Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  On the road to their left, wagons are moving south toward Triune in the fog. Cleburne listens closely, hears the first tread of marching infantry coming behind. Good. The schedule is holding. “Surely this will be General Bragg’s last battle. I am told that he looks terrible. And they say his stomach complaint is very active.”

  Hardee laughs. “It’s beyond active. It’s a small wonder that his headquarters doesn’t explode from the concentration of foul gases. But Bragg will continue in command until he is utterly prostrated. He is a man of the worst kind of arrogance; he believes himself irreplaceable.”

  “General, if he’s unfit—”

  “Of course he is unfit, Patrick! He’s physically unfit and he’s temperamentally unfit. He was unfit at the beginning of this war and he’s unfit now. He is unfit. But not God himself is going to convince his excellency Jefferson Davis that his best friend from the Old Army is unfit to command one of the two great armies of this, our new and glorious Confederacy!”

  Cleburne looks away, mutters, “I don’t know President Davis.”

  “I know you don’t. But I do and very well. People think Jeff Davis is a cold man. They think he is pure, grim, unemotional purpose. But people are wrong. Jeff Davis is a man of great passions, plethoric prejudices, and extraordinary, if nonsensical, loyalties. He feels he owes Bragg his life, and he will never abandon him. I tried to talk to him at Morgan’s wedding, but when I wanted to discuss Perryville, the president brought up Buena Vista. When I tried to talk to him about the starvation of the army on our retreat from Kentucky, he lectured me about the hardships of the march to Agua Nueva. He will not hear reason where Bragg is concerned. And so we are hitched to Bragg’s fortune and will be as long as his excellency remembers what Bragg did for him in Mexico.”

  Cleburne has heard the story of Buena Vista from Hardee, has seen him draw the lines of Davis’s famous V on a sketch of the battlefield. Yet he cannot quite imagine the battle, cannot picture Davis and Bragg young, fighting the charging hordes of Mexicans in the high desert of so long ago. To Cleburne, who is thirty-three, these are old men, the glory of their past unimaginable and irrelevant in this war where his division alone would outnumber old Taylor’s entire army.

  An orderly brings coffee. Hardee is gracious to the boy, inquires where this bounty of good dark coffee comes from. “Yankee prisoners, General. They’ve got rucksacks full of the stuff.”

  “Ah. Well, we should thank them for carrying it all the way from Nashville for us.”

  “Yes, sir, General. Next time I see one of them bluebellies, I’ll be sure to do that.” He catches Cleburne’s cold stare, retreats quickly.

  Cleburne concentrates on the fog-shrouded road again, listening to the tramp of marching feet. The pace is a little slow but not bad. Good enough.

  Hardee sips from his cup, smacks his lips in appreciation. “You don’t approve of my bantering with the men, do you, Patrick?”

  “I was a common soldier, General. I’ve never seen any good come of familiarity.”

  “Oh, I was hardly familiar with him. You’re a hard man, Patrick. Still, I can’t argue with your results. Well, I should be getting on to Murfreesboro. I need to talk to Breckinridge before I see the commanding general. That’s if Bragg hasn’t shot him since yesterday.”

  “General, I would like to stay with the rear guard. Neither of my brigadiers is much used to their new responsibilities, and—”

  “No, Patrick. You’re a major general now and command a division. That means you must delegate and trust. I would like to stay, too. Alex McCook exhausted my considerable patience at the Academy, and I would love to give him a difficult time this morning. But I must look to my entire corps, and you must do the same for your division. Difficult as it is, we must leave the brigadiers to fight the brigade battles.”

  After Hardee and his staff have disappeared into the fog, Cleburne stands for another hour on the hill. He drinks more of the good coffee, takes reports, signs orders. It amazes him that he commands a division. In truth, his entire life since he set foot in this country amazes him. Cleburne is a native of County Cork, the son of a Protestant physician with a large and largely uncompensated practice among the Catholic poor. After the good doctor died and Patrick failed admission for apothecary school, he joined the army in order to help the family. He served three years, buying out his enlistment when his stepmother embarked the family for America.

