Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  On the right end of the line, Colonel Charlie Harker is appalled when Van Cleve halts the line sixty yards short of the trees. He does not come directly under Van Cleve’s authority, could push on. But Charlie Harker, lucky though he is, won’t press his luck that far. The old farmer has a sternness about him, an edge like an old scythe forgotten in the rain behind a shed but still dangerously sharp beneath the rust.

  Harker prances his horse back and forth behind his line. Let’s go, damn it. Let’s get around the Reb flank and give them back a little of their own medicine.

  Major General Alexander McDowell McCook sits his horse on the pike, watching the line waiting a few score yards from the trees as a pair of couriers dash back toward the pike. He has managed to cobble together a few regiments from his shattered wing and has them coming now to fall in on the position vacated by Harker. McCook frowns. Where the hell is the cavalry to protect Harker’s flank? He’s hanging entirely in the air, exposed to anything. McCook bites his lip against a sudden stinging in his eyes. God must be a cavalryman, never around when you need him.

  Brigadier General Sam Beatty spits tobacco juice. “Well, Tanner,” he says to his adjutant, “we chased the Rebs in there. I wonder if they’ve stopped to regroup, or if they’re still running.”

  Before the adjutant can reply, there is a stirring in the trees, branches moving, as if by something casually, confidently powerful. The adjutant has the absurd recollection of an afternoon when he’d paddled a skiff through a narrow, reedy channel in search of ducks, only to come face to face with a bear. The bear had come as whatever is coming now, pushing slowly through the reeds and brush of a low island to emerge on the muddy bank within a paw’s swipe of skiff and boy. The bear’s small, red eyes stared disdainfully at him, almost dared him to reach for the shotgun. And when he didn’t, the bear had made a noise almost like a harrumph, had turned his broad behind and shambled back into the brush. And so it is with an almost eidetic horror that Major Tanner watches the disturbance in the cedar branches resolve itself into a long line of butternut skirmishers.

  Beside him, Sam Beatty pauses in his chewing. “Well, son of a whore,” he mutters.

  The clash at the edge of the trees midway between the Wilkinson and Nashville pikes sets Lucius Polk’s brigade against Sam Beatty’s; S.A.M. Wood’s against Fyffe’s; Vaughan’s brigade, lent Cleburne by Cheatham, against Harker’s left; and Bushrod Johnson’s brigade against Harker’s right. With his flank dangling in the air and two brigades coming at him hard, Charlie Harker, who has never doubted that the stars work in his favor, loses his composure. Forgetting Fyffe’s flank, he retreats to the Burris house ridge, six hundred yards to his right rear. Fyffe sends three messengers, one after another, with pleas for Harker to cover his flank. But Harker, his men flat on the ground either side of the Widow Burris’s house, refuses to budge.

  A Union surgeon bursts from the Burris house, heads for Harker. “For God’s sake, man! We’ve got wounded here. Take your fight down into the field.”

  Charlie Harker cannot stop trembling, although when he looks at his hands they seem steady enough. He wonders if he can speak in a normal tone, tries: “This is your fight, too, Doctor. All of ours.”

  The surgeon sweeps a hand at the long rows of wounded. “These men have done their fighting! Now it’s the job of my surgeons to save as many as we can. And they can’t do it if we’re in the middle of a battle.”

  Harker turns his back on the man. “We can’t leave here, Doctor. Now do your work and I’ll do mine.”

  The surgeon stands tight-lipped for a moment, then looks where Harker is looking. Slowly, his mouth falls open in amazement. “Colonel, you’ve abandoned the flank! That brigade can’t hold!”

  “Neither could we. There are too many Rebs.”

  “But Christ, man! You’ve got to do something!”

  “We can’t leave this hill, Doctor. Now, please, I have things I must do.”

  Abandoned by Harker, Fyffe swings back the 86th Indiana to form a crochet. Before the Hoosiers can get in position, Vaughan envelops Fyffe’s flank, enfilading the entire length of the Yankee line. Fyffe’s and Sam Beatty’s brigades buckle, the men fleeing for the safety of the pike. Liddell joins Bushrod Johnson’s assault on the Burris house ridge. Under fire, Harker withdraws from the yard of the hospital, leaving dozens of the waiting wounded with second and even third wounds.

