by John Jakes
The whine of a shell muffled the rest of the warning. Craning, George watched another ambulance reach the suspension bridge just before the shell hit. The horses tore against leather, the wagon rolled over—the bridge was blocked.
More vehicles and men appeared on the Warrenton Turnpike and in the flanking woods. Geysers of smoke and dirt erupted as projectiles fired by distant artillery struck the slope and creek banks. The Union volunteers were fleeing; the bridge was impassable; ambulance and supply wagons piled up in the smoky vale behind; and quick as brush fire, the terror spread to the spectators.
A civilian leaped into the barouche and tried to grab the reins. His nails raked the back of George’s hand, drawing blood. George squirmed sideways and booted the man in the groin. He fell off.
“Black Horse, Black Horse!” the running soldiers screamed, the turnpike thick with them now; most were soaked from wading the creek to avoid the bridge. Constance cried out softly and hugged the children as a shell burst in the field to their right. Dirt came down all over them.
George drew his Colt, transferred it to his left hand, and struggled to turn the nervous animals using only his right. Not easy, but he was determined to get his family to safety. He stayed off the turnpike; too many retreating men made it impossible to travel with any speed. Uniforms were mingled, regulation blue with gaudy Zouave outfits—the entire Union force must have collapsed into disorder.
“Hold on,” he yelled as he plunged the team through a stubble field south of the road, then swerved wildly to avoid a tuba thrown away by some musician. In a quarter of a mile, hundreds of men caught up with them and passed them. George was outraged by the rout, the fleeing soldiers, and the spectators. Beyond the turnpike, he saw three women thrown from their buggy by two men in civilian clothes. He raised his Colt to fire at them, then realized the futility of it and didn’t.
He began to ache from the rough transit of the fields. Smoke made his eyes smart; shells landed close behind them. Crossing another small stream, the barouche’s rear wheels sank into ooze on the bank. George ordered the family out and gestured William to the off rear wheel. Just then he saw Stanley’s rig race by, straight down the middle of the turnpike. Soldiers had to leap out of the way. Isabel spied the barouche, but her fear-stricken face suggested she didn’t recognize anyone.
A sergeant and two privates splashed toward the mired vehicle. George was wary of the sergeant’s glazed look. Standing in muddy water halfway up his thighs, George drew the Colt’s hammer back.
“Help us push it out or get the hell away.”
The sergeant called him a name and motioned his men on. Almost blinded by sweat, George put his shoulder against the wheel and told his son to do the same. “Push!”
They strained and heaved; Constance dragged at the headstall of the near horse. Finally the barouche sprang free of the mud. Dirty, angry, and fearful, George resumed the drive toward Washington, wondering if they would ever see it again.
Men and wagons, wagons and men. The summer light slanted lower, and the smoke hampered visibility. The smells grew intolerable: urine-stained wool, bleeding animals, the bowels of an open-mouthed dead youth in a ditch.
The woods ahead looked impassable; George put the barouche back on the road. He heard weeping. “The Black Horse Cavalry tore us to pieces!” Soldiers repeatedly tried to climb in the carriage. George handed the Colt to Constance and armed himself with the whip.
Under drooping trees, the stable nags were slowed to a walk, then stopped completely. A bleeding cavalry horse had fallen in the center of the road. It blocked the retreat of about a dozen men in stained Zouave uniforms. All but one double-timed around the dying animal; the last soldier, young and pudgy and displaying a deeply gashed cheek, halted and stared at the animal. Suddenly he raised his muzzleloader and brought the butt down on the horse’s head.
Crying and cursing, he hit the horse again. Then twice more, with increasing ferocity. Ignoring his wife’s plea, George jumped from the barouche. The boy had already broken open the horse’s skull. While the animal thrashed and George’s outraged yell went unheeded, the soldier raised his musket for another blow. Tears washed down into his wound.
George shouted, “I am giving you a direct order to—”
The rest got lost in the boy’s sobbed obscenities and the scream of the horse taking the next blow. George ran around the animal, glimpsing its head by chance; the sight brought vomit to his throat. He tore the muzzleloader out of the hands of the demented youth and menaced him with it.
