“Well, many of them were taught by English tutors, or studied in England, or travelled there.”
“But not the ladies?”
“No, most of our ladies spent their childhood in the care of negro nurses,” Longstreet explained. “That has influenced their way of speaking.” He asked whether Texas had been hard hit by the war.
“I think not,” the Englishman told him. “Texans were sending a lot of cotton into Mexico, to be shipped to New England or to England from Mexican ports, and the trade was profitable.” He smiled. “One of my compatriots had an amusing experience. He purchased some cotton in Texas and hired waggoners to haul it to the border; but drouth stopped them, no water for their animals. Then a Confederate agent seized the cotton, gave an order on the Cotton Bureau in payment, and seized the mules and wagons too, and pushed on to Brownsville. When a mule died of thirst, he impressed another from some farmer along the way, so he left a trail of dead mules behind him. He crossed the cotton by the ferry to Matamoras as Confederate government property; but my compatriot was there to meet him with a claim which the Mexicans recognized, so his cotton was transported at no cost to him.” He added: “Your friend, Judge Hyde, seemed to relish the story. He says the Confederate agents down there are an arrogant and offensive lot, and he was glad to see them—as he put it—cut down to size!”
Fremantle under the General’s prompting described each step of his journey through the Southern states. He had met General Magruder in Texas, and General Scurry. “An unfortunate name for a soldier,” he commented. He had travelled by wagon, on horseback, by stage and rail and steamer; had been taken for a spy in Mississippi; had heard Grant’s guns pounding Vicksburg.
“I found at General Johnston’s headquarters,” he remarked, “the opinion that rather than yield, the South would prefer to become subjects of our Queen. In fact, I heard one man say he would rather be the subject of the French Emperor or of the Emperor of Japan or of the Devil himself than return to the Union! General Johnston assured me that nine Southerners out of ten would choose to serve the Queen rather than submit to the North.”
Longstreet grunted scornfully. “Joe Johnston is a fine commander; but if he said that, he’s a damned fool! This is a family quarrel, Colonel; and you know what happens to any outsider who mixes in a family quarrel.”
Fremantle had come by way of Chattanooga, and when the Colonel spoke of this, Longstreet said thoughtfully: “I believe this army should be there today. A victory there and a march toward Ohio would relieve Vicksburg.”
“I had the impression,” Fremantle remarked, “that General Bragg’s soldiers at Chattanooga felt no love for him. He executes a great many deserters. One was shot in Wartrace while I was there.” But Longstreet made no comment. This was a subject on which the less said the better.
When Sorrel reported that Hood and McLaws were going into bivouac along Conococheague Creek, Longstreet went again to General Lee, and they had some talk together. Lee said Ewell was at Carlisle, on the way to Harrisburg; Early’s division was near York.
Longstreet ventured the question which held first place in his thoughts. “Stuart?”
General Lee did not reply; his head moved in fretful fashion. “We will rest here tomorrow,” he said. He had outspread on his table the map Longstreet had seen once before, and Longstreet bent over it. His eye followed the Baltimore turnpike eastward to Gettysburg, where many roads converged.
“This town, Gettysburg, is like a magnet,” he commented.
“Early was there yesterday, but he moved on this morning.”
“No enemy there?”
“A few militia.”
Longstreet nodded. The question about Stuart—he put it in another form. “Where is Hooker?”
Lee’s head twitched, but his voice was calm. “Ten days ago he was moving slowly toward the Potomac. He has a pontoon bridge at Edward’s Ferry, but if he had crossed the Potomac, Stuart would have let us know. Hooker will come by forced marches when he comes. He’ll be strung out over miles of roads. We will concentrate and meet the head of his columns and roll him up like a ribbon.” There was a sudden deeper note in his voice, a hoarseness and a hunger. “To strike those people hard could end the war this summer, General!”
Longstreet hesitated. Here was the danger, that Lee’s high heart would plunge them into offensive battle. “We need not beat Hooker. He must beat us. We can let him break himself against us.”
“He has waited too long,” Lee said surely. “He has lost the campaign. Before Hooker’s advance reaches Frederick, Stuart will let us know. Then we can concentrate to crush him.”
