Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

by Donald McCaig

  Alexander Kirkpatrick cared nothing about Roanoke Island. What did this war have to do with him?

  “Our army is composed of volunteers. Enlistments are expiring and new soldiers must be found. My superiors, Keeper Blackwell, and Governor Letcher are agreed that prisoners willing to serve with Confederate arms may be pardoned. I am to decide who is worthy of this mercy.”

  Alexander’s brow furrowed. He could not fathom what Tyree was driving at.

  Mr. Tyree flipped open his ledger and dipped his pen. “You, Kirkpatrick.”

  “Sir?”

  “You do wish to serve our country? You do wish to expunge your shame?”

  Alexander’s heart fluttered in his breast like a panicked sparrow. “Shame?” he said stupidly. “What shame?”

  ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC

  MCDOWELL, VIRGINIA

  MAY 8, 1862

  If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 yankees,

  how many Confederate soldiers can whip 49 yankees?

  —An Elementary Arithmetic Designed for Beginners,

  Raleigh, North Carolina, 1864

  THAT SPRING THE armies in the western mountains fought like black snakes bumping noses. Tap, and the Confederates slithered east, abandoning the hamlet of McDowell. Another tap and they snaked rearward over the mountain into the Shenandoah Valley, pursued by cautious Federal cavalry.

  Something big in the wind. Far to the north, Stonewall Jackson’s army had dropped off the map. Two additional Federal armies were rumored hurrying toward the scene. Allegheny Johnson’s Confederates blocked the Parkersburg–Staunton Turnpike at Staunton, and the Federals held the passes. Toward Parkersburg, the turnpike passed through mountain ridges close as fingers laid flat.

  On May 4 at its Staunton Depot, the Virginia Central disgorged train after train of Jackson’s veterans to swell General Johnson’s army. The VMI Brigade of Cadets arrived from Lexington.

  The newly fattened Confederate snake faced west and extended its snout. Tap, the Federals recoiled up Shenandoah Mountain. Tap, they abandoned their provisions train. Tap, back over Shaw’s Ridge. The Federal army had coiled back upon itself and would withdraw no farther.

  At sundown the pursuing Confederates made a misery bivouac. The night was frosty and the stars were remarkably bright. The body of the Confederate snake stretched eight miles along the turnpike.

  At dawn, Johnson’s men were glad to be up and building fires. “Black walnut is just the thing for a coffin,” Second Lieutenant Duncan Gatewood opined. “Tree off a backslope, stunted tree. Water won’t make walnut wood swell and crack. You’ll see to it, Catesby?”

  “Anything you say.” Catesby Byrd was devoting his full attention to a tin cup boiling upon a precarious triangle of stone, bayonet, and ramrod—the coffee was real, never before used, and with the entire brigade stumbling around any fool might kick it over.

  “I suppose you’d prefer oak?” Duncan perched on the stone wall that funneled turnpike travelers into Marshall’s Tollgate. Duncan’s hands were tucked into his sleeves, his legs clamped together for warmth. “Suppose we’re among the fellows killed in this fracas and we get buried in oak coffins. Burial parties aren’t overparticular which army a man fought with: they lay everybody in one hole. Soon enough, the oak’d start coming to pieces and directly all the coffins’d burst and what with frost heaving, corpse’d get jumbled so there’d be a Federal skull on a Confederate chest and a rebel leg hooked to a yankee hip. Now, when Gabriel blows his horn and the earth is rent open to give up its dead and we present ourselves before Saint Peter, it’d be a hellacious mixup. Walnut coffin for me, Catesby. It is but simple prudence.”

  “Indeed.” Catesby’s pursed lips touched the hot cup. “That good farm wife said this was good coffee, and she didn’t lie. Let us give thanks for patriotic southern women.” After two sips he passed the cup to Duncan, who warmed his hands with it.

  “Damn if I didn’t think I was going to freeze to death last night. What did ol’ Allegheny think he’s up to? The Federals know we’re coming, and we’ve got to come at ’em up this turnpike. Why wouldn’t Allegheny Johnson let us light campfires? Until my blood warms I am no soldier.”

  Catesby retrieved his cup. “You’re still meaning to reenlist?”

  “Thought I might.”

