The Long Roll

by Mary Johnston

Allan Gold, fighting with the 65th, took the colours from the last of the colour guard. He was tall and strong and he swung them high. The glare from an exploding shell showed him and the battle flag. Gone was the quiet school-teacher, gone even the scout and woodsman. He stood a great Viking, with yellow hair, and the battle rage had come to him. He began to chant, unconscious as a harp through which strikes a strong wind. "Come on!" he chanted. "Come on!

"Sixty-fifth, come on! Come on, the Stonewall! Remember Manassas, The first and the second Manassas! Remember McDowell, Remember Front Royal, Remember the battle of Winchester, Remember Cross Keys, Remember Port Republic, The battle of Kernstown, and all our battles and skirmishes, Our marches and forced marches, bivouacs, and camp-fires, Brother's hand in brother's hand, and the battle to-morrow! Remember the Seven Days, Seven Days, Seven Days! Remember the Seven Days! Remember Cedar Run. The Groveton Wood, and the Railroad cut at Manassas Where you threw stones when your cartridges were gone, where you struck with the bayonet, And the General spoke to you then, 'Steady, men, steady!' Remember Chantilly, remember Loudoun and Maryland Heights. Harper's Ferry was yesterday. Remember and strike them again! Come on, 65th! Come on, the Stonewall!"

Back through the cornfield before the Dunkard church fell the blue. Dead and dying choked the cornfield as the dead and dying had choked the cane brake. Blade and stalks were beaten down, the shells tore up the earth. The blue reformed and came again, a resistless mass. Heavier and heavier, Fighting Joe Hooker, with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts and Sumner, struck against Stonewall Jackson! Back came the grey to the little Dunkard church. All around it, wood and open filled with clangour. The blue pressed in—the grey were giving way, were giving way! An out-worn company raised a cry, "They're flanking us!" Something like a shiver passed over the thinning lines, then, grey and haggard, they tore another cartridge. Stonewall Jackson's voice came from behind a reef of smoke. "Stand fast, men! Stand fast. There are troops on the road from Harper's Ferry. It is General McLaws. Stand fast!"

It was McLaws, with his black bullet head, his air of a Roman Consul! In he thundered with his twenty-five hundred men, tawny with the dust of the seventeen miles from Harper's Ferry. He struck Sedgwick full. For five minutes there was brazen clangour and shouting and an agony of effort, then the blue streamed back, past the Dunkard wood and church, back into the dreadful cornfield.

Maury Stafford, sent with a statement to the commander-in-chief, crossed in one prolonged risk of life from the wild left to the only less stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French and Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge—a part of D. H. Hill's line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, that, later, was given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody Lane. Lee was found standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. "I yet look for A. P. Hill," he said. "He has a talent for appearing at identically the right moment."

Stafford gave his statement. All over the field the staff had suffered heavily. Some were dead, many were wounded. Those who were left did treble duty. Lee sent this officer on to Longstreet, holding the long ridge on the right.

Stafford rode through the withering storm across that withered field. There seemed no light from the sky; the light was the glare from the guns. He marked, through a rift in the smoke, a battery where it stood upon a height, above felled trees. He thought it was Pelham's—the Horse Artillery. It stood for a moment, outlined against the orange-bosomed cloud, then, like an army of wraiths, the smoke came between and hid it. His horse frightened at a dead man in his path. The start and plunging were unusual, and the rider looked to see the reason. The soldier had drawn letters from his breast and had died with them in his hands. The unfolded, fluttering sheets stirred as though they had life. Stafford, riding on, found the right and found Longstreet looking sombrely, like an old eagle from his eyrie. "I told General Lee," he said "that we ought never to have divided. I don't see A. P. Hill. You tell General Lee that I've only got D. R. Jones and the knowledge that we fight like hell, and that Burnside is before me with fourteen thousand men."

Stafford retraced his way. The ground beneath was burned and scarred, the battle cloud rolled dark, the minies sang beside his ear. Now he was in a barren place, tasting of powder, smelling of smoke, now lit, now darkened, but vacant of human life, and now he was in a press of men, grey forms advancing and retreating, or standing firing, and now he was where fighting had been and there was left a wrack of the dead and dying. He reached the centre and gave his message, then turned toward the left again. A few yards and his horse was killed under him. He disengaged himself and presently caught at the bridle and stayed another. There were many riderless horses on the field of Sharpsburg, but he had hardly mounted before this one, too, was killed. He went on afoot. He entered a sunken road, dropped between rough banks overhung by a few straggling trees. The road was filled with men lying down, all in shadow beneath the rolling battle smoke. Stafford thought it a regiment waiting for orders; then he saw that they were all dead men. He must go back to the Dunkard wood, and this seemed his shortest way. He entered the lane and went up it as quickly as he might for the forms that lay thick in the discoloured light. It looked as though the earth were bleeding, and all the people were fantastic about him. Some lay as straight as on a sculptured tomb, and some were hooped, and some lay like a cross, and some were headless. As he stepped with what care he might, a fierce yelling broke out on the side that was the grey side. There was a charge coming—already he saw the red squares tossing! He moved to the further side of the sunken road and braced himself against the bank, putting his arm about a twisted, protruding cedar. D. H. Hill's North Carolinians hung a moment, tall, gaunt, yelling, then swooped down into the sunken lane, passed over the dead, mounted the other ragged bank and went on. Stafford waited to hear the shock. It came; full against a deep blue wave. Richardson had been killed and Hancock commanded here. The blue wave was strong. The sound of the mêlée was frightful; then out of it burst a loud huzzahing. Stafford straightened himself. The grey were coming back, and after them the blue. Almost before he could unclasp his arm from the cedar, the first spray of gaunt, exhausted, bleeding men came over and down into the sunken lane. All the grey wave followed. At the moment there outburst a renewed and tremendous artillery battle. The smoke drifting across the Bloody Lane was like the fall of night, a night of cloud and storm. Orange flashes momentarily lit the scene, and the sullen thunders rolled. The grey, gaunt and haggard, but their colours with them, overpassed the dead and wounded, now choking the sunken road. Behind them were heard the blue, advancing and huzzahing. The grey wave remounted the bank down which it plunged fifteen minutes before. At the top it stayed a moment, thin and grey, spectral in the smoke pall, the battle flags like hovering, crimson birds. A line of flame leaped, one long crackle of musketry, then it resumed its retreat, falling back on the west wood. The blue, checked a moment by that last volley, now poured down into the sunken road, overpassed the thick ranks of the dead and wounded, mounted, and swept on in a counter charge.

Maury Stafford had left the cedar and started across with the last broken line of the grey. Going down the crumbling bank his spur caught in a gnarled and sprawling root. The check was absolute, and brought him violently to his knees. Before he could free himself the grey had reached the opposite crest, fired its volley, and gone on. He started to follow. He heard the blue coming, and it was expedient to get out of this trap. Before him, from the figures covering the earth like thrown jackstraws, an arm was suddenly lifted. The hand clutched at him, passing. He looked down. It was a boy of nineteen with a ghastly face. The voice came up: "Whoever you are, you're alive and well, and I'm dying. You'll take it and put a stamp on it and mail it, won't you? I'm dying. People ought to do things when the dying ask them to."