Mr Lincoln's Army (50 page)

The Confederates who were defending the line
in here belonged to D. H. Hill, and he had them cunningly posted at the crest
of a hill, lying down almost invisible, firing steadily. As the Northerners
came nearer these Rebels found themselves outnumbered and backed off; and when
the advancing Yankee fine got to the crest it looked down the reverse slope a
hundred yards or more to a sunken road packed full of Rebels who yelled furious
defiance. The Northerners' faces were already blackened by powder smoke, and a
couple of regiments wore brand-new uniforms of blue darker than ordinary,
which looked black in the morning sun, and the Southerners shouted: "Go
away, you black devils—go home!" along with much else.

It was a bad layout. An eighth of a mile
south of the Dunker church a country lane runs zigzag east and south from the
Hagers-town road, going for a quarter of a mile under the lee of a long hill,
climbing to a plateau for another quarter mile, and there making a sharp elbow
as it turns south. By years of usage and erosion this lane had been worn down
several feet below the surface of the ground, and it was bordered on both sides
by snake-rail fences. On the northern side the Rebels had taken these rails
down and piled them in a low breastwork, and they were lined up strongly in the
low road behind this obstruction, as securely entrenched as if they had been
digging all night. Lying below the brow of the hill, the lane could not be
reached by Federal artillery. The men who defended it were almost wholly
protected; the men who tried to take it would have to advance in the open,
exposed to a crippling fire. It was as nasty a strong point as the army ever
ran up against: the famous sunken road, known forever after (for sufficient
reason) as Bloody Lane.

The Yankee line halted on top of the hill,
dressing its ranks. In the road below the Rebels held their fire, waiting for
them. For a moment this part of the field was almost silent, and the waiting
Confederates could hear the shouted commands of the Northern officers as the
assaulting lines started forward. Down the slope they came, four ranks deep. A
colonel in the sunken road paid his tribute to the brilliance of the spectacle:
"Their gleaming bayonets flashed like burnished silver in the sunlight.
With the precision of step and perfect alignment of a holiday parade this
magnificent array moved to the charge, every step keeping time to the tap of
the deep-sounding drum."
⁴

Down the slope they came, nearer and
nearer, the Confederates crouching low in their trench, officers standing just
behind them, the whole field seeming breathless with suspense. Then, at a
shouted command, the Rebels leveled their muskets and fired, and a long sheet
of flame ran from end to end of the sunken road, a wave of smoke drifted up the
hillside, and the Yankee charge ceased to look like a holiday parade. The first
line of the assaulting wave was almost torn to pieces. The men halted, tried
to re-form, and the Southerners, reloading with desperate haste, stood up and
whacked in another volley. Back up the hill went the Northerners, to pull their
broken lines together and come down again; but the Rebel fire was too heavy.
The lines swayed to a halt halfway down the slope, and the men sprawled on the
ground to return the fire from the sunken road, both sides volleying away at
the closest range, while the terrible tumult of battle rose to a higher pitch
than ever. The leading Federal brigade finally faded back, and French sent
another one in to take its place.

Beyond the sunken lane were more Rebels in a
cornfield (not
the
cornfield:
this one belonged to a man named Piper), and they fired over the heads of the
men in the lane, tearing the Yankee lines. Rebel guns came up on the high
ground back by the Hagerstown road, and the great uproar of the battle was
deepened and increased as Federal guns beyond the Antietam marked these Rebel
batteries for destruction. The Southern gunners were in a hard spot. They were
under orders to forget about the Yankee guns and attend to the infantry —this
was the last line of defense, and if the Yankees broke through here it would be
the end; and whole batteries of long-range rifles beyond the creek concentrated
their fire on the Confederate guns, hammering the line from end to end,
smashing gun wheels and limber chests, dismembering gunners, sending shells
through whole ranks of waiting battery horses. Once a shell found a Confederate
caisson and blew it up with a crash that resounded above all the din, while an
immense cloud of black smoke shot upward. Never had the Southern batteries taken
such a fearful pounding; throughout the rest of the war they remembered this battle
as "artillery hell."

