House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “We’re giving McClellan time to build an army,” he told Trav once, “while we spend our days on parades. The most powerful weapon in war, Currain, is time. Tactics is time. To act at the right time—as against the wrong time—is what wins battles and campaigns, and wars. If we give McClellan too much time, he’ll build an army that can crush us.”

  When they were alone, the big man, who except in the jovial after-dinner hour was usually reserved, became easily vocal. They sometimes, at Longstreet’s invitation, rode together, bound nowhere in particular, exploring the byways that threaded this impoverished countryside. “It’s a pity and a shame to see a region worked out like this,” the General one day commented. “Farmed to death and then let go to old field pine and broom sedge.” Trav might have spoken, but the other went on as though forgetting he had a listener: “I’ve always had my greatest enjoyment in the out of doors. My work in the Indian service, when we lived for weeks with a blanket and our saddle for bedding and saw new country every day, was pure pleasure.” And as their horses took their own pace he talked of hunting deer and antelope and panthers, of encampments in cool canyons after long sun-baked days upon the desert plains, of slaughtering wild cattle to feed the troops. “The cattle are wild as elephants in the Asian jungles,” he declared. “And to a man on foot even more dangerous.” And he laughed and recalled a day when a bull that he had wounded charged him after he dismounted to dispatch and bleed it. “There was nothing to climb but a cactus,” he confessed. “I was picking its spikes out of my hide for days. If I’d had time to think I should have preferred the bull.” He spoke of a buffalo hunt, the headlong chase, the spatter of shots, the choppy hump-shouldered canter of the great beasts which was so much more swift than it looked. “I was a young man then,” he admitted. “Probably I wouldn’t relish it now. But after this war is won I’m going to settle down to a quiet life on some peaceful farm.”

  “I’ve spent my happiest years farming.”

  “Then you’ve the stuff to make a good soldier. You like figures, you don’t waste time, and you’ve an eye for topography. Topography is strategy, time is tactics, and figures are forces available. That’s the whole essence of war.”

  “I’ll never make a soldier. I lack—among other things—confidence in myself.”

  Longstreet’s eyes twinkled. “That’s not necessarily a fault. Of course, when you’ve seen more of the dull-witted, stubbornly ignorant, stupidly arrogant self-assurance of others, you’ll come to respect yourself; but too much self-confidence is worse than too little. Bonham, and young Major Whiting, when they stopped me from opening fire on the stampeding enemy at Centerville, had too much self-confidence —plus too much authority.”

  “I know you were angry that day.”

  “If there’s anything I hate worse than stupidity, it’s opposition.” The big man chuckled. “But then of course opposition always seems to me stupid.” He was laughing in frank amusement at himself. “I can never do, wholeheartedly, what someone else tells me to do when I’m sure he’s wrong.”

  “Are you always right?” Trav was smiling too.

  “God bless you, no! But even when I’m wrong, I’m right, because I do better work when I think I’m right. A wise superior will never insist that I do something I think is a mistake. He’d better let me do the wrong thing and do it well.”

  Trav asked curiously: “Are you ambitious for higher command?”

  “Of course! So is every officer worth his salt!” The big man hesitated. “And yet,” he admitted, “I might fail. I’m worth more in action than in council. In action, I forget the remote and comprehend only the immediate, the thing that needs doing at once. You spoke of self-confidence. In action, under fire, I’m confident; then I know! That’s my best field. In quiet planning, I might—think too much!”

  The long summer days gave them many such hours together; Trav himself came to talk as freely as the other. Cinda would have been astonished at his loquacity. He confessed one day that he had dreaded war.

