CHAPTER XXII.
PLEASANTON'S ADVANCE ON CULPEPER--CROSSING THE RAPPAHANNOCK--THE FIGHT AND THE CALAMITY OF RAWSON'S CROSS-ROADS--TAKING OF CULPEPER--PLEASANTON'S VOLUNTEER AIDE--TOWNSEND VERSUS COLES--THE MEETING OF TWO WHO LOVED EACH OTHER--AND THE LITTLE RIDE THEY TOOK TOGETHER.
On Sunday the thirteenth day of September, 1863, and Monday the fourteenth,but principally on the former day, took place that running fight whichdisplayed some of the very noblest qualities of the federal cavalry shownduring the War for the Union, and which is better entitled than otherwiseto be designated as the Battle of Culpeper. One of the first conclusiveindications was given in that fight, that while the rebel cavalry, which atthe beginning of the war was certainly excellent, had been running downfrom the giving out of their trained horses, and the deterioration of thequality of their riders through forced conscription,--the Union cavalry, atfirst contemptible in force and inefficient in comparison to their verynumbers, had every day been improving as fast as augmenting, until they hadbecome the superiors of what the best of their foes had been at thebeginning of the contest. War can make any thing (except perhaps statesmen)out of a given quantity of American material; but it can unmake as well,when it strains the material existing and creates a forced supply for thevacant places of the dead and the vanquished, out of the infirm and theincapable; and before the end of this conflict the lesson will have been soclosely read as never to need a repetition.
The rebels held Culpeper and the south bank of the Rappahannock, and hadheld the whole of that line for weeks, formidable in their occasionaldemonstrations, but still more formidable in what it was believed they_might_ do by a sudden crossing of that dividing stream at some momentwhen the Union forces should be deficient in vigilance, preoccupied, orotherwise embarrassed. They were to be driven back if possible, from theirthreatening front, or if not driven back, at least struck such a blow aswould make early offensive operations on their part improbable. These werethe intentions, so far as they can be known and judged, which led to thecrossing of the Rappahannock at that particular juncture.
At three o'clock on the morning of that Sunday which was to join with somany other days of battle during the rebellion in proving that "there areno Sabbaths in war,"--at an hour when the thick darkness preceding the dawnhung like a pall over the banks of the rugged stream and the hostile forcesthat fringed it on either side--the cavalry camps on the north side of theRappahannock were all astir. All astir, and yet all strangely quiet, incomparison with the activity manifested. No mellow bugle rang out its notesof reveille; there was no rattle of drum or shrieking of fife; the laggardsleeper was awakened by a touch on the shoulder, a shake, or a quick wordin his ear. Horses were saddled in silence; and at the commands: "Prepareto mount!" "Mount!" given in the lowest possible tones that could commandattention, the drowsy blue-jacketted, yellow-trimmed troopers, allbe-spurred and be-sabred as if equal foes to the horses they were to rideand the enemies they were to encounter,--vaulted lightly or swungthemselves heavily, according to the manner of each particular man, intotheir high peaked McClellan saddles that seemed to be all that was leftthem of their old leader. The squadrons were formed as quietly and with asfew words as had accompanied the awakening and the mounting; for if asurprise of the enemy's force was to take place, it was a matter of thehighest consequence that no loud sound or careless exclamation should reachthe ears of the wary pickets and wide-awake videttes of the rebels huggingclose the banks on the south side of the narrow river.
The preparations were at last and hastily completed, long before the graydawn after the moonless night had begun to break over the Virginia hillslying dark and cool to the eastward. Perhaps that very morning had beenselected for the attack because on the night before the new moon had madeits appearance and there was no tell-tale lingerer to throw an awkwardgleam on an accoutrement and thus tell a story meant to be concealed.Troopers clustered together and formed squadrons, squadrons were mergedinto regiments which in turn swelled to brigades and brigades to divisions.It was only then that the extensive nature of the movement, which hadPleasanton at the head and Buford, Gregg and Kilpatrick all engaged in theexecution, could have been conjectured even by an eye capable of peeringthrough the darkness. It seemed scarcely an hour after the first awakeningwhen the formation was complete and the order to "March!" given; and therewas not even yet a gleam of red in the eastern sky when the whole commandwas in motion.
This large cavalry force, under Pleasanton as we have said, was composed ofthree divisions, commanded respectively by Buford, Gregg and Kilpatrick,all Brigadiers. The Rappahannock was crossed at as many different points,Buford with the First going over at Starke's Ford; Gregg, with the Second,at Sulphur Springs, four miles distant; and Kilpatrick, with the Third, atKelly's Ford, nine miles farther down and thirteen miles distant from theplace of crossing of the First. Stuart, the famous "Jeb," with hisconfederate cavalry, was known to be in force on the elevated ground at andaround Culpeper Court House, with his pickets and videttes extending to thevery edge of the Rappahannock; and a wide sweep of the Union force wasbelieved to be necessary to circumvent him. Detachments of rebel troopswere also known to hold all the prominent points between Culpeper andBrandy Station, where the brigades of Lomax and W. F. H. Lee were lying.
Pleasanton was over the river, with all his force before broad daylight--sorapid and successful had been the movement. The roads were dry and in asgood order as Virginia roads are ever allowed to be by the powers thatpreside over highways; and the force, still in the three divisions, sweptsouthward as silently as iron-shod animals have the capacity for bearingiron-accoutred riders. Napoleon _la Petit_ had never yet succeeded inintroducing gutta-percha scabbards for the swords of his troopers andgutta-percha shoes for their horses, even into the French cavalry; and theYankee troops of Pleasanton had all the disadvantages of the usual rattlingof bridle-bits, the clattering of sabres within steel scabbards, and thepounding of multitudinous hoofs upon the hard dry earth, the latteroccasionally a little muffled by an inch of gray powdery dust, choking theriders as it made their advance less noisy.
