ONE
They were coming, and everyone knew
it. The whole company stirred, eighty
restless and uncomfortable men, echoing a tension that worked its way down the
regiment’s entire line. For all Captain
Charles Stewart knew, the tension originated on the ridge to the north, where
the big guns in the heart of the Confederate position continued to fire at an
enemy he could not see.
Stewart stared at the woods in which the
enemy forces were hidden, and fought against the urge to loosen his
collar. It was unseasonably warm for
May, and the heavy kersey of his jacket and trousers itched abominably as he
tried to ignore the trickle of sweat making its way down his back. He wanted to be busy, but until the day
demanded more of him than watchfulness, there was little he could do.
"What do you think, sergeant?" Stewart turned to Fitzgerald, the company
sergeant and a man whose twenty years in the Old Army had left his face the
same color and texture as his boots.
"When do you expect them?"
"Sooner rather than later, Captain. They’ve no choice, you see." Fitzgerald gestured right with his ramrod, to
the white-clad troops on the ridge.
"We hold the high ground."
The main Confederate line stretched from west to east along the heights
just north of the town of Bolivar, which itself was perched at the top of the
west bank of the Potomac River.
"And General Twiggs has anchored our left flank on the
Shenandoah." He pointed to the
fields straight ahead, their green uniformity blotted by dark spots that marked
the places where men had fallen.
"They've tried to take the heights three times today, and a bloody
mess they made of it. If they really
want to take Harper's Ferry back—and why they'd want to I can't imagine—this is
the only route they've got left. And
even that would be stupid."
“We’re not going to try to keep the place
ourselves,” Stewart said. Though he’d
not yet finished his second year at the Virginia Military Institute he felt he
knew why. “I think this place is
indefensible. Look at those
heights.” Even from here it was possible
to see the high ground on the Maryland side of the Potomac.
“Very good, sir,” Fitzgerald said. “So why do you think we’re here, then?”
“We have to hold the town just long enough to
allow the machines, tools and stocks to be removed from the armory.”
"You’ll make an officer yet, captain, if
you’ll pardon my presumption."
Fitzgerald winked, and Stewart winked back, knowing full well who it
really was who had whipped the company into whatever fighting form it now
possessed. Today was May 8, 1850, a mere
six weeks since Virginia had seceded to join the Confederate States. There'd been almost no time in which to
train. Perhaps the men were nervous
because, deep down, they knew they weren’t fully ready yet.
* * * *
“Because this isn’t a brigade,” Sam Grant
said to the colonels who stood, in a half-circle, around him. “It’s a mob that just happens to be dressed
alike and carrying muskets.”
The colonels, every one a Volunteer, looked
offended, but none tried to counter Grant’s characterization.
“I have to warn you, sir,” one colonel
eventually said. “Marching in column
into those woods will delay our attack.
It’ll take me forever to form my men into line.”
“You don’t have forever,” Grant said. “And you shouldn’t need it. Haven’t you been drilling?” From somewhere in the distance a soft popping
of musketry announced a sudden contact between two groups of skirmishers as
General Wool probed for a weakness that Grant suspected he’d never find.
“Of course we’ve been drilling, sir,” the
colonel protested. “But my regiment was
mustered in just two months ago.”
“And we’ve been a brigade for scarcely four
weeks. You just made my point,
sir.” Grant pulled the cigar from his
mouth and spat out the fragment that had stayed behind when he bit down. He envied Ransom, on his right: he at least
had a regiment of Regulars in his brigade.
“Until I am convinced that this brigade can maneuver, as
a brigade, on a battlefield, I intend to make my dispositions as
simple as possible. I want you to
concentrate on doing your job on the field.
Let me worry about how to get you there.”
* * * *
"Messenger for
you, sir." Sergeant Fitzgerald
nodded up the line, in the direction of the regiment’s command officers.
As Stewart turned, a corporal trotted
up. For a moment, the man stood,
catching his breath as dust fell in clouds from his trousers. Another man was already talking with Wilson,
captain of C Company on their right.
