House Divided (117 page)

“That's Captain Scheibert,” Sorrel explained. “He's the Prussian young Dewain told us about, the one who took an impression of a wet painting on his pants.”

Longstreet smiled faintly. He turned his horse, riding back along the Hagerstown road and across the fields behind the wood till he saw Hood's men filing off the Chambersburg pike. Yesterday the Yankees had been driven back up that slope along which the men now were marching; and Longstreet saw a few unburied dead, each the focus for a swarm of flies buzzing in the sun. The leaders of the advancing column sometimes swerved to avoid them. He sought McLaws and bade him place his men beyond Hood's, conveniently ready to move.

 

When Longstreet returned to the commanding general, Lee was sitting alone on a log at the edge of the trees, and Longstreet dismounted and joined him. Lee said, his controlled tones suggesting his impatience: “Venable has not yet returned. Nor Captain Johnston. Nor General Pendleton.”

“McLaws is coming up,” Longstreet told him. “I think Law will be here by noon, Pickett this afternoon.”

Lee made no comment. Longstreet's eyes swept the gently undulating levels which lay between him and the enemy position; but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear except the occasional bark of a skirmisher's rifle. Major Currain requested permission to go and exchange a word with Brett Dewain, and Longstreet gave it. Hood approached, and sat down on the log, and selected a dead stick and produced
his knife and began to whittle aimlessly. A man whittled as a woman knitted, to ease taut nerves. Longstreet too opened his knife, tried it on his thumb, picked up a twig from the ground and sharpened it to a needle point with careful strokes of the keen blade. It was not yet eight o'clock, but already the sun was baking hot, the shade was grateful.

Lee rose and walked away, and Hood said quietly: “General, he's going to attack. He told General Hill if we don't whip Meade he'll whip us.”

“Attack?” Longstreet spoke in gruff incredulity. “If we'd wanted to attack, we could have done that in Virginia, without marching God knows how many hundred miles!”

Hood did not reply, and Longstreet watched Lee, a little way off, his coat buttoned to his chin despite the increasing heat, his hands clasped behind him, walking to and fro with bowed head. Sorrel came up beside them and asked in a sprightly tone: “Well, General, how does it look?”

Longstreet grunted, not answering. Sorrel was as talkative as a woman, but this was no time for talk. If Hood was right, Lee's blood was up! That fighting heart, that instinct to plunge headlong at the enemy had him in command.

But if Lee ordered an attack, a thousand men would die today in these fields beyond which Meade was waiting! Yes and die vainly! Longstreet lifted his glasses to study the ground yonder. The cemetery was somewhat higher than the spot where he sat. He watched Yankee skirmishers come toward the Emmitsburg road and lie down in the wheat. Meade was organizing his position to crush the assault he expected, and General Lee could see those movements over there plainly enough. Surely Hood was wrong!

Longstreet heard a step and lowered his glasses and saw General Lee approaching. He rose, and as they met, Lee said firmly: “General, if Ewell meant to attack, Major Venable would have come to tell us; so presumably General Ewell sees no good prospect. We must strike them from this side.” Before Longstreet could protest, he added: “I will show you the position. We can see better if we ride a little to the south.”

He turned his horse and Longstreet followed, gnawing at his mustache.
When they mounted, so did the others. They rode southward through an orchard, the ground descending a little and then rising to another orchard which projected from the border of the woods almost exactly west of the cemetery. Lee paused and Longstreet drew up beside him and they dismounted.

Lee pointed south across the cultivated fields. “See down there where the Emmitsburg road crosses that knoll?” Longstreet's eye turned that way, and Lee explained: “I mean that ground twenty or thirty feet higher than we are here. Look between the two houses and beyond.” There was a house in an orchard a quarter-mile southeast, and another a little west of south, twice or thrice as far away. They framed between them fields and meadows that sloped gently upward to where on the higher ground fences marked the road. “If we had some guns on that knoll we could hurt those people over there,” Lee said. “You had better prepare to seize it.”

Longstreet's cheeks were stiff with angry blood. “You wish to attack?”

