Rodney The Partisan

by Harry Castlemon

  CHAPTER XVII.

  RODNEY MEETS A FRIEND.

  Sergeant Graham first read aloud the account of the second day'sfighting at Pittsburg Landing; but of course the fact that Beauregardhad sustained a crushing defeat and been forced to retire from Corinth,was carefully concealed. It was to be expected, the paper said, thattwenty-five thousand fresh men would turn the tide of battle in favor ofthe enemy, but even against these overwhelming odds the Confederates hadheld their own until noon, and then left the field in good order.

  "I don't see anything to feel bad over in that account," said Rodney,whose war-like spirit arose every time he heard a glowing story of afight. "We knew when we went into this thing that the Yankees couldraise more men than we could, and we expected to fight against big odds.Now for the conscripts," and when Rodney said this, he thought of TomRandolph, and hoped that he would be the first Mooreville citizen to"draw a prize."

  He thought he could imagine how Tom would look and feel after he hadmade a campaign with a foot or more of mud under his feet, drippingstorm-clouds over his head and not so much as a crumb of corn bread inhis haversack, and laughed silently as he pictured him at a smokingcamp-fire with a lot of veterans "poking fun" at him. His own term ofservice would soon expire, and he hoped he should reach home in time tosee Tom march out with the first squad of conscripts that leftMooreville; but as Dick proceeded to read the abstract of the Act as itappeared in the paper, all the while pushing the sheet farther andfarther from him as his amazement and anger increased, Rodney found thatthe situation was not quite so amusing as he thought, and that he,Rodney Gray, was in a worse box than his friend, Tom Randolph. It wasthe first general conscription law of the Confederacy, and "it withdrewevery non-exempt citizen, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five,from State control, and placed him absolutely at the disposal of thePresident during the war." When Dick had read this far he looked at hiscomrades to see what they thought of it.

  "Why, it's--it's--the Czar of Russia couldn't do worse," exclaimed thefirst one who recovered control of his tongue. "It's a fraud--a despoticact. Where are our State Rights now, I should like to know?"

  "Go on," said Captain Jones, who stood on the outskirts of the group butwithin hearing distance. "There's worse to come."

  Dick Graham, who did not see how anything could be worse, went on withhis reading and found that the Act "annulled all contracts made withvolunteers for short terms, holding them to service for two yearsadditional, should the war continue so long; and all twelve months'recruits, below eighteen and over thirty-five years, who would otherwisehave been exempted by this law, were to be retained in service forninety days after their term expired."

  "Hey--youp!" yelled Dick, dancing about like one demented. "Our owngovernment is ten times worse than the one we are fighting against, andevery one of us was a fool for ever putting on a gray jacket. Why didn'tthey tell us all this in the first place, so that we might know whatthere was before us? It's a fraud and a cheat and a swindle and a--anda--what are you about?" he added, turning almost fiercely upon hiscaptain, who elbowed his way through the excited group and tried to takethe paper from his hand. "I'll not obey the orders of the Richmondgovernment, and that's all there is about it."

  "I was going to direct your attention to something else," replied thecaptain, paying no heed to the sergeant's rudeness. "But since you areso nearly beside yourself I don't suppose you can read it, and so I hadbetter tell you what it is. You say you will not obey the orders of theRichmond government?"

  "That is what I said, and I will stick to it," exclaimed Dick. "Theyhave no right--"

  "Hold on a bit," the captain interposed.

  "They may not have the right but they have the power, and you will haveto give in. They offer you inducements to re-enlist for two years. Youwill be regarded as volunteers, and be allowed the privilege of changingyour officers and electing new ones."

  This was a big inducement indeed. The men laughed derisively when theyheard it.

  "If you don't volunteer, but insist on leaving the army when your termof service expires, you will never get out of the camp," continued thecaptain. "You will be conscripted."

  "I don't care if I am," answered Dick, indignantly. "I'll not do duty."

  "Then you will be treated as a mutineer and run the risk of being shotwithout the benefit of a drum-head court-martial," said the captain;whereupon the men backed off, thrust their hands into their pockets andlooked at him and at one another. "I tell you, boys, this is no time forfoolishness," the captain went on, earnestly. "Ever since Bull Run theNorthern people have been showing the mettle that's in them. That defeatgot their blood up and they mean business. They have more volunteersthan they want. Their armies are growing stronger every day, while oursare growing weaker every hour. To be honest, there isn't half thepatriotism now there was among us when these troubles first begun.Desertions are alarmingly frequent, and voluntary enlistments are almostentirely suspended. We must have men to fight our battles, or elsesurrender our cherished liberties to such Hessians and Tories as Curtisbrought against us at Pea Ridge."

