FRANKLIN
But General Jeremiah Travis could not keep out of the war; for toward the last, when Hood's army marched into Tennessee the Confederacy called for everything—even old age.
And so there rode out of the gates of The Gaffs a white-haired old man, who sat his superb horse well. He was followed by a negro on a mule.
They were General Jeremiah Travis and his body-servant, Bisco.
“I have come to fight for my state,” said General Travis to the Confederate General.
“An' I am gwine to take keer of old marster suh,” said Bisco as he stuck to his saddle girth.
It was the middle of the afternoon of the last day of November—and also the last day of many a gallant life—when Hood's tired army marched over the brow of the high ridge of hills that looked down on the town of Franklin, in front of which, from railroad to river, behind a long semicircular breastwork lay Schofield's determined army. It was a beautiful view, and as plain as looking down from the gallery into the pit of an amphitheatre.
Just below them lay the little town in a valley, admirably situated for defense, surrounded as it was on three sides by the bend of a small river, the further banks of which were of solid rocks rising above the town. On the highest of these bluffs—Roper's Knob—across and behind the town, directly overlooking it and grimly facing Hood's army two miles away, was a federal fort capped with mighty guns, ready to hurl their shells over the town at the gray lines beyond. From the high ridge where Hood's army stood the ground gradually rolled to the river. A railroad ran through a valley in the ridge to the right of the Confederates, spun along on the banks of the river past the town and crossed it in the heart of the bend to the left of the federal fort. From that railroad on the Confederate right, in front and clear around the town, past an old gin house which stood out clear and distinct in the November sunlight—on past the Carter House, to the extreme left bend of the river on the left—in short, from river to river again and entirely inclosing the town and facing the enemy—ran the newly made and hastily thrown-up breastworks of the federal army, the men rested and ready for battle.
There stands to-day, as it stood then, in front of the town of Franklin, on the highest point of the ridge, a large linden tree, now showing the effects of age. It was half-past three o'clock in the afternoon, when General Hood rode unattended to that tree, threw the stump of the leg that was shot off at Chickamauga over the pommel of his saddle, drew out his field glasses and sat looking for a long time across the valley at the enemy's position.
Strange to say, on the high river bluff beyond the town, amid the guns of the fort, also with field glass in hand anxiously watching the confederates, stood the federal general. A sharp-shooter in either line could have killed the commanding general in the other. And now that prophesying silence which always seems to precede a battle was afloat in the air. In the hollow of its stillness it seemed as if one could hear the ticking of the death-watch of eternity. But presently it was broken by the soft strains of music which floated up from the town below. It was the federal band playing “Just Before The Battle, Mother.”
The men in gray on the hill and the men in blue in the valley listened, and then each one mentally followed the tune with silent words, and not without a bit of moisture in their eyes.
“Just before the battle, Mother,
I am thinking most of thee.”
Suddenly Hood closed his glasses with that nervous jerk which was a habit with him, straightened himself in the saddle and, riding back to General Stewart, said simply: “We will make the fight, General Stewart.”
Stewart pressed his General's hand, wheeled and formed his corps on the right. Cheatham formed his on the left. A gun—and but few were used by Hood in the fight for fear of killing the women and children in the town—echoed from the ridge. It was the signal for the battle to begin. The heavy columns moved down the side of the ridge, the brigades marching in echelon.
At the sound of the gun, the federal army, some of whom were on duty, but the larger number loitering around at rest, or engaged in preparing their evening meal, sprang noiselessly to their places behind the breastworks, while hurried whispers of command ran down the line.
