House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  General Lee had come on to Markham, and Longstreet sent him a dispatch reporting he had done this. Lee replied in a tone puzzlingly uncertain. He remarked that to operate east of the mountains might have confused Hooker. “But as you have turned off to the Valley, and I understand all the trains have taken that route, I hope it is for the best.”

  This was so near a reproof that Longstreet half resented it; but General Lee was in constant pain from his pleurisy and from the rheumatism which he could not shake off, and probably he was worried because he had so little news of Hooker.

  “Just as I am worried about Louisa, not hearing from her,” Longstreet reflected; but next day a letter from her overtook him. It was almost two weeks old; but like all her letters it was affectionate and cheerful. She was taking the best care of herself, she said; she was resting every day. He must never worry. “Have me in your heart,” she wrote, “but not on your mind. We know you’ll beat the old Yankees any time they meet you.” She gave him some crumbs of news. “There’s been a fine rain to break the drouth, and everyone’s boasting about their gardens. Prices are terrible; but somehow we manage. Everybody seems to be getting rich by speculating.”

  There was a postcript. “I must never keep anything from you, because if I did you’d worry; so I’ll ’fess up that I had a bad time a week ago, the same thing. Even Dr. Dunn was worried, but I’m fine now.”

  That disturbed him for a while, till his work drove thoughts of Louisa into the background of his mind. Friday, General Lee broke up his headquarters at Markham and rode through Ashby’s Gap and down into the Valley; and on Saturday, Longstreet was perplexed by a dispatch from headquarters directing him to be ready to move toward the Potomac.

  “But we’re ready now,” he told Moxley Sorrel. “What am I expected to do? General Lee saw the disposition of McLaws’s division at Ashby’s. Possibly he thinks we should pass through the Gaps and cross the Shenandoah.” Till Powell Hill was up, the Gaps should be held; but these orders seemed to mean that Lee felt Longstreet could now leave his post.

  Very well, he would move across the Shenandoah. He gave orders for the march. The ascent was easy, by a grade seldom steep enough to weary the men; and from the crest they saw the waiting beauty of the Valley, as inviting as the blue of the sea on a hot summer’s day. The way down was long and tortuous, winding through forest that seldom permitted any distant outlook; but at the foot of the Ridge they came to wide levels and to frequent farms and pushed on across the tilled lands and down to the ford, and so made their bivouac on the rising ground beyond the sparkling stream.

  The mountains were like a wall between them and the enemy, but next day Stuart sent word that Yankee cavalry in force was pressing him toward the Gap; so McLaws’s division had to climb back up that steep winding road to be ready to hold the Gap if Stuart were pushed too far. But by the time they were in position Stuart sent word that the Yankees were withdrawing, that he was harrying them through Upperville toward Aldie. McLaws’s men had that hard day’s march to no purpose; but Longstreet, though he regretted the waste of good shoe leather, knew this would not daunt the men. A soldier soon learned to accept the changing minds of his commanders.

  General Lee had made his new headquarters a little beyond Berryville, on the west side of the Charlestown road; and Monday when the Gap was secure and McLaws was bringing his division back down the mountain to the ford, Longstreet had a dispatch from the commanding general enclosing an open letter to be forwarded to Stuart. In this open letter General Lee bade Stuart move northward and take position on Ewell’s flank in Pennsylvania; and his covering dispatch to Longstreet said Stuart might in his discretion go through Hopewell Gap and pass Hooker’s rear, turning north between the Federal army and Washington.

  Longstreet was troubled by this discretionary order. Stuart’s proper place was between this army and the enemy, and Stuart of course knew this; but still smarting under the sting of that surprise at Brandy Station, he would be in a mood to do something spectacular. Acting as a flank guard was dull work, and it would be like Stuart to elect that risky alternative of a ride around the enemy.

  Longstreet tried to dismiss his misgivings. Stuart was too good a soldier to get out of touch with the commanding general. Lee’s letter indicated that the northward movement was to be resumed, and Tuesday evening the expected orders came: the First Corps was to move through Berryville and Martinsburg toward the Potomac at Williamsport.