  He stepped off the boat in New Orleans on Christmas day, 1849. He soon left the city and the family for the Arkansas frontier and a job managing a drug store for two young doctors. He worked from dawn until late at night, returning to his Spartan rooms to study law into the wee hours. It is an archetypal American story, not unlike that of a certain Illinois rail-splitter turned lawyer and politician. In two years, Cleburne was a partner. A year later, the three partners sold the store for a healthy profit, and Cleburne took up the practice of law. He enjoyed Helena’s best society, joined the Masons, and made common cause with Thomas Hindman, a future Confederate general, in battling the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings. Frontier politics was a rough business, and he and Hindman carried revolvers. When the two were attacked on a public street, Cleburne killed a man and took a bullet through a lung. He recovered but wheezed ever after. By 1860 Pat Cleburne was both well-to-do and respected in his adopted land of Arkansas, sovereign state in the union of sovereign states. Although he is a liberal and opposes slavery, he knows exactly where his loyalties lie; Arkansas is his nation and he will stand by it to the death.

  Like Ulysses Grant, he bartered his skill as a drillmaster into a colonel’s commission and command of a regiment. Professionalism and aggressiveness won him a star and command of a brigade at Shiloh. At Richmond, Kentucky, he commanded two brigades and designed the battle plan that destroyed Bull Nelson’s army. Early in the battle, a minié ball pierced Cleburne’s cheek, shattering most of the teeth on one side of his lower jaw before exiting through his mouth, which was fortunately open to shout an order. But he was back in the saddle at Perryville, five weeks later, helping Hardee smash McCook’s corps. That time a piece of shrapnel disemboweled his horse and sliced open Cleburne’s leg. Swearing loudly, he was carried protesting to the field hospital. Assured that he would recover, his men joked that “Old Pat” might dodge a few missiles if he rode anything but the slowest, most docile plowhorse available. But in all but his choice of steeds, Cleburne is ferociously brave. And though he is remote, he is also fair and humane. His men adore him.

  Cleburne calls for his horse. His mount is a thickset gelding of considerable age and great resignation. He clambers into the saddle, his personal orderly giving him a discreet leg up. He jogs down the hillside and then walks the plug beside the column. The men lift their hats, smile, keep the order to be silent on this march. Cleburne responds in his quiet voice: “Hurry on, boys. We want to get well clear before the fog lifts. General Bragg is preparing a surprise for the Yankees, and we want to be in Murfreesboro to help.” They grin, nod. This is a remarkably democratic war, even in Cleburne’s division, and they appreciate being included in the plan.

  Time and the fog hang heavily on the four Federal brigades waiting on the northern outskirts of Lavergne. Brigadier General Tom Wood reads a military text in French. Hazen paces. Bierce writes in his journal. By the roadside, the soldiers brew coffee, try to nap on the soaking grass, bitch about the weather, officers, the war. Cold rain begins falling, but the fog persists until nearly noon, when the visibility finally improves enough for the division to advance down the Murfreesboro Pike. The division slogs through Lavergne. Only a few houses remain intact. The rest of the village has been reduced to blackened chimneys standing in beds of ashes puddled with rain.

  Hazen’s brigade splits off onto the Jefferson Pike. Wood returns Hazen’s salute, rides ahead to push the pace of his column toward Stewart’s Creek. The men see Wood’s intensity, catch it. Something is about to happen. They bend to the weight of their packs and rifle-muskets, t
ighten their ranks.

  Wood has given Hazen ninety troopers of the 4th Michigan Cavalry. This is an almost unheard-of luxury for the commander of an infantry brigade. Even more amazing, these troopers are a well-trained and scrappy lot with a sturdy young captain, James Mix, in command. Hazen decides to gamble. “Mix, stay a quarter mile ahead of us in screen. The minute you hit anything, pull in to the pike and go like hell. I don’t want you to fight, to scout, or to do so much as spit. Just go like hell down that road and don’t stop until you’re across the bridge. Then dig in and hold on. We’ll be coming after you at a run. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Colonel. I’m not to stop until I’m across the bridge.”

  “Exactly. I’m sending Lieutenant Bierce with you to scout the ground south and west of the bridge. Give him a man if you can spare one. Otherwise, let him take care of himself.”

  “Yes, sir. Come on, Bierce.”

