House Divided (109 page)

“General Jackson's death overshadowed everything on that field,” Longstreet reminded him; and Burr nodded.

“We were at Orange Court-House when he died,” he said. “We had a chance to rest our horses there, and get some fresh ones; and we had some good times.” He laughed, remembering an incident. “Captain Scheibert was with us. He's a Prussian, an artist, a fat little man, wears a short jacket and white trousers too tight for him; and he's forever getting into ridiculous trouble. One day he sat down on a fresh oil painting and transferred the portrait of a lady to the seat of those white pants of his and came back to headquarters fairly whooping at the joke on himself. He keeps us laughing most of the time.”

Laughter and Stuart went together; but the day after the review the laugh was at Stuart's expense. His headquarters were on Fleetwood Hill, between Brandy Station and the river; and the Yankee cavalry, divided into two powerful columns, crossed the river and struck him hard converging blows. There was an all-day battle on the slopes and levels around Fleetwood Hill, with twenty thousand horsemen hotly engaged, and for a while Stuart was in serious trouble. At the first heavy onslaught one of his brigades was badly broken, and the Yankees got on Stuart's rear and threatened to inflict upon him a major defeat.

But the end of that hard-fought day saw the enemy cavalry draw back across the river again, so though there were losses, the screen along the Rappahannock was restored. Longstreet thought Stuart would be a better soldier if the Yankees had now taught him to respect them; yet the fact that the enemy cavalry fought so well was disquieting. When the Yankees learned their work, their advantage in numbers would begin to tell.

 

The day after that great cavalry battle, General Ewell's Corps proceeded toward the Valley. Longstreet was with General Lee when Ewell came for a last word; and Lee repeated the broad outline of his plan.

“If Winchester is strongly held, leave it for us, General,” he said. “You move on, cross the river, march into Maryland.” He added quietly: “And on into Pennsylvania. General Longstreet will stay east of the Blue Ridge for a while.” He met Longstreet's eyes. “To hold off those people till Hill can pass in his rear. So you leave Winchester for us, keep your men in hand, keep them fresh. We'll follow you.”

Ewell rode away; and for almost a week Longstreet and Lee remained at Culpeper. On the fifteenth, Longstreet led his divisions northward, following the valley roads while the Rappahannock ceased to be a river and became no more than a shallow creek, easily forded at any crossing. After the halt for a nooning, Longstreet called Major Currain to ride with him. Ahead, the dome of Cobbler's Mountain began now and then to show itself, and Longstreet's thoughts drifted.

“What's a sugarloaf, Currain?” he asked, and seeing Trav's surprise, he nodded toward the height ahead. “That mountain—any mountain shaped like that is apt to be named Sugarloaf; but it looks much more the way a pile of sugar might look if you poured it through a funnel. What is a sugarloaf, anyway?”

Trav did not know. Another mountain with a double top appeared on the left ahead, as Cobbler's was on the right. “Now that one,” Longstreet suggested jocosely, “looks like the rear end of a horse going away from us at an angle. I wonder what its name is?”

“Saddleback, probably,” Trav suggested, and Longstreet agreed.

“Always the obvious,” he assented. “And why not? I wonder if the world wouldn't be a happier place if we all of us always did the obvious. What a lot of trouble we would avoid so.”

They made a fair twenty miles that day, and when they halted for the night the two heights stood like sentinels guarding the morrow's road to Markham and beyond. Stuart's men were off to the east toward the Bull Run Mountains, on guard against any enemy thrust against the flank of the moving columns. Next morning a courier brought a dispatch from General Lee, still at Culpeper. Ewell had stormed Winchester, had won a substantial success; but Longstreet, remembering Lee's instructions to leave a defended Winchester behind and push on, found that action blamable. If Ewell were going to precipitate battle on his own initiative, he was as dangerous as Hill. The fact that he himself had been sure Ewell would keep a cool head, and that he had told Lee so, made him uncomfortable. He spoke of this to Sorrel.

“I hate to be proved wrong,” he admitted. “General Lee may twit me about that a little. But of course Ewell will be forgiven. It's easy to forgive a victory.”

“It sounds like the sort of thing Jackson might have done,” Sorrel suggested; and Longstreet nodded.

