The Song of the Rappahannock: Sketches of the Civil War

by Ira Seymour Dodd

The ring of the bursting shells was not the least impressive of the notes of the Song. It is hard to describe; but strange as it may seem to say so it was certainly music, often with absolutely sweet tones like the sudden stroke of a bell, followed by the singing hum, in curious harmony of the rushing of jagged iron fragments through the air. One of the friends of my boyhood was a musical genius, a pianist of no mean power who had studied his profession in Germany. The democratic makeup of our army is illustrated by the fact that, in the early sixties this man enlisted as a private soldier. And he used to amuse himself while lying in the trenches by noting the varying keys of the music of moaning and bursting shells.

But the Song was not always harmless or ineffectual. No one knows precisely how many men suffered wounds and death beside the banks of the pretty, placid Rappahannock. It is within bounds to put the number at fifty thousand. The war history of that region is peculiar. It is a tale of incessant and resultless strife, seldom without at least the intermittent fire of opposing picket lines. Three of the greatest, most deadly, yet most indecisive battles of the war were fought there.

The veil of time has begun to fall over the actual agonies of the nation while the fury of that great war tempest lingered; but some of us remember how real it was, and the Song of the Rappahannock seems its very voice. It was Delphic in the ambiguity of its utterance. Neither the pæan of victory nor the wail of the conquered, it was the breath of the Titanic struggle with its bitter pain, its dark suspense, its grim and terrible stress and strain.

In early May, that sweet season when in Virginia springtime is just passing into summer, we came to the banks of the Rappahannock, ready to take our destined share in the battle of Chancellorsville. The river was no stranger: we had formed its intimate acquaintance in December during the bloody days of Fredericksburg; and now, separated from the main body of the army which had crossed about fifteen miles above, we found ourselves once more facing the old battle-ground with its familiar sleepy town, its wide fields and amphitheatre of gentle hills spread out in portentous panorama before us. Peace seemed to have settled down upon the scene, blotting out all memory of strife; yet we knew the semblance was but a mocking phantasm, for our comrades of the First Corps stirred up a very hornet's nest of enemies and had a sharp brush before they could lay their pontoon bridge. And though with this exception the Song was ominously silent in our front, we could hear its distant voice from up the river.

On one day it rose into an angry roar, and immediately afterward the First Corps received marching orders, went filing past us along the river road toward the sound of the Song, and the Sixth was left alone. On Saturday night our time came. It was a lovely evening full of the breath of spring-time; but our hearts were very solemn as, in the darkness and in sternly enforced silence our lines crept across the pontoon bridge out into the fields full of the ghosts of December's awful sacrifices and finally, with rifles loaded and with battle provision of sixty rounds of cartridge to every man, we halted before the spectral outlines of the Fredericksburg hills.

Then in low tones the order passed from company to company: "Lie down where you are. Let every man keep his gun by his side. Do not take off any of your equipments; do not even loosen your belts. Keep silence!"

A battery moves like a group of shadows out a little way to the front; we can hear the subdued orders of the officers; the unlimbering and loading of the guns; and then all is quiet along the Rappahannock. Beyond the guns we know there are pickets whose duty it is to wake and watch; but soon all along the inner lines the May moon shines peacefully on rows of sleeping men. By to-morrow night many of them will lie very quiet in another and a deeper sleep.

Dawn comes soon in May, and the first gray light brought the Song. With hum and buzz like that of ghostly insects the bullets came stealing over from the enemy's skirmish line. It was a grim awakening and its first impression inexpressibly mournful. Each singing bullet seemed to chant a dirge—and the morning air held a very graveyard chill. Swearing is a common dialect with soldiers, but not an oath was heard as that morning Song began. Everyone was solemn; we were thinking of home and of loved ones, and there was a great despairing sense of separation in our hearts. I think almost any man who has seen war would tell the same story and count those moments of the skirmish firing in the gray dawn on the brink of battle among the most gloomy of his life.

But hark! The batteries are opening fire, the Song is bursting into fuller voice; and up and down the line orders ring out sharply, "Attention, battalion!" There is movement now, it brings life and dispels the gloom. There is marching and countermarching for better position and soon the line is placed in a sunken road whose banks protect us against the enemy's shot and shell, while just behind, on slightly higher ground our own batteries fire over our heads. And so the morning passes; the Song, never silent sometimes swells out clamorously; and anon it sinks to intermittent growls.

Suddenly, about noontime, there is a restless movement along the line; staff officers are galloping furiously hither and thither; something is in the air. We are ordered to unsling our knapsacks and pile them together. Meantime our batteries open a furious fire. The men say to each other, "The bulldogs are barking, and our turn is coming!" And as the Song swells with their baying, by quick orders our line is formed for the charge. We must storm those hills flaming with the fire of the Confederate cannons. A few breathless moments that seem like hours, and suddenly our batteries cease fire, the expected order is given, and the line surges forward.