  Pickett’s division was at Millwood, McLaws’s men lay between Millwood and the river, Hood at Snicker’s Gap could pass through and march to Berryville and take his place in the advance. Longstreet gave orders to move at dawn on Wednesday; and when McLaws led his men through Millwood and followed Pickett toward Berryville, the plodding foot soldiers filling the road for miles as they filed northward across the low rolling hills, Longstreet mounted and rode with his staff to overtake Pickett and come to the head of the column.

  There was a deep reluctance in him, and a sadness at this setting out; and he wondered why. Perhaps it was because every mile took him farther from Louisa. Moxley Sorrel rode beside him, and Major Goree, and these two were talking cheerfully of nothing; and Longstreet wondered almost resentfully if they had no families to whom their thoughts turned as his did to Louisa. Then he remembered that Goree’s Texas home was far away, and Sorrel’s too; so a few miles more made little difference to them. But a man like Currain, with a wife and children in Richmond, could share his own homesick longing; and beyond Berryville Longstreet called Trav to his side.

  “This is one of those times I’d as soon forget I’m a soldier,” he confessed. “So let’s not talk business. You’ll always be a civilian at heart. Even when you fight, you’re less like a soldier than like a drunken man in a brawl.”

  “I’m no great shakes as a talker, either, General.”

  “Yes, but you can listen. Let’s ride ahead.” Longstreet touched his horse to a trot, and Trav followed and the rest of the staff kept pace behind. But the narrow road, honeysuckle like a hedge along the fences on either side, was crowded, and it was always hard to pass marching infantry; so Longstreet turned into a byway, clear of the column and of the sluggish dust clouds stirred up by so many tramping feet.

  “The men have their own dust to eat,” he suggested. “Let’s not make it harder for them by adding ours. We’ll ride through Charlestown and be ahead of them at Kearneysville.” Trav followed his lead without comment, and Longstreet welcomed that silence, thinking how ready with conversation some of the others on the staff would have been. A wise general chose his staff not only for their capacities but for their qualities. Fairfax was a clown, loving meat and drink and lusty pleasures, ready when the wine flowed to make an ass of himself. Well, there were hours when a man wanted to play the fool, and in such hours Fairfax was a jolly companion. Longstreet remembered one occasion when both of them were in their cups and he rode Fairfax like a horse around the mess table, and Fairfax played his part to perfection, bucking and neighing like an unbroken colt. Walton drank as heavily as anyone; but liquor edged his tongue with sarcastic barbs and set his temper on a hair trigger. Latrobe and Peyton Manning were gentlemen by instinct and breeding, unfailingly kindly in word and act, prompt for any duty and equally ready for the gentler pleasures. Sorrel was probably the ablest of them all, certainly the one best fitted for command; but he was a little too ready to urge his own opinions, and easily critical. Goree and Longstreet had in common many friends in Texas, and there was a strong affection between them. Goree was a diligent and intelligent and trustworthy officer; but if he had a fault it was too ready a tongue. For instance, he would never have ridden here beside Longstreet mile after mile, as Currain was doing now, with never a word. To be with Currain was like being alone: you could keep your thoughts to yourself or let them find words as you chose, sure that Currain would do more listening than talking.

  Longstreet’s eyes swept approvingly across the pleasant fertile fields that ran with the road;
and at last he spoke. “This is fine country, Currain. Some day I’m going to quit the army and find a smooth bit of turf under a shady tree and just sit there for the rest of my life!”

  “I’d probably plow up the turf and plant something.”

