CHAPTER VI
BY ASHBY'S GAP
The 65th Virginia Infantry, Colonel Valentine Brooke, was encamped tothe north of Winchester in the Valley of Virginia, in a meadow throughwhich ran a stream, and upon a hillside beneath a hundred chestnuttrees, covered with white tassels of bloom. To its right lay the 2d, the4th, the 5th, the 27th, and the 33d Virginia, forming with the 65th theFirst Brigade, General T. J. Jackson. The battery attached--theRockbridge Artillery--occupied an adjacent apple orchard. To the left,in other July meadows and over other chestnut-shaded hills, were spreadthe brigades of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Somewhere in the distance,behind the screen of haze, were Stuart and his cavalry. Across thestream a brick farmhouse, ringed with mulberry trees, made theheadquarters of Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the forces of theConfederacy--an experienced, able, and wary soldier, engaged just now,with eleven thousand men, in watching Patterson with fifteen thousand onthe one hand, and McDowell with thirty-five thousand on the other, andin listening attentively for a voice from Beauregard with twentythousand at Manassas. It was the middle of July, 1861.
First Brigade headquarters was a tree--an especially big tree--a littleremoved from the others. Beneath it stood a kitchen chair and a woodentable, requisitioned from the nearest cabin and scrupulously paid for.At one side was an extremely small tent, but Brigadier-General T. J.Jackson rarely occupied it. He sat beneath the tree, upon the kitchenchair, his feet, in enormous cavalry boots, planted precisely beforehim, his hands rigid at his sides. Here he transacted the business ofeach day, and here, when it was over, he sat facing the North. Anawkward, inarticulate, and peculiar man, with strange notions about hishealth and other matters, there was about him no breath of grace,romance, or pomp of war. He was ungenial, ungainly, with large hands andfeet, with poor eyesight and a stiff address. There did not lack spruceand handsome youths in his command who were vexed to the soul by theidea of being led to battle by such a figure. The facts that he hadfought very bravely in Mexico, and that he had for the enemy a cold andformidable hatred were for him; most other things against him. Hedrilled his troops seven hours a day. His discipline was of thesternest, his censure a thing to make the boldest officer blench. Ablunder, a slight negligence, any disobedience of orders--down camereprimand, suspension, arrest, with an iron certitude, a relentlessnessquite like Nature's. Apparently he was without imagination. He had butlittle sense of humour, and no understanding of a joke. He drank waterand sucked lemons for dyspepsia, and fancied that the use of pepper hadcaused a weakness in his left leg. He rode a raw-boned nag named LittleSorrel, he carried his sabre in the oddest fashion, and said "oblike"instead of "oblique." He found his greatest pleasure in going to thePresbyterian Church twice on Sundays and to prayer meetings through theweek. Now and then there was a gleam in his eye that promised something,but the battles had not begun, and his soldiers hardly knew what itpromised. One or two observers claimed that he was ambitious, but thesewere chiefly laughed at. To the brigade at large he seemed prosaic,tedious, and strict enough, performing all duties with the exactitude,monotony, and expression of a clock, keeping all plans with the secrecyof the sepulchre, rarely sleeping, rising at dawn, and requiring hisstaff to do likewise, praying at all seasons, and demanding an implicityof obedience which might have been in order with some great and gloriouscaptain, some idolized Napoleon, but which seemed hardly the due of thelate professor of natural philosophy and artillery tactics at theVirginia Military Institute. True it was that at Harper's Ferry, where,as Colonel T. J. Jackson, he had commanded until Johnston's arrival, hehad begun to bring order out of chaos and to weave from a high-spiritedrabble of Volunteers a web that the world was to acknowledge remarkable;true, too, that on the second of July, in the small affair withPatterson at Falling Waters, he had seemed to the critics in the ranksnot altogether unimposing. He emerged from Falling WatersBrigadier-General T. J. Jackson, and his men, though with some mentalreservations, began to call him "Old Jack." The epithet impliedapproval, but approval hugely qualified. They might have said--in fact,they did say--that every fool knew that a crazy man could fight!
