From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days

by Charles King

CHAPTER XX.

In the month that followed the panic and disaster of Bull Run the nation seemed to realize at last what was before it. "Little Mac," the idol of the soldiery, had been summoned to Washington to organize and command the rapidly arriving regiments of volunteers,—splendid regiments from all over the Northland, and though the flag of rebellion waved on Munson's Hill, in full view of the unfinished dome of the Capitol, and every afternoon the Southern bands played "Dixie," in full hearing of the guards to the approaches of the Long Bridge, the Southern generals were wise and refrained from farther advance.

Within that month, too, almost all the officers and many of the men reported missing after the battle were accounted for. Many turned up safe and sound, if much "demoralized." Many were heard of as at Libby and Belle Isle, the Richmond prisons, but not one word of any kind came from Major Stark, not a thing could be learned of his devoted orderly, appointed corporal, said the survivors of Stark's battalion, the very morning of the battle. The New-Englanders had gone home with the thanks of the President and Secretary of War for their gallant conduct at the battle, and their faithful service days after their time had expired. The gray-haired colonel, though still unable to remount and take command in the field, had been made a brigadier-general. Flint reappeared at the front as lieutenant-colonel of the reorganized regiment. Everybody said that Major Stark would have been made its colonel had he survived.

In Gotham there was grief in many a household, but there was trouble in the Lawrences'. Poor Mrs. Park, as was to be expected, could give them little peace. "Everybody" now knew that the youthful captor, so lauded in the papers, of the young Confederate cavalryman was the George Lawton who had fled from Aunt Lawrence's roof rather than listen to more upbraidings. Mrs. Park had first gone wild with pride, exultation, and delight when the Monday morning Herald reached her,—and then to New York and Aunt Lawrence the very next day. And there she learned the later news, and stayed a dreadful fortnight, dreadful for herself and everybody else. One thing, at least, was comfort to the younger sister, and comfort she certainly needed now,—the mother steadfastly refused to believe her boy was dead. What she wished to do and what perhaps she would have done, but that her husband came and forbade, was to go to Washington and lay siege to the War Department. Mrs. Park could see no just reason why the government should not send forth a strong column to scour and scourge Virginia until "the Mother of the Presidents" surrendered her boy. School was closed for the summer. The First Latin had passed its examinations, matriculated at Columbia, and was to start as freshmen in the fall, minus two members at least, Hoover, who had apparently abandoned his academic career, and had not been seen around New York, and Briggs, ignominiously "flunked" at the examination. Two others of its list were spoken of as duly admitted should they return to the fold in time to enter with the class,—Snipe Lawton and Shorty Prime. Where the first was no one could conjecture. Where the second was everybody knew, as Shorty took good care they should, if letters could accomplish it. There wasn't a happier lad in all the lines around Washington as August wore on, and the army "got its second wind"—and reinforcements. Short and small as he was, he rode as big a horse as anybody, and had reached almost the pinnacle of his boyish ambitions. He had been made mounted orderly at brigade head-quarters, and could ask no more, except that Snipe should know, and Snipe should turn up safe and sound.

The Doctor's wisdom had prevailed. The scare that followed Shorty's disappearance was short as he. Ellsworth was organizing the Fire Zouaves at the time, and the lad, in longing and misery and in envy of Snipe's inches, had stolen away to the old haunt at "40's" house down in Elm Street to beg the boys to tell their enthusiastic young colonel how well he could drum and how mad he was to go. He was home again by midnight, and late to school and lax in conduct and lessons the following day. It was all settled within a week, and as the Doctor had advised, and almost crazy with joy the youngster was hurried on to the capital to join his soldier kindred, was welcomed and set to work to teach other and bigger boys the army calls and beats for the snare-drum, and then, along in August, the general, for whom he had run many an errand and delivered many a message, ordered him to duty at head-quarters and set him in saddle.

