A Lincoln Conscript

by Homer Greene

  CHAPTER X

  FIGHTING FOR THE FLAG

  For three days, Robert Barnwell Bannister had been a soldier of theUnited States. On the evening of the third day he sat at the openingof his tent studying a small volume of infantry tactics which hadfallen into his hands. Inside the tent his comrade and tent-mate, ayoung fellow hardly older and no less patriotic and enthusiastic thanhimself, just in from two hours of picket-duty, lay resting on a rudeboard couch, with a block of wood and a coat for a pillow, singingsoftly to himself a rude bit of doggerel that had recently becomepopular in camp.

  “Mud in the coffee and niggers in the pork, Lobskous salad to be eaten with a fork, Hardtack buns--oh, but soldiering is fun; Never mind the grub, boys, we’ll make the Johnnies run.”

  After a moment he called out:--

  “Say, Bob, here’s a conundrum. What’s the difference between abounty-jumper and a--”

  “Oh, button up!” replied Bob, who was studying out a peculiarlydifficult infantry formation, and did not wish to be interrupted.

  “All right! now you’ll never know,” responded his comrade.

  For a few moments there was silence, then the voice in the tent wasagain heard singing rude rhymes of war.

  “We are goin’ to drop our thunder, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; You had better stand from under, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; You will see the lightnin’ flash, You will hear the muskets crash, It will be the Yankees comin’, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; And we’ll git you while you’re runnin’, Johnny Reb.”

  Above the tent, below it, all about it, from Warrenton to TurkeyRun, was encamped Meade’s great army. There were seasoned veterans,raw volunteers, conscript regiments, all accepting and enduring withphilosophic fortitude the hardships and vicissitudes of army life.Here and there camp-fires had been lighted, here and there a belatedmeal was being eaten. It was an hour for rest and relaxation from thestern duties of war, only the picket force being thrown to the front intriplicate lines, to protect the army from surprise.

  Bob Bannister looked well in his suit of army blue. He bore himselfwith soldier-like precision, and a dignity befitting his occupation.Young, enthusiastic, good-natured, intensely patriotic, he had atonce become a favorite with the men of his company. His every duty,performed with intelligence and alacrity, marked him in the eyes of theofficers as one destined to promotion. As he sat there in the twilight,still studying his book, an orderly approached him and inquired:--

  “Are you private Bannister?”

  “That is my name.”

  “You are wanted at company headquarters.”

  Wondering what it could mean, private Bannister laid aside his bookand went with the orderly up the company street to the captain’squarters. Inside the tent a candle was burning on a rude table bywhich the captain was seated. Standing about, against the inner walls,were a half-dozen men whose faces the boy could not recognize in thesemi-darkness.

  Bob advanced to within a few paces of the table, saluted, and stood atattention.

  “Private Bannister,” said the captain, “I want to know if you recognizethis person?”

  He nodded, as he spoke, toward a man dressed in civilian costume,standing near the entrance to the tent. Bob turned and peered into theshadows. The man stepped forward.

  “Father!”

  “Rob!”

  And then Bob rushed into his father’s arms.

  For a moment no one spoke. But the soldiers who saw the meeting neverforgot it.

  “Father, what does it mean?”

  “FATHER, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?”]

  Bannister, his voice lost in emotion and his eyes dim with tears,pointed to a paper lying on the captain’s table. He had tried toimagine how Bob would look in uniform, but he had not thought tosee quite so straight, manly a figure, clear of eye, handsome ofcountenance, “every inch a soldier.” And the words of Mary Bannister,when he read Bob’s letter to her, came back into his mind and voicedhis sentiment: “I’m proud of him. He’s the bravest boy in the world.”

  “Private Bannister,” said the captain, “your father is here in custodyof Lieutenant Forsythe of the regular army, who brings with him thisletter.”

  The captain then read impressively, with a sense of its trueimportance, the President’s letter to General Meade. When he reachedthe end and read the name “A. Lincoln,” every man in the tent liftedhis cap reverently from his head.

  “This communication,” continued the captain, “was delivered to thegeneral commanding, by him endorsed and delivered to the divisioncommander, then to the commander of our brigade, to the colonel ofthe regiment, and in due course has reached me. It has been endorsedas follows by all the officers through whose hands it has passed: ‘Ifnot prejudicial to the service, let the President’s wish be carriedout.’ There is therefore nothing left for me to do except to give theorder for your discharge, and the mustering in of your father to takeyour place. Permit me to add, however, that we shall regret to loseyou. During your brief term of service you have been a good soldier, acredit to the company and the army.”