The Army of the Shenandoah was a civilian army, a high-spirited,slightly organized, more or less undisciplined, totally inexperienced inwar, impatient and youthful body of men, with the lesson yet to learnthat the shortest distance between two points is sometimes a curve. Inits eyes Patterson at Bunker Hill was exclusively the blot upon theescutcheon, and the whole game of war consisted in somehow doing awaywith that blot. There was great chafing at the inaction. It was hot,argumentative July weather; the encampment to the north of Winchester inthe Valley of Virginia hummed with the comments of the strategists inthe ranks. Patterson should have been attacked after Falling Waters.What if he was entrenched behind stone walls at Martinsburg? Pattersonshould have been attacked upon the fifteenth at Bunker Hill. What if hehas fifteen thousand men?--what if he has _twenty_ thousand?--What ifMcDowell is preparing to cross the Potomac? And now, on the seventeenth,Patterson is at Charlestown, creeping eastward, evidently going tosurround the Army of the Shenandoah! Patterson is the burning realityand McDowell the dream--and yet Johnston won't move to the westward andattack! _Good Lord! we didn't come from home just to watch thesechestnuts get ripe! All the generals are crazy, anyhow._
It was nine, in the morning of Thursday the eighteenth,--a scorchingday. The locusts were singing of the heat; the grass, wherever men,horses, and wagon wheels had not ground it into dust, was parched to agolden brown; the mint by the stream looked wilted. The morning drillwas over, the 65th lounging beneath the trees. It was almost too hot tofuss about Patterson, almost too hot to pity the sentinels, almost toohot to wonder where Stuart's cavalry had gone that morning, and why "OldJoe" quartered behind the mulberries in the brick farmhouse, had sent astaff officer to "Old Jack," and why Bee's and Bartow's and Elzey'sbrigades had been similarly visited; almost too hot to play checkers, towhittle a set of chessmen, to finish that piece of Greek, to read"Ivanhoe" and resolve to fight like Brian de Bois Gilbert and RichardCoeur de Lion in one, to write home, to rout out knapsack andhaversack, and look again at fifty precious trifles; too hot to smoke,to tease Company A's pet coon, to think about Thunder Run, to wonder howpap was gettin' on with that thar piece of corn, and what the girls weresayin'; too hot to borrow, too hot to swear, too hot to go down to thecreek and wash a shirt, too hot--"What's that drum beginning for? _Thelong roll! The Army of the Valley is going to move! Boys, boys, boys! Weare going north to Charlestown! Boys, boys, boys! We are going to lickPatterson!_"
At noon the Army of the Valley, the First Brigade leading, uncoileditself, regiment by regiment, from the wide meadow and the chestnutwood, swept out upon the turnpike--and found its head turned toward thesouth! There was stupefaction, then tongues were loosed. "What'sthis--what's this, boys? Charlestown ain't in this direction. Old Joe'slost his bearings! Johnny Lemon, you go tell him so--go ask Old Jack ifyou can't. Whoa, there! The fool's going!! Come back here quick,Johnny, afore the captain sees you! O hell! we're going right backthrough Winchester!"
A wave of anger swept over the First Brigade. The 65th grew intractable,moved at a snail's pace. The company officers went to and fro. "Closeup, men, close up! No, I don't know any more than you do--maybe it'ssome roundabout way. Close up--close up!" The colonel rode along theline. "What's the matter here? You aren't going to a funeral! Think it'sa fox hunt, boys, and step out lively!" A courier arrived from the headof the column. "General Jackson's compliments to Colonel Brooke, and hesays if this regiment isn't in step in three minutes he'll leave it withthe sick in Winchester!"
