Last Cavaliers Trilogy

by Gilbert, Morris

  Morgan felt as if every single nerve ending in his body were raw when he found out that the Yankees had crossed the Rapidan and were invested along the south banks all the way to where it flowed into the Rappahannock. That meant that Rapidan Run was now behind enemy lines. Dread and fear overcame him, but only for a few moments. The reality was that he could not help Jolie and Amon’s family by going to them, even if it had been possible. The best thing he could do was pray for victory and deliverance. After a short wordless prayer to that effect, he turned his mind to those things that he could do: he took care of the horses and followed General Lee.

  Morgan had never put himself forward to General Lee, but he did so the night of May 1st. General Lee had come to the edge of the forest south of Chancellorsville to consult with General Jackson. Before Jackson arrived, General Lee pored over a crude map with several of his officers. Morgan stood nearby holding the horses, as usual, but in the close woods he was nearer to the conference than usual. He heard one colonel say, “Perhaps we can find a local who knows the country, General Lee.”

  Without thinking, Morgan sprang forward and said, “General Lee, sir? I know these woods. This is very near my home.”

  General Lee turned to look at him quizzically then recognition dawned on his face. “That’s right,” he said quietly. “I remember, Rapidan Run Horse Farm. Tell me, Private Tremayne, can you tell me if we are looking at this map upside down or right side up?”

  In fifteen minutes Morgan had improved their map greatly, and then Stonewall Jackson arrived. Morgan withdrew back to the horses, and the two men moved away from their officers to lay out the map on the ground and study it. This meeting was memorialized by the humble name of the “Crackerbox Meeting,” because that’s what Lee and Jackson sat on as they decided the disposition of the entire army. The conversation ended with three simple words so typical of General Lee. “Well,” he told Stonewall, “go on.”

  The next morning Hooker’s Union forces advanced…and successfully. But once again, the fey fear that seemed to strike Union generals who faced Robert E. Lee assaulted the swaggering “Fighting Joe” Hooker, and he ordered all to fall back to Chancellorsville and hold a defensive position. This, of course, gave Robert E. Lee what he loved most: the initiative.

  The fighting was fierce on May 2nd and 3rd, and on that day, they broke the Union line, and Hooker withdrew a mile. By May 6th, the vast army had fled back across the Rappahannock. Lee had beaten them with only sixty-two thousand men, and those split up into three forces.

  When he heard that the Yankees had withdrawn from the Rapidan, Morgan was so relieved he felt weak. But even though he was only about seven miles from his home, he didn’t see Rapidan Run. General Lee quickly gathered the wounded and the men in the field, and the march back to the heights above Fredericksburg began.

  Morgan had heard on May 3rd that Stonewall Jackson had been wounded somewhere in the Wilderness, shot by his own men because of the overlying spirit of unease and confusion that seemed to rule in that place. He was anxious and disheartened when he heard the news.

  On Sunday, May 10th, General Jackson crossed his last river to rest under the shade of the trees. Morgan was deeply saddened, and he saw many battle-hardened veterans weep unashamedly at the news. The entire South mourned.

  General Lee, however, had little time to weep, even for his most beloved comrade in arms. In June, the Army of Northern Virginia would invade the North for the second time.

  Morgan was always acutely aware that his view of the war was vastly different from that of other soldiers. As he wrote Jolie, “I hold the horses while the real soldiers fight the war.”

  He had never been in battle. He had always observed it from afar, standing behind General Lee and talking softly to Vulcan and Traveler. Sometimes it was not so “afar” that Morgan didn’t feel the hot rush from artillery shells screaming over his head or the sharp whistle of a rifle round close to his ear. Robert E. Lee liked to get as close to the battle line as possible and still retain a coherent view of the field. Sometimes that was close to people shooting at each other, indeed.

  Of course Morgan saw the aftermath, the grisly bodies, the little creeks and streams running crimson, the horror of wounds of war. But though these images were the most vivid and graphic, they were but a small fraction of his memories. Most of the pictures that loomed large in his mind were very different, of quiet evenings with Meredith and Perry, of the few times that General Lee had groomed Traveler while Morgan groomed Vulcan, and they talked of little inconsequential things, of the strange predatory exultation he had felt on Lee’s Hill above Fredericksburg.