  "And whipped us with," added one of the men; and the captain couldn'tcontradict him, for it was the truth. He could only look at himreproachfully.

  "'Is Sparta dead in your veins?'" exclaimed the captain, quoting fromthe speech of Spartacus to his fellow gladiators. "Are you willing togive up whipped and permit a lot of Regicides and Roundheads to puttheir feet on your necks?"

  Taking this for his text the officer spoke earnestly for ten minutes,drawing largely from the fiery editorials of the Southern papers, whichhe had read so often that he had them by heart, and trying his best toinfuse a little of his own spirit into the angry, scowling men who hadcrowded around him, but without any very flattering success. There wasbut one thought in their minds--they had been duped by the Richmondgovernment, which had so suddenly developed into a despotism that it wasplain the machinery for it had been prepared long before. They could notgo home even for a short time to visit their friends after their term ofservice had expired, and it is no wonder that they felt sore over it.Seeing that he could not arouse their patriotism, the captain next triedto arouse their combativeness.

  "On the same day that the battle of Shiloh was decided against us, therewas another struggle settled a hundred miles nearer to us," said he."That too went against us. Island No. 10, the stronghold that was tohave kept the enemy from going down the Mississippi, has fallen, and theway is open to Memphis."

  "But the Yankees will never get there," exclaimed Rodney. "When I cameup the river on the _Mollie Able_, I heard a man say we had a fleetbuilding there that would eventually take Cairo and St. Louis too."

  "I certainly hope he was right, but things don't seem to point that waynow," replied the captain.

  "That is good news for us in one respect," Dick Graham remarked. "NewMadrid must have fallen too, and if that is the case, we'll not beordered there. It's too late. We'll stay in our own State."

  The captain shook his head, and his men knew by the expression on hisface that he had something yet to tell them.

  "There's where you are wrong," said he. "We are going to Memphis asquick as we can get there, and from Memphis we shall go to Corinth tojoin the army under Beauregard. I am sorry you boys feel so about it,but I really don't see how you are going to help yourselves. Now braceup and do your duty like men, as you always have done it. I don't wantto see any of you get into trouble, but you certainly will if you kickover the traces."

  This last announcement was altogether too much for the men, who turnedaway in a body, muttering the heaviest kind of adjectives, "not loud butdeep." When the two boys were left alone with the captain the latterinquired:

  "How old are you?"

  "Seventeen," growled Rodney.

  "Well, you will have to stay in ninety days after your term expires.Will that make you eighteen?"

  "No, it wouldn't; and if it did they would be careful n
ot to say so."

  "Then I don't see what reason you have to get huffy over a thing thatcan't be helped," continued the officer. "We must have men, and if theywill not come in willingly, they must be dragged in. We can't besubdued; we never will consent to be slaves. But you two will get outall right."

  "We knew it all the while; at least I thought of it," replied Dick, "butI didn't want to mention it while the rest of the boys were around. Theyare mad already, and it might make them worse to know that we two arebetter off than they are."

  "But I want to tell you that you will make a big mistake if you acceptyour discharges," the captain went on to say. "You ought by all means tostay in until this thing is settled and the invaders driven from oursoil. You'll wish you had when you see the boys come home covered withglory. And then think of the possibilities before you! You are bound tobe promoted, and that rapidly. If I had your military education I wouldnot be satisfied with anything short of a colonelcy."

  "Well, you may have it, and since you want it, I hope you will get it;but I wouldn't accept it if it were offered to me," answered Dick,turning on his heel. "I'll not serve under such a fraud of a governmentas this has turned out to be a day longer than I can help. I'll take mydischarge as soon as they will condescend to give it to me, and thenthey can hunt somebody to fill my place. I'll never volunteer again, andsooner than be conscripted I'll take to the woods."

  "Now, sergeant, you know you wouldn't do any such thing," said thecaptain.

  "Yes, I would," Dick insisted. "There is a principle at the bottom ofthis whole thing that is most contemptible; but what more could youexpect of men who induced us to enlist by holding out the promise of aneasy victory? 'The North won't fight!' This looks like it. We're whippedalready."

