Campaigns Of A Non-Combatant, And His Romaunt Abroad During The War Part 12

The dry skin of the embalmer broke into chalky dimples, and he grinned very much as a corpse might do:--

"Ah!" he said, "_then_ there would be money made."

To hear these embalmers converse with each other was like listening to the witch sayings in Macbeth. It appeared that the arch-fiend of embalming was a Frenchman named Sonca, or something of that kind, and all these worthies professed to have purchased his "system." They told grisly anecdotes of "operations," and experimented with chemicals, and congratulated each other upon the fever. They would, I think, have piled the whole earth with catacombs of stony corpses, and we should have no more green graves, but keep our dead with us as household ornaments.

The negroes did not suffer with the fever, although their quarters were close and filthy. Their Elysium had come; there was no more work. They slept and danced and grinned, and these three actions made up the sum of their existence. Such people to increase and multiply I never beheld.

There were scores of new babies every day; they appeared to be born by twins and triplets; they learned to walk in twenty-four hours; and their mothers were strong and hearty in less time. Such soulless, lost, degraded men and women did nowhere else exist. The divinity they never had; the human they had forgotten; they did no great wrongs,--thieving, quarrelling, deceiving,--but they failed to do any rights, and their worship was animal, and almost profane. They sang incongruous mixtures of hymns and field songs:--

"Oh! bruddern, watch an' pray, _watch_ an' pray!

De harvest am a ripenin' our Lord an' Ma.r.s.er say!

Oh! ho! yo! dat ole c.o.o.n, de serpent, ho! oh!

Watch an' pray!"

I have heard them sing such medleys with tears in their eyes, apparently fervid and rapt. A very gray old man would lead off, keeping time to the words with his head and hands; the ma.s.s joining in at intervals, and raising a screaming alleluja. Directly they would all rise, link hands, and proceed to dance the accompaniment. The motion would be slow at first, and the method of singing maintained; after a time they would move more rapidly, shouting the lines together; and suddenly becoming convulsed with strange excitement, they would toss up their arms, leap, fall, groan, and, seemingly, lose consciousness. Their prayers were earnest and vehement, but often degenerated to mere howls and noises.

Some of both s.e.xes had grand voices, that rang like bugles, and the very impropriety of their music made it fascinating. It used to seem to me that any of the great composers might have borrowed advantageously some of those original negro airs. In many cases, their owners came within the lines, registered their allegiance, and recovered the negroes. These were often veritable Shylocks, that claimed their pounds of flesh, with unblushing reference to the law. The poor Africs went back cowed and tearful, and it is probable that they were afterward sent to the far South, that terrible _terra incognita_ to a border slave.

Among the houses to which I resorted was that of a Mr. Hill, one mile from White House. He had a thousand acres of land and a valuable fishery on the Pamunkey. The latter was worth, in good seasons, two thousand dollars a year. He had fished and farmed with negroes; but these had leagued to run away, and he sent them across the river to a second farm that he owned in King William County. It was at Hill's house that the widow Custis was visiting when young Washington reined at the gate, on his road to Williamsburg. With reverent feelings I used to regard the old place, and Hill frequently stole away from his formidable military household, to talk with me on the front porch. Perhaps in the same moonlights, with the river shimmering at their feet, and the grapevine shadowing the creaky corners,--their voices softened, their chairs drawn very close, their hands touching with a thrill,--the young soldier and his affianced had made their courtship. I sometimes sat breathless, thinking that their figures had come back, and that I heard them whispering.

Hill was a Virginian,--large, hospitable, severe, proud,--and once I ventured to speak upon the policy of slavery, with a view to develop his own relation to the "inst.i.tution." He said, with the swaggering manner of his cla.s.s, that slavery was a "domestic" inst.i.tution, and that therefore no political law could reach it. I insinuated, quietly, that no political law should therefore sustain it, and took exception to the idea that what was domestic was therefore without the province of legislation. When I exampled polygamy, Hill became pa.s.sionate, and asked if I was an abolitionist. I opined that I was not, and he so far relented as to say that slavery was sanctioned by divine and human laws; that it was ultimately to be embraced by all white nationalities, and that the Caucasian was certain, in the end, to subjugate and possess every other race. He pointed, with some shrewdness, to the condition of the Chinese in California and Australia, and epitomized the gradual enslaving of the Mongol and Malay in various quarters of the world.

