Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY--A CHAPTER THAT SHOULD ONLY BE READ BY THOSE WHOTHINK--THE DESPAIR OF THE SEVEN DAYS BATTLES--SHOULDER-STRAPS ANDSTAY-AT-HOME SOLDIERS--AN INCIDENT OF THE SECOND.

  The first week of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-two. What a time itwas!--and who that took part in it, in any portion of the loyal Statesto which the telegraph and the newspaper had reached, can ever forgetit? Everything was hopeless, blank despair--dull, dead desolation. Noteven the fatal Monday following the defeat of Bull Run, when we believedthat all our New York troops had been cut to pieces or fledingloriously, produced the same total discouragement in the great city.Bull Run was our first signal reverse--the first blow from the rod ofnational chastisement, that was afterwards to cut so deeply. Though thatstroke pained, it also fired and awakened; and repeated blows had notyet produced that weakness and exhaustion so difficult to arouse to anyfurther effort. And we had not, at the same time, passed through therepeated disasters of the few months following, which stunned andhardened while they pained. We were quite unprepared for the disaster,coming as it did after several months of continued comparative victory(the Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland period of the Lincoln Empire, if ithas had one); and the country felt it most keenly.

  The heart of the nation had been bound up in McClellan. The confidenceand love reposed in him may have been man-worship, without ground orreason, but it was no less real and positive. While in theCommand-in-Chief, everything had gone well, and the Butler and Burnsideexpeditions, the two great successes of the war, had been planned andexecuted. On the Army of the Potomac the people had looked as thebulwark of the country--the central force that should in good time takeRichmond and give the last blow to the rebellion. The miserablebickering and paltry fears which had detached McDowell's division fromthe grand army, to defend Washington when never threatened, had beencomparatively unknown or little understood. Many and disastrous monthswere yet to elapse, before the letters of the Orleans Princes could tearaway the curtain of mystery and show the official action in its nakeddeformity of malice and misjudgment. McClellan had left Manassas with agallant army of immense force, whose numbers had no doubt been all thewhile exaggerated to the popular ear. They had proved themselvessoldiers and heroes, and had won whenever and wherever brought to thetest. The young commander had had the Command-in-Chief taken from him,at the moment when he first moved forward; but it was believed that thechange had been made with his consent if not at his own request, so thathe might be the more unhampered in the field. We did not know the chainwhich had been cruelly locked around his strong limbs, and which he hadbeen dragging through every mile of that long march. He had complained,it is true, from Williamsburgh, of the insufficiency of his force forthe great end in view; but he was known to be a cautious man, and whenhe had won Williamsburgh, forced the evacuation of Yorktown andafterwards won Fair Oaks, all fears for him and for the army had beengradually dismissed.

  He had been set down to win--to take Richmond: that had formed the greatculmination of the programme--the red fire and flourish of trumpets onwhich the curtain of the rebellion was to go down. If any one had spokendisapprovingly or doubtfully of his long delay in the swamps of theChickahominy, the reply had been: "Wait patiently! McClellan is slow,but sure. He will take Richmond before he ends the campaign, and that isenough!" Such had been public confidence--the confidence of a public whoperhaps did not know the General, but who certainly did not know thegovernment directing and overruling his every action. At last even thetime of the great capture had been fixed. Officers leaving on shortfurlough had been admonished to return quickly, "if they expected totake part in the capture of Richmond." What else could this mean, thanconfidence on the part of the commanding general, that the approaches tothe rebel capital had been made sufficiently close to ensure itscapture, and that the prize was at length in his grasp? Then the Fourthof July had been seized upon as the auspicious period, and the wholecountry had grown ready to celebrate the National Anniversary in theloyal cities, simultaneously with the shouts and bonfires of the UnionArmy that should then be treading the streets of the conquered capitaland opening the prison-doors of the loyal men who had been suffering andstarving in the tobacco-warehouses.

  Such had been the supposed aspect of affairs in the field, up to thelast week of June, and young orators preparing their Fourth of Julyorations had introduced rounded periods referring to the added glory ofthe day and the new laurels wreathing the brows of the Union commanders.Those who contemplated speaking on the great day, and had not made anyallusion to the fall of Richmond in their prepared orations, had alreadyseen cause to repent the omission. One, who had incautiously mentionedin a city passenger-car that "he hoped Richmond would not be taken untilafter the Fourth," and who had lacked time to give as a reason that "ifit should be taken before, he would be obliged to write his oration allover again"--had been assaulted for the offensive expression, and onlyescaped after a hard fight, with a black eye and a sense of damagedpersonal dignity. It had been settled that Richmond was to be inpossession of the Union troops on the Fourth--wo to him who doubted it!

