The Broken Sword; Or, A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction

by D. Worthington

  CHAPTER VIII.

  MEMORIAL DAY.

  The patriotic men of the South who had so valorously insisted upon theirrights throughout the deadly passage at arms, felt that now the war wasover, that the country should settle down on the great common principleof the constitution--the principle that had triumphed in 1780. They hadan intuitive abhorrence to confiding extravagant power in the hands ofthe corrupt and ignorant. They could not understand how the Union couldbe preserved by the annexation of eleven conquered provinces, and askedthemselves the question, "Will not the light of these eleven pale starsbe totally obscured by a central sun blighting and destroying every germof constitutional liberty?" The Union, said they, was safe in the handsof President Lincoln. Rome was safe when Cincinnatus was called from theplow, but she was torn asunder by the wars of Scylla and Marius, andhistory is more or less a repetition of itself.

  Despite the catastrophe that overlaid the South because of the unhappyissue of the war; the gravity of which enemies, both domestic andforeign, have scandalized by calling it "rebellion," despite the factthat disbanded forces were still prosecuting their conquests, notagainst disciplined armies in the field, but against men, women andchildren, in the lawful pursuit of peace and happiness, with a vengeancehourly reinforced by new resources and fresh horrors, and with a terrorthat mastered our fettered souls; our people felt that there was atleast one refuge from the blast of the tornado--still a sheltering rockto which they could flee from the cruel cloud-burst.

  In passing the eye rapidly over the outline of the circumstances inwhich persecution originated; in reviewing the cause that unsettled thedeep foundations of social life, the southern people felt that therewere hallowed spots of ground so strongly buttressed in the hearts ofthe people that the violence of the storm could not rustle a leaf orshake a twig; that these consecrated precincts they could lawfullyappropriate, and as to this claim, the carpet-baggers with all theirhosts of misrule had the honor, magnanimity and mercy to forget, forgiveand forbear. Here at least there could be no intrusion, because thebaser passions were fenced upon the outside; and amid this sadcontinuity of graves the heart would be uplifted in gratitude to God,who in his great mercy had given to the nineteenth century and to theSouth, such undying examples of patriotism and valor. Here lie the bonesof men who dared to say, when the political system of the South wasstrangely inverted, that it was such a menace to southern institutionsthat it could not go unchallenged; a palpaple violation of the publicfaith. To what other convulsions and changes are we predestined? theyasked. Shall we leave our character, our civilization, our very being tothe unresisted assault and prepare such an epitaph for our tombs? Shallwe declare ourselves outlawed from the community of nations? "Nay, warrather to the cost of the last dollar, and slaughter of the last man."Such was the sentiment of the men who sleep so peacefully in thesegraves. Such was the sentiment of the men, women and children, whoto-day stand over these graves to honor the brave, and to reproduce afresh page in history, and lay it reverently by in our southernValhalla.

  Col. Seymour was the orator of the day. "Stonewall Jackson," his oldcommander, the subject, and his friends, Judge Bonham and theex-governor honored auditors. The old governor, whitelocked andfurrowed, in introducing the orator observed with a proper decorum. "Forwhat Stonewall Jackson and his brave men did, we have no apologies tomake here or elsewhere. I had rather wear here," said he, striking hisaged breast, "a scar from the victorious field of Manassas, than thejewelled star of St George, or the Victorian Cross."

  I can reproduce in a fragmentary way parts of the patriotic addresswhich I herein give to the reader, to show that there was "life in theold land yet."

  "MY COMRADES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

  "One year ago to-day, with the reverence of a pilgrim, I stood by thegrave of Stonewall Jackson; and I remembered that every battle order heever wrote, every victory he ever won, was a thank offering to thechristian's God.

  "I thought, too, of the thousand highways that rayed out from citadelsof oppression, barricaded with human bones. I thought of the seas ofhuman slaughter, whose redundant tides flowed on and on as libationsupon the altars of ambition.

