Campaigns Of A Non-Combatant, And His Romaunt Abroad During The War Part 19

Our nags being removed, we repaired to one of the rustic cottages which bounded the lawn, and I was introduced to several members of the staff; among others, to a Count Saint Alb, an Austrian. He had been an officer in his native country; but came to America, anxious for active service, and was appointed to Gen. McDowell's Staff with the rank of Captain. I understood that he was writing a book upon America. There are many such adventurers in the Federal service, but the present one was clever and amusing, and he spoke English fluently.

Our tea was plain but abundant, consisting of broiled beef, fresh bread, b.u.t.ter, and cheese; and the inveterate whiskey was produced afterward, when we a.s.sembled on the piazza, so that the hours pa.s.sed by pleasantly, if not profitably, and we retired at two o'clock.

In the morning I bathed in the clear, cold sulphur spring, where thousands of invalid people had come for healing waters. A canopy covered the spring, and a soldier stood on guard at the top of the descending steps, to preserve the property in its original cleanliness.

This was one of the most famous medical springs on the American continent; the water was so densely impregnated that its peculiarly offensive smell could be detected at the distance of a mile. The place was going to ruin now. All the bathing-rooms were falling apart, the pipes had been carried off to be moulded into bullets, and the great hotel was desolate. I walked into the ball-room; but the large gilded mirrors had been splintered, and lewd writings defaced the wall. Some idlers were asleep upon the piazzas, and the furniture was removed or broken. Some rustic cottages dotted the lawn, but these were now inhabited by officers and their servants. A few days were to finish the work of rapine, and a heap of ashes was to mark the scene of tournament, coquetry, and betrothal. I witnessed a review of troops in a field contiguous, at nine o'clock. The heat was so intense that many men fell out of line and were carried off to their camps. McDowell pa.s.sed exactingly from man to man, examined muskets, clothing, and knapsacks, and the inspection was proceeding, when I bade my friends good by and set out for Culpepper.

I crossed the North Rappahannock, or Hedgemain river, upon a precarious bridge of planks. A new bridge for artillery was being constructed close by; for the river beneath had a swift, deep current, and could with difficulty be forded. Patches of wagons, squads of horse, and now and then a regiment of infantry, varied the monotony of the journey. The country was high, woody, and spa.r.s.ely settled. At noon I overtook Tower's brigade, and observing the 94th N. Y. Regiment resting in the woods, I dismounted and made the acquaintance of its Colonel. He was at this juncture greatly enraged with some of his soldiers who had been plucking green apples.

"Boy," he said to one, "put down that fruit! Drop it, or I'll blow your head off! Directly you'll double up, pucker, and say that you have the "di-o-ree," and require an ambulance. Orderly!"

A sergeant came up and touched his cap.

"Take your musket," said the Colonel; "go out to that orchard, and order those men away. If they hesitate or object, shoot them!"

A few such colonels would marvellously improve the volunteer organization.

The Hazel or North Anne river, a branch of the Hedgemain, interposed a few miles further on, and pa.s.sing through a covered bridge, I turned down the north bank, crossed some spongy fields, and at length came to a dry place in the edge of a woods, where I tied my nag, spread out my bed, and prepared to dine. A box of sardines, a lemon, and some fresh sandwiches const.i.tuted the repast, and being dusty and parched I stripped afterward and swam across the river. Seeing that my horse plunged and neighed, with swollen eyeb.a.l.l.s, and every evidence of terror, I hastened toward him and discovered a black snake, six feet or more in length, which seemed about to coil itself around the nag's leg.

The size and contiguity of the reptile at first appalled me, and my mind was not more composed when the serpent, at my approach, manifested an inclination to a.s.sume the offensive. Its folds were thicker than my arm, and it commenced to revolve rapidly, at length running up a sapling, suspending itself by the tail, and hissing vehemently. It belonged to the family of "racers," and was hideous and powerful beyond any specimen that I had seen. I blew it into halves at the second discharge of my pistol, and at once resumed my saddle, indisposed to remain longer amidst such acquaintances.