The First Brigade, followed by Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, marched sullenlydown the turnpike, into Winchester, and through its dusty streets. Thepeople were all out, old men, boys, and women thronging the bricksidewalks. The army had seventeen hundred sick in the town. Pale faceslooked out of upper windows; men just recovering from dysentery, frommeasles, from fever, stumbled out of shady front yards and fell intoline; others, more helpless, star
ted, then wavered back. "Boys, boys!you ain't never going to leave us here for the Yanks to take?Boys--boys--" The citizens, too, had their say. "Is Winchester to beleft to Patterson? We've done our best by you--and you go marchingaway!" Several of the older women were weeping, the younger lookedscornful. _Close up, men, close up--close up!_
The First Brigade was glad when it was through the town. Before it,leading southward through the Valley of Virginia, stretched the greatpike, a hundred and twenty miles of road, traversing as fair, rich, andhappy a region as war ever found a paradise and left a desolation. Tothe east towered the Blue Ridge, to west the Great North and ShenandoahMountains, twenty miles to the south Massanutton rose like a Gibraltarfrom the rolling fields of wheat and corn, the orchard lands andpleasant pastures. The region was one of old mills, turning flashingwheels, of comfortable red brick houses and well-stored barns, of fairmarket towns, of a noble breed of horses, and of great, white-coveredwagons, of clear waters and sweet gardens, of an honest, thrifty, brave,and intelligent people. It was a fair country, and many of the armywere at home there, but the army had at the moment no taste for itsbeauties. It wanted to see Patterson's long, blue lines; it wanted todrive them out of Virginia, across the Potomac, back to where they camefrom.
The First Brigade was dispirited and critical, and as it had not yetlearned to control its mood, it marched as a dispirited and criticalperson would be apt to march in the brazen middle of a July day. Everyspring and rivulet, every blackberry bush and apple tree upon the roadgathered recruits. The halts for no purpose were interminable, theperpetual _Close up, close up, men!_ of the exasperated officers asunavailing as the droning in the heat of the burnished June-bugs. Thebrigade had no intention of not making known its reluctance to leavePatterson. It took an hour to make a mile from Winchester. GeneralJackson rode down the column on Little Sorrel and said something to thecolonel of each regiment, which something the colonels passed on to thecaptains. The next mile was made in half an hour.
The July dust rose from the pike in clouds, hot, choking, thick as therain of ash from a volcano. It lay heavy upon coat, cap, haversack, andknapsack, upon the muskets and upon the colours, drooping in the heat,drooping at the idea of turning back upon Patterson and going off,Heaven and Old Joe knew where! Tramp, tramp over the hot pike, sullenlysouthward, hot without and hot within! The knapsack was heavy, thehaversack was heavy, the musket was heavy. Sweat ran down from under capor felt hat, and made grimy trenches down cheek and chin. The men hadtoo thick underwear. They carried overcoat and blanket--it was hot, hot,and every pound like ten! _To keep--to throw away? To keep--to throwaway?_ The beat of feet kept time to that pressing question, and to_Just marching to be marching!--reckon Old Joe thinks it's fun_, and to_Where in hell are we going, anyway?_
Through the enormous dust cloud that the army raised the trees of thevalley appeared as brown smudges against an ochreish sky. The fartherhills and the mountains were not seen at all. The stone fences on eitherside the road, the blackberry bushes, the elder, the occasional apple orcherry tree were all but dun lines and blotches. Oh, hot, hot! A manswung his arm and a rolled overcoat landed in the middle of a briarpatch. A second followed suit--a third, a fourth. A great, raw-bonedfellow from some mountain clearing jerked at the lacing of his shoes andin a moment was marching barefoot, the offending leather swinging fromhis arm. To right and left he found imitators. A corpulent man, amerchant used to a big chair set in the shady front of a village store,suffered greatly, pale about the lips, and with his breath coming inwheezing gasps. His overcoat went first, then his roll of blanket.Finally he gazed a moment, sorrowfully enough, at his knapsack, thendropped it, too, quietly, in a fence corner. _Close up, men--close up!_
A wind arose and blew the dust maddeningly to and fro. In the ColourCompany of the 65th a boy began to cough, uncontrollably, with a hollowsound. Those near him looked askance. "You'd better run along home,sonny! Yo' ma hadn't ought to let you come. Darn it all! if we marchdown this pike longer, we'll all land home!--If you listen right hardyou can hear Thunder Run!--And that thar Yank hugging himself back tharat Charlestown!--dessay he's telegraphin' right this minute that we'verun away--"
Richard Cleave passed along the line. "Don't be so downhearted, men!It's not really any hotter than at a barbecue at home. Who was thatcoughing?"