  These were the sentiments of thousands of men who wore gray jackets inthe beginning of 1862, but it wasn't every one who dared express them asboldly as Dick Graham did, nor was it every officer who would havelistened as quietly as did Captain Jones. Everything went to show thatthe officers had been drilled in the parts they were expected to performlong before the men dreamed that such a thing as a Conscription Act wasthought of; for, as a rule, all discussion regarding the policy of theRichmond government was "choked off" with a strong hand. In some armies,Bragg's especially, the men were treated "worse than their niggers everwere." They dared not speak above a whisper for fear of being shovedinto the guard-house; and "when some regiments hesitated to availthemselves of this permission (to volunteer) they were treated asseditious, and the most refractory soldiers, on the point of being shot,only saved their lives by the prompt signature of their comrades to thecompact of a new enlistment." Things were not quite as bad as this inPrice's army, but still Captain Jones thought it best to tell his men,especially the out-spoken Dick Graham, that they had better be a littlemore guarded in their language, unless they were well acquainted withthose to whom they were talking. They went to Memphis, as the captainsaid they would, marching over a horrible road and leaving some of theirartillery stuck in the mud at Desarc on White River, and from Memphisthey went to Corinth forty miles farther on, packed in box cars likesheep, and on top like so much useless rubbish. Their train was rushedthrough at such a rate of speed that the men on top shouted to theengineer:

  "Go it. Let out two or three more sections of that throttle. Run us offinto the ditch and kill us if you want to. There are plenty more menwhere we came from."

  Rodney Gray afterward declared that he had never seen a grander sightthan Beauregard's camp presented when the troops from the West marchedthrough it, greeted everywhere by the most vociferous cheering, to taketheir positions on the right. Their arrival brought the strength of thearmy up to more than a hundred thousand men, and, somewhat to theirsurprise, they were introduced to their new comrades as "Invincibles."At any rate that was what General Bragg called them in an address whichhe issued to his soldiers a few days afterward:

  "The slight reverses we have met on the sea-board have worked us good aswell as evil," was what he said in the vain hope of blinding his troopsto the real magnitude of the disaster that had recently befallen theConfederacy. "The brave troops so long retained there have hastened toswell your numbers, while the gallant Van Dorn and invincible Price,with the ever-successful Army of the West, are now in your midst, withnumbers almost equaling the Army of Shiloh."

  The "slight reverses" to which the general so gingerly referred were thepassage of Forts Jackson and St. Philip by Farragut's fleet, theannihilation of the Confederate gunboats and the capture of New Orleans;and these "slight reverses" were almost immediately followed by thedefeat of the gunboats that had been building at Memphis, and of whichthe Confederates expected such great things. But the rank and file ofthe army were not so easily deceived. They knew well enough that theaccounts that came to them through the papers were "doctored" on purposefor them, and were fully sensible of the fact that the loss of theseimportant points, Memphis and New Orleans, were disasters mostdiscouraging. When they were in the presence of those to whom they knewthey could speak freely, they sneered at the efforts made by theirsuperiors to belittle the Union victories, and laughed to scorn MayorMonroe and the "city fathers" for the attitude they had seen fit toassume while Farragut's powerful fleet held the Crescent city under itsguns. If the pompous little mayor, by folding his arms and standing infront of that loaded howitzer when the marines came ashore to hoist theStars and Stripes over the Custom House, desired to show the people ofNew Orleans and the country at large what a brave man he was, he failedof his object, for the men who had faced cannon on the field of battlehad nothing but contempt for him and his antics.

  "He has made himself a laughing-stock for all time to come," was whatRodney Gray thought about it. "That was all done for effect, for therewas not the slightest danger that the Yankees would fire that howitzerat him while he was going through his monkey-shines. If he is such anawful brave man, why didn't he follow that naval officer to the roof ofthe Custom House and jerk the Union flag down the minute it was hauledup?"

  "Or why doesn't he shoulder a musket and fall in with us?" chimed inDick. "One short campaign through Missouri mud would take some of thatnonsense out of him."

