The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story

by George Cary Eggleston

  XIV

  _QUICK WORK_

  It was a warm, soft day in autumn, joyous in its sunshine, sad in itssuggestions of the year's decay. Baillie Pegram, now nearly well again,but still lacking strength, was lolling on the closely clipped swardunder one of the great trees at Warlock, chatting disjointedly withMarshall Pollard, who had got away again on a few days' leave ofabsence, for the purpose of visiting his friend. Baillie had alreadywritten to his captain, reporting himself as nearly well again,expressing regret at his long absence from duty, and announcing hispurpose of rejoining the battery within a week or ten days atfurthest--"at the earliest time," he said, "when I can persuade thesurgeons to release me from their clutches." This was likely, therefore,to be the last meeting between the two friends for many moons to come.

  "Tell me about yourself, old fellow," said Baillie, after a pause inthe conversation. "How do you like your service in that battery ofruffians?"

  "Thoroughly well. They're not half-bad fellows when kept under militarydiscipline, and I've enjoyed studying them psychologically. I'mconvinced that the only reason society has failed so consummately in itsattempts to deal with the criminal class is that it hasn't taken painsto understand them or find out their point of view. We really haven'ttaken pains enough even to classify them, or to find out the differencesthere are among them. We class them all together--all who violate thelaw--and call them criminals, and proceed to deal with them as if theywere a totally different species from ourselves, whereas, in point offact, they are 'men like unto ourselves,' with like passions and desiresand impulses. The only real difference is that circumstances andeducation and association have taught us to curb our passions and holdour impulses in check, while they have run wild, obeying those instinctswhich are born in all of us.

  "They are usually very generous fellows--impulsive, affectionate, andloyal to such friendships as they know. If you discovered any wrongbeing done to me, or heard any unjust accusation made against me, you'dresist and resent instantly. But you'd know precisely how far and inwhat direction to carry your resentment, while these fellows do not knowanything except the instincts of a righteous wrath. There isn't a man inSkinner's Battery who wouldn't be quick to stand for me and by me. Butin doing so he would calmly kill the man who injured me, and never beable to understand why he must be hanged for doing so.

  "Most of them have been made hardened criminals solely by society'sblundering way of dealing with them. It has sent them to jail, for smallfirst offences, committed in ignorance perhaps. It has thus declared warupon them, and with the instincts of manhood they have taken up the gageof battle. In other words, it is my sincere belief that quite nine inten of the criminal class are criminal only because of society's neglectat first and blundering afterward. They need education and discipline;we give them resentful punishment instead, and there is a world ofdifference between the two things.

  "However, I did not mean to deliver a lecture on penology. And after allI am no longer one of the ruffians, you know. All the officers of thebattery are gentlemen, while none of the men happens to be anything ofthe kind. There is, therefore, as sharp a line of demarcation drawn inour battery, between officers and enlisted men, as there is in anyregular army. This makes things pleasant for the officers, and I fancythey are not unpleasant for the men. It is a case of aristocracy wherethe upper class enjoys itself and the lower class is content. It isquite different from service in an ordinary Confederate company ofvolunteers. There the enlisted men are socially quite as good as theirofficers and sometimes distinctly better. Under such circumstances it isdifficult to maintain more of distinction and discipline than theenlisted men may voluntarily consent to. Socially, with us Southernpeople, it is quite as honourable to be an enlisted man in such abattery as yours as to be a commissioned officer. That's a good enoughthing in its way, but it isn't military, and it is distinctly bad forthe service."

  "I don't know so well about that," said Baillie. "We have at least theadvantage of knowing that, discipline or no discipline, every man in theranks, equally with every officer, has a personal reputation at home tosustain by good conduct. Even your desperadoes couldn't fight betterthan the young fellows I had with me on the skirmish-line at Manassas,though they had never had anything resembling discipline to sustainthem. Every man of them knew that if he 'flunked' he could never go homeagain--unless all flunked at once and so kept each other company. Thatvery nearly happened while we were falling back across Bull Run."

  "Precisely. And it happened to the whole Federal army a few hours later.Discipline, with a ready pistol-shot behind it, would have preventedthat in both cases. 'Man's a queer animal,' you know, if you rememberyour reading, and one of the queerest things about him is that when hehas once accustomed himself to accept orders unquestioningly, and toobey them blindly, as every soldier does in drilling, he becomes farmore afraid of mere orders than he is of the heaviest fire. Personalcourage and high spirit among the men are admirable in their way, butfor the purposes of battle, discipline and the habit of blind obedienceare very much more trustworthy. If you want to make soldiers of men, youmust teach them, morning, noon, and night, that blind, unquestioningobedience is the only virtue they can cultivate. That isn't good for thepersonal characters of the men, of course, but it is necessary in thecase of soldiers, and our volunteers will all of them have to learn thelesson before this war is over. More's the pity, for I can't imagine howa whole nation of men so trained to submission can ever again become anation of--oh, confound it! I'm running off again into a psychologicalspeculation. Fortunately, here comes a letter for you."

