House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Trav wiped his streaming eyes. “Well, gentlemen; we’ll all soon be starting home.”

  Lonn said cheerfully: “If I had the sense God give a chipmunk I’d have started four years ago. Yes, and got there and stayed there, too!”

  “Your soldiering’s almost done.” Trav spoke at random, any words at all. “One more march, to lay down your guns and cartridge boxes, and your flag.”

  Lonn grinned and looked around and saw an officer near-by and called to him. “Cap’n, the Major here says we-uns got to lay down our flag.” The officer approached and Trav recognized Captain Outlaw of C Company.

  “Why, no, Major,” the Captain said mildly. “Not our regiment. Last Friday night we all saw this coming, and we decided no Yankee was ever going to touch our flag. The legislature gave it to the Bethel Regiment, and the Bethel Regiment passed it on to us; so we decided it was too good for the Yankees. We took it off the staff and carried the staff with the cover on it all day Saturday, so no one could tell the flag wasn’t there; and Sunday morning when we saw General Lee all dressed up and riding to meet Grant, we took the flag off in the woods and burned it.”

  Lonn Tyler said dryly: “So, Major, if you look to see us lay down our flag you’re due to be some supprised.”

  Trav was astonished at his own fierce rush of gladness at this incident. A flag was such a little thing; yet how many men North and South—rude, untutored men like Lonn Tyler in whom you would not readily suspect fine sensibilities and spiritual loyalties—had died in these four years for just such draggled, shot-torn banners as the one these men had consecrated in the flames! In any combat, the battle flags were focus of the fiercest fighting. Men did not, in the heat of action, fight for their families, or their homes, or their possessions, or their states, or the cause to which they adhered; they fought for their flags, to protect their own, to seize the enemy’s. Trifles meant in the end so much more, moved men’s hearts so much more deeply, than the great things. Perhaps it was because they were trifles, and so within reach of every comprehension.

  All that day, General Alexander’s guns remained in the road where they had been surrendered, the column extending from the bridge up the slope for almost a mile. The exhausted horses stood patiently in the rain; and dusk came down and found them there. At dawn Wednesday, when Trav went to look, the guns had not been moved, but many of the horses were down. They had fallen from exhaustion and were too nearly starved to scramble to their feet again.

  There were other gaps in the bogged column too; for horses with any work left in them had been cut from their traces during the night and spirited away. Trav guessed that the Yankee guards had shut their eyes to this. “Let the men keep their horses,” Grant had said. Well, many a man, when the time came to depart, would have a horse to ride who had had none before.

  The final act of the tragedy was played out under skies that had been wept dry by two days’ rain, under a gloomy canopy of lowering clouds. There were no bands to set the rhythm of the last march, and no drums to beat. If the sun rose that day, no man saw it. Dawn came gray through the cloud scud.

  The formal laying down of arms would follow a pattern prearranged. For the march down to the stream, and up the road along which the victors would await their coming, General Gordon and his Second Corps would lead, the First Corps bring up the rear. Till time for the First Corps to fall in, Trav had no duties; so he watched from the heights half a mile short of the bridge as Gordon’s men began to form in the field beside the road still clogged with Alexander’s guns. Beyond the stream he saw, through the gray light of that dull morning, files of Union soldiers march down toward the bridge and form facing the road, two lines on one side, one on the other. He remembered old tales of prisoners taken captive by Indians and required to run a gantlet. Yonder was the gantlet which this army presently must run.

  Some of Gordon’s regiments now taking position yonder were so reduced in numbers that only a color guard remained. Except for an occasional low word of command, a hush lay across that gentle valley. Men moved in silence to their places and stood waiting; and some were proudly erect and some hung their heads.