  In the silence that followed, the captain half rose from the table asif to close the interview. Then Bob found his voice.

  “But, Captain Howarth,” he said, “I don’t want to be discharged. Idon’t want to go home. I want to stay. I am old enough. I can march.I can do picket-duty. I can fight. But I can’t go back home now, it’ssimply impossible.”

  The captain dropped back into his seat, incredulous. Among the menstanding against the tent-wall there was a buzz of approving voices.Rhett Bannister put his arm about the boy’s shoulders affectionately.

  “You’re right, my son,” he said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have askedit. I didn’t think. I didn’t realize; but--you’re right.”

  Then Lieutenant Forsythe stepped forward.

  “Permit me,” he said, “to make a suggestion. I talked much with thisman on my way down here. I believe he will make a good and earnestsoldier. The son has already proved his ability and patriotism. Whynot keep them both? I am sure it will not militate against the spiritof the President’s order.”

  “Right you are!” exclaimed Sergeant Anderson, stepping out from theshadow where he had stood dreading lest he should lose his protégé, ofwhom he had grown wondrously fond.

  “Good!” said the other men.

  “Let it be done,” responded the captain. And it was done.

  In less than two hours Rhett Bannister was also a soldier of the UnitedStates. And so he and his son served their country in the ranks. Theyate by the same camp-fire, slept in the same rude tent, and marched,shoulder to shoulder, through the autumn mists and the winter slush andmud of old Virginia. At Mine Run, a month after they were sworn in,they had their first baptism of fire, and bore themselves with suchcoolness and bravery as to elicit compliments for both from CaptainHowarth. In winter-quarters, with the monotony of camp-life and theround of daily duties pressing on them, their spirits never flagged.Both by precept and example they radiated courage and cheerfulness toall their company. When, occasionally, a spirit of dissatisfactionshowed itself in the ranks, when impatience with those in commandbecame manifest, when poor and scanty fare and wretched clothing werethe rule, it was Rhett Bannister, cool and logical, free of speech andearnest in manner, who moved among the men and counseled patience, whopointed out to them their duty and appealed to their patriotism, andnever without success. “His influence with the soldiers,” said CaptainHowarth, one day, “is worth a thousand courts-martial.”

  There was one time in particular when murmurings of discontent brokeforth, when the winter rains of Virginia were coldest and mostpiercing; when food was scarce and foraging forbidden; when Meade,under whom the soldiers had fought at Gettysburg, was discreditedand displaced, and Grant, whom they did not know, was given supremecommand; when the authorities at Washington seemed stricken withlethargy and blindness, and the anti-war sentiment in
the North,increasing with dangerous rapidity, came filtering down to ears andhearts in the ranks not unwilling to receive it. Then it was that RhettBannister, the one-time hater of the administration, detractor of thearmy, denouncer of the war, went out among his comrades, from man toman, from tent to tent, from company to company, urging duty, pleadingpatriotism, counseling patience.

  “You think you have troubles,” he said one night to a group ofmurmuring men, crowded into a smoky tent, while the cold rain drippedthrough the tattered canvas, and the wind howled dismally amongthe pines outside. “You think you have hardships and burdens andafflictions in the service of your country. Let me tell you something.I have seen Abraham Lincoln. I have talked with him face to face. Ihave read in his sad eyes and hollow cheeks, and the lines creasing hisforehead, the story of his suffering. Boys, that man is bearing theburdens of this country and the woes of her people on his heart. Everydrop of blood that is shed is as though it came from his body, everygroan of a wounded soldier is as though it came from his lips, everytear from the eyes of those left desolate is as though it furrowed hisface. You cannot conceive the immensity of the burdens he is bearing,or the weight of suffering he endures. Yet he is patiently, faithfully,earnestly, prayerfully, with tremendous power of will and strength ofsoul, pressing on toward the hoped-for end, and by God’s grace he isgoing soon to bring us all back out of the shadows of war into thelight of a victorious peace. Boys, when you think you have burdens tobear, remember Abraham Lincoln.”

  And they did. No man who heard those impassioned words that night everagain opened his lips in complaint of his commanders.