  A servant approached, bearing upon a tray a missive from The Oaksladies, which had been delivered at the house a few minutes earlier. Thegrand dames assured Mr. Baillie Pegram of their highest respect andesteem, but suggested that, to the very great satisfaction of theanxiety they had so long felt on his account, they were convinced by hisassurances to that effect, that he was now so far advanced on the roadto complete recovery as perhaps to excuse them from the necessity ofmaking their thrice a week journey to Warlock to inquire concerning hiswelfare. If they were mistaken in this assumption, would not Mr. BailliePegram kindly notify them? And if the daily inquiries which theyintended to make hereafter through a trusty servant, should at anymoment bring to them news of a relapse, they would instantly resumetheir personal and most solicitous inquiries.

  To this Baillie laughingly wrote a reply equally formal, in which heassured the good ladies that their tender concern for him during hisillness had been a chief factor in a recovery which was now practicallycomplete.

  Meantime Sam had come with the mail-pouch from the post-office, and itheld two letters for Baillie.

  One of these was a formal and official communication from the WarDepartment, informing him that upon General J. E. B. Stuart'srecommendation, he had been appointed captain of artillery withauthority to raise a mounted battery of from fifty to one hundred men,for service with the cavalry. His commission, dating from the day of hiswound at Manassas, accompanied the document, and with it an order forhim to proceed, as soon as he should be fit for service, to enlist andorganise the company thus authorised, and to make the properrequisitions for arms and equipments.

  Baillie's second letter was a personal one from Stuart. It was scribbledin pencil on the envelopes of some old letters and such other fragmentsof paper as the cavalier could command at some picket-post. It read:

  "I have asked the War Department to commission you as a captain, toraise a company of mounted artillery to serve with me in front. Iunderstand that you have a healthy liking for the front. The WarDepartment lets me choose my own men for this service, and I have chosenyou first, for several reasons. One is that you know what to do with agun. Another is that you fought so well at Manassas. Another is that youare very strongly recommended to me by a person whose judgment isabsolutely conclusive to my mind.

  "Now get to work as quickly as you can. Enrol fifty or seventy-five, orbetter still a hundred men if you can find
them. Put them in camp andinstruct them, and report to me the moment you are ready. Makerequisition for guns--six of them if you can secure a hundred men--anddrill your men at the piece. For a hundred men in _mounted_ artilleryyou will need about 170 horses--100 for the cannoniers to ride and 70for the guns, etc. There is likely to be your difficulty. Can't you helpyourself out a bit? I am told that you have influence. Can't youpersuade your neighbours to contribute some at least of the horses youneed? The quicker your battery is horsed the quicker you'll get a chanceto practise your men in gunnery with the enemy for a target. Please sendme a personal line, telling me how soon you will be ready to join me. Itwill take a month or two, of course, but I hope it won't take more."

  Twelve hours later Baillie Pegram sent an answer to General Stuart'sletter. In it he said:

  "Thank you. I'll have the men and the horses within twenty-four hours.If the guns are promptly forthcoming on my requisition, I'll be readywithin two days to receive orders to join you. As for drill, I canattend to that in front of Washington as well as in camp of instructionat Richmond."

  But before sending that note, which delighted Stuart's soul when itcame, Baillie Pegram had done a world of earnest work.

  First of all there was the problem of getting the men. The able-bodiedcitizens of the county had already volunteered for the most part, butsome were still waiting for one reason or another, and Baillie, who kneweverybody, sent hurried notes to all of these, by special negromessengers, asking each to send an immediate reply to him at theCourt-house. On this service he employed all his young negroes, mountingthem on all his mules. The men appealed to responded almost to a man,for the master of Warlock was a man under whose command his neighbourseagerly wanted to serve, and Baillie found more than half of themawaiting him at the county seat, when he got there in mid-afternoon.

