The Long Roll Part 94

The aides lifted the wounded general. "No one," said Hill, "must tell the troops who was wounded." The other opened his eyes. "Tell them simply that you have a wounded officer. General Hill, you are in command now. Press right on."

With a gesture of sorrow Hill went, returning to the front. The others rested at the edge of the road. At that moment the Federal batteries opened, a hissing storm of shot and sh.e.l.l, a tornado meant measurably to r.e.t.a.r.d that antic.i.p.ated, grey onrush. The range was high. Aides and couriers laid the wounded leader on the earth and made of their bodies a screen. The trees were cut, the earth was torn up; there was a howling as of unchained fiends. There pa.s.sed what seemed an eternity and was but ten minutes. The great blue guns slightly changed the direction of their fire. The storm howled away from the group by the road, and the men again lifted Jackson. He stood now on his feet; and because troops were heard approaching, and because it must not be known that he was hurt, all moved into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road came on--Pender's brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and asked who was wounded. "A field officer," answered one, but there came from some direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He sprang from his horse. "Don't say anything about it, General Pender," said Jackson.

"Press on, sir, press on!"

"General, they are using all their artillery. It is a very deadly fire.

In the darkness it may disorganize--"

The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. "You must hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out to the last, sir."

"I will, general, I will," said Pender.

A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid upon it.

The little procession moved toward Dowdall's Tavern. A shot pierced the arm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the litter. It tilted.

The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring afresh the wounded limb, striking and bruising his side. They raised him, pale, now, and silent, and at last they struggled through the wood to a little clearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, too, came the doctor, a man whom he loved, and knelt beside him. "I hope that you are not badly hurt, general?"

"Yes, I am, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying."

In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield, painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. "He isn't badly hurt?"

"Yes. Badly hurt."

Crutchfield groaned. "Oh, my G.o.d!" Stonewall Jackson heard and made the ambulance stop. "You must do something for Colonel Crutchfield, doctor.

Don't let him suffer."

A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece of sh.e.l.l.

Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the guidance through the night of the advance upon the roads to the fords, was killed. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of Chancellorsville, fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness chanted a battle chant indeed to the moon, the moon that was pale and wan as if wearied with silvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a litter, just back of his advanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. Stuart was far toward Ely's Ford, riding through the night in plume and fighting jacket. The straining horses, the recalling order, reached him.

"General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! I in command!

My G.o.d, man! all changed like that? _Right about face! Forward! March!_"

There was, that night, no grey a.s.sault. But the dawn broke clear and found the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolled in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet two miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strong entrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men.

Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight. In the dawn, the 2nd Corps, swung from the right by a master hand, struck full against the Federal centre, struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May morning broke a thunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal on peal, crash on cras.h.!.+ The grey sh.e.l.ls struck the Chancellor house. They set it on fire.

It went up in flames. A fragment of sh.e.l.l struck and stunned Fighting Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The grey musketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.

In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the scrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack against his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right and Anderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again a unit.

Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson was badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and this Wilderness remembered. "_Forward. Charge!_" cried Jeb Stuart. "Remember Jackson!" He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!

Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at their head, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. "_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_"

By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced, Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all, was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of Northern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well, you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"

He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospital near Dowdall's Tavern. "_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could I have directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country to be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee._"

An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in the deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said, "General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to G.o.d."

For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, at the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then they rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of the Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern sh.o.r.e and the road to Richmond--Richmond no nearer for McDowell, no nearer for McClellan, no nearer for Pope, no nearer for Burnside, no nearer for Hooker, no nearer after two years of war! In the Wilderness and thereabouts Hooker lost seventeen thousand men, thirteen guns, and fifteen hundred rounds of cannon ammunition, twenty thousand rifles, three hundred thousand rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army of Northern Virginia lost twelve thousand men.

On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from the Wilderness to Guiney's Station. Here was a large old residence--the Chandler house--within a sweep of gra.s.s and trees; about it one or two small buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to its doors with wounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in a rude cabin among the trees. The left arm had been amputated in the field hospital. He was thought to be doing well, though at times he complained of the side which, in the fall from the litter, had been struck and bruised.

At daylight on Thursday he had his physician called. "I am suffering great pain," he said. "See what is the matter with me." And presently, "Is it pneumonia?"

That afternoon his wife came. He was roused to speak to her, greeted her with love, then sank into something like stupor. From time to time he awakened from this, but there were also times when he was slightly delirious. He gave orders in a shadow of the old voice. "You must hold out a little longer, men; you must hold out a little longer!... Press forward--press forward--press forward!... Give them canister, Major Pelham!"