  "I saw as it were the faded crowns and the crumbling thrones of deaddespots, who once girdled the earth with a cincture of fire, and markedits boundaries with the sword, writing again their achievements wheremankind might read and wonder.

  "I saw again the accusing throngs of pensioned widows from the Moselle,the Rhine, the Danube, the Nile, and wherever else the scarlet standardsof fanaticism flaunted their challenge, hastening to record theiranguish, where the tyrants had memorialized their deeds.

  "I saw everywhere the badges of speculative knavery, of incorrigiblewrong; Cossacks all, who knew no law but force, and no patriotism butgreed.

  "I thought of the Spaniard, riding to the stirrup-leather in the bloodof babes in the Netherlands; of the Hun and his proclamation 'beauty andbooty,' and I thought of the angel of God's mercy proclaiming anarmistice; giving a refreshing peace to the saturated earth after thesemonsters were dead, and I bowed with a profounder reverence at thishallowed grave in the valley of Virginia.

  "I thought then of Alcibiades at Abydos; of Alexander at Issus; ofScipio at Zama; of Hannibal at Cannae; of Pompey at Pharsalia; of Caesarat the Rubicon; of Napoleon at Marengo; and I thought, as Vattelthought, that warriors such as these failed to prosecute the rights oftheir countrymen by force.

  "I thought of the keen blade of the assassin that cut in twain the heartof Alcibiades; of the dagger of Brutus; of the murder of Clitus; of thehemlock; of the suicide's sword at Thrapsus; of the assassination atMiletus; of the fifth paragraph in the will of Napoleon; and then Ithought of the bleeding earth these warriors had scarified and scourged,until they were drunken with excess of human slaughter; and then Ilooked back over the tide of centuries for a single example ofdisinterested patriotism, and I bowed my head once more to hear aprotest from principalities in their orphanage, and commonwealths intheir sorrow.

  "I thought again of Jackson, as he knelt in prayer, when the great gunswere signaling the issue of battle, as with hands uplifted to heaven hewas supplicating his Father to guide and guard his poor country in hersore hour of travail, and I thought if there were a Pericles somewhere,who from the foot of our American Acropolis would sound his fame, the'bloody chasm' would be bridged by a single span.

  "A little more than three years ago, by the violation of a plain order,the tears of a nation, magnanimous and patriotic, rained down upon andextinguished almost the last camp fire of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Withinthat short period events, like chasing shadows, both clouded andglorified the perspective of history. Within a like period of time thisgreat country, by a vigorous discipline, has completely obliteratedlines and boundaries that once circumscribed the ambition of men. Atrifling order methinks of Jackson, but it cancelled our charter offreedom, it rendered a nude pact our declaration of independence. It wasonly the nod of the head of an unlettered peasant at Hougomont, but itsent somersaulting into the sunken road of Ohain the steel cladcuirassiers of Napoleon the great; dipped the imperial purple starredwith bees, into the silt of the English channel, and paragraphed thecapitulation of Paris with the civil death of the great emperor. Suchare some of the pivots upon which great crises rotate.

  Forty eight years after the Scotch-Greys pierced the uplifted visors ofthe old guard, there glided down the echoing corridors of time thissententious order; "Shoot down without halting the man who dares tocross the lines to-night."

  The catastrophe that rode as a courier upon the flank of this order,hacked the sword, unnerved the arm that was carving out of a heart offire a civilization whose altars and whose shrines were relumed by thetorch of liberty; but the God of battles, amid the carnage, called ahalt. It was a night of exasperation, of despair. Ten million peoplewatched, as watchers never watched before, the last flickering of alife that laid down its all, at the altar of love and duty. Those tenmillion people kept their vigil like vestal v
irgins, and saw, alas, thefrenzied spirit of hate and wrath snuff out the candle and heard thegroans of the victim of his own blunder, as he cried out in hisdelirium, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of thetrees."

