House Divided (133 page)

The approach to the river was difficult, through mud so deep that wagons and batteries sometimes stalled even on the descent to the stream, and at the Virginia end of the bridge there was a steep climb up to level going, and here the laden wagons and the guns mired, and horses labored with cracking sinews, and men slipping and sliding in the mud lent their strength to help. Each delay there halted traffic on the bridge, and Longstreet sent Trav to spur the work on the Virginia side. Gray dawn broke through the plunging rain before Longstreet, relieved by General Lee, came to lead the First Corps on.

They lodged that night at Bunker Hill, a twenty-mile march from the crossing; and they learned there of the minor disaster that struck the rear of the column. General Pettigrew's division was the last of the infantry to cross. Through some error, the cavalry screen which should have protected their move allowed the Yankees to come down on them. Hundreds of Pettigrew's exhausted men were taken prisoner, and General
Pettigrew himself was mortally wounded. He was brought to Bunker Hill and lodged in a hospitable house west of the road just south of town.

Trav heard from Ed Blandy the account of the affray. “It was about eleven o'clock,” Ed said. “We were waiting our turn to cross, most of us wore out and half-asleep; and when their cavalry come up, we thought they were ours. They charged us, and we broke them; but the Major leading the charge, he shot the General.”

“Where was our cavalry?” Trav asked. Ed did not know; and Trav, because he had marched with Pettigrew's division on that third day at Gettysburg, felt a personal loss in the General's approaching death and blamed Stuart. Next day while he was with Longstreet and others on a knoll above Mill Creek beside the road, he saw Stuart pass like a pageant. Two buglers rode ahead, sounding on their instruments the promise that Stuart was coming; his staff and the attendant couriers made an impressive cavalcade. Trav swore under his breath, and Longstreet, whose hearing was keen enough when he chose, heard.

“Grumbling, Currain?”

“I wish Stuart loved work as well as he loves making a show.”

Longstreet said seriously: “Stuart has virtues to match his failings. No better cavalry leader ever lived, unless Forrest is better.”

 

They stayed a few days at Bunker Hill, and General Pettigrew died; and then Stuart reported that Meade had passed the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge, so they marched again. Ten days after the crossing at Falling Waters, they lay once more behind the Rapidan, across Meade's road to Richmond. Their headquarters were near Erasmus Taylor's home, with good pasture for the weary horses, food enough, and friendliness and welcome at the big house. Moxley Sorrel and Peyton Manning and all the younger men of the staff, from the first evening, flocked that way; for every pretty girl in the neighborhood was there to laugh and dance with them.

While they lay there, Brett and Faunt came together to seek Trav, and he thought Faunt was wasted to a shadow, worn and ill; but Faunt said there was nothing wrong with him that a few days' rest would not cure. “The trouble is to get the rest,” he admitted. “But I'll rejoin Mosby tomorrow behind Meade's lines, and take my ease.”

“I shouldn't think that would be a place to rest.”

Faunt laughed in a dry fashion. “Nothing rests me so much as inheriting a new horse from a Yankee who won't need it any more.”

His tone chilled them both, and Trav saw that Brett felt as he did. Faunt was become a stranger, a cold and deadly man. Brett put to them his proposal to turn all the Currain funds into Confederate bonds; and they agreed. Trav said: “I've sent money to Enid to stock the house with flour and coal and bacon and sugar enough to last eighteen months, so she and the children are provided for. I've a twenty-five-percent profit on tobacco I bought in April, and I'll margin a new trade with that in next month's market.”

Brett smiled. “You've done well. Then you both agree?” They nodded, and Brett said, “I'll write Tony. We'll see.”

Faunt turned to his horse. “Do as you please,” he said. They watched him ride away, and Trav shook his head.

“Faunt's not the same man, Brett, since those damned letters.”

“Yes, he's taken that mighty hard.”

“I did, at first. But I can't help seeing that in Lincoln's place I'd do as he has done.” He spoke of those pictures of Lincoln which the men had found on the way to Hagerstown. “They laughed and made jokes; but it was the way you laugh at someone you like.” He hesitated, said in a shy way: “I'm almost proud to be related to him.”