Longstreet did not express his anxiety, but he rode back to his own headquarters with a troubled mind. Ewell had been in Pennsylvania since Tuesday or Wednesday, and today was Saturday; and Hooker must have known their movements long ago, must be hurrying to meet them. Even if he were laggard, Lincoln would have spurred him on. Hooker himself might have preferred to cross the mountains and strike their communications; but to do so would have been to let Lee intervene between him and Washington, and Lincoln would not risk that.
No, Hooker must be moving north. Was it possible that Lee trusted Stuart too far? His habit of reliance on his commanders and on his army made him heedless of odds. Just now his army was scattered as it had been before Sharpsburg; but to divide your forces in the face of the enemy was perilous. At Sharpsburg it had brought them to the threshold of disaster. It was true that at Second Manassas and again at Chancellorsville the maneuver had led to fine success; but some day it must prove a losing gamble. Stuart or no Stuart, Hooker was surely coming, and coming fast. To lie idle here while the enemy hosts streamed northward was a procedure full of peril.
Longstreet woke to a fine morning; and lying relaxed and half awake he remembered it was Sunday, and thought of Louisa, and wondered whether she would feel well enough to go to church today. Unless General Lee issued new orders, this would be for all of them a day of rest. He himself felt no need of rest; but he had ridden while his men marched, and their feet must be bruised and weary. Let them rest while they could.
Like many men, he was apt to be short-tempered till he had had a bite of breakfast. Major Moses, though he was an admirable commissary, began each day in such a cheerful frame of mind that Longstreet sometimes found him rather trying. This morning even from his tent he could hear the Major laughing as he told the others of the staff something about Colonel Fairfax. “. . . still asleep, with his bottle on one side and his Bible on the other,” he reported. “I looked in on him, but he hadn’t even had his first six drinks, much less his bath; and he was snoring like the wind.” Longstreet rolled to his feet and pulled on his clothes, wishing Major Moses would at least once in a while wake with a headache that would blunt the edge of his good humor. But a cup of coffee put him in a better frame of mind.
“This sure enough coffee’s a treat, Major,” he said approvingly, “after all the make-believes.”
“I expect to locate some more today,” the other promised. “I’m going to search ever cellar and pantry in Chambersburg till I do.” Colonel Fremantle, who shared his tent, would go into town with him. “The Colonel here hasn’t taken his boots off since he joined us,” Moses jocosely declared. “So I let him share my tent but not my bed. He’s afraid the Yankees will catch him in his socks! If he’s to die it will be with his boots on!”
Fremantle smiled. “These boots are still so wet I can’t get them off,” he said. “And if I did, I couldn’t get them on again; so on they stay.”
Longstreet gave Major Moses an official requisition, and the two departed. Then orders came from Lee to move Hood’s division and McLaws’s to a new location on the Baltimore pike toward Fayetteville; and Longstreet called Sorrel to ride with him to where these two divisions lay and gave the necessary orders. To avoid the town the men would march across the fields. The engineers must take down fences and replace them again when the last regiments and the last guns and wagons had passed thro
ugh the gaps. While Sorrel put the engineers to work, Longstreet rode on to find General Pickett, whose brigades would for the present stay where they were. The other divisions were already breaking camp; the fields along the creek were a swarm of activity. As Longstreet joined Pickett, someone near-by whooped:
“Look yonder, boys! That sure looks like a mice!” Longstreet recognized the voice, and he saw Red Wheatley’s flaming red hair; and as one of Hood’s regiments fell in, Wheatley shouted: “Hey, boys! If you ketch up with any bluebellies, shoot ’em in the haid. Don’t go bloodying up their clothes! I need me a new pair of pants!”