"As to our treatment of n.i.g.g.e.rs," he said, curtly, "I never prevaricate, as some masters do, in that respect. I whip my n.i.g.g.e.rs when they want it! If they are saucy, or careless, or lazy, I have 'em flogged. About twice a year every n.i.g.g.e.r has to be punished. If they ain't roped over twice a year, they take on airs and want to be gentlemen. A n.i.g.g.e.r is bound by no sentiment of duty or affection. You must keep him in trim by fear."

Among the victims of the swamp fever, were Major Larrabee, and Lieutenant-Colonel Emory, of the Fifth Wisconsin regiment; I had been indebted to them for many a meal and draught of spirits. I had talked with each of them, when the camps were darkened and the soldiery asleep.

Larrabee was a soldier by nature,--adventurous, energetic, intrepid, aggressive. He had been a country Judge in Wisconsin, and afterwards a member of Congress. When the war commenced, he enlisted as a common soldier, but public sentiment forced the State Government to make him a Major. Emory was a mild, reflective, unimpa.s.sioned gentleman,--too modest to be eminent, too scrupulous to be ambitious. The men were opposites, but both capital companions, and they were seized with the fever about the same time. The Major was removed to White House, and I visited him one day in the hospital quarters. Surgeon General Watson, hospital commandant, took me through the quarters; there was quite a town of sick men; they lay in wall-tents--about twenty in a tent,--and there were daily deaths; those that caught the fever, were afterwards unfit for duty, as they took relapses on resuming the field. The tents were pitched in a damp cornfield; for the Federals so reverenced their national shrines, that they forbade White House and lawn to be used for hospital purposes. Under the best circ.u.mstances, a field hospital is a comfortless place; but here the sun shone like a furnace upon the tents, and the rains drowned out the inmates. If a man can possibly avoid it, let him never go to the hospital: for he will be called a "skulker," or a "shyster," that desires to escape the impending battle. Twenty hot, feverish, tossing men, confined in a small tent, like an oven, and exposed to contumely and bad food, should get a wholesome horror of war and glory.

So far as I could observe and learn, the authorities at White House carried high heads, and covetous hands. In brief, they lived like princes, and behaved like knaves. There was one--whose conduct has never been investigated--who furnished one of the deserted mansions near by, and brought a lady from the North to keep it in order. He drove a span that rivalled anything in Broadway, and his wines were luscious. His establishment reminded me of that of Napoleon III. in the late Italian war, and yet, this man was receiving merely a Colonel's pay. My impression is that everybody at White House robbed the Government, and in the end, to cover their delinquencies, these scoundrels set fire to an immense quant.i.ty of stores, and squared their accounts thus: "Burned on the Pamunkey, June 28, commissary, quartermaster's, and hospital stores, one million dollars."

The time was now drawing to a close that I should pa.s.s amid the familiar scenes of this region. The good people at Daker's were still kindly; but having climbed into the great bed one night, I found my legs aching, my brain violently throbbing, my chest full of pain and my eyes weak. When I woke in the morning my lips were fevered, I could eat nothing, and when I reached my saddle, it seemed that I should faint. In a word, the Chickahominy fever had seized upon me. My ride to New Bridge was marked by great agony, and during much of the time I was quite blind. I turned off, at Gaines's Mill, to rest at Captain Kingwalt's; but the old gentleman was in the grip of the ague, and I forebore to trouble him with a statement of my grievances. Skyhiski made me a cup of tea, which I could not drink, and Fogg made me lie on his "poncho." It was like old times come back, to hear them all speak cheerfully, and the man Clover said that if there "warn't" a battle soon, he knew what he'd do, he did! he'd go home, straight as a buck!