At four o'clock I saw Culpepper, a trim little village, lying in the hollow of several hills. A couple of steeples added to its picturesqueness, and a swift creek, crossed by a small bridge, interposed between myself and the main part of the place. It looked like Sunday when I rode through the princ.i.p.al street. The shutters were closed in the shop windows, the dwellings seemed tenantless, no citizens were abroad, no sutlers had invaded the country; only a few cavalry-men cl.u.s.tered about an ancient pump to water their nags, and some military idlers were sitting upon the long porch of a public house, called the Virginia Hotel. I tied my horse to a tree, the bole of which had been gnawed bare, and found the landlord to be an old gentleman named Paine, who appeared to be somewhat out of his head. Two days before the Confederate cavalry had vacated the village, and the army had been encamped about the town for many months. A sabre conflict had taken place in the streets; and these events, happening in rapid succession, combined with the insolence of some Federal outriders, had so agitated the host that his memory was quite gone, and he could not perform even the slightest function. There is a panacea for all these things, which the faculty and philanthropy alike forbid, but which my experience in war-matters has invariably found unfailing. I produced my flask, and gently insinuated it to the old gentleman's lips. He possessed instinct sufficient to uncork and apply it, and the results were directly apparent, in a partial recovery of memory. He said that meals were one dollar each, board four dollars a day, or by the week twenty-five dollars. These terms are unknown in America; but when Mr. Paine added that horse provender was one dollar per "feed," I looked aghast, and required some stimulant myself to appreciate the enormity of the reckoning. I discovered, however, that the people of the village were almost starving; that beef had been fifty cents a pound during the whole winter, flour twenty-five dollars per barrel, coffee one dollar and a quarter a pound, and corn one dollar per bushel. The army had swept the country like famine, and the citizens had pinched, pining faces, with little to eat to-day and nothing for to-morrow.

I acquiesced in the charge, as no choice remained, and asked to be shown to my room. A burly negro, apparently suffering _delirium tremens_, seized my baggage with quaking hands, and lifting a pair of red eyes upon me, shuffled through a bare hall, up a stairway, and into a bedroom. I never saw a more hideous being in my life, and when he had flung my luggage upon the floor, he sank into a chair, and glared wofully into my face, breathing like one about to expire.

"Young Moss," said he, "cant you give a po' soul a drop o' sperits? Do for de good Lord's sake! Do, Moss, fo' de po' n.i.g.g.a's life. Do! do!

Moss."

I poured him out a little in a tumbler, less from charity than from fear; for he knew that I was provided with a bottle, and I seemed to read murder in his eyes.

He drank like one athirst and scant of breath, making a dry, chuckling noise with his throat. When he had finished, he leaned his powerful neck and head upon the bed and groaned terribly.

"Moss," he said again, "ain't you got no tobacco, Moss? I haint had none since Christmas. I's mos dead I'm po' sinful n.i.g.g.a'. Do give some tobacco to po' creature, do!"

I told him that I did not chew the weed, but gave him a crushed cigar, and he thrust it into his mouth, as if it was food and he was perishing.

This wretched animal performed the duties of a chambermaid upon the premises; he made the beds, attended to the toilets, answered the bells, etc. He finally became so offensive that I forbade him my room, and he revenged himself by paltry thefts. There were two other servants, a woman with a baby, and a shrewd, dishonest mulatto man, who was the steward and carver. This fellow secreted provender in the kitchen and sold it stealthily to hungry soldiers. A public house so mismanaged I had nowhere met. Sometimes we could get no breakfast till noon, and finally the price of dinner went up to one dollar and a half, with nothing to eat. The table was protected from flies by a series of paper fans, pendant from the ceiling and connected by a cord, which an ebony boy pulled, at the foot of the room to keep them in motion. This boy being worked day and night, often fell asleep upon his stool, when the yellow man boxed his ears, or knocked him down; and then he would fan with such vigor that a perfect gale swept down the table. The landlord was a kindly old man, but he could not "keep a hotel," and the strong-minded part of the house consisted of his wife and four daughters. Gen. Ben Butler would have sent these young women to Ship Island, five times of a day. They were very bad-mannered and always sat apart at one end of the cloth, talking against the "Yankees." As there was no direct provocation to do so, this boldness was gratuitous, and detracted rather than added to my estimate of the heroism of Southern women. I have known them to burst into the office, crowded with blue-coats, and scream--

"Pop, Yankees thieving in garden!" or, "Pop, drive these Yankees out of parlor!"