  Two little incidents that happened on their march north imprinted on Morgan’s mind, and he knew for the remainder of his life they would become part of his most vivid recollections of Robert E. Lee.

  On June 25th, General Lee, riding his beloved Traveler, crossed the Potomac River into Maryland. On the Yankee side of the river, a group of ladies holding umbrellas in the drizzly rain were waiting for him. They stepped in front of him, and General Lee courteously dismounted to doff his hat and bow. As always, Morgan slipped forward to take Traveler’s reins.

  The ladies were on a mission. They had an enormous wreath of white roses for Traveler to wear as a garland. General Lee was silent for a fraction of a second, and behind him Morgan thought, He’s horrified. I can almost hear him thinking…things like that are all fine and good for General Stuart, but… Morgan had difficulty keeping a straight face.

  At a stand, the general balked. But the ladies were very insistent. Still General Lee declined the honor. Finally Morgan stepped forward slightly, doffed his hat to the ladies, and said, “General Lee, perhaps I may have the honor of carrying this magnificent garland and walking beside you and Traveler.”

  Though reluctantly, the ladies assented. Morgan walked into Maryland by General Lee’s side, holding a rose garland in his arms, Vulcan’s reins tied to his belt. As soon as they were out of sight of the ladies, General Lee said, “I believe you may mount up again, Private Tremayne.”

  The next day, in the afternoon, they crossed into Pennsylvania. At the head of the column rode General Lee, his uniform immaculate, his seat on Traveler perfect, as nobly handsome as when he was the Marble Model.

  As the army marched through a small town, a group of well-dressed women stood on the walk in front of a large house to watch the invaders. A young girl stood in front of the women, defiantly waving an American flag. When she saw General Lee, she lowered the flag and said loudly enough for a hundred men following the general to hear, “Oh! I wish he was ours!”

  Lee’s plan was to draw the Yankees into battle at Harrisburg, which would enable him to cut their east–west communications. On their way out of Chambersburg, General Heth heard of a supply of shoes in nearby Cashtown, and he sent a brigade for them, since many men in the army were barefoot. They found themselves engaged by Union cavalry. Within the next two days, following the capricious tangents of war, the two armies found themselves in the little sleepy town of Gettysburg.

  People remembered the fields of battle at Gettysburg. Soon everyone in the South and in the North knew the Peach Orchard, the Wheat Field, Devil’s Den, Round Top, Little Round Top. But the one that Southern people always recalled with anguish was Cemetery Ridge. Here was where they charged when Major General George Pickett led his division of thirteen thousand Rebels and seven thousand of them fell.

  On that hot, dusty afternoon, General Lee took his hat off and rode with the remnant as they streamed back to the safety of Confederate lines. “This was all my fault,” he said. “It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it the best you can.”

  On July 4, 1863, the defeated Army of Northern Virginia retreated back toward the Potomac River and the safety of Virginia soil. The train of wounded stretched more than fourteen miles.

  After Gettysburg, the army quartered south of the Rapidan, about twenty-five miles west of Fredericksburg. General Lee esta
blished his field headquarters at Orange Court House. Morgan wished valiantly for the old quarters on the hills above Fredericksburg. One reason was that the brush shelter he and Rosh had built for the horses had proved to be as sturdy and almost as weatherproof as a log cabin. The other reason was that he was too far away from Rapidan Run for Amon to be able to come to camp.

  For the first time since he had joined the army, he was homesick. He missed Jolie, and he missed Rapidan Run. His homesickness always took that form in his mind, in that order, and it interested him when he realized it. He missed Jolie terribly, perhaps even more than he missed his home. Why was that? How had that happened? In his disheartened state, he honestly didn’t know. All he knew was that it was true, and this revelation only made him more forlorn.