Spite of the clanking of hoof and steel, however, the advance was made withsuch silence and celerity that the greater portion of the rebel pickets onthe southern bank of the Rappahannock were captured, while theremainder--here and there one scenting danger afar off and holding anadvantage in knowledge of the roads--fled in dismay to report that thewhole Army of the Potomac, sappers and miners, pioneers and pontoniers,horse, foot and dragoons, was closing in upon Culpeper.
As the morning advanced and the light grew stronger, so that the danger andthe persons of the attacking forces could at once be better distinguished,skirmishing commenced with that portion of the rebel force, stationed inmore or less strength at various points and called to arms by their picketsbeing driven in upon them,--to meet and if possible check the advancingcolumns. Not long before they discovered that any effectual check to theforces which Pleasanton seemed to be pouring down every cross road andthrowing out from behind every clump of woods on the roadsides, wasimpossible; and they fell back, skirmishing.
At Brandy Station (droll and unfortunate name, destined to supply more badjokes at the expense of the dry throats of the army than almost any otherspot on Virginia soil), a junction of the three divisions of Union troopswas effected; and there, while that disposition was being made, a sharpfight took place between the First, under Buford, and the rebel cavalryunder Colonel Beale of the Ninth Virginia. But that struggle, though sharp,was only of brief continuance: out-foughten, and it must be confessed,outnumbered, the enemy was driven back from the Station and pursuedvigorously.
While the gallant Buford was thus occupied with the First, Gregg, with theSecond division was making a detour to the right and pouring down histroopers upon Culpeper from the north by the Ridgeville road, drivingbefore him upon the main body at the Court House a rebel brigade that hadheld the advance, under General Lomax (an officer whose name, we may aswell
say, apropos of the bad jokes of war-time, had caused nearly as manyof those verbal outrages upon English, as the unfortunate Brandy Stationitself).
Kilpatrick, meanwhile, with his Third division had not been idle. (When washe ever known to be idle, except when others held him in check, orineffective except when some other than himself misdirected his dashingenergy?) He had swept around to the left, nearly at the same time thatGregg made the detour to the right, and striking the Stevensburgh roadadvanced rapidly from the east towards Culpeper and the right of theenemy's position, which rested on Rawson's Cross-Roads, two milessouth-east of the Court-House. The rebels here made a stubborn resistance,and steel met steel and pistol-shot replied to sabre-stroke as it had notbefore done that day; but the odds were a little against them; they wereoutflanked by that incarnate "raider" of the Sussex mountains of NewJersey, who no doubt could trace back some drop of his blood to JohnnyArmstrong the riever of the Scottish border, or the moss troopers of theBog of Allen in Ireland; and they fell back to the town and beyond it,taking up new positions which they were not destined to hold much longerthan those they had abandoned.
But this brief shock of battle between the division of Kilpatrick and therebels opposed to it, did not roll away from the little hamlet of Rawson'sCross-Roads without the enacting of one of those sad tragedies, in theshedding of the blood of non-combatants, which seem so much more painfulthan the wholesale but expected slaughter of the field. Near the crossingof the roads there stood one brick house, of two stories, the only one ofthat material in the vicinity. This house, when Kilpatrick came up, wasoccupied by the rebel sharp-shooters, partially sheltered by the thickwalls and bringing down the federal cavalry from their saddles at everydischarge of their deadly rifles. Such obstructions in the way of anadvance, especially when they destroy as well as embarrass, are not apt tobe treated with much toleration by those who have the power to sweep themaway; and immediately when the imminence of the danger was discovered, oneof the federal batteries was ordered up to dislodge the sharp-shooters. Itdashed up with all the celerity that whipped and spurred and gallopinghorses could give it, halted within point-blank range, unlimbered, and sentshell, canister and case-shot into and through the obnoxious edifice in amanner and with a rapidity little calculated upon by the mason who quietlylaid his courses of bricks for the front and side-walls, in the quiet yearsbefore Virginia secession. The sharp-shooters were soon silenced anddislodged--at least all of them who were left after the last deadlydischarge of missiles had been poured in by the battery; and the house wasat once occupied, when the firing ceased, by a detachment of Union cavalrydismounted for that service. When those men entered the half-ruinedbuilding they first became aware of this extraordinary and deplorabletragedy, in which a little blood went so far in awakening regret andhorror. They heard cries of pain and shrieks of distress and fear, echoingthrough the building, in other accents than those which could belong towounded soldiers--the tones of women! And in the cellar they found thepainful solution of the mystery--more painful far, to them, than a hundredtimes the death and suffering under ordinary circumstances. In that cellar,among smoke, and blood and dust, were huddled twenty or thirtynon-combatants, men, women and children; and in their midst lay an old man,quite dead and the upper part of his head half carried away by a portion ofshell, while fallen partially across his legs was the body of his son ofsixteen, his boyish features scarcely yet stilled in the repose of deathfrom a ghastly hurt that had torn away the arm and a part of the shoulder.Two women lay near, one dying from a blow on the temple which had driven inthe bones of the skull like the crushing of an egg-shell, and the otheruttering the most heart-rending of the cries and groans under the agony ofa crushed leg and a foot literally blown to atoms. A sad sight!--aharrowing spectacle, even for war-time! And how had it been occasioned?