Every afternoon when the pavement was unusually patronized by young officers, these women would sally out, promenade in crinoline, silk stockings, and saucy hoods, and the crowd would fall respectfully back to let them pa.s.s. A flag hung from a hospital over the sidewalk, and with a pert flourish, the landlord's daughters filed off the pavement, around the ensign, and back again. This was amusing, I thought, but not very clever, and rather immodest. Had they been handsome, some romance might have attached to the act; but being homely and not marriageable, I smiled at the occurrence and entered it in my diary as "patriotism run mad." The stable arrangements were, if possible, worse. One had to be certain, from actual presence, that his horse was fed at all, and during the first three days of my tenure, the black hostler lost me a breast strap, a halter, a crupper strap, and finally emptied my saddle-bags.

Now and then a woman made her appearance at a front window, stealthily peeping into the street, or a neighboring farmer ventured into town upon a lean consumptive mule. The very dogs were skinny and savage for want of sustenance, and when a long, cadaverous hog emerged from nowhere one day, and tottered up the main street, he was chased, killed, and quartered so rapidly, that the famous steam process seemed to have been applied to him, of being dropped into a hopper, and tumbling out, a medley of hams, ribs, lard, and penknives. The stock of provisions at the hotel finally gave out, and I was compelled to purchase morsels of meat from the steward. Dreadful visions of famishing ensued, but ultimately the railway was opened to town, and a sutler started a shop in the village. I lived upon sardines and crackers for two days, and a Major Fifield, Superintendent of Military Railroads, gave me savory breakfasts of ham afterward. Troops were now concentrating in the neighborhood of Culpepper, and a bevy of camps encircled the little village. Crawford's Brigade, of Banks's Corps, garrisoned the place, and a Provost Marshal occupied the quaint Court House. Reconnoissances were made southward daily, and I joined one of these, which left the village on the second of August, at three o'clock, for Orange Court House, seventeen miles on the way to Richmond. Detachments of a Vermont and a New York cavalry regiment composed the reconnoitring party, and the whole was commanded by Gen. Crawford, a clever and unostentatious soldier. We bivouacked that night near Racc.o.o.n Ford, on the river Rapidan. No fires were built; for we knew that the enemy was all around us, and we slept coldly and imperfectly till the gray of Sunday morning.

At daylight we galloped into the main street of Orange Court House, having first sent a squadron around the village, to ride in at the other end. At the very moment of our entry, a company or more of Confederate horse was also trotting into town. Both parties sounded the charge simultaneously, and the carbines exploded in the very heart of the village. For a minute or more a sabre fight ensued, alternated by the firing of revolvers; but the defenders were overmatched, and several of them having been slain, they turned to escape. At that moment, however, our other squadron charged upon them, effectually blocking up the street, and the whole party surrendered. A major, who exhibited some obstinacy, was felled from the saddle by a terrible cut, which clove his skull, and a very dexterous young fellow, who attempted to escape by a side street, dodged a bevy of pursuers and saved his head by the loss of both his ears. The disfigured corpses of those freshly slain were laid along the sidewalk in a row; and after some invasion of henroosts and private pantries, we remounted, and with fifty or more prisoners crossed the Rapidan, and were welcomed into Culpepper with cheers. The prisoners were lodged in the loft of the Court House, and their officers were paroled, and boarded among the neighbors. They complied with the terms of their parole very honorably, and bore testimony to the courtesy of their captors. I talked with them often upon the tavern porch, but an undue intimacy with any of them might have brought me into disrepute.

Although the larders of the village were supposed to be empty, savory meals were nevertheless sent daily to these cavalry-men, and it was evident that the people on all hands sympathized with their soldiery.

The stringent orders of Pope, relative to removing the disaffected beyond his lines, were never enforced. I doubt if the veritable commander himself meant to do more than intimidate evil doers; but I saw frequent evidences of scrupulous humanity on the part of his general officers.

One day, when I was negotiating with the Provost for the purchase of some port wine, stored upon the premises of a village druggist, a sergeant elbowed his way into the presence of the Marshal, and pushed forward two very dirty lads, who gave their ages respectively, as ten and thirteen years. They were of Hibernian parentage, and belonged to the cla.s.s of newsboys trading with the different brigades. The younger lad was wiping his nose and eyes with a relic of a coat sleeve, and the elder was studying the points of the case, with a view to an elaborate defence. The sergeant produced a thick roll of bills and laid them upon the desk.

"Gineral Crawford," said he, "orders these boys to be locked up in the jail. They have been pa.s.sing this stuff upon the country folks, and belong to a gang of young varmints who follers the 'lay.' The Gineral is going to have 'em brought up at the proper time and punished."