"Andrew Kerr, sir."
"Andrew Kerr, you go to the doctor the first thing after roll-callto-night. Cheer up, men! No one's going to send you home withoutfighting."
From the rear came a rumble, shouted orders, a cracking of whips. Thecolumn swerved to one side of the broad road, and the RockbridgeArtillery passed--a vision of horses, guns, and men, wrapped in a dunwhirlwind and disappearing in the blast. They were gone in thunderthrough the heat and haze. The 65th Virginia wondered to a man why ithad not chosen the artillery.
Out of a narrow way stretching westward, came suddenly at a gallop ahandful of troopers, black plumed and magnificently mounted, swinginginto the pike and disappearing in a pillar of dust toward the head ofthe column. Back out of the cloud sounded the jingling of accoutrements,the neighing of horses, a shouted order.
The infantry groaned. "Ten of the Black Horse!--where are the rest ofthem, I wonder? Oh, ain't they lucky dogs?"
"Stuart's men have the sweetest time!--just galloping over the country,and making love, and listening to Sweeney's banjo--
If you want to have a good time-- If you want to have a good time, Jine the cavalry!--
What's that road over there--the cool-looking one? The road to Ashby'sGap? Wish this pike was shady like that!"
A bugle blew; the command to halt ran down the column. The First Brigadecame to a stand upon the dusty pike, in the heat and glare. The 65th wasthe third in column, the 4th and the 27th leading. Suddenly from the 4ththere burst a cheer, a loud and high note of relief and exultation. Amoment, and the infection had spread to the 27th; it, too, was cheeringwildly. Apparently there were several couriers--No! staff officers, the65th saw the gold lace--with some message or order from the commandinggeneral, now well in advance with his guard of Black Horse. They wereriding down the line--Old Jack was with them--the 4th and the 27th werecheering like mad. The colonel of the 65th rode forward. There was aminute's parley, then he turned, "Sixty-fifth! It isn't a fox hunt--it'sa bear hunt! 'General Johnston to the 65th'--" He broke off and wavedforward the aide-de-camp beside him. "Tell them, Captain Washington,tell them what a terror to corn-cribs we're going after!"
The aide, a young man, superbly mounted, laughed, raised his voice."Sixty-fifth! The Army of the Valley is going through Ashby's Gap toPiedmont, and from Piedmont by rail to Manassas Junction. General Stuartis still at Winchester amusing General Patterson. At Manassas ourgallant army under General Beauregard is attacked by McDowell withoverwhelming numbers. The commanding general hopes that his troops willstep out like men and make a forced march to save the country!"
He was gone--the other staff officers were gone--Old Jack was gone. Theypassed the shouting 65th, and presently from down the line came thecheers of the 2d, 21st, and 33d Virginia. Old Jack rode back alone thelength of his brigade; and so overflowing was the enthusiasm of the menthat they cheered him, cheered lustily! He touched his old forage cap,went stiffly by upon Little Sorrel. From the rear, far down the road,could be heard the voices of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Ardour, elasticity,strength returned to the Army of the Shenandoah. With a triumphant crythe First Brigade wheeled into the road that led eastward through theBlue Ridge by Ashby's Gap.
Two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock came and passed. Enthusiasmcarried the men fast and far, but they were raw troops and theysuffered. The sun, too, was enthusiastic, burning with all its might.The road proved neither cool nor shady. All the springs seemed suddenlyto have dried up. Out of every hour there was a halt of ten minutes, andit was needed. The men dropped by the roadside, upon the parched grass,beneath the shadow of the sumach and the elder bushes, and lay withoutspeaki
ng. The small farmers, the mountaineers, the hunters, theploughmen fared not so badly; but the planters of many acres, thelawyers, the doctors, the divines, the merchants, the millers, and theinnkeepers, the undergraduates from the University, the youths fromclassical academies, county stores, village banks, lawyers' offices, allwho led a horseback or sedentary existence, and the elderly men and thevery young,--these suffered heavily. The mounted officers were notfoot-weary, but they also had heat, thirst, and hunger, and, inaddition, responsibility, inexperience, and the glance of theirbrigadier. The ten minutes were soon over. _Fall in--fall in, men!_ Theshort rest made the going worse, the soldiers rose so stiff and sore.