  Hark! was there muttering thunder in the heavens?--thunder from a skyhitherto all bright blue? Business men, going down town on the morningof the twenty-eighth of June, found that "fighting had commenced beforeRichmond," and that "McClellan was changing his front." That "change offront" looked ominous. A few read the secret at once--that heavyreinforcements had come into Richmond from the half-disbanded rebel armyHalleck had checked but not defeated at Corinth; and coupled withstrange rumors of this came hints about "Stonewall Jackson," whichindicated to the same persons that that rebel officer had advanced fromthe North-west and made an attempt to take McClellan's right wing inflank, necessitating a retrograde movement of that wing to bring him infront. Still, confidence was not lost, in McClellan or in the army.While his right wing fell back before an attack in force, his left mightswing in towards Richmond and even take the city--who could say?

  Then the telegraph closed down, and the morning papers contained "nolater intelligence" from the field before Richmond. This was "thefeather that broke the camel's back" of the national spirit. Thegovernment had no confidence in the people--it dared not trust them withthe truth--it dared conceal! Our army was being cut to pieces, and wewere permitted to know nothing of the calamity except the dreadful fact.No development could have been so injurious as this concealment--nostroke at the national confidence so deadly as the want of relianceshown by the government censors. The nation's heart went down beneaththe blow: to this day[6] it has never risen to the same proud andcourageous determination shown through all previous disasters.

  [Footnote 6: January, 1863.]

  It is said to be a terrible spectacle when a strong man weeps--athousand times more terrible than the grief of the softer sex and thegentler nature, because it is evident what must have been the blowinflicted and what the struggle before the pent waters burst forth. Buteven the strong man's grief is tame compared to the spectacle of thegrief of a _nation_--that aggregation of strong men and of vitalinterests. When the very sky seems dimmed and the bright sunshine amockery. When the foot falls without energy and the voice breaks forthwithout emphasis. When men, who meet on the corners of streets, clasphands in silence or only speak in low and broken words. When the silvermoonlight seems to be shining upon nothing else than new-made graves.When the sound of revelry from ball-rooms jars upon the heart until itcreates deadly sickness; and the glare of lights from places of publicamusement seems to be an indecorum like a waltz at a funeral. When auniform in the street is a reproach and a horror; and the music of theband to which soldiers tramp, sounds like nothing but the "Dead March inSaul." When business is impossible, and idleness an agony. When the oldflag is looked up to without pride, and the very pulses of patriotismseem dead because they have no hope to keep them in motion. When all isdarkness--all discouragement--all shame--all despair. These are thetears of a broad land--this is the spectacle we witness when a na
tionweeps. The loyal men of this generation have wept more bitterly andsorely, within the past two years, than those wept who saw the armies ofthe Revolution starved and outnumbered--who pined in the Prison-Shipsand tracked the bloody snow at Valley Forge. God forgive those who havewrung these tears--whatever the ultraism they may represent! The peoplethey have outraged will not forgive until a terrible vengeance is taken.

  The first days of July, when fell the President's fifth proclamation,calling for "three hundred thousand more." If ever a cry of despairburst out from an overcharged heart, it went up to heaven from the wholeland at that moment. "Have I yet more to give?" cried the depopulatedcity and the desolated village. "Have I yet more to give?" cried thefather with one son remaining of his six brave boys; "Have I yet more togive?" echoed the widow whose last stay was to be taken from her; and"Have I yet more to give?" re-echoed the wife as she buckled the swordor the bayonet-sheath on the side of her husband and sent him forth asone more sacrifice to the insatiate demons of Ambition andMismanagement. Have not the days following Manassas, and the Seven Daysbefore Richmond, and Fredericksburgh, been hours in a nationalGethsemane? And has not the hand been almost excusable, lifted in theprayer: "Father of Nations!--if it be possible let this cup pass fromus!" And yet the cup has not passed--we have been draining it to thevery dregs!

  The introduction of this chapter, which does not in the least advancethe action of the story, would be altogether inexcusable, did not everyartist have a habit of painting a background for his historicalcomposition, instead of throwing the figures on the naked canvas andthereby losing half his little chance of illusion. The characters hereintroduced may live and move, but relieved against what? The backgroundof current events, certainly--without a knowledge of which theiractions might be altogether unaccountable. And general as may be afeeling to-day, it must be caught and put upon record to-morrow, or thevery persons who held it most deeply will forget it by the third day.Ten years hence--perhaps a year hence--the bitter humiliation throughwhich the country has been passing between the opening of 1861 and theopening of 1863, will be almost entirely forgotten in after glory orafter shame. A few will remember, but faintly and dimly, as the oldveterans of the Revolution remembered in their tottering age theconflicts through which they had passed in youth, beside Washington orwith Mad Anthony. A few will remember something of the truth, but onlyas veteran play-goers remember a performance at the Old Park in itspalmy days--a Cooper or a Power prominent, but all the other actors lostin the mists of time.