“Get out of here. Go on!”
Indifferent to the anger, the boy gave George a vacant look, then stumbled down the shoulder to the ditch and turned in the direction of Washington. He was still crying and muttering to himself. George quickly checked the musket, found it was loaded, and fired a shot to end the horse’s agony. He stopped three running men, and the four of them dragged the dead animal to the side of the turnpike.
Breathing hard and still tasting vomit, he searched for the barouche. He spied Constance standing in the road, an arm around each child and the Colt dangling in her right hand. George saw the barouche moving away toward Centreville, packed with men in blue. “They took it, George. I couldn’t shoot our own soldiers—”
“Of course not. It’s my fault for leaving you—Patricia, crying won’t help. We’ll get out of this. We’ll be all right. Give me the gun. Now let’s walk.”
In Mexico, George had learned that a battle was inevitably larger than what the individual soldier perceived and experienced; even generals sometimes failed to discern the larger patterns. George’s knowledge of the battle at Bull Run consisted of what he saw from the spectator site and on the retreat in the hot, insect-ridden hours of a waning Sunday. For him, Bull Run would forever be a road of wrecked wagons and discarded gear, a stream bed for a blue torrent that overflowed both sides and crashed by them, impelled by the melting of some unknown grand plan.
Constance tugged the sleeve of his uniform. “George, look there—ahead.”
He saw Stanley’s carriage lying on its side. The horses were gone; stolen, probably. Isabel and the twins huddled around George’s brother, who sat on a roadside stone, his undone cravat dangling between his legs. Stanley’s hands were pressed to his face. George knew why; he had experienced a similar moment years ago.
“Christ, do I have to take care of him again?”
“I know how you feel. But we can’t leave them there.”
“Why not?” said Patricia. “Laban and Levi are hateful. Let the rebs get them.” Constance slapped her, turned red, hugged her, and apologized.
George refused to look at Isabel as he stepped in front of his brother. “Get up, Stanley.” Stanley’s shoulders heaved. George seized Stanley’s right hand and jerked it down. “Get on your feet. Your family needs you.”
“He just—collapsed when the carriage overturned,” Isabel said. George paid no attention, pulling and hauling till he got his brother up and pointed in the right direction. George pushed; Stanley started walking.
So the shepherd and his flock went on. Men continued to pass them, most dirty with powder and grime, many bloodied. They encountered a few volunteer officers bravely trying to keep a small squad formed up, but these were the exception; the majority of officers had no men and walked or ran faster than their subordinates.
Stanley’s breakdown infuriated his wife but, oddly, her anger focused on George. The twins complained and muttered disparaging remarks about George until near-darkness separated them from the others in a field. After five minutes of frantic shouting, the twins found the adults again. Henceforth they walked directly behind George, saying nothing.
The detritus of defeat lay everywhere: canteens, horns and drums, shot pouches and bayonets. Darkness came down, and the eerie cries of the hurt and dying made George think of an aviary in hell. In the shadow tide flowing by, the voices rose and fell:
“—fucking captain ran. Ran—while the rest of us stood fast—”<
br />
“—my feet are bleeding. Can’t—”
“—Black Horse. They was nigh a thousand of—”
“—Sherman’s brigade broke when Hampton’s voltigeurs hit—”
Hampton? George plucked the name out of the babble of voices, the creak of wheels, the complaints of his children. Wasn’t Charles Main riding with Hampton’s Legion? Had he fought today? Had he survived?
The rising moon provided scant light; translucent clouds kept floating across it. The air smelled of rain. George guessed it to be ten or eleven o’clock; he was so weary, he could have crawled in a ditch and slept. That told him how tired the others must be.
At Centreville, they finally saw lights again—and wounded everywhere. Some New York volunteers with a supply wagon noticed the children and offered to drive them on to Fairfax Courthouse. They had no room for the adults. George spoke earnestly to William, whom he knew he could trust, and when he was sure his son knew the rendezvous point, he and Constance helped the youngsters into the wagon. Isabel uttered objections; Stanley stared at the rainy moon.
