C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Burial of the Guns
By Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922)
L
The little plateau at the top guarded the descending road on either side for nearly a mile; and the mountain on the other side of the river was the centre of a clump of rocky, heavily timbered spurs, so inaccessible that no feet but those of wild animals or of the hardiest hunter had ever climbed it. On the side of the river on which the road lay, the only path out over the mountain except the road itself was a charcoal-burner’s track, dwindling at times to a footway known only to the mountain folk, which the picket at the top could hold against an army. The position, well defended, was impregnable; and it was well defended. This the general of the division knew when he detailed the old colonel, and gave him his order to hold the pass until relieved, and not let his guns fall into the hands of the enemy. He knew both the colonel and his battery. The battery was one of the oldest in the army. It had been in the service since April 1861, and its commander had come to be known as “the wheel-horse of his division.” He was perhaps the oldest officer of his rank in his branch of the service. Although he had bitterly opposed secession, and was many years past the age of service when the War came on, yet as soon as the President called on the State for her quota of troops to coerce South Carolina, he had raised and uniformed an artillery company, and offered it, not to the President of the United States, but to the governor of Virginia.
It is just at this point that he suddenly looms up to me as a soldier; the relation he never wholly lost to me afterward, though I knew him for many, many years of peace. His gray coat with the red facing and the bars on the collar; his military cap; his gray flannel shirt—it was the first time I ever saw him wear anything but immaculate linen; his high boots; his horse caparisoned with a black high-peaked saddle, with crupper and breast-girth, instead of the light English hunting-saddle to which I had been accustomed,—all come before me now as if it were but the other day. I remember but little beyond it, yet I remember, as if it were yesterday, his leaving home, and the scenes which immediately preceded it; the excitement created by the news of the President’s call for troops; the unanimous judgment that it meant war; the immediate determination of the old colonel, who had hitherto opposed secession, that it must be met; the suppressed agitation on the plantation, attendant upon the tender of his services and the governor’s acceptance of them.
The prompt and continuous work incident to the enlistment of the men, the bustle of preparation, and all the scenes of that time, come before me now. It turned the calm current of the life of an old and placid country neighborhood, far from any city or centre, and stirred it into a boiling torrent, strong enough, or fierce enough, to cut its way and join the general torrent which was bearing down and sweeping everything before it. It seemed but a minute before the quiet old plantation, in which the harvest, the corn-shucking, and the Christmas holidays alone marked the passage of the quiet seasons, and where a strange carriage or a single horseman coming down the big road was an event in life, was turned into a depot of war supplies, and the neighborhood became a parade-ground. The old colonel—not a colonel yet, nor even a captain, except by brevet—was on his horse by daybreak, and off on his rounds through the plantations and the pines, enlisting his company. The office in the yard, heretofore one in name only, became one now in reality; and a table was set out piled with papers, pens, ink, books of tactics and regulation, at which men were accepted and enrolled. Soldiers seemed to spring from the ground, as they did from the sowing of the dragon’s teeth in the days of Cadmus. Men came up the high-road or down the paths across the fields, sometimes singly, but oftener in little parties of two or three, and asking for the captain, entered the office as private citizens and came out soldiers enlisted for the war. There was nothing heard of on the plantation except fighting; white and black, all were at work, and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation,—cutting out and making underclothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms,—for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion was urgent. Meantime the men were being drilled by the captain and his lieutenants, who had been militia officers of old. We were carried to see the drill at the cross-roads, and a brave sight it seemed to us: the lines marching and countermarching in the field, with the horses galloping as they wheeled amid clouds of dust, at the hoarse commands of the excited officers, and the roadside lined with spectators of every age and condition.
I recall the arrival of the messenger one night, with the telegraphic order to the captain to report with his company at “Camp Lee” immediately; the hush in the parlor that attended its reading; then the forced beginning of the conversation afterwards in a somewhat strained and unnatural key, and the captain’s quick and decisive outlining of his plans. Within the hour a dozen messengers were on their way in various directions to notify the members of the command of the summons, and to deliver the order for their attendance at a given point next day. It seemed that a sudden and great change had come. It was the actual appearance of what had hitherto only been theoretical—war. The next morning the captain, in full uniform, took leave of the assembled plantation, with a few solemn words commending all he left behind to God; and galloped away up the big road to join and lead his battery to the war, and to be gone just four years.
