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

"My dear Hector," said Colonel Talbot, "each of us has taken a piece. It is not so much a question of the relative value of these pieces as it is of the position into which you force your opponent."

"Exactly so, Leonidas. I agree with you on that point, and for that reason I aver that I have made a tactical gain."

"Hector, you are ordinarily a man of great intelligence, but in this case you seem to have lost some part of your mental powers."

"One of us has suffered such a loss, and while I am too polite to name him, I am sure that I am not the man."

"Ah, well, we'll not accuse each other while the issue still hangs in doubt. Progress with the game will show that I am right."

When Harry passed that way an hour later they were still bent over the board, the best of friends again, but no more losses had been suffered by either.

May was almost spent and spring was at the full. The Southern army was now at its highest point in both numbers and effectiveness. Only Jackson was gone, but he was a host and more, and when Lee said that he had lost his right arm, he spoke the truth, as he was soon to find. Yet the Southern power was at the zenith and no shadow hung over the veteran and devoted troops who were eager to follow Lee in that invasion of the North of which all now felt sure.

Doubts were dispelled with the close of May. Harry was one of the young officers who carried the commander-in-chief's orders to the subordinate generals, and while he knew details, he wondered what the main plan would be. Young as he was he knew that no passage could be forced across the Rappahannock in the face of the Army of the Potomac, which was now as numerous as ever, and which could sweep the river and its shores with its magnificent artillery. But he had full confidence in Lee. The spell that Jackson had thrown over him was transferred to Lee, who swayed his feelings and judgment with equal power.

The figure of Lee in the height and fullness of victory was imposing. An English general who saw him, and who also saw all the famous men of his time, wrote long afterward that he was the only great man he had ever seen who looked all his greatness. Tall, strongly built, with thick gray hair, a short gray beard, clipped closely, ruddy complexion and blue eyes, he was as careful in dress as Jackson had been careless. He spoke with a uniform politeness, not superficial, but from the heart, and his glance was nearly always grave and benevolent.

General Lee in these warm days of late spring occupied a large tent. Even when the army was not on the march he invariably preferred tents to houses, and now Harry saw nearly all the famous Southern generals in the east passing through that door. There was Longstreet, blue of eye like Lee, full bearded, thick and powerful, and proud of his horsemanship, in which he excelled.

Ewell, too, stumped in on his crutches, vigorous, enthusiastic, but never using profane language where Lee was. And there was A. P. Hill, of soldierly slenderness and of fine, pleasing manner; McLaws, who had done so well at Antietam; Pickett, not yet dreaming of the one marvelous achievement that was to be his; Old Jubal Early, as he was familiarly called, bald, bearded, rheumatic, profane, but brave and able; Hood, tall, yellow-haired; Pender, the North Carolinian, not yet thirty, religious like Jackson, and doomed like him to fall soon in battle; Tieth, Edward Johnson, Anderson, Trimble, Stuart, as gay and dandyish as ever; Ramseur, Jones, Daniel, young Fitzhugh Lee; Pendleton, Armistead, and a host of others whose names remained memorable to him. They were all tanned and sun-burned men. Few had reached early middle age, and the shadows of death were already gathering for many of them.

But the high spirits of the Southern army merely became higher as they began to make rapid but secret preparation for departure. The soldiers did not know where they were going, except that it was into the North, and they began to discuss the nature of the country they would find there. Harry took the message to the Invincibles to pack and march. Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire reluctantly dropped their unfinished game, put up the chessmen, and in an hour the Invincibles—few, but trim and strong—were marching to a position farther up the river.

The corps of Longstreet was to lead the way, and it would march the next morning. Harry now knew that the army would advance by way of the Shenandoah valley. The Northern troops had been raiding in the great valley and again had retaken Winchester, the pleasant little city so beloved of Jackson. Harry shared the anger at this news that Jackson would have felt had he been alive to hear it.

Harry was well aware, however, that the army could not slip away from its opponent. Hooker, still in command, was watching on the heights across the river, and there were the captive balloons hovering again in the sky. But the spirit of the troops was such that they did not care whether their march was known or not.

Harry and Dalton were awake early on the morning of the third of June, and they saw the corps of Longstreet file silently by, the bugle that called them away being the first note of the great and decisive Gettysburg campaign. They were better clothed and in better trim than they had been in a long time. They walked with an easy, springy gait, and the big guns rumbled at the heels of the horses, fat from long rest and the spring grass. They were to march north and west to Culpeper, fifty miles away, and there await the rest of the army.

Harry and Dalton felt great exhilaration. Movement was good not only for the body, but for the spirit as well. It made the blood flow more freely and the brain grow more active. Moreover, the beauty of the early summer that had come incited one to greater hope.