The bills were fair imitations of Confederate currency, and were openly sold in the streets of Northern cities at the rate of thousands of dollars for a penny. These lads probably purchased horses, swine, or fowls with them, or perhaps paid some impoverished widow for board in the worthless counterfeit.

The younger lad sobbed and howled when the order for his incarceration had been announced, but the elder made a stout remonstrance.

He didn't know the Gineral would arrest him. Everybody else pa.s.sed the bills. He thought they wos good bills; some man gave 'em to him. They wan't pa.s.sed, nohow, upon n.o.body but _Rebels_! He could prove that! He "know'd" a quartermaster that pa.s.sed 'em. Wouldn't they let him and Sam off this wunst?

They were both sent to Coventry, despite their tears, and down to the last day of our tenure in Culpepper, I saw these wicked urchins peeping through the grates of the old brick jail, where they lay in the steam and vapor, among negroes, drunkards, and thieves,--an evidence of justice, which it is a pleasure to record, in this free narrative.

I joined a mess in the Ninth New York regiment finally, and contrived to exist till the fifth of the month, when Pope moved his head-quarters to a hill back of Culpepper, and thereafter I lived daintily for a little while. On the 8th of August, however, an event occurred, which disturbed the wisest calculations of the correspondent and the Generals, THE BATTLE OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOING INTO ACTION.

While General Pope's army was concentrating between the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, the army of General Stonewall Jackson was lying upon the south bank of the Rapidan, and that renowned commander's head-quarters were at Gordonsville, about thirty miles from Culpepper. It was generally presumed that Jackson had fortified Gordonsville, intending to lie in wait there, or possibly to oppose the crossing of Pope upon the banks of the river. It was not believed that Jackson's force was very great, because the main body of the Confederates were held below Richmond, where McClellan's army still remained. The Southern capital seemed to be menaced both from the North and the South; but in reality, the Grand Army was re-embarking at Harrison's Bar, and sailing up the Chesapeake in detachments, to effect a junction with Pope on the plains of Piedmont. So important a movement could not be concealed from the Confederates, and they had resolved to annihilate Pope before McClellan's reinforcements could arrive. It was the work of two weeks to transport eighty or a hundred thousand men three hundred miles, and finding that Burnside's corps had already landed upon the Potomac, Stonewall Jackson determined to cross the Rapidan and cripple the fragment of Pope's forces stationed at Culpepper.

Stonewall Jackson is one of the many men whose extraordinary military genius has been developed by the civil war. But unlike the ma.s.s who have become famous in a day, and lost their laurels in a week, Jackson's glory has steadily increased. He was first brought into notice at Winchester, where he fought a fierce battle with Banks, and derived the _sobriquet_ which he has retained to the present time. Soon afterward, he chased Banks's army down the Shenandoah Valley, and across the Potomac. Afterward, he bore a conspicuous part in the engagement below Richmond, and was now to become prominent in the most daring episodes of the whole war. His excellence was _activity_. He scrupled at no fatigue, marched his troops over steep and circuitous roads, was everywhere when unexpected, and nowhere when sought, and his boldness was equal to his energy. He did not fear to attack overpowering numbers, if the situation demanded it. All that General Lee might plan, General Jackson would dare to execute; and he has been, above all others, the Soult of the Southern war, while Stuart was its Murat, and Lee its Napoleon.

We first had intimation of the advance of Jackson on the afternoon of the 7th of August. Two regiments of cavalry, picketed upon the Rapidan, rode pell-mell into Culpepper, reporting a large Southern force at the fords, and rapidly advancing. Pope at once ordered the whole of one of these regiments under arrest, and it was the opinion of the army that the approach was a feint, or, at most, a reconnoissance in force.

Subsequent information satisfied the incredulous, however, that a considerable body of troops were marching northward, and their outriding scouts had been seen at Cedar Mountain, only six miles from Culpepper.

The latter is one of the many woody k.n.o.bs or heights that environ the village, but it is nearer than any other, and should have been occupied by Pope, simultaneously with his arrival. It is scarcely a mountain in elevation, but so high that the clouds often envelope its crest, and it commands a view of all the surrounding country. There are cleared patches up its sides, and the highest of these const.i.tutes the farm of a clergyman, after whom the eminence is sometimes called "Slaughter's Mountain." At its base lie a few pleasant farms; and a shallow rivulet or creek, called Cedar Run, crosses the road between the mountain and Culpepper. Upon the mountain side Jackson had placed his batteries, and his infantry lay in dense thickets and belts of woods before the hill and on each side of it. The position was a powerful, though not an impregnable one; for batteries might readily be pushed up the slope, and our infantry had often ascended steeper eminences. But an opposing army scattered about the meadow lands below, would find its several components exposed to shot and sh.e.l.l, thrown from points three or four hundred feet above them.