Within a month he was on the “Peninsula” with Magruder, guarding Virginia on the east against the first attack. His camp was first at Yorktown and then on Jamestown Island, the honor having been assigned his battery of guarding the oldest cradle of the race on this continent. It was at “Little Bethel” that his guns were first trained on the enemy, and that the battery first saw what they had to do; and from this time until the middle of April 1865 they were in service, and no battery saw more service or suffered more in it. Its story was a part of the story of the Southern Army in Virginia. The captain was a rigid disciplinarian, and his company had more work to do than most new companies. A pious churchman, of the old puritanical type not uncommon to Virginia, he looked after the spiritual as well as the physical welfare of his men; and his chaplain or he read prayers at the head of his company every morning during the War. At first he was not popular with the men, he made the duties of camp life so onerous to them: it was “nothing but drilling and praying all the time,” they said. But he had not commanded very long before they came to know the stuff that was in him. He had not been in service a year before he had had four horses shot under him; and when later on he was offered the command of a battalion, the old company petitioned to be one of his batteries, and still remained under his command. Before the first year was out the battery had, through its own elements and the discipline of the captain, become a cohesive force, and a distinct integer in the Army of Northern Virginia. Young farmer recruits knew of its prestige, and expressed preference for it of many batteries of rapidly growing or grown reputation.
Owing to its high stand, the old and clumsy guns with which it had started out were taken from it, and in their place was presented a battery of four fine brass twelve-pound Napoleons of the newest and most approved kind, and two three-inch Parrotts,—all captured. The men were as pleased with them as children with new toys. The care and attention needed to keep them in prime order broke the monotony of camp life. They soon had abundant opportunities to test their power. They worked admirably, carried far, and were extraordinarily accurate in their aim. The men from admiration of their guns grew to have first a pride in and then an affection for them, and gave them nicknames as they did their comrades: the four Napoleons being dubbed “The Evangelists,” and the two rifles being “The Eagle,” because of its scream and force, and “The Cat,” because when it became hot from rapid firing “it jumped,” they said, “like a cat.” From many a hill-top in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania the Evangelists spoke their hoarse message of battle and death; the Eagle screamed her terrible note, and the Cat jumped as she spat her deadly shot from her hot throat. In the Valley of Virginia; on the levels of Henrico and Hanover; on the slopes of Manassas; in the woods of Chancellorsville; on the heights of Fredericksburg; at Antietam and Gettysburg; in the Spottsylvania wilderness; and again on the Hanover levels and on the lines before Petersburg, the old guns through nearly four years roared from fiery throats their deadly messages. The history of the battery was bound up with the history of Lee’s army. A rivalry sprang up among the detachments of the different guns, and their several records were jealously kept. The number of duels each gun was in was carefully counted, every scar got in battle was treasured; and the men around their camp fires, at their scanty messes, or on the march, bragged of them among themselves and avouched them as witnesses. New recruits coming in to fill the gaps made by the killed and disabled readily fell in with the common mood and caught the spirit like a contagion. It was not an uncommon thing for a wheel to be smashed in by a shell; but if it happened to one gun oftener than to another there was envy. Two of the Evangelists seemed to be especially favored in this line, while the Cat was so exempt as to become the subject of some derision. The men stood by the guns till they were knocked to pieces; and when the fortune of the day went against them, had with their own hands oftener than once saved them after most of their horses were killed.
This had happened in turn to every gun; the men at times working like beavers, in mud up to their thighs and under a murderous fire, to get their guns out. Many a man had been killed tugging at trail or wheel when the day was against them; but not a gun had ever been lost. At last the evil day arrived. At Winchester a sudden and impetuous charge for a while swept everything before it, and carried the knoll where the old battery was posted; but all the guns were got out by the toiling and rapidly dropping men, except the Cat, which was captured with its entire detachment working at it until they were surrounded and knocked from the piece by cavalrymen. Most of the men who were not killed were retaken before the day was over, with many guns; but the Cat was lost. She remained in the enemy’s hands, and probably was being turned against her old comrades and lovers. The company was inconsolable. The death of comrades was too natural and common a thing to depress the men beyond what such occurrences necessarily did; but to lose a gun! It was like losing the old colonel; it was worse: a gun was ranked as a brigadier; and the Cat was equal to a major-general. The other guns seemed lost without her; the Eagle especially, which generally went next to her, appeared to the men to have a lonely and subdued air. The battery was no longer the same: it seemed broken and depleted, shrunken to a mere section. It was worse than Cold Harbor, where over half the men were killed or wounded. The old captain, now colonel of the battalion, appreciated the loss, and apprehended its effect on the men as much as they themselves did, and application was made for a gun to take the place of the lost piece; but there was none to be had, as the men said they had known all along. It was added—perhaps by a department clerk—that if they wanted a gun to take the place of the one they had lost, they had better capture it. “By ——, we will,” they said,—adding epithets intended for the department clerk in his “bomb-proof,” not to be printed in this record;—and they did. For some time afterwards, in every engagement into which they got, there used to be speculation among them as to whether the Cat were not there on the other side; some of the men swearing they could tell her report, and even going to the rash length of offering bets on her presence.