  “Why, of course,” Longstreet agreed. “So did all sensible men, and especially soldiers. Every intelligent soldier knows that the real function of an army is to make war unnecessary. No one but the politicians—who know nothing about war—wanted it. They had dreams of glory, but battle is the least part of war. We lost say two thousand men killed and wounded at Manassas; but there are ten or fifteen thousand men sick in our hospitals within a few miles of us today, and not from wounds. They’re down with measles, and chicken pox, and pneumonia, and from eating the wrong things. We’ll have a good many thousands killed in battle before this business is over, but two or three times as many will die wretchedly in camps or hospitals because their bowels insist on moving ten or fifteen times a day. Many a mother who wept with pride when her son marched bravely off with his fellows will learn—if she ever learns the truth—that he died of a bloody flux from drinking dirty water. Battle is a bloody business of screaming men and gushing blood and spilled guts. Of course, it’s exhilarating. But for every hour of battle there’s a month of stinking wretchedness. You’ll see more vomit and ordure in this war than you will blood! You’ll be much more annoyed by lice than by bullets.” His voice was harsh and angry. “But that’s not the politicians’ dream picture of war!”

  Trav told him about the feeling around Martinston, in the months before war came, in that time that seemed so long ago. “But when the war did begin they raised a company there.”

  “Oh, once war comes, everyone hurrahs for war,” Longstreet assured him. “We all catch the infection. We see everyone around us cheering, so we start cheering with the rest. We’re afraid we’ll be suspect if we don’t cheer. But the best of us still hate it. The politicians go to war for an idea; and because they insist that their ideas must prevail, ordinary men and women must send their sons away to die of diarrhea!” His eyes shadowed. “Yes, Currain, I dreaded this war just as much as you did. Perhaps even more. I had reason to dread it. The army was my profession. My fellow officers, North and South, were my friends. I could name you a hundred men fighting on the other side today; men I love like brothers. And I had a happy life, settled, secure; but if war came, I’d have to serve. I’d have to fight either against my own people, or against the flag for which I’d been ready these twenty years, as a matter of course, to die.” He spoke more softly. “No, I didn’t want war. When the rupture came, I hoped I need not take an active part against the flag I had always defended; so when I arrived in Richmond I asked for office duty.” He roused as though from a revery, chuckled, slapped his knee. “And here I am in charge of the outposts, in sight of Washington, in the foremost line! Well, I like games. I shall play the best hand I can at this one, now it’s begun!”

  Trav found it hard in more festive hours to recognize the man who talked to him thus simply, and the festive hours were many. In lodgings as near the camps as possible, hundreds of wives and daughters and sweethearts spent the summer and fall, and there was a daily flood of charming feminine visitors. Two Baltimore girls, Jenny and Hetty Cary, escaped to Virginia with a smuggled consignment of drugs that were badly needed in the Richmond hospitals; and with their cousin Constance they paid a visit to Colonel Stewart’s Maryland regiment in Elzey’s Brigade, encamped at Fairfax Station. Invitations from General Elzey led General Longstreet and his staff to ride over for dinner. Afterward Colonel Stewart paraded his regiment; and Hetty Cary, with much merry prompting, put the soldiers through the manual of arms, and the men in steady ranks moved with the smart precision of machines, till in sudden pretty confusion the girl fled to join her sister and Miss Constance in the triangular portal of the tent which had been prepared to lodge them for the night. Colonel Stewart came after her, laughingly protesting that she could not dismiss the regiment without some grateful gesture; and Trav saw the three girls whisper together, and then Miss Hetty and Miss Constance, bravely facing the men still stiffly at attention, began to sing.

  The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
<
br />   Maryland, my Maryland!

  His touch is on thy temple door,

  Maryland, my Maryland!

  Avenge the patriotic gore

  That flowed the streets of Baltimore,

  And be the battle queen of yore,

  Maryland, my Maryland!

  Till the first notes, there had been a stir and movement among the officers grouped around the young ladies; but now at once quiet fell upon them all. The scene seemed to Trav deeply moving. The steady ranks of soldiers, the silent officers, the sweet dusk across the plain, the lovely girls from whose lips came these liquid golden sounds, all combined to present an unimagined beauty; and when, at first by ones and twos and then all together the voices of the men took up the reiterated refrain, Trav sang with the rest, his tears streaming in a mysterious happiness. He and Longstreet, riding homeward through the night, were for a long time silent; when they spoke it was of little unimportant things. This had been an experience too deep for words.

  The “Cary Invincibles” stayed in lodgings near the army for weeks. During the battle at Manassas there had been confusing difficulty in distinguishing the Confederate Stars and Bars from the Stars and Stripes. General Beauregard designed a “Battle Flag”, with diagonal blue bars star-spangled, which would be more easily recognized, and the three girls made banners of the new pattern to present to their favorite generals: Hetty’s to General Johnston, Jenny’s to Beauregard, Constance’s to General Van Dorn.

