House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  The regiments began to move out of the woods and down into the sheltering swale. There, the lines took shape, each regiment compact and three ranks deep. Longstreet watched them briefly; then he mounted and with a gesture summoned the men of his staff, waiting near-by.

  “Sorrel,” he said. “Stay with me. You too, Fairfax. Keep three or four couriers.” His eye swept the others. “Gentlemen, some of General Pettigrew’s brigades are under new leaders today. They may need guidance or direction. Three or four of you had better report to General Pettigrew.”

  Major Currain asked: “May I go to Colonel Marshall, General? I’ve friends in the Eleventh North Carolina, in his brigade. I’d like to be with them.”

  “If you desire,” Longstreet agreed. He smiled grimly. “But leave that black horse of yours behind. He’ll get you into hot water.” He rode to find Colonel Alexander, Sorrel and Fairfax following him. “Colonel,” he asked the artilleryman, “what’s this about not enough ammunition? You should have sent for more.”

  “I did, General; but the ordnance train has been moved. My men couldn’t find it.”

  “Then stop Pickett. Let him wait till you fill your limbers.”

  Alexander protested: “That would take God knows how long, General; it would give the enemy time to repair what damage we’ve done.”

  This was so obviously true that Longstreet nodded in sorrowful agreement. “I’d halt this charge if I could,” he confessed. “But General Lee wants it. Have you those howitzers ready to go along with Pickett?”

  “I sent for them some time ago, sir; but General Pendleton had moved them, presumably to get away from the enemy fire. I’ve sent twice without finding them.”

  Longstreet made an angry gesture. Mishaps and mistakes had trailed them day by day. “Pickett has a hard row to hoe, Colonel.”

  “General Wright says it’s not hard to get there,” Alexander replied. “Pickett will need reinforcements if he is to stay; but I understand General Lee is throwing the whole army in to support him.” He added in a quickening tone, looking toward the ravine where Pickett’s men were forming. “Here they come.”

  Longstreet turned to watch. Smoke from the enemy shells and from their own guns somewhat obscured the sun; but he could see regiments move up out of the swale. The line took shape. Kemper’s brigade extended from the ravine to the right, Garnett’s to the left; Armistead would follow close on their heels. Kemper was forming behind the screen of an orchard; he would have farther to go than Garnett or Armistead. This spot where Longstreet and Alexander sat their horses was in Kemper’s line of march, for he would approach the road at a long diagonal, passing through the batteries, so Longstreet rode to one side to be out of Kemper’s way.

  Under red sunlight that came sickly through the canopy of smoke, the regiments, beginning now to move forward, were dark and gloomy masses. Over the clamor of the cannon Longstreet shouted to Alexander:

  “Keep your guns firing till it’s time to let them through. Then follow and guard their right.”

  Alexander nodded, but Longstreet’s eyes never left the unfolding scene. As the nearer regiments came on, a faint west wind carried the smoke toward the enemy and caught the battle flags and fluttered them. Longstreet saw the pause here, the hurry there, which brought Kemper’s front into alignment. On Kemper’s left Garnett; and beyond Garnett all the rest of the assaulting force came into position. The gently rolling fields between the woods and the road, till a moment ago almost deserted, now suddenly were alive with men. Six brigades, say thirty regiments, say nine thousand men, formed the front of attack; six thousand more would press on their heels.

  Longstreet from his position on the right flank could at first see across the gently undulating meadows the whole length of the front line, and the open ground between brigades and regiments as each unit preserved its individuality; but as the line came up abreast of him, it became increasingly foreshortened. The skirmishers moved in advance in many little files, four or five or six men in each file, so spaced as to cover and protect the whole front of the attack and to clear away enemy skirmishers before the main body came near enough to suffer from their fire. They went forward in short rushes, not running but moving at quickstep for a few paces and then taking cover while the main body came on. The skirmishers kept their formation, five paces apart, except when the order was to fire while advancing; then each leader halted and fired and waited to reload, the men behind proceeding a few paces beyond him, each in turn halting to let off his piece and load again. Thus the long front of the moving line was alive with single figures weaving an orderly pattern as they shuttled precisely to their tasks.

