CHAPTER XLIII
SHARPSBURG
"Sharpsburg!" said long afterwards Stephen D. Lee. "Sharpsburg was Artillery Hell!"
"Sharpsburg," said the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia. "Sharpsburg! That was the field where an infantryman knew that he stood on the most dangerous spot on the earth!"
Through the passes of the South Mountain, over Red Hill, out upon the broken ground east of the Antietam poured the blue torrent—McClellan and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with a narrow grey sea—not thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two colours.
There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods. It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left. Before him was Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts.
From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked from Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. He looked to the Harper's Ferry Road, but he did not see what he wished to see—A. P. Hill's red battle shirt. "Artillery Hell" had begun. There was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All the country side, all the little Maryland villages and farmhouses blenched beneath that sound. Lee put down his field glass. He stood, calm and grand, the smoke and uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge Guns came by, going to some indicated quarter of the field. In thunder they passed below the knoll, the iron war-beasts, the gunners with them, black with powder and grime! All saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance of his chief of staff. "Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob."
The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and how ghastly battles surged about small country churches! The Prince of Peace, if he indwelled here, must have bowed his head and mourned. Sunrise struck upon its white walls; then came a shell and pierced them. The church became the core of the turmoil, the white, still reef against which beat the wild seas in storm.
Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle flags were bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in time, regular as a beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his fourteen thousand men. He crossed the turnpike, he came down on the Dunkard church. "Yaii! Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!" yelled the grey sea,—no time at all, only fierce determination. Sometimes a grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there was no other music, save the thunder of the guns and the long rattle, never ceasing, of the musketry. There were battle flags, squares of crimson with a starry Andrew's cross. They went forward, they shrank back. Standard-bearers were killed. Gaunt, powder-grimed hands caught at the staves, lifted them; the battle-flags went forward again.
Doubleday struck and Ricketts. They charged against Stonewall Jackson and the narrow grey sea. All the ground was broken; alignment was lost; blue waves and grey went this way and that in a broken, tumultuous fray. But the blue waves were the heavier; in mass alone they outdid the grey. They pushed the grey sea back, back, back toward the dark wood about the Dunkard church! Then Stonewall Jackson came along the front, riding in a pelting, leaden rain. "Steady, men. Steady! God is over us!" His men received him with a cry of greeting and enthusiasm that was like a shriek, it was so wild and high. His power upon them had grown and grown. He was Stonewall Jackson! He was Stonewall Jackson! First, they would die for those battle-flags and the cause they represented; second, they would die for one another, comrades, brethren! third, they would die for Stonewall Jackson! They lifted their voices for him now, gaunt and ragged troops with burning eyes. Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Virginia! Virginia! Virginia! the South! the South! He turned his horse, standing in the whistling, leaden rain. "Forward, and drive them!"