  Brigadier General St. John Liddell steps into the Burris house to visit with the Yankee surgeons. He regrets having spoken so brutally to the doctor at the Gresham house in the hour he thought his son killed. Not that he would grant a truce if asked again, for it is impossible in the midst of this tumult, but he would at least refuse with a courtesy befitting a Southern gentleman.

  Liddell is hardly a squeamish man, but the stench of chloroform, vomit, blood, and excrement almost overwhelms him. In the parlor and dining room on either side of the hall, surgeons and orderlies bend over makeshift operating tables. The floors are slick with blood, the men on the tables moaning, the doctors panting and perspiring with the effort of sawing off limbs. The chief surgeon approaches from the kitchen in the rear, wiping his hands on a bloody rag.

  Liddell extends a hand. “Liddell, commanding Second Brigade, Cleburne’s division.”

  “Burns, General. Ninety-third Ohio.” He gestures at the surroundings. “I apologize for the conditions. This wasn’t supposed to be a hospital, and we don’t have what we should. But we’re doing what we can.”

  An orderly pushes between them with a tub of severed arms and legs. Liddell is struck with the paleness of the skin, the dead whiteness that comes so soon after the amputation of a living limb. I must leave here, he thinks. I need to fight yet today.

  A shriek from the kitchen makes Liddell wince in spite of himself. Burns turns a casual glance in that direction. “We’re nearly out of chloroform, and the pain is too much for some of the lads. And there’s the horror of losing an arm or a leg. I suppose it might be the same with any of us. If they protest too much, we have to put them outside without doing the work that might save their lives. It’s a pity, but we can’t waste much time on any one man. But some additional chloroform would help if you have some to spare.”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but my surgeons are far behind by now, treating our wounded in equally poor circumstances.”

  “Yes, I suppose so… . Well, General, I should see to my patients. There’s a bottle of acceptable claret somewhere around here if you’d care for a drink.”

  “Thank you, but no. Is there anything else I can do for you, Doctor?”

  “Well, we’ve had some trouble with stragglers going among the wounded, demanding money.”

  “No one from my command!”

  “No, sir. They were from our side. But there will be Southern boys straggling and more of our Northern toughs about. If you could post a guard… .”

  “I don’t have any men to spare, Doctor. But if you can find some whitewash, paint on the outside of the house that you are under the protection of General St. John Liddell. That will give at least those who know me pause.”

  Garesché has never seen Rosecrans more in command. In a day which should have stretched every fiber of the man’s physical and mental strength to breaking, the rout of Sam Beatty, Fyffe, and Harker seems only to stimulate Rosecrans to greater exertions. He rallies the retreating regiments, reforms them along the pike. “It’s all right, boys. They got the better of us that time. Next time it’s our turn.” And so he turns them: regiment, company, squad, and soldier.

  Rosecrans is foremost but not alone in rallying the troops. Van Cleve, snow-white beard identifying him from a great distance, rides calmly among the retreating men. Even Crittenden, buoyed no doubt by alcohol, has Harker’s men in surprisingly good order. Down the road, Garesché can make out Thomas walking his smooth-gaited mare along the pike, pointing soldiers to positions. We are not whipped yet, Garesché thinks. My God of Battles, stand by us, we are not whipped yet. />
  For hours now, Rosecrans has been in a state of such extraordinary concentration that the capacity for fear or wonder has been blotted entirely from his consciousness. The army is terribly battered: cracked and riven in a hundred places so that one more blow may shatter it entirely. The counterattack on Hardee was a mistake, an impulsive gamble to regain the offensive. Impatience, always his worst enemy. Now, he thinks, we may have given them one more success than we can stand. But I don’t think so. I still have the pieces of this army in my hands, know where every regiment is. I can pull this line together one more time. And sooner or later Hardee must stop and rest his men. They have fought now for nearly nine hours and not even they can fight forever—not even that Irish boy Cleburne who would attack hell itself if Hardee told him to.