It would seem that on the approach of the cavalry and the commencement offighting in the neighborhood, this party of non-combatants had crowded intothis house--no doubt long to be known in the local traditions of the placeas that of James Inskip,--and taken refuge in the cellar, believing that init, as the only brick house in the vicinity, they would be safest from themissiles of the opposing forces. And so they would have been, safe enoughbeyond a doubt, had not the rebel commander, unaware of the presence ofnon-combatants in the building, or heedless of the common law of humanitynot to expose them to unnecessary danger in any military operation,recklessly placed his sharp-shooters in shelter there and thus drawn thefire of the fatal battery. Two or three of the shells, crashing through thehouse, had fallen into the cellar and exploded in the very midst of thetrembling skulkers in their place of fancied security,--with the sadresults that have been recorded, and which none more deeply deplored thanthe men who had unwittingly slaughtered the aged and the helpless. Some ofthe Richmond papers told harrowing stories, a few days after, of the"inhuman barbarity of the dastardly Yankees who wantonly butchered thoseinoffensive men and helpless women and children in James Inskip's house atRawson's Cross-Roads"; but they forgot, as newspapers on both sides of thesad struggle have too often done during its continuance, to add one word ofthe explanatory and extenuating circumstances!
By the time that Kilpatrick, with the Third, had concluded the episode ofRawson's Cross-Roads and driven the opposing forces back upon the town,Buford, with the First, after chasing the rebel cavalry under Beale tomoderate satisfaction, had come up from the south, and the junction of thethree divisions was accomplished.
On the elevated site of Culpeper and in the uneven streets of that old townwhich bears, like so many of its compeers, shabby recollections of Englisharistocracy that for some cause seem to suit it better than the thinpretence of democratic government,--there Stuart, than whom the rebellionhas developed no more restless or more active foe of the Union cause,appeared determined to make a last and effectual stand. With a celerityworthy of his past reputation he placed sharp-shooters in houses thatcommanded the Union advance, planted batteries at advantageous positions inthe streets, and threw up barricades of all the unemployed carts and wagonsand all the idle timber and loose fence-rails lying about the town, in amanner which would have endeared him to the Parisians of the time of LouisPhilippe. Right and left and on every hand, defending these obstructionsand supporting the batteries, dashed his mounted "Virginia gentlemen," oncethe very Paladins of their knightly class, when Fauquier and the WhiteSulphur saw the pleasant sport of tilting at the ring in the presence ofthe bright-eyed Queens of Beauty of the Old Dominion,--now brought down tothe level and compelled to contest the fatal advance, of a "horde of Yankeetailors on horseback"!
General Pleasanton, the actual as well as nominal head of the Unionadvance, held his position on an eminence a short distance east of thetown, from which an excellent view of the whole situation could becommanded, and whence he directed all the movements with the rapidity of asoldier and the coolness of a man thoroughly in confidence with himself andwell assured of the material of his command. He had won with the sametroops before, even when placed at disadvantage: that day he felt that thegame was in his own hands and that he could play it rapidly and yetsteadily. The thing which worst troubled him as from that little eminencehe looked out from under his bent brows, over the scene which was towitness so short, sharp and decisive a conflict,--was the knowledge howseriously the stubborn resistance offered by the rebels was likely to perilthe non-combatants in the town, and how inevitably, from the same cause,the old town itself, just tumble-down enough to be historical andpicturesque, must suffer from the flying shot and shell that know so littlemercy. He had hoped, the first surprise succeeding, to take Culpeperagainst but slight resistance; and it was no part of his plan (it never_is_ part of the plan of any truly brave man!) to batter the town if thatmeasure could be avoided; but the balances and compensations of war areappreciable if not gratifying, musketry on one side is nearly sure to beanswered in kind by the other, and artillery (when there happens to be any,and wo to the party without the "big guns" when the other has them
atcommand!)--artillery has a very natural habit of replying to the thunderousdefiance sent out by its hostile kinsmen. Culpeper, too well defended, wasnot the less certain to be taken, while it was the more certain to bearmarks of the conflict that only the demolition of half its buildings coulderase.
God pity and help the residents of any town given up to the ruthlesspassions of a fierce soldiery--to plunder and rapine and murder,--afterwhat is so inadequately described as "taking by _storm_"! When for themoment hell is let loose upon the earth, as if to teach us that if we haveyet something of the god lingering in our fallen manhood, we have yetsomething of the arch-fiend remaining to show how we accompanied him inhis fall. When roofs blaze because a reckless hand has dashed a torchtherein in the very wantonness of destruction. When the golden vessels ofthe church service and the sacred little memorials of happy hours inboudoir and bed-room are alike torn from their places, dashed into piecesand ground under armed heels, as if the inanimate objects bore a share ofthe wrong of resistance and could feel a part of the suffering meted out toit. When murder is for the time licensed and the blood of the defender ofhis door-stone and his hearth dabbles his gray hair on one or the other ofthose sacred places, and there is no thought of punishment for the redhand, except as God may silently mete it in the years to come.When--saddest and worst of all,--the matron is outraged before the eyes ofher bound and blaspheming husband; and young girls, the peach-bloom ofmaidenhood not yet brushed from the cheek, are torn shrieking from the armsthat would shelter them, to be so polluted and dishonored by a ruffiantouch that but yesterday would have seemed impossible to their dainty fleshas the rising up of a fiend from the lower pit to rend the white garmentsof one of the redeemed in heaven,--so polluted and dishonored that a prayerfor the mercy of death bubbles up from the lips at the last word beforeresistance becomes insensibility.
