House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  It was three months since Longstreet brought his divisions west. Trav’s duties threw him twenty-four hours behind the General on the journey. At the request of Dr. Dunn, at whose home in Petersburg Mrs. Longstreet was staying, Longstreet had arranged that the doctor’s cousin, Lieutenant Andrew Dunn, should be assigned to his staff; and he and Trav travelled together. Lieutenant Dunn had been born in Ireland, and he was a lively and amusing individual. Trav found him good company.

  The battle along Chickamauga Creek had been fought and won before they arrived. It was late evening of that great day when they reached Ringold Station, a long low-roofed stone structure on the eastern fringe of the little town; and once off the cars the clamor of the guns came to them across the hills that lay between Ringold and the battlefield. When their horses had been unloaded, they trotted across the level valley and followed a road that wound through low, forest-covered hills, climbing and then descending to cross Chickamauga Creek and go on up gently rising ground to the rolling woodlands in whose thickets the battle had been fought. Before they reached headquarters just beyond Jay’s Mill, the fight was over, and Trav found Moxley Sorrel drunk with victory.

  “We’ve smashed them, Currain,” he cried. “They’re on the dead run for Chattanooga. We’ll be after them at daylight, gather them in as easily as shaking ripe plums off a tree.” All about them in the forest there was jubilation as the victorious Confederates built their cooking fires; and triumphant voices drowned even the moaning cries of wounded men as stretcher bearers gathered them for the surgeons’ bitter work. “General Hood’s killed, mortally wounded. But we’ve smashed them today.”

  “Where’s General Longstreet?”

  “Trying to find General Bragg, to get orders for tomorrow; but there’s only one thing to do, and we’ll do it.” Sorrel fell to laughing at his own thoughts. “Oh, we’ve had a day! We got to Catoosa Station about two o’clock yesterday, and there were no orders for us, so we started to hunt General Bragg. Down by the creek we rode right into a Yankee outpost. It was dark by then. They challenged us and I asked who they were and they told us, and I thought we were goners, but the General just said, loud enough for them to hear: ‘We’d better ride down the creek a little, find a better crossing.’ So we turned away and they didn’t fire a shot.”

  “He never gets excited, does he?”

  “Not in danger, no; but in action, yes! You should have heard him roar today!” Sorrel grinned affectionately. “The old Bull-of-the-Woods! And how the men love him! Yes, and civilians, too! In Atlanta, we put up at the Trout Hotel; and just about everyone in town came crowding around the hotel and yelling for him. When he showed himself they wanted a speech. He held up his hand and that quieted them down and he said: ‘I came not to speak but to meet the enemy!’ That touched them off again. I wish you could have seen him today.”

  “I can imagine it. Were any of the staff hurt?”

  Sorrel laughed. “No, but we thought Colonel Manning was a gone goose at dinner. A shell fragment hit him and he was gasping and strangling and black in the face, but the General said: ‘Get that sweet potato out of his mouth and he’ll stop choking!’ So we clapped him on the back, and up came the potato and he was all right.”

  But the first fine exhilaration of that great victory did not long endure Next morning, although the Yankees were in full flight for Chattanooga, Bragg refused to permit the swift pursuit that would have made victory complete. Longstreet and the whole army raged at this excess of caution; and an open demand arose for Bragg’s removal, a demand so vehement that a petition went to Richmond. So two or three weeks after the battle, President Davis himself came to Bragg’s headquarters. He called the higher-ranking officers into conference, and next day he and Longstreet spent hours together.

  Trav saw, thereafter, Longstreet’s profound depression; and one evening when they had ridden to the heights above Chattanooga to look down on the enemy far below, the General spoke of what had happened.