It was hell for the infantry too. The
strange, frenzied, illogical exaltation of spirit that descended on the
fighting men at times in this battle visited the troops who assaulted the
sunken road and the troops who defended it. Once a group of Rebels scrambled
out of the road and charged straight up the hill in a mad, doomed counterattack,
shook the Yankee line briefly, and then went all to bits in the fire; one
Federal who helped to repulse this attack said none of the Confederates got
back to the lane. Farther north, some courageous Southern artillery officer
rolled two guns out into an open field, and a mass of yelling Rebel infantry
came out to beat in the right flank of the Yankee line. Red-faced French,
storming and swearing with excitement, pulled the 8th Ohio and 14th Indiana out
of line and sent them over to meet the threat, and the Westerners fired until
their muskets were hot and foul, their ammunition gone, and half their men
down. From somewhere in the rear a section of Yankee guns came clattering up,
and the Rebel advance was driven back.

An immense sheet of smoke covered the
battlefield, like a low thundercloud that was forever pulsing and glowing with
lightning.

The
ground underfoot shook and trembled with the everlasting jar of the guns. The
bam by the Roulette house was jammed with wounded men. Screams, prayers, and
curses made it a horrible place, with hundreds of anguished men packed together
on the straw begging the surgeons to attend to them—surgeons bare-armed and
fearsomely streaked and spattered with blood, piles of severed arms and legs
lying by the slippery operating tables, the uproar of the battle beating in
through the thin walls. Stragglers from the fighting line crept into house and
outbuildings and drifted downhill toward the creek, where the valley gave
shelter.

French's division was fought to a standstill,
but new troops were coming up. Franklin arrived on the field with his army
corps from the valley north of Harper's Ferry, and he put a brigade in line on
French's right to prevent any further flanking maneuvers by the Rebels there.
What was left of Greene's division was pulled back from its lines around the
Dunker church, to join this brigade of Franklin's; and to the south Sumner's
third division, Richardson's, got across the creek at last and prepared to go
into action. Richardson rode along the line—strictly business this morning,
with the eccentricities of camp all shelved—and he shook out the Irish Brigade
with the golden harps on its emerald flags to spearhead the attack.

Between the general and the Irishmen there
was a warm friendship, and it all started because of a sly dodge worked by a
member of Richardson's staff. Early in the war, when the Irish Brigade was
first assigned to Richardson's division, this staff member—Captain Jack Gosson,
himself as Irish as Dublin—felt that it would be fine if the general got a good
first impression of the new brigade. So when Richardson started over to make
his first inspection Gosson rode on ahead of him. He found the three regiments
all drawn up, waiting, and he spurred up and addressed them eloquently about
the merits of their new commander.

"And
what do you think of the brave old fellow?" he cried at last, inspired to
a great and beautiful he. "He has sent to our camp three barrels of
whisky, a barrel for each regiment, to treat the boys of the brigade; and we
ought to give him a thundering cheer when he comes along."

This made sense to the Irishmen, and when
Richardson came up they threw their caps in the air and gave him one of the
most spirited ovations of the war. Naturally this pleased Richardson very much,
he being ignorant of Captain Gosson's stratagem, and ever afterward he was
especially devoted to the Irish Brigade. The complete nonappearance of the
whisky was not held against him, somehow; probably the boys could recognize an
artful Irish trick when they saw it. At any rate, this was Richardson's pet
brigade and he was the brigade's pet general, and when he came up they yelled
loudly and went swinging up the hill with their green flags snapping.
⁵