“Ewell learned his work under Jackson. Perhaps he learned it well.”

They marched through Markham and up the valley of Goose Creek, climbing easily toward Ashby's Gap. The ascent for a while was gentle, and there were many small farms, the houses usually set well away from the road. From some of them, when the column approached, children came in a headlong race to the roadside to perch on the fences and watch the regiments pass, or perhaps to march for a while beside the men, stretching their small legs to keep the pace. The bolder ones might beg the privilege of carrying a soldier's musket for a while; they asked a thousand questions; their searching eyes missed no detail. When the road ran near the clear winding creek, these youthful volunteers filled canteens, or fetched pails of water for the thirsty men. Between the children and the soldiers there was a quick and affectionate communion, an easy intercourse.

Longstreet, bound to keep his men fresh for the work that lay ahead, did not hurry them. He put the First Corps in position along the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge, guarding Ashby's Gap and Snicker's. His orders from Lee were to remain east of the Ridge, but he had discretion. When a courier from Stuart reported that Major Mosby had seen the Yankee army moving north to cover Washington, Longstreet thought it time to send Pickett's division through the Gaps into the Valley.

General Lee had come on to Markham, and Longstreet sent him a dispatch reporting he had done this. Lee replied in a tone puzzlingly uncertain. He remarked that to operate east of the mountains might have confused Hooker. “But as you have turned off to the Valley, and I understand all the trains have taken that route, I hope it is for the best.”

This was so near a reproof that Longstreet half resented it; but General Lee was in constant pain from his pleurisy and from the rheumatism which he could not shake off, and probably he was worried because he had so little news of Hooker.

“Just as I am worried about Louisa, not hearing from her,” Longstreet reflected; but next day a letter from her overtook him. It was
almost two weeks old; but like all her letters it was affectionate and cheerful. She was taking the best care of herself, she said; she was resting every day. He must never worry. “Have me in your heart,” she wrote, “but not on your mind. We know you'll beat the old Yankees any time they meet you.” She gave him some crumbs of news. “There's been a fine rain to break the drouth, and everyone's boasting about their gardens. Prices are terrible; but somehow we manage. Everybody seems to be getting rich by speculating.”

There was a postcript. “I must never keep anything from you, because if I did you'd worry; so I'll 'fess up that I had a bad time a week ago, the same thing. Even Dr. Dunn was worried, but I'm fine now.”

That disturbed him for a while, till his work drove thoughts of Louisa into the background of his mind. Friday, General Lee broke up his headquarters at Markham and rode through Ashby's Gap and down into the Valley; and on Saturday, Longstreet was perplexed by a dispatch from headquarters directing him to be ready to move toward the Potomac.

“But we're ready now,” he told Moxley Sorrel. “What am I expected to do? General Lee saw the disposition of McLaws's division at Ashby's. Possibly he thinks we should pass through the Gaps and cross the Shenandoah.” Till Powell Hill was up, the Gaps should be held; but these orders seemed to mean that Lee felt Longstreet could now leave his post.

Very well, he would move across the Shenandoah. He gave orders for the march. The ascent was easy, by a grade seldom steep enough to weary the men; and from the crest they saw the waiting beauty of the Valley, as inviting as the blue of the sea on a hot summer's day. The way down was long and tortuous, winding through forest that seldom permitted any distant outlook; but at the foot of the Ridge they came to wide levels and to frequent farms and pushed on across the tilled lands and down to the ford, and so made their bivouac on the rising ground beyond the sparkling stream.

The mountains were like a wall between them and the enemy, but next day Stuart sent word that Yankee cavalry in force was pressing him toward the Gap; so McLaws's division had to climb back up that steep winding road to be ready to hold the Gap if Stuart were pushed too far. But by the time they were in position Stuart sent word that
the Yankees were withdrawing, that he was harrying them through Upperville toward Aldie. McLaws's men had that hard day's march to no purpose; but Longstreet, though he regretted the waste of good shoe leather, knew this would not daunt the men. A soldier soon learned to accept the changing minds of his commanders.

