The rapid and heavy cannonading stopped with the amber dawn. The Federal sappers were again under the Third Louisiana Redan. They worked behind a timber-and-wire screen against which in vain the grey threw hand grenades and fire balls. Lockett, the chief engineer, had a barrel, filled with a hundred and twenty-five pounds of powder and carrying a time fuse of fifteen seconds, rolled over the parapet toward the blue shelter. The explosion sent the timber screen in a thousand fragments into the air; behind it there came a shouting and running. All this day there was heavy firing from the river.
The morning of July first all division commanders received from General Pemberton a confidential note. It stated succinctly that apparently the siege of Vicksburg could not be raised and that supplies were exhausted. There remained an attempt at evacuation. The note asked for reports as to the condition of the troops and their ability to make the marches and endure the fatigues necessary to a successful issue. The major-generals put the note before the brigadiers, and the brigadiers before the colonels. There was but one answer. The morale of the men was good—yes! and again yes! But for the rest, for their physical condition, so hungry, so tired, so staggering from weakness....
This was in the morning. At one in the afternoon of this first of July the enemy exploded their great mine under the Third Louisiana Redan. The fuse was lit, the fuse burned, the spark reached fifteen hundred pounds of powder. There was an awful, a rending explosion. Earth, defences, guns, men and men and men were blown high into the air. The Sixth Missouri suffered here. There was made a crater twenty feet deep and fifty across. The Third Louisiana Redan was no more.
All day the second, a part of the day the third, the blue land batteries, the blue gunboats, the blue mortars bombarded Vicksburg. On the Fourth of July the place surrendered.
CHAPTER XV
GETTYSBURG
The sun of the first day of July rose serene into an azure sky where a few white clouds were floating. The light summer mist was dissipated; a morning wind, freshly sweet, rippled the corn and murmured in the green and lusty trees. The sunshine gilded Little Round Top and Big Round Top, gilded Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill, gilded Oak Hill and Seminary Ridge. It flashed from the cupola of the Pennsylvania College. McPherson’s Woods caught it on its topmost branches, and the trees of Peach Orchard. It trembled between the leaves, and flecked with golden petals Menchey’s Spring and Spangler’s Spring. It lay in sleepy lengths on the Emmitsburg road. It struck the boulders of the Devil’s Den; it made indescribably light and fine the shocked wheat in a wheat-field that drove into the green like a triangular golden wedge. Full in the centre of the rich landscape it made a shining mark, a golden bull’s-eye, of the small town of Gettysburg.
It should have been all peace, that rich Pennsylvania landscape—a Dutch peace—a Quaker peace. Market wains and country folk should have moved upon the roads, and a boy, squirrel-hunting, should have been the most murderous thing in the Devil’s Den. Corn-blades should have glistened, not bayonets; for the fluttering flags the farmers’ wives should have been bleaching linen on the grass; for marching feet there should have risen the sound of the scythe in the wheat; for the groan of gun wheels upon the roads the robin’s song and the bobwhite’s call.
The sun mounted. He was well above the tree-tops when the first shot was fired—Heth’s brigade of A.P. Hill’s corps encountering Buford’s cavalry.
The sun went down the first day red behind the hills. He visited the islands of the Pacific, Nippon, and the Kingdom of Flowers, and India and Iran. He crowned Caucasus with gold, and showered largess over Europe. He reddened the waves of the Atlantic. He touched with his spear lighthouses and coast towns and the inland green land. He came up over torn orchard and trampled wheatfield; he came up over the Round Tops and Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill. But no one, this second day, stopped to watch his rising. The battle smoke hid him from the living upon the slopes and in all the fields.
The sun travelled from east to west, but no man on the shield of which Gettysburg was the centre saw him go down that second day. A thick smoke, like the wings of countless ravens, kept out the parting gleams. He went his way over the plains of the West and the Pacific and the Asian lands. He came over Europe and the Atlantic and made, on the third morning, bright pearl of the lighthouses, the surf, and the shore. The ripe July country welcomed him. But around Gettysburg his rising was not seen. The smoke had not dispersed. He rode on high, but all that third day he was seen far away and dim as through crêpe. All day he shone serene on other lands, but above this region he hung small and dim and remote like a tarnished, antique shield. Sometimes the drift of ravens’ wings hid him quite. But an incense mounted to him, a dark smell and a dark vapour.