Talons of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  The Federal commanders finally stopped the retreat before it got completely out of hand and pushed their men back to the front with threats and curses and taunts.

  The cheering of the hundreds of civilians behind the front had ceased when the retreating began, now it resumed as the Yankees rallied.

  For the next three hours, the battle lines changed and shifted, and positions were lost, retaken, lost again, and retaken many times. In many areas along the front, the fighting was cut and slash with bayonet, saber, and Bowie knife, eyeball to eyeball and nose to nose; so close the men of the Blue and Gray could smell the sweat and the fear of the other. The Rebels would use the captured cannon against the Yankees; the Yankees would retake the pieces and use them against the Rebels without having to move the cannon except to turn them around.

  Johnston kept MacCallister’s Marauders close to his HQ until one event caused the general to call Jamie in and ask him to lead his men briefly into battle. It appeared Beauregard himself was so caught up in the heat of battle he personally led the Fifth Virginia in a wild charge up a hill, waving his saber and cursing the Yankees. He and his men took the hill and captured more Union artillery pieces. They turned the cannon around and began shelling the retreating Federal forces.

  “Colonel, take some of your men and get my field commander off that damn hill, please!”

  Jamie personally escorted a reluctant-to-leave Beauregard off the hill just as Colonel Frances Bartow, commander of the Seventh Georgia, was shot through the chest. He died urging his men to never give up.

  Men on both sides were dropping not only from grievous wounds, but from the terrible heat of the day, choked with dust and arid gunsmoke. Drinkable water was scarce, and besides, the battle was so intense, no one had the time to waste drinking what water could be found. The creeks were running red with blood from the bodies of the Blue and the Gray.

  Johnston came up to view the battle from atop a high hill and told Beauregard to stay with him. “I need you,” was his explanation.

  “They could overwhelm us at any time,” Jamie muttered. “But they don’t. Why?”

  Why indeed? Why, because McDowell would never commit his Union troops to a charge in anything other than brigade strength. He needlessly lost several hundred lives because of his timidity. But even had he committed all his troops, he might not have won the battle, for the Rebels were fighting for loved ones and homeland, and there is no stronger incentive to stand or die.

  As one Union brigade was driven back, another took its place, and they, too, were driven back by the men of the Gray. The New York Highlanders charged up a hill and were slaughtered by Rebel rifle fire and the lowered barrels of point-blank cannon using grapeshot.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon when McDowell finally called up his unbloodied reserves, men from Vermont and Maine, nearly four regiments strong. But by now the Union lines were so disorganized and confused, with commanders from the company level up and the essential sergeants wounded, dead or missing, McDowell was about to hurl his last fresh troops into and through the gates of death, the gate masters the men of the Gray.

  In the dust and smoke and confusion of battle, it is doubtful that General McDowell even knew where the fresh troops were committed to the line; but committed they were and died by the score.

  The first attack from the four regiments was thrown back, the Union troops thoroughly demoralized by the fierceness of their adversaries. The fresh Union troops were further disheartened by the sight of bloodied and mauled Federals limping back from a previous assault.

  The Federals charged again—some of them, at least. The others did not know what to do. Orders could not be heard over the crash of combat. Some men went forward while others, confused, turned toward the rear. Others became disoriented.

  Fresh Rebel troops had been added to the line of defenders, and they bolstered the resolve of their tired comrades. One fresh-to-the-scene Rebel commander of Maryland troops vowed to “... walk away from this day victorious or be buried here.” He led his men against the far right of McDowell’s troops, and the Union line began to crumble.

  Jamie, watching through field glasses, saw Union soldiers throw away their weapons and packs and run toward the rear.

  It was late afternoon—about five o’clock.

  Beauregard left the hill over Jamie’s protestations and galloped to the battle, personally leading his men forward, chasing the fleeing Union soldiers. The retreat soon turned into something else: a panic seemed to grip the Union soldiers, many of them running blindly in any direction that would take them away from the terrible carnage.