  There were flags for each division, too; and that night the general officers gathered for a banquet at Longstreet’s headquarters. The occasion began decorously enough, but it proceeded—as was apt to be the case when Major Fairfax furnished the food and drink—to a hilarious climax. When the potations he provided had done their work an argument arose. The South should have a song, a national anthem. Dixie? That was a good song, to be sure; but too frivolous! General Johnston and General Beauregard voted for Maryland, My Maryland, but General Van Dorn argued that the best of all possible songs was the duet from I Puritani, and he began to sing it to prove his point.

  “Just a moment, General,” Longstreet protested. “If you’re going to sing for us, get up on the table where we can see you.”

  Van Dorn rose, somewhat unsteadily. “Why, willingly, sir,” he agreed. “But a duet needs two voices. Add that fog horn of yours to my piping tones and we’ll do it properly.”

  “I will, sir,” Longstreet assured him. He came to his feet. But to climb on the table presented difficulties, and General Smith tried to help them and had to mount the table himself to pull them up; and they insisted that for that service he deserved to sing with them. The duet became a thundering trio, Longstreet’s voice almost drowning out the other two. Trav saw General Johnston and General Beauregard laughing as robustly as anyone.

  Such diversions were welcome, since they broke the long monotony of inaction; but though the officers could find amusement, there was grumbling among the men. Trav in the course of his duties had made many contacts with the private soldier; his long friendship with such simple men as Ed Blandy may have endowed him with some quality that made them trust him. The first fervor which had led them to enlist was long since cooled. Had they not whipped the Yankees, way back there two months ago? Well then, why not go home? Their wives were having a hard time making a crop; and someone had to get the corn in, and the firewood ready for winter. If the Yankee army made a move, it would be time enough to hustle back here and lick them again; but if a man stayed around camp doing nothing, he would just come down sick and be no good to anyone.

  The steady trickle of desertions had begun even before the battle of Manassas; it continued and increased. Trav heard discussion among the ranking generals as to how this problem should be met. Certainly it would be absurd, when ranks were already so thinned by sickness that it was no longer worth while to put the men through the School of the Company, to start executing deserters after you had gone to all the trouble of bringing them back to duty. General Johnston considered drumming them out of the regiment, in public disgrace; but Longstreet advised against that. “Some of these men deserting now will turn out to be good soldiers before this business is done,” he argued. “But take a man and shave his head and make him keep time to the Rogue’s March up and down the brigade front and he’ll be a scoundrel all his life. A man is as tender of his honor as a woman—and as worthless when it’s gone.”

  So lesser penalties, some painful, some calculated to make the culprit ridiculous, were imposed; bucking, the barrel shirt, pack drill. But the men, with no enemy to try their mettle, began to fight among themselves. Soldiers were gouged or knifed or shot in these affrays, till at last something like a general battle developed in Major Wheat’s battalion. The ringleaders were arrested and put under guard, but a few of their comrades tried to release them by force, and for that crime were court-martialled and ordered to be shot. The firing squad was drawn from their own company, and the whole army was marched out to witness the execution.

  Trav closed his eyes before the volley rang; he said to General Longstreet afterward: “That was a hard thing to do.”

  Longstreet agreed. “A pity, yes. These are good men; but they’ve been loafing too long.”

  “Winter will be worse, won’t it, sir?”

  “Worse for the men, yes. Furloughs will help, of course.” The General added: “And you and I will be able to see something of our families. Mrs. Longstreet plans to come on as far as Lynchburg this month; and Lynchburg’s not far away.”

  Trav knew how much an occasional day or two with Mrs. Longstreet and the children would mean to the General, and he wished he could look forward as eagerly to seeing Enid again; but he had in fact no desire to see her, seldom thought of her at all. Except for that one occasion in August he had stayed at headquarters, absorbed in his routine tasks. Cinda, in an October letter, said he should come to Richmond more often. “And to Great Oak, to see Enid and the children.” She added with an obscure irrelevance: “Mr. Streean thinks Faunt and the Blues will soon be coming home.” That seemed a curious thing for Cinda to say, as though Faunt’s prospective return was a reason for his seeing Enid; but Cinda often puzzled him. She was as perplexing as Enid, in a different way.