The men had eaten before leaving the camp above Winchester--but that wasdays ago. Now, as they went through Clarke County, there appeared atcross-roads, at plantation gates, at stiles leading into green fields,ladies young and old, bearing baskets of good things hastily snatchedfrom pantry and table. They had pitchers, too, of iced tea, of coldmilk, even of raspberry acid and sangaree. How good it all was! and howimpossible to go around! But, fed or hungry, refreshed or thirsty, themen blessed the donors, and that reverently, with a purity of thought, achivalrousness of regard, a shade of feeling, youthful and sweet and yetvirile enough, which went with the Confederate soldier into the serviceand abode to the end.
The long afternoon wore to a close. The heat decreased, but the dustremained and the weariness grew to gigantic proportions. The FirstBrigade was well ahead of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. It had started inadvance and it had increased the distance. If there was any marching inmen, Jackson forced it out; they went a league for him where anotherwould have procured but a mile, but even he, even enthusiasm and thenecessity of relieving Beauregard got upon this march less than twomiles an hour. Most happily, McDowell, advancing on Beauregard and BullRun and fearing "masked batteries," marched much more slowly. At sunsetthe First Brigade reached the Shenandoah.
The mounted officers took up one and sometimes two men beside them, andthe horses struggled bravely through the cold, rapid, breast-deepcurrent. Behind them, company by company, the men stripped off coat andtrousers, piled clothing and ammunition upon their heads, held hightheir muskets, and so crossed. The guns and wagons followed. Before theriver was passed the night fell dark.
The heat was now gone by, the dust was washed away, the men had drunktheir fill. From the haversacks they took the remnant of the food cookedthat morning. The biscuit and the bacon tasted very good; not enough ofeither, it was true, but still something. The road above the river rosesteeply, for here was the Blue Ridge, lofty and dark, rude with rock,and shaggy with untouched forests. This was the pass through themountains, this was Ashby's Gap. The brigade climbed with the road,tired and silent and grim. The day had somehow been a foretaste of war;the men had a new idea of the draught and of the depth of the cup. Theyfelt older, and the air, blowing down from the mountains, seemed the airof a far country toward which they had been travelling almost withoutknowing it. They saw now that it was a strange country, much unlike thatin which they had hitherto lived. They climbed slowly between dark cragand tree, and wearily. All song and jest had died; they were tiredsoldiers, hungry now for sleep. _Close up, men, close up!_
They came to the height of the pass, marked by a giant poplar whoseroots struck deep into four counties. Here again there was a tenminutes' halt; the men sank down upon the soft beds of leaf and mould.Their eyelids drooped; they were in a dream at once, and in a dreamheard the _Fall in--fall in, men!_ The column stumbled to its feet andbegan the descent of the mountain.
Clouds came up; at midnight when they reached the lower slope, it wasraining. Later they came to the outskirts of the village of Paris, to agrove of mighty oaks, and here the brigade was halted for the night. Themen fell upon the ground and slept. No food was taken, and no sentrieswere posted. An aide, very heavy-eyed, asked if guard should not be set."No, sir," answered the general. "Let them sleep." "And you, sir?" "Idon't feel like it. I'll see that there is no alarm." With his cloakabout him, with his old cadet cap pulled down over his eyes, awkward andsimple and plain, he paced out the night beneath the trees, or sat upona broken rail fence, watching his sleeping soldiers and, the aidethought, praying.
