House Divided (186 page)

Since the capitulation, Lee's army had contracted, the First Corps moving up from New Hope Church, where they had drawn that last defensive line across the road, to make themselves as comfortable as was possible in the woods on the upper slopes no more than a mile from the Appomattox. Tuesday morning, General Alexander put his guns in single column along the road and delivered them where they stood to the Federal officers appointed to receive them. Trav, from the slopes above, watched that formality; and he waited to see the guns file away down to the bridge and up the hill to the village. But they did not move, and after a time the men grouped around them began to drift back up the road again, and Trav saw Brett and joined him, walking Nig by Brett's side.

“Why didn't they take the guns?” he asked.

Brett said in a hoarse voice, his eyes on the road: “They're too deep in mud. Our horses can't move them. We had to manhandle every gun to get them into line. The Yankees haven't any horses to spare. They haven't decided what to do.” His tone was heavy with stale fatigue, and Trav did not speak. Brett said absently: “General Alexander plans to leave the country, go to Brazil, or anywhere there's work for a good artilleryman.”

“West Point men have no other trade but war,” Trav reflected. “But I suppose they can never have an army command again, not Confederate officers.” He added: “Latrobe is planning to go to England.”

Brett plodded through the mud. “Fitz Lee took his men away before the surrender. Burr and Rollin are gone. I don't hear any more talk about taking to the mountains, guerrilla war.”

“No, this will end it all. Will you go back to Richmond?”

“Yes, at first. I think we may all go to the Plains when we can. If we can. Probably Richmond will be garrisoned.”

“General Longstreet and I will go to Lynchburg,” Trav told him. “Enid's there, and Mrs. Longstreet.”

After a few paces Brett said: “Trav, I have some news of Tony.” Trav looked at him in surprise, and Brett explained: “From Mr. Owen, of the Washington Artillery. He had a letter from a friend in New Orleans, describing conditions there. Mr. Owen did not know there was any relationship between Anthony Currain and me, and I did not inform him.”

“What was it he said?”

“Why, that Tony has set up an establishment there.” Brett did not meet Trav's eyes. “His wife is a very beautiful—Creole. Every Yankee in New Orleans knows Miss Sapphira.” Trav felt his spine prick, and Brett went on: “According to Mr. Owen's correspondent, Tony is in politics. There have always been free negroes in New Orleans, and now Tony is on familiar political—and social—terms with their leaders. He seems to have a financial interest in a Republican newspaper there, run by some San Domingan negroes.” Trav could not speak, and after a moment Brett added: “You see, New Orleans has been a Northern city for three years now. I suppose it's a sample of what will happen in the whole South. Mr. Owen is afraid that when civil government is re-established, negroes may get the suffrage. Apparently, if that happens, Tony will control a good many votes.”

Trav felt anger like a sickness in him. He would not look at Brett, trudging with downcast head beside him; and when someone called his name—“Mornin', Major Currain!”—he welcomed the interruption. He turned and saw, lounging among the trees with half a dozen others whose faces were familiar, Lonn Tyler. Here were the fragments of the Eleventh North Carolina, the regiment with which he
had faced those flaming guns at Gettysburg. When he pulled up his horse, Brett went on; and Trav after a moment's hesitation let him go. Of Tony, there was no more to be said. Let him be forgotten.

So he stayed, sitting his horse with these simple men grouped around him. Lonn offered him a canteen, and more from politeness than desire Trav lifted it to his lips. Some fiery liquid with a bitter flavor burned his throat, and he stifled a cough. “God Almighty, what's that?”

“Pine-top whiskey, Major. They make it around here. A farmer back along give us a jug of it. You got to say for it, it warms you!”

Trav wiped his streaming eyes. “Well, gentlemen; we'll all soon be starting home.”

Lonn said cheerfully: “If I had the sense God give a chipmunk I'd have started four years ago. Yes, and got there and stayed there, too!”

“Your soldiering's almost done.” Trav spoke at random, any words at all. “One more march, to lay down your guns and cartridge boxes, and your flag.”

Lonn grinned and looked around and saw an officer near-by and called to him. “Cap'n, the Major here says we-uns got to lay down our flag.” The officer approached and Trav recognized Captain Outlaw of C Company.