Their grins answered him. Such a man, with his lively laughing tongue, was worth a regiment of gloomy faces. Longstreet and Pickett found a vantage on the hilltop to watch the other divisions begin their march. A scattering of curious civilians had gathered there; and the rolling fields and meadows to the eastward were alive with masses of men and long trains of wagons. The sound of fife and drum and an occasional bugle call came up to the watchers on the hill, and now and then they heard the voice of an officer giving some routine command. One of the regiments began to sing; and others joined in the song. Longstreet caught the murmur of distant voices, but his ears were not sufficiently keen to identify the tune. He saw, off to the north, thin columns of smoke rising and shredding in the light breeze, and asked a question, and Pickett said detachments were destroying the railroad. Longstreet could picture the men cheerfully at their work, ripping up rails and ties, laying the ties in piles and the rails across them, so that when the ties burned the red hot rails would bend in the middle from their own weight and become useless strips of iron. Soldiers relished such a task. Men were like boys, delighting in an orgy of destruction.
When the two divisions were well on their way, Longstreet directed the removal of his own headquarters to the vicinity of Fayetteville, to be near their new bivouac. There at supper time Fremantle rejoined them. “But Major Moses has had no success,” he reported. “He’s found nothing but whiskey and sugar and molasses; but he’s scratching at every door in town like a terrier at rat holes.”
After supper Longstreet spent an hour with General Lee; and once while they talked he saw Lee’s lips compress, as though at a twinge of pain. Longstreet asked: “Are you more comfortable, General?”
“Yes, yes. My discomfort is nothing. I should never complain. Mrs. Lee suffers so much more severely than I. She can only move on crutches now. She’s gone to Hickory Hill to be with Rooney.” General Lee’s son had been wounded at Brandy Station. “Robert’s there, and I suppose the girls are too. I hope Mrs. Lee will go to the Hot Springs when Rooney is improved.”
Longstreet nodded sympathetically. “I’m concerned for Mrs. Longstreet,” he remarked. “She hasn’t been well since winter.” And he said, half smiling: “No matter what our responsibilities in the field, we can never long forget our families.” Returning to his tent a little later he thought this preoccupation with their beloved ones was a bond between them; he could measure the depth of General Lee’s anxiety by his own.
Longstreet was asleep when Major Fairfax and Moxley Sorrel roused him, knocking on his tent pole. “Here’s Harrison, your scout, General,” Sorrel reported. “His news is so important that Fairfax and I decided you ought to hear it at once.” Longstreet was instantly awake. “Harrison came to our outposts,” Sorrel explained. “They didn’t know him, so they sent him under guard to me.” He called Harrison in, and the General said graciously:
“Well, Mr. Harrison, I’m glad to see you.”
“Glad to get here,” Harrison replied. “I didn’t fancy travelling with that escort you gave me. Just about as soon sleep with a rattlesnake. He don’t even rattle before he strikes. He’d rather knife a Yankee picket than sneak by him, any time.”
Longstreet remembered that brother of Currain’s with the hot flame in his eyes. “Never mind. Let’s have your report.”
Harrison nodded. “I went to Washington, looked around, kept my eyes open. Didn’t get anything till day before yesterday. Then I found out Hooker’s army was crossing the Potomac.”
“Day before yesterday? Friday?”
“Yes sir. And that General Hooker——”
“How did you find out?”
“I make a business of finding out things, General.”
“Where is his army now?”
“There’s two corps at Frederick and another one near there and two more toward South Mountain.” South Mountain? That might mean Hooker intended to cross the Blue Ridge. Longstreet’s thoughts were racing. Unless Lee already knew these things, Stuart had failed; but if Lee knew, this army would not be idle here. So Lee did not know. Harrison added: “And General Hooker’s been relieved by General Meade.”
Longstreet’s attention quickened. “Sure?”
“Yes sir. Colonel Hardie brought the order from Washington to Frederick at two o’clock this morning.”
Longstreet, remembering the map, felt a sharp doubt. “Frederick? You couldn’t have come all the way from Frederick today.”
“Not all the way, no, General. No, I was heading for you, to report that Hooker had crossed the river. My horse went lame short of Emmitsburg, and I picked up the news from the Yankees there. They’d had a dispatch from Frederick. I found a stable someone had forgotten to lock and borrowed a good-looking horse and crossed Monterey Pass and came on through Waynesboro. I hurried, but I got here.”
Longstreet grunted. The feat was barely possible; yet Harrison’s news was so disturbing that he was reluctant to believe. “How did you know where to find us?”
