The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide, Joseph A. Altsheler [best value ebook reader txt] 📗

the youths in gray saw that the Union army, having let the night pass, was beginning to cross the river. When the dawn finally came many regiments were already over and the wheels of the heavy cannon were thundering on the bridges. But the Confederate army lay quiet on the heights, although before morning it had drawn itself in somewhat, shortening the lines and making itself more compact.

"Look how they pour over the bridges!" said Harry, who stood glass to eye. "They come in thousands and thousands, regiments, brigades and whole divisions. Why, George, it looks as if the whole North were swarming down upon us!"

"They're a hundred and twenty thousand strong. We know that positively, and they're as brave as anybody. But we're eighty thousand strong, just sitting here on the heights and waiting. Harry, they'll cross that river again soon, and when they go back they'll be far less than a hundred and twenty thousand!"

He spoke with no sign of exultation. Instead it was the boding tone of an old prophet, rather than the sanguine voice of youth.

The fog deepened for a little while, and then some of the marching columns were hidden. Out of the mists and gloom came the quick music of many bands, playing the Northern brigades on to death. Then the fog lifted again, and along the heights ran the blaze of the Southern cannon as they sent shot and shell into the black masses of the Union troops crowding by Fredericksburg.

But as the echoes of the shots died away, Harry heard again the bands playing, and from the great Northern army below came mighty rolling cheers.

"The battle is here now, Harry," said Dalton, "and this is the biggest army we've ever faced."

The Union brigades, black in the somber winter dawn, seemed endless to Harry. From the point where he stood the advancing columns as they crossed the river looked almost solid. He knew that men must be falling, dead or wounded, beneath the fire of the Southern guns, but the living closed up so fast that he could not see any break in the lines.

"You can't see any sign of hesitation there," said Dalton. "The Northern generals may doubt and linger, but the men don't when once they get the word. What a tremendous and thrilling sight! It may be wicked in me, Harry, but since there is a war and battles are being fought, I'm glad I'm here to see it."

"So am I," said Harry. "It's something to feel that you're at the heart of the biggest things going on in the world. Now we've lost 'em!"

His sudden exclamation was due to a shift of the wind, bringing back the fog again and covering the river, the town and the advancing Union army. The Confederate cannon then ceased firing, but Harry heard distinctly the sounds made by scores of thousands of men marching, that measured tread of countless feet, the beat of hoofs, the rumbling of cannon wheels over roads now frozen hard, and the music of many bands still playing. The thrill was all the keener when the great army became invisible in the fog, although the mighty hum and murmur of varied sounds proved that it was still marching there.

Jackson was on the right of Lee's line. He would be, as usual, in the thick of it. His fighting line ran through deep woods, and he was protected, moreover, by the slope up which the Union troops would have to come, if they got near enough. Fourteen guns, guarded by two regiments, were on Prospect Hill at his extreme right, and on his left the ravine called Deep Run divided him from the command of Longstreet, which spread away toward Marye's Hill.

Jackson's own line was a mile and a half long and he had thirty thousand men, while Longstreet and the others had fifty thousand more. Lee himself, directing the whole, rode along the lines on his white horse, and whenever the men saw him cheers rolled up and down. But Lee had little to say. All that needed to be said had been said already.

Harry saw the great commander riding along that morning as calmly as if he were going to church. Lee, grave, imperturbable, was the last man to show emotion, but Harry thought once that he caught a gleam from the blue eye as he spoke a word or two with Jackson and went on. As he passed near them, Harry, Dalton and all the other young officers took off their hats, saluted and stood in silence. General Lee raised his own hat in return, and rode back toward the division of Longstreet.

Harry glanced toward General Jackson, who was also mounted. But he did not move and the reins lay loose on the animal's neck. Once the horse dropped his head and nuzzled under some leaves for a few blades of sheltered grass that had escaped the winter. But the general took no notice. He kept his glasses to his eyes and watched every movement of the enemy, when the fog lifted enough for him to see. Presently he beckoned to Harry.

"Ride over to General Stuart," he said, "and see if he has made any change in his lines. It is important that our formation be preserved intact and that no gaps be left."

Then General Jackson himself rode to another elevation for a different view, and the soldiers, from whom he had been hidden before by the fog, gazed at him in amazement. The gorgeous uniform that Stuart had sent him, worn only once before, and which they had thought discarded forever, had been put on again. The old slouch hat was gone, and another, magnificent with gold braid, looped and tasseled, was in its place. Instead of the faithful pony, Little Sorrel, he rode a big charger.

Usually cheers ran along the line whenever he appeared upon the eve of battle, but for a little space there was silence as the men gazed at him, many of them not even knowing him. Jackson flushed and looked down apologetically at the rich cloth and gold braid he wore. His eyes seemed to say, "Boys, I've merely put these on in honor of the victory we're going to win. But I won't do it again."