The wagon disappeared. The adults resumed their walk. Along the roadsides beyond Centreville they passed more casualties, sleeping or resting or still. The sight of hurt faces, bloodied limbs, the moonlit eyes of lads too young to be asked to look at death, continually reminded George of Mexico, and of the burning house in Lehigh Station.
It was small consolation to know he had not been imagining danger then. The fire bells had signaled a greater conflagration, and now they were all trapped in it. Trapped in war’s folly and madness. Chicane seducing honesty. Ruin replacing plenty. Fear banishing hope. Hatred burying amity. Death canceling life. This fire was the mortal foe of everything the Mains and Hazards wanted to preserve, and it would not be extinguished quickly, like that at home. This day—this night—had shown him the fire was out of control.
“Stanley? Don’t fall behind.” The shepherd’s eyes began to water with dust and fatigue. The moon melted, and streaks of it dripped down the sky. Instead of the dim road, he saw the soldier striking the fallen horse. An unbelievable act. A change had begun that he couldn’t comprehend. Some terrible change.
“Isabel? Are you all right? Come on, now. You must keep up.”
Book Two
The Downward Road
Nobody, no man, can save the country. Our men are not good soldiers. They brag, but don’t perform, complain sadly if they don’t get everything they want, and a march of a few miles uses them up. It will take a long time to overcome these things, and what is in store for us in the future I know not.
COL. WILLIAM T. SHERMAN,
after First Bull Run, 1861
33
ALL NIGHT LONG, RUMORS of disaster swept the city. Elkanah Bent, like thousands of others, was unable to sleep. He lingered in bars or in the streets where quiet crowds awaited word. He prayed there would be news of a victory. Nothing else would save him.
Around three, he and Elmsdale, the New Hampshire colonel, gave up the vigil and returned to the boardinghouse. Bent dozed rather than slept and heard the rain start sometime before daybreak. Then he heard men in the streets. He dressed quickly, went out to the boardinghouse porch, and in a vacant lot in the next block saw eight or ten soldiers resting in the weeds. Three others, visibly filthy, dismantled a board fence to make a fire.
Yawning, Elmsdale joined him with a supply of cigars. With a nod at the vacant lot, he said, “Looks bad, doesn’t it?” Bent felt a silent hysteria rising.
The two colonels hurried toward Pennsylvania Avenue. An officer’s horse walked by; the man in the saddle was asleep. At another boardinghouse, Zouaves begged for food. A civilian in a white suit staggered through the drizzle with several canteens and a musket. Battlefield souvenirs? Bent tried to control his trembling.
On the avenue, they saw the ambulances, the wandering men with defeated expressions. Dozens more lay sleeping in President’s Park. Bent saw bloodied faces, arms, and legs. He and Elmsdale separated for a short time. Then Elmsdale rejoined him.
“It’s what we feared. A rout. I knew it last night. If McDowell had won, the President would have sent word from the telegraph room. Well—” he lit a cigar under his hat brim, out of the drizzle—“it’s a taste of what’s in store for us in the West.”
Never religious, Bent had implored God yesterday for a Union victory. He and Elmsdale already had train tickets to Kentucky. Now he would have to use his. The war might last for months. He might perish in Kentucky, his trove of genius untapped, wasted—
He wanted to escape that fate but didn’t know how. He didn’t dare appeal to Dills again; the lawyer might make good on his threat. Short of desertion, which would definitely bring his dreams of military glory to an end, he saw no alternative but to use the ticket.
The child inside him screamed in futile protest. Elmsdale took note of his companion’s queer, strained expression and, muttering some excuse, once more strode away in the rain.
The day after Manassas, Charles and his troop encamped with the legion not far from Confederate headquarters at the Lewis house, which was named Portici. This was quite near the center of the field of battle and less than a mile from Bull Run, whose pink-tinted brown water still held dead bodies from both sides.
As the light faded, Charles set about rubbing and currying Sport. He was elated by the victory but angry with the circumstances that had denied him a part in it. On Friday, following his return from Fairfax County, the legion had been ordered to come up from Ashland and reinforce Beauregard. But the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac rail line had only enough cars for Hampton and his six hundred foot. There were none for his four troops of horse or his flying artillery battery.