“The Yanks at Emmitsburg knew where you were.”
Longstreet nodded, accepting this. The army was in enemy country; their every move would of course be reported to the enemy. “Major Fairfax,” he directed, “take this man to General Lee. Say I have found him reliable. No, wait. I’ll give you a note.”
Sorrel handed him a pad of paper, and he wrote: “This scout has served me well. If he is right about Meade, you’ve again given those people a new commander. I suppose if we move east, they must follow us.” He might make that suggestion stronger; but Lee would weigh it. He folded the paper and handed it to Fairfax. “Report back to me what the General says.”
Fairfax and Harrison departed, and Sorrel, always easily vocal, was eager to discuss the scout’s report; but Longstreet withdrew into his own thoughts. To move east of the mountains would be a threat to Baltimore and Washington, would certainly compel Meade to meet them. Meade would be reluctant, he was not so bold as Hooker; but Lincoln had driven Burnside into disaster at Fredericksburg and Hooker into catastrophe at Chancellorsville, and he would do the same to Meade. That man Lincoln was the South’s best general. From McDowell to Hooker, every Union commander in the east had been defeated as much by Lincoln’s uneasiness about Washington, or by his impatience for victory, as by Lee’s army.
Yes, Meade, no matter what he wished to do, would have to find them and attack. If defensive ground were well chosen they could inflict upon the Yankees another Fredericksburg; and when the enemy was broken they could strike him in his flight.
When Fairfax returned, Longstreet asked: “Well sir?”
“General Lee heard him,” Fairfax reported. “Then he sent Harrison outside and asked me your opinion of the man. I said you thought well of him, and he told me to bring him back to you. That’s all.”
Longstreet was struck by the other’s tone. “You sound tired.” Fairfax was always tired on Sunday, after bibulous Saturday nights. “Go along to bed.” Fairfax departed, and Longstreet called Harrison and made him repeat every detail of his report. Then a messenger from General Lee asked that Harrison be sent to him again. Longstreet put the scout this time in Sorrel’s charge; he lay awake, waiting, sure that Lee would before he slept make some decision.
He was right. When Sorrel returned, he said: “General Lee has decided to concentrate on Cashtown. He’s sending for Imboden, and for Robertson’s cavalry to hurry and j
oin us, and sending couriers to recall Ewell to Cashtown. Hill will move tomorrow. We’ll follow next day.”
Longstreet for a moment did not speak, weighing this, approving. Lee’s decision to concentrate east of the mountains was sound. Here was a great victory in the making. He filled his lungs in deep content. “Good! Good!” In the prospect of present action, he felt all the tension in him ease and relax. He was never so completely master of himself as in the pitch and heat of hard contention. Somewhere on the eastern slopes of South Mountain they would find a position with a good field of fire, and wait for Meade to drive his men up to be slaughtered. Over there at Cashtown they would give Meade another Fredericksburg. “Good!” he said for the third time. Sorrel was waiting for orders, but there was no hurry. “Since we don’t move tomorrow, we’ll not disturb McLaws and Hood tonight. Good night.” He was quickly asleep, undisturbed by dreams.
The cloudy dawn brought a frowning threat of storm, and rain presently began to fall. When Longstreet went to the commanding general he saw an extraordinary discomposure in the other’s eyes. Lee dropped the tent flaps so that they could not be observed; and while they talked he paced restlessly up and down, and once he ran his fingers through his hair.
Yet his tone was calm enough. “I’ve just now sent off another dispatch to Ewell,” he said. “He should have it by noon or soon after.” He frowned at his own thoughts. “We need cavalry badly, General. It’s most embarrassing. Robertson should have been here no later than yesterday, and I don’t know what Imboden can be doing! What mounted strength we have is all with Ewell. We’re even using artillery horses for our foraging.”
Longstreet noticed that he did not speak of Stuart; yet Stuart must be foremost in Lee’s mind. “We can manage,” he said hearteningly. “We don’t have to find Meade. He must find us. Lincoln will demand that. We need only select a good position and wait for his attack and shatter him.” His own confidence was in his tones.
House Divided Page 106