Then presently McClellan found himself strong enough to risk a slight forward movement, and two brigades crossed the Potomac one night in face of the pickets at Chain Bridge, and, hardly waiting for dawn, began tossing up earthworks on the heights beyond, and here the saucy rebels came and "felt" the pickets and, riding through the wood lanes, made some effort to dislodge them, but there was evidently heavy force behind those strong picket-posts, and though rifles and revolvers were popping day and night all along the guarded lines from the Potomac below Alexandria to the Potomac above Chain Bridge, no real attempt was made by the "Johnnies" to push through at any point. Night after night, at first, gay young gallants from the Southern lines would mount their horses and ride out ahead just to "stir up the Yanks," and then there would be no end of a bobbery along the front, picket firing in every direction and the long roll in every camp, and everybody would turn out under arms and form line on the designated parade-ground, and stand and shiver and say unpublishable and improper things for an hour or more, and then go back to bed disgusted. After a week or so at this the colonels would no longer form line, but let the companies muster in their respective streets in camp, and the long waits were reduced to an hour, and then to a half, and in course of a fortnight it became difficult even to rouse a drummer when the long roll was actually ordered. And when the sputter and crackle of musketry began far out at the picket-posts in the dead hours of the night, men in camp would roll over and grunt something to the effect that those fellows were making dashed fools of themselves again. And so by the end of August it became a sign of "scare" or "nerves" when pickets began firing at night, and when Shorty's brigade took post along those densely wooded heights and had got fairly shaken down to business, matters at the front, out toward the hamlet of Lewinsville and the lanes to Vienna and Ball's Cross-Roads, became almost professionally placid and disciplined, and the lad was in a sort of military seventh heaven, trotting about with orders and despatches, recognized and passed without check at almost all the posts of the main guards, where even officers below certain grades had to show their permits, welcomed at every regimental camp for the news and gossip he could bring,—ay, and it must be owned, for items much more stimulating than even the latest rumors from the War Department, for Shorty was many a time the bearer of despatches to McClellan's head-quarters or the office of some high dignitary in the city, and his saddle-bags were never inspected by provost-marshals and patrols, and, now that the sutlers were forbidden to sell the fiery liquids of the first weeks of the war, many a flask of forbidden "commissary" found its way to some favored tent among the brigade lines, and in return, when Sergeant This or Corporal That was out on picket, the lad was sure of friends at court when he strove for a peep outside the lines, and one of his absorbing crazes was to ascertain what might be going on around that mysterious hamlet, nearly two miles out there in the lovely Virginia slopes beyond the pickets.

The fact is that Shorty was consumed with ambition to "do something" like Snipe. He envied his former chum the distinction of that capture of Lieutenant Grayson infinitely more than he envied "Little Mac" the command of the army. Just to think that the first Confederate officer caught in front of Washington should turn out to be a first cousin of the very Graysons who were with them at school! Just to think that it should be Snipe of all others—Snipe, a First Latin boy—to make the capture! Just to think that Snipe should have been all through Bull Run, while he, Shorty, was far to the rear where he could only hear the thunder of the guns and the tales of the stragglers! Just to think that the old men in the reorganized New-Englanders declared that Snipe was the best soldier in the ranks of Company "C" if he was the youngest!—Snipe who couldn't shoot a gun six months ago without shutting his eyes, and who would rather fish all day or figure out equations than follow the band of the Seventh itself! Just to think that the old colonel's written report of Bull Run should include among the few names of those deserving especial credit and commendation that of Corporal George Lawton, Company "C," "who sacrificed himself in the heroic effort to save Major Stark from death or capture, and was last seen fighting hard over his prostrate body,"—Snipe who used to turn sick at sight of a fist fight, even though he was the "bulliest" first baseman the Uncas ever had.

Time and again the general's diminutive orderly would ride to Colonel Flint to inquire if any news had been heard, and to talk with the old men of Company "C" about his chum. There were two drawbacks to this. It began to bore Flint, who felt a trifle jealous of the praises sung of Stark, and it gave the New-Englanders abundant opportunity to chaff the lad about his old friends, the Fire Zouaves, whose conduct or misconduct at Bull Run was the subject of the derision of the "steady" regiments of the army. It wasn't that the "b'hoys" lacked nerve, stamina, courage. They had lost their soldierly little colonel, shot dead by a fanatic the very day they entered Alexandria. There was no one to discipline them, with Ellsworth gone, and the bravest men in the world are of no account in battle except when acting in disciplined unison. Other regiments ran down that hill as hard as did the Fire Zouaves, and without half the provocation; but everybody pitched on the red shirts and made them the scapegoats because they had come with such a tremendous swagger and had boasted so much. Shorty believed in his old friends and stood up for them, and lost his temper and said things to the New-Englanders in turn that they didn't like. "How came it that you could stand and see your major down with a dozen rebs around him and make no effort at rescue?" he demanded, and this was a home thrust that made many men wince, and at last it leaked out somehow, as such things will, that none of the left wing saw or heard of it until too late. The smoke was thick. They were falling back as ordered, but the senior captain had been wounded and sent to the rear. Flint was acting as wing commander, and when two companies on the right begged their officers, after the confusion, to let them rush back and bring off the major, Flint himself refused. "We have lost far more now than our share," he said, "and the general orders us back."

And still there lived among the New-Englanders that abiding faith that the honored major was not dead and would yet be heard from. "And when he is," said Shorty, "you can bet your buttons Snipe and Sergeant Keating will prove to be the ones that pulled him out, and they were firemen."