General Travis had been given a place of honor on General Hood's staff. He insisted on going into the ranks, but his commander had said: “Stay with me, I shall need you elsewhere.” And so the old man sat his horse silently watching the army forming and marching down. But directly, as a Mississippi regiment passed by, he noticed at the head of one of the companies an old man, almost as old as himself, his clothes torn, and ragged from long marching; shoeless, his feet tied up in sack-cloth and his old slouch hat aflop over his ears. But he did not complain, he stood erect, and gamely led his men into battle. As the company halted for a moment, General Travis rode up to the old man whose thin clothes could not keep him from shivering in the now chill air of late afternoon, for it was then past four o'clock, saluted him and said:
“Captain, will you do me the favor to pull off this boot?” Withdrawing his boot from the stirrup and thrusting it towards the old man, the latter looked at him a moment in surprise but sheathed his sword and complied with the request. “And now the other one?” said Travis as he turned his horse around. This, too, was pulled off.
“Just put them on, Captain, if you please,” said the rider. “I am mounted and do not need them as much as you do?” and before the gallant old Captain could refuse, he rode away for duty—in his stocking feet!
And now the battle began in earnest.
The confederates came on in splendid form. On the extreme right, Forrest's cavalry rested on the river; then Stewart's corps of Loring, Walthall, French, from right to left in the order named. On the left Cheatham's corps, of Cleburne, Brown, Bate, and Walker. Behind Cheatham marched Johnston's and Clayton's brigade for support, thirty thousand and more of men, in solid lines, bands playing and flags fluttering in the afternoon wind.
Nor had the federals been idle. Behind the breastworks lay the second and third divisions of the 23rd Corps, commanded in person by the gallant General J. D. Cox. From the railroad on the left to the Carter's Creek pike on the right, the brigades of these divisions stood as follows: Henderson's, Casement's, Reilly's, Strickland's, Moore's. And from the right of the Carter's Creek pike to the river lay Kimball's first division of the Fourth Corps. In front of the breastworks, across the Columbia pike, General Wagner, commanding the second division of the Fourth Corps, had thrown forward the two brigades of Bradley and Lane to check the first assault of the confederates, while Opdyck's brigade of the same division was held in the town as a reserve. Seven splendid batteries growled along the line of breastworks, and showed their teeth to the advancing foe, while three more were caged in the fort above and beyond the town.
Never did men march with cooler courage on more formidable lines of defense. Never did men wait an attack with cooler courage. Breastworks with abatis in front through which the mouth of cannon gaped; artillery and infantry on the right to enfilade; siege guns in the fort high above all, to sweep and annihilate.
Schofield, born general that he was, simply lay in a rock-circled, earth-circled, water-circled, iron-and-steel-circled cage, bayonet and flame tipped, proof against the armies of the world!
But Hood's brave army never hesitated, never doubted.
Even in the matter of where to throw up his breastworks, Schofield never erred. On a beautiful and seemingly level plain like this, a less able general might have thrown them up anywhere, just so that they encircled the town and ran from river to river.
But Schofield took no chances. His quick eye detected that even in apparent level plains there are slight undulations. And so, following a gentle rise all the way round, just on its top he threw up his breastworks. So that, besides the ditch and the abatis, there was a slight depression in his immediate front, open and clear, but so situated that on the gentle slope in front, down which the confederates must charge, the background of the slope brought them in bold relief—gray targets for the guns. On that background the hare would loom up as big as the hound.
There were really two federal lines, an outer and an inner one. The outer one consisted of Bradley's and Lane's brigades which had retired from Spring Hill before the Confederate army, and had been ordered to halt in front of the breastworks to check the advance of the army. They were instructed to fire and then fall back to the breastworks, if stubbornly charged by greatly their superiors in numbers. They fired, but, true to American ideas, they disliked to retreat. When forced to do so, they were swept away with the enemy on their very heels and as they rushed in over the last line at the breastworks on the Columbia pike the eager boys in gray rushed over with them, swept away portions of Reilly's and Strickland's troops, and bayoneted those that remained.
It was then that Schofield's heart sank as he looked down from the guns of the fort. But Cox had the forethought to place Opdyck's two thousand men in reserve at this very point. These sprang gallantly forward and restored the line.