  Trav watched till at last General Gordon led his van down toward the stream. In addition to the Stars and Bars which most regiments displayed, there were so many battle flags that the moving files of men seemed to be crowned with red, and Trav had a sudden vision of what those flags meant, of the many regiments which once in full strength had marched under those colors. How many thousands of brave men had followed these torn and tattered flags into the bloody battles of the years now ending here! How few of those fine men of valor were alive today! Their blood, blood of the bravest and the best, was long since spilled; their bodies, often left unburied, had rotted or had been devoured by hogs and vermin. Their bones lay bleaching in the new green grass of this month of April, all across those southern fields.

  They were dead, and the sons they might have sired would never be born. The South, yes, and the nation, had lost not those fine men alone, but the generations of their sons who now would never be. The nation and the world would be poorer for that loss, poorer forevermore.

  Trav’s eyes blurred, and he turned back to be ready to take his place when the First Corps should move. Behind him, across the river toward the village, he heard a bugle blow; but he did not look that way. When he rejoined the staff, the men of the First Corps were already in formation, but they would not tread too close on the heels of those in front; and whenever the head of the column halted, so must they all.

  Thus on that last march there were many halts, and many brief forward movements. At the halts even Nig stood patiently; when they moved on, the horse showed no eagerness or haste. Trav with his comrades of the staff—Manning, Latrobe, all the others—came a little behind Longstreet, letting the General have the road to himself. Trav wondered why he had followed that big man so far. Except for brief moments when battle frenzy spurred him into explosive action, he had never been at heart the warrior. He wondered, too, why grief now tortured him. He was glad the war was done; yet the gloomy pageantry of this hour, the set faces all around him, the silent men and the sluggish beat of weary feet in the churned mud of the road, combined to wring his very vitals, as though all his organs were caught in a twisted rope and squeezed to agonizing pain.

  When the road dipped more steeply toward the bridge, the whole scene lay under his eye. The gray-clad column flowed past the abandoned guns down to the stream; it climbed the hill between those ranks of men in blue and disappeared over the crest. Beyond the bridge he saw a group of mounted Union officers. Doubtless they were the ones chosen to receive this surrender.

  He heard suddenly a bugle blow, and along the ranks of the enemy a ripple ran. Their pieces moved smartly and were still. Trav looked at Longstreet. The big man, since his wound paralyzed the nerves, had carried his right arm in a sling; but he who rarely or never wore any weapon today had belted on a sword. Trav saw him now remove the sling and stuff it into the pocket of his uniform, leaving his right arm free.

  They came near the stream and halted again, and again went on. As Nig crossed the bridge, Trav held his eyes straight ahead, feeling upon him the steady eyes of the ranked soldiers in blue who walled the road. A moment later he heard again the bugle sound, and every Yankee musket came to Carry Arms, in courteous salute to the vanquished. Longstreet at the column’s head swept his sword up and down in signal for response; and Trav heard the men behind him shift their pieces in acknowledgment of the victor’s gesture. He understood then why Longstreet a while ago had freed his sword arm; and this proof of the General’s unshaken mastery of himself made Trav’s eyes burn with proud tears.

  They had to halt once more, just short of the crest of the rise, while Gordon’s last division laid down its arms. When the road was clear they moved again, and at command halted and left-faced. Longstreet and his staff wheeled into position behind their men. Trav saw the shabby lines dress ranks; he heard the scrape of steel as bayonet
s were fixed and arms were stacked. At the word, the men stripped off their cartridge boxes and hung them on the muskets; the color-bearers rolled the flags and laid them on the ground with lingering, tender hands.

  The leading division stood at attention while Yankee wagons came to collect the stacked muskets, to empty the cartridge boxes, to gather the battle flags. When the surrendered weapons and the trophies had been removed, this division marched on, and another took its place; and again there was that pattern of relinquishment, and again and again. Trav did not know how long he sat there; the solemn pageant of surrender beat upon him blow by blow.

  After the last man had made his gesture and the long ordeal ended, there was some mingling with blue-clad officers. Small fires began to burn along the street where the cartridges which had been emptied from the boxes lay in a windrow, and now spent their strength in futile spurts among the crawling flames. Trav was not of that fraternity of West Point men who now renewed old acquaintances, so he took no part in this exchange of polite words; and he was relieved when Longstreet presently drew apart, gathering the officers of his staff around him, all of them for the last time together.