  There has been now and again an illustrious personage, who appears to usto have been mirrored upon the foreground of events like some titanicsilhouette. The irony of fate has dealt with such a man, as the creatureof an hour, holding him in thrall in time of peace, to become the stormspirit in some great crisis. When he dies the face of history issaddened and obscured, and a twilight like that observed under Southernskies, falls upon the world. Such a person may be fitly called thecourier of fate; or better still, the tragedian of revolution. He cannotbe weighed or measured by the definitive judgment of contemporaries.When he dies the stride of conquest is checked; sword blades drippingwith human blood are thrust back into scabbards. In war, he is itsinspiration; its providence.

  I make no allusion just now to that splendid effigy that is yetdiscerned in the haze that lowers over Vienna, Berlin and Moscow; thatincomprehensible tutor of strategic science, who with sword and cannoncut a red swath through the capital cities of Europe; and partitionedthe world into two dominions, as if he were only dividing in twain anapple. I speak not of him, whom this man that "embarrassed God," found awaif, and made a giant, whose death hastened to its decline thatsplendid imperialism that the great Napoleon erected on the ruins of thecommune.

  The fall of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville thrust betwixt theConfederacy and independence a pall so dense, that it could not be cutasunder with the sword.

  I can compare Stonewall Jackson with no hero, living or dead. He stoodin the foreground an unique personality--a phenomenon. With the geniusof war he appeared almost supernaturally mated. Whether his unparalleledvictories were the result of combinations essentially tactical, ofmethods logically conceived, or of an intuition that almost withoutarrangement forced its power upon vast evolutions, will perhaps never beknown.

  The plain profile of this man reminds one of the hard-hitting,rough-riding Roundhead. His dispatches smacked of the Calvinism ofIreton and Cromwell. "God blessed our arms at McDowell yesterday."Wherever there was a downpour of leaden rain Jackson and the "Ironsides"would have been in accord. His was the spirit that resolved combinationsin his favor. His masterly apprehension of issues diminished the carnageby plucking the fruit before it was fully ripe. In war as elsewhere hewas absorbed by a fatalism, such as Mohammedans sum up when they say"What is to be, will be." Napoleon, like an astrologer, believed in astar; Jackson, unlike an astrologer, believed in Him who made the starand lighted it in the candelabra of night.

  A few years ago an American asked a halting, mutilated soldier of theOld Guard to tell him how Napoleon died? "The great Emperor dead! Hewill not die," was the sententious answer from the man who had foughtunder the shadow of his eagles at Wagram and Marengo. It was withsomething of this vague, indefinable superstition, of this heroic beliefin "Old Stonewall" as their providence that one of the "Old Brigade"would hearken dubiously to such a challenge, "Tell us how StonewallJackson died?"

  Critics who have judged with more or less asperity have said that hiscapacity as a commander was limited to the manoeuvres of a corps.Strange fatuity! A score of battle fields prove the opinion false. Ifsuch had been the case, the history of Port Republic, Harper's Ferry,Groveton and Winchester would have been written the other way.

  I saw this imperturbable man at Cold Harbor. Again he reminded one ofthe "predestined" leader of the Ironsides. "If the enemy stand atsunset, press them with the bayonet." All commands issuing from himfound their climax in this supreme order. The hero of Toulon nevercaressed the fire throated 12 pounder more ardently than did Jackson. Hewould have swept every obstruction from the field with a single battery,or failing in this would have "pressed" them with the bayonet. His campfires are now extinguished. The old army of the Shenandoah is anaggregation of phantoms. Winchester, Port Royal, Fredericksburg andChancellorsville appear as mirage reminiscences rather, that stealunbidden upon the soul when its depths are full of darkness and shadows.

  "We walk to-day listlessly over the great, rough, heroic life ofStonewall Jackson, but on either side of us are monuments and memorialsto his renown ever brightening to a higher luster.