  When Thomas Wilson left the field of Brandywine, after that disastrousdefeat, and with a bullet-hole through his neck, narrowly missing thejugular, which had been received in aiding to rescue and bear off thewounded Lafayette,--that battle-scene was so imprinted on his mind thathe believed he could ever afterwards, to his dying day, recall theposition of every squadron, and even the place of every rock and treebeside which he had fought; and yet when he saw him, more than half acentury afterwards, hobbling along on his stout hickory cane to theplace where he was to draw the scant pittance afforded him by a nationgrudging in its gratitude--he remembered Lafayette and that he waswounded in helping to bear him off--nothing more. No doubt John Wilson,grandson of the old man, wounded in the assault at Fredericksburgh, cameaway from that murderous field with the same impression of the eternityof his own memory; but he will forget all except the very event of theaction, like his grandsire. And yesterday evening, coming out from amongthe plaudits of the crowd that had been paying honor to the wonderfulrenderings of Couldock and Davidge in the "Chimney-Corner," Wetmore, thecritic and habitue, did not even bring away a play-bill. That littledomestic scene was so daguerreotyped upon his memory that he shouldnever forget one detail of cast or incident--never! And yet five yearshence, Wetmore will turn to some companion of the present and say: "Ah,confound it--I cannot remember! Who _was_ it that played with Couldockat the Winter Garden, in the--the--there, hang me if I have not evenforgotten the name of the piece!--that capital little Robson domesticdrama--the--the--the 'Chimney Corner'?"

  So much by way of explanation, if not of apology, for catching thecolors of the background of general feeling at the particular period ofthis story, before they have time to fade. And yet a few more words withreference to that general feeling, as it took particular directions.

  "Vox populi, vox Dei" is a motto so often falsified, at least inappearance, that the world has come to place but little reliance uponit; and yet it is as true to-day as when the old Latin maximist firstpenned it, with the plurality of the gods of his dependence fullymanifest in the original "Dii" or "Deis." The people do not often errmaterially or long. They may throne a wooden god or a baboon for a shortmoment, but that moment soon passes. As a political body no demagoguewith words supplying the place of brains, can long override them; and asan army they never make a favorite of a fool or a coward. The Americanpeople did not err for a moment as to where the responsibility of thesad check to the army of the Potomac did _not_ belong; and they erredbut little in their calculation of where it _did_. The army wasbrave--its leader was both careful and capable--the very man for theplace: that they knew intuitively. They doubted the existence of brainsat Washington, and of loyalty in many of those who had been urging"forward movements" without sufficient force or proper preparation; andthey have already been fully justified in the doubt.

  But the people saw something more--execrated it, howled against it, spatupon it; and after the Seven Days before Richmond, their abhorrenceculminated. That terrible something was _absenteeism_. Thousands andtens of thousands who should have been in their places in the army, wereshamelessly absent when their brothers-in-arms were being sacrificedfrom their very want of numbers. Wounded soldiers who had come home onfurlough, and afterwards recovered, had never rejoined their commands;and in spite of the calls of McClellan no steps had been taken to forcethem back into the ranks. The Provost Marshals were too busy looking forsummer-boarders at Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren, to think of theirobvious duty of protecting the armies of the Union against indolence anddesertion! A still more serious defection existed among theofficers--those who had been awhile in the service, and those who hadmerely entered it in _pretence_. Half the New York regiments,especially, had originally been officered by men who had no intention offighting, and who merely took commissions and spent a few weeks in campor in the field of inactive operations, in order that they might have"Colonel," "Major," or "Captain" attached to their names, and be readyto make more successful plunges into the flesh-pots of well-paidoffices, on the plea that they had been "patriots" and "served thecountry" in its need. Hundreds had come home, leaving their commandshalf-officered, on one pretext or another, and their leaves-of-absenceobtained by more or less of political influence or favoritism. Theynever intended to go back; for were not the elections coming within afew months? and was it not necessary to plough the political field withthose very harmless swords in order to raise a fall crop of offices?