They saved the Union army!
The battle was now raging all around the line. There was a succession of yells, a rattle, a shock and a roar, as brigade after brigade struck the breastworks, only to be hurled back again or melt and die away in the trenches amid the abatis. Clear around the line of breastworks it rolled, at intervals, like a magazine of powder flashing before it explodes, then the roar and upheaval, followed anon and anon by another. The ground was soon shingled with dead men in gray, while down in the ditches or hugging the bloody sides of the breastworks right under the guns, thousands, more fortunate or daring than their comrades, lay, thrusting and being thrust, shooting and being shot. And there they staid throughout the fight—not strong enough to climb over, and yet all the guns of the federal army could not drive them away. Many a gray regiment planted its battle-flag on the breastworks and then hugged those sides of death in its efforts to keep it there, as bees cling around the body of their queen.
“I have the honor to forward to the War Department nine stands of colors,” writes General Cox to General Geo. L. Thomas; “these flags with eleven others were captured by the Twenty-third Army Corps along the parapets.”
Could Bonaparte's army have planted more on the ramparts of Mount St. Jean?
The sun had not set; yet the black smoke of battle had set it before its time. God had ordained otherwise; but man, in his fury had shut out the light of heaven against the decree of God, just as, equally against His decree, he has now busily engaged in blotting out many a brother's bright life, before the decree of its sunset. Again and again and again, from four till midnight—eight butchering hours—the heart of the South was hurled against those bastions of steel and flame, only to be pierced with ball and bayonet.
And for every heart that was pierced there broke a dozen more in the shade of the southern palmetto, or in the shadow of the northern pine. After nineteen hundred years of light and learning, what a scientific nation of heart-stabbers and brother-murderers we Christians are!
It was now that the genius of the confederate cavalry leader, Forrest, asserted itself. With nearly ten thousand of his intrepid cavalry-men, born in the saddle, who carried rifles and shot as they charged, and whom with wonderful genius their leader had trained to dismount at a moment's notice and fight as infantry—he lay on the extreme right between the river and the railroad. In a moment he saw his opportunity, and rode furiously to Hood's headquarters. He found the General sitting on a flat rock, a smouldering fire by his side, half way down the valley, at the Winstead House, intently watching the progress of the battle.
“Let me go at 'em, General,” shouted Forrest in his bluff way, “and I'll flank the federal army out of its position in fifteen minutes.”
“No! Sir,” shouted back Hood. “Charge them out! charge them out!”
Forrest turned and rode back with an oath of disgust. Years afterwards, Colonel John McGavock, whose fine plantation lay within the federal lines and who had ample opportunity for observation, says that when in the early evening a brigade of Forrest's cavalry deployed across the river as if opening the way for the confederate infantry to attack the federal army in flank and rear, hasty preparations were made by the federal army for retreat. And thus was Forrest's military wisdom corroborated. “Let me flank them out,” was military genius. “No, charge them out,” was dare-devil blundering!
The shock, the shout and the roar continued. The flash from the guns could now plainly be seen as night descended. So continuous was the play of flame around the entire breastwork that it looked to the general at headquarters like a circle of prairie fire, leaping up at intervals along the breastworks, higher and higher where the batteries were ablaze.
In a black-locust thicket, just to the right of the Columbia turnpike and near the Carter House, with abatis in front, the strongest of the batteries had been placed. It mowed down everything in front. Seeing it, General Hood turned to General Travis and said: “General, my compliments to General Cleburne, and say to him I desire that battery at his hands.”
The old man wheeled and was gone. In a moment, it seemed, the black smoke of battle engulfed him. Cleburne's command was just in front of the old gin house, forming for another charge. The dead lay in heaps in front. They almost filled the ditch around the breastworks. But the command, terribly cut to pieces, was forming as coolly as if on dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. It was Cleburne's battle flag and well the enemy knew it. They had seen and felt it at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Ringgold Gap, Atlanta. “I tip my hat to that flag,” said General Sherman years after the war. “Whenever my men saw it they knew it meant fight.”