  Bierce rides with Mix and his first sergeant behind the screen of troopers. Mix is watchful, untalkative. They splash through muddy pools along the narrow road which only some civic booster in Jefferson would dignify with the name “pike,” though Bierce supposes that once there might have been an actual tollgate. Then suddenly, improbably, it is there. An old man stands before it, frowning furiously at the approaching horsemen. Mix’s troopers draw rein in confusion. Mix, the sergeant, and Bierce ride forward. “How many men you got here?” the gatekeeper demands. “Can’t sneak around through the fields. That there is private property. Everybody’s got to stay on the pike and go through the gate. It’s five cents apiece, no exceptions ’ceptin’ doctors and preachers.”

  Mix scratches his beard. “We’re United States cavalry on duty in suppression of rebellion.”

  “I don’t give a hoot in hell who you are. I’m paid by the township to collect the tolls, and you’re gonna pay or you ain’t gonna pass.”

  “And I suppose the Johnnies have been paying,” the sergeant says.

  “Damned right they have.”

  “Horseshit,” the sergeant says, and kicks his horse forward to push through the gate.

  “Hold it right there, you blue-bellied bastard!” From under his coat, the old man drags an ancient horse pistol. It catches in his pants and he wrestles furiously with it. The sergeant unstirrups a boot and kicks him in the chest. The old man sits down with a thud, starts to cry.

  Bierce dismounts, takes the horse pistol from him. “Should hang the old bastard,” the sergeant says.

  Mix sighs. “Grandpa, you got another gun around?”

  “No, I ain’t got no gun, you blue-bellied bastard!” the old man sobs. “Why you all come down here? Why you doing this to us?”

  Mix turns to one of his troopers. “Look around. Make sure he doesn’t have a shotgun hidden in the bushes. Turn him over to the first chaplain who comes by. Then catch us up if you can.”

  Down the road, Bierce hands the horse pistol to Mix. Mix glances at it without interest. “Want it?” he asks.

  “No,” Bierce says.

  Mix pops the cap off with a thumbnail and tosses the pistol into a gully. Bierce will regret for the rest of his life that he did not say yes.

  Three miles short of the creek, there is a sudden smattering of pistol fire ahead and to their left. Mix gives a whoop, digs spurs to his horse. Gray troopers and blue troopers explode from a copse of trees. The Rebels cut across an open field, but the Federal horsemen swing in for the road, falling in behind Mix. They are yelling like Indians, blazing away at the gray troopers, who fire back wildly, leap ditches, tumble, try to work in toward the pike, break off to try the fields again, falling behind as the Yankee troopers hurtle down the road.

  Bierce cannot believe the glorious irrationality of it all. He is swallowed up in the noise, the smoke, the smell, the wild ferocity of the ride. He hears his own voice yelling, fires his revolver at a gray rider, though he knows he has no chance of hitting man or horse and that he would be far wiser to concentrate on staying aboard his careening mount. Yet he cocks and fires until his revolver clicks empty.

  Then ahead, butternut infantry scrambling up from campfires this side of a narrow bridge. They are the real danger, for if they stay cool, they can shoot down the Yankee troopers easily with their long-barreled Enfields. But the Yankees are on top of them, horse-borne, screaming, revolvers blazing, sabers swinging, ten feet tall and growing. It is too much; the Rebel infantrymen break and run for cover. Two make the mistake of trying to get across the bridge ahead of the cavalry, are ridden down, trampled screaming beneath iron-shod hooves.

  Mix is off his horse on the far side of the bridge, carbine in hand, shouting orders. “You, Bierce! Get down before they shoot your damned fool head off.” The troopers are sprinting to cover the crossing. Bierce wishes that he had thought to borrow a carbine, fumbles another cylinder into his revolver.

  A weasel-faced private plucks at his sleeve. “Captain says if you want to go on your scout, now’s the time. In a few minutes, the Rebs is gonna figure out there ain’t many of us. Then it’ll get hot until our infantry shows up.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  They run along the road past a dozen troopers spreading out to form a perimeter. The private grabs a burly corporal. “Benny, don’t you let the boys shoot my ass when I’m comin’ back. Or the lieutenant here either. I’ll wave my hat, call out your name. That’s our password.”

  “Right, Jims. Stay low.”

  Bierce and the private called Jims dodge down through the trees to the stream bottom. They hear hoofbeats and shouts across the way, then a crackle of carbine fire from Mix’s men. “The Reb cavalry’s caught up,” Jims says. “Where we going, Lieutenant? I should be back there.”

