The Iron Game: A Tale of the War

by Henry F. Keenan

THE AFTERMATH.

There were not so many millions of Americans in 1861 as there are to-day. But they were more American then than they are now. That is, the Old World had not sent the millions to our shores that now people the waste places of the West. It was not until after the civil war that those prodigious hosts came—enough to make the populace of such empires as fill the largest space in history. That part of the land that loved the flag cherished it with a fervor deeper than the half-alien race that first flung it to the breeze under Washington. They loved the republic with something of that passionate idolatry that made the Greek's ideal joy—death for the fatherland; some of that burning zeal and godlike pride that made the earlier Roman esteem his citizenship more precious than a foreign crown. But until the battle on that awful 21st of July proved the war real—with the added horror of civil hate—Secretary Seward's epigram of ninety days clung fast in the public mind.

Up to Bull Run there was a vague feeling that our army, in proper time, would march down upon the rebels like the hosts of Joshua, and scatter them and the rebellion to uttermost destruction in one action. It was upon this assumption that the journals of the North satirized, abused, vilified Scott, and clamored day by day for an "advance upon Richmond." The damnation of public clamor, and not the incompetency of the general, set the inchoate armies of Scott upon that fatal adventure. But that humiliating, incredible, and for years misunderstood Sunday, on the plateaus of Manassas, where, after all, blundering and imbecility brought disaster, but not shame, upon the devoted soldiery, aroused the sense of the North to the reality of war, as the overthrow at Jemmapes in 1793 convinced the Prussian oligarchy that the republic in France was a fact.

It was a dreadful Monday in the North when the first hideous bulletins were sent broadcast through the cities and carried by couriers into every hamlet. For hours—sickening hours—it was not believed. We have awakened many a morning since 1861 to hear of thrones overturned, armies vanquished, dynasties obliterated; to hear of great men gone by sudden and cruel death: but the anger and despair when Booth's cruel work was known; the shuddering horror over Garfield's taking off; the amazement when the hand of Nihilism laid an emperor dead; the overthrow of Austria in a single day; the extinction of the Bonapartes—these things were heard and digested with something like repose compared to the bewildering outbreak that met the destruction of our army at Manassas.

It was not the dazed, panic-stricken, panic anguish that followed Fredericksburg or the second Bull Run. It was not the indignant, fretful wrath that rebuked official culpability for the destruction of the grand campaign on the Peninsula. It was a startled, incredulous, angry amazement, in which blame afterward visited upon generals or Cabinet, was humbly taken on the people's shoulders and echoed in a moaning mea culpa. For days all the people were close kin. In the streets strangers talked to strangers; the pulpit echoed the inextinguishable wrath of the streets; the journals, for a moment restrained into solemnity, echoed for once the real voice of an elevated humanity and not the drivel of partisanship nor the ulterior purposes of wealth and sham. Even schoolboys, arrested in the merry-making of youth, looked in wonder at the sudden reversal of conditions. Boys well remember in the school that Monday, when the northern heavens were hung in black and grief wrung its crystal tresses in the air, the master began the work of the day with a brief, pathetic review of the public agony, and dismissed the classes that he was too agitated to instruct. There were no games on the greensward, no swimming in the river, no excursion to the Malvern cherry groves. The streets were filled with blank faces and whispering crowds unable to endure the restraint of routine or the ordinary callings of life. Parties were obliterated, or rather from the flux of this white heat, came out in solidified unity that compact of parties which for four years breathed the breath of the nation's life, spoke the purposes of the republic, and amid stupendous reverses and triumphs held the public conscience clear in its sublime duty. The woes of bereavement were not wide-spread; the killed at Manassas were hardly more than we read of now in a disaster at sea or a catastrophe in the mines. The whole army engaged hardly outnumbered the slaughtered at Antietam, Gettysburg, or Burnside's butchery at St. Mary's Hill.

Hence the marvel of the instant fusion, the swift resolve of the Northern mind. The battle was the sudden grapple of aggressive weakness—catching the half-contemptuous strong man unaware and rolling him in the dust. Brought to earth by this unlooked-for blow, the North arose with renewed force and the deathless determination that could have but one issue. The people, when the benumbing force of the surprise was mastered, flew together with one mind, one voice, one impulse. The churches, the public halls, the street corners, moving trains, and rushing steamers, were such hustings as the Athenian improvised in the porticoes, when her orators inflamed the heart of Greece to repel the barbarians, to die with Leonidas in the gorges of the Thermopylae.

Ah, what an imposing spectacle it was! The blood of wrath leaped fiercely in the chilled veins of age; the ardor of youth became the delirium of the Crusaders, the lofty zeal of the Puritans, the chivalrous daring of Rupert's troopers, and the Dutch devotees of Orange. A half-million men had been called out; a million were waiting in passionate eagerness within a month; two hundred and fifty millions of money had been voted—ten times that amount was offered in a day. Every interest in life became suddenly centered in one duty—war. It touched the heart of the whole people, and for the time they arose, purified, contrite, as the armies of Moses under the chastening of the rod.

In Acredale there were sore hearts as the dreadful news became more and more definite. For days the death lists were mere guess-work; but when the routed forces returned to their camps in Washington the awful gaps in the ranks were ascertained with certainty. The Caribees were nearly obliterated. Of the thousand men and over who had marched from Meridian Hill only four hundred were found ten days after the battle. Elisha Boone had hurried at once to Washington, charged by all the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the regiment to make swift report of the absent darlings. Kate was besieged in the grand house with tearful watchers, waiting in agonizing impatience for the fatal finality. Olympia, to spare her mother the distress of the vague responses her telegrams brought from Washington, spent most of the time at the Boones', where, thanks to the father's high standing with the Administration, the earliest, most accurate information came. Finally he wrote. He had seen Nick Marsh, who gave the first coherent narrative of Jack, Barney, and Dick Perley. They had been seen—the first two in the last desperate conflict. An officer (the hero whom Jack had so much admired, and who turned out to be Gouverneur K. Warren) had escaped from the forlorn hope left to dispute the rebel charge upon the flying columns. He gave particulars that pointed with heart-breaking certainty to the death of the two boys. Young Perley had been lost sight of since noon of the battle. He had followed the path taken by Jack and his comrades across the flank of the enemy. He had been seen at Heintzelman's headquarters, but after that no one could trace him. Wesley, too, had been left near the stone bridge with a ball in either his arm or thigh, the informant was not quite sure which, as he fell in a charge of the line. Boone telegraphed to Kate that he was going through the lines with a flag of truce so soon as the affair could be regulated, and proffered his best offices for the Acredale victims.

Everything had been prepared by Olympia and her mother for an instant departure so soon as positive information came. With them Marcia Perley went, trembling and tearful, and Telemachus Twigg, to extricate his son from danger, for it was uncertain what his status was in the forces. Kate, too, joined the melancholy pilgrimage that set out one morning followed to the station by weeping kinsmen imploring the good offices of these ambassadors of woe. The sleeping-car gave the miserable company seclusion, if not rest. They were not the only ones in quest of the missing, for as yet there was no certainty as to the fate of those left on the field of battle. Later reports had been more encouraging, for hundreds who were set down as prisoners or missing began to be heard from as far northward as the Maryland line. In the station at Washington Boone met his daughter. Twigg hurried to him and asked:

"Any further news, Mr. Boone? We're all here—about half Acredale."