  In August, when they finally settled down in the fields and pastures around Orange Court House, bleak news from the western theater greeted them. In May and June, a rising star Union general named Ulysses S. Grant had besieged the vital city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. On July 4th, the day the Army of Northern Virginia had begun their retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg had surrendered. Longstreet was sent west, to help in the defense of Chattanooga.

  In September, they were elated when they heard of a resounding victory by Confederate General Braxton Bragg at Chickamauga. In November, they were utterly downcast when the news of Chattanooga’s surrender reached them.

  Even though life in camp could be monotonous, Morgan was glad that the army fought no great battles in the winter of 1863–1864. They could not recover so readily from the defeat at Gettysburg, the first they had known. And they were hungry, they were short of blankets, they were threadbare, and they were ill shod. Morgan spent much of the time helping the quartermasters as they implored Richmond for supplies and searched desperately for new sources.

  But as surely as the dawn follows the darkest night, renewed hope and strength come in springtime. By March of 1864, the army was still poorly fed and many were still barefoot, but the days were warm and the air was scented with jasmine. Men found renewed vigor in their hearts and minds and renewed strength in their reverential loyalty to Robert E. Lee.

  Darwin’s theory of evolution was hotly argued in some quarters of the camp. But one carefree spring day, an earthy veteran told the debating scholars, “Well, boys, the rest of us may have developed from monkeys, but I tell you none less than God could have made such a man as Marse Robert.”

  In May, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock again. This time they didn’t poke along as they had under General McClellan, they didn’t procrastinate for days as they had under General Burnside, and they didn’t swagger in a parade as they had under General Hooker. They marched fast and relentlessly now, for they had a new commander, Ulysses S. Grant, and he was a true man of war.

  Grant’s orders were identical to Hooker’s in one area alone. He ordered the army to cross at Germanna Ford and Ely’s Ford and to march into the Wilderness. On May 3rd, Morgan stood by the side of the Plank Road, holding the horses while General Lee conferred with General Longstreet, thinking grimly that it had been exactly a year since he had looked at that dark forest. Again sickening dread assailed him when he thought about Rapidan Run, in danger of being overrun by the Union Army.

  He deliberately eavesdropped on General Lee’s conversation this time. Lee knew of the Union crossings at the fords on the Rapidan, but he did not yet know the exact disposition of the Union Army. “I believe he will make a feint around on my left,” he told Longstreet, “but I believe the main attack will come on our right. I wish that we had a clearer picture of their concentrations, but the dispatches come fast and furiously, and they are often hazy and confused.”

  Morgan stepped up to the two men, saluted, and said, “General Lee, I would like to volunteer to scout out the Federal concentration on your right.”

  Lee studied him. “I believe that you would be an excellent scout, Private Tremayne, for I’ve seen before how well you know this country. However, you are not a trained soldier, and through no fault or reluctance of your own, you have no experience in battle.”

  “That’s true, sir. But I assure you that I can find the easternmost Yankee pickets, and I will take great pains to assure that they do not find me,” Morgan said forcefully. “If they do find me, though, I will strive to do my duty, sir.”

  Lee nodded as if that were obvious, but he argued in his gentle manner. “In the morning I will send my two best observers, who have performed this same sort of covert task for me many times. I believe that would be the better course.”

  But Morgan was determined. “Sir, there is just one more thing I would like for you to consider before making that your final decision.”

  “And what is that, Private?”

  “I can find them in the dark.”

  Just as twilight descended, Morgan mounted Vulcan, said a quiet good-bye to Perry and Meredith, and headed across the plains toward the southern border of the Wilderness. He was challenged several times, because Confederates were camped all over the roads and fields and pastures, waiting to be told exactly where to march to engage the enemy.

  Each time he was challenged, Morgan replied, “Scout from headquarters” and started to retrieve his orders from General Lee. But not one man looked at it. After seeing him clearly they waved him on. Morgan didn’t realize it, but he was a well-known figure because he rode with General Lee. They called him Marse Robert’s horsemaster.