  Then the other class--those who had never intended to go at all--thosewho had no heart in the cause, from the first, and who had merelyassumed the regulation uniform to feed _vanity_ or the _pocket_. Theformer, to strut Broadway in unimpeachable blue-and-gold, be called bymilitary titles, lounge at the theatres or create sensations at thewatering-places, confident of being able to escape, on some pretext,before their commands (if they had any) should leave for the seat ofwar. The latter, to find profitable employment in raising companies,regiments or brigades, for Staten Island, East New York or the RedHouse, drawing pay and subsistence for twice or three times the numberever in camp, and coolly pocketing the difference! It is idle to talk,as exaggerating sensation-paragraphists sometimes do, of stealing thepennies off the eyes of a dead grandmother to play at pitch-and-toss, orforging the name of a buried father to a note and then allowing it togo to protest,--it is idle to talk of these as the extreme of criminalheartlessness: the men who could thus trade--the men who _have_ thustraded, during the whole war--on the public patriotism and the publi
cnecessity, would deserve the lowest deep in the pit of perdition,following upon leprosy in life and deaths on dunghills--if there was nota still deeper guilt on the souls of those who first plunged the countryinto war and then murdered it by treason or inefficiency.[7]

  [Footnote 7: January 17th, 1863.]

  The public disgust at these "shoulder-straps" of both classes culminatedduring the first week of July. It might be unpatriotic and even cowardlyto make no movement towards joining the Army of the Union: it was baseand utterly contemptible to make such a movement merely as an injurioussham. So thought the people--seeing in this _desire of militaryreputation and profit without service or sacrifice_, the worm gnawing atthe very heart of the republic. "If they are not soldiers, why do theywear these trappings of the battle-field?" asked the public. "If theyare soldiers, why are they loitering here when their comrades are beingoverpowered and slaughtered?" Alas! the question has been continuallyasked and never answered. "Leipsic was lost, and I not there!" cried thesoldier of the old French Eleventh, bursting into tears. But: "All thegreat battles of this war have been fought, and I have managed to keepout of them!" might the shoulder-strapped, belted, fatigue-capped,strutting mock-soldier of our own time say with a corresponding chuckle.God help us!--Rome had but one Nero fiddling when it burned, if historytells us true: we have had ten thousand military fiddlers playing awayto admiring audiences during _our_ conflagration!

  Is this to be a wholesale attack, then, on our national courage? Had weno brave men, then, that only these apologies for men are exhibited?Yes!--thousand upon thousand of brave men, and hundred upon hundred ofbrave officers--the world over no better or truer! But they were, asthey _are_, the men of action, not of _show_, or at least not of show_alone_.

  One incident of the morning of the Second of July, when the Seven DaysBattles were yet in progress before Richmond, will at once supply a fewfigures for this background, and an illustration of the public feelingfor the soldiers of the little army of action and the great army ofsham!

  A few words had been permitted by the telegraph-censors to come through,and they had arrived too late for the morning papers. They wereconsequently bulletined. They gave some hint of the abandonment of theWhite House and the severe fighting which followed that movement, onSaturday and Sunday. They were not hopeful--they were discouraging--muchworse, as it afterwards appeared, than the truth demanded; and the knitbrows and set teeth of the readers did not show any symptoms ofimprovement under the new revelation.

  A considerable group of men were standing about the "World" bulletin,stopping, reading and passing on--all the more slowly because the shadeof the high building was refreshing in that hot, blinding, cloudlessJuly morning sun. A group of politicians who had read the bulletins andtaken their second breakfast at Crook and Duff's, were digesting the oneand picking their teeth from the fragments of the other, before the doorof that unaccountably-popular establishment, on the block above. Overthe street from the "World" corner, at the Park fence, a dozen or two ofinvalid soldiers, with jaundiced faces and shabby uniforms, who hadarrived by steamer from the South the day before and taken up theirtemporary abode in the dirty Barracks,--were standing lounging andlistening to what was read from the bulletin; while a sentinel paradedup and down the walk, outside, to prevent escapes that did not seemover-probable. Voices were a little high, though not in disagreement,among the group at the corner--for they were discussing the very subjectnoted--that of _absenteeism and military sham_.

  At that moment a good-looking young officer in spotless full uniform,with his cap so natty that the rain could never have been allowed tofall upon it, with his hair curled and his moustache trim as if he hadbeen intended for any other description of "ball" than one met on thefield of battle, and with a Captain's double-bars on his shoulder,--cameacross the Park from the direction of Broadway, over to the BeekmanStreet corner, as if to pass down that street. Some of the talkersnoticed him, and connected him and his class a little injuriously withthe events of the day. Just as he passed the corner, brushing very nearsome of the talkers and casting a hurried glance at thebulletin-board--one of the crowd, a rough fellow who might have belongedto the set who growled and hooted Coriolanus out of Rome,--broke outwith:--

  "There goes one of them, now!"