  Catesby peered into the black liquid as if it contained his future. “Leona puts a brave face on it, but things are not well at Stratford. The government has requisitioned so many blacks to build fortifications in Richmond it is difficult to get plantation work done. Our baby is due soon, and doubtless Leona would prefer me home.”

  “Hell, Catesby. You’re not gonna quit now? Ain’t you having fun?”

  A slight figure came up the road and presented his musket to Duncan. “Sir?”

  Private Ryals was the youngest man in the regiment, just fourteen, and he carried a Kentucky rifle so venerable Daniel Boone might have known it. A previous owner had sawed it into carbine length and installed a percussion lock. “I got fast nerves, sir,” the boy explained. “Last night, I was sittin’ with Private Saunders and we was talkin’, wonderin’ what would happen today, and I wasn’t thinkin’ at all, so I kept on pourin’ bullets into it.”

  The boy had stuffed so many cartridges into the weapon that the ultimate glistening ball was perfectly visible four inches from the end of the muzzle.

  “Tell you what, Ryals,” Duncan said solemnly. “What you want to do is charge into the biggest bunch of Federals you can find, and you pull the trigger. Won’t matter what you shoot at, you’ll kill everybody.”

  “But Lieutenant . . .”

  “I’m just foolin’, Ryals.” Duncan returned the useless carbine. “Take this to Corporal Fisher. He has the worm. Don’t shoot until you’ve wormed every cartridge out or this gun’ll do you more harm than the Federal you’re shootin’ at. Soon as we lay into the Federals, keep your eyes peeled and snatch yourself a better gun.”

  Duncan opened his hand, but closed it again. You don’t tousle a soldier’s hair—not even a fourteen-year-old soldier’s hair.

  As Private Ryals went after the corporal, Catesby said, “Just a damn farm boy. Never been anyplace before, never did a thing. Never knew a woman. Only time he was in a city was when we paraded through Richmond. And today he’ll fight a Federal army. Dear God. . . .”

  “Catesby,” Duncan said seriously, “sometimes it doesn’t pay to think about things.”

  Catesby was framing his reply when Colonel Scott galloped by shouting orders, and the brigade fell into line of march.

  Bullpasture Mountain was steep, and a few officers rode on ahead and waved handkerchiefs at every switchback, signaling: so far so good, no Federal bushwhackers.

  March a hundred yards march and wait twenty minutes and officers and couriers raced along the narrow road and the Confederate army took six hours to gain the summit and start downhill toward the town of McDowell.

  Duncan showed a hand-drawn map to Catesby. “The Federals are holed up in McDowell. Our scouts found a way to the top of Sitlington’s Hill, which looks down on them. If we get guns up there before they do, we can knock hell out of ’em.”

  The Confederates turned into a steep westerly ravine and the lead Virginia regiment clambered for the top of Sitlington’s Hill.

  While the 44th waited its turn, men fell out and boiled water for coffee. Others dipped into their haversacks for hardbread. Duncan wished he had an apple. In Stratford’s cool springhouse, apples kept until March, and they’d broach the last barrel of cider for the haymakers. When Duncan recalled the taste of that fine cider, his mouth seemed bone-dry.

  At the first spattering of gunfire, men looked up at the woods as if they could see through all the way to the top of the hill. When the musketry died, shoulders relaxed, and jokes were told. Scattered shots were followed by intense rolling volleys, and the Federal guns started to boom.

  “Damn,” Corporal Fisher cried. “Now why’d we have to go and make ’em mad at us.�
��

  “Stay in ranks there,” Duncan growled. “We go in after the Georgia boys.”

  The 44th Virginia jammed into the fan-shaped meadow at the foot of the ravine as the Georgia boys ascended two by two, clutching at saplings and roots.

  Catesby’s face had been weather-roughened since the days when he was a householder and county lawyer. He fanned his face with his hat. If Catesby lives, Duncan realized with a shock, one day he’ll be bald.

  “No way to get our guns up this ravine,” Catesby said.

  “Don’t believe there is.”

  “Then what in hell are we doing? I thought our intent was to get above the Federals and rain hellfire on their pernicious heads.”

  “I’m not General Johnson. And I certainly ain’t General Blue Light Jackson. You’re asking me does this make sense?”

  The gunfire above grew more insistent—a percussive clatter as if hundreds of china plates were hitting the floor.