After numerous delays, Hampton reached Manassas on the morning of the battle; his cavalry was still laboring across a hundred and thirty miles of winding road, fording the South Anna, North Anna, Mattapony, Rappahannock, Aquia, Occoquan, and many lesser streams. Despite maddening slowdowns caused by two heavy rainstorms, Charles had brimmed with unexpected confidence on that long ride. He believed his men, once in action, would be all right; in spite of their resistance to discipline, they were riding well as a unit. Most could sit the dragoon seat respectably, if not as perfectly as the already fabled Turner Ashby.
Charles never had a chance to verify his new feeling; the troopers arrived after the day was won. They learned the colonel had distinguished himself, sustaining a light head wound while leading his infantry against crumbling federal regiments. That did little to soothe some of Charles’s young gentlemen, who complained of missing not only the scrap but also the chance to pick through the weapons and accoutrements dropped by the fleeing Yankees. Charles sympathized with his men and mentally prepared for the next fight. It was already clear that this one wouldn’t end matters.
President Davis had ridden the cars from Richmond personally to congratulate the various commanders, including Hampton, whom Davis and Old Bory called on in Hampton’s tent. By late Monday, however, Charles and many others were hearing of complaints from certain members of the government; Beauregard had failed to press his advantage, drive on to Washington and capture it.
Charles kept his counsel. Lard-assed bureaucrats who sat at desks and carped had no comprehension of warfare or the limits it imposed on men and animals. They had no grasp of how long you could drive a soldier or a horse to fight fiercely and expend maximum energy. It was not a long time, relatively speaking. Battle was hard work, and even the greatest courage, the hardest will, the strongest heart must give in to overwhelming exhaustion.
Complaints aside, Manassas had been a triumph, the proof of a long-held belief that gentlemen could always whip rabble. Charles shared some of that euphoria in the pleasant hours following the battle and tried not to take undue notice of certain stenches drifting on the summer wind or the ambulance processions passing in silhouette against the red sundown.
There had been losses less impersonal than those represented by t
he passing vehicles. The legion’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, of Charleston, had been killed by the first volley he and his men faced. Barnard Bee, one of Cousin Orry’s friends from the Academy, had been mortally hit just after rallying men to the colors of that reportedly mad professor from the Virginia Military Institute, Fool Tom Jackson. Bee had praised Jackson for standing like a stone wall near the Henry house, and it appeared that “Fool Tom” had now been replaced by a more complimentary nickname.
All the members of Hampton’s family who were serving had gotten through unscathed: his older son, young Wade, on the staff of Joe Johnston, whose valley army had come in on the cars of the Manassas Gap line; and Wade’s younger brother, Preston, a smart-looking twenty-year-old famous for wearing yellow gloves. Preston was one of his father’s aides. Hampton’s brother Frank, a cavalryman, had also escaped injury.
While Charles was using a pick to remove dirt and bits of dead tissue from Sport’s hooves, Calbraith Butler, another troop commander, drifted up. Butler was a handsome, polished fellow, exactly Charles’s age. He was married to the daughter of Governor Pickens and had given up a lucrative law practice to raise the Edgefield Hussars, one of the units Hampton had absorbed into the legion. Though Butler had no military experience, Charles suspected he would be fine in a fight; he liked Butler.
“Ought to have a nigra do that for you,” Butler advised.
“If I were as rich as you lawyers, I might.” Butler laughed. “How’s the colonel?”
“In good spirits, considering the loss of Johnson and the casualties we took.”
“How high?”
“Not certain. I heard twenty percent.”
“Twenty,” Charles repeated, with a slight nod to show satisfaction. Best to think of the dead and injured as percentages, not people; it helped you sleep nights.
Butler crouched down. “I hear the Yankees not only ran from our Black Horse, but they ran from the mere thought of them. They ran from bays, grays, roans—any color you care to name. Called ’em all the Black Horse. Sure sorry we missed that. One nice development—whether we fought or not, we’re to taste the fruits of victory in a week or so. Those of us who can manage to get back to Richmond, anyway.”