  Soon, Beauregard and his cavalry had to stop chasing the Federals, for they had taken so many prisoners the captured Union soldiers were badly outnumbering the guards.

  President Jefferson Davis had reached the battlefield, and Johnston and a contingent of Marauders personally escorted the Confederate president to the hill overlooking what had been the main battle area.

  “They were good men all,” Jeff Davis said, speaking of both the Blue and the Gray. “And they believed they were right.”

  Jamie sat his horse and said nothing as Johnston and Jeff Davis turned their mounts and rode back to Johnston’s headquarters.

  “Good men all, indeed,” Jamie muttered. “And every man on either side was right.” And the winds from the gathering storm clouds blew the words away.

  * * *

  A furious storm developed early in the evening of July 21, and it only added to the misery of the retreating Federal soldiers slogging wearily and dejectedly back to Washington, D.C.

  General Johnston decided that the Confederate troops, just as tired, plus being hungry and short on ammunition, would make no pursuit of the enemy. Many believed that was a mistake, for as tired as his men were, they could have seized the nation’s capital and possibly ended the war right then. Others heatedly disagreed. It was an argument that would never be settled one way or the other.

  General McDowell managed to put together a force and throw up a defensive line around Centerville, but he knew they could not stop an all-out Rebel offensive. More than half of his army was still retreating toward Washington, D.C.

  On the morning of the 22nd of July, McDowell ordered the rest of his army back to the Potomac. There were no bands playing, no cheering crowds. The retreating men had fought all the past day and then marched more than twenty miles through the stormy night, and they were exhausted. The rain continued to fall and that added to the misery of the beaten soldiers.

  Many of the ladies of Washington turned out to help in the feeding of the hundreds and hundreds of bedraggled-looking soldiers. They used wash kettles to cook soup and coffee. Others stayed up all night baking bread. After wolfing down the first food many had consumed in thirty-six hours, the weary soldiers dropped down to sleep wherever they could, oblivious to the rain.

  The battle had cost the Union army more than six hundred dead, nearly fifteen hundred wounded, and more than two thousand missing. Whether captured, dead or deserters, the exact figure would never be known.

  Lincoln’s comments upon hearing the figures was terse. “It’s bad.”

  The Confederate army lost four hundred dead, over sixteen hundred wounded, and twenty-three missing.

  On July 25, President Lincoln summoned General George McClellan and named him commander of the Union army around Washington, replacing McDowell. But the old soldier was not put out to pasture, for he would go on to command other divisions in the Union army and blunder through the war.

  One firm conclusion did come out of Bull Run: it forever wrote in blood the unwavering promise—on both sides—to wage this war to a bitter conclusion.

  It did that. But a hundred and thirty years after the Civil War officially ended, a lot of bitterness would remain, and even after hundreds of thousands of classroom hours, the real reasons for fighting the war would still be murky in the minds of many.

  10

  War news was slow to reach t
he small and all but isolated communities in the West. By the time Kate received the letter Jamie had posted to her, telling her of his appointment to major in the CSA, the Battle of Manassas was days old, and he had already been field promoted to lieutenant colonel. And he and his Marauders had been given a new assignment.

  Two more young men had left MacCallister’s Valley to join in the fight, one for the Blue, one for the Gray.

  In his letter, Jamie had asked her not to write him for he had no idea where he and his command would be sent. Instead, he would write her and keep her abreast of happenings.

  Kate began keeping a daily diary, listing everything that took place in the twin valleys; she felt Jamie would enjoy reading it when he came home.

  But Kate knew more about her husband than he thought, for the newspapers had written extensively of the exploits of MacCallister’s Marauders. The nation’s press now knew that he and his men had been responsible for the events in Philadelphia prior to the Battle of Manassas, and of his daring charges during what they referred to as the Battle of Bull Run.

  The Marauders were making quite a name for themselves, and much of it was unfavorable. Jamie was aware of that, and it bothered him not a whit.