  “President Davis knew that every general officer in the army desired Bragg’s removal; but I suppose he wanted to outface us. He called a council, with Bragg present, and asked me to be the first to express myself.” He laughed. “Perhaps he expected to abash me into silence. I told him that I had not been an hour with this army before I knew General Bragg was unfit to command. I said his intentions were good but his capabilities inadequate. I said that properly handled we could have chased Rosecrans into Kentucky; but that General Bragg made us sit still while Burnside made Chattanooga impregnable.”

  “General Bragg heard you?” Trav asked, imagining the scene.

  “Yes, and when I was done all his other officers urged his removal, and he heard them too. I don’t know how any man of spirit could accept such a humiliation. I expected him to resign, but he did not, and President Davis will not remove him.” He added angrily: “But it’s probably just as well. Our chance was lost when we made no pursuit after Chickamauga.”

  “You think we had a real chance then?”

  “Yes. Oh, I suppose we’re all optimists in the hot hours of victory; but I thought that next day we could open the road to the Ohio and push on.” After a moment he added: “Mr. Davis spoke to me privately after our council. He had some thought of assigning me to command. I told him General Johnston was the proper choice; but he doesn’t like General Johnston, and he rebuked me as though I were a presumptuous child. I asked permission to resign, and he said I could not be spared; that my men would not let me go. I asked leave of absence, proposed to withdraw to Texas and to send in a later resignation. He would have none of that.” He laughed gruffly. “Then he began to complain of the way the politicians torment him, said he couldn’t decide what to do. Taking thought is a vice with him. There are occasions when even a wrong decision is better than indecision!” He shook his head. “We do everything at the wrong time, Currain. If we had won that victory at Chickamauga Creek in May instead of September, and had followed it up, I believe we would have saved Vicksburg. We would have invaded Ohio last July, instead of Pennsylvania. But time is one opportunity that is never offered twice.”

  Trav suspected that a major part of the other’s depression had its source in his anxiety for news from Mrs. Longstreet, and when late in October the word at last reached them that on the twentieth Robert Lee Longstreet had been born, he saw an immediate change in the big man. The General, his mind at ease, became mellow and tolerant and genial. One morning when they were at breakfast an old woman in a black silk dress and an extraordinary hat of ancient pattern timidly approached and asked if General Longstreet were among them.

  “At your service, madam,” the General assured her. “What can I do for you?”

  She looked around uncertainly. “Any harm in me a-comin’ heah?”

  “None whatever, ma’am. In fact it would please me mightily if you would join us at breakfast.”

  The old woman hesitated. “Well, I done walked eight miles sence I et my breakfast, and we-uns don’t have much up in our settlement, so I rightly believe I’ll take a bite.”

  She ate with the headlong, furtive haste of one to whom a full meal was an event, and food loosened her tongue, and she and the General chatted comfortably. She confessed at last that her real errand was to replenish her supply of pipe tobacco, and they filled her pouch and General Longstreet ordered an ambulance to carry her to her distant mountain home.

  They had other humble visitors, and Trav thought Longstreet knew how to reassure and to win them; but the big man’s eagerness for some military activity persisted. The move against Knoxville, a hundred miles away, seemed to Trav hopeless of success. He thought that for Bragg thus to divide his army invited disaster. But Longstreet welcomed the opportunity; and with an effective force of no more than fifteen thousand men, he set out to attack and disperse General Burnside’s army, which was at least as numerous and on good defensive ground. On that tedious march through bottomless mud he wore from day to day a hearty cheerfulness, and he laughed away T
rav’s doubts. “Even if we don’t take Knoxville, as long as we have an army so near Kentucky, the Yankees won’t sleep of nights.”

  His good spirits were heightened by an affectionate letter from General Lee, which he proudly showed Trav. “I urged him to come out here and take command,” he explained. “This is his reply.”

  Trav read the letter. “As regards your position as to myself,” General Lee wrote, “I wish that I could feel that it was prompted by other reasons than kind feelings to myself. I think that you could do better than I could.” Lee told the story of his unsuccessful move against Meade which ended at Bristoe Station, and he added: “I missed you dreadfully, you and your brave corps. Your cheerful face and strong arms would have been invaluable. I hope you will soon return to me. I trust we may soon be together again. May God preserve you and all with you.”