  He went to a southeast point on the border of the woods and without hesitation plunged into the dim gray shadows of the Wilderness. After Vulcan had trotted forward a few steps, Morgan pulled him to a stop. He knew that if he waited and made himself relax for a few minutes, his eyes would adjust to what seemed like impenetrable blackness. Slowly the darker shapes began to form themselves into recognizable things—trees and boulders and an earth mound and a tangle of vines. Morgan could see. He gave Vulcan the lightest of kicks, and the horse walked slowly forward.

  Morgan reflected that his mission would seem like the worst of folly to anyone else, and rightly so. Men got lost in the Wilderness in glaring daylight, and finding one’s way at night seemed impossible. But to Morgan it was not. He had good night vision and sharp instincts for place and direction, but that was not what gave Morgan confidence at night in the Wilderness. It was because he knew this place so well, because he had taught himself. In the years that he had been at Rapidan Run, he had ridden into some part of the forest bordering his land almost every day. He had regarded it as a self-imposed challenge, to learn of this place. He had spent nights traveling through the woods, constantly mapping the place in his head, until he found a good place to camp. He wasn’t afraid of the Wilderness, because he knew it.

  But other men would fear it, because even courageous men feel vulnerable and apprehensive in a thick forest at night. Morgan was pretty sure he knew where the small squads of outlying pickets would be. About midway on the east side of the Wilderness were three little clearings, all roughly in a line from east to west, separated by the uneven ground of ridges and ravines, some of the dozens of small streams that traced all through the woods, and piles of sharp boulders and rocks. Morgan knew that three or four men alone at night in this place would want any open space they could find, instead of trying to sleep in a hostile jungle of stunted scrub pine, thorny tangles of vines, and tall misshapen oaks looming over them.

  He sensed, rather than calculated, that he was nearing the first clearing, and he dismounted. “Be very, very quiet,” he whispered to Vulcan. He began to creep forward. It was eerily quiet. The only noise was the occasional shreep, shreep of a cricket, its cheerful call odd and jangling in the portentous silence. Morgan was careful to gently pull any branches and vines away so that he and Vulcan could pass quietly.

  Ahead and on his left was a group of white boulders, the biggest of them almost six feet tall. They gleamed dimly in the scant starlight, and Morgan was glad to see this landmark. About a hundred feet past the bould
ers in a straight line was the first clearing. Confidently now, Morgan made his way to the large boulder. At exactly the same moment he stepped around it, he heard a hoarse whisper.

  “We aren’t ever going to find—”

  He came face-to-face with two Yankees.

  The next few moments Morgan remembered as if he were a bystander, for he moved and acted on pure instinct, without conscious thought. He reached behind him and grabbed his rifle from the saddle sheath. In a smooth, swift movement, he twirled it to hold it like a club and hit the nearest man across the head. He reeled then fell hard, and Morgan heard a sickening crack as his head hit a rock.

  Directly behind the first man, the second soldier raised his rifle and fired point-blank at Morgan’s stomach, but either the rifle was not loaded or it misfired. To see that rifle barrel right at his gut made Morgan pause for a fatal second. The Yankee was quick, and now he grabbed his rifle barrel, reared back, and planted a vicious blow right across Morgan’s left temple.

  The lurid sight before his eyes instantly began to fade to black, and Morgan could feel himself falling but couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  He barely registered that Vulcan rushed to him, rose up, and hit the soldier with both hooves right in the chest. The man was knocked backward several feet and lay on his back, all breath gone. Vulcan moved forward to rear over him and stamp him, but the man rolled to his right and crawled away into a thick tangle of undergrowth. Vulcan neighed, a screaming trumpet sound, nose pointed to the sky, galloped headlong into the jungle of vines and shrubs, and disappeared from the death scene.

  The blackness finally claimed Morgan.

  It seemed to Morgan that he regained consciousness in one heartbeat, because the blood pushed through his head was hot and burning as if he had liquid lava in his veins. Each throb of his pulse was a second of agony. He lay still and motionless, thinking that if he didn’t move, the pain would lessen. But it did not.