  It is a stern business, this going to war. Reconciliation isproblematical, more frequently impossible. The public pulse in 1861 wasintensely excited. One boastingly said upon one side that all the bloodthat would be spilt, could be wiped up with a silk handkerchief. Anotheron the other side with equal bravado answered that he would live to callthe roll of his slaves from the foot of Bunker Hill, and thus there wasboast and badinage until the "Anaconda" turned his many-hued scales tothe sun on the 21st of July, 1861.

  The scene from the northern point of view was exceedingly dramatic--amagnificent host all in tinsel--a composite picture of carnival and war.A flash, as of gunpowder; a blazing up as of dry heath; a shout ever sofrightful, and half infernal, and the whole universe seemed wrapt inflame and wild tumult. But the fire has died out; tumultuous passion isallayed; the old South with its mountains and glades, rivers andvalleys, the stars above its sodden ground beneath, is still there.

  "Jackson believed in the southern cause, as if it had been a revelationfrom God. Cromwell said, 'Let us obey God's will' while he whetted hissword blade to drink the slaughter of women, and nursing babes atDrogheda. Jackson said, 'Let us obey God's will,' whilst bringing to thealtar the offering of universal emancipation.

  "Jackson believed that the war of invasion was a heartless crusadeagainst mankind and womankind, and the civilization of the South, andthe higher law proclamation was the aftermath of the perniciousbroadcasting of seed sown by Horace Greely, Gerritt Smith, and Joshua R.Giddings. The old stubble required to be ploughed under, said they;unhappily in seeding the ground they scattered here and there dragons'teeth and forthwith there sprang up armed men.

  "Jackson believed that the 'Grand army' in holiday attire, withflaunting banners and careering squadrons, were an aggregation oficonoclasts, fierce destroyers of images, creeds, institutions,traditions, homes, country. So believed he when the 'Anaconda' withpanting sides drew back to strike.

  "Man to man, bayonet to bayonet, cannon to cannon, bosom to bosom, herewas challenged the asserted right of coercion, of frenzy against frenzy,patriotism, anger, vanity, hope, dispair; each facing and meeting theother like dark clashing whirlwinds."

  Hither sped Jackson with the swoop of the eagle, down the valley fromGordonsville to fresher carnage, to a bloodier banquet. Hither he camewith as high a resolve as ever animated Peter the Hermit, to plant uponthe sand dunes of Palestine the fiery cross; whether right or wrong,cannot now be known. The formula by which he may be judged is yetundiscovered.

  Eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, and Jackson with folded arms, occupiesthe plateau near the "Henry House." Just beyond is a dark confused deathwrestle. Forty thousand athletes against eighty thousand athletes; twohundred odd iron throats perpetually vomiting an emetic of death.

  Hope within him burns like a freshly lighted fagot. There is a quiver inthe hardened nerves; the old sun-scorched cap is in his hand; the lipsare slightly parted; the order given, and the 'old Stonewall Brigade' ishurled like an immense projectile upon ranks of human flesh. There is ahalt, a recoil; cannon spit out their fire, their hail, their death uponbosoms bared to the shock. 'There stands Jackson like a Stonewall.'Under that name he was baptized with blood at Manassas. Everywhere thatfaded coat and tarnished stars were the oriflame of battle and the oldbrigade followed them as if they had been the white plume of Navarre.

  This incomparable leader never failed in a single battle from the daywhen with 2800 men at Kernstown he held in check 20,000 men and coveredthe retreat of the army from Centreville to Manassas, where he cut theircommunications and decoyed their columns into the iron jaws ofLongstreets reserves. Such achievements were not accidental. Nomanoeuvre could mislead the clear judgment
that presided serenely inthat soul of fire. It is not too much to say that the conqueror of PortRepublic was an overmatch in strategy and technique of war for hisopponents.

  He's in the saddle, now fall in-- Steady! the whole brigade! Hill's at the ford cut off; he'll win His way out with ball and blade.

  What matter if our shoes are worn-- What matter if our feet are torn-- The foe had better ne'er been born That gets in Stonewall's way.