  26

  Summer and Fall, 1861

  IF TRAV found contentment, during that quiet summer after Manassas, in the routine of military life, so did Tony. He was happier than he had ever been, revelling in an exhilarating sense of capacity and power. He had always thought of himself as a coward. To discover, as he did at Bethel, that he was in a modest way a hero, and to find that he was a leader whom men respected, was an inspiring stimulus.

  The inspiration persisted. Through the weeks after Bethel, when action was replaced by what seemed aimless marching to and fro, and drill was the order of the day, men sickened from inadequate or improper food. Bob Grimm, who during those days of playing war at Martinston had been laid low by a boil that was funny to everyone but Bob, was their only battle casualty. At Bethel a musket ball smashed his elbow and he lost the arm and was discharged. But Jim Tunstill and Albert Hunt died of the measles and Rab Anderson of dysentery. Chub Welfare was the glutton of the company, and one day when no rations were available he led a hunt for bull frogs in a creek near camp. They caught a dozen or two, and proceeded to boil them whole. Tony came upon them grouped around their cooking fire, about to begin the feast.

  “Those frogs might make you sick, boys,” he suggested. It was no more than a suggestion, for he recognized the limitations of his authority; yet his advice, and after the first taste their own repugnance, made some of the men abstain. Chub, however, ate not only his own share but the leftovers of these others. The resulting dysentery stripped his well-padded frame of forty or fifty pounds of weight; and though he survived, he was weak as an ailing woman afterward.

  Such incidents strengthened Tony’s influence over his men. He set Ed Blandy and Tom Shadd to teach them how to sleep on the ground in mud or rain w
ithout needless discomfort. He sought advice from experienced campaigners and passed it on to them. They learned that to eat lightly and to drink cold water slowly and to wear a wetted handkerchief in their hats made a hot day endurable, and that clean feet in clean and well-darned socks did not blister so easily on a long march. In one of the training maneuvers which were the order of the summer, during a halt beside good running water, a fair third of Tony’s company knelt along the stream to wash socks and underclothes; and while they were thus engaged Colonel Hill rode by and stopped to speak to Tony.

  “Is this by your orders, Captain?”

  “Well, it’s not orders, sir; but the men are learning how to keep themselves clean.”

  “Good! Excellent! I wish all the companies were as well led.” Colonel Hill added thoughtfully: “An army spends most of its time not in fighting the enemy but in fighting its own laziness and carelessness. More men will be put out of action in this war by blistered heels than by bullets.” He nodded again. “Good,” he repeated, and rode on.

  So Tony met the test of the summer of idleness after Manassas as adequately as he had met the test of action at Bethel. When in August he had two days in Richmond, he told Cinda laughingly: “I don’t know whether I’m a captain or a nurse. I inspect heels quite as carefully as I inspect muskets.”

  Even thus soon after Clayton’s death, Cinda could smile. “I can’t imagine you, somehow, peering at a soldier’s feet!”

  “Not only their feet,” he assured her. “Their socks too, and their underwear. Why, I’m as critical of their laundry as Mama ever was of the way things were done at Great Oak. And I keep them up to the mark, too! Nat Emerson had to walk post twelve hours barefoot because he marched with a hole in his sock and got a blister. Joe Merritt cooked his dinner in a dirty frying pan, so I made him wash all the company’s dishes that day.” Thinking of Clayton he wished to lead her to laughter, and he spoke of the day when Chelmsford Lowman’s horse was lame and he rode a little spike-tailed mule which balked at a ford. “So we put a rope on the mule’s neck and the men tailed onto it to drag the mule across with Lowman still on its back. He’s a tall, thin man with a big Adam’s apple. The mule swerved into a pot hole below the ford and went clean under, and Lowman too; but when the men hauled them out he was still on the mule’s back, with his Adam’s apple working like a pump handle, spitting muddy water like a fountain. He said that dratted mule waded all the way across!”