Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

He reached New York on Monday night, after a stay of a few hours at Albany. What he did at the latter place has never been known and perhaps will never be. On Tuesday, for an hour, he was at Camp Lyon, and some of the other officers saw him walking backward and forward, on the piazza of the hotel, in conversation with the Adjutant. Once or twice their voices were heard to rise louder than good-feeling would have allowed, though the words they uttered were not caught by any listener. Were they haggling, as robbers have been known to do after successful operations in plundering, over the division of the spoils? At nightfall the Colonel returned to the city, and Camp Lyon and the Two Hundredth Regiment saw him no more.

The morning papers of a day or two after announced that the Two Hundredth Regiment, which seemed to have been lagging in the way of recruits, for a few days before, had been abandoned as a separate organization and would be consolidated with the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth, then in the course of successful formation at a camp within half a mile of its disbanded rival. With this addition, the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth would be full and able to leave within a week. The Colonel of the Two Hundredth, it was added, had accepted a commission on staff-service, and had already left for the seat of war.

All this Was true, except so much of it as was mere speculation for the future. Whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth did profit by the consolidation and move within the week—whether any money, and if so how much, was received by those who "sold out" the Two Hundredth—and whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth (not including Lieut. Woodruff, who threw up his commission in disgust) entered and honored the service, or was yet frittered away by the gross mismanagement of those in command,—all these are matters that have no connection whatever with the present relation. The gist of the newspaper paragraph was true—the consolidation of the two regiments had been effected, and Colonel Egbert Crawford had left Now York for Washington, on staff-service.

When he left his legal office on the day of his departure for Washington, he carried with him a package the shape of which none could mistake. It contained a sword. So much any eye could see. But no eye could see what lay beneath. It has been more than once indicated that so far as an evil man could love purely, Egbert Crawford really loved the little cousin for whom he was playing so unfairly. Sword-factories had sprung up, since the breaking out of the war, along the little streams which emptied into the Mohawk, through the Oneida Valley; and some of them kept up the clink of the trip-hammers and the whirr of the emory-wheels that shaped and polished sword-blades, not far from West Falls. One day, in June, while his star seemed to be so certainly in the ascendant in the family of John Crawford, Mary and himself had visited one of those factories. Impressed by the intelligence of his remarks on the manufacture, and perhaps willing to curry favor with the commander of a regiment just going into the field, the superintendent of the sword-factory had presented the officer with a splendid plain light-cavalry sabre with its brazen hilt and heavy steel scabbard—a most deadly and effective weapon, upon which one could depend in battle almost as well as upon the best blade forged in Damascus. That sword Mary had carried home in her own hands, presenting it to him afterwards, in a moment of good feeling, with a playful word of confidence in his valor, which he had never forgotten. That blade, hallowed by the little hand of Mary Crawford which had once pressed its hilt, was the one which he carried with him that day as he left his office for no imaginary "field," but one of bloody reality.

Would he have been superstitious enough to connect the fact with his own past or future fate, had he known that Aunt Synchy, the old Obi woman of Thomas Street, was that very day lying dead on the floor of her miserable room, having had a dose of one of her own insidious poisons administered in her tea by Master Jeffy, who had become almost too much of an expert in the art,—because she would not allow him the extravagance of a whole penny to buy a top?

Josephine Harris, painfully correct in her general estimation of the character of Egbert Crawford, had pronounced him, in addition to his other vices, "a coward," and "amounting to nothing, as a soldier, except his shoulder-straps and sword-belts." She "did not believe that he would ever go to the war." How very easily, seeing one half the truth, we can overleap too much intervening space and falsify the remaining half! Egbert Crawford did "go to the war," and under such circumstances that his "shoulder-straps" and "sword-belts" counted for very little in comparison with himself. Three days after he left New York, he joined the army at Harrison's Landing, as a volunteer aid-de-camp to any officer who needed rough-riding and sharp fighting. He was a dashing rider—thanks to the education received many years before in the country, and the steadiness with which he had since kept up the habit of riding, at an expenditure of time and money which he could ill afford. He bore excellent endorsements from Albany and New York, and he had lately held a commission as Colonel. Besides these advantages, Hooker saw something in the dark face of the lawyer—something in the set lips and clouded brow, which while it might not have commanded confidence in the selection of an agent to be specially trusted in matters of delicate issue, told that there was desperation and fight. He joined the staff of that General, with the honorary rank of Captain.

Then followed that terrible blunder which removed the Army of the Potomac from the James River, unloosed the grasp of the Federals from the very throat of the rebel power, and re-opened the Pandora's Box of incursion which had been almost closed by the investiture of Richmond. Then followed the still more terrible blunder of the appointment of Pope to the leading command, and the commencement of that chain of disasters which culminated in the disgraceful retreat of the Union forces towards Washington, after the second battle of Bull Run, on the twenty-ninth of August—a retreat which was only checked by the momentary return of the "young Napoleon" from his temporary Elba, and a demoralization which was only forgotten when the Potomac army, once more re-organized under the old commander, moved up into Maryland to break the threatened invasion of the Middle States.

The young aid-de-camp proved himself a man and a soldier, however raw and unaccustomed, in the removal from Harrison's Landing and the disastrous fights of Pope's campaign; but there was little opportunity, indeed, for dash amid demoralization. And so matters passed rapidly on until the morning of Antietam. One of the captains of General Pleasanton's cavalry fell at Sharpsburg, leaving a vacancy which that gallant officer filled, by General Hooker's consent, with his volunteer aid-de-camp. Mary Crawford's cavalry sabre had at last found its true field, though he had worn it through all, instead of the more showy regulation blade, when on staff duty.

Antietam had begun to thunder, though the height of that terrible battle, which up to this time[19] divides with Malvern Hill and Shiloh the fearful honor of being the most destructive of any fought on the American continent, had not yet been reached. One hundred and twenty thousand of the Union troops held the eastern bank of Antietam Creek, ready to cross and complete the expulsion of the rebels from Maryland, while it was believed that not less than two hundred thousand of the rebels held the high lands opposite. The slaughter of the day was fairly commencing. Pleasanton held the upper of the three bridges over the Creek, that at the Hagerstown road, over which Hooker was sweeping forward to make his crossing. He had been ordered by Hooker to hold his position without fail and at all hazards. The rebels seemed to be in heavy force on the heights behind and farther up the creek, and evidently they were prepared to make a desperate resistance to the crossing of Hooker. The position of the cavalry was a painful one. Hooker seemed slow in coming, and shot and shell kept continually dropping among them, knocking from their saddles one and another of the brave fellows who were so chafing with impatience and inaction. At length, and just at the moment when the head of Hooker's column appeared from behind the woods on the other side, a squadron of rebel horse, two or three hundred strong, came into view, down the creek and a little behind, on a low plateau which stretched from it towards the hills. The advance guard came pricking in at the same moment. Pleasanton, who had been anxiously observing the advance of Hooker, caught a word behind him and turned. As he did so, and saw the rebel cavalry, he caught the word repeated.

"Damnation!"