My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field Part 4

I pa.s.sed the brigade. Ayers's and Carlisle's batteries were there. I found the spring beyond a little hillock. While drinking, there was sudden confusion in Schenck's brigade. There was loud talking, cannon and musketry firing, and a sudden trampling of horses. A squadron of Rebel cavalry swept past within a few rods of the spring, charging upon Schenck's brigade. The panic tide had come rolling to the rear. Ayers lashed his horses to a gallop, to reach Cub Run bridge. He succeeded in crossing it. He came into position to open upon the Rebels and to check their pursuit. The road was blocked with wagons. Frightened teamsters cut their horses loose and rode away. Soldiers, officers, and civilians fled towards Centreville, frightened at they knew not what. Blenker's brigade was thrown forward from Centreville to the bridge, and the rout was stopped. The Rebels were too much exhausted, too much amazed at the sudden and unaccountable breaking and fleeing of McDowell's army, to improve the advantage. They followed to Cub Run bridge, but a few cannon and musket shots sent them back to the Stone Bridge.

But at Blackburn's Ford General Jones crossed the stream to attack the retreating troops. General Davies, with four regiments and Hunt's battery, occupied the crest of a hill looking down towards the ford. The Rebels marched through the woods upon the bank of the stream, wound along the hillside, filed through a farm-yard and halted in a hollow within a quarter of a mile of General Davies's guns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGHT AT BLACKBURN'S FORD, July 21, 1863.

1 Blackburn's Ford.

2 Mitch.e.l.l's Ford.

3 Rebel troops.

4 Davies's brigade and batteries.

5 Richardson's brigade.]

"Lie down," said the General, and the four regiments dropped upon the ground. The six cannon and the gunners alone were in sight.

"Wait till they come over the crest of the hill; wait till I give the word," said the General to Captain Hunt.

The men stand motionless by their pieces. The long column of Rebels moves on. There is an officer on his horse giving directions. The long dark line throws its lengthening shadows upward in the declining sunlight, toward the silent cannon.

"Now let them have it!" The guns are silent no longer. Six flashes of light, and six sulphurous clouds are belched towards the moving ma.s.s.

Grape and canister sweep them down. The officer tumbles from his horse, and the horse staggers to the earth. There are sudden gaps in the ranks.

They stop advancing. Officers run here and there. Another merciless storm,--another,--another. Eighteen flashes a minute from those six pieces! Like gra.s.s before the mower the Rebel line is cut down. The men flee to the woods, utterly routed.

The attempt to cut off the retreat signally failed. It was the last attempt of the Rebels to follow up their mysterious victory. The rear-guard remained in Centreville till morning recovering five cannon which had been abandoned at Cub Run, which the Rebels had not secured, and then retired to Arlington.

So the battle was won and lost. So the hopes of the Union soldiers changed to sudden, unaccountable fear, and so the fear of the Rebels became unbounded exultation.

The sun had gone down behind the Blue Mountains, and the battle-clouds hung thick and heavy along the winding stream where the conflict had raged. It was a sad night to us who had gone out with such high hopes, who had seen the victory so nearly won and so suddenly lost. Many of our wounded were lying where they had fallen. It was a terrible night to them. Their enemies, some of them, were hard-hearted and cruel. They fired into the hospitals upon helpless men. They refused them water to quench their burning thirst. They taunted them in their hour of triumph, and heaped upon them bitterest curses. They were wild with the delirium of success, and treated their prisoners with savage barbarity. Any one who showed kindness to the prisoners or wounded was looked upon with suspicion. Says an English officer in the Rebel service:--[4]

[Footnote 4: Estvan.]

"I made it my duty to seek out and attend upon the wounded, and the more so when I found that the work of alleviating their sufferings was performed with evident reluctance and want of zeal by many of those whose duty it was to do it. I looked upon the poor fellows only as suffering fellow-mortals, brothers in need of help, and made no distinction between friend and foe; nay, I must own that I was prompted to give the preference to the latter, for the reason that some of our men met with attention from their relations and friends, who had flocked to the field in numbers to see them. But in doing so I had to encounter opposition, and was even pointed at by some with muttered curses as a traitor to the cause of the Confederacy for bestowing any attention on the d---- Yankees."