This wreck of a "storm" of human license is terrible--so terrible that theeffects of the convulsions of nature, the tempest, the tornado and even theearthquake, sink into insignificance beside them. Heaven be praised thatduring the War for the Union, called by our English cousins so"fratricidal," we have as yet known no Badajos or even a sacking of Pekin!But only second to such scenes in horror and scarcely second in terror,have been some of those supplied when the battle issue of the two armieswas joined near some quiet country town before lying peaceful andinoffensive, or when military necessity has made its houses temporaryfortifications and its streets the points of desperate attacks and asdesperate defences. Then what crashing of shot and shell through houses;what demolition of all that had before been sacred; what huddling togetherof the frightened and the defenceless who never before dreamed that, thoughwar was in the land, it would break so near to _them_; what mad gatheringof valuables and impotent preparations for flight that would be moredangerous than remaining; what whistling of bullets that seemed eachbilleted for a defenceless breast; what thunderous discharges of cannonthat made every non-combatant limb quiver and every delicate cheek growbloodless; what shouts in the street and cries of terror and dismay withindoors; what trembling peeps through half-closed shutters, with an imagineddeath even in every such momentary exposure; what cowerings in cellars andhidings beneath piles of old lumber in garrets; what reports of defeat orvictory to the party that was feared or favored; what claspings of childrenand ungovernable weepings of hysteria; what prayers and what execrations;what breakings-up and destructions of all that had been, and whatrevelations of the desolation that is to be!
Such, since the breaking out of the rebellion, has been the situation ofmany a before-peaceful town, in many a State that once rested happily underthe shadow of the Eagle's wing. And such was the situation of one fated oldtown that day, when Gregg from the north, Kilpatrick from the east andBuford from the south, came up almost simultaneously and their forcescharged recklessly into the streets of Culpeper Court-House. The excitementand confusion in the town at once became all that we have so feeblyendeavored to indicate--women shrieking in terror, soldiers groaning withtheir wounds, children crying from fright; and blended with these and ahundred other inharmonious sounds, the shouts in the street, the buglecalls, the hissing of bullets, the rumble of artillery wheels, the brokenthunder of the feet of trampling horses, the occasional crash ofhalf-demolished houses, and the hoarse roar of the batteries as theybelched out their missiles of death and destruction. Culpeper, for a shortperiod, was a veritable pandemonium in miniature; and no detail can add tothe force of that brief but comprehensive description.
Near the railroad bridge spanning the little stream running nearly throughthe centre of the town, the rebels had discovered a strategic point of nolittle consequence, and they had posted there a battery of several pieces,well served and annoying the advance of the Third division very materially.The battery seemed to be placed there, not only to obstruct the advance butto protect a train of cars just then being loaded by the rebels above, withmunitions and other articles of consequence, preparatory to a start downthe railroad southward. Battery D., Second New York Artillery, ordered forthat service, ran up its sections at a gallop, unlimbered and poured inshot and shell, grape and canister upon the train, in such disagreeablerapidity as sent the half loaded cars away towards the Rapidan with all thespeed that could be suddenly mustered. Still the battery at the bridgeremained, firing rapidly and cutting up the head of Kilpatrick's column ina manner calculated to make the General gnash his teeth in indignation. Thespace to the bridge was uphill, accordingly raked downward by the rebelfire; the bridge itself was narrow and the footing for horses seriouslydamaged by the railroad tracks that crossed it with their switches andlines of slippery iron. Still it was known that that bridge must becleared, at any cost, or the advance through Culpeper would be a mostbloody one if accomplished at all. Just as Kilpatrick was about to order acharge of cavalry to clear that bridge and if possible capture the pieces,his intention seemed to be anticipated and a squadron of Stuart's cavalryrode down and took post, dismounted, behind the battery, in position tosupport, while three or four companies of rebel riflemen followed, ready todo deadly execution with their pieces against any troops attempting tocharge, and to fall upon that force with resistless fury at the moment oftheir weakness, if the guns should be ridden over! No pleasant prospect,as the Sussex raider thought, and for a moment he apparently wavered inintention, while the battery played heavily and every instant saw one ormore of his best troopers biting the dust of the causeway below.
But this momentary indecision, whether or not it would have continued muchlonger of his own volition, was not destined to do so when the will ofanother came into play. A horseman dashed rapidly over to the spot whereKilpatrick was momentarily halted, from Pleasanton a few hundreds of yardsaway, running a fearful gauntlet of the enemy's fire, as he did so, from abattery that had just wheeled into position and opened down a narrowcross-street to the left,--spoke a few quick words to the General and thenawaited the movement that was to follow. And it was not long that he or thecommander who sent him needed to wait. The command had been: "Clear thatbridge and take the battery, at all hazards!" and Kilpatrick only neededthat support of his own judgment to order a charge which he would have beenbest pleased, if he could only have gone back to be a Colonel for a fewmoments, to lead in person. His eye rolled questioningly over the Third fora moment, and then the rapid words of command followed. Only a certainnumber of cavalry could be employed upon that dangerous service, withoutmaking the carnage greater by throwing the troopers literally in the way ofeach other; and it was the Second New York, Harris Light Guard, a troopwhich had already won honor on every field touched by the hoofs of theirhorses,--called out for that quick, sharp, perilous duty that everysquadron in the command probably coveted.