As the old man rode up, the division charged. Carried away in the excitement he charged with them, guiding his horse by the flashes of the guns. As they rushed on the breastworks a gray figure on a chestnut horse rode diagonally across the front of the moving column at the enemy's gun. The horse went down within fifty yards of the breastwork. The rider arose, waved his sword and led his men on foot to the very ramparts. Then he staggered and fell, pierced with a dozen minie balls. It was Cleburne, the peerless field-marshal of confederate brigade commanders; the genius to infantry as Forrest was to cavalry. His corps was swept back by the terrible fire, nearly half of them dead or wounded.
Ten minutes afterwards General Travis stood before General Hood.
“General Cleburne is dead, General”—was all he said. Hood did not turn his head.
“My compliments to General Adams,” he said, “and tell him I ask that battery at his hands.”
Again the old man wheeled and was gone. Again he rode into the black night and the blacker smoke of battle.
General Adams's brigade was in Walthall's division. As the aged courier rode up, Adams was just charging. Again the old man was swept away with the charge. They struck the breastworks where Stile's and Casement's brigades lay on the extreme left of the federal army. “Their officers showed heroic examples and self-sacrifice,” wrote General Cox in his official report, “riding up to our lines in advance of their men, cheering them on. One officer, Adams, was shot down upon the parapet itself, his horse falling across the breastworks.” Casement himself, touched by the splendor of his ride, had cotton brought from the old gin house and placed under the dying soldier's head. “You are too brave a man to die,” said Casement tenderly; “I wish that I could save you.”
“'Tis the fate of a soldier to die for his country,” smiled the dying soldier. Then he passed away.
It was a half hour before the old man reached Hood's headquarters again, his black horse wet with sweat.
“General Adams lies in front of the breastworks—dead! His horse half over it—dead”—was all he said.
Hood turned pale. His eyes flashed with indignant grief.
“Then tell General Gist,” he exclaimed. The old man vanished again and rode once more into the smoke and the night. Gist's brigade led the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging lines. “In passing from the left to the right of the regiment,” writes Colonel Ellison Capers commanding the South Carolina regiment above named, “the General (Gist) waved his hat to us, expressed his pride and confidence in the Twenty-fourth and rode away in the smoke of battle never more to be seen by the men he had commanded on so many fields. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart. On pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and Gordon's brigade charged on and reached the ditch, mounted the works and met the enemy in close combat. The colors of the Twenty-fourth were planted and defended on the parapet, and the enemy retired in our front some distance, but soon rallied and came back in turn to charge us. He never succeeded in retaking the line we held. Torn and exhausted, deprived of every general officer and nearly every field officer, the division had only strength enough left to hold its position.”
The charging became intermittent. Then out of the night, as Hood sat listening, again came the old man, his face as white as his long hair, his horse once black, now white with foam.
“General Gist too, is dead,” he said sadly.
“Tell Granbury, Carter, Strahl—General! Throw them in there and capture that battery and break that line.”
The old man vanished once more and rode into the shock and shout of battle.
General Strahl was leading his brigade again against the breastworks. “Strahl's and Carter's brigade came gallantly to the assistance of Gist's and Gordon's” runs the confederate report sent to Richmond, “but the enemy's fire from the houses in the rear of the line and from guns posted on the far side of the river so as to enfilade the field, tore their line to pieces before it reached the locust abatis.”
General Carter fell mortally wounded before reaching the breastworks, but General Strahl reached the ditch, filled with dead and dying men, though his entire staff had been killed. Here he stood with only two men around him, Cunningham and Brown. “Keep firing” said Strahl as he stood on the bodies of the dead and passed up guns to the two privates. The next instant Brown fell heavily; he, too, was dead.
“What shall I do, General?” asked Cunningham.