  The big man nodded, only half hearing. “Yes, some day I’ll turn civilian.” And after a moment he said thoughtfully. “You know, Currain, army life is strange. Here are thousands of us in closest companionship day after day, and yet each one of us is always alone. Have you ever noticed, at headquarters or in camp, how often a man draws apart by himself? There’s a difference between comradeship and friendship, isn’t there? You can be comrades with a stranger. Friends, even when they’re apart, are still friends; but comrades, after the hot moment of action is passed, are no longer comrades.” He nodded over his shoulder. “These gentlemen here, and the soldiers on the road yonder, are all knit together in a military comradeship; yes, and close knit too. But separate them and they’re individuals again.” Currain made an assenting sound and Longstreet added: “It may be an armor we put on. If we loved our comrades too much, we could not endure it when they die.”

  “I guess that’s so.”

  “Whatever the reason, the thing is true. If you doubt it, Currain, watch them in their leisure. At work, or at table, or at some jest together, they’re laughing and genial; but the moment nothing any longer holds them together, see how quickly each withdraws himself into silence, into another room, another place. Men value their privacy; they like to be alone.”

  “I like to run into people I know,” Trav said. “Get news of friends and kin. I’ve got some friends in the Eleventh North Carolina that I want to look up when the army draws together again.” He added as though this made a difference: “But of course, they were my friends before the war.”

  An elderly gentleman rode out from a great house they passed and saluted them, introducing himself. “Thomas Paynton, General.” Any march brought such incidents as this. The gentlemen of the neighborhood were apt to ride a few miles with you, seeking what information you cared to give them, volunteering information that was often useful. Trav dropped back to let Mr. Paynton ride by the General’s side, and their talk was random till Longstreet remembered that in Charlestown, now not far ahead, John Brown had been hanged, and spoke of it.

  “Yes,” Mr. Paynton agreed. “Yes, I talked with that man, after his capture.” And he explained: “He came to my home during my absence to try to work on my negroes. They saw in him only an old man with a long beard who wanted to give them pikes with which to kill their white folks. Of course they were frightened, so they never spoke of it till after he was safe in jail; but then my old Andrew saw the maniac and recognized him and told me. I was sufficiently curious so that I went to see Brown before he was hanged, told him Andrew recognized him. Brown admitted it without any evidence of shame. He said I need never fear my negroes, that he could not move them at all, that they were completely loyal.”

  “I had not known that Brown tried to excite the people.”

  “Oh yes. He was in the neighborhood for some time before he turned to actual violence; visited many plantations hereabouts. When he found he could not enlist any black men as his recruits, he decided they were afraid to rise, that a bold stroke might give them their cue.”

  “He knew as little about the black people as any other abolitionist,” Longstreet commented. “I’ve sometimes thought it must puzzle those ignorant fanatics up North, if they have enough intelligence to be puzzled, to see millions of slaves loyally protecting our women and children and our homes while we march off to war. You know, if there were even one slave insurrection anywhere in the South, every soldier in Lee’s army would desert and go home to protect his family, and the war would be over.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Paynton agreed. “And if there were even a grain of truth in the lies preached by men like Garrison and Beecher and Emerson, the slaves would have butchered us long ago. But I suppose there were liars on both sides. Massachusetts at one end of the country, and South Carolina and Alabama at the other, equally ignorant, fed us lies for thirty years. Lies and abuse, flung back and forth by ignorant men, were bound to lead to battle in the end.”

  “Lies are the tools of politicians.” Longstreet spoke sternly. “Good tools, too; because you can never catch up with a lie. And a lie is usually more interesting than the truth, so it’s listened to more readily. The politicians feed us lies till they persuade us we believe things we really don’t believe at all. It’s their talk, poured into our ears or thrown at us by the newspapers, that brought us into this war. People will always be easily led to war as long as they believe what they hear and what they read, instead of thinking for themselves. And of course the lie most easily believed is that they’re better than other men. The abolitionists think they’re better than we are, and we think we’re better than they are. So we’re all fighting to prove it.”

  Mr. Paynton amended that. “The abolitionists never could have done it without the Republicans to help. I suppose the worst insult you can throw at a Southerner for the next hundred years will be to call him a Republican.”