By one of those curious coincidences, as strange as anything in fiction, a new general had in 1864 come down across the Rapidan to take Richmond, and the old battery had found a hill-top in the line in which Lee’s army lay stretched across the “Wilderness” country to stop him. The day, though early in May, was a hot one, and the old battery, like most others, had suffered fearfully. Two of the guns had had wheels cut down by shells, and the men had been badly cut up; but the fortune of the day had been with Lee, and a little before nightfall, after a terrible fight, there was a rapid advance: Lee’s infantry sweeping everything before it, and the artillery, after opening the way for the charge, pushing along with it; now unlimbering as some vantage ground was gained, and using canister with deadly effect; now driving ahead again so rapidly that it was mixed up with the muskets when the long line of breastworks was carried with a rush, and a line of guns were caught still hot from their rapid work. As the old battery, with lathered horses and smoke-grimed men, swung up the crest and unlimbered on the captured breastwork, a cheer went up which was heard even above the long general yell of the advancing line; and for a moment half the men in the battery crowded together around some object on the edge of the redoubt, yelling like madmen. The next instant they divided; and there was the Cat, smoke-grimed and blood-stained and still sweating hot from her last fire, being dragged from her muddy ditch by as many men as could get hold of trail-rope or wheel, and rushed into her old place beside the Eagle, in time to be double-shotted with canister to the muzzle, and to pour it from among her old comrades into her now retiring former masters. Still, she had a new carriage, and her record was lost, while those of the other guns had been faithfully kept by the men. This made a difference in her position for which even the bullets in her wheels did not wholly atone; even Harris, the sergeant of her detachment, felt that.
It was only a few days later, however, that abundant atonement was made. The new general did not retire across the Rapidan after his first defeat, and a new battle had to be fought: a battle if anything more furious, more terrible, than the first, when the dead filled the trenches and covered the fields. He simply marched by the left flank, and Lee, marching by the right flank to head him, flung himself upon him again at Spottsylvania Court House. That day the Cat, standing in her place behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was posted, had the felloes of her wheels, which showed above the top of the bank, entirely cut away by minie bullets, so that when she jumped in the recoil her wheels smashed and let her down. This covered all old scores. The other guns had been cut down by shells or solid shot; but never before had one been gnawed down by musket-balls. From this time all through the campaign the Cat held her own beside her brazen and bloody sisters; and in the cold trenches before Petersburg that winter, when the new general—Starvation—had joined the one already there, she made her bloody mark as often as any gun on the long lines.
Thus the old battery had come to be known, as its old commander, now colonel of a battalion, had come to be known by those in yet higher command. And when, in the opening spring of 1865, it became apparent to the leaders of both armies that the long line could not longer be held if a force should enter behind it, and sweeping the one partially unswept portion of Virginia, cut the railways in the southwest, and a man was wanted to command the artillery in the expedition sent to meet this force, it was not remarkable that the old colonel and his battalion should be selected for the work. The force sent out was but small; but the long line was worn to a thin one in those days, and great changes were taking place, the consequences of which were known only to the commanders. In a few days the commander of the expedition found that he must divide his small force, for a time at least, to accomplish his purpose; and sending the old colonel with one battery of artillery to guard one pass, must push on over the mountain by another way to meet the expected force, if possible, and repel it before it crossed the farther range. Thus the old battery, on an April evening of 1865, found itself toiling alone up the steep mountain road which leads above the river to the gap, which formed the chief pass in that part of the Blue Ridge. Both men and horses looked, in the dim and waning light of the gray April day, rather like shadows of the beings they represented than the actual beings themselves. And any one seeing them as they toiled painfully up, the thin horses floundering in the mud, and the men, often up to their knees, tugging at the sinking wheels,—now stopping to rest, and always moving so slowly that they seemed scarcely to advance at all,—might have thought them the ghosts of some old battery lost from some long gone and forgotten war on that deep and desolate mountain road. Often when they stopped, the blowing of the horses and the murmuring of the river in its bed below were the only sounds heard, and the tired voices of the men when they spoke among themselves seemed hardly more articulate sounds than they. Then the voice of the mounted figure on the roan horse half hidden in the mist would cut in, clear and inspiring, in a tone of encouragement more than of command, and everything would wake up: the drivers would shout and crack their whips; the horses would bend themselves on the collars and flounder in the mud; the men would spring once more to the mud-clogged wheels, and the slow ascent would begin again.
The orders of the colonel, as has been said, were brief: To hold the pass until he received further instructions, and not to lose his guns. To be ordered, with him, was to obey. The last streak of twilight brought them to the top of the pass; his soldier’s instinct and a brief recognizance made earlier in the day told him that this was his place, and before daybreak next morning the point was as well fortified as a night’s work by weary and supperless men could make it. A prettier spot could not have been found for the purpose: a small plateau, something over an acre in extent, where a charcoal-burner’s hut had once stood, lay right at the top of the pass. It was a little higher on either side than in the middle, where a small brook, along which the charcoal-burner’s track was yet visible, came down from the wooded mountain above; thus giving a natural crest to aid the fortification on either side, with open space for the guns, while the edge of the wood coming down from the mountain afforded shelter for the camp.