“Keep firing,” said Strahl.
Again Cunningham fired. “Pass me another gun, General,” said Cunningham. There was no answer—the general was dead.
Not a hundred yards away lay General Granbury, dead. He died leading the brave Texans to the works.
To the commanding General it seemed an age before the old man returned. Then he saw him in the darkness afar off, before he reached the headquarters. The General thought of death on his pale horse and shivered.
“Granbury, Carter, Strahl—all dead, General,” he said. “Colonels command divisions, Captains are commanding brigades.”
“How does Cheatham estimate his loss?” asked the General.
“At half his command killed and wounded,” said the old soldier sadly.
“My God!—my God!—this awful, awful day!” cried Hood.
There was a moment's silence and then: “General?” It came from General Travis.
The General looked up.
“May I lead the Tennessee troops in—I have led them often before.”
Hood thought a moment, then nodded and the horse and the rider were gone. It was late—nearly midnight. The firing on both sides had nearly ceased,—only a desultory rattling—the boom of a gun now and then. But O, the agony, the death, the wild confusion! This was something like the babel that greeted the old soldier's ears as he rode forward:
“The Fourth Mississippi—where is the Fourth Mississippi?” “Here is the Fortieth Alabama's standard—rally men to your standard!” “Where is General Cleburne, men? Who has seen General Cleburne?” “Up, boys, and let us at 'em agin! Damn 'em, they've wounded me an' I want to kill some more!”
“Water!—water—for God's sake give us water!” This came from a pile of wounded men just under the guns on the Columbia pike. It came from a sixteen year old boy in blue. Four dead comrades lay across him.
“And this is the curse of it,” said General Travis, as he rode among the men.
But suddenly amid the smoke and confusion, the soldiers saw what many thought was an apparition—an old, old warrior, on a horse with black mane and tail and fiery eyes, but elsewhere covered with white sweat and pale as the horse of death. The rider's face too, was deadly white, but his keen eyes blazed with the fire of many generations of battle-loving ancestors.
The soldiers flocked round him, half doubting, half believing. The terrible ordeal of that bloody night's work; the poignant grief from beholding the death and wounds of friends and brothers; the weird, uncanny groans of the dying upon the sulphurous-smelling night air; the doubt, uncertainty, and yet, through it all, the bitter realization that all was in vain, had shocked, benumbed, unsettled the nerves of the stoutest; and many of them scarcely knew whether they were really alive, confronting in the weird hours of the night ditches of blood and breastworks of death, or were really dead—dead from concussion, from shot or shell, and were now wandering on a spirit battle-field till some soul-leader should lead them away.
And so, half dazed and half dreaming, and yet half alive to its realization, they flocked around the old warrior, and they would not have been at all surprised had he told them he came from another world.
Some thought of Mars. Some thought of death and his white horse. Some felt of the animal's mane and touched his streaming flanks and cordy legs to see if it were really a horse and not an apparition, while “What is it?” and “Who is he?” was whispered down the lines.
Then the old rider spoke for the first time, and said simply:
“Men, I have come to lead you in.”
A mighty shout came up. “It's General Lee!—he has come to lead us in,” they shouted.
“No, no, men,”—said the old warrior quickly. “I am not General Lee. But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was—”
“It's Ole Hick'ry—by the eternal!—Ole Hick'ry—and he's come back to life to lead us!” shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the air.
“Ole Hickory! Ole Hickory!” echoed and re-echoed down the lines, till it reached the ears of the dying soldiers in the ditch itself, and many a poor, brave fellow, as his heart strings snapped and the broken chord gurgled out into the dying moan, saw amid the blaze and light of the new life, the apparition turn into a reality and a smile of exquisite satisfaction was forever frozen on his face in the mould of death, as he whispered with his last breath:
“It's Old Hickory—my General—I have fought a good fight—I come!”