The light rain ceased, the sky cleared, the pale dawn came up from theeast. In the first pink light the bugles sounded. Up rose the FirstBrigade, cooked and ate its breakfast, swung out from the oak grove uponthe highroad, and faced the rising sun. The morning was divinely cool,the men in high spirits, Piedmont and the railway were but six milesdown the road. The First Brigade covered the distance by eight o'clock.There was the station, there was the old Manassas Gap railroad, therewas the train of freight and cattle cars--ever so many freight andcattle cars! Company after company the men piled in; by ten o'clockevery car was filled, and the platforms and roofs had their quota. Thecrazy old engine blew its whistle, the First Brigade was off forManassas. Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, arriving at Piedmont in the course ofthe morning, were not so fortunate. The railroad had promised, barringunheard-of accident, to place the four brigades in Manassas by sunriseof the twentieth. The accident duly arrived. There was a collision, thetrack was obstructed, and only the 7th and 8th Georgia got through. Theremainder of the infantry waited perforce at Piedmont, a portion of itfor two mortal days, and that without rations. The artillery and thecavalry--the latter having now come up--marched by the wagon road andarrived in fair time.
From ten in the morning until sunset the First Brigade and the ManassasGap train crept like a tortoise through the July weather, by rustlingcornfields, by stream and wood, by farmhouse and village. It was hot inthe freight and cattle cars, hot, cinderish, and noisy. With here andthere an exception the men took off their coats, loosened the shoes fromtheir feet, made themselves easy in any way that suggested itself. Thesubtle _give_, the slip out of convention and restraint back toward aless trammelled existence, the faint return of the more purelyphysical, the slight withdrawal of the more purely mental, the rapidbreaking down of the sheer artificial--these and other marks of one ofthe many predicates of war began to show themselves in this journey. Butat the village stations there came a change. Women and girls weregathered here, in muslin freshness, with food and drink for "ourheroes." The apparel discarded between stations was assiduouslyreassumed whenever the whistle blew. "Our heroes" looked out of freightand cattle car, somewhat grimy, perhaps, but clothed and in their rightmind, with a becoming bloom upon them of eagerness, deference, andpatriotic willingness to die in Virginia's defence. The dispensers ofnectar and ambrosia loved them all, sped them on to Manassas with many aprayer and God bless you!
At sunset the whistle shrieked its loudest. It was their destination.The train jolted and jerked to a halt. Regiment by regiment, out pouredthe First Brigade, fell into line, and was double-quicked four miles toMitchell's Ford and a pine wood, where, hungry, thirsty, dirty, andexhausted, the ranks were broken.
This was the night of the nineteenth. At Piedmont the brigade had heardof yesterday's minor affair at this ford between Tyler's division andLongstreet, the honours of the engagement resting with the Confederate.In the pine wood there was a line of fresh graves; on the brown needleslay boughs that shell had cut from the trees; there were certain stainsupon the ground. The First Brigade ate and slept--the last somewhatfeverishly. The night passed without alarm. An attack in force wasexpected in the morning, but it did not come. McDowell, amazinglyenough, still rested confident that Patterson had detained Johnston inthe valley. Possessed by this belief he was now engaged in a"reconnoissance by stealth," his object being to discover a road wherebyto cross Bull Run above the Stone Bridge and turn Beauregard's left.This proceeding and an afternoon rest in camp occupied him the whole ofthe twentieth. On this day Johnston himself reached Manassas, bringingwith him Bee's 2d Mississippi and 4th Alabama, and Bartow's 7th and 8thGeorgia. Stuart, having successfully amused Patterson, was also on hand.The remainder of the Army of the Shenandoah, detained by the break uponthe Manassas Gap, was yet missi
ng, and many an anxious glance thegenerals cast that way.
The First Brigade, undiscovered by the "reconnoissance by stealth,"rested all day Saturday beneath the pines at Mitchell's Ford, and atnight slept quietly, no longer minding the row of graves. At dawn ofSunday a cannon woke the men, loud and startling, McDowell's signal gun,fired from Centreville, and announcing to the Federal host that theinterrupted march, the "On to Richmond" blazoned on banners and chalkedon trunks, would now be resumed, willy nilly the "rebel horde" on thesouthern bank of Bull Run.