The great adventure had now begun, but it was not unknown to Hooker and his watchful generals on the other shore. The ground was dry and they had seen a column of dust rise and move toward the northwest. Their experienced eyes told them that such a cloud must be made by marching troops, and the men in the balloons with their glasses were able to catch the gleam of steel from the bayonets of Longstreet's men as they took the long road to Gettysburg.

Hooker had good men with him. He, too, as he stood on the left bank of the Rappahannock, was surrounded by able and famous generals, and others were to come. There was Meade, a little older than the others, but not old, tall, thin, stooped a bit, wearing glasses, and looking like a scholar, with his pale face and ragged beard, a cold, quiet man, able and thorough, but without genius. Then came Reynolds, modest and quiet, who many in the army claimed would have shown the genius that Meade lacked had it not been for his early death, for he too, like Pender, would soon be riding to a soldier's grave. And then were Doubleday and Newton and Hancock, a great soldier, a man of magnificent presence, whose air and manner always inspired enthusiasm, soon to be known as Hancock the Superb; Sedgwick, a soldier of great insight and tenacity; Howard, a religious man, who was to come out of the war with only one arm; Hunt and Gibbon, and Webb and Sykes, and Slocum and Pleasanton, who commanded the cavalry, and many others.

These men foresaw the march of Lee into the North, and the people behind them realized that they were no longer carrying the battle to the enemy. He was bringing it to them. Apprehension spread through the North, but it was prepared for the supreme effort. The Army of the Potomac, despite Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, had no fear of its opponent, and the veterans in blue merely asked for another chance.

On the following morning and the morning after, Ewell's corps followed Longstreet in two divisions toward the general rendezvous at Culpeper Court House, but Lee himself, although most of his troops were now gone, did not yet move. Hill's corps had been held to cover any movement of the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, and Lee and his staff remained there for three days after Longstreet's departure.

The Invincibles had gone, but Harry and Dalton were just behind Lee, who sat on his white horse, Traveler, gazing through his glasses toward a division of the Army of the Potomac which on the day before had crossed the Rappahannock, under a heavy fire from Hill's men.

But Harry knew that it was no part of Lee's plan to drive these men back across the river. A. P. Hill on the heights would hold them and would be a screen between Hooker's army and his own. So the young staff officer merely watched his commander who looked long through his glasses.

It was now nearly noon, and the June sky was brilliant with the sun moving slowly toward the zenith. Lee at length lowered his glasses and, turning to his staff, said:

"Now, gentlemen, we ride."

Harry by some chance looked at his watch, and he always remembered that it was exactly noon when he started on the journey that was to lead him to Gettysburg. He and Dalton from a high crest looked back toward the vast panorama of hills, valleys, rivers and forest that had held for them so many thrilling and terrible memories.

There lay the blackened ruins of Fredericksburg. There were the heights against which the brave Northern brigades had beat in vain and with such awful losses. And beyond, far down under the horizon, was the tragic Wilderness in which they had won Chancellorsville and in which Jackson had fallen. Harry choked and turned away from the fresh wound that the recollection gave him.

Lee and his staff rode hard all that afternoon and most of the night through territory guarded well against Northern skirmishers or raiding bands, and the next day they were with the army at Culpeper Court House. Meanwhile Hooker was undecided whether to follow Lee or move on Richmond. But the shrewd Lincoln telegraphed him that Lee was his "true objective." At that moment the man in the White House at Washington was the most valuable general the North had, knowing that Lee in the field with his great fighting force must be beaten back, and that otherwise Richmond would be worth nothing.

It was Harry's fortune in the most impressionable period of life to be in close contact for a long time with two very great men, both of whom had a vast influence upon him, creating for him new standards of energy and conduct. In after years when he thought of Lee and Jackson, which was nearly every day, no weighing of the causes involved in the quarrel between the sections was made in his mind. They were his heroes, and personally they could do no wrong.

As Lee rode on with his staff through the fair Virginia country he talked little, but more than was Jackson's custom. Harry saw his brow wrinkle now and then with thought. He knew that he was planning, planning all the time, and he knew, too, what a tremendous task it was to bring all the scattered divisions of an army to one central point in the face of an active enemy. This task was even greater than Harry imagined, as Lee's army would soon be strung along a line of a hundred miles, and a far-seeing enemy might cut it apart and beat it in detail. Lee knew, but he showed no sign.

Harry felt an additional elation because he rode westward and toward that valley in which he had followed Jackson through the thick of great achievements. In the North they had nicknamed it "The Valley of Humiliation," but Jackson was gone, and Milroy, whom he had defeated once, was there again, holding and ruling the little city of Winchester. Harry's blood grew hot, because he, too, as Jackson had, loved Winchester. He did not know what was in Lee's mind, but he hoped that a blow would be struck at Milroy before they began the great