  There were a good many in the army who thought that the constantmaneuvering and skirmishing that followed during the next few weeks werenot kept up because a great battle was expected, but for the purpose ofgiving the men so much to do that they could not get together and talkover the discouraging news they had recently heard. There was oneengagement fought, that of Farmington, which resulted in a victory forthe Confederates, and taught them at the same time that they weremistaken in supposing that our troops would not venture so far into thecountry that they would be out of the reach of help from the gunboats,which had rendered them such important service at the battle ofPittsburg Landing. Of course Rodney and Dick marched and skirmished andfought with the rest, but they didn't care much whether they whipped orgot whipped, for the feelings that took them away from home and friendsand into the army, had long since given place to others of an entirelydifferent character. They didn't care as much for State Rights andSouthern independence as they did once, and if they ever got home againthe Richmond government might go to smash for all they could do to saveit. Two questions engrossed their minds, and formed the principalsubjects of their conversation: Would they be permitted to leave theservice when the year for which they enlisted expired; and if so, howwas Dick Graham going to get across the river into Missouri now thatMemphis had fallen, and the Mississippi as far down as Vicksburg was inpossession of the Federals?

  In regard to the first question--there was one thing which the boys wereafraid would work against them. While nearly all the line officers ofthe regiment remained with them, the field officers who had come withthem from the West had disappeared, some being promoted, some dischargedand others being sent to the hospital, new ones had taken their placesand a new staff had been appointed.

  "And a lovely staff it is," said Dick, expressing the sentiments
ofevery man in his company. "I can see now why that Conscription Act waspassed. It was to make room for a lot of government pets, who are toofine to go into the ranks, but who are allowed to come here and shoveout veterans when they cannot tell the difference between 'countermarchby file right' and 'right by twos.' Our new colonel doesn't know who weare or what we have done, and cares less; and when we go to him for ourdischarges, he will throw so much red-tape in our way that we can't getout. That's what I am afraid of."

  As to the other question--how Dick Graham was to get over theriver--that was something that could be settled when they had theirdischarges in their pockets. First and foremost Dick would go home withRodney; and after he had taken a good long rest, and learned all aboutthe means of communication between the two shores (they were positivethere must be some regular means of communication, because Dick hadreceived two letters from home since he had joined the Army of theCenter), Rodney would take his chances of seeing him safely across theriver. But their discharges must be their first care, and they came mucheasier than they dared hope for. One day Rodney was detailed to act asguard at brigade headquarters, and the first officer to whom hepresented arms was one whose face was strangely familiar to him. It washis new brigade commander, and a wild hope sprung up in Rodney's breast.The energetic, soldier-like manner in which he handled his pieceattracted the notice of the general, who seemed to be in good humor, andwho unbent from his dignity long enough to remark:

  "You have been well drilled, sentry."

  "Yes, sir; at Barrington Military Academy," replied Rodney, with a gooddeal of emphasis on the last words.

  This had just the effect the boy meant it should have. The generalstopped and looked curiously at him, and Rodney, instead of keeping hiseyes "straight to the front and striking the ground at the distance offifteen paces," returned his superior's gaze with interest.

  "Haven't I seen you before?" the latter asked at length.

  "Yes, sir; aboard the steamer _Mollie Able_, going up the river a yearago," answered Rodney. "You were Captain Howard then."

  The boy had no business to say all this, and no one in the army knew itbetter than he did. It was his place to wait and be questioned; but hecouldn't do it. There was too much at stake--his discharge and Dick's.The general did riot appear to notice this breach of military etiquette.On the contrary he smiled and said, pleasantly:

  "I remember you perfectly. You were on your way to join Price, and yourpresence here proves that you found him. When you are relieved I want tosee you."

  "Very good, sir," replied Rodney, bringing his piece to a shoulder andresuming his walk. "If that man's word is worth anything," he added,mentally, when the general disappeared in his tent, "Dick Graham and Iwill be free men when our year and three months are up, and you just saythat much to your folks and tell 'em it's confidential. He as good assaid that he would do something for me if he could, and now I will tryhim on; but there's one thing I'll not promise to do: I won't re-enlistuntil I get a good ready, and if I can help myself, that time will nevercome."

  Rodney walked his beat as if he were treading on air, and wished hisfriend Dick would happen along about the time he was relieved, so thathe might tell him that he believed he had found a powerful friend intheir new brigade commander. At the end of two hours, having beenrelieved from post and obtained the necessary permission from theofficer of the guard, Rodney presented himself at the door of GeneralHoward's tent, and sent his name in by the orderly.