  The Eastern press could not understand how a man who had fought so bravely for freedom at the Alamo could now fight for slavery with the South.

  “Idiots!” Jamie said, wadding up the newspaper and tossing it into the fire.

  The press, Jamie felt, just simply did not understand the real reason behind the War Between the States. And probably never would, he concluded.

  Jamie had brought his companies up to full strength and then some by pulling up the men he had held in reserve. While the Battle of Manassas was going on, other men had been training to join the Marauders. Jamie now had four full companies. Little by little, all his men had adopted a standard uniform, and Jamie offered no objection to it. The Marauders wore gray shirts, black pants, yellow bandannas, and gray Confederate cavalrymen’s hats with gold-colored braid. As the weather worsened, they would wear black waist-length jackets. The Marauders were officially listed as a Special Operations unit.

  Jamie preferred to think of them as guerrillas.

  A few days after the Battle of Manassas, Jamie was called to a meeting with General Johnston.

  “Colonel, I have been asked if I would lend you to the fight in the West, namely Missouri and Arkansas. I said I would ask you.”

  “I’ll go wherever I’m needed, sir.”

  “Good! Good! I felt you would.” He held out a hand and Jamie shook it. “Good luck and God bless you, sir.”

  Jamie and his four companies of men rode out one hot morning in the last week of July, 1861, with Captain Malone commanding the Third Company, and Captain Jennrette commanding the Fourth. They rode out without fanfare, the more than five hundred man column and wagons heading first south, then cutting to the west.

  As they rode through the small towns of Virginia, people lined the streets and cheered the guerrilla fighters, for by now, everyone knew who they were. The standard bearers rode with the Confederate battle flag and the Marauders’ own flag unfurled and flying. The citizens of the South pressed food upon the guerrilla fighters: Virginia hams and sides of bacon and fresh-baked bread and containers of stew and soup. So much food was given them that Jamie had to stop along the way and buy two more wagons and mules to pull them.

  Toward the end of the long and bitterly divisive war, many citizens of the South, in order to survive, would be forced to eat all manner of things that would have been totally repugnant to them prior to the war.

  But for now, food was plentiful, the South had just won a major victory against the Yankees, and the citizens were in a jubilant mood.

  West Virginia was divided in loyalty, but stayed with the Union. There were a lot of hostilities toward the Confederacy in the state, so rather than have to fight his way through, Jamie chose to take the long way west.

  The Marauders were a proud unit, for just getting picked to be interviewed was hard, and the few weeks of training they received was brutal. Each man knew exactly what was expected of him, knew that the life of a guerrilla could be very short, and knew that if captured, they could well face a firing squad or a hangman’s noose.

  The Marauders put the miles behind them as they rode farther and farther into territory many had never seen before—including Jamie. The cheering crowds, the blaring bands, and the adoration from the people soon became an embarrassment to the men, and Jamie began searching for ways to avoid towns whenever possible, taking back roads and sometimes blazing new trails around the populated areas.

  The men of the two new companies were all seasoned combat veterans, having fought against the Federals in Florida and Texas and South Carolina and in pitched battles in other areas.

  Whenever they camped for the night, Jamie would study the reports given him by General Johnston. Missouri had already seen dozens of battles of varying intensities between Union forces and Southern troops. Missouri was split in its loyalties almost along geographical lines: the northern part of the state was pro-Union, while the southern part was pro-Rebel. There had been riots in St. Louis where Union troops had fired into civilian crowds, killing many men and women and several babies; hatreds were running deep and bloody in Missouri. The state capital, Jefferson City, had changed hands several times, but by the end of July was firmly under the control of Union forces, under the command of General Harney and the home guard commander, Nat Lyon, a man who hated the South and all Southerners.