“Yes. If we don't hit them, they will hit us.” So Hood was right! “Their left is anchored on that rise, in the trees around the house you can just see past the right side of the nearer orchard. Move your men to the right till you're beyond their flank; then throw your right across the road and strike up the road toward the town. If you give us that knoll to place our guns, we can hammer them from both sides; you from there and General Ewell from the town. We'll crack them like a nut!”

Longstreet held his voice steady. “If you win a victory here, sir, what fruits will you gather?”

Lee smiled affectionately. “Let's get the victory first, my old War Horse! Once we shake the tree, the fruits will fall into our lap.”

Longstreet tried to speak; but he was choking at once with the certainty that to attack was wrong and with humiliation. General Lee knew his opinion, knew he was opposed to an assault. To be even thus gently overruled had not happened to him before. The confidence in him which Lee had always shown made this rebuff the more painful.

But he reminded himself that General Lee had had trying days. To constant pain and the responsibilities of command had been added the
burden of the errors of others. But for Stuart's absence, Lee would have known Meade's movements; but for Hill, there would have been no battle yesterday; but for Ewell's sluggishness last night, Meade would be today in full retreat from that natural redoubt yonder. Stuart, Hill, and Ewell had among them thrown the army into this sorry position. No wonder General Lee wore less than his usual serenity, saw less clearly than usual.

So Longstreet's resentment gave way to affectionate understanding; but his anger was to rise to full flood again. For a moment after General Lee had explained his desires, Longstreet did not speak; and Lee, with that characteristic nervous sidewise twitch of his head which was always a mark of irritation, turned toward where the other officers were gathered. Longstreet saw him, with a map spread open in his hands, give some direction to McLaws. That was a new humiliation! Any orders for McLaws should be given through the commander of the First Corps. Longstreet strode toward them.

“Place your divisions here, General,” Lee was saying to McLaws, drawing a line with his finger across the map. “Can you do it without being seen by the enemy?”

The line Lee had drawn crossed the Emmitsburg road at the spot where the commanding general himself had said the enemy flank was anchored; but his own orders to Longstreet had been to move beyond that flank before crossing the road. So not only was General Lee wrong to give direct orders to McLaws; his tactics were mistaken.

“I can take a few skirmishers and reconnoiter,” McLaws suggested; but Longstreet interrupted.

“General McLaws, I do not wish you to leave your division.” With a blunt forefinger he drew a line on the map that General Lee still held, a line parallel with the road. “And your division should be here!” His plan was clear in his own mind; he would throw Hood across the road beyond McLaws, and place McLaws in position to strike the Yankees in front as Hood rolled up their flank.

Lee said quietly: “I wish the division placed across the road, not along it, General Longstreet. I wish you to advance up the Emmitsburg road, toward the cemetery.”

There was an instant's silence, while Longstreet held his temper hard in check. Surely General Lee could trust him with the tactical
handling of his men! For Lee to give a direct order to McLaws was an affront, and Longstreet's anger bade him resign on the spot and instantly; but loyal second thought reminded him that this was out of the question. There was no man Lee could put in his place; he could not desert his post in the face of the enemy.

And this was even more profoundly true if General Lee were today so far from being himself that he could thus confuse his own intent. Certainly too this was no time for disputing and discussion. Longstreet called Moxley Sorrel. “Send for Colonel Alexander,” he directed. As Sorrel hurried away, Longstreet's pulses quieted. An officer rode up to General Lee with some report; and Lee explained to Longstreet: “This is Captain Johnston, General. He has been looking to our right.” And to the officer: “What did you find, Captain?”

“We rode over to that low wooded hill yonder,” the Captain said, and pointed. “The farmers call it Little Round Top, and the higher hill south of it is Round Top. The lower hill is all big boulders, no place for a horse unless he wants a broken leg; so we turned south and circled back.”

“Did you encounter the enemy?”

“No, sir, no sign of them. We saw three or four troopers at a distance, but they didn't see us.”

“Are there roads over those rocky heights?”

“No sir. They're impassable.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Lee turned to Longstreet. “General, those hills will guard your right as you advance up the road. Guide your left by the road.”

As he spoke, Colonel Alexander rode up and dismounted, saluting them. Longstreet asked: “Where are your guns, Colonel?”