  Rosecrans spurs Boney up the pike again, pushing yet more men into position, anchoring the line on Morton’s Pioneers and Stokes’s battery. “Rally, boys,” he shouts. “We’re going to give them a taste of real hell this time.”

  He spots two begrimed, exhausted regiments limping across the pike. An officer bareback on an artillery horse rides forward, salutes. “Bradley, sir. Fifty-first Illinois.”

  “I know you, Colonel.”

  “Colonel Roberts is dead, sir. I’ve taken command of his brigade. Two of our regiments are back with General Sheridan. I’m taking these two to resupply at the ordnance train.”

  “There’s no time for that. Re-form and fill that gap a hundred yards up the pike.”

  “But, General, we don’t have a cartridge among us!”

  “Then you must fight with bayonets, Colonel. Go on now. The Rebs will break this time. I know it for certain.”

  It is not the sort of attack Pat Cleburne likes. For all his aggressiveness, he is never reckless. But he has the order in Hardee’s own hand: Push them, Patrick! Now, before we lose the light!

  Cleburne orders his five brigades forward against the pike and Rosecrans’s shaky line of infantry. But the Union guns are solid. Anchored by the Chicago Board of Trade Battery and the Pennsylvania battery on Stokes’s hill, the Federal batteries pour a converging fire on the butternut line. Encouraged by the guns and the disciplined fire of Morton’s Pioneers, the Union infantry steadies.

  For the rest of the day and the rest of the war, Cleburne’s colonels and brigadiers will dispute which unit broke first. The majority of opinion will blame a regiment of Vaughan’s brigade, but this may be simple prejudice against a brigade only temporarily attached to the division. When Colonel Bradley leads Sheridan’s exhausted veterans in a bayonet charge that should be at best a forlorn hope, the blue soldiers are astonished to see the Rebels turn tail.

  Son of a bitch if Rosy wasn’t right! Bradley thinks. “Remember Roberts, boys!” he shouts. “Remember Roberts!” He glances back over his shoulder, catches sight of Rosecrans waving his hat wildly.

  Brigadier General St. John Liddell is still on the Burris house ridge when he sees Secesh soldiers running. He mounts, dashes down the hill, saber drawn. He menaces the soldiers with his blade, recognizing them as Bushrod Johnson’s men, and manages to halt the retreat near the base of the hill. He gallops on, finds Johnson. “What is the meaning of this disgrace, sir?” he shouts, for in his rage he is no more a respecter of Johnson’s seniority than he was, at the Gresham house, of gentle Doctor Doolittle’s petition of mercy.

  Johnson turns a mild look on Liddell, then points to the west. Liddell looks, feels color drain from his face at the sight of his own brigade, ranks broken and colors at the trail, fleeing for the cover of a copse of trees. My God, Liddell thinks, we are undone. He turns to Johnson, “General, I beg your pardon.”

  “Never mind, John. It is a disgrace, and I have no explanation for it.”

  The great clash of cavalry fated in the convergence of the forces of Stanley, Wharton, Kennett, and Wheeler never takes place. Wharton withdraws from his forward position near the pike to make a sweep to the southeast to pick up a few more Yankee prisoners and wagons. In so doing, he narrowly misses Kennett who is swinging to the west with Zahm, Otis, and a section of mountain howitzers.

  Coming along the country road just east of Overall Creek to find Wharton, Wheeler is within sight of the Ashbury church when cannon and carbine fire erupt from the woods ahead. Instead of shifting smoothly into attack formation as they would if fresh, Wheeler’s lead squadrons give way. Wheeler rides forward, trying to get an idea of what he faces. There are only two guns—mountain howitzers, judging from their bark—but he has none, his own guns back in the rear, teams broken down. And like his friend Charlie Harker, Joe Wheeler loses his nerve, decides nothing of commensurate value can be gained by pressing an attack in the face of such odds.

  Watching Wheeler retreat, Judge John Kennett is not foolish enough to press his luck. Except for the howitzers, the odds are entirely on the other side and the hour itself dictates caution. The judge looks at the pale outline of the sun low above the trees, feels his belly grumble. He’ll ask around, see if anyone on the staff has a cracker or two. Another hour or so and maybe they’ll have a chance for something hot. Coffee, at least.