  There were no long farewells. “Well, gentlemen,” the General said, his voice harsh to mask his deep emotion, “the war is ended. It is time for us to ride to our homes and take up the harder tasks of peace.”

  They talked a moment quietly; they exchanged hand clasps, and Trav was surprised at his own sense of loss in saying these good-bys. Little Peyton Manning, so small he might have been a boy, a Mississippi man from Aberdeen, would ride first to Richmond. “I’ll stay there till things are more settled before I start for home.” Manning, always considerate and kind, had a thousand times led them all to laughter; but there was never any sting in his jests. Latrobe was equally kindly; and Fairfax, for all his addiction to his cups and his clumsy buffoonery, had a heart big enough to love all the world—and to make you love him. Young Dunn, and Frank Potts, and Goree, and Major Otey who would ride with them to Lynchburg; yes, Trav loved them all.

  Four of them took the Lynchburg road; Longstreet and Trav, and Captain Goree who had been at Longstreet’s side since the beginning, and Major Otey. The Lynchburg pike led them with many meanderings through pines and scrub oak and past small farms; and they crossed and recrossed the railroad right of way. Silence for the most part kept them company, but once Longstreet spoke.

  “I’ve wondered ever since Grant cut our road at Jetersville how he knew exactly what we meant to do. I learned the answer yesterday. Some weeks ago, the Legislature required General Lee to disclose his plans for our retreat, if retreat became necessary; and when President Davis skedaddled out of Richmond he threw Lee’s letter into his wastebasket. The Yankees found it. ’Lys Grant had a copy of it Monday night a week ago; so by the kindness of Mr. Davis the enemy always knew what we intended.”

  There was no heat in his voice, and they made no comment. The past was past. But Trav remembered that President Davis had summoned on to Richmond that train loaded with supplies which was waiting for the army at Amelia Court House. There were many crimes to be laid at the President’s door; but Mr. Davis was a fugitive, and probably with a noose waiting for him if he were caught. It was a time for pity, not for empty blame.

  Longstreet lifted their pace. After a few miles they crossed the railroad again, and rode for a quarter of a mile through swampy ground, and came up past a cemetery on their left to the outskirts of the little town of Concord Depot, twenty or thirty houses scattered along the highways that converged at the railroad station. The first house on the right of the road, set among chestnut trees, with a big black gum opposite the front door between the driveway and the road, had a substantial and hospitable aspect. The house itself was two stories high, with square pillars in front rising to the roof of the second floor veranda. Trav saw a separate kitchen and a smoke house in the yard, thinly shaded by the first pricking green of the unfolding leaves of the chestnut trees. There was a white fence of crisscrossed boards, with a rounded board atop; and as they approached the house three small children, two boys and a girl of about five, scrambled up to stand precariously atop this fence to watch them.

  Longstreet spoke to the oldest youngster. “Son, do you think your mother could find dinner for four hungry men?”

  The boy scuttled toward the house, and a woman met him in the doorway. The General led the way along the drive; and she said hospitably:

  “Light and come in, sirs.”

  “We don’t wish to burden you, ma’am.”

  “There’s aplenty,” she assured him. Trav saw her eyes red with weeping. The boys took their horses. The little girl had disappeared. The woman led them through a hall with a room on either side and into a dining room beyond. “My husband’s in a Yankee prison somewheres, but I can always rustle up a meal for soldiers.”

  “We are no longer soldiers. General Lee’s army is surrendered.”

  “I heard so. I guess you all did as much as flesh and blood could do.”

  “What is your husband’s name, ma’am?”