The gallant Second received the order with loud cheers that came nigh toimitating the well-known rebel fox-hunting yell, for some of their bestfellows had fallen ingloriously and the human tiger was not only unchainedbut set on horseback. They formed column by fours with a rapidity whichtold of the
fierce hunger of conflict; and when the bugles rang out thecharge, the dusty and smoke-stained riders returned their now-uselesscarbines to their slings, drew sabres, and driving their spurs rowel deepinto the flanks of horses that seemed almost as anxious as themselves,dashed forward towards the bridge. Their ringing shouts did not cease asthey galloped on, and their sword-blades, if they grew thinner in number,still gleamed as brightly as ever in the sunlight, as they measured thatnarrow but fatal space, while round after round of grape and canister,carbine-bullets, musket-balls and rifle-shots, burst into their faces andmowed down their flanks as they swept on. Saddles were emptied, horses wentdown with cries of pain more fearful than any that man can utter, and bravemen went headlong into the dust from which they would never rise again inlife. But the progress of the charging squadron did not seem to be delayeda moment. The rebel gunners of the battery were reloading for yet one moredischarge, when, just in the midst of that operation, over the bridge andupon them burst the head of that column which seemed as if nothing in theway of human missiles had power to stay it. Before the gray and begrimedcannoniers could withdraw their rammers the troopers were in their midst.Then followed that fierce cutting and thrusting of artillery swords andcavalry sabres, that interchange of revolver-shots and crushing of humanbones under the feet of trampling horses, incident to the taking of anybattery that is sharply attacked and bravely defended. A little of this,but still under heavy fire from behind,--and the guns were captured, withall their men and horses left alive.
And yet the work of the Second New York in that quarter was by no meansfinished. That steady and murderous fire continued from up the street, asthe infantry and the dismounted cavalry of the support fell back; and itwas only by one more sweeping charge that the annoyance could be removed.Scarcely any one knew whence came the voice that ordered that secondcharge, but the blood of the troopers was up and they made it gallantly. Inthree minutes thereafter a broken and flying mass, far up the street, wasall that remained of the supporting force; but a fearfully diminishednumber of the cavalrymen rode back to assist in sending the capturedbattery to the rear. We shall have occasion, presently, to know somethingmore of these two charges, undoubtedly the most spirited events of a day onwhich all the Union troops and many of the rebels reflected honor upon thecauses they supported.
Immediately after the clearing of the bridge a gallant dash was made byGen. Custer, the "boy general with the golden-locks" (the man who has madea solemn vow, it is said, never to shorten those locks until he ridesvictoriously into Richmond) leading the charge in person, with portions ofthe First Vermont and First Michigan cavalry, against a section of abattery, stationed nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge and withina hundred or two yards of the front of Stuart's main body. These pieceswere worked by as obstinate a set of gray-backs as ever rammed home a rebelcartridge; and the gunners, defiant of Custer's detour to the left toescape a direct raking fire, and apparently relying upon the main bodylying so near them, continued to load and fire until the federal leader andhis men were literally on the top of the pieces and fairly riding themunder foot. Guns and caissons were taken, while the support relied uponseemed to be so paralyzed by the daring of the whole affair as scarcely tooffer any resistance,--the horses hitched to the pieces, the guns limberedup, and the rebel gunners even forced to mount and drive their lost cannonto join the others in the rear!
A considerable rebel force of cavalry, artillery and infantry were by thistime in full retreat below the town, along the line of the Orange andAlexandria railroad; and the Fifth New York cavalry were sent in pursuit.The gallant troopers of the Fifth charged at a gallop the moment they camewithin sweeping distance of the foe, but the high embankment of the roadbroke the charge, and the detour necessary to make a more advantageousapproach deprived the gallant boys of their half-won laurels and allowedthe flying enemy to escape.
While Kilpatrick was thus engaged, Buford and Gregg, with the First andSecond, had been by no means idle. Dashing into the town, each from hischosen direction, the troopers of each leaped barricades and drove therebels before them wherever encountered upon open ground; and a part of theforce of either division, dismounted, skirmished from corner to corner anddislodged the sharp-shooters one by one from all their holes andhiding-places. Sometimes stubbornly resisted, at others seeming to have nofoe worthy of their steel, the three divisions won their way through theold town; and the cavalry of Stuart, up to that time so often declaredinvincible, were at last driven pell-mell out of Culpeper and back to themomentary refuge of Pony Mountain. Even there they were again dislodged,the First Michigan cavalry accomplishing a feat which might have surprisedeven Halstead Rowan of this chronicle--routing a whole brigade by chargingup a hill so steep that some of the riders slipped backwards over the tailsof their horses, their saddles bearing them company!
The town of Culpeper was finally occupied at one o'clock, P. M.; and notmany hours after the ridge behind it and Pony Mountain were in the hands ofthe dashing cavalrymen. Retreating towards the Rapidan, they were pursuedtowards Raccoon Ford on the left and centre by Buford and Kilpatrick withthe First and Third divisions, while Gregg, with the Second, pushed a heavyRebel force before him to Rapidan Station. By nightfall the rebels had beendriven to the north bank of the Rapidan, where both forces bivouacked thatnight in line of battle.
Monday morning saw the recommencement of hostilities and the retreat of therebels to the south side of the river, leaving the federal forces to holdthe country between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, with all thestrategic points therein, Culpeper included. Stuart, it was said, hadoften boasted that "no Yankee force could drive _him_ from Culpeper!" andif such a boast was really made and afterwards so signally disproved by the"horde of Yankee tailors on horseback," the fact only furnishes one moreadditional proof to Benedick's declaration that he would live and die abachelor, so soon followed by his marriage with Beatrice,--that humanity isvery uncertain and that human calculations are fallible to a degree painfulto contemplate!