  Still better, he found a messenger there from one of the men whom he hadsummoned. This messenger came from a camp at a little distance, wherewere assembled about sixty or seventy men and boys peculiarly situated.These men and boys had belonged to a company composed mainly of collegestudents, which had gone out with the earliest volunteers. The companyhad been captured at Rich Mountain, and the men composing it had beensent home on parole. Within the two days preceding Baillie Pegram's callfor volunteers, official notification had come of the discharge of allthese men from parole by virtue of an exchange of prisoners. Thereuponthe men, thus left free to volunteer again, had met in camp to considerwhat should be done. Their company had been officially disbanded, andthere were now not enough of them left to secure its reorganisation.When Baillie Pegram's call for volunteers came, therefore, the men werecalled together, and in pursuance of a resolution, unanimously adopted,a messenger was sent to the Court-house to say that sixty-two men of thedisbanded company offered themselves for enrolment under Captain Pegram,and that they would report for duty on the following morning at theCourt-house.

  Thus before four o'clock Baillie was assured of his hundred men or more.The next problem was to secure horses. He called together such of hismen as were present, and said:

  "Each of you is mounted. We shall need your horses. The government willhave them valued, and will pay the assessed price for any that may diein the service. It will pay monthly for their services. How many of youwill enlist your horses as well as yourselves, as all our cavalrymenhave done?"

  The response was general, and many of the planters offered additionalhorses on the same terms, so that, before night fell Baillie Pegram hadmore than a hundred men and about a hundred and thirty horses secured.Forty or fifty more horses must be had, but Baillie knew how to securethem, and so he sent off his note to Stuart. Then he turned to MarshallPollard, and said:

  "I want you to go to Richmond by the midnight train, old fellow, andreturn by the noonday train to-morrow. I've a mind to complete thisbusiness at a stroke. I've a few thousand dollars in bank and a fewthousand more in the hands of my commission merchant. The money is worthits face now. Heaven only knows what it will be worth a year hence. I'mgoing to spend it now for the rest of the horses I need, and I want youto go to Richmond and bring it to me. In the meanwhile I'll bargain witha drover who is not very far away, for the horses."

  Then, weak as he was, Baillie planned to ride the dozen miles that laybetween the Court-house and the point where the drover was camping withhis horses, but one of his friends, who had just enlisted with him, badehim to go to the tavern and to bed, saying:

  "I'll have the drover and his horses here before noon to-morrow, and Ishall know something about the horses by that time, too, for I'll comeback in company with them, and I'll keep my eyes open."

  No sooner was Baillie comfortably stretched upon a lounge in his hotelroom, than Sam presented himself.

  "Mas' Baillie," the negro boy broke in, without waiting for his masterto ask how he came to be there, "Mas' Baillie, you's a-gwine to be oneo' de officers now, jes' as you ought to ha' been fust off. Now you'llneed Sam wid you, won't you?"

  "I'll need somebody, I suppose," the young man answered, with a laugh atSam's enthusiasm, "but if I take you along where I am going, you'llstand a mighty good chance of getting a bullet-hole through you, orhaving your black head knocked off your shoulders by a shell. Have youthought of that?"

  "Co'se I'se thought o' dat, an' I ain't de leas' bit afeard nuther. I'sea Pegram nigga from Warlock, I is, an' a Pegram nigga from Warlock ain'tgot no more business to be afeared o' bullets when his duty brings 'emin his way, dan a white folks Pegram hisself is. Ef ye'll jes' take Samalong of you, you sha'n't never have no 'casion to be shamed o' yerservant."

  "Very well, Sam," answered the master; "now go back to Warlock, and tellyour mammy you're going to the war. By the way, you may have that oldvelveteen and corduroy hunting suit of mine to wear. Get it from thecloset in the chamber, and tell your mammy to shorten the trousers legsby seven or eight inches."

  Sam was fairly dancing for joy, and as he mounted his mule for thehomeward journey, he began to sing a dismal ditty which he had composedas an expression of his feelings at the time of his master's firstdeparture from Warlock to serve as a soldier. Unhappily only a fragmentof the song remains to us. It began:

  "Dey ain't no sun in de mawning, Dey ain't no moon shine in de night, 'Case the war's done come an' de mahstah's done gone, Fer to git hisse'f killed in de fight.

  "Oh, Moses! Holy Moses! Can't you come back 'cross de ribber? Can't you let Gabrel blow his horn?"

  What lines were to follow, and what words rhymed with "ribber" and"horn," we are not permitted to know. For at this point, Sam, whoseself-education included a considerable proficiency in profanity, brokeoff his singing, reined in his mule, and said:

  "Dat's too _dam_ dismal fer de 'casion!" Then addressing the mule, hereproachfully asked:

  "What for you done let me sing dat? Don' you know Sam's a-gwine to dewah wid Mas' Baillie?"

  As the mule made no reply, the conversation ceased at this point, andthe remainder of the homeward journey was made in complete silence.