  “J. J. Landrum.” Her hands twisted in her apron. “He’s b‘en a long time gone, but me and the young’uns git along. They set out to conscript my oldest, but I said they’d have to conscript me first. He’s sixteen, and he worked in the station store till the Yankees burned it down. They like to burned him too. He hid in the closet under the stairs in the store, and they yelled for anyone that was inside to come out because they was going to burn the place; but he didn’t dast come out till he heard the crackling. Then he scuttered up here to the house. With him to do the heavy work, we git along. You all rest you’selves and dinner’ll be ready right soon.”

  There were windows in both sides of this large pleasant room, the fireplace at the end farthest from the road. They laid their swords on a small table near the door and turned to the dinner table. Longstreet sat with his back to the hearth, the others flanking him; and they fell into quiet talk. Where will you go? What will you do? And you? And you?

  After a time, and some silence, Longstreet said reflectively: “I wonder if any other great nation has ever had so short a history as the Confederacy. Born at Sumter four years ago almost to the day, died at Appomattox Court House today.”

  The Confederacy dead? Yes. To each of them Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was the Confederacy; with Lee’s surrender, the Confederacy was gone.

  “Four years,” the General repeated. “Four years from founding to dissolution. Old Egypt, Greece, Rome, France, Spain; they have had their centuries. We had four years.”

  “Four crowded years, General.” It was Goree who spoke. “They will be remembered.”

  Longstreet nodded. “Four years, the entire lifetime of a nation, and every day of it devoted to war. And war captures man’s imagination; so yes, these years will be remembered.” After a moment he added gravely: “Remembered perhaps too long.”

  He was thinking aloud, and he continued to speak, but Trav’s attention suddenly was drawn away. The door of one of the front rooms was open a crack, open wide enough so that through the crack he could see a bed beyond. In this slightly open door a small head appeared. That little girl who had watched them arrive, and who fled when General Longstreet spoke to her brother, peered in through the crack of the door.

  Trav, lest he frighten her to flight, was ready to avert his eyes if she looked toward him; but she did not. She slipped into the room and like a fascinated bird sidled to where on the table against the wall they had laid down their swords. Her small hand reached up to touch the weapons, to move caressingly along the length of one scabbard and another, to stroke this hilt and that with little loving gestures. The setting sun struck through the window into her face and Trav saw her tears, and his throat filled.

  The warriors’ swords were now forever sheathed; but even this child wept for those who had fought and died, for those who had fought and failed. Well, there would be many tears to mingle with hers. She need not weep alone.


  24

  April-May, 1865

  THE news that General Lee had surrendered his fragment of an army at first brought Cinda not only sadness but comfort too; for this was peace, and Brett would come home! But then the courage which for four years had helped her to composure gave way to a hysteria of unreasoning fears. Suppose Brett did not come! Suppose he never came! There must have been hard, desperate fighting through the week since she last held him in her arms; for nothing less than great defeats and dreadful losses could have brought Lee’s hosts to helplessness. So perhaps Brett was dead; or perhaps he lay wounded somewhere along the path the army in retreat had followed; or perhaps he was a captive, already hurried away to one of the dreadful Northern prisons.

  Cinda had seen Southern men, just back from those death camps. There was food enough everywhere in the North, but released prisoners came home no longer men but the skeletons of men. Their legs were pipe stems, their arms as frail as those of a sick child, their skin yellow Below their sunken eyes, in the pits above the cheekbones, the skin was black like the mark of a deep bruise, with jaundiced edges; sagging eyelids revealed inner membranes of a greenish blue, and yellow-veined eyeballs. So shrunken were their muscles that their joints seemed enlarged; great knobby knees, elbows like knots in a rope. Their lips, pale and with a bluish tinge, twisted at any kindness in a shamed, frightened grimace meant for a smile. If they were fed very gently and a few crumbs at a time with bread soaked in wine, some of them recovered; but many who were brought to the hospitals lay almost inanimate, with blankly staring eyes that never closed, and with their knees drawn up in a terrible contortion so that they were like corpses which had been allowed to stiffen in death’s rigor, till they mercifully died.