"Becoz," said the man Clover, flourishing his hands, "I volunteered to fight. To _fight_, sir! not to dig and drive team. Here we air, sir, stuck in the mud, burnin' with fever, livin' on hardtack. And thair's Richmond! Just thair! You can chuck a stone at it, if you mind to. A'ter awhile them rebbils'll pop out, and fix us. Why ain't we led up, sa-a-y?"

The man Clover represented common sentiment among the troops at this time; but I told him that in all probability he would soon be gratified with a battle. My prediction was so far correct, that when I met the man Clover on the James River, a week afterward, he said, with a rueful countenance--

"Sa-a-a-y! It never rains but it pours, does it?"

As I rode from the camp of the Pennsylvania Reserves, at noon, on the 21st of June, I seemed to feel a gloomy premonition of the calamities that were shortly to fall upon the "Army of the Potomac." I pa.s.sed in front of Hogan house; through the wood above the mill; along Gaines's Lane, between his mansion and his barn; across a creek, tributary to the Chickahominy; and up the ploughed hills by a military road, toward Grapevine Bridge. Lieutenant-Colonel Heath, of the Fifth Maine Regiment, was riding with me, and we stopped at the tip of an elevated field to look back upon the scene. I was very sick and weary, and I lay my head upon the mane of my nag, while Heath threw a leg across his saddle pommel, and straightened his slight figure; we both gazed earnestly.

The river lay in the hollow or ravine to the left, and a few farm-houses sat among the trees on the hill-tops beyond. A battery was planted at each house, and we could see the lines of red-clay parapets marking the sites. From the roof of one of the houses floated a speck of canvas,--the revolutionary flag. A horseman or two moved shadow-like across a slope of yellow grain. Before and back the woods belted the landscape, and some pickets of both sides paced the river brink: they did not fire upon each other.

Our side of the Chickahominy was not less peaceful. A couple of batteries lay below us, in the meadows; but the horses were dozing in the harness, and the gunners, standing bolt upright at the breech, seemed parts of their pieces; the teamsters lay grouped in the long gra.s.s. Immediately in front, Gaines's Mansion and outhouses spotted a hillside, and we could note beyond a few white tents shining through the trees. The roof of the old mill crouched between a medley of wavy fields and woods, to our right, and just at our feet a tiny rill divided Gaines's Mill from our own. Behind us, over the wilderness of swamp and bog-timber, rose Smith's redoubt, with the Federal flag flaunting from the rampart.

"Townsend," said Heath, as he swept the whole country with his keen eye, "do you know that we are standing upon historic ground?"

He had been a poet and an orator, and he seemed to feel the solemnity of the place.

"It may become historic to-morrow," I replied.

"It is so to-day," he said, earnestly; "not from battle as yet; _that_ may or may not happen; but in the pause before the storm there is something grand; and this is the pause."

He took his soft beaver in his hand, and his short red hair stood pugnaciously back from his fine forehead.

"The men that have been here already," he added, "consecrated the place; young McClellan, and bluff, bull-headed Franklin; the one-armed devil, Kearney, and handsome Joe Hooker; gray, gristly Heintzelman; white-bearded, insane Sumner; Stuart, Lee, Johnston, the Hills----"

"Why not," said I, laughingly, "Eric the red,--the redoubtable Heath!"

"Why not?" he said, with a flourish; "Fate may have something in store for me, as well as for these."

I have thought, since, how terribly our light conversation found verification in fact. If I had said to Heath, that, at the very moment, Jefferson Davis and his Commander-in-chief were sitting in the dwelling opposite, reconnoitring and consulting; that, even now, their telescopes were directed upon us; that the effect of their counsel was to be manifest in less than a week; that one of the bloodiest battles of modern times was to be fought beside and around us; that six days of the most terrible fighting known in history were to ensue; that my friend and comrade was standing upon the same clods which would be reddened, at his next coming, with his heart's blood; and that the trenches were to yawn beneath his hoofs, to swallow himself and his steed,--if I had foretold these things as they were to occur, I wonder if the "pause before the storm" would have been less awful, and our ride campward less sedate. Poor Heath! Gallant New Englander! he called at my bedside, the sixth day following, as I lay full of pain, fear, and fever, and after he bade me good by, I heard his horse's hoofs ringing down the lane. Ten minutes afterward he was shot through the head.