Such were the general features of the crossing of the Rappahannock and theBattle of Culpeper, one of the sharpest cavalry affairs of the war, andperhaps more important as illustrating the reliability to which the Unionhorse had attained from a beginning little less than contemptible, thanfrom the mere military advantage gained by the movement. It now becomesnecessary to descend to a few particulars connected with the event of theday, and briefly to trace the influence on the fortunes of some of theleading characters in this narration, exercised by the advance of GeneralPleasanton and his dashing brigadiers.
It has been seen that at a certain period of that day the division ofKilpatrick was held temporarily in check by the rebel battery posted at therailroad-bridge, and that for a moment the General, aware of the necessityof removing the obstruction if the direct advance through Culpeper was tobe continued, yet hesitated in ordering the charge which must be made inthe face of such overwhelming difficulty, until a peremptory direction fromPleasanton left him no option in the matter. And it is to personalmovements of that particular period that attention must at this moment bedirected.
Just when he made the discovery through his field glass of the havoc beingwrought by the rebel battery and the momentary hesitation, Pleasanton, whodid not happen to be in the best of humors with reference to it, was placedin the same situation in which Wellington for a few moments found himselfon the day of Waterloo, when he employed the button-bagman with the blueumbrella under his arm, to carry some important orders. He was, in short,out of aide-de-camps. One by one they had been sent away to differentpoints, and it so chanced, just then, that none had returned. Somethingvery much like an oath muttered between the lips of the impatient veteranof forty, and one exclamation came out so that there was no difficulty inrecognizing it:
"Nobody here when everybody is worst wanted! I wish the d--l had the wholepack of them!"
"Perhaps _I_ can do what you wish, General."
The words came from a young man in civilian's dress--gr
ay pants andbroad-brimmed felt hat, but with a military suspicion in his coat of lightblue flannel,--who stood very near the commander, his horse's bridle overarm and a large field glass in hand, and who had apparently been scanningwith much interest a scene of blood in which it was neither his duty norhis disposition to take part.
"You?" and the veteran turned upon him, with something very like a laugh onhis lips. "You? Humph! Do you know what I want?"
"Some one to carry an order, I suppose!"
"Exactly! Over that causeway, to Kilpatrick at the bridge. Do you see howthat flanking battery to the left is raking every thing, and the one infront is throwing beyond Kil's position? The chances are about even thatthe man who starts never gets there! Now do you wish to go?"
"No objection on that account!" was the reply of the young man, who seemedto be on terms of very easy intimacy with the General, as indeed he was,--aprivileged visitor, who had accompanied him in the advance, but eminently"unattached" and thus far neither fighting nor expected to fight.
"The d--l you haven't! Well, ----, that is certainly cool, for _you_! Nevermind--if you like a little personal taste of what war really is, takethis," and he scribbled a few words on a slip of paper on his raisedknee--"take this and get it to Kilpatrick as soon as you can. If you do notcome back again, I shall send word to your family."
"Oh, yes, thank you, General; but I shall come back again!" He had swunghimself into the saddle of his gray, while Pleasanton was writing, and theveteran held the paper for one instant in his hand and looked into his facewith a strange interest. What he saw there seemed to satisfy him, and hehanded the paper with a nod. The volunteer aide-de-camp received it with abow, and the next moment was flying towards the front of the Third, ridingsplendidly, running the gauntlet that has before been suggested, butuntouched, and delivering his orders in very quick time and at emphaticallythe right moment. The important movement which immediately followed hasalready been narrated, in its bearing on the result of the day; but therewere other effects not less important when personal destinies are takeninto the account.
Gregg, who espied something on the right, that was likely to be hidden fromKilpatrick until it discovered itself by unpleasant consequences, had sentover an aide with a word of warning; and nearly at the same moment when thevolunteer messenger from Pleasanton reached the brigadier, the officer fromGregg rode rapidly up from his direction. Both delivered their messages ina breath, and then both fell back at a gesture from the General. The aidefrom Gregg was turning his horse to ride back again to his post, when hecaught a glance at the somewhat strangely attired man who had come in fromPleasanton. From his lower garments that glance naturally went up to hishat, and thence, by an equally natural movement, to his face. The darkbrows of the officer bent darker in an instant, and perhaps there was thatin his gaze which the other _felt_, (there are those who assert that suchthings are possible), for the next instant there was an answering glanceand another pair of brows were knitted not less decidedly. Those two menwere serving (more or less) in the same cause, but they looked as little aspossible like two warm-hearted comrades in arms--much more as if they wouldhave been delighted to take each other by the throat and mutually exertthat gentle pressure calculated to expel a life or two!
Pleasanton was just calling out the Second to take the battery and clearthe bridge. While he was doing so, the evil genius of one of those mendrove them into collision. The messenger from Gregg, who wore theshoulder-straps and other accoutrements of a Captain on staff service, butwith a cavalry sabre at his belt,--after the pause of a moment and whilethe other was still fixedly regarding him, spurred his horse close up tothe side of the gray ridden by the civilian, and accosted him in a tone andwith a general manner that he seemed to take no pains to render amiable:
"What are _you_ doing here?"
"On staff service, Captain. How is your head?" was the reply, with quite asmuch of sneer in the tone as the other had displayed of arrogance.