Friday went by, and Sat.u.r.day. The afternoon of this day he asked for his chaplain, Mr. Lacy. Later, in the twilight, his wife sang to him, old hymns that he loved. "Sing the fifty-first psalm in verse," he said. She sang,--

"Show pity, Lord! O Lord, forgive--"

The night pa.s.sed and Sunday the tenth dawned. He lay quiet, his right hand on his breast. One of the staff came for a moment to his bedside.

"Who is preaching at headquarters to-day?" He was told, and said, "Good!

I wish I might be there."

The officer's voice broke. "General, general! the whole army is praying for you. There's a message from General Lee."

"Yes, yes. Give it."

"He sends you his love. He says that you must recover; that you have lost your left arm, but that he would lose his right arm. He says tell you that he prayed for you last night as he had never prayed for himself. He repeats what he said in his note that for the good of Virginia and the South he could wish that he were lying here in your place--"

The soldier on the bed smiled a little and shook his head. "Better ten Jacksons should lie here than one Lee."

It was sunny weather, fair and sweet with all the bloom of May, the bright trees waving, the long gra.s.s rippling, waters flowing, the sky azure, bees about the flowers, the birds singing piercingly sweet, mother earth so beautiful, the sky down-bending, the light of the sun so gracious, warm, and vital!

A little before noon, kneeling beside him, his wife told Stonewall Jackson that he would die. He smiled and laid his hand upon her bowed head. "You are frightened, my child! Death is not so near. I may yet get well."

The doctor came to him. "Doctor, Anna tells me that I am to die to-day.

Is it so?"

"Oh, general, general!--It is so."

He lay silent a moment, then he said, "Very good, very good! It is all right."

Throughout the day his mind was now clouded, now clear. In one of the latter times he said there was something he was trying to remember.

There followed a half-hour of broken sleep and wandering, in the course of which he twice spoke a name, "Deaderick." Once he said "Horse Artillery," and once "White Oak Swamp."

The alternate clear moments and the lapses into stupour or delirium were like the sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted at last, the prey at last of a sh.o.r.eless sea. At times he came head and shoulders out of the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey-blue eyes full on one of his staff. All the staff was gathered in grief about the bed. "When Richard Cleave," he said, "asks for a court of enquiry let him have it.

Tell General Lee--" The sea drew him under again.

It hardly let him go any more; moment by moment now, it wore out the strong swimmer. The day drew on to afternoon. He lay straight upon the bed, silent for the most part, but now and then wandering a little. His wife bowed herself beside him; in a corner wept the old man, Jim.

Outside the windows there seemed a hush as of death.

"Pa.s.s the infantry to the front!" ordered Stonewall Jackson. "Tell A. P.

Hill to prepare for action!" The voice sank; there came a long silence; there was only heard the old man crying in the corner. Then, for the last time in this phase of being, the great soldier opened his eyes. In a moment he spoke, in a very sweet and calm voice. "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." He died.

The bells tolled, the bells tolled in Richmond, tolled from each of her seven hills! Sombre was the sound of the minute guns, shaking the heart of the city! Oh, this capital knew the Dead March in Saul as a child knows his lullaby! To-day it had a depth and a height and was a dirge indeed. To-day it wailed for a Chieftain, wailed through the streets where the rose and magnolia bloomed, wailed as may have wailed the trumpets when Priam brought Hector home. The great throng to either side the streets s.h.i.+vered beneath the wailing, beneath the low thunder of the drums. There was lacking no pomp of War, War who must have gauds with which to hide his naked horror. The guns boomed, the bells tolled, the m.u.f.fled drums beat, beat! Regiments marched with reversed arms, with colours furled. There was mournful civic pomp, mournful official. There came a great black hea.r.s.e drawn by four white horses. On it lay the body of Stonewall Jackson, and over it was drawn the deep blue flag with the arms of Virginia, and likewise the starry banner of the eleven Confederate States. Oh, heart-breaking were the minute guns, and the tolling, tolling bells, and the deep, slow, heroic music, and the sobbing of the people! It was a cloudless day and filled with grief.

Behind the hea.r.s.e trod Little Sorrel.

Beneath arching trees, by houses of mellow red brick, houses of pale grey stucco, by old porches and ironwork balconies, by wistaria and climbing roses and magnolias with white chalices, the long procession bore Stonewall Jackson. By St. Paul's they bore him, by Was.h.i.+ngton and the great bronze men in his company, by Jefferson and Marshall, by Henry and Mason, by Lewis and Nelson. They bore him over the greensward to the Capitol steps, and there the hea.r.s.e stopped. Six generals lifted the coffin, Longstreet going before. The bells tolled and the Dead March rang, and all the people on the green slopes of the historic place uncovered their heads and wept. The coffin, high-borne, pa.s.sed upward and between the great, white, Doric columns. It pa.s.sed into the Capitol and into the Hall of the Lower House. Here it rested before the Speaker's Chair.