Then the cheers burst forth, spontaneous and ringing, proving a devotion that few men have ever been able to command. Stern and unflinching as Jackson invariably was in inflicting punishment, his soldiers always regarded him as one of themselves, the best man among them, one fitted by nature to lead democratic equals. After the cheers were over they watched him as he looked through the glasses from his new position. But he stayed there only a minute or two, going back then to his old point of vantage.

Harry meanwhile had reached Stuart, who, mounted upon a magnificent horse and clad in a uniform that fairly glittered through the fog itself, was waiting restlessly. But he had not changed any part of his line. Everything remained exactly as Jackson had ordered. He now knew Harry well and always called him by his first name.

"Have you an order?" he exclaimed eagerly. "Does General Jackson want us to advance?"

"He has said nothing about an advance," replied Harry tactfully. "He merely wanted me to ride down the line and report to him on the spirit of the soldiers as far as I could judge. He knew that your men, General, would be hard to hold."

Stuart threw back his head, shook his long yellow hair and laughed in a pleased way.

"General Jackson was right about my men," he said. "It's hard to keep them from galloping into the battle, and my feelings are with them. Yet we'll have all the fighting we want. Look at the great masses of the Union army!"

The fog had lifted again and the Northern columns were still advancing, marching boldly against the intrenched foe, although nearly every one of their generals save Burnside himself knew that it was a hopeless task. In all the mighty events of the war that Harry witnessed few were as impressive to him as this solemn and steady march of the Union army, heads erect and bands playing, into the jaws of death.

He stayed only a few moments with Stuart, returning direct to Jackson. On his way he passed Sherburne, who, with his troop, was on Stuart's extreme left flank. Harry leaned over, shook hands with him, nothing more, and rode on. With the lifting of the fog the Southern guns were again sending shot and sell into the blue masses. Then, from the other side of the river, the great Union batteries left on Stafford Heights began to hurl showers of steel toward the hostile ridges a little more than a mile and a half away. It was long range for those days, but the Union gunners, always excellent, rained shot and shell upon the Southern position.

Harry, used now to such a fire, went calmly on until he rejoined Jackson, who accepted with a nod his report that Stuart had not changed his lines anywhere. The general signed to him and the rest of the staff as they rode toward the center of the Southern line. Harry did not know their errand, but he surmised that they were to meet General Lee for the final conference. The general said no word, but rode steadily on. Union skirmishers, under cover of the fog and bushes, had crept far in advance of their columns, and, as the fog continued to thin away and the day to brighten, they saw Jackson and his staff.

Harry heard bullets whistling sinister little threats in his ear as they passed, and he heard other bullets pattering on the trees or the earth. They alarmed him more than the huge cannon thundering away from the other side of the river. But the fog, although thin, was still enough to make the aim of the skirmishers bad, and General Jackson and his staff went on their way unhurt.

They reached a little hill near the middle of the Southern bent bow. It had no name then, but it is called Lee's Hill now, because at nine o'clock that morning General Lee, mounted on his white horse, was upon its crest awaiting his generals, to give them his last instructions. Longstreet was already there, and, just as Jackson came, the fog thinned away entirely and the sun began to blaze with a heat almost like that of summer, rapidly thawing the hard earth.

The young officers on the different staffs reined back, while their chiefs drew together. Yet for a few moments no one said anything. Harry always believed that the veteran generals were moved as he was by the sight below. The great banks of white fog were rolling away down the river before the light wind and the brilliant sun.

Now Harry saw the Army of the Potomac in its full majesty. On the wide plain that lay on the south bank of the Rappahannock nearly a hundred thousand men were still advancing in regular order, with scores and scores of cannon on their flanks or between the columns. The army which looked somber black in the misty dawn now looked blue in the brilliant sun. The stars and stripes, the most beautiful flag in the world, waved in hundreds over their heads. The bands were still playing, and the great batteries which they had left on Stafford Heights across the river continued that incessant roaring fire over their heads at the Southern army on its own heights. The smoke from the cannon, whitish in color, drifted away down the river with the fog, and the whole spectacle still remained in the brilliant sunlight.

Harry's respect for the Union artillery, already high, increased yet further. The field was now mostly open, where all could see, and the gunners not only saw their targets, but were able to take good aim. The storm of shot and shell from Stafford Heights was frightful. It seemed to Harry—again his imagination was alive—that the very air was darkened by the rush of steel. Despite their earthworks and other shelter the Southern troops began to suffer from that dreadful sleet, but the little conference on Lee's Hill went on.

Longstreet, sitting his horse steadily, looked long at the dense masses below.

"General," he said to General Jackson, "doesn't that myriad of Yankees frighten you?"

"It won't be long before we see whether we shall frighten them," replied Jackson.

General Lee said a few words, and then