Brett met his eyes. “Lincoln's life, the way he has been brought up from nowhere and put where he is—Trav, do you suppose that's just an accident? I've wondered sometimes whether God didn't decide Lincoln was a man He could use.”

Trav said uneasily: “I've never thought much about—religious things.”

“No, neither have I. Oh, I've gone to church with Cinda and the children, naturally. But without thinking. Now I'm beginning to.”

 

During the quiet weeks that followed, since in these idle days most of the staff were much at Mr. Taylor's, Trav and Longstreet had many hours together. Once they spoke of the battle. Trav had remarked that the Richmond papers were blaming Ewell, were saying that Jackson in Ewell's place would have won the battle the first day, were even critical of General Lee; and Longstreet said angrily:

“After things go wrong, civilians are always ready to say what should have been done; but they don't get those brilliant ideas beforehand.”

“You had some ideas beforehand,” Trav recalled.

“I did, yes; and I thought it my duty to express my views. But General Lee considered and appraised every plan that offered any promise. We ought to believe that what he did was best. He drew the enemy out of Virginia long enough to make it impossible for them to launch any summer campaign against us.” He smiled grimly. “He says Meade's army will be as mild as a brooding dove, for the next twelve months or so; and I agree with him. But in any case, to talk of what might have been done is folly.”

“I heard you defend General Pendleton to Colonel Fremantle.”

“Certainly! General Pendleton did his best. So did Ewell. So did General Heth. To criticize them now is to weaken their future usefulness.” Longstreet moved his broad shoulders. “If these little editors want to blame someone, let them blame me! I'd rather take all the blame than have them yapping at Ewell's heels, or Heth's. General Lee selected them for the work. To criticize his subordinates is to criticize him; and our commanding general must never be undermined by criticism.”

“What will we do now?” Trav asked. “Stand on the defensive?”

“There is one stroke we might try.” Longstreet spoke thoughtfully. “I discussed it with Secretary Seddon last spring.” He frowned. “My suggestions are badly timed, Currain. Perhaps I make them too soon. A year ago when McClellan was landing on the Peninsula, I suggested using the Valley as a sally port to threaten Washington, so Lincoln would call McClellan back. It was not done. We let McClellan come on. It's true General Lee drove him into the James. That was a splendid thing, but it was more risky than my plan.” Trav did not speak, and Longstreet went on: “We've just one advantage over the North, Currain. The Confederacy has interior lines. You saw what that meant at Gettysburg, where the advantage was with them. They could reinforce any threatened spot by moving troops a mile or so; while for us to call troops from our left to our right meant a march of four or five miles. But in the war as a whole, that advantage of interior lines is ours. We can move divisions, yes and whole corps, by rail to any point we choose. We haven't used that advantage. Last spring I
thought a sally into Tennessee might make Lincoln call Grant away from Vicksburg. If we'd put the First Corps on the cars and thrown them west to give Bragg enough strength for great work, we might have made Grant let go his grip on Vicksburg. We didn't do it then; but even now, a quick move into Tennessee might crush the Union army there and give us an open road to Cincinnati.”

“Have you suggested that again?”

Longstreet shook his head. “Not yet. Best to wait a while, see what Meade means to do. The end of August will be time enough, if the move seems wise.”

Sometimes they rode together, and they heard from the country folk echoes of last winter's battle at Fredericksburg, and of the victory at Chancellorsville. Some poor people were living by harvesting the bullets from those hard-fought fields; and one farmer said there would be a good yield of bones next summer, when the dead horses had had time to rot and the flesh to be picked clean off them. Trav wondered whether the bones of men would go into that ugly gleaning. There was a bone factory at Fredericksburg, the farmer said, which would pay a good price for all they could bring in.