Then the old warrior smiled—a smile of simple beauty and grandeur, of keen satisfaction that such an honor should have been paid him, and he tried to speak to correct them. But they shouted the more, and drowned out his voice and would not have it otherwise. Despairing, he rode to the front and drew his long, heavy, old, revolutionary sword. It flashed in the air. It came to “attention”—and then a dead silence followed.
“Men,” he said, “this is the sword of John Sevier, the rebel that led us up the sides of King's Mountain when every tyrant gun that belched in our face called us—rebels!”
“Old Hick'ry! Old Hick'ry, forever!” came back from the lines.
Again the old sword came to attention, and again a deep hush followed.
“Men,” he said, drawing a huge rifled barreled pistol—“this is the pistol of Andrew Jackson, the rebel that whipped the British at New Orleans when every gun that thundered in his face, meant death to liberty!”
“Old Hickory! Old Hickory!!” came back in a frenzy of excitement.
Again the old sword came to attention—again, the silence. Then the old man fairly stood erect in his stirrups—he grew six inches taller and straighter and the black horse reared and rose as if to give emphasis to his rider's assertion:
“Men,” he shouted, “rebel is the name that tyranny gives to patriotism! And now, let us fight, as our fore-fathers fought, for our state, our homes and our firesides!” And then clear and distinct there rang out on the night air, a queer old continental command:
“Fix, pieces!”
They did not know what this meant at first. But some old men in the line happened to remember and fixed their bayonets. Then there was clatter and clank down the entire line as others imitated their examples.
“Poise, fo'k!” rang out again more queerly still. The old men who remembered brought their guns to the proper position. “Right shoulder, fo'k!”—followed. Then, “Forward, March!” came back and they moved straight at the batteries—now silent—and straight at the breastworks, more silent still. Proudly, superbly, they came on, with not a shout or shot—a chained line with links of steel—a moving mass with one heart—and that heart,—victory.
On they came at the breastworks, walking over the dead who lay so thick they could step from body to body as they marched. On they came, following the old cocked hat that had once held bloodier breastworks against as stubborn foe.
On—on—they came, expecting every moment to see a flame of fire run round the breastworks, a furnace of flame leap up from the batteries, and then—victory or death—behind old Hickory! Either was honor enough!
And now they were within fifty feet of the breastworks, moving as if on dress parade. The guns must thunder now or never! One step more—then, an electrical bolt shot through every nerve as the old man wheeled his horse and again rang out that queer old continental command, right in the mouth of the enemy's ditch, right in the teeth of his guns:
“Charge, pieces!”
It was Tom Travis who commanded the guns where the Columbia Pike met the breastworks at the terrible deadly locust thicket. All night he had stood at his post and stopped nine desperate charges. All night in the flash and roar and the strange uncanny smell of blood and black powder smoke, he had stood among the dead and dying calling stubbornly, monotonously:
“Ready!”
“Aim!”
“Fire!”
And now it was nearly midnight and Schofield, finding the enemy checked, was withdrawing on Nashville.
Tom Travis thought the battle was over, but in the glare and flash he looked and saw another column, ghostly gray in the starlight, moving stubbornly at his guns.
“Ready!” he shouted as his gunners sprang again to their pieces.
On came the column—beautifully on. How it thrilled him to see them! How it hurt to think they were his people!
“Aim!” he thundered again, and then as he looked through the gray torch made, starlighted night, he quailed in a cold sickening fear, for the old man who led them on was his grandsire, the man whom of all on earth he loved and revered the most.
Eight guns, with grim muzzles trained on the old rider and his charging column, waited but for the captain's word to hurl their double-shotted canisters of death.
And Tom Travis, in the agony of it, stood, sword in hand, stricken in dumbness and doubt. On came the column, the old warrior leading them—on and:—
“The command—the command! Give it to us, Captain,” shouted the gunners.
“Cease firing!”
The gunners dropped their lanyards with an oath, trained machines that they were.
