In the mean time the Bostonians hastily repair a bridge or two; some pass that way, some over the Neck; all stealthily by night, and while the foe expect them at Bunker's, amid the blazing town, they have stolen a march and rush upon Cambridge itself. The Cambridge men turn back. The battle is fiercely joined. You hear the cannon, the sharp report of musketry. You crowd the hills, the house-tops; you line the Common, you cover the shore, yet you see but little in the sulphurous cloud. Now the Bostonians yield a little, a reinforcement goes over. All the men are gone; even the gray-headed who can shoulder a firelock. They plunge into battle mad with rage, madder with rum. The chaplains loiter behind.
"Pious men, whom duty brought,
To dubious verge of battle fought,
To shrive the dying, bless the dead!"
The battle hangs long in even scale. At length it turns. The Cambridge men retreat, they run, they fly. The houses burn. You see the churches and the colleges go up, a stream of fire. That library—founded amid want and war and sad sectarian strife, slowly gathered by the saving of two centuries, the hope of the poor scholar, the boast of the rich one—is scattered to the winds and burnt with fire, for the solid granite is blasted by powder, and the turrets fall. Victory is ours. Ten thousand men of Cambridge lie dead; eight thousand of Boston. There writhe the wounded; men who but few hours before were poured over the battle-field a lava flood of fiery valor—fathers, brothers, husbands, sons. There they lie, torn and mangled; black with powder; red with blood; parched with thirst; cursing the load of life they now must bear with bruised frames and mutilated limbs. Gather them into hasty hospitals—let this man's daughter come to-morrow and sit by him, fanning away the flies; he shall linger out a life of wretched anguish unspoken and unspeakable, and when he dies his wife religiously will keep the shot which tore his limbs. There is the battle-field! Here the horse charged; there the howitzers scattered their shells, pregnant with death; here the murderous canister and grape mowed down the crowded ranks; there the huge artillery, teeming with murder, was dragged o'er heaps of men—wounded friends who just now held its ropes, men yet curling with anguish, like worms in the fire. Hostile and friendly, head and trunk are crushed beneath those dreadful wheels. Here the infantry showered their murdering shot. That ghastly face was beautiful the day before—a sabre hewed its half away.
"The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay must cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent."
Again it is night. Oh, what a night, and after what a day! Yet the pure tide of woman's love, which never ebbs since earth began, flows on in spite of war and battle. Stealthily, by the pale moonlight, a mother of Boston treads the weary miles to reach that bloody spot; a widow she—seeking among the slain her only son. The arm of power drove him forth reluctant to the fight. A friendly soldier guides her way. Now she turns over this face, whose mouth is full of purple dust, bit out of the ground in his extremest agony, the last sacrament offered him by Earth herself; now she raises that form, cold, stiff, stony and ghastly as a dream of hell. But, lo! another comes, she too a woman, younger and fairer, yet not less bold, a maiden from the hostile town to seek her lover. They meet, two women among the corpses; two angels come to Golgotha, seeking to raise a man. There he lies before them; they look. Yes it is he you seek; the same dress, form, features too; it is he, the son, the lover. Maid and mother could tell that face in any light. The grass is wet with his blood. The ground is muddy with the life of men. The mother's innocent robe is drabbled in the blood her bosom bore. Their kisses, groans, and tears, recall the wounded man. He knows the mother's voice; that voice yet more beloved. His lips move only, for they cannot speak. He dies! The waxing moon moves high in heaven, walking in beauty amid the clouds, and murmurs soft her cradle song unto the slumbering earth. The broken sword reflects her placid beams. A star looks down and is imaged back in a pool of blood. The cool night wind plays in the branches of the trees shivered with shot. Nature is beautiful—that lovely grass underneath their feet; those pendulous branches of the leafy elm; the stars and that romantic moon lining the clouds with silver light! A groan of agony, hopeless and prolonged, wails out from that bloody ground. But in yonder farm the whippoorwill sings to her lover all night long; the rising tide ripples melodious against the shores. So wears the night away,—Nature, all sinless, round that field of woe.
"The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day."
What a scene that morning looks upon! I will not turn again. Let the dead bury their dead. But their blood cries out of the ground against the rulers who shed it,—"Cain! where are thy brothers?" What shall the fool answer; what the traitor say?
Then comes thanksgiving in all the churches of Boston. The consecrated banners, stiff with blood and "glory," are hung over the altar. The minister preaches and the singer sings: "The Lord hath been on our side. He treadeth the people under me. He teacheth my hands to war, my fingers to fight. Yea, He giveth me the necks of mine enemies; for the Lord is his name;" and "It was a famous victory!" Boston seizes miles square of land; but her houses are empty; her wives widows; her children fatherless. Rachel weeps for the murder of her innocents, yet dares not rebuke the rod.
I know there is no fighting across Charles River, as in this poor fiction; but there was once, and instead of Charles say Rio Grande; for Cambridge read Metamoras, and it is what your President recommended; what your Congress enacted; what your Governor issued his proclamation for; what your volunteers go to accomplish: yes, what they fired cannon for on Boston Common the other day. I wish that were a fiction of mine!