When it had been discovered that the enemy had antic.i.p.ated us in seizing this strong position, word was at once despatched to Banks and Siegel to bring up their columns without delay. The brigade of General Crawford was marched through Culpepper at noon on Friday; and that afternoon, foot-sore, but enthusiastic, regiments began to arrive in rapid succession.

I had been pa.s.sing the morning of Friday with Colonel Bowman, a modest and capable gentleman, when the serenity of our converse was disturbed by a sergeant, who rode into camp with orders for a prompt advance in light marching order. In a twinkling all the camps in the vicinity were deserted, and the roads were so blocked with soldiers on my return, that I was obliged to ride through fields.

I trotted rapidly into the village, and witnessed a scene exciting and martial beyond anything which I had remarked with the Army of Virginia.

Regiments were pouring by all the roads and lanes into the main street, and the spectacle of thousands of bayonets, extending as far as the eye could reach, was enhanced by the music of a score of bands, throbbing all at the same moment with wild music. The orders of officers rang out fitfully in the din, and when the steel shifted from shoulder to shoulder, it was like looking down a long sparkling wave. Above the confusion of the time, the various nativities of volunteers roared their national ballads. "St. Patrick's Day," intermingled with the weird refrain of "Bonnie Dundee," and s.n.a.t.c.hes of German sword-songs were drowned by the thrilling chorus of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Then some stentor would strike a stave of--

"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave,"

and the wild, mournful music would be caught up by all,--Germans, Celts, Saxons, till the little town rang with the thunder of voices, all uttering the name of the grim old Moloch, whom--more than any one save Hunter--Virginia hates. Suddenly, as if by rehearsal, all hats would go up, all bayonets toss and glisten, and huzzas would deafen the winds, while the horses reared upon their haunches and the sabres rose and fell. Then, column by column, the ma.s.ses pa.s.sed eastward, while the prisoners in the Court-House cupola looked down, and the citizens peeped in fear through crevices of windows.

Being unattached to the staff of any General at the time, and therefore at liberty as a mere spectator, I rode rapidly after the troops, pa.s.sed the foremost regiments, and unwittingly kept to the left, which I did not discover in the excitement of the ride, till my horse was foaming and my face furrowed with heat drops. I saw that the way had been little travelled, and inquiry at a log farm-house, some distance further, satisfied me that I had mistaken the way. Two men in coa.r.s.e brown suits, were chopping wood here, and they informed me, with an oath, that the last soldiers seen in the neighborhood, had been Confederate pickets. A by-road enabled me to recover the proper route, and from the top of a hill overlooking Culpepper, I had a view of the hamlet, nestling in its hollow; the roads entering it, black with troops, and all the slopes covered with wagon-trains, whose white canopies seemed infinite. The skies were gorgeously dyed over the snug cottages and modest spires; some far woods were folded in a pleasant haze; and the blue mountains lifted their huge backs, voluming in the distance, like some boundary for humanity, with a happier land beyond. Here I might have stood, a few months before, and heard the church bells; and the trees around me might have been musical with birds. But now the parsons and the choristers were gone; the scaffold was erected, the axe bare, and with a good by glance at the world and man, some hundreds of wretches were to drop into eternity. We have all read of the guillotine in other lands; it was now before me in my own.

As I pa.s.sed into the highway again, and riding through narrow pa.s.sages, grazing officers' knees, turning vicious battery horses, winding in and out of woods, making detours through pasture fields, leaping ditches, and so making perilous progress, I pa.s.sed many friends who hailed me cheerfully,--here a brigadier-general who waved his hand, or a colonel who saluted, or a staff officer who rode out and exchanged inquiries or greetings, or a sergeant who winked and laughed. These were some of the men whose bodies I was to stir to-morrow with my foot, when the eyes that shone upon me now would be swollen and ghastly.

Some of the privates seeing me in plain clothes, as I had joined the army merely as a visitor and with no idea of seeing immediate service there, mistook me for a newspaper correspondent, which in one sense I was; and I was greeted with such cries as--

"Our Special Artist!"

"Our Own Correspondent!"

"Give our Captain a setting up, you sir!"