As the battery was unsupported, it had to rely on itself for everything: a condition which most soldiers by this time were accustomed to. A dozen or so of rifles were in the camp, and with these pickets were armed and posted. The pass had been seized none too soon: a scout brought in the information before nightfall that the invading force had crossed the farther range before that sent to meet it could get there, and taking the nearest road had avoided the main body opposing it, and been met only by a rapidly moving detachment,—nothing more than a scouting party,—and now were advancing rapidly on the road on which they were posted, evidently meaning to seize the pass and cross the mountain at this point. The day was Sunday; a beautiful spring Sunday: but it was no Sabbath for the old battery. All day the men worked, making and strengthening their redoubt to guard the pass; and by the next morning, with the old battery at the top, it was impregnable. They were just in time. Before noon their vedettes brought in word that the enemy were ascending the mountain; and the sun had hardly turned when the advance guard rode up, came within range of the picket, and were fired on.
It was apparent that they supposed the force there only a small one, for they retired and soon came up again reinforced in some numbers; and a sharp little skirmish ensued, hot enough to make them more prudent afterwards, though the picket retired up the mountain. This gave them encouragement and probably misled them, for they now advanced boldly. They saw the redoubt on the crest as they came on, and unlimbering a section or two, flung a few shells up at it, which either fell short or passed over without doing material damage. None of the guns was allowed to respond, as the distance was too great with the ammunition the battery had; and indifferent as it was, it was too precious to be wasted in a duel at an ineffectual range. Doubtless deceived by this, the enemy came on in force; being obliged by the character of the ground to keep almost entirely to the road, which really made them advance in column. The battery waited. Under orders of the colonel, the guns standing in line were double-shotted with canister; and loaded to the muzzle, were trained down to sweep the road at from four to five hundred yards’ distance. And when the column reached this point, the six guns, aimed by old and skillful gunners, at a given word swept road and mountain-side with a storm of leaden hail. It was a fire no mortal man could stand up against; and the practiced gunners rammed their pieces full again, and before the smoke had cleared or the reverberation had died away among the mountains, had fired the guns again and yet again. The road was cleared of living things when the draught setting down the river drew the smoke away; but it was no discredit to the other force, for no army that was ever uniformed could stand against that battery in that pass. Again and again the attempt was made to get a body of men up under cover of the woods and rocks on the mountain-side, while the guns below utilized their better ammunition from longer range; but it was useless. Although one of the lieutenants and several men were killed in the skirmish, and a number more were wounded, though not severely, the old battery commanded the mountain-side, and its skillful gunners swept it at every point the foot of man could scale. The sun went down, flinging his last flame on a victorious battery still crowning the mountain pass. The dead were buried by night in a corner of the little plateau, borne to their last bivouac on the old gun-carriages which they had stood by so often—which the men said would “sort of ease their minds.”
The next day the fight was renewed, and with the same result. The old battery in its position was unconquerable. Only one fear now faced them: their ammunition was getting as low as their rations; another such day or half-day would exhaust it. A sergeant was sent back down the mountain to try to get more, or if not, to get tidings. The next day it was supposed the fight would be renewed; and the men waited, alert, eager, vigilant, their spirits high, their appetite for victory whetted by success. The men were at their breakfast—or what went for breakfast; scanty at all times, now doubly so, hardly deserving the title of a meal, so poor and small were the portions of corn meal, cooked in their frying-pans, which went for their rations—when the sound of artillery below broke on the quiet air. They were on their feet in an instant, and at the guns, crowding upon the breastwork to look or to listen; for the road, as far as could be seen down the mountain, was empty except for their own picket, and lay as quiet as if sleeping in the balmy air. And yet volley after volley of artillery came rolling up the mountain. What could it mean? That the rest of their force had come up and was engaged with that at the foot of the mountain? The colonel decided to be ready to go and help them; to fall on the enemy in the rear: perhaps they might capture the entire force. It seemed the natural thing to do; and the guns were limbered up in an incredibly short time, and a roadway made through the intrenchment,—the men working like beavers under the excitement. Before they had left the redoubt, however, the vedettes sent out returned and reported that there was no engagement going on, and the firing below seemed to be only practicing. There was quite a stir in the camp below; but they had not even broken camp. This was mysterious. Perhaps it meant that they had received reinforcements, but it was a queer way of showing it. The old colonel sighed as he thought of the good ammunition they could throw away down there, and of his empty limber-chests. It was necessary to be on the alert, however: the guns were run back into their old places, and the horses picketed once more back among the trees. Meantime he sent another messenger back,—this time a courier, for he had but one commissioned officer left,—and the picket below was strengthened.