“A mile from here, beside the stream called Willoughby Run, down behind this ridge.”

“Bring them up,” Longstreet directed. “General Lee wishes us to throw our right beyond the enemy's flank, to wheel and attack up the Emmitsburg road and seize that high ground yonder.” He pointed out to Colonel Alexander the vantage Lee had indicated. “Have your guns ready to go into action, but keep them behind the woods where they can't be seen by enemy signal stations on those wooded hills. As
soon as we seize the knoll, throw your guns forward to that position. Let me know when you are ready, if you please.”

When Alexander was gone, Lee said approvingly: “That was well done, General! Now I must ride over and see General Ewell.” He raised his hat in friendly salutation, and departed.

 

When the other was gone, Longstreet saw McLaws and Hood watching him, and he knew what they were thinking, and knew they understood what he must have felt a little while ago. Because it was McLaws who had been the innocent instrument of his humiliation, Longstreet spoke harshly. “Well, General McLaws, you have your orders!”

“Very well, sir.” McLaws mounted and rode away along the border of the wood. Longstreet sat down again; and Hood asked, the question suggesting his surprise at this inaction:

“Do we move at once, General?”

“Not yet. I don't want to attack without Pickett. I never like to go into battle with one boot off.” Longstreet added: “General Lee is a little nervous this morning.”

He regretted that word as soon as it was spoken. What he had said was true, but there were times when the truth should not be uttered. Hood knew as well as he that to try to throw Meade out of that position over there would cost heavily and profit little. When he himself spoke to Colonel Alexander a moment ago, he had seen the surprise in the artilleryman's eyes. Alexander had a quick eye for terrain; he knew that such an attack must be expensive and of doubtful issue. These two were as sure as he that Lee was wrong.

Nevertheless he should not have said what he did, and he was glad Hood made no reply. Hood was like Major Currain; he knew how to hold his tongue. He had come on to Virginia with his Texans, a young man just turned thirty, a year ago last fall; and during that first winter of the war he welded his regiment and then his brigade into a fine fighting unit.

Hood could hold his tongue, and he could get fine work out of his men; and Pickett, too, for all his perfumed ringlets and his lovesick sighing for that lady down below Petersburg, could be relied upon. Longstreet had known Pickett for twenty years: at West Point, in
Texas and New Mexico, in old Mexico, and now in this army. A little slow of understanding, so that it was always safer to give him a written than a spoken order, nevertheless he was one whom no battle task would ever daunt. That he was not only valorous but firm he had proved at San Juan when the British threatened to land forces there. He retorted that if a landing were attempted he would open fire, and the British abandoned their design. Pickett might neglect routine military duties to make his devotions to the lady of his choice; but when battle offered he was of a direct and single mind. Thus far no great military opportunity had been afforded him, but when it came he would seize it.

In his mood just now Longstreet thought that of his divisional commanders McLaws was the least effective, if for no other reason than that his health was precarious. But as his resentment of the incident of a few minutes ago began to pass, Longstreet gave McLaws more credit. Certainly the other was a gentle and a courteous man, completely unselfish in his relationship with his brother officers. Yes, and he had a fine self-possession on the field. His highest achievement thus far had been the seizure of Maryland Heights and the emplacement of cannon there, when he shared with General Jackson the success won at Harper's Ferry. His men were always well in hand. On that terrible march into Maryland last year, though for two days they had no water to drink, none straggled. At Sharpsburg McLaws did well; at Marye's Hill above Fredericksburg, his was the close direction of the defense which worked among the enemy such slaughter. Longstreet, calmer now, nodded contentedly. With three such men to handle the divisions, the First Corps could be relied upon.

 

The minutes drifted by. Colonel Alexander came to report that he had found a way to bring his guns into position unobserved by the enemy. “One of my men knows this ground, General,” he said. “Lieutenant Wentz. He lived as a boy in a house down there on the other side of the Emmitsburg road.” He pointed toward the knoll a mile or more to the southward, which they meant to seize. “You can just see the roof. There's a peach orchard all around the house. The Lieutenant's parents still live there, but he's lived in Virginia for years. You might care to question him. He's here with me.”