. They were all blue soldiers, and they lay where they fell.
There was a long fringe of them near the stone wall and near the railway embankment behind which now rested the Light Division and Taliaferro and Early. The wind here was loud, rattling a thicker growth of reeds. Above, the long, silent, flickering lights mocked with their rosy hue, and the glittering stars mocked, and the empty concave of the night mocked, and the sound of the Rappahannock mocked. A river moving by like the River of Death, and they could not even get to the river to drink, drink, drink....
A figure kneeling by a wounded man, spoke in a guarded voice to an upright, approaching form. "This man could be saved. I have given him water. I went myself to the general, and he said that if we could get any into the hospital behind the hill we might do so. But I'm not strong enough to lift him."
"I air," said Billy. He set down the bucket that he carried. "I jest filled it from the creek. It don't last any time, they air so thirsty! You take it, and I'll take him." He put his arms under the blue figure, lifted it like a child, and moved away, noiseless in the darkness. Corbin Wood took the bucket and dipper. Presently it must be refilled. By the creek he met an officer sent down from the hillside. "You twenty men out there have got to be very careful. If their sentries see or hear you moving you'll be thought a skirmish line with the whole of us behind, and every gun will be opening! Battle's decided on for to-morrow, not for to-night.—Now be careful, or we'll recall every damned life-in-your-hand blessed volunteer of you!—Oh, it's a fighting chaplain—I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir! But you'd better all be very quiet. Old Jack would say that mercy's all right, but you mustn't alarm the foe."
All through the night there streamed the boreal lights. The living and the dying, the ruined town, the plain, the hills, the river lay beneath. The blue army slept and waked, the grey army slept and waked. The general officers of both made little or no pretence at sleeping. Plans must be made, plans must be made, plans must be made. Stonewall Jackson, in his tent, laid himself down indeed for two hours and slept, guarded by Jim, like a man who was dead. At the end of that time he rose and asked for his horse.
It was near dawn. He rode beneath the fading streamers, before his lines, before the Light Division and Early and Taliaferro, before his old brigade—the Stonewall. The 65th lay in a pine wood, down-sloping to a little stream. Reveille was yet to sound. The men lay in an uneasy sleep, but some of the officers were astir, and had been so all night. These, as Jackson checked Little Sorrel, came forward and saluted. He spoke to the colonel. "Colonel Erskine, your regiment did well. I saw it at the Crossing."
Erskine, a small, brave, fiery man, coloured with pleasure. "I'm very glad, sir. The regiment's all right, sir. The old stock wasn't quite cut down, and it's made the new like it—" He hesitated, then as the general with his "Good! good!" gathered up the reins he took heart of grace. "It's old colonel, sir—it's old colonel—" he stammered, then out it came: "Richard Cleave trained us so, sir, that we couldn't go back!"
"See, sir," said Stonewall Jackson, "that you don't emulate him in all things." He looked sternly and he rode away with no other word. He rode from the pine wood, crossed the Mine Road, and presently the narrow Massaponax. The streamers were gone from the sky; there was everywhere the hush of dawn. The courier with him wondered where he was going. They passed John Pelham's guns, iron dark against the pallid sky. Presently they came to the Yerby House, where General Maxey Gregg, a gallant soldier and gentleman, lay dying.
As Jackson dismounted Dr. Hunter McGuire came from the house. "I gave him your message, general. He is dying fast. It seemed to please him."
"Good!" said Jackson. "General Gregg and I have had a disagreement. In life it might have continued, but death lifts us all from under earthly displeasure. Will you ask him, Doctor, if I may pay him a little visit?"
The visit paid, he came gravely forth, mounted and turned back toward headquarters on Prospect Hill. In the east were red streaks, one above another. The day was coming up, clear and cold. Pelham's guns, crowning a little eminence, showed distinct against the colour. Stonewall Jackson rode by, and, with a face that was a study, a gunner named Deaderick watched him pass.
All this day these two armies stood and faced each other. There was sharpshooting, there was skirmishing, but no full attack. Night came and passed, and another morning dawned. This day, forty-eight hours after battle, Burnside sent a flag of truce with a request that he be allowed to collect and bury his dead. There were few now alive upon that plain. The wind in the reeds had died to a ghostly hush.
That night there came up a terrible storm, a howling wind driving a sleety rain. All night long, in cloud and blast and beating wet, the Army of the Potomac, grand division by grand division, recrossed the Rappahannock.
The storm continued, the rain and snow swelled the river. The Army of the Potomac with Acquia creek at hand, Washington in touch, lay inactive, went into winter quarters. The Army of Northern Virginia, couched on the southern hills, followed its example. Between the two foes flowed the dark river. Sentries in blue paced the one bank, sentries in grey the other. A detail of grey soldiers, resting an hour opposite Falmouth, employed their leisure in raising a tall signpost, with a wide and long board for arms. In bold letters they painted upon itthis way to richmond. It rested there, month after month, in view of the blue army.
At the end of January Burnside was superseded. The Army of the Potomac came under the command of Fighting Joe Hooker. In February Longstreet, with the divisions of Pickett and Hood, marched away from the Rappahannock to the south bank of the James. In mid-March was fought the cavalry battle of Kelly's Ford—Averell against Fitz Lee. Averell crossed, but when the battle rested, he was back upon the northern shore. At Kelly's Ford fell John Pelham, "the battle-cry on his lips, and the light of victory beaming from his eye."
April came with soft skies and greening trees. North and south and east and west, there were now gathered against the fortress with the stars and bars above it some hundreds of thousands under arms. Likewise a great navy beat against the side which gave upon the sea. The fortress was under arms indeed, but she had no navy to speak of. Arkansas and Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina, vast lengths of the Mississippi River, Fortress Monroe in Virginia and Suffolk south of the James—entrance had been made into all these courts of the fortress. Blue forces held them stubbornly; smaller grey forces held as stubbornly the next bastion. On the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, within fifty miles of the imperilled Capital, were gathered by May one hundred and thirty thousand men in blue. Longstreet gone, there opposed them sixty-two thousand in grey.
Late in April Fighting Joe Hooker put in motion "the finest army on the planet." There were various passes and feints. Sedgwick attempted a crossing below Fredericksburg. Stonewall Jackson sent an aide to Lee with the information. Lee received it with a smile. "I thought it was time for one of you lazy young fellows to come and tell me what that firing was about! Tell your good general that he knows what to do with the enemy just as well as I do."
Flourish and passado executed, Hooker, with suddenness, moved up the Rappahannock, crossed at Richard's Ford, moved up the Rapidan, crossed at Ely and Germanna Fords, turned east and south and came into the Wilderness. He meant to pass through and, with three great columns, checkmate Lee at Fredericksburg. Before he could do so Lee shook himself free, left to watch the Rappahannock, and Sedgwick, ten thousand pawns and an able knight, and himself crossed to the Wilderness.