The morning passed and no one came; the day wore on, and still no advance was made by the force below. It was suggested that the enemy had left; he had at least gotten enough of that battery. A reconnoissance, however, showed that he was still encamped at the foot of the mountain. It was conjectured that he was trying to find a way around to take them in the rear, or to cross the ridge by the foot-path. Preparation was made to guard more closely the mountain path across the spur; and a detachment was sent up to strengthen the picket there. The waiting told on the men, and they grew bored and restless. They gathered about the guns in groups and talked; talked of each piece some, but not with the old spirit and vim: the loneliness of the mountain seemed to oppress them,—the mountains stretching up so brown and gray on one side of them, and so brown and gray on the other, with their bare dark forests soughing from time to time as the wind swept up the pass. The minds of the men seemed to go back to the time when they were not so alone, but were part of a great and busy army; and some of them fell to talking of the past, and the battles they had figured in, and of the comrades they had lost. They told them off in a slow and colorless way, as if it were all part of the past as much as the dead they named. One hundred and nineteen times they had been in action. Only seventeen men were left of the eighty odd who had first enlisted in the battery; and of these four were at home crippled for life. Two of the oldest men had been among the half-dozen who had fallen in the skirmish just the day before. It looked tolerably hard to be killed that way after passing for four years through such battles as they had been in; and both had wives and children at home, too, and not a cent to leave them to their names. They agreed calmly that they’d have to “sort of look after them a little,” if they ever got home. These were some of the things they talked about as they pulled their old worn coats about them, stuffed their thin, weather-stained hands in their ragged pockets to warm them, and squatted down under the breastwork to keep a little out of the wind. One thing they talked about a good deal was something to eat. They described meals they had had at one time or another as personal adventures, and discussed the chances of securing others in the future as if they were prizes of fortune. One listening, and seeing their thin, worn faces and their wasted frames, might have supposed they were starving; and they were, but they did not say so.
Towards the middle of the afternoon there was a sudden excitement in the camp. A dozen men saw them at the same time: a squad of three men down the road at the farthest turn, past their picket; but an advancing column could not have created as much excitement, for the middle man carried a white flag. In a minute every man in the battery was on the breastwork. What could it mean! It was a long way off, nearly half a mile, and the flag was small,—possibly only a pocket-handkerchief or a napkin; but it was held aloft as a flag unmistakably. A hundred conjectures were indulged in. Was it a summons to surrender? A request for an armistice for some purpose? Or was it a trick to ascertain their number and position? Some held one view, some another. Some extreme ones thought a shot ought to be fired over them to warn them not to come on: no flags of truce were wanted. The old colonel, who had walked to the edge of the plateau outside the redoubt, and taken his position where he could study the advancing figures with his field-glass, had not spoken. The lieutenant who was next in command to him had walked out after him, and stood near him, from time to time dropping a word or two of conjecture in a half-audible tone: but the colonel had not answered a word; perhaps none was expected. Suddenly he took his glass down, and gave an order to the lieutenant: “Take two men and meet them at the turn yonder; learn their business; and act as your best judgment advises. If necessary to bring the messenger farther, bring only the officer who has the flag, and halt him at that rock yonder, where I will join him.” The tone was as placid as if such an occurrence came every day. Two minutes later the lieutenant was on his way down the mountain, and the colonel had the men in ranks. His face was as grave and his manner as quiet as usual, neither more nor less so. The men were in a state of suppressed excitement. Having put them in charge of the second sergeant, the colonel returned to the breastwork. The two officers were slowly ascending the hill, side by side; the bearer of the flag, now easily distinguishable in his jaunty uniform as a captain of cavalry, talking, and the lieutenant in faded gray, faced with yet more faded red, walking beside him with a face white even at that distance, and lips shut as though they would never open again. They halted at the big bowlder which the colonel had indicated, and the lieutenant, having saluted ceremoniously, turned to come up to the camp; the colonel, however, went down to meet him. The two men met, but there was no spoken question; if the colonel inquired, it was only with the eyes. The lieutenant spoke, however. “He says—” he began and stopped, then began again—“he says General Lee—” again he choked, then blurted out, “I believe it is all a lie—a damned lie.”
“Not dead? Not killed?” said the colonel quickly.
“No, not so bad as that: surrendered; surrendered his entire army at Appomattox day before yesterday. I believe it is all a damned lie,” he broke out again, as if the hot denial relieved him. The colonel simply turned away his face, and stepped a pace or two off; and the two men stood motionless back to back for more than a minute. Then the colonel stirred.