  Letters came from Mount Hermon almost daily, sometimes a half-dozen ina bunch. People up there wanted Rhett Bannister and his son to knowthat they were appreciated at home. But the letters that came fromMary Bannister, strong, cheerful, splendid letters, were the ones thatbrought most joy to the hearts of their recipients. At last she feltthat the ban had been lifted, and that she was once more a woman amongwomen. She was not insensible, indeed, to the dangers that surroundedher loved ones night and day. She knew well enough that any mail mightbring her terrible tidings about one or both of them. But such anxietywas as nothing to the agony of mind she had endured through many weeksbefore her son and husband went down to the war. And as there driftedup to her ears now and again news of the brave conduct and manlybearing of those so near and dear to her, she went about her householdlabors, happy in the thought that from this time forth she could lookany man or woman in the face and say: “Behold my heroes!”

  One day there came down to Rhett Bannister a letter from Sarah JaneStark. A wise, impetuous, laudatory letter, such as no one on earthcould write save Sarah Jane Stark herself. Over the first two pagesBannister laughed like a boy, but when he had finished the last line ofthe letter, tears were streaming down his face.

  “To think,” she wrote, “that the one-time copperhead of Mount Hermon isserving his country in the ranks. I would give Billy my cat to see youin your blue uniform, and you know how much I love Billy. And that dearboy! I never cried about a boy in my life before, you know that; but Icry about that boy of yours every time I hear from him! I’m so proud ofhim, and so fond of him! Heaven bless both of you!”

  And down at the end of the letter a postscript was hidden away. Itsaid:--

  “I’ve induced Mary Bannister to come up to town with Louise and livewith me this winter. It’ll be pretty lonely down at your place, andI’ve got a big house and plenty of room, and I want company, and I wanther. She’s such a dear, brave, patient little woman, and we’ll have aglorious time together.”

  So, with no disquietude on account of their loved ones at home on theirminds, Rhett Bannister and his son faced the enemy and, with theircomrades in arms, fared on.

  When Grant, in the spring of ’64, began his arduous and bloody campaignfrom the Rappahannock to the Rapidan and from the Rapidan to the James,they were in the forefront of the conflict. Yet they seemed to leadcharmed lives. Out from the tangled depths and thousand pitfalls of TheWilderness, from the forest scarred and seamed across with fire andshell and bullet, from the ghastly field with its blood-soaked herbageand its piled-up heaps of dead, they came unscathed. At SpottsylvaniaCourt-House and up and down and across the North Anna, through allof May they marched and fought. At Cold Harbor, in the early days ofJune, they faced, with their comrades, the merciless fire of thoseConfederate riflemen, until, scorched, winnowed, withered, the Unionarmy, with ten thousand dead and wounded on the field, retired fromthe hopeless and unequal contest. Yet father and son came out of itwithout serious injury. Shocked, sickened, exhausted, they were indeed;scratched here and there by hissing bullets, but otherwise unharmed.Again, in the awful fiasco before Petersburg, in the crater left by theexploding mine, hemmed in, helpless, horribly entangled, black soldiersand white falling by hundreds under the pitiless enfilading fire of athousand down-pointed Confederate guns, even from that pit of deaththey escaped, wrenched, bruised, battered, buffeted, but whole.

  So, through all that summer they fought, in the bloodiest, cruelestcampaign recorded in history, shallow trenches filled with deadeverywhere proclaiming the awful sacrifice at which Grant was forcingthe desperate and depleted armies of the South into their finalstrongholds.

  As his officers had predicted from the beginning, Bob Bannister wasrapidly promoted. For meritorious conduct, for brave deeds, to fillvacancies above him as the grim tragedy of war played itself out, hedonned his corporal’s stripes, exchanged them for a sergeant’s, addedthe orderly’s diamond, and finally, in the fall of ’64, his shoulderswere decorated with the straps of a first lieutenant. When thishappened his company held a jubilee. He was a mere boy, indeed, notlong past eighteen, possibly the youngest commissioned officer in theArmy of the Potomac; but the men of his command trusted him, believedin him, loved him, and would have followed him wherever he chose tolead, even to the gates of death.

  But Rhett Bannister was not promoted. That was not, however, thefault of his officers. Nor was it that his conduct was not splendidlysoldier-like and meritorious,--it was simply because he would not haveit so. It was after Cold Harbor that Captain Baker called him onenight to company headquarters,--Howarth had long ago been invalidedhome,--and said to him:--

  “Bannister, I am going to make a sergeant of you.”

  “But, captain--”

  “Oh, I know how you feel, but there’s no help for it. Brady’s dead,Holbert’s a prisoner, and Powelton and Gray can’t do the work. You musttake it.”