  Trav handed the letter back, understanding how much it must have encouraged Longstreet in this present venture; but his own misgivings persisted, and others shared them. When they faced the enemy in his works at Knoxville and prepared to attack, they heard a rumor that Bragg had been defeated at Chattanooga; and General McLaws in a written protest to Longstreet argued that under the circumstances an assault on Knoxville offered little hope of profit. Longstreet, furiously angry, showed Trav the communication. “With that lack of spirit in my commanding officers,” he demanded, “how can the attack succeed?”

  Trav said honestly: “Well, sir, General McLaws is a brave and skillful fighter. He conceives it his duty to offer these considerations, just as you conceived it your duty to advise General Lee against making battle at Gettysburg.”

  Longstreet scowled. “Nonsense! Even if Bragg has been defeated, our best course is to beat the enemy in front of us!”

  “General Lee felt at Gettysburg that our best course was to attack, but you did not agree.”

  Trav knew that to speak thus straightforwardly might draw Longstreet’s anger on himself, and he braced to meet the storm. But Longstreet, after a moment, said almost sadly:

  “If General Lee believed it was right to attack at Gettysburg, and you see here a parallel, then I am the more convinced that we must attack the forts over there.” He added half to himself: “General Lee may have been wrong, and I may now be wrong; yet I think that in my place here, he would do as I shall do. Certainly I must take the responsibility of decision.”

  The assault failed. Trav thought it might have succeeded if it had been pushed home, but on a report from one of General McLaws’s staff of difficulties in the way, Longstreet himself recalled the attacking column. Yet he said that night to Trav: “We had them! Blame our repulse on me. I let myself be discouraged by another’s doubts.” And he said in stern self-reproach: “No man is fit for high command, nor fit to send other men into the front of battle, if as I did he allows his own heart to waver in the crucial hour.”

  As far as Trav knew, he made this admission to no one else; and Trav understood the big man too well to expect that he would. For the repulse at Gettysburg, General Lee had at once and publicly taken the responsibility; but it was not in Longstreet openly to admit he was wrong. Perhaps he was right in this attitude; perhaps to confess his fallibility might shake the confidence of his men. General Lee could admit his errors and still command the highest devotion; but there was no other like Lee.

  Immediately after the repulse, the telegraph confirmed the rumor of Bragg’s defeat. He had been beaten into hard retreat; and he sent orders for Longstreet’s army to unite with his disorganized command. But before Longstreet began to move in that direction, communications were cut; and thus left to his own resources he led his men eastward to reopen direct communication with Virginia.

  During those weeks of rain and mud and hunger and disease, and perhaps because he remembered his own lapse at Knoxville, Longstreet’s temper became increasingly brittle. He asked for a court-martial for General Robertson, of whom General Hood had complained at Chickamauga; he relieved General McLaws and ordered him to proceed to Augusta, charging him with “want of confidence in the plans of the commanding general”; and when General Law a day or two later presented his resignation with a request for leave of absence, Longstreet growled:

  “General, your request is cheerfully granted.”

  Trav understood the other’s harshness toward these men who had been so long his comrades. Longstreet’s wrath was not at them but at himself. The General had once said of Stuart that the cavalryman had the weaknesses which matched his virtues; that his vanity and his love for the spectacular were a part of the dashing courage which made him a great commander. Something of the sort was true of Longstreet himself. It was confidence in his own rightness that made him the fine battle leader he was, and he knew this, and so would never, unless he must, admit that he had been wrong. But the failure at Knoxville was so clearly his failure that he recognized the fact; and the memory of it must be a torment to him now. During these weeks the General kept even Trav at a distance, forever finding fault with him in little ways; and Trav guessed that Longstreet regretted that confession of his fault, and blamed Trav for having heard it. Certainly it was to find a scapegoat for his own sins that the commanding general now disciplined his lieutenants.