“Shall I go back with you?” the lieutenant asked huskily.
The colonel did not answer immediately. Then he said, “No: go back to camp and await my return.” He said nothing about not speaking of the report. He knew it was not needed. Then he went down the hill slowly alone, while the lieutenant went up to the camp.
The interview between the two officers beside the bowlder was not a long one. It consisted of a brief statement by the Federal envoy of the fact of Lee’s surrender two days before, near Appomattox Court House, with the sources of his information, coupled with a formal demand on the colonel for his surrender. To this the colonel replied that he had been detached and put under command of another officer for a specific purpose; and that his orders were to hold that pass, which he should do until he was instructed otherwise by his superior in command. With that they parted ceremoniously, the Federal captain returning to where he had left his horse in charge of his companions a little below, and the old colonel coming slowly up the hill to camp. The men were at once set to work to meet any attack which might be made. They knew that the message was of grave import, but not of how grave. They thought it meant that another attack would be made immediately, and they sprang to their work with renewed vigor, and a zeal as fresh as if it were but the beginning and not the end.
The time wore on, however, and there was no demonstration below, though hour after hour it was expected and even hoped for. Just as the sun sank into a bed of blue cloud, a horseman was seen coming up the darkened mountain from the eastward side, and in a little while practiced eyes reported him one of their own men—the sergeant who had been sent back the day before for ammunition. He was alone, and had something white before him on his horse—it could not be the ammunition; but perhaps that might be coming on behind. Every step of his jaded horse was anxiously watched. As he drew near, the lieutenant, after a word with the colonel, walked down to meet him, and there was a short colloquy in the muddy road: then they came back together and slowly entered the camp—the sergeant handing down a bag of corn which he had got somewhere below, with the grim remark to his comrades, “There’s your rations;” and going at once to the colonel’s camp-fire, a little to one side among the trees, where the colonel awaited him. A long conference was held: and then the sergeant left to take his luck with his mess, who were already parching the corn he had brought for their supper, while the lieutenant made the round of the camp; leaving the colonel seated alone on a log by his campfire. He sat without moving, hardly stirring, until the lieutenant returned from his round. A minute later the men were called from the guns and made to fall into line. They were silent, tremulous with suppressed excitement; the most sun-burned and weather-stained of them a little pale; the meanest, raggedest, and most insignificant not unimpressive in the deep and solemn silence with which they stood, their eyes fastened on the colonel, waiting for him to speak. He stepped out in front of them; slowly ran his eyes along the irregular line up and down, taking in every man in his glance, resting on some longer than on others,—the older men,—then dropped them to the ground; and then suddenly, as if with an effort, began to speak. His voice had a somewhat metallic sound, as if it were restrained; but it was otherwise the ordinary tone of command. It was not much that he said:—simply that it had become his duty to acquaint them with the information which he had received: that General Lee had surrendered two days before at Appomattox Court House, yielding to overwhelming numbers; that this afternoon, when he had first heard the report, he had questioned its truth, but that it had been confirmed by one of their own men, and no longer admitted of doubt; that the rest of their own force, it was learned, had been captured, or had disbanded, and the enemy was now on both sides of the mountain: that a demand had been made on him that morning to surrender too; but he had orders which he felt held good until they were countermanded, and he had declined. Later intelligence satisfied him that to attempt to hold out further would be useless, and would involve needless waste of life: he had determined, therefore, not to attempt to hold their position longer; but to lead them out, if possible, so as to avoid being made prisoners, and enable them to reach home sooner and aid their families. His orders were not to let his guns fall into the enemy’s hands, and he should take the only step possible to prevent it. In fifty minutes he should call the battery into line once more, and roll the guns over the cliff into the river; and immediately afterwards, leaving the wagons there, he would try to lead them across the mountain, and as far as they could go in a body without being liable to capture; and then he should disband them, and his responsibility for them would end. As it was necessary to make some preparations, he would now dismiss them to prepare any rations they might have, and get ready to march.