  “Captain, I beg of you not to do it. Be good to me. I’ll fightanywhere. I’ll take any mission. I’ll face any danger. But I can’taccept an office in the army of the United States. I told you this whenyou spoke of making me a corporal. I repeat it now. If I were to acceptthis honor I never could fight again, I never could look the boys inthe face again, I would feel so cowardly and ashamed and dismayed.Don’t do it, captain, I beseech you, don’t do it! Let me fight in theranks and be contented and happy as I am to-night.”

  And the captain gave heed to his protest, knowing that it came from hisheart; and so he continued to fight in the ranks, honored, trusted,and loved by all his comrades. In the midst of the political campaignof ’64, when the contest for the office of President of the UnitedStates was stirring the North as no political contest had ever stirredit before; when Lincoln’s enemies felt that they had won the victory,and that the battle of the ballots on election day would only ratifyit; when Lincoln himself gave up the hope that he would be permittedto lead the nation back to peace and safety; when only the votes ofthe soldiers in the field could by any possibility save the day, RhettBannister turned politician and went out electioneering. From manto man he went, from company to company, from regiment to regiment,earnest, anxious, persuasive, pleading with his whole heart and soulthe cause of Abraham Lincoln. And when the November ballots werecounted, and the overwhelming majority proved that the people in theNorth as well as the soldiers in the field had confidence in the g
reatWar President, no heart in the Army of the Potomac beat with moreexultant pride and unbounded happiness than did the heart of RhettBannister, the Lincoln conscript.

  In March came the President’s second inaugural address. A newspapercontaining a report of it floated early into camp and came intoBannister’s hands. He read the address word by word, sentence bysentence again and again. Then he called together the men who were fondof listening to him and read it to them.

  “You will not find,” he said, “in all history, nor in all literature,a clause so sublime in thought, so simple in diction, so sweet withdivine charity as this; listen: ‘With malice toward none, with charityfor all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’swounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for hiswidow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a justand lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’

  “Gentlemen, that is Abraham Lincoln, than whom no man who ever livedin America has had a higher aim, a sweeter spirit, or a more propheticvision.”

  All winter Grant had sat before Petersburg, grim, silent, relentless,pushing here and there ever a little farther to the front, seeking theexhaustion of his enemy, waiting for the auspicious moment to let fallthe blow which should lead quickly to the inevitable end. To Lee’s armylooking from the heights on the tented foe in front of them by day, onthe thousand camp-fires gleaming there at night, it seemed as thougha ravenous monster, white-toothed, fiery-eyed, lay crouching beforethem, stretching out a sharp claw now and then, waiting pitilesslyuntil the exhausted foe, weak and helpless, should fall, an easy prey,into its clutches. Surely no soldier, no army, ever held out morebravely against more fearful odds, in more desperate straits, than didthis remnant of Lee’s tattered host, in its final effort to save theConfederate capital from falling into the hands of its enemies. Yetevery drum-beat trembling on the soft spring air was but the knellof Richmond’s hope; every passing hour brought nearer and nearer herunavoidable doom.

  Late in March Grant threw out a force on his left, under Sheridan,to meet and turn, and crush if possible, Lee’s right flank, and thusprecipitate the fall of Petersburg. It was at Five Forks that thetwo armies met and clashed in the last decisive battle of the war.Overwhelmed in front, cut off from the main column on the left, bornedown upon from the rear, fighting twice its numbers on every side, thelittle army of Confederate veterans, with a thousand of its men alreadycaptured, and a thousand lying dead and wounded along the barricades ithad so stoutly defended, broke and fled helplessly and hopelessly tothe west, only the darkness of night saving it from utter annihilationat the hands of Sheridan’s pursuing cavalry.

  But on that field of Five Forks, after the blue-clad hosts had sweptover it across the enemy’s redoubts, and only the grim harvest ofbattle was left, dread rows of fallen men and horses struggling andgroaning among the silent dead, Rhett Bannister lay, at the edge ofthe White Oak road, his shoulder pierced by a minié ball, his dim eyesseeking vainly for the child of his heart. And just beyond lay Bob,stretched on the greensward, his blood-splashed face turned upward tothe twilight sky, seeing nothing, knowing nothing of battle or victory,of friend or foe, deaf alike to the dying thunders of the conflict, tothe exultant shouts of the victors, to the heart-stirring cry of thatfather who would joyously have given his own life that his son mightlive.