“Why, no, Major,” the Captain said mildly. “Not our regiment. Last Friday night we all saw this coming, and we decided no Yankee was ever going to touch our flag. The legislature gave it to the Bethel Regiment, and the Bethel Regiment passed it on to us; so we decided it was too good for the Yankees. We took it off the staff and carried the staff with the cover on it all day Saturday, so no one could tell the flag wasn't there; and Sunday morning when we saw General Lee all dressed up and riding to meet Grant, we took the flag off in the woods and burned it.”

Lonn Tyler said dryly: “So, Major, if you look to see us lay down our flag you're due to be some supprised.”

Trav was astonished at his own fierce rush of gladness at this incident. A flag was such a little thing; yet how many men North and South—rude, untutored men like Lonn Tyler in whom you would not readily suspect fine sensibilities and spiritual loyalties—had died in these four years for just such draggled, shot-torn banners as the one
these men had consecrated in the flames! In any combat, the battle flags were focus of the fiercest fighting. Men did not, in the heat of action, fight for their families, or their homes, or their possessions, or their states, or the cause to which they adhered; they fought for their flags, to protect their own, to seize the enemy's. Trifles meant in the end so much more, moved men's hearts so much more deeply, than the great things. Perhaps it was because they were trifles, and so within reach of every comprehension.

 

All that day, General Alexander's guns remained in the road where they had been surrendered, the column extending from the bridge up the slope for almost a mile. The exhausted horses stood patiently in the rain; and dusk came down and found them there. At dawn Wednesday, when Trav went to look, the guns had not been moved, but many of the horses were down. They had fallen from exhaustion and were too nearly starved to scramble to their feet again.

There were other gaps in the bogged column too; for horses with any work left in them had been cut from their traces during the night and spirited away. Trav guessed that the Yankee guards had shut their eyes to this. “Let the men keep their horses,” Grant had said. Well, many a man, when the time came to depart, would have a horse to ride who had had none before.

 

The final act of the tragedy was played out under skies that had been wept dry by two days' rain, under a gloomy canopy of lowering clouds. There were no bands to set the rhythm of the last march, and no drums to beat. If the sun rose that day, no man saw it. Dawn came gray through the cloud scud.

The formal laying down of arms would follow a pattern prearranged. For the march down to the stream, and up the road along which the victors would await their coming, General Gordon and his Second Corps would lead, the First Corps bring up the rear. Till time for the First Corps to fall in, Trav had no duties; so he watched from the heights half a mile short of the bridge as Gordon's men began to form in the field beside the road still clogged with Alexander's guns. Beyond the stream he saw, through the gray light of that dull morning, files of Union soldiers march down toward the bridge and form facing
the road, two lines on one side, one on the other. He remembered old tales of prisoners taken captive by Indians and required to run a gantlet. Yonder was the gantlet which this army presently must run.

Some of Gordon's regiments now taking position yonder were so reduced in numbers that only a color guard remained. Except for an occasional low word of command, a hush lay across that gentle valley. Men moved in silence to their places and stood waiting; and some were proudly erect and some hung their heads.

Trav watched till at last General Gordon led his van down toward the stream. In addition to the Stars and Bars which most regiments displayed, there were so many battle flags that the moving files of men seemed to be crowned with red, and Trav had a sudden vision of what those flags meant, of the many regiments which once in full strength had marched under those colors. How many thousands of brave men had followed these torn and tattered flags into the bloody battles of the years now ending here! How few of those fine men of valor were alive today! Their blood, blood of the bravest and the best, was long since spilled; their bodies, often left unburied, had rotted or had been devoured by hogs and vermin. Their bones lay bleaching in the new green grass of this month of April, all across those southern fields.

They were dead, and the sons they might have sired would never be born. The South, yes, and the nation, had lost not those fine men alone, but the generations of their sons who now would never be. The nation and the world would be poorer for that loss, poorer forevermore.

 

Trav's eyes blurred, and he turned back to be ready to take his place when the First Corps should move. Behind him, across the river toward the village, he heard a bugle blow; but he did not look that way. When he rejoined the staff, the men of the First Corps were already in formation, but they would not tread too close on the heels of those in front; and whenever the head of the column halted, so must they all.