All this was in the formal manner of a common order of the day; and the old colonel had spoken in measured sentences, with little feeling in his voice. Not a man in the line had uttered a word after the first sound—half exclamation, half groan—which had burst from them at the announcement of Lee’s surrender. After that they had stood in their tracks like rooted trees, as motionless as those on the mountain behind them, their eyes fixed on their commander; and only the quick heaving up and down the dark line, as of horses over-laboring, told of the emotion which was shaking them. The colonel, as he ended, half turned to his subordinate officer at the end of the dim line, as though he were about to turn the company over to him to be dismissed; then faced the line again, and taking a step nearer, with a sudden movement of his hands towards the men as though he would have stretched them out to them, began again:—
“Men,” he said, and his voice changed at the word, and sounded like a father’s or a brother’s,—“My men, I cannot let you go so. We were neighbors when the war began—many of us, and some not here to-night; we have been more since then,—comrades, brothers in arms; we have all stood for one thing,—for Virginia and the South; we have all done our duty—tried to do our duty; we have fought a good fight, and now it seems to be over, and we have been overwhelmed by numbers, not whipped—and we are going home. We have the future before us: we don’t know just what it will bring, but we can stand a good deal. We have proved it. Upon us depends the South in the future as in the past. You have done your duty in the past; you will not fail in the future. Go home and be honest, brave, self-sacrificing, God-fearing citizens, as you have been soldiers, and you need not fear for Virginia and the South. The War may be over; but you will ever be ready to serve your country. The end may not be as we wanted it, prayed for it, fought for it; but we can trust God: the end in the end will be the best that could be; even if the South is not free, she will be better and stronger that she fought as she did. Go home and bring up your children to love her; and though you may have nothing else to leave them, you can leave them the heritage that they are sons of men who were in Lee’s army.”
He stopped; looked up and down the ranks again, which had instinctively crowded together and drawn around him in a half-circle; made a sign to the lieutenant to take charge, and turned abruptly on his heel to walk away. But as he did so, the long pent-up emotion burst forth. With a wild cheer the men seized him; crowding around and hugging him, as with protestations, prayers, sobs, oaths—broken, incoherent, inarticulate—they swore to be faithful, to live loyal forever to the South, to him, to Lee. Many of them cried like children; others offered to go down and have one more battle on the plain. The old colonel soothed them, and quieted their excitement; and then gave a command about the preparations to be made. This called them to order at once; and in a few minutes the camp was as orderly and quiet as usual: the fires were replenished; the scanty stores were being overhauled; the place was selected and being got ready, to roll the guns over the cliff; the camp was being ransacked for such articles as could be carried, and all preparations were being hastily made for their march.
The old colonel having completed his arrangements, sat down by his camp-fire with paper and pencil, and began to write; and as the men finished their work they gathered about in groups, at first around their camp-fires, but shortly strolled over to where the guns still stood at the breastwork, black and vague in the darkness. Soon they were all assembled about the guns. One after another they visited, closing around it and handling it from muzzle to trail, as a man might a horse to try its sinew and bone, or a child to feel its firmness and warmth. They were for the most part silent; and when any sound came through the dusk from them to the officers at their fire, it was murmurous and fitful as of men speaking low and brokenly. There was no sound of the noisy controversy which was generally heard, the give-and-take of the camp-fire, the firing backwards and forwards that went on on the march: if a compliment was paid a gun by one of its special detachment, it was accepted by the others; in fact, those who had generally run it down now seemed most anxious to accord the piece praise. Presently a small number of the men returned to a camp-fire, and building it up, seated themselves about it, gathering closer and closer together until they were in a little knot. One of them appeared to be writing, while two or three took up flaming chunks from the fire and held them as torches for him to see by. In time the entire company assembled about them, standing in respectful silence, broken only occasionally by a reply from one or another to some question from the scribe. After a little there was a sound of a roll-call, and reading and a short colloquy followed; and then two men, one with a paper in his hand, approached the fire beside which the officers sat still engaged.
“What is it, Harris?” said the colonel to the man with the paper, who bore remnants of the chevrons of a sergeant on his stained and faded jacket.
“If you please, sir,” he said with a salute, “we have been talking it over, and we’d like this paper to go in along with that you’re writing.” He held it out to the lieutenant, who was the nearer and had reached forward to take it. “We s’pose you’re agoin’ to bury it with the guns,” he said hesitatingly, as he handed it over.
“What is it?” asked the colonel, shading his eyes with his hands.
“It’s just a little list we made out in and among us,” he said, “with a few things we’d like to put in, so’s if any one ever hauls ’em out they’ll find it there to tell what the old battery was; and if they don’t, it’ll be in one of ’em down thar till judgment, an’ it’ll sort of ease our minds a bit.” He stopped and waited, as a man who had delivered his message. The old colonel had risen and taken the paper, and now held it with a firm grasp, as if it might blow away with the rising wind. He did not say a word, but his hand shook a little as he proceeded to fold it carefully; and there was a burning gleam in his deep-set eyes, back under his bushy gray brows.
“Will you sort of look over it, sir, if you think it’s worth while? We was in a sort of hurry, and we had to put it down just as we come to it; we didn’t have time to pick our ammunition: and it ain’t written the best in the world, nohow.” He waited again; and the colonel opened the paper and glanced down at it mechanically. It contained first a roster, headed by the list of six guns, named by name: “Matthew,” “Mark,” “Luke,” and “John,” “The Eagle,” and “The Cat”; then of the men, beginning with the heading—
Then had followed, “Those wounded,” but this was marked out. Then came a roster of the company when it first entered service; then of those who had joined afterward; then of those who were present now. At the end of all there was this statement, not very well written, nor wholly accurately spelt:—
There was a dead silence whilst the colonel read.