"What do you call yourself just now?--'Horace Townsend' still?" was theCaptain's next inquiry.
"To most others, yes: to you, Captain Hector Coles, just now, I am--" andhe bent his mouth so close to the ear of the other that he could have nodifficulty in hearing him, though he spoke the last words in a hoarsewhisper that has even escaped _us_!
"I thought so, all the while!" was the reply, an expression of malignantjoy crossing the face. "The same infernal coward--I knew it!"
The face of the man who had been Horace Townsend seemed convulsed by aspasm of mortal agony the instant after, but it gave place almost asquickly to an expression of set, deadly anger, the eyes blazing and thecheeks livid. He leaned close to the Captain and even grasped his arm as ifto make sure that he should not get away before he had finished his wholesentence.
"Captain Hector Coles," he said, still in the same low, hoarse voice, butso near that the other could easily hear--"you called me the same name fiveor six weeks ago at the Crawford House, and I am afraid that I _proved_that it belonged to _you_!"
"I told you that I would kill you some day for that impertinence, and I_will_!" was the reply of the Captain, terrible anger in his face.
"No--if you kill me at all, and I do not think you will,--it will bebecause you believe me, with good reason, something more of a favorite witha lady whose name it is not necessary to mention, than yourself!"
This insulting boast of preference and allusion to Margaret Hayley werequite as well understood as they needed to be. There was another lividcheek, just then, and a fierce answering fire in the eye which told howdeeply the barb rankled. But before the Captain could speak, to utter wordsthat must have been equally bitter and blasphemous, the civilian continued:
"You challenged me for what I said at the White Mountains, Captain HectorColes--you man with a swimming in the head! I refused your challenge then,but I accept it now. If you are not the coward you called _me_, you willfight me here and instantly!"
"Here and now?" These were all the words that the surprised and possiblyhorrified Captain could utter.
"Exactly!" was the reply, the voice still low and hoarse but rapid andwithout one indication of tremor. "I told you that I was on staff service.So I am. I have just brought General Kilpatrick orders from GeneralPleasanton to clear that bridge and take the battery yonder that is doingus so much damage. Ah! by George--there goes another of our best fellows!"This as a round shot came tearing into the ranks just ahead, killing one ofthe troopers and his horse. Then he resumed, in the same low rapid tone:"You see those New York boys forming there, to do the work. Ride with themand with _me_, if you DARE, Captain Hector Coles, and see who goesfurthest! That is my duel!"
"_I?_--I am on staff duty--not a mere cavalryman!" There was hesitation inthe voice and deadly pallor on the cheek: the civilian heard the one andsaw the other.
"Refuse to go with me and fight out our quarrel in that manner," theexcited voice went on, "and by the God who made us both, the whole armyshall know who is the coward! More--" and again his mouth was very near tothe ear of the other--"_she_ shall know it!"
There are spells by which the fiend can always be raised, without muchdoubt, however troublesome it may be to find any means by which to lay himafterwards. To Captain Hector Coles there was one conjuration irresistible,and that had been used in the present instance. Shame before the whole armywas nothing--it may be doubted, in fact, whether he had not known somethingof that infliction before at least a portion of the army, and survived itwithout difficulty. But shame before Margaret Hayley, after the boasts hehad used, the underrating of others in which he had indulged, and theworship of physical courage which he knew to be actually a foible in hernature?--no, that was not to be thought of for one moment! Better wounds ordeath, out of the way of both which he had before so skilfully kept, thanthat! This reflection did not occupy many seconds, and his heavy brow wasas black as thunder as he turned short round in the saddle and almosthissed at his tempter:
"Come on, then, fool as well as coward, and
see how long before I willteach you a lesson!"
Horace Townsend--as he must still be called--did not say another word inreply. The Light Guard were by that time formed for the charge, and hemerely said, in the hearing of all:
"Come--the Captain and I are going to take a ride with the boys! Who willlend me a sword?"
The strange demand for a moment drew general attention to him, and amongother regards that of Kilpatrick. The idea of a civilian throwing himselfinto such a charge seemed to strike him at once, and before one of theorderlies could draw out his weapon and present it, the General had handedhis, with the words:
"Here is mine!--Mind that you bring it back again!"
Kilpatrick unslung his sword and held up the scabbard with the blade, butthe new volunteer merely drew out the blade with a bow and driving spursinto his gray dashed forward to the head of the column, Captain HectorColes close beside him. Perhaps no two men ever went into battle side byside, with precisely the same relative feelings, since carving up men withthe broadsword became a profession. Neither, it seems almost certain, hadthe least thought of devotion to the country, of hatred to the rebellion,or even of _esprit du corps_, moving him to the contest. The one was intentupon revenging an insult received long before, by getting the other killedin proving him a coward,--and may have had another but still personalmotive: that other was equally anxious to keep up his own reputation in theeyes of a woman, and to get removed out of his way a man whom he believedto be a rival, but who was really no more in his way than Shakspeare'snobody who "died a' Wednesday." Both half blind with rage and hate, andboth, therefore--let the truth be told--bad soldiers! Both following apetty whim or facing death as a mere experiment, and neither with the mostdistant thought of the fate that rode close behind, to protect or to slay,and each alike inevitably!