Notwithstanding the inhuman treatment they received at the hands of their captors, there were men on that field who never quailed,--men with patriotism so fervent, deep, and unquenchable, that they lay down cheerfully to their death-sleep. This officer in the Rebel service went out upon the field where the fight had been thickest. It was night.

Around him were the dying and the dead. There was a young Union officer, with both feet crushed by a cannon-shot. There were tears upon his cheeks.

"Courage, comrade!" said the officer, bending over him; "the day will come when you will remember this battle as one of the things of the past."

"Do not give me false hopes, sir. It is all up with me. I do not grieve that I must die, for with these stumps I shall not live long."

He pointed to his mangled feet, and added: "_I weep for my poor, distracted country. Had I a second life to live, I would willingly sacrifice it for the cause of the Union!_"

His eyes closed. A smile lighted his countenance, as if, while on the border of another world, he saw once more those who were dearest on earth or in heaven. He raised himself convulsively, and cried, "Mother!

Father!"

He was dead.

He sleeps upon the spot where he fell. His name is unknown, but his devotion to his country shall shine forevermore like a star in heaven!

When the Union line gave way, some of the soldiers were so stupefied by the sudden change that they were unable to move, and were taken prisoners. Among them was a Zouave, in red trousers. He was a tall, n.o.ble fellow. Although a prisoner, he walked erect, unabashed by his captivity. A Virginian taunted him, and called him by hard names.

"Sir," said the Zouave, "I have heard that yours was a nation of gentlemen, but your insult comes from a coward and a knave. I am your prisoner, but you have no right to fling your curses at me because I am unfortunate. Of the two, I consider myself the gentleman."[5]

[Footnote 5: Charleston Mercury.]

The Virginian hung his head in silence, while other Rebel soldiers a.s.sured the brave fellow that he should not again be insulted. So bravery, true courage, and manliness will win respect even from enemies.

No accurate reports have been made of the number of men killed and wounded in this battle; but each side lost probably from fifteen hundred to two thousand men.

It was a battle which will always have a memorable place in the history of this Rebellion, because having won a victory, the slaveholders believed that they could conquer the North. They became more proud and insolent. They manifested their terrible hate by their inhuman treatment of the prisoners captured. They gave the dead indecent burial. The Rebel soldiers dug up the bones of the dead Union men, and carved them into ornaments, which they sent home to their wives and sweethearts. One girl wrote to her lover to "be sure and bring her Old Lincoln's _skelp_"

(scalp), so that the women as well as the men became fierce in their hatred. I have seen the letter, which was found upon a prisoner.

The North, although defeated, was not discouraged. There was no thought of giving up the contest, but, as you remember, there was a great uprising of the people, who determined that the war should go on till the Rebellion was crushed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY.

Tennessee joined the Southern Confederacy, but Kentucky resisted all the coaxing, threatening, and planning of the leaders of the Rebellion. Some Kentuckians talked of remaining neutral, of taking no part in the great contest; but that was not possible. The Rebels invaded the State, by sailing up the Mississippi and taking possession of Columbus,--a town twenty miles below the mouth of the Ohio. They also advanced from Nashville to Bowling Green. Then the State decided for the Union,--to stand by the old flag till the Rebellion should be crushed.

The Rebels erected two forts on the northern line of Tennessee. Looking at your map, you see that the c.u.mberland and Tennessee Rivers are near together where they enter the State of Kentucky. They are not more than twelve miles apart. The fort on the Tennessee River was named Fort Henry, the one on the c.u.mberland, Fort Donelson. A good road was cut through the woods between them, so that troops and supplies could be readily removed from one to the other. Fort Henry was on the eastern bank of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the western bank of the c.u.mberland. They were very important places to the Rebels, for at high water in the winter the rivers are navigable for the largest steamboats,--the c.u.mberland to Nashville and the Tennessee to Florence, in Northern Alabama,--and it would be very easy to transport an army from the Ohio River to the very heart of the Southern Confederacy. The forts were built to prevent any such movement of the Union troops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FORTS.]

The bluffs of the Mississippi River at Columbus are two hundred feet high. There the Rebels erected strong batteries, planting heavy guns, with which they could sweep the Mississippi far up stream, and pour plunging shots with un.o.bstructed aim upon any descending gunboat. They called it a Gibraltar, because of its strength. They said it could not be taken, and that the Mississippi was closed to navigation till the independence of the Southern Confederacy was acknowledged.