  It was two in the afternoon. The way was steep, and wherever men could slip they had, creating greasy slides for those coming after.

  The Virginians clambered through a light rain of spent balls and broken twigs pattering to the ground. Corporal Fisher found breath for steady monotonous cursing. At last they surged onto a hogback ridge above the valley. “Line of battle on the right! Forty-fourth to the right! Shake a leg now, damn it!”

  Bent over and gasping, the Virginians scurried along the crest wincing when minié balls zipped over their heads.

  The valley below the hill was smoky from Federal guns, and of the village only a church steeple could be seen. But the distance was too great for artillery, whose rounds exploded short of the Confederate line.

  The hogback was open ground thirty yards wide. Two hundred yards downhill, Georgians held a rail fence, and below that fence a woodlot wreathed with Federal rifle smoke. Bullets buzzed like yellow jackets.

  Colonel Scott cried, “Spread out! Two men every five yards. One man to fire. The other to load.”

  Men in blue charged uphill from the woods and tumbled over the rail fence and hit the Georgians hard. Federal and Confederate were so intermingled the Virginians couldn’t shoot. The hot swarm of men rolled toward the crest, receded, rolled again, until, sullenly, the Georgians withdrew. Gray and blue figures slumped lifeless as laundry across the rail fence.

  “Fire! Lie down to reload!” Colonel Scott commanded. A sergeant stood to relay Scott’s order and a bullet hit him with the tunk a hatchet makes going into soft wood and he dropped to his knees, mewled, and fell on his face.

  The Federals fixed bayonets and cheered as they came. Duncan swallowed hard, strolled behind the Confederate line, calm as Sunday, though his knees were shaking.

  “Bullets go high firing downhill! Aim for their knees. Their knees, damn it! You there, Private, haven’t you reloaded yet?! Hurrah for General Johnson! Hurrah!”

  A volley roared from the Federal line. A weaker volley from the Confederates.

  Some Virginians lay flat, hands clamped over their ears.

  Colonel Scott raged, “Get up, damn you! Get up!”

  The Federals came on in a rush.

  “Damn you for cowards!” Scott bellowed and booted his horse down the line of prone soldiers, taking no particular care where the animal stepped.

  The Federals were at point-blank range: a smoke cloud through which silver bayonets protruded, backed by dim blue shapes.

  “Retire two steps and fire!” Scott ordered. “Retire and fire!”

  A step back, another. They backed toward the ravine they’d come from.

  Private Ryals had a new rifle, an Enfield, and he was loading it fast as his hands could fly and firing it straight up into the air. Reload, fire into the air. Reload, fire.

  “Ryals!” Duncan yelled. “There are no Federals up there!”

  “No! And I’m afraid there never will be!”

  Waving his walking stick and cursing, General Allegheny Johnson rallied the beleaguered Confederates. “Stop the bastards! You must stop these goddamned son-of-a-bitching bastards! Stop them! Cut them down!”

  Deep within the Federal ranks, a cry rose: “That’s Allegheny Johnson! Let’s take him!”

  “Oh you will, will you? You will? The hell with you! The hell!” Lifting his walking stick like a saber, the general demanded: “Cut those Federals down!”

  Duncan laughed from pure joy. Bullets snapped by his ears, tugging at his clothes; Duncan didn’t know when he had been so happy. He thought: So this is why men go to war—because they are so tender and it doesn’t matter. Because men die and that’s how the world has been, always, and it makes not the least difference what day you die so long as you die honorably, facing your foe. Your cause doesn’t matter, nor whether you conquer or are defeated, only that you lift your Colt’s patent revolver and select a man from the charging blue, a man like you, a blond-haired sergeant carrying a flag, and that you squeeze off one, two, three shots until suddenly he is fallen from your V-notched sights, fallen below your shimmering barrel, and perhaps you slew him, and his wife and children may grieve, his mother mourn, but like you he has elected to be on this field, and moments before he was as elated as you are.

  The Federals fell back. Time passed. Men drank water. The Federals charged. They fell back. An hour passed. They attempted to turn the Confederate right, but a fresh Virginia regiment repulsed them.

  Colonel Scott’s horse was killed.

  The sun dropped lower, balanced on the rim of the western mountains. On the slope below, the Federals were only musket flashes and smoke, but on the crest the Confederates were silhouetted against the sky.