When I reached Michie's, at three o'clock, I had to be helped from the saddle, and the fever was raging in my whole body before nightfall. My hands were flushed, my face hot, but my feet were quite cold, and I was seized with chills that seemed to shake my teeth from my head. Mrs.

Michie made me a bowl of scorching tea, and one of the black-girls bathed my limbs in boiling water. The fever dreams came to me that night, in s.n.a.t.c.hes of burning sleep, and toward morning I lay restlessly awake, moving from side to side, famishing for drink, but rejecting it, when they brought it to my lips. The next day, my kind hostess gave me some nourishing soup, but after a vain effort to partake of it, I was compelled to put it aside. O'Ganlon procured some pickled fruit and vegetables from a sutler, which I ate voraciously, quaffing the vinegar like wine. Some of my regimental friends heard of my illness, and they sent me quiet luxuries, which gladdened me, though I did not eat. During the day I had some moments of ease, when I tried to read. There was a copy of Wordsworth's poems in the house, and I used to repeat stanzas from "Peter Bell," till they rang, in eddies of rhyme, through my weak brain, and continued to scan and jangle far into the nights. Some of these fever-dreams were like delusions in delirium: peopled with monsters, that grinned and growled. Little black globules used to leer from corners, and after a time they began to revolve toward me, increasing as they came, and at length rolling like mountains of surge.

I frequently woke with a scream, and found my body in profuse perspiration. There were fiery snakes, also, that, at first, moved slowly around me, and I followed them with red and terrified eyes. After awhile they flashed in circles of lightning, and hissed showers of sparks, until I became quite crazed with fear. The most horrible apparitions used to come to my bedside, and if I dropped to sleep with any thought half formed or half developed, the odd half of that thought became impregnated, somehow, and straightway loomed up a goblin, or a giant, or a grotesque something, that proceeded to torture me, like a sort of Frankenstein, for having made it. Amid all these ghastly things, there came beautiful glimpses of form, scene, and sensation, that straightway changed to horrors. I remember, for example, that I was gliding down a stream, where the boughs overhead were as shady as the waters, and there were holy eyes that seemed to cool my fever; but suddenly the stream became choked with corpses, that entangled their dead limbs with mine, until I strangled and called aloud,--waking up O'Ganlon and some reporters who proposed to give me morphine, that I might not alarm the house.

How the poor soldiers fared, in the hot hospitals, I shudder to think; but a more merciful decree spared my life, and kind treatment met me at every hand. Otherwise, I believe, I should not be alive to-day to write this story; for the fever had seized me in its severest form, and I had almost tutored myself to look upon my end, far from my home and on the very eve of my manhood.

O'Ganlon, at last, resolved to send me to White House, and started thither one day, to obtain a berth for me upon a Sanitary steamer. The next day an ambulance came to the door. I tried to sit up in bed, and succeeded; I feebly robed myself and staggered to the stairs. I crawled, rather than walked, to the hall below; but when I took a chair, and felt the cool breeze from the oaks fanning my hair, I seemed to know that I should get well.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" pealed some cannon at the moment, and all the windows shook with the concussion.

Directly we heard volleys of musketry, and then the camps were astir.

Horses went hither and thither; signal flags flashed to-and-fro; a battery of the Reserve Artillery dashed down the lane.

I felt my strength coming back with the excitement; I even smiled feebly as the guns thundered past.

"Take away your ambulance, old fellow," I said, "I shan't go home till I see a battle."

CHAPTER XV.

TWO DAYS OF BATTLE.

The Confederates had been waiting two months for McClellan's advance.