"Colonel Jackson’s compliments,
sir," the man facing Stewart said.
"The skirmishers out on our left report movement in the woods. The colonel desires that you ready yourself
to repulse an attack. All companies are to hold their positions at all
costs." The corporal gulped for
breath. "He reminds you that we are
the last regiment in the line, and you are the flank company—the last in the
regiment’s line. You and Captain Wilson
are the flank of the army, sir. Colonel
Jackson charges you with holding this wall to the last, and God be with
you."
Stewart nodded to the corporal, swallowing
hard. "Thank you, corporal,"
he said. "Return my compliments to
the colonel, and tell him that Company D stands firm."
The corporal saluted and began retracing his
steps up the gentle slope to where Jackson waited. Stewart wondered what
Jackson’s pale blue eyes looked like now. The colonel’s cold stare,
nerve-jangling enough on the parade ground, was reputed to take on an unearthly
glow in the face of combat.
So the stories went, at least. Stewart took
some comfort from the knowledge that, in one important respect, the colonel was
no more experienced than any of his captains.
It was true that Jackson had served in the Old Army and had seen action
against the Seminoles. But fighting
Indians wasn’t the same as fighting a determined army of well-armed white men,
and that Jackson had never done. In fact, none of the men on this field today
had done so, save for the older generals.
And their fighting had been twenty years ago in Florida against the
Spanish—who scarcely qualified as white men—or forty years ago, in the war with
Britain that had lost the Louisiana Territory.
Losing Louisiana, Stewart was convinced, had set in motion the chain of
events that had sundered the Union.
Now he would learn what kind of man he truly
was. They all would.
He hoped the men would make Uncle James proud
by their performance today. As the man who had raised and paid for the company,
his reputation as much as theirs was on trial.
He should say something to the company, while
there was still time. Climbing up onto
the stone fence behind which the company had formed up, Stewart drew his sword
and faced his soldiers. The nervous
chatter stilled, and he was conscious of nearly a hundred faces staring at
him. "Boys," he said, fighting
to keep his voice steady, "the Federals are heading this way. Colonel
Jackson thinks they’re going to try to get around us."
"The Hell they will!" somebody
shouted, and his companions hallooed their agreement.
"That’s the spirit I want you to
show," Stewart said. "Remember
what you’ve been taught, boys, and hold your fire until I give the signal. And
whatever you do, hold fast. We’re the
end of the line, boys. General Twiggs
has put the fate of the army in Colonel Jackson’s hands, and the colonel has
put it in our hands."
They still looked nervous. Hell, thought Stewart, I’d be nervous after
that pathetic imitation of a speech. He
thrust his sword high over his head, and shouted, "Let’s show those people
what Virginia men are made of!" Now
he got the response he’d wanted, a shrill hurrah! and a shimmer of silver as
four- score bayonet-tipped rifles thrust skyward in echo of his pantomime
thrust.
Someone shouted, "There they
are!" Stewart turned his head to
look, suddenly aware of a tightness in the chest that choked his breath worse
than any dust.
From the edge of the woods, a dozen or so
Federals had emerged from behind a stone wall that ran on a rough diagonal
across the regiment's front. They were, he
guessed, about two hundred yards away—how had they got so close without being
spotted sooner?—and were firing into the cornfield, at the men Jackson had
placed there as a skirmish line. As Stewart watched, the bluecoats ran into the
field. Fascinated, he stared as the
ragged blue line met its white counterpart with a startling clatter of
musketry. More Federal troops appeared
at the woods’ edge and began to form up in front of the wall, though these did
not advance. After a moment’s
resistance—they should have held longer, Stewart thought—the white-coated
skirmishers began drifting back toward the Virginia line. The Federal skirmishers moved forward, firing
sporadically, until the closest of them were less than 100 yards away. A ball
smacked into the fence not far from where he stood.
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