  Accompanied by fresh blue troops and vigorous hurrahs, a Federal flag emerged from the smoke. Confused Confederates started to retreat. Colonel Scott waved his hat and cried, “Do you intend to let these damn Federals drive Virginians from their own soil?”

  The Virginians lifted their rifles and a bright bolt of fire crashed into the Federals. They quit.

  Private Ryals was aiming carefully now, firing at flashes in the Federal smoke. Catesby Byrd tossed Duncan his canteen. Duncan swallowed warm water gratefully.

  The sun disappeared. The Georgians ran out of ammunition and withdrew down the ravine. The 10th Virginia took their place and another Virginia regiment filled in behind them. VMI cadets were pressed into service as litter bearers.

  General Johnson climbed a rock pile to see better. His stick twisted and he fell face forward into a stump hole. “God damn you men, drag me out of here. Drag me, you hear?”

  The general’s legs were waggling in the air like an upset beetle’s and Duncan was running to help when the Federals volleyed. Duncan sat. It felt like somebody had smacked his right leg with a singletree. When he tried to stand, his leg buckled. “Oh,” Duncan said. “So this is what it’s like.”

  He pushed his revolver into his holster and fastened the flap and started crawling. His leg didn’t hurt but wouldn’t support his weight. He didn’t want to inspect his leg closely because he didn’t want to know. He hunched along toward the rear. Bullets flew high over his head.

  Private Ryals put his rifle down and pulled Duncan by his armpits, but Ryals was too slight to do much good. “Wait a minute, sir!” he cried. “I’ll get help.”

  Duncan thought but didn’t say, “I won’t go anywhere,” and slumped onto his arm, his cheek in his hand.

  He emerged into partial consciousness on a litter halfway down the ravine. He gripped the litter rails to steady himself. Lanterns held high marked the worst spots, but sometimes litter bearers slipped and wounded men shrieked when they crashed to the ground.

  “Watch your feet! Damn it, have a care!”

  The stars swirled safely overhead, but on earth it was dark and crowded and dangerous.

  A young voice reassured Duncan he’d be all right, he’d be fine, it was only a short distance to the field hospital. “The surgeons will care for you, sir,” the young voice said. Duncan opened his eyes. The
boy at his head was a VMI cadet, high-collared jacket, stock; apparently he’d lost his kepi somewhere.

  That’d mean demerits, Duncan thought.

  “Only a little farther, sir,” the boy said. “Just hold on a little longer.”

  “They called me Wheelhorse,” Duncan whispered.

  NOTE FROM CATESBY BYRD

  TO SAMUEL GATEWOOD

  HEADWATERS, VIRGINIA

  MAY 9, 1862

  SAMUEL,

  I regret that your son Duncan was wounded during our signal victory over the Federals during the battle for McDowell. Duncan is shot through the upper leg but Providence has spared both his life and his leg, since the bullet missed the bone. He is weak from loss of blood and will require patient nursing while he recovers. Please come yourself or send Jack with a wagon to Wilson’s Hotel, which, to Mr. Wilson’s distress, has been converted into our hospital.

  I send this by James Cleek, a reliable man, who will be scouting with the cavalry. Despite our severe losses, General Jackson has us formed into line of march to pursue the Federals.

  Bless you,

  Catesby

  AN ABOLITIONIST

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  MAY 25, 1862

  SALLIE SAT IN the window seat of the keeper’s parlor, mending a stocking. Her striped convict’s shift was neatly patched and clean. Her long hair lay on top of her head in two braids tied with strips of rough cloth.

  Conversing with a convict is like speaking to an inhabitant of a country one never wishes to visit, but Cousin Molly, who had commenced her visits with the expectation of uplifting Abigail’s imprisoned neighbor, had come to rely on them for an opportunity for candor her work customarily forbade. “I have never seen our soldiers in such low spirits,” she admitted. “They straggle into the city in twos and threes and find some inconspicuous place in the alleyways or Capitol Square, and sprawl—silent, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes. We have suffered too many grievous defeats.

  “New Orleans is now under the heel of that Federal beast Ben Butler. How gallantly the Louisiana regiments paraded through Richmond last spring. How bravely their General Beauregard fought. Now his home is confiscated, his family subservient to Federal rule. Dreadful.”