“’Tain’t entirely accurate, sir, in one particular,” said the sergeant apologetically: “but we thought it would be playin’ it sort o’ low down on the Cat if we was to say we lost her, unless we could tell about gittin’ of her back, and the way she done since; and we didn’t have time to do all that.” He looked around as if to receive the corroboration of the other men, which they signified by nods and shuffling.
The colonel said it was all right, and the paper should go into the guns.
“If you please, sir, the guns are all loaded,” said the sergeant; “in and about our last charge, too: and we’d like to fire ’em off once more, jist for old times’ sake to remember ’em by, if you don’t think no harm could come of it?”
The colonel reflected a moment, and said it might be done: they might fire each gun separately as they rolled it over, or might get all ready and fire together, and then roll them over—whichever they wished. This was satisfactory.
The men were then ordered to prepare to march immediately, and withdrew for the purpose. The pickets were called in. In a short time they were ready, horses and all, just as they would have been to march ordinarily; except that the wagons and caissons were packed over in one corner by the camp, with the harness hung on poles beside them, and the guns stood in their old places at the breastwork ready to defend the pass. The embers of the sinking camp-fires threw a faint light on them standing so still and silent. The old colonel took his place; and at a command from him in a somewhat low voice, the men, except a detail left to hold the horses, moved into company-front facing the guns. Not a word was spoken except the words of command. At the order each detachment went to its gun; the guns were run back, and the men with their own hands ran them up on the edge of the perpendicular bluff above the river, where, sheer below, its waters washed its base, as if to face an enemy on the black mountain the other side. The pieces stood ranged in the order in which they had so often stood in battle; and the gray, thin fog, rising slowly and silently from the river deep down between the cliffs, and wreathing the mountain-side above, might have been the smoke from some unearthly battle, fought in the dim pass by ghostly guns, yet posted there in the darkness, manned by phantom gunners, while phantom horses stood behind, lit vaguely up by phantom camp-fires. At the given word the laniards were pulled together; and together as one the six black guns, belching flame and lead, roared their last challenge on the misty night, sending a deadly hail of shot and shell, tearing the trees and splintering the rocks of the farther side, and sending the thunder reverberating through the pass and down the mountain, startling from its slumber the sleeping camp on the hills below, and driving the browsing deer and the prowling mountain-fox in terror up the mountain.
There was silence among the men about the guns for one brief instant: and then such a cheer burst forth as had never broken from them even in battle; cheer on cheer, the long, wild, old familiar “Rebel yell” for the guns they had fought with and loved.
The noise had not died away, and the men behind were still trying to quiet the frightened horses, when the sergeant—the same who had written—received from the hand of the colonel a long package or roll, which contained the records of the battery furnished by the men and by the colonel himself, securely wrapped to make them water-tight; and it was rammed down the yet warm throat of the nearest gun,—the Cat,—and then the gun was tamped to the muzzle to make her water-tight, and like her sisters, was spiked, and her vent tamped tight. All this took but a minute; and the next instant the guns were run up once more to the edge of the cliff; and the men stood by them with their hands still on them. A deadly silence fell on the men, and even the horses behind seemed to feel the spell. There was a long pause, in which not a breath was heard from any man, and the soughing of the tree-tops above and the rushing of the rapids below were the only sounds. They seemed to come from far, very far away. Then the colonel said quietly, “Let them go, and God be our helper; Amen.” There was the noise in the darkness of trampling and scraping on the cliff-top for a second,—the sound as of men straining hard together,—and then with a pant it ceased all at once; and the men held their breath to hear. One second of utter silence; then one prolonged, deep, resounding splash, sending up a great mass of white foam as the brass pieces together plunged into the dark water below, and then the soughing of the trees and the murmur of the river came again with painful distinctness. It was full ten minutes before the colonel spoke, though there were other sounds enough in the darkness; and some of the men, as the dark outstretched bodies showed, were lying on the ground flat on their faces. Then the colonel gave the command to fall in, in the same quiet, grave tone he had used all night. The line fell in, the men getting to their horses and mounting in silence; the colonel put himself at their head and gave the order of march, and the dark line turned in the darkness, crossed the little plateau between the smoldering camp-fires and the spectral caissons with the harness hanging beside them, and slowly entered the dim charcoal-burner’s track. Not a word was spoken as they moved off. They might all have been phantoms. Only, the sergeant in the rear, as he crossed the little breastwork which ran along the upper side and marked the boundary of the little camp, half turned and glanced at the dying fires, the low, newly made mounds in the corner, the abandoned caissons, and the empty redoubt, and said slowly, in a low voice to himself,—
“Well, by God!”