Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon)

by William Martin

  Lee said, “I’ll tell you what I told your cousin: You can’t prove yourself until you’re in the field. But you descend from a man who fought on April nineteenth and marched with Washington. That’s the kind of breeding we’re looking for.”

  In truth, it was not duty or patriotism that drove Heywood. But if Amelia wished for a young man in uniform, he would wear one.

  On a Sunday in late August, a train came out of Boston to Camp Meigs in Readville, a gridiron of tents on the dusty plain between the Neponset River and the Blue Hills. The train carried the governor, his aides, and the families of many of those young Harvard officers.

  Dorothy Wedge Warren and several of the other mothers had made a white silk banner. On one side was the Massachusetts coat of arms, on the other, the Latin words Fide et constantia, faith and constancy.

  That afternoon, the regiment proudly carried the banner as they passed in review before their loved ones.

  “Who could believe,” said Theodore as the drums beat and the dust rose, “that in six short weeks our boys have been turned into officers.”

  “And who could believe,” said George Jr., “that those Irish hod carriers and stevedores could learn to keep step.”

  “Let us hope that they fight as well as they march,” said Samuel Bunting, who had come to see his nephew.

  “I think they all look smashing,” said Amelia, who had come out with her family.

  “Pray that they smash the Rebels,” said Uncle Theodore.

  Dorothy glanced over her shoulder at Amelia. If there was anything good about her son’s enlistment, it was that he would soon pass from the girl’s orbit. In those dark days, a mother might not be able to save her son from putting on a soldier’s uniform, but she would do what she could to protect him from marrying before his time.

  After the parade, the young officers mingled a final time with their families in a pavilion that had been set up on the edge of the grounds. Though the sides of the great tent were open to the breeze, it was hot under the canvas, and the dust from the field puffed in.

  Dorothy did not care. She had not seen her son in six weeks. But she was shocked at how hard and angular his body seemed now that his shoulders were squared by lieutenant’s bars, and by how mature he seemed now that a mustache curled around the corners of his mouth.

  He ran his hand over the mustache and said, “Do you like it, Mother?”

  “Oh . . . I’m not the one to ask. Let some young lady answer that.” Dorothy gave a little laugh that they both knew was as false as the sentiment. “Now, then—”

  But his eyes were lifting from her face and scanning the crowded tent.

  “She’s over there, Douglass,” said Dorothy sharply, “behind you. She’s giving something to Heywood Wedge. Apparently, she is as drawn to his uniform as to yours.”

  “Mother—”

  “Oh, darling, enough of other people”—Dorothy threw her arms around him and tried not to cry—“I’m so worried . . . and so proud.”

  “Father would have wanted me to do this, Mother.”

  “Yes . . . yes. And he would have wanted you to have this.” From her handbag she withdrew a gold locket that she pressed into his hands and said, “I gave this to him when he went to Bleeding Kansas to fight slavery. It was all that came back of him.”

  Douglass took the locket with awe. “‘From D. to A.’—from you to father—‘With All My Love, May God Keep You.’ He will, Mother. He will.”

  “Open it, dear.”

  There were two tiny clasps. Douglass fumbled with them, so his mother slipped the locket from his hand and pressed on one. The locket opened to reveal a miniature of the young and angelic Dorothy Wedge, her hair raven black, her skin the color of porcelain.

  “Mother, you were . . . you are beautiful.”

  She laughed as her eyes filled. “I was beautiful. Now . . . there’s another compartment, a secret compartment, where you’ll find a small sentiment from me.”

  Douglass went to open it, but his mother put a hand on his. “Not now, dear. Not here. Not ever, unless I die before you return.”

  “Mother, don’t say that.”

  She put her hands on his arm. “Wear the locket. Protect the sentiment, because it shows my trust in you, which shows you my deepest love.”

  “I know you love me, Mother.”

  “And I knew Lydia loved me, but I never knew how much until she passed me a secret codicil in her will. It told of two gilt-edged envelopes and a small gift of majestic proportion. I transcribed the codicil and put it into the locket.”