  Stanley leaves the Wilkinson Pike west of Overall Creek, following a narrow lane north until it intersects with the east–west road that crosses the creek a few hundred yards west of the Ashbury church. He finds Kennett waiting for him at the crossroads, munching a piece of hardtack. “Judge! I’m glad to see you.”

  Kennett smiles with the sort of grim forbearance he might direct at a young lawyer rushing into court fifteen minutes late. “Stanley. We’d begun to wonder what happened to you. We’ve been busy.”

  “So this man told me.” Stanley gestures to a wiry private, who stares at him with obvious loathing. “I can’t understand why General Rosecrans didn’t send for me sooner. It wasn’t until this man came with a message from Garesché that we even knew there was a battle.”

  Kennett lets this pass without comment. “This flank is secure, General. I think you can safely leave it while you seek instructions from the commanding general. Minty’s brigade can take the front here while Zahm’s boys cook some supper. They’ve had a long day.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Stanley puts spurs to his horse, rides off with his staff to find Rosecrans, leaving Judge Kennett to carry out the tactical deployment of the cavalry division, as is his right and responsibility as division commander.

  Kennett takes a bite of his second cracker, chews with huge satisfaction. Lieutenant Otis brings him a metal cup. “Coffee, Colonel? It’s a bit on the weak side, but it’s hot.”

  “Thank you, Otis. At this moment it could be made from boiled mule piss and I’d relish it.”

  Rosecrans and Garesché watch as the Rebel assault on the army’s right streams back across the fields into the darkening cedars. Rosecrans slaps Garesché on the shoulder. “We’ve sent them running here, Julius. Come, we must look to the center. It sounds like Bragg is making another try at breaking Hazen.”

  Garesché feels his face stretched to an unfamiliar tightness, realizes he is grinning in a way he hasn’t grinned since he was a boy wandering through a street carnival in Havana. And though he has known much happiness in his children, Mariquitta, and the embrace of his church, he has never, between that day and this, felt such joy.

  Pat Cleburne can see the exhaustion in their stumbling, leaden walks, in the eyes gone deep and glassy in haggard faces. These are brave men, but they have nothing left of the store of courage they brought into the fight. He will not order them to attack again, though he could fight on forever. There is something in Cleburne that hungers, will hunger eternally, even if he is killed. He imagines that he will then become part of the hunger itself, will go with it in search of another soul. He has never met Robert E. Lee, but he has seen the man’s picture, suspects that he is haunted by the same hunger for battle. Someday he should like to meet Sheridan, for he suspects that he too has it, but that unlike Lee he is not merely haunted but possessed by it in entire acceptance,
as Pat Cleburne is. Yes, Cleburne could fight on forever, but not these men, not now when the hour is too late to bring up cannon or to petition Bragg again for reinforcements.

  Hardee comes riding through the dripping cedars, his head bowed, shoulders slumped, the soldiers parting to either side of him without looking up. He stops before Cleburne, raises red-rimmed eyes. “Bragg is unfit, Patrick,” he whispers. “Unfit to be a general, unfit to command men such as these.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Wednesday, 1:00–4:00 P.M.

  December 31, 1862

  The Confederate Right Center

  Bragg has ordered brigades from Breckinridge’s division across the river to reinforce Hardee’s attack on the Union right. But confusion thwarts that plan and, with the failure of Hardee’s final assault, the Round Forest again becomes the focus of the Confederate attack.

  THE PLEAS RAIN on him, bombard him like hail: for more troops, more artillery, for a diversion here, a thrust there. And Bragg can do nothing but sit his tall gelding in the drizzle, waiting for others to obey orders. Last night he gave them a plan and assigned them the means to carry it out. But they have failed to execute the great wheel, have squandered their forces. Now they act as if he is being selfish, as if he is withholding vast reserves. Hardee’s messages in particular have become shrill to the point of insubordination. He has sent him Wheeler, though the cavalry is badly broken down by its raid through Rosecrans’s rear. Beyond that he has nothing to give, must concentrate what he can muster to break the Yankees’ hold on that miserable grove at the apex of their line.