General Lee had made his new headquarters a little beyond Berryville, on the west side of the Charlestown road; and Monday when the Gap was secure and McLaws was bringing his division back down the mountain to the ford, Longstreet had a dispatch from the commanding general enclosing an open letter to be forwarded to Stuart. In this open letter General Lee bade Stuart move northward and take position on Ewell's flank in Pennsylvania; and his covering dispatch to Longstreet said Stuart might in his discretion go through Hopewell Gap and pass Hooker's rear, turning north between the Federal army and Washington.

Longstreet was troubled by this discretionary order. Stuart's proper place was between this army and the enemy, and Stuart of course knew this; but still smarting under the sting of that surprise at Brandy Station, he would be in a mood to do something spectacular. Acting as a flank guard was dull work, and it would be like Stuart to elect that risky alternative of a ride around the enemy.

Longstreet tried to dismiss his misgivings. Stuart was too good a soldier to get out of touch with the commanding general. Lee's letter indicated that the northward movement was to be resumed, and Tuesday evening the expected orders came: the First Corps was to move through Berryville and Martinsburg toward the Potomac at Williamsport.

 

Pickett's division was at Millwood, McLaws's men lay between Millwood and the river, Hood at Snicker's Gap could pass through and march to Berryville and take his place in the advance. Longstreet gave orders to move at dawn on Wednesday; and when McLaws led his men through Millwood and followed Pickett toward Berryville, the plodding foot soldiers filling the road for miles as they filed northward across the low rolling hills, Longstreet mounted and rode with his staff to overtake Pickett and come to the head of the column.

There was a deep reluctance in him, and a sadness at this setting
out; and he wondered why. Perhaps it was because every mile took him farther from Louisa. Moxley Sorrel rode beside him, and Major Goree, and these two were talking cheerfully of nothing; and Longstreet wondered almost resentfully if they had no families to whom their thoughts turned as his did to Louisa. Then he remembered that Goree's Texas home was far away, and Sorrel's too; so a few miles more made little difference to them. But a man like Currain, with a wife and children in Richmond, could share his own homesick longing; and beyond Berryville Longstreet called Trav to his side.

“This is one of those times I'd as soon forget I'm a soldier,” he confessed. “So let's not talk business. You'll always be a civilian at heart. Even when you fight, you're less like a soldier than like a drunken man in a brawl.”

“I'm no great shakes as a talker, either, General.”

“Yes, but you can listen. Let's ride ahead.” Longstreet touched his horse to a trot, and Trav followed and the rest of the staff kept pace behind. But the narrow road, honeysuckle like a hedge along the fences on either side, was crowded, and it was always hard to pass marching infantry; so Longstreet turned into a byway, clear of the column and of the sluggish dust clouds stirred up by so many tramping feet.

“The men have their own dust to eat,” he suggested. “Let's not make it harder for them by adding ours. We'll ride through Charlestown and be ahead of them at Kearneysville.” Trav followed his lead without comment, and Longstreet welcomed that silence, thinking how ready with conversation some of the others on the staff would have been. A wise general chose his staff not only for their capacities but for their qualities. Fairfax was a clown, loving meat and drink and lusty pleasures, ready when the wine flowed to make an ass of himself. Well, there were hours when a man wanted to play the fool, and in such hours Fairfax was a jolly companion. Longstreet remembered one occasion when both of them were in their cups and he rode Fairfax like a horse around the mess table, and Fairfax played his part to perfection, bucking and neighing like an unbroken colt. Walton drank as heavily as anyone; but liquor edged his tongue with sarcastic barbs and set his temper on a hair trigger. Latrobe and Peyton Manning were gentlemen by instinct and breeding, unfailingly
kindly in word and act, prompt for any duty and equally ready for the gentler pleasures. Sorrel was probably the ablest of them all, certainly the one best fitted for command; but he was a little too ready to urge his own opinions, and easily critical. Goree and Longstreet had in common many friends in Texas, and there was a strong affection between them. Goree was a diligent and intelligent and trustworthy officer; but if he had a fault it was too ready a tongue. For instance, he would never have ridden here beside Longstreet mile after mile, as Currain was doing now, with never a word. To be with Currain was like being alone: you could keep your thoughts to yourself or let them find words as you chose, sure that Currain would do more listening than talking.