  Douglass laughed. “Mother, isn’t all this secrecy a bit silly?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t know what the gift is, or where. I know only that Lydia trusted me. She wanted me to pass the information to a trusted heir, preferably female. If you have a daughter, pass it on to her. Once Harvard educates women, open the locket. If that never comes to pass, you are to open the locket one month before the Tercentenary.”

  “Mother, I’m going off to war. What do I care about some distant tercentenary?”

  “You should care because you’ll be there, Douglass, an old man, like Grandfather Caleb, tottering across the Yard at the head of the procession.”

  Douglass slipped the locket around his neck. “I’ll be in my nineties, Mother.”

  “But you will be there, Douglass.” She spoke with sudden ferocity, as if to convince herself and allay her fears. Then she pulled her son close to her breast. “You will be. You must be.”

  Then the sound of a bugle burst through the din of conversation, and a sergeant announced that the officers had to return to their duties. A great gasp of sadness rose to the top of the pavilion and then seemed to boil back down on everyone. Mothers embraced their sons, while fathers stepped back bravely and stood stiffly.

  Soon, Dorothy was swept along with the crowd, back to the carriages that would take them to the train. As she turned to wave a final time, she saw her son and Amelia embracing. Then Amelia handed Douglass a card that seemed to fill him with emotion. He brought it to his lips, as if to kiss it, then put it into his breast pocket.

  Dorothy sat in the carriage and fixed her eyes on the largest of the rocky hills above them. And she told herself that her jealousy was no more than selfishness, that whatever had just passed between Douglass and Amelia was as timeless as the Blue Hills themselves. And then she began to cry.

  A short distance away, Heywood was also watching Douglass and Amelia. He was still tingling from his talk with her, from her kiss on his cheek, and from the carte de visite she had given him, a beautiful photo of herself, preserved on cardboard, “so that you may carry it next to your heart,” she had said.

  Now Heywood was seething, because Douglass had been the last to speak with her, to feel her breasts press against him, to kiss her. Heywood resolved to write to her every week. And if Douglass wrote every week, Heywood would write every day.

  Neither Heywood nor Dorothy knew that the last words Douglass had spoken to Amelia were “Wait for me.” And Amelia had said that she would.

  v

  The morning mist burned away so that the sun beat down on bodies and broken cornstalks. Thousands were dead, and it was not yet nine o’clock.

  They had fought for three hours, back and forth, north to south, in a cornfield where the Federal Twelfth Corps had been decimated and the Confederate left wing had been shattered. Then the fighting had broken off. The field had fallen silent, but for the cries and moans floating on the fetid breeze.

  Now Sedgwick’s Division, Federal Second Corps, was coming up from Antietam Creek on the east, crossing the blasted cornfield, making for the woods to the west. Somewhere beyond, the Confederates had pulled back. And Sedgwick’s Division—fresh, rested, five thousand strong—meant to strike them.

  They went by brigade front, three full brigades, each brigade stretched in a line some five hundred yards wide and two ranks deep. They went as if their generals knew the ground and were cer
tain of their battlefield intelligence.

  Lieutenant Douglass Wedge Warren marched with the Twentieth Massachusetts in the third brigade. Someday, he thought, some artist might paint their advance as a magnificent moment, paint it and put it on a calendar—banners fluttering, blue lines etching the landscape, bayonets glinting in the sun.

  Why did bayonets always glint in the sun? he wondered. And why did artists never paint the blood that turned the corn furrows to red mud? Or the chunks of human flesh, splattered by artillery, squishing now under thousands of hobnailed boots? And what pigment could capture the cries of the wounded, who reached up from the corn stubble, calling for help, grabbing like ghosts at the cuffs of those who now had to step over them?

  Douglass tried not to think about them. Better to think about doing his job. In every attack, he concentrated on putting each part of himself in place—speech calm, stride steady, posture erect. He was like a watchmaker putting springs and gