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

Jackson and Longstreet returned to their respective divisions, Jackson, as Harry noted, showing not the least excitement, although the resolute Union general, Franklin, with nearly sixty thousand men and one hundred and twenty guns, was marching directly against his own position.

But Harry felt excitement, and much of it. In front of Jackson in a great line of battle, a mile and a half long, they were moving forward, still in perfect array. But there was something wanting in that huge army. It was the lack of a great animating spirit. There was no flaming flag, like the soul of Jackson, to wave in the front of a fiery rush that could not be stopped.

The blue mass hesitated and stopped. Out of it came three Pennsylvania brigades led by Meade, who was to be the Meade of Gettysburg, and less than five thousand strong they advanced against Jackson. Harry was amazed. Could it be possible that they did not know that Jackson with his full force was there?

The Pennsylvanians charged gallantly. The young General Pelham, who had been sent forward with two pieces of artillery, opened on them fiercely, but the heavy batteries covering the advance of the Pennsylvanians drove Pelham out of action, although he held the whole force at bay for half an hour. In his retreat he lost one of his own guns, and then Franklin brought up more batteries to protect the further advance of Meade and the Pennsylvanians. The batteries across the river helped them also, never ceasing to send a rain of steel over their troops upon the Southern army.

But Jackson's men still lay close in the woods and behind their breastworks. Nearly all that rain of steel flew over their heads. A shower of twigs and boughs fell on them, but so long as they stayed close the great artillery fire created terror rather than damage. The men were panting with eagerness, but not one was allowed to pull trigger, nor was a cannon fired.

"Burnside must think there's but a small force here," said Dalton, "or he wouldn't send so few men against us. Harry, when I look down at those brigades of Yankees I think of the old Roman salute—it was that of the gladiators, wasn't it?—'Morituri salutamus.'"

"They're doomed," said Harry.

Jackson, like the others, had dismounted, and he walked forward with a single aide to observe more closely the Union advance. A Northern sharpshooter suddenly rose out of high weeds, not far in front, and fired directly at them. The bullet whistled between Jackson and his aide. Jackson turned to the young man and said:

"Suppose you go to the rear. You might get shot."

The young man, of course, did not go, and Harry, who was not far behind them in an earthwork, watched them with painful anxiety. He had seen the sudden uprising of the Northern skirmisher in the weeds and the flame from the muzzle. The man might not have known that it was Jackson, but he must have surmised from the gorgeous uniform that it was a general of importance.

Harry, with the trained eye of a country boy, saw a rippling movement running among the weeds. The sharpshooter would reload and fire upon his general from another point. The second bullet might not miss.

But the second shot did not come. The marksman, doubtless thinking that another shot was too dangerous a hazard, had retreated into the plain. General Jackson walked on calmly, inspecting the whole Northern advance, and then returning took up his station on Prospect Hill, where he waited with the singular calmness that was always his, for the fit time to open fire.

The leader of the Army of the Potomac was watching from the other side of the Rappahannock with a terrible eagerness. The man who had not wished the command of the splendid Union army, who had deemed himself unequal to the task, was now proving the correctness of his own intuitions. He had taken up his headquarters in a fine colonial residence on one of the highest points of the bank. He was surrounded there by numerous artillery, and the officers of his staff crowded the porches, many of them already sad of heart, although they would not let their faces show it.

But Burnside, now that his men had forced the river in such daring fashion, began to glow with hope. Such magnificent troops as he had, having crossed the deep, tidal Rappahannock in the face of an able and daring foe, were bound to win. He swept every point of the field with his glasses, and from his elevated position he and his officers could see what the troops in the plain below could not see, the long lines of the Confederates waiting in the trenches or in the woods, their cannon posted at frequent intervals.

But Burnside hoped. Who would not have hoped with such troops as his? Never did an army, and with full knowledge of it, too, advance more boldly to a superhuman task. He saw the gallant advance of the Pennsylvanians and he saw them drive off Pelham. Hope swelled into confidence. With an anxiety beyond describing he watched the further advance of Meade and his Pennsylvanians.

Stonewall Jackson also was watching from his convenient hill, and his small staff, mostly of very young men, clustered close behind him. Jackson no longer used his glasses, as Burnside was doing. Meade and his Pennsylvanians were coming close to him now. The great Union batteries on Stafford Heights must soon cease firing or their shells and shot would be crashing into the blue ranks.

"It cannot be much longer," said Harry.

"No, not much longer," said Dalton. "We'll unmask mighty soon. How far away would you say they are now, Harry?"

"About a thousand yards."

"Over a half mile. Then I'll say that when they come within a half mile Old Jack will give the word to the artillery to loosen up."

Harry and George, in their intense absorption, had forgotten about the other parts of the line. In their minds, for the present at least, Jackson was fighting the battle alone. Longstreet was forgotten, and even Lee, for a space, remained unremembered. They were staring at the brigades which were coming on so gallantly, when the jaws of death were already opened so wide to receive them.

"They're at the half mile," said Dalton, who had a wonderful eye for distance, "and still Old Jack does not give the word."

"The closer the better," said Harry. Glancing up and down the lines he saw the men bending over their guns and the riflemen in line after line rising slowly to their feet and looking to their arms. In spite of himself, in spite of all the hard usage of war through which he had been, Harry shuddered. He did not hate any of those men out there who were coming toward them so boldly; no, there was not in all those brigades, nor in all the Union army, nor in all the North a single person whom he wished to hurt. Yet he knew that he would soon fight against them with all the weapons and all the power he could gather.

"Eight hundred yards," said Dalton.

"Fire!" was the word that ran like an electric blaze along the whole Southern front; and Jackson's fifty cannon, suddenly pushing forward from the forest, poured a storm of steel upon the devoted Pennsylvanians. Harry felt the earth rocking beneath him, and his ears were stunned by the roaring and crashing of the cannon all about him.

The Union officers on the porches of the colonial mansion across the river saw that terrible blaze leap from the Confederate line, and their hearts sank within them like lead. Alarmed as they had been before, they were in consternation now. Some had said that Jackson was not there, that it was merely a detachment guarding the woods, but now they knew their mistake.

Harry and Dalton stayed close to their general. Shells and shot from the batteries below on the plain were crashing along the trees, but, like those from the great guns on Stafford Heights, they passed mostly over their heads. The two youths at that moment had little to do but watch the battle. The Southern riflemen crept forward in the woods, and now their bullets in sheets were crashing into the hostile ranks. The Union division commander hurried up reinforcements, and the Pennsylvanians, despite their frightful losses and shattered ranks, still held fast. But the Southern batteries never ceased for a moment to pour upon them a storm of death. With red battle before him and the fever in his blood running high, Harry now forgot all about wounds and death. He had eye and thought only for the tremendous panorama passing before him, where everything was clear and visible, as if it were an act in some old Roman circus, magnified manifold.

Then came a message from Jackson to hurry to the left with an order for a brigadier who lay next to Longstreet. As he ran through the trees, he heard now the roar of the battle in the center, where the stalwart Longstreet was holding Marye's Hill and the adjacent heights. A mighty Union division was attacking there, and out of the south from the embers of Fredericksburg came another great division in column after column.

Harry heard the fire of Jackson slackening behind him, and he knew it was because Meade had been stopped or was retreating, and he stayed a little with the brigadier to see how Longstreet received the enemy. The hill and all the ridges about it seemed to be in one red blaze, and every few minutes the triumphant rebel yell, something like the Indian war-whoop, but poured from thirty thousand throats, swelled above the roar of the cannon and the crash of the rifles and made Harry's pulses beat so hard that he felt absolute physical pain.

He hurried to Jackson, where the battle, which had died for a little space, was swelling again. As the Pennsylvanians were compelled to draw back, leaving the ground covered with their dead, the Union batteries on Stafford Heights reopened, firing again over the heads of the men in blue. The Southern batteries, weaker and less numerous, replied with all their energy. A far-flung shot from their greatest gun, at the extreme southern end of the line, killed the brave Union general, Bayard, as he was sitting under a tree watching his troops.

Gregg, one of the best of the Southern generals, was mortally wounded. A great body of the Pennsylvanians, charging again, reached the shelter of the woods and burst through the Southern line. At another point, Hancock, always cool and brilliant on the field of battle, rallied shattered brigades and led them forward in person to new attacks. Hooker, who had shown such courage at Antietam, equally brave on this occasion, rushed forward with his men at another point. Franklin, Sumner, Doubleday and many other of the best Union generals showed themselves reckless of death, cheering on their men, galloping up and down the lines when they were mounted, and waving their swords aloft after their horses were killed, but always leading.

The Pennsylvanians who had cut into the Southern line were attacked in flank, but they held on to their positions. Jackson did not yet know of Meade's success. He still stood on Prospect Hill with his staff, which Harry had rejoined. The forest and vast clouds of smoke hid from his view the battle, save in his front. Harry saw a messenger coming at a gallop toward the summit of the hill, and he knew by his pale face and bloodshot eyes that he brought bad news.

Jackson turned toward the messenger, expectant but calm.

"What is it?" he asked.

"The enemy have broken through General Archer's division, and he directed me to say to you that unless help is sent, both his position and that of General Gregg will be lost."

Jackson showed no excitement. His calm and composure in the face of disaster always inspired his men with fresh courage.

"Ride back to General Archer," he said, "and tell him that the division of Early and the Stonewall Brigade are coming at once."

He turned his horse as if he would go with the relief, but in a moment he checked himself, put his field glasses back to his eyes, and continued to watch heavy masses of the enemy who were coming up in another quarter.

Harry did not see what happened when Early and Taliaferro, who now led the Stonewall Brigade, fell upon the Pennsylvanians, but