Early in the war it was seen that a fleet of gunboats would be needed on the Western rivers, and Captain Andrew H. Foote of the navy was placed in charge of their construction. They were built at Cincinnati and St.

Louis, and taken to Cairo, where they received their armament, crews, and outfit.

You have heard of Cairo. I do not mean the ancient city on the banks of the Nile, but the modern town on the tongue of land at the mouth of the Ohio. Charles d.i.c.kens has given a description of the place in one of his delightful books,--Martin Chuzzlewit. It was a forest, with a few log-huts, when Mark Tapley resided there, and all the people were smitten with fever and ague. It is a town now, with several thousand inhabitants. In the spring the town is sometimes overflowed, and the people navigate the streets with boats and rafts. Pigs look out of the chamber windows, and dogs, cats, and chickens live on the roofs of houses at such times.

Let us take a look at the place as it appeared the first day of February, 1862. Stand with me on the levee, and look up the broad Ohio,--the "la belle riviere," as the French called it. There are from fifty to a hundred steamboats lying along the bank, with volumes of black smoke rolling up from their tall chimneys, and puffs of steam vanishing in the air. Among them are the gunboats,--a cross between a floating fort, a dredging-machine, and a mud-scow. The sailors, who have been tossed upon the ocean in stately ships, call them mud-_turkles_.

There are thousands of soldiers on the steamboats and on the sh.o.r.e, waiting for the sailing of the expedition which is to make an opening in the line of Rebel defences. There are thousands of people busy as bees, loading and unloading the steamboats, rolling barrels and boxes.

When Mark Tapley and Martin Chuzzlewit were here it was muddy, and it is muddy now. There is fine, thin, sticky, slimy, splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough of Despond described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress,--a place for all the filth, sin, and slime of this world. Christian was mired there, and Pliable nearly lost his life. If Bunyan had seen Cairo, he might have made the picture still more graphic. There are old houses, shanties, sheds, stables, pig-sties, wood-piles, carts, wagons, barrels, boxes, and all the old things you can imagine. Pigs live in the streets, and there are irrepressible conflicts between them and the hundreds of dogs. Water-carts, drays, army-wagons, and artillery go hub deep in the mud. Horses tug and strive, rear, kick, and flounder. Teamsters lose their footing. Soldiers wade leg deep in the street. There are sidewalks, but they are slippery, dangerous, and deceptive.

It is Sunday. A sweet day of rest in peaceful times, but in war there is not much observance of the Sabbath. It is midwinter, but a south-wind sweeps up the Mississippi, so mild and balmy that the blue-birds and robins are out. The steamboats are crowded with troops, who are waiting for orders to sail, they know not where. Groups stand upon the topmost deck. Some lie at full length in the warm sunshine. The bands are playing, the drums beating. Tug-boats are dancing, wheezing, and puffing in the stream, flitting from gunboat to gunboat.

The shops are open, and the soldiers are purchasing knickknacks,--tobacco, pipes, paper, and pens, to send letters to loved ones far away. At a gingerbread stall, a half-dozen are taking a lunch.

The oyster-saloons are crowded. Boys are crying their newspapers. There are laughable and solemn scenes. Yonder is the hospital. A file of soldiers stand waiting in the street. A coffin is brought out. The fife begins its mournful air, the drum its m.u.f.fled beat. The procession moves away, bearing the dead soldier to his silent home.

A few months ago he was a citizen, cultivating his farm upon the prairies, ploughing, sowing, reaping. But now the great reaper, Death, has gathered him in. He had no thought of being a soldier; but he was a patriot, and when his country called him he sprang to her aid. He yielded to disease, but not to the enemy. He was far from home and friends, with none but strangers to minister to his wants, to comfort him, to tell him of a better world than this. He gave his life to his country.

Although there is the busy note of preparation for the sailing of the fleet, there are some who remember that it is Sunday, and who find time to worship. The church-bells toll the hour. You tuck your pants into your boots, and pick your way along the slippery, slimy streets. There are a few ladies who brave the mud, wearing boots suited to the walking.

Boots which have not been blacked for a fortnight are just as shiny as those cleaned but an hour ago. At the door of the church you do as everybody else does,--take a chip and sc.r.a.pe off the mud.