Thus on that last march there were many halts, and many brief forward movements. At the halts even Nig stood patiently; when they moved on, the horse showed no eagerness or haste. Trav with his comrades of the staff—Manning, Latrobe, all the others—came a little
behind Longstreet, letting the General have the road to himself. Trav wondered why he had followed that big man so far. Except for brief moments when battle frenzy spurred him into explosive action, he had never been at heart the warrior. He wondered, too, why grief now tortured him. He was glad the war was done; yet the gloomy pageantry of this hour, the set faces all around him, the silent men and the sluggish beat of weary feet in the churned mud of the road, combined to wring his very vitals, as though all his organs were caught in a twisted rope and squeezed to agonizing pain.

When the road dipped more steeply toward the bridge, the whole scene lay under his eye. The gray-clad column flowed past the abandoned guns down to the stream; it climbed the hill between those ranks of men in blue and disappeared over the crest. Beyond the bridge he saw a group of mounted Union officers. Doubtless they were the ones chosen to receive this surrender.

He heard suddenly a bugle blow, and along the ranks of the enemy a ripple ran. Their pieces moved smartly and were still. Trav looked at Longstreet. The big man, since his wound paralyzed the nerves, had carried his right arm in a sling; but he who rarely or never wore any weapon today had belted on a sword. Trav saw him now remove the sling and stuff it into the pocket of his uniform, leaving his right arm free.

They came near the stream and halted again, and again went on. As Nig crossed the bridge, Trav held his eyes straight ahead, feeling upon him the steady eyes of the ranked soldiers in blue who walled the road. A moment later he heard again the bugle sound, and every Yankee musket came to Carry Arms, in courteous salute to the vanquished. Longstreet at the column's head swept his sword up and down in signal for response; and Trav heard the men behind him shift their pieces in acknowledgment of the victor's gesture. He understood then why Longstreet a while ago had freed his sword arm; and this proof of the General's unshaken mastery of himself made Trav's eyes burn with proud tears.

They had to halt once more, just short of the crest of the rise, while Gordon's last division laid down its arms. When the road was clear they moved again, and at command halted and left-faced. Longstreet and his staff wheeled into position behind their men. Trav saw the
shabby lines dress ranks; he heard the scrape of steel as bayonets were fixed and arms were stacked. At the word, the men stripped off their cartridge boxes and hung them on the muskets; the color-bearers rolled the flags and laid them on the ground with lingering, tender hands.

The leading division stood at attention while Yankee wagons came to collect the stacked muskets, to empty the cartridge boxes, to gather the battle flags. When the surrendered weapons and the trophies had been removed, this division marched on, and another took its place; and again there was that pattern of relinquishment, and again and again. Trav did not know how long he sat there; the solemn pageant of surrender beat upon him blow by blow.

 

After the last man had made his gesture and the long ordeal ended, there was some mingling with blue-clad officers. Small fires began to burn along the street where the cartridges which had been emptied from the boxes lay in a windrow, and now spent their strength in futile spurts among the crawling flames. Trav was not of that fraternity of West Point men who now renewed old acquaintances, so he took no part in this exchange of polite words; and he was relieved when Longstreet presently drew apart, gathering the officers of his staff around him, all of them for the last time together.

There were no long farewells. “Well, gentlemen,” the General said, his voice harsh to mask his deep emotion, “the war is ended. It is time for us to ride to our homes and take up the harder tasks of peace.”

They talked a moment quietly; they exchanged hand clasps, and Trav was surprised at his own sense of loss in saying these good-bys. Little Peyton Manning, so small he might have been a boy, a Mississippi man from Aberdeen, would ride first to Richmond. “I'll stay there till things are more settled before I start for home.” Manning, always considerate and kind, had a thousand times led them all to laughter; but there was never any sting in his jests. Latrobe was equally kindly; and Fairfax, for all his addiction to his cups and his clumsy buffoonery, had a heart big enough to love all the world—and to make you love him. Young Dunn, and Frank Potts, and Goree, and Major Otey who would ride with them to Lynchburg; yes, Trav loved them all.