  As the front of attack came abreast of Longstreet, his attention centered on the nearest regiments. Here was General Kemper, his brigade crossing a lane where two fences for a moment hindered. Kemper had resigned from Congress, had left the legislative labors for which he was preeminently fitted, to enter the army; but he should not be here today. In Congress, guiding the passage of needed legislation, he was infinitely more valuable to the Confederacy than on this deadly field. As an active force in the Confederate legislature he would be worth a division to this army; but here, any chance Yankee bullet might destroy him. But the South had little respect for politicians; it wanted its great men to fight. So Kemper had come perhaps to meet his death today.

  The men marched at a steady battle step, slow enough so that none need lag and slow enough so that the lines could dress, yet fast enough to carry them steadily forward. Kemper’s brigade had almost a mile to go, across those open fields and across the road and up to where the enemy awaited them; the other brigades not quite so far. When now they came abreast of Longstreet, they had covered perhaps a third of the way.

  When the column of assault began to move, the enemy guns for a few moments held their fire. In this brief respite, Longstreet dismounted and seated himself on a fence clear of the right flank of the advance; but Kemper had scarce passed him before, from the hill by the cemetery, from the whole length of the ridge over there, from the rocky heights to the right, Meade’s batteries let loose a cascade of shot and shell.

  So Colonel Long was wrong; those guns on that lower hill to the right had not been silenced. They had simply withheld their fire to wait for a target. Well, they had their target now; but the men went on, unshaken. Longstreet found himself trembling with pride and with love for these brave men. He saw Kemper turn and shout something to Armistead behind him; heard a word or two. “. . . close up!” Armistead made an assenting sign. The regiments marched as if on parade. Pickett as he passed gave Longstreet a salute. His long curls hung to his shoulder, and Longstreet smiled in grim affection.

  The fire from the hill to the right harassed this flank, and Longstreet bade Colonel Alexander give it his attention. Alexander said quietly: “I will move my guns forward, General, as soon as the men are past.” Longstreet assented. Kemper and Garnett filed their brigades through the silent batteries, angling toward the road, and at once Alexander’s guns whose fire was blanketed began to limber to the front. A signal brought their horses from the trees back on the ridge at full gallop to their work. Alexander explained: “I’m moving forward all guns that have enough shell to be of use, General. Most of them have nothing but canister left.”

  Longstreet made no comment, watching the advance. The long front of attack was far enough past him now so that he began again to see it in perspective, this time from the rear, sometimes as a whole, and sometimes in segments when the smoke of shell bursts for a moment obscured his view. Armistead’s supporting brigade came on. There were brief clots of men here and there at a fence while the men tore rails away, or ripped off boards and crowded through the openings they had made. In one of these crowding groups Longstreet saw a shell burst, and another; and when that regiment paused to form again beyond the fence, half its strength was gone.

  Kemper was across the road now, obliquing to the left toward where low ground behind a house and barn offered some shelt
er from enemy fire. That must be the Codori house of which Lieutenant Wentz had spoken; that was the swale where Ranse Wright had said they could correct their alignment and repair the ravages of enemy fire. Garnett was in the road beyond Kemper. Armistead, still on this side of the road, was approaching the knoll above the Codori house through a hollow twice as deep as a tall man, so his men were for the moment protected; but as they climbed the knoll and came again into enemy view Longstreet saw shells tear their solid ranks before they plunged down into the road.

  Off to the north the regiments of Pettigrew’s division were almost completely hidden by the smoke and dust; but they seemed to be maintaining their advance. Longstreet saw Kemper move up out of that hollow by the Codori house. Garnett was on his left, and in firm formation the brigades marched up the gentle slope toward the clump of trees where they must strike their blow. Armistead hurried to lend his weight to theirs. To reach the road they had advanced through steady punishment by solid shot and by shell; but beyond the road they came within musket range of Meade’s line, and Longstreet saw the scythe of grapeshot and canister lay windrows of dead and wounded, as the mower’s scythe lays ripe grain along the ground. He could not see clearly because of the smoke, but he could see enough. As Pickett’s brigades emerged from the sheltering swale by the Codori house, the enemy cross fire caught them, and a blue column thrust out of some trees on their right to hit their flank; but Colonel Alexander opened on that column and Longstreet saw the Yankees break and scurry back to shelter. Alexander knew how to use those guns of his.