  The next hundred years? Yes, that was the question: not what was best and wisest for today, but for tomorrow, for the years to come. Suppose the Confederacy established itself; suppose the Union fell. Was that, after all, conceivable? Longstreet at his own thoughts shook his head. No, it was not. Any victory the South won would be only temporary. Inevitably the force of a common language, common interests, blood ties, a shared heritage, would draw North and South together again.

  But then this war, these battles, all were a bloody futility. He fell into an abstracted silence; and when Mr. Paynton presently, as though feeling himself dismissed, said good-by and turned homeward, Longstreet rode alone. The countryside was increasingly familiar. Bunker Hill, where after Sharpsburg he had spent some weeks, was off to the west not far away. From the Shenandoah there was a rising swell of ground to the rolling plateau along which ran the Valley pike, with the masses of North Mountain paralleling the road to the westward. In the pastured lands beside the road, bone-gray ledges frequently broke the sod. Sometimes these ledges might extend for long distances, set on edge so that slanting slabs like toppling grave stones rose two or three feet above the green turf.

  Off there to the westward, as the road he followed approached its junction with that which his men had taken, he saw a low cloud of dust stirred up by thousands of tramping feet; and his thoughts returned to his present problems. The army was a serpent stretched to its utmost length along many miles of road, with South Mountain to guard the flank toward the enemy; but they would presently enter Yankee territory. Then they must draw more closely together. They would have to live off the country; and as for fighting, they carried no more than enough artillery ammunition for one great battle. The soldiers could replenish their cartridge boxes from the wagons, but unless they won a battle and captured powder and shells and solid shot and canister and grape, the great guns would become useless baggage.

  General Lee hoped this northward thrust would draw the enemy army out of his beloved Virginia. He hoped to fight a defensive battle where victory might earn a rich reward. He hoped at the worst to keep the fighting north of the Potomac till summer waned.

  But suppose instead of victory they met defeat, or fought a drawn battle. What then? A strong uneasiness made Longstreet lift his horse to a trot. At Kearneysville he found Garnett’s brigade, with Colonel Hunton for this day at its head, and he heard that General Lee was gone toward Martinsburg and pushed on to rejoin the commanding general. The rolling levels gave way to many little hills, and from the crest of each he could see behind him the line of marching men, the guns, the wagons of his First Corps on the move, crawling steadily northward along the undulating road. Above them hung the dust, and Longstreet thought the dust seemed to dull the sun, and he glanced upward. The sun was in fact obscured, but not by the dust. A thin mist of cloud, scored by barely perc
eptible lines, was drawn like a veil across the western sky. That promised rain tonight, or tomorrow. Suppose, somewhere up there in Pennsylvania where they now were bent, they met a shattering disaster, and rains raised the river to flood stage behind them. What then?

  This road they followed, this region they traversed, woke sombre thoughts. Hagerstown was not far away. Last September he had been at Hagerstown when a messenger brought word that McClellan was fighting to cross the South Mountain and strike their scattered forces. Then came the desperately hurried concentration and that bitter day of death at Sharpsburg. Longstreet looked off that way. South Mountain was a dim shadow in this increasing haze, but he could make out the notch of the gap through which McClellan came. The ford where after that bloody day at Sharpsburg this army crossed back into Virginia to lick its wounds was only a few miles to the eastward. Probably a crow could fly from here to last September’s battlefield in five minutes, ten at the most. Longstreet remembered the dead who strewed that field, and the nightlong cries of wounded as they died; and he wondered whether those dead men might not just now feel the pound of marching feet as this army passed, and rouse from their shallow graves, and—what was that shuddering line he had read somewhere? —come to squeak and gibber at old comrades, and to call derisive greetings to living men who would soon be dead as they.

  He set his jaw, forcing himself to forget that disastrous field so near the line of march they followed now. Last September Lee had only thirty or forty thousand men to face McClellan’s hundred thousand, but now Lee led twice that many seasoned veterans toward Pennsylvania. The issue must be different this year.