Emboldened by his delay they had gathered the whole of their available strength from remote Tennessee, from the Mississippi, and from the coast, until, confident and powerful, they crossed Meadow Bridge on the 26th of June, 1862, and drove in our right wing at Mechanicsville. The reserves of Gen. McCall were stationed here; they made a wavering resistance,--wherein four companies of Bucktails were captured bodily,--and fell back at nightfall upon Porter's Corps, at Gaines's Mill. Fitz John Porter commanded the brigades of Gens. Sykes and Morrell,--the former made up solely of regulars. He appeared to have been ignorant of the strength of the attacking party, and he telegraphed to McClellan, early on Thursday evening, that he required no reinforcements, and that he could hold his ground. The next morning he was attacked in front and flank; Stewart's cavalry fell on his right, and turned it at Old Church. He formed at noon in new line of battle, from Gaines's House, along the Mill Road to New Coal Harbor; but stubbornly persisted in the belief that he could not be beaten. By three o'clock he had been driven back two miles, and all his energies were unavailing to recover a foot of ground. He hurled lancers and cavalry upon the ma.s.ses of Jackson and the Hills, but the b.u.t.ternut infantry formed impenetrable squares, hemmed in with rods of steel, and as the hors.e.m.e.n galloped around them, searching for previous points, they were swept from their saddles with volleys of musketry. He directed the terrible fire of his artillery upon them, but though the gray footmen fell in heaps, they steadily advanced, closing up the gaps, and their lines were like long stretches of blaze and ball. Their fire never slackened nor abated. They loaded and moved forward, column on column, like so many immortals that could not be vanquished. The scene from the balloon, as Lowe informed me, was awful beyond all comparison,--of puffing sh.e.l.ls and shrieking shrapnel, with volleys that shattered the hills and filled the air with deathly whispers. Infantry, artillery, and horse turned the Federal right from time to time, and to preserve their order of battle the whole line fell back toward Grapevine Bridge. At five o'clock Sloc.u.m's Division of volunteers crossed the creek from the south side, and made a desperate dash upon the solid columns of the Confederates. At the same time Toombs's Georgia Brigade charged Smith's redoubt from the south side, and there was a probability of the whole of both armies engaging before dark.

My fever of body had so much relinquished to my fever of mind, that at three o'clock I called for my horse, and determined to cross the bridge, that I might witness the battle.

It was with difficulty that I could make my way along the narrow corduroy, for hundreds of wounded were limping from the field to the safe side, and ammunition wagons were pa.s.sing the other way, driven by reckless drivers who should have been blown up momentarily. Before I had reached the north side of the creek, an immense throng of panic-stricken people came surging down the slippery bridge. A few carried muskets, but I saw several wantonly throw their pieces into the flood, and as the ma.s.s were unarmed, I inferred that they had made similar dispositions.

Fear, anguish, cowardice, despair, disgust, were the predominant expressions of the upturned faces. The gaunt trees, towering from the current, cast a solemn shadow upon the moving throng, and as the evening dimness was falling around them, it almost seemed that they were engulfed in some cataract. I reined my horse close to the side of a team, that I might not be borne backward by the crowd; but some of the lawless fugitives seized him by the bridle, and others attempted to pull me from the saddle.

"Gi' up that hoss!" said one, "what business you got wi' a hoss?"

"That's my critter, and I am in for a ride; so you get off!" said another.

I spurred my pony vigorously with the left foot, and with the right struck the man at the bridle under the chin. The thick column parted left and right, and though a howl of hate pursued me, I kept straight to the bank, cleared the swamp, and took the military route parallel with the creek, toward the nearest eminence. At every step of the way I met wounded persons. A horseman rode past me, leaning over his pommel, with blood streaming from his mouth and hanging in gouts from his saturated beard. The day had been intensely hot and black boys were besetting the wounded with buckets of cool lemonade. It was a common occurrence for the couples that carried the wounded on stretchers to stop on the way, purchase a gla.s.s of the beverage, and drink it. Sometimes the blankets on the stretchers were closely folded, and then I knew that the man within was dead. A little fellow, who used his sword for a cane, stopped me on the road, and said--