It was a drunken German who brought a heavy sword-hilt down on the young officer's head with:
“You damned traitor!”
A gleam of gun and bayonet leaped in the misty light in front, from shoulder to breast—a rock wall, tipped with steel swept crushingly forward over the trenches over the breastworks.
Under the guns, senseless, his skull crushed, an upturned face stopped the old warrior. Down from his horse he came with a weak, hysterical sob.
“O Tom—Tom, I might have known it was you—my gallant, noble boy—my Irish Gray!”
He kissed, as he thought, the dead face, and went on with his men.
It was just midnight.
“At midnight, all being quiet in front, in accordance with orders from the commanding Generals,” writes General J. D. Cox in his official report, “I withdrew my command to the north bank of the river.”
“The battle closed about twelve o'clock at night,” wrote General Hood, “when the enemy retreated rapidly on Nashville, leaving the dead and wounded in our hands. We captured about a thousand prisoners and several stands of colors.”
Was this a coincidence—or as some think—did the boys in blue retreat before they would fire on an old Continental and the spirit of '76?
An hour afterwards a negro was sadly leading a tired old man on a superb horse back to headquarters, and as the rider's head sank on his breast he said:
“Lead me, Bisco, I'm too weak to guide my horse. Nothing is left now but the curse of it.”
And O, the curse of it!
Fifty-seven Union dead beside the wounded, in the little front yard of the Carter House, alone. And they lay around the breastworks from river to river, a chain of dead and dying. In front of the breastworks was another chain—a wider and thicker one. It also ran from river to river, but was gray instead of blue. Chains are made of links, and the full measure of “the curse of it” may have been seen if one could have looked over the land that night and have seen where the dead links lying there were joined to live under the roof trees of far away homes.
But here is the tale of a severed link: About two o'clock lights began to flash about over the battle-field—they were hunting for the dead and wounded. Among these, three had come out from the Carter House. A father, son and daughter; each carried a lantern and as they passed they flashed their lights in the faces of the dead.
“May we look for brother?” asked the young girl, of an officer. “We hope he is not here but fear he is. He has not been home for two years, being stationed in another state. But we heard he could not resist the temptation to come home again and joined General Bate's brigade. And O, we fear he has been killed for he would surely have been home before this.”
They separated, each looking for “brother.” Directly the father heard the daughter cry out. It was in the old orchard near the house. On reaching the spot she was seated on the ground, holding the head of her dying brother in her lap and sobbing:
“Brother's come home! Brother's come home!” Alas, she meant—gone home!
“Captain Carter, on staff duty with Tyler's brigade,” writes General Wm. B. Bate in his official report, “fell mortally wounded near the works of the enemy and almost at the door of his father's home. His gallantry I witnessed with much pride, as I had done on other fields, and here take pleasure in mentioning it especially.”
The next morning in the first light of the first day of that month celebrated as the birth-month of Him who declared long ago that war should cease, amid the dead and dying of both armies, stood two objects which should one day be carved in marble—One, to represent the intrepid bravery of the South, the other, the cool courage of the North, and both—“the curse of it.”
The first was a splendid war-horse, dead, but lying face forward, half over the federal breastworks. It was the horse of General Adams.
The other was a Union soldier—the last silent sentinel of Schofield's army. He stood behind a small locust tree, just in front of the Carter House gate. He had drawn his iron ram-rod which rested under his right arm pit, supporting that side. His gun, with butt on the ground at his left, rested with muzzle against his left side, supporting it. A cartridge, half bitten off was in his mouth. He leaned heavily against the small tree in front. He was quite dead, a minie ball through his head; but thus propped he stood, the wonder of many eyes, the last sentinel of the terrible night battle.
But another severed link cut deepest of all. In the realization of her love for Thomas Travis, Alice Westmore's heart died within her. In the years which followed, if suffering could make her a great singer, now indeed was she great.