At the head of his company Capt. Carleton moved. Firm, erect, and dignified, as if born to command, he did full justice to the Carleton name, of which he was justly proud; but his face was paler than its wont, and a tinge of sadness rested upon it as his regiment halted at last in front of what was supposed to be the hidden foe. Thomas Carleton had wept bitter tears when he laid his Mary to rest beneath South Carolina’s sunny skies, and had thought he could never be reconciled to the loss, but he was half glad now that she was dead, for she was born of Southern blood, and he would rather she should not know the errand which had brought him to Virginia, where first he met and loved her,—rather she should not know how he had come to war with her people. There was another thought, too, which made him sad that July day. The green, beautiful woods standing there so silently before him probably sheltered more than one with whom he had in bygone days struck the friendly hand and bandied the friendly joke, for his home was once in Richmond, and there were there those who once held no small place in his heart. And they were dear to him yet. He was not fighting against them personally, he was contending only for his nation’s rights, his country’s honor. He bore no malice toward his Southern brethren, and like many of our staunchest, bravest Northern men, he would even then have met them more than half way with terms of reconciliation. He knew they were no race of bloodthirsty demons, as some fanatics had madly termed them. They were men, most of them, like himself,—warm-hearted, impulsive men, generous almost to a fault in peace, but firm and terrible in war. Tom had lived among them,—had shared their hospitalities,—had seen them in their various phases, and making allowance for the vast difference which education and habits of society make in one’s opinions, he saw many points wherein the North had misunderstood their actions, and not made due concessions when they might have done so without yielding one iota of their honor. But time for concession was over now. Political fanatics had stirred up the mass of the people till nought but blood could wash away the fancied wrong. And they were there that Sabbath morn to spill it. Tom, however, did not know that the green, silent woods sheltered his brother, for his mother had purposely withheld from him the fact that Jimmie had joined the Southern Army. She knew the struggle it had cost him to take up arms against a people he liked so much, and she would not willingly add to his burden by telling him of Jimmie’s sin, and it was well she did not, for had he known how near he was to Jimmie, he could not have stood there so unmoved, awaiting the first booming gun which should herald the opening of the battle.
It came at last, a bellowing, thunderous roar, whose echoes shook the hills for miles, as the hissing shell went plowing through the air, bursting harmlessly at last just beyond its destined mark. The enemy were in no hurry to retort, for a deep silence ensued, broken ere long by another heavy gun, which did its work more thoroughly than its predecessor had done, for where several breathing souls had been there was nought left save the bleeding mutilated trunks of what were once human forms. The battle had commenced. Sherman’s Brigade, in which was the N. Y. 13th, did its part nobly, overrunning in its headlong charges battery after battery, and recking little of the shafts of death falling so thick and fast. Louder and more deafening grew the battle din, hoarser and heavier the battle thunder, denser, deeper the battle smoke, dimming the brightness of that Sabbath morn. Louder, shriller grew the Gaelic scream, fiercer rose the Celtic cry, wilder rang the yells of the 13th, as its members plunged into the thickest of the fight their demoniacal shouts appalling the hearts of the foe far more than the rain of shot so vigorously kept up, and causing them to flee as from a pack of fiends.
Steady in its place George Graham’s giant form was seen; no thought of Annie now; no thought of home; no thought of Bible buttoned over the heart; thoughts only of the fray and victory.
Not far away, and where the fight was thickest, the widow’s boys, Eli and John, stood firm as granite rocks, the beaded sweat dropping from their burning brows, begrimed with battle smoke, as with unflinching nerve and hands that trembled not, they took their aims, seeing more than one fall before their sure fire.
White as the winter snow one boyish face gleamed amid the excited throng; the fair hair pushed back from the girlish forehead, and the scorching sun falling upon the unsheltered head, for Isaac’s cap had been shot away, and the ball which shot it lay swimming in the dark life blood of poor Harry Baker, just behind, and just two inches taller than the widow’s youngest born. Poor Harry! He had done his best to keep the promise made so boastfully. In all the 13th Regiment there was not one who played a braver part than he, firing off with every gun a timely joke, which raised a smile even in that dreadful hour. But Harry’s work was done, and Mrs. Baker had but one boy now, for her first-born lay upon the ground so blackened and disfigured, with the thick brains slowly oozing from his mangled head, and the purple gore pouring from his lips, that only those who saw him fall, could guess that it was Harry. Poor Harry! We say it again, sadly, reverently, for rude and reckless though he was, he fell fighting for his country; and to all who perish thus we owe a debt of gratitude, a meed of praise. Sacred, then, be the memory of those whose graves are with the slain, far away beneath Virginia’s sky, and sacred be the memory of poor Harry Baker. His own worst enemy, he lived his life’s brief span, and died at last a soldier’s death.
“Shot plump through the upper story! Won’t the old woman row it, though?” was Bill’s characteristic comment, as the whizzing and the death shriek met his ear, and the falling, bleeding figure met his view.
Spite of his jeering words there was a keen pang in Billy’s heart as he shrank away from the gory mass he knew had been his brother,—a sudden upheaving of something in his throat and a blur before his vision, as he began to realize what it was to go to war. But there was then no time to waste over a fallen brother. The dread work must go on, and with the whispered words, “Poor Hal, I’ll do the tender for you when we get the varments licked,” he marked the position by signs he could not miss, and then pressed closer to his comrade, saying, as he did so—
“Ike, Hal’s a goner. Shot right through his top-knot, with a piece of your cap wedged in his skull. If you’d been a leetle taller you’d been scalped instead of Hal. So much you get for bein’ ‘Stub.’”
Isaac shuddered involuntarily, but ere he could look back the crowd behind pushed him forward, and so he failed to see the ruin which, but for his short stature, would have come to him. There were no marks upon him yet,—nothing, save the uncovered head, to tell where he had been. The balls which struck down others passed him by, the wind they made lifting occasionally his fair hair, but doing no other damage. Above, around, before, behind, at right, at left, the grape shot fell like hail, but left him all untouched, and Billy, grown timid since poor Harry’s fate, pressed closer to the boy who would not tell a lie, as if there were safety there.