Just then the bugle rang out, the commands "Column forward! Trot, march!Gallop, march! Charge!" rang out in quick succession, and away dashed theSecond, with the results that have already been foreshadowed in the generalaccount of the movement. But though armies and the various smaller bodiesthat form armies, are great aggregates of manhood, they are something more;and who can measure, in reading an account of that bridge so gallantlycarried, that attack so splendidly repulsed, or that point of battle heldagainst every odds, with the conclusion--"Our loss was only two hundred [ortwo thousand], in killed and wounded,"--who can measure, we ask, the amountof personal suffering involved in that movement and its result?--who canform any guess at the variety of personal adventure, depression,elevation, hope, fear, delirious joy and maddening horror, going to make upthat event spoken of so flippantly as one great total?
The rebel battery beyond the bridge had been throwing round shot and shell,as has already been observed, reaching far beyond Kilpatrick's front anddoing heavy damage. It was inevitable that as the advance of the attackingcolumn was seen, that fire should be redoubled. And before they had crossedhalf the intervening distance the rain of bullets from the supporting rebelriflemen began to blend with the fall of heavier projectiles, making a verystorm of destructive missiles, more difficult for horsemen to breast thanany opposing charge of their own weight could have been, splitting heads,crashing out brains, boring bodies full of holes from which the blood andthe life went out together, and hurling horses and riders to the groundwith such frequency that wounded men had their little remaining breathtrampled out by their own comrades and every fallen animal formed atemporary barricade over which another fell and became disabled. Throughthe air around them rang the scream of shell and the shrill whistle ofbullets, blended with the inevitable cry that rose as some bullet found afatal mark, and the roar of agony when a horse was hurled desperatelywounded and yet living to the ground. The shout with which the troopers hadat first broken into their charge, did not die away; and it did not cease,in fact, until the command had done its work--until the battery was takenand the supports scattered by the supplementary onset; but with what soundsit was blent before the cavalrymen reached the rebel guns, only those whohave listened to the same horrible confusion of noises can form the mostdistant idea. To all others the attempt at description must be as vague asthe thought of Armageddon or the Day of Falling Mountains!
If those sights and sounds cannot be described, who shall describe thesensations of those who then for the first time rode point-blank into thevery face of death? Not we, certainly. The very man who has experiencedthem can tell no more, one hour after, of what existed at the time, thanone moment's rift in a drifting cloud reveals of the starlit heaven above.
What Captain Hector Coles really felt when first meeting that iron andleaden storm so unlike the usual accompaniments of his "staff service," maybe guessed but can never be known. He rode on gallantly, at least for atime: that was quite enough.
What the _ci-devant_ Horace Townsend experienced may be easily enoughindicated, and in one word--_madness_. He was stark, raving mad! The angerfelt a few moments before; the novelty of the position; the motion of ahorse that bore him nobly: the sword, that was no holiday weapon but athing of might and death, clasped by his unaccustomed but nervous hand; theshouts of fierce bravery, the groans of anguish and the scream of missiles;above all, the rousing for the first time of that human tiger which sleepswithin most of us until the fit moment of awakening comes--no witches'cauldron on a blasted heath ever brewed such a mixture to craze a humanbrain, as that he was so suddenly drinking; and it may be said that hisrational self knew nothing of what followed. He was riding on--it mighthave been on horseback on the solid earth, in a fiery chariot through theair, or on the crest of a storm-wave at sea--he could have formed no ideawhich. When he came within striking distance of the foe, he was swingingthat heavy sword of Kilpatrick's, at something, everything, he knew notwhat, that seemed to stand in his way. Nothing appeared to hurt him,nothing to stop him or the gallant gray he rode. There was a red mist overhis eyes, and the thunder of twenty judgments rang in his ears: he knew nomore. He was mad, stark mad--so drunk with the wine of human blood and thefiendish joy of battle, that the powers of heaven might have looked down inpity on him as upon a new and better developed descendant of the originalCain, smiting all his brothers to a death that could not satisfy the hotthirst of his evil soul.
Only once he seemed to be for a moment clearly conscious. It was when theyrode full upon the battery, trampling down men and horses and sabring everything that had life, but under a fire which seemed to rain from the openedwindows of hell. He saw a man who had thus far kept at his side, recoil,rein his horse backward, leap over the fallen friends and foes who barredhis flight, and dash down the track towards the bridge. He saw, and knewCaptain Hector Coles; and in his madness he had reason enough left to shout"Aha! Coward! Coward!" and then the red mist closed again over his eyes andhe fought on. He did not see what followed before the flying man reachedthe bridge--the fragment of a shell that struck him in the back andliterally tore him in pieces, horse and rider going down and lying stonedead together.
He could not have told, under oath, who gave the command for thatsupplemental charge upon the supporting force. And yet _his_ tongue utteredit, and he was in the front, still waving his sword through the red mistand letting it fall with demoniac force upon every thing that stood in hisway,--when the last hope of the rebels was thus broken. He had known butlittle, most of the time: after that he knew literally nothing except thathis fierce joy had turned to pain. As if through miles of forest he heardthe notes of the bugles sounding the recall; and he had a dim consciousnessof hearing the soldiers speaking of him in words that would have given himgreat pleasure had he been alive to appreciate them! Then he was back atthe bridge. Kilpatrick was there, somebody cheered, and the General heldout his hand to him. He tried to hand him back the sword that had done suchgood service, said: "I have brought it--back--" and spoke no more. Then andonly then, as he fell from his blown and beaten gray, they knew that hisfirst charge had a likelihood of being his last--that a Minie bullet,received so long before that some of the blood la
y dried upon his coat,had passed through him from breast to back,--thank God not from back tobreast!--so near the heart that even the surgeon could not say whether ithad touched or missed it!
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 24