“It's about the only crop a man can make around here these times,” he declared. “With the cavalry letting their horses eat things up soon as a sprout shows above the ground.” Bones were worth five or six dollars a hundred pounds. “And my old woman can pick up enough bullets in a day to pay for all the pork and meal we can eat in a week. They'll fetch two-three cents a pound; and it don't take many bullets to make a pound. Only trouble, it's quite a ways to where the fighting was.” He cackled mirthfully. “Next time you have a battle, have it here on my place and I'll be obliged to you.”

 

That month of August was a time of ferment in the camps. The soldiers got mail from home, and every letter was so full of discouragement that Longstreet thought mail should be opened and read before being delivered to the men. The Richmond papers were querulous; and in North.Carolina, Mr. Holden openly declared in the
Standard
that it was time for peace negotiations. Early in August the North Carolina regiments sent delegates to a meeting at Orange Court House to denounce Holden's editorials and to urge the people of North Carolina
to repudiate the editor and all his works. Moxley Sorrel and Major Fairfax joked Trav about his North Carolinians, but Longstreet came to his defense.

“Those North Carolina regiments that faltered at Gettysburg should never have been put into the assaulting column,” he said firmly. “They had been cut to pieces two days before, and they had lost most of their officers, so they were under strange commanders. Outside of Pickett's division, half the men killed and wounded at Gettysburg were North Carolina men. There are no harder fighters in the army.”

Nevertheless, especially among the North Carolina and the Georgia troops, there were through August many desertions. Trav thought idleness might be one of the causes. Men in camp with nothing to do were always likely to slip away to their homes. After Chancellorsville, General Lee had refused all furloughs, fearing that men who went home would not return; but now as many as could be spared were given leave. When Brett went to Richmond, Trav wished to go with him, but Longstreet said: “No, Currain. We may be moving soon. I'd like to go to Petersburg myself. Louisa writes me that she's more comfortable now, but it's a long time since I've seen her. But we may be needed here.”

“If I'm needed, of course I don't want to go,” Trav agreed. He asked: “What is the move to be?”

“Some force may be sent to strengthen Bragg. I've repeated my suggestion to the Secretary of War. If General Lee would go out there, he might do great things.”

Trav did not repeat this confidence to anyone; but rumors of a possible venture into Tennessee began to spread. When, late in August, General Lee went to Richmond, leaving Longstreet in command, the air was full of guesses and conjectures. Then suddenly everyone seemed to know that two divisions of the First Corps would go to Tennessee, and Longstreet put his staff to work on preparations. “The essence is to move quickly,” he told them. “The railroad from here through Cumberland Gap is in good order. We should be able to move the divisions there in two days at the best, four at the worst.” When, early in September, word came that that route was in imminent danger of being cut by the Union forces, the first plan had to be
changed; and the two or three or four days which the journey by that route would have taken became ten or twelve. But Longstreet, eager for this adventure in the field of his selection, brushed aside these delays as of no importance.

“We'll have to go south to Georgia and then north again,” he told Trav. “And the railroads that way are in poor condition, with different gauges so we'll have to change cars at every junction point. But at least, Currain, you'll have a day or two at home, and I'll have a glimpse of Louisa.”

The first trains loaded with troops left Orange Court House to begin that long journey; but Longstreet, with Trav and a part of the staff, stayed three days longer. The night before they were to leave for Richmond, Trav heard that ten North Carolina deserters, men from Steuart's brigade of Ewell's corps, had been sentenced to be shot at sunrise; and they were to be shot by firing squads drawn from North Carolina regiments. When next morning Longstreet rode to say good-by to General Lee, Trav went with him, and from a distance he heard the rattle of that fusillade. His lips were white with hurt and sorrow, and while he waited outside General Lee's tent for Longstreet to appear, his eyes were wet with tears.

Then the two generals came out together, and Trav heard a word or two. “Give my compliments to Mrs. Longstreet, General,” Lee said courteously.

“May I tell her, sir, that if her baby is a boy he is to bear your name?”

“By all means,” Lee assured him. “Now go, and finish quickly, and return to me.”

Longstreet said frankly: “If I didn't think this move necessary, I would be disturbed at leaving you. All that this army has to be proud of has been accomplished under your eye and under your orders. And our affection for you is as strong as our admiration.”