  A courier galloped up to the fence where Longstreet sat with a message from Pickett. Pickett promised that the enemy’s center would be pierced; but he said his right would need support. Longstreet, without taking his eyes off that smoking, fire-swept slope where the Virginians marched steadily toward the enemy, asked the messenger: “Where is General Pickett?”

  The courier pointed: “At that barn.”

  “Tell him support is coming.”

  The courier raced away. Pickett was at the Codori barn, not two hundred yards short of the goal; but that last two hundred yards, every foot of it within musket range of the enemy, was a long road to travel. Yet Pickett’s men went steadily into the storm of fire.

  Longstreet turned to Moxley Sorrel. “Tell Anderson to keep the damned bluebellies off Pickett’s flank. Tell him to hurry! Don’t go yourself—send.” He saw Sorrel’s messenger start, saw the man’s horse sheer from a shell burst and almost unseat the rider. Sometimes a courier’s death or wounding lost a battle, changed the course of history; and also, Longstreet remembered that when Anderson’s brigade commanders yesterday sent to him for help, Anderson had been hard to find. “Better go yourself, Colonel Sorrel,” he decided. “If you don’t see Anderson, direct Wilcox and Perry to support that flank.”

  When Sorrel was gone, his attention returned to Pickett’s brigades. Those regiments, their ranks thrashed and thinned by cross fire, had not yet fired a shot; and Longstreet’s heart lifted with pride. It needed brave men to march into the face of intolerable fire and never loose their pieces till the word of command. The slope they were climbing was not severe. From the Codori house up to the enemy position there was a rise of no more than twenty feet. But the men had no protection now, and the Yankee infantry had them in range; yet they went on at a steady pace. The line bent a little but it did not break. Longstreet thought that line of men was like a rug hung in the sun while the dust was beaten out. At every blow it yielded, it bellied backward; but after every blow it made firm front again.

  A fierce impatience shook him. It seemed hours since those regiments had formed and begun their advance. Of course it had not been as long as it seemed; to march a mile, unfalteringly as these men had marched, was a matter of half an hour at most. But half an hour was a long time for men marching into death, and unable to strike their enemy a retaliatory blow.

  Major Fairfax spoke to him. “General, Pettigrew’s left is lagging. I think it’s shaken.”

  Longstreet, his eyes on Pickett’s brigades, had missed this. Smoke clouded the field, and Pettigrew’s left was a mile to the north; but at first glance he saw Fairfax was right. “Send someone,” he directed. “Have that corrected. And tell Anderson to move forward and support the assault.”

  As the couriers departed, his eyes remained fixed on the wavering left. Even from this distance, through the smoke of shell bursts and the hanging dust of battle, he saw men by ones and twos dropping behind their comrades. Those brigades had been badly hurt day before yesterday, and some of them today were in new hands. It was because he had feared some weakness there that he had sent Major Currain and others of his staff to that quarter of the field. They would do what they could; but Pettigrew’s left was under close and heavy fire from batteries in the cemetery. Surely Hill would move help forward; and Anderson could throw some of his weight that way.

  Then his attention was drawn back to Pickett’s front; for from the ridge, even through the steady roar of battle, he heard the sudden shrill, yipping falsetto yell that had sounded on every field since First Manassas at the high moment when the Southern men drove in for the kill; and he heard a slatting blast of musketry. It was a little muffled. Those guns were pointed toward the enemy. Pickett’s men had delivered their first volley.