  “Don’t talk. Just watch behind us.” Bierce leads them another hundred yards along the bottom and then chances the higher ground to the left. The brush gives way to thick second growth, then to a spongy field. Bierce pulls out his dispatch book, sketches rapidly.

  Downstream, the firing increases. “How long do you think till the infantry gets here?” Jims asks.

  Bierce looks at his watch, tries to calculate. “Three-quarters of an hour. Maybe a little less.”

  “That’s a long damn time. We goin’ back or goin’ on, Lieutenant?”

  “I’ve got to see what’s on the other side of that rise.”

  “Lieutenant, there ain’t nothing more than this low sort of ground. We oughta—”

  Bierce glares at him and the private falls silent. They skirt the field, mount the rise on the far side, crawling the last dozen yards to keep below the skyline. Lying on his belly, Bierce studies the ground ahead through his field glasses. There is not a Reb in sight, no sign of an army preparing to dispute the crossing of Stewart’s Creek. “Lieutenant, we got to get back,” Jims pleads.

  Bierce rolls on his back, stares at the man. “Why are you in such a hurry to get killed? You’re a lot safer here.”

  Jims wets his lips. “They’re my people, Lieutenant. They’re fightin’. I gotta be there even if I do catch one.”

  Bierce shakes his head. “All right. Just a minute and we’ll head back.” He sketches.

  They return to the creek bottom, work along it toward the firing. They are perhaps three hundred yards from the bridge when they nearly collide with three Rebel infantrymen wading the stream. The stream bed is treacherous, and the Rebs, intent on their footing, do not see Bierce and Jims. Bierce raises his revolver, points it at the chest of the blond-bearded sergeant in the lead. He is suddenly very aware that he has never shot a man at close range. In truth, he is not sure he has ever shot a man at any range. He has fired many times into a throng of Rebel infantry, never knowing if any of his bullets found flesh. But here there will be no question. Behind him Jims cocks his carbine.

  “Sarge,” the Reb following the sergeant says. “Better stop.”

  The sergeant looks up, freezes. He and Bierce stare at each other. “Uh, what now, friend?” the sergeant asks.

>   Bierce is about to reply when the third Reb slips on a wet stone. Trying to get his balance, he swings his Enfield toward Jims, who shoots him through the head. The other two Rebs, not understanding quite what has happened but suspecting the worst of the Yankees, try to defend themselves. Bierce fires, the revolver jumping in his hand. His first shot hits the sergeant in the chest just to the right of the heart with a sound like an overripe piece of fruit hitting a wall. His second shot sings over the shoulder of the falling sergeant to bury itself in the mud bank of the far shore. The third hits the remaining Reb in the neck, tearing through the jugular vein in a spray of blood. The man falls to his knees in the stream, hands clutching at his throat. He stumbles up, falls, tries again to stand, then topples backward into the deep water below the ford. His hands slip from his throat, and he floats still for a moment before rolling over like an otter to slide downstream with the current.

  Bierce steps to the sergeant, begins to say “I’m sorry,” stops himself. It is pointless. The sergeant is dead and this is war. Accident within accident within accident of human frailty. All pointless.

  There is a cheer from the bridge, the sound of a heavy infantry volley. “Our infantry,” Jims says.

  “Yes,” Bierce says. “They made very good time.”

  Three miles upstream on the Murfreesboro Pike, the Confederate troopers guarding the bridge over Stewart’s Creek are enjoying the restful hour after the midday meal when the 3rd Kentucky Union Volunteers come around the bend at the head of Wood’s flying column. Brigadier General Milo Hascall screams at the regiment’s colonel: “Don’t deploy. Go for ’em in column!” The 3rd Kentucky, its colors still furled, bayonets unfixed, breaks into a run.

  The Rebels have a 12-pounder Napoleon loaded with canister on the near side of the creek. The troopers scramble clear, and the gunner jerks the lanyard, sending a blast of canister straight into the face of the charging column. The 3rd Kentucky recoils, recovers, storms past the Napoleon, clubbing and shooting the fleeing cannoneers. Ahead, coal oil blazes up on a stack of railroad ties in the middle of the bridge. The Rebs rally on the far shore, shooting steadily as the blaze takes hold. But the Kentucky blood is up and the Third roars onto the bridge. Men tear apart the burning pile with their bare hands, heave the ties over the rail into the creek. They charge on, break onto the far shore, send the Rebel troopers fleeing.