The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 88

Lee reached the field and took command. Mahone's men came to the rescue marching with swift, steady tread. They took their position on the crest which commanded the open s.p.a.ce toward the captured trenches.

As Wright's brigade moved into position, the Black Battalions were ordered to charge. They had been hurried through the crater and into the trenches on the right and left. At the signal they swarmed over the works, with a voodoo yell, and in serried black waves, charged the men in gray. In broad daylight the Southerners saw for the first time the plan of the dramatic attack.

The white men of the South shrieked an answer and gripped their muskets.

The cry they gave came down the centuries from three thousand years of history. It came from the hearts of a conquering race of men. They had heard the Call of the Blood of the Race that rules the world.

Without an order from their commanders, with a single impulse, the whole Southern line leaped from their cover and dashed on the advancing Black Legions in a counter charge so swift, so terrible, there was but a single crash and the yell of white victory rang over the field. The Blacks broke and piled pell mell into the trenches and on into the h.e.l.l hole of the crater.

Fifty of Lee's guns were now pouring a steady stream of sh.e.l.ls into this pit of the d.a.m.ned.

The charging gray lines rolled over the captured trenches. They ringed the edge of the crater with a circle of flaming muskets. The writhing ma.s.s of dead, dying, wounded and living, scrambling blacks and whites, was a thing for devil's joy. At the bottom of the pit the heap was ten feet deep in moving flesh. In vain the terror-stricken blacks scrambled up the slippery sides through clouds of smoke. They fell backward and rolled down the crumbling walls.

Young John Doyle stood on the brink of this crater, his eyes aflame with revenge. His musket was so hot at last he threw it down, tore a cartridge belt from the body of a dead negro trooper, seized his rifle and went back to his task.

Sickened at last by the holocaust, the officers of the South ordered their men to cease firing. They had charged without orders. They refused to take orders. The officers began to strike them with their swords!

"Cease firing!"

"d.a.m.n you, stop it!"

Their orders rang around the flaming curve in vain. They seized the men by their collars and dragged them back. The gray soldiers tore away, rushed to the smoking rim and fired as long as they had a cartridge in their belts.

It was the poor white man who got beyond control at the sight of these yelling black troops wearing the uniform of the Republic. Had their souls leaped the years and seen in a vision dark-skinned hosts charging the ranks of white civilization in a battle for supremacy of the world?

CHAPTER XLV

When the smoke had lifted from the field of the Black Battalions, Lee stood in Richmond before a secret meeting of the leaders of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided. The meeting was called by request of the Commander. He had an important announcement to make.

Facing the anxious group gathered around the Cabinet table he spoke with unusual emphasis:

"Gentlemen, the end is in sight unless I can have more men. So long as I can burrow underground my half-clothed and half-starved soldiers will hold Grant at bay. I may hold him until next spring. Not longer. The North is using negro troops. They have enrolled nearly two hundred thousand. Their man power counts. We can arm our negroes to meet them.

They will fight under the leaders.h.i.+p of their masters. I speak as a mathematician and a soldier. I do not discuss the sentimental side. I must have men and I must have them before spring or your cause is lost."

Robert Toombs of Georgia leaped to his feet. His words came slowly, throbbing with emotion.

"Any suggestion from General Lee deserves the immediate attention of this Government. He speaks to-night as an engineer and mathematician. He has told us the worst. It was his duty. I honor him for it.

"But I differ with him. He can see but one angle of this question. He is a soldier in field. It is our duty to see both the soldier's and the statesman's point of view. And our cause is not so desperate as the science of engineering and mathematics would tell us.

"The war of the revolution was won by Was.h.i.+ngton in spite of mathematics. The odds were all against him. We have our chance. This war is now in its fourth year. The outlook seems dark in Richmond. It is darker in Was.h.i.+ngton. What have they accomplished in these years of blood and tears? Nothing. Not a slave has been freed. Not a question at issue has found its solution. The millions of the North are in despair and they are crying for peace--peace at any price. The Presidential election is but a few weeks off. They have nominated Abraham Lincoln again for President. They had to, although he is the most unpopular man who ever sat in the White House. All the mistakes, all the agony, all the horrors of this war, they have unjustly heaped on his drooping shoulders.