  So the charge had come to hand grips. This was the moment of decision, the climax of the charge, for which all else had been only preparation. His senses sharpened; he weighed every note in the clanging uproar; his eyes strove to pierce the heavy clouds of smoke; he summoned all his faculties to help him see what in fact could not be seen at all. He saw not with his eyes but with a sixth sense. He saw three or four or five thousand men smashing at the Yankee centre, saw as many more coming on to lend mass to that terrific impact.

  This was the hour. It was for this moment they had marched the long way from their old lines at Fredericksburg. Now at last the question was put; in a moment more the answer would be given. The violence of that contention yonder could not long be maintained. Presently the scales must tip.

  Longstreet could see nothing. All was hidden in that spreading, slowly rising smoke cloud on the ridge. But he could guess what was happening. Meade must have held reserves in hand for this moment. Meade knew tactics as well as any man. To defend against such an attack as this, the rule was standard: Let your guns weaken the attacking column; then at the moment of final impact batter its head with reserves, stab at its flanks, hack at its roots. So Longstreet knew that in this moment Meade would be sending a countercharge from the hill by the cemetery against Pettigrew’s wavering left; he would throw a heavy stroke against Pickett’s right. A momentary glimpse of a blue column coming down on Pickett was not needed to confirm that certainty.

  Listening, watching, testing the pulse of this battle, he felt the issue hang in wavering balance for minutes that might have been seconds, might have been hours. He did not know; time had no meaning. As long as the attacking column moved forward even by inches, success was possible; but once Pickett was surely brought to a stand, his momentum spent, then he must in the end recoil.

  When that moment came, when the attack was held, Longstreet knew it beyond any hopeful doubt. So the day was lost; the day that could never have been won was lost. He knew it certainly.

  Well, they had failed. Now what could be salvaged must be. General Anderson came at a gallop, pulled up his horse, pointed down across the road toward a mass of men moving against the enemy force which threatened Pickett’s flank.

  “I’ve sent Lang to help Wilcox, General,” he shouted.

  Longstreet looked at him. “Lang? Who’s Lang?”

  “Colonel Lang’s commanding Perry’s brigade today.”

  Longstreet grunted. Another brigade in strange hands. But no matter now. “Halt them,” he directed. “The assault has failed.” Anderson looked at him in astonishment, for the battle on the ridge seemed at its keenest pitch; and Longstreet spoke in sharpened tones: “It’s all ov
er! Recall them! Place your brigades to rally the men.” Anderson exclaimed in protest; but Longstreet pointed. “See for yourself.”

  Off to the north, soldiers of Pettigrew’s division were streaming back across the death-strewn fields in confused disorder. Anderson saw. “I’ll stop that!” he cried, and wheeled to race that way.

  Longstreet glanced at the sun, still high. If Meade pressed them now, the danger would be great; but his jaw set. By God, if Meade tried a stroke, they would teach him a lesson to remember. Yet first Pickett must be extricated. Up on the ridge, the Virginians and some North Carolinians who on Pickett’s left had pushed home their charge were trapped. The bluebellies would close in on them from each flank as they had closed in on Wright yesterday. Longstreet sent Sorrel to bid Pickett draw back his left and thus strengthen Pettigrew against a blow from the cemetery; he sent Fairfax to bid McLaws move forward and give Pickett’s right what help he could.

  The assault was broken; but Pickett’s battle, though his flanks were crumbling, incredibly still held to hottest pitch as the men fought off the pressure on front and flank. Longstreet growled a curse. Were those Virginians going to stay there till the last of them died? A high admiration for their stubborn valor ran through him like wine; yet they must yield, they must withdraw while there were still a few of them alive!

  Colonel Fremantle, afoot, came running toward him, panting with excitement. “General,” he cried, “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything!”

  The contrast between the Englishman’s words and his own thoughts was so absurd that Longstreet in a grim amusement laughed aloud. “The hell you wouldn’t! I’d give a good deal to have missed it!”

  The other stared. “Why? What?”

  “Look!” Longstreet told him, sternly now. He pointed northward along the line of the road toward where men by twos and threes and half-dozens were trudging wearily to the rear, sullenly retreating.