They
came up just in time, for French's men were in serious trouble. One brigade
had been broken and the other two had been taking a deadly pounding, and the
Rebels had mustered some new men and sent them forward beyond the lane, on the
higher ground, to crush the Union left flank. The Irishmen went charging into
this flank attack with savage power, the oncoming Confederate line halted to
meet them, and on the open field there was a terrible shock of point-blank fire
too hot for any troops to endure for long. General Meagher, who led the Irishmen,
decided that the only way out of it was straight ahead—his men could charge or
they could retreat; the one thing they could not do much longer was stand there
and take it. He edged a few squads forward to tear down a fence that rose in
their way, and then he stood up in his stirrups, raised his sword high, and
shouted over all the battle thunder: "Boys! Raise the colors and follow
me!" The green flags went tossing up and onward, the Irishmen cheered
again, and the Rebels slowly fell back into the sunken road, where they rallied
and poured out a fire which the Irish Brigade remembered afterward the way
Sedgwick's men remembered the fire in the West Wood—the heaviest they had to
face in all the war. Half of the 63 rd New York fell in that first volley, all
of the brigade color-bearers went down, and the men who snatched up the fallen
flags went down likewise—carrying the colors was a mean job in that war, for
hostile fire was always directed at the flags. A bullet killed Meagher's horse
in full gallop, and the beast fell heavily, knocking Meagher out so that he had
to be carried to the rear. The advance came to a halt a hundred yards from the
sunken road, the Irishmen hugged the ground, and the last of their ammunition
gave out.

Richardson was close behind, and he sent a
fresh brigade through them while the Irish soldiers went to the rear to get
more cartridges.

Still
under fire, they marched to the rear in columns as orderly as if they were on
the drill field, with no straggling, although the four regiments in the brigade
were down to five hundred men now. Richardson met them as they came out, rode
up to Lieutenant Colonel Kelly of the 88th New York, and cried: "Bravo,
88th-I shall never forget you!" and the exhausted soldiers gave him three
cheers. Then Richardson rode back to the front, and his fresh troops pushed forward
until they were within thirty yards of the sunken lane. All up and down the
half-mile length of that little country lane in front of French and Richardson
the air was ablaze beneath the smoke, and all the fury of the battle was coming
to a new climax.

Everything seemed to happen at once. D. H.
Hill found a gap between French and Richardson and sent troops forward, while
other Confederates went prowling around to the south and east, trying still
another flank attack around Richardson's new line. The first counterattack was
broken up easily, and Richardson spotted the second one just in time and sent
the 5th New Hampshire off to meet it. This regiment's Colonel Cross had a scalp
wound, and had bound a red bandanna around his head. He took his men in with
the grim warning: "If any man runs I want the file closers to shoot him.
If they don't, I shall myself." The New Hampshire boys set off on a run
through a ragged cornfield, collided with a North Carolina regiment on a little
knoll, and halted for a vicious fire fight amid the tattered cornstalks.
Richardson came up on foot—hatless, bare sword in hand, his face like a storm
cloud. He had just pricked some skulking major out of a hiding place, and the
men heard him shouting: "God damn the field officers!" He got into
the front line, the men surged forward with him, the North Carolinians gave
way, and the flank attack was beaten off.

There
was a pause. The sunken lane and the main Confederate line lay just ahead, the
heated air was full of drifting smoke and flying bullets, winded men snatched
breath in convulsive gulps as they nerved themselves for a new advance. Colonel
Cross, the old Indian fighter, got in front and turned to face them, face black
with smoke, eyes flaming.

"Put
on the war paint!" he yelled. The soldiers grabbed grimy cartridge papers
and smeared their sweaty faces with soot. "Now give 'em the war
whoop!" shouted Cross.

Cheers went up in a wild falsetto chorus. The
colonel swung his arm, and the line moved on. To the right the 81st
Pennsylvania began to advance at the same moment. Still farther to the right,
Colonel Barlow got the 61st and 64th New York regiments up to high ground where
they could enfilade part of the sunken lane. For the first time the Southerners
there came under a fire that was too hot to take, and they began to back away.
Then at last the whole line caved in, the sunken lane was abandoned, and
yelling Federals ran down the slope, clambered over the fence rails, and fired
at the backs of the retreating enemy.