"McClellan is his opponent _on a peace platform_.

"The Republican Party is split as ours was before the war. John C.

Fremont is running on the Radical ticket against Lincoln. Unless a miracle happens General George B. McClellan will be elected the next President. If he is, the war ends in a draw.

"It's a fair chance. We can take it.

"But our chance of success is not the real question before us. It is a bigger one. The question before you is bigger than the South. It is bigger than the Republic. It is bigger than the Continent. It may involve the future of civilization.

"The employment of these negro troops, clothed in the uniform of the Union, marks the lowest tide mud to which its citizens.h.i.+p has ever sunk.

The profoundest word in history is _race_. The ancestral soul of a people rules its destiny. What is the ancestral soul of the negro? The measurement of the skull of the Egyptian is exactly the shape and size of six thousand years ago. Has the negro moved upward? This republic was born of the soul of a race of pioneer white freemen who settled our continent and built an altar within its Forest Cathedral to Liberty and Progress. In the record of man has a negro ever dreamed this dream?

"The Roman Republic fell and Rome became a degenerate Empire. Why?

Because of the lowering of her racial stock by slaves. The decline of the Roman spirit was due to a mixture of races. The flower of her manhood died on her far-flung battle lines. Slaves and degenerates at home bred her future citizens.

"Have we also placed our feet on the path of oblivion? History is littered with the wrecks of civilization. And always the secret is found in racial degeneracy--the lowering of the standard of racial values.

Civilization is a name--an effect. Race is the cause. If a race maintains its soul, it must remain itself and it must breed its best.

Race is the result of thousands of years of this selection. One drop of negro blood makes a negro. The inferior can always blot out the superior if granted equality.

"This uniform is the first step toward racial oblivion for the white man in America. It is the first step toward equality. A people of half breeds have no soul. They are always ungovernable. The negro is the lowest species of man. Through Slavery he has been disciplined into the family of humanity. We cannot yet grant him equality. Abraham Lincoln who has consented to arm these blacks against us has himself said:

_"'There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid them living together on terms of political or social equality.'_

"How can he prevent social and political equality once these black men are clothed with the dignity of the uniform of a Nation? He has declared his intention of colonizing the negro race. General Lee also holds this as the solution. If Slavery falls, it _is_ the _only_ solution.

"In the meantime we hold fast to the faith within us. Dare to arm a negro, drill and teach him to kill white men, and we are traitors to country, traitors to humanity, traitors to civilization. Robert E. Lee himself is the supreme contradiction of the sentimental mush involved in the dogma of equality. His genius and character is a racial product.

"The man in gray stands for two things, Reverence for Law and the Racial Supremacy of the White Man.

"If we must clothe negroes in gray to save the Confederacy, let it go down in blood and ashes. We'll stand for this. And hand our ideal down to our children. If defeat shall come, we may yet live to save the Republic. We hold a message for Humanity."

There was no further discussion. The South chose death before racial treason.

CHAPTER XLVI

The miracle which Toombs feared came to pa.s.s. In the blackest hour of the Lincoln administration, his own party despaired of his election. The National Republican Committee came to Was.h.i.+ngton and demanded that he withdraw from the ticket and allow them to name a candidate who might have a chance against General McClellan and his peace platform.

And then it happened.

Sherman suddenly took Atlanta and swung his legions toward the sea. A black pall of smoke marked his trail. The North leaped once more with the elemental impulse. A wave of war enthusiasm swept Lincoln back into the White House. And a new line of blue soldiers streamed to Grant's front.

The ragged men in gray were living on parched corn. Grant edged his blue legions farther and farther southward until he saw the end of the mortal trenches Lee's genius had built. The lion sprang on his exposed flank and Petersburg was doomed.

The Southern Commander sent his fated message to Richmond that he must uncover the Capital of the Confederacy, and staggered out of his trenches to attempt a union of forces with Johnston's army in North Carolina.

Grant's host were on his heels, his guns thundering, his cavalry destroying.

A negro regiment entered Richmond as the flames of the burning city licked the skies.

Lee paused at Appomattox to await the coming of his provision train. His headquarters were fixed beneath an apple tree in full bloom.