  But when the army crossed into the region where the French Broad and the Holston rivers join, the big man became more like himself. They came into a land of plenty, of fine farms where the crops were ready for the reaper or had just been harvested. Major Moses found himself in a commissary officer’s heaven; for wagons sent to collect supplies could be filled within half a dozen miles of camp. Even in mid-December they discovered corn still standing, pumpkins just touched with frost, vegetables in the cellars and the bins, fat hogs and sheep and cattle. Blankets and uniforms and shoes were worn-out and hard to replace; so men chosen from the ranks must turn hides into leather, and leather into shoes. This took time, and when there was a march to be made, barefoot, soldiers left bloody prints on the frozen ground; but at least food was plentiful, and wood for fires to fight back the harsh and bitter cold.

  So the spirits of the men were high, and Longstreet’s temper improved, not only because of this but because he now had regular letters from Mrs. Longstreet. She was well, the baby throve. He told Trav that she proposed to go presently to Augusta, to visit the Sibleys there.

  “Two of my cousins, Emma Eve Longstreet and Elizabeth Eve Longstreet, of the Virginia branch of the family, married Augusta men,” he explained. “Cousin Emma married a cotton merchant, Josiah Sibley. She’s his second wife, and she had a son last August and wrote asking permission to name him after me. She and Louisa have kept up a correspondence, and she wants Louisa to come and stay with them; and Louisa thinks Augusta will be better for the baby than the cold weather in Petersburg. Augusta’s warm and pleasant even in winter, I believe. I’ll be relieved to have her there.”

  But if the General’s mind was at ease, Trav’s was not. The long days of inactivity gave him too much time for thought, and thoughts of Enid were sorry company. He had letters from Lucy and from Cinda, and since they did not mention Darrell, he assumed that Darrell had not returned to Richmond. Lucy’s letters seemed to say that their life at home followed a normal and not unhappy course.

  Lucy never failed to assure him that Peter and Mama sent him just loads of love; but Enid had never written, and did not now, and Trav found himself longing for some word of her. To remember that moment when he struck her senseless filled him with shame; and when he recalled how on the morning of his departure she came to make her peace and he gave her no word, he blamed himself for hard brutality.

  For after all, she might be innocent. Weighed at this distance, the evidence against her was frail and unconvincing. Streean’s insinuation? Well, Streean was a malicious man, with a base and scandalous mind. Lucy’s manner? Peter’s? The disapproval of old April and of Mill? a Trav realized that his imagination might have magnified these things. Possibly the children and the servants resented Darrell’s frequent p
resence at the house; but why should Darrell not occasionally call on Enid, and why should she not welcome him? She was lovely, and hungry for companionship, and Darrell could be amusing when he chose. Trav tried to buttress his condemnation, to persuade himself she had confessed; but she had not. When he flung at her a question which any loyal wife would rightfully resent, she angrily retorted: “Don’t you wish you knew?” But that was not confession; that might have been no more than sudden furious hurt and rage. If he had been a little kinder, if they had talked calmly together for a while, she might have reassured him. He imagined her teasing him because he was jealous, turning at last to a sweet tenderness, forgiving his question because it was prompted by his love for her.

  But he had given her no chance to do so. He flung at her an angry question which was actually a brutal affront; and when her hurt resentment framed an angry retort he knocked her down! Next morning when she was ready to forgive him he rebuffed her. What insane passion had made him so ready to believe her guilty, whom he should have trusted utterly? Oh, he had been wrong, cruelly wrong, condemning her without hearing. It was he who had been at fault, not she. Would she ever forgive him?

  These remorseful thoughts were Trav’s Christmas companions in that winter of ’63. Like an erring child, expecting chastisement yet hopeful of pardon, he at once longed and dreaded to see her again.