  "Yes," muttered another, almost in front of the officer. "D--n 'em all!Much good those shiny uniforms are doing the country!"

  The officer, who must have heard the words and known that they wereintended for his ears, paid no attention and was passing on--the part ofprudence and propriety, beyond a doubt. But one of the crowd was notsatisfied. He must make wrong of the right (a thing very common in allcauses) and the insult a personal one.

  "See here!" and he laid his hand on the officer's arm, detaining him,but not roughly. "Do you see what there is on that bulletin?"

  "I see!" said the Captain.

  "Yes, they are cutting our boys all to pieces down there!" went on theaggrieved citizen.

  "Well?" again said the officer, apparently neither angry nor frightened.

  "Well!" spoke the other, repeating his word, but a little abashed by thecalmness of the officer, whose arm he had let go the moment he turned tospeak to him. "Well!--perhaps it is none of my business, you know--butwhy the d--l don't you fellows who have such handsome uniforms, andcommissions, and all that sort of thing, go down and help?"

  "Humph!" said the Captain, still with no symptom of being abashed orangry. "Perhaps it _would_ be as well, for all of us who _could_."

  "Oh, you can't go, eh?" said another member of the assemblage, in asneering tone.

  "Not _yet_!" was the reply of the officer.

  "I thought not!" said the man who had first addressed him.

  "See here, boys!" said the Captain, "haven't you made a mistake in yourman? I hate a stay-at-home soldier, quite as much as you."

  "Why don't you go, then?" one of the others again interrupted.

  "I have _been_, and I am _going again_!" said the Captain, emphatically."I see what is the matter. I have just put on a new uniform, and youthink that looks suspicious. So it does, I suppose; but my old one hasbeen through six pitched battles and looks rough enough to suit you."

  "The d--l it has!" said the man who had addressed him. "Really, Captain,I beg your pardon!"

  "Never mind that!" said the Captain. "You will probably hit the rightman next time, and the quicker you shame the make-believes into doingsomething or pulling off their uniforms, the better. McClellan wants usall--"

  "McClellan's the boy!" broke out a voice.

  "You are right--'Little Mac's' the boy!" said the Captain. "He wants usall. The doctor told me this morning that I might go back, and I amgoing to-morrow."

  "The doctor?--then you have been sick or wounded! What a fool I havebeen making of myself!" said the first speaker, generous as rough.

  "A little!" answered the Captain, and by a dexterous movement he flungback his coat, threw open his collar and bared his neck almost to theshoulder. The whole top of the shoulder seemed to have been shot away,and the blade broken, by a ball that had struck him there and ploughedthrough into the neck; and the yet imperfectly healed flesh lay in tornridges of ghastly disfigurement. Thousands of men have died from woundsof not half the apparent consequence; and yet the wearer of this was thesmiling and even-tempered man of the new uniform--going back to-morrow!The world has not lost all its heroes yet; and some of them have thesame fancy for a clean shirt and spotless broadcloth, when attainable,as Murat displayed for a velvet cloak, or white plume and plenty of goldembroidery on his trousers, when making the most reckless of charges atthe head of the most dashing cavalry in the world. "That," said theCaptain, closing up the wound as rapidly as he had opened it, but notbefore a general shudder had run through the crowd at its ghastlycharacter--"that I got at Fair Oaks, three weeks ago last Sunday. How doyou like it? Am I going back soon enough? Good morning, boys!"

  "And your name?" asked the man who had stopped him, as he attempted topass on. "Who a
re you?--Do tell us."

  "Nobody that you would know," said the Captain. "My name is D----, and Ibelong to the Sickles Brigade."

  He passed on, hurriedly, down Beekman Street, as if "Little Mac" hadsent for him and he had been wasting time in going; but the cheer thatwent after him was joined in by the invalids at the Park fence, who hadcaught a part of the dialogue; and the people in the "World" officelooked up from their account books, wondering what was the matter in thestreet; while the politicians in front of Crook and Duff's, among whomwere some of the City Fathers and their backers and bottle-holders,losing the other part of the affair and only hearing the shouts,wondered whether some new notability had not just arrived at the AstorHouse, who could be turned to profitable use in the way of a receptionin the Governor's Room, a few "Committees," gloves, carriages from VanRanst and a dinner or two all around--of course at the expense of theeconomically-managed city treasury.

  And this closes a chapter which has made no direct progress whatever infollowing the leading characters of this story, who must now be againtaken up in their order.