  There were other attractions there, too; flower girls had broughthither, not the funereal cypress and willow, but bright and beautifulcarnations and violets, and streaming about the heads of the throngswere battle flags, torn and tattered--almost shredded by shot andshell--cross-barred with blue, with pale white stars like enameledlilies peeping out of the azure ground. Lifeless eyes and voiceless lipsnow, had cheered these flags with the same joy that once greeted theeagles of Napoleon. Withered skeleton hands now, had borne them at thehead of charging squadrons and battalions, the guidons of victoriousarmies--the guerdon of a nation's trust and faith. If out of the cold,dead white stars could come again the old gleam of light as it lightedup the line of direction over the mountain passes of Virginia and thevalley of the Shenandoah, what a halo of glory would encircle Winchesterand Gordonsville and Chantilly! how dramatic the narrative; how truthfulthe history; how inspiring the reminiscence; how fully and completelyvindicated the Old South--the lost cause! But there is no light in thestars, and the broad bands of blue upon the blood-red field aredisfiguring scars upon the face of an incident long since closed, andclosed forever, full of tragedy and patriotism.

  The old Governor was exceedingly complimentary towards his old friend,Colonel Seymour, "for his patriotic address," and very cordially invitedhim to visit him at his home.

  Alice had formed new acquaintances, and Clarissa too had honored thismost interesting occasion with her presence. She had carried a basketfulof flowers that had been carefully plucked and assorted by her youngmistress, and with very tender hands Alice had placed them in a stoneurn at the foot of a grave that seemed to have been more profuselydecorated than the others. Indeed, it was the grave of the soldier boywho had been the first to fall in the terrible holocaust of war.

  "Miss Alice," Clarissa asked quite feelingly, "Haint yu dun und fotchedback to yo membrunce dis here po sojer boy dat fout in de battle ofManassy, und was brung back home to pine away und die? Me und yu seedhim arter he got home, und hit made my flesh creep und crawl lakkatterpillers when I seed how de yankeys had mommucked up dat po chile.Dare wus wun arm all twisted kattykornered twell you couldn't tellpine-plank whedder it growed wid de fingers pinted disserway ordatterway, und den dare wus er hole in de buzzum dat yu cud farely seede daylight on de tother side. Grate king! De yankeys mouter shot dat pochile wid a steer kyart; he wus de wustest lookin' humans I eber seed inmy born days, und he wus de onliest chile of his po mammy. Dare's hergrabe too. Dare day lay side by side, und de Lord in hebben only knowswhat day's dun und sed erbout dis here war up yander. I'm ergwine terstrow dese lillies o' de walley on boff on em. Po fings, I hopes undprays day has dun und gon froo de purly gates whey dare aint no war, nurtribulation of sperrets nudder." And the old negro knelt reverently atthe graves and placed the white flowers upon them. As she rose from thesolemn service she said feelingly to her young mistress, "Pend upon it,missis, sumbody's bleeged to suffer fer all dis gwines on epseps dareaint no troof in proverdense nur grace nudder. Miss Alice, bress yerlife, Gord aint ergwine ter suffer his people ter be mommucked up in nosich er fashion. Now dar is dat po 'oman lying out dare; ef de yankeyshadn't kilt her onliest son, she would be right here ergwine erboutspreddin flowers on de grabes o' dese po sojers, und she'd er heerd olemarser a speechifying to all dese fokeses."

  Alice was not in the humor to indulge Clarissa in further observations.She was thinking of a grave over yonder in old Virginia, and wonderingif some fair hand was not arranging the flowers and tenderly placingthem upon the grave of her boy lover.

  The setting sun was shooting little slivers of gold from its beautifuldisc all around the cemetery, and the shadows from magnolias and weepingwillows were deepening and darkening all the while, when the Colonel,his daughter and Clarissa drove home in the old barouche, tired out withthe fatigue incident to the day and its burdens.