  By the time Jamie and his Marauders reached Memphis, conditions were totally out of hand in Missouri. Missouri and Kansas were waging a bloody border war, with the Kansas Jayhawkers, the Red Legs, and Lane’s Raiders fighting several bands of guerrillas, including Bloody Bill Anderson, Quantrill’s Raiders, and the Missouri Bushwhackers. Lane, too, despised the South and Southerners, but his hatred was almost fanatical. The rift between Kansas and Missouri would not heal until decades after the war.

  “We’re riding into a hornet’s nest,” Jamie told his company commanders. “In Missouri, it’s going to be damn difficult to tell friend from foe.”

  The leaders of the South had already and with much conviction disavowed any connection with William Quantrill, for the man was nothing but a cold-blooded murderer, and several of the men who rode with him were certifiably insane, including the man who would soon split and form his own gang, Bloody Bill Anderson, who often rode into battle foaming at the mouth like a rabid beast. Just before the war officially started, Quantrill had been given a commission in the Confederate army, but that commission had been quickly pulled, though Quantrill proclaimed himself a colonel.

  By the time Jamie and his men reached a Confederate post just outside Memphis, General Lyon had been killed in a Missouri battle called Bloody Hill. Although it only lasted for half a day, the fight was one of the bloodiest battles in Missouri, with several thousand Rebel and Union soldiers wounded and over five hundred men killed.

  “Missouri is a bloody killing field,” the commanding general at Memphis told Jamie. “And it is going to get worse . . . much worse. I’ve sent word to General Johnston that I am not going to order you in there—yet—and he has agreed. But the Mississippi River, as much as we can hold, must remain in our hands. For as long as possible,” he added grimly. “I want you to start raiding Yankee encampments on the east side of the river. Range just as far north as you dare, Colonel.”

  “Kentucky?” Jamie asked.

  “It will soon be lost to us,” the general said. “I don’t know how long I can hold Memphis.”

  Longer than most expected. Memphis would remain in Confederate hands until May of ’62, when Union gunboats, after a blistering naval battle, won them the city.

  In a way, Jamie was relieved about not having to go into Missouri and get all tangled up in a divided state’s internal war. However, Jamie was now a soldier until the war’s end, and he would obey orders, even those orders he p
ersonally considered to be stupid ones—he would receive several of those.

  * * *

  After the Battle of Manassas—or Bull Run, as it is better known—even the most optimistic on either side realized in their hearts that this war was going to be a long and bloody one. And the war would age both combatants and leaders alike with a speed that seemed virtually impossible. Lee, at the war’s outbreak, was fifty-four years old, tall and with dark hair showing almost no gray. At war’s end, he was totally gray and worn far past his years. The Southern spirit was so strong that before the terrible conflict ended, boys as young as ten and eleven would be fighting in the front lines for the South... and no one made them go. Confederate soldiers, near the war’s end, so weak from hunger they could barely stand, would be facing Federal rifles, pistols, cannons and sabers, armed with only rocks and clubs and knives. Old men armed with shotguns loaded with birdshot would die fighting the Union forces. Old women and young girls would stand near the road and throw rocks at Union cavalrymen as they passed, hoping to spook their horses into throwing the despised blue-coated riders. Young boys would point wooden guns at blue uniforms as they passed. So hated was the Federal occupation after the war that young children would grow into adults before realizing that Damn Yankee was not one word.

  Many people still believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery, yet ninety-five percent of the enlisted men who fought for the Gray, and many of its officers, never owned a slave.

  For the rich plantation owners, the Southern gentry, to survive (and most of them became officers—many self appointed), the war had to be, for they could not continue their grand and lavish and selfish lifestyle without slaves. For if they had to pay people to work the fields, they’d be out there in the fields, pickin’ cotton and pullin’ bolls and choppin’ weeds right along with the working class. Many of the Southern gentry owned hundreds of slaves; some owned as many as three thousand slaves. For them, the war was about slavery. But for the average Southerner, it was not. Men do not leave hearth and home and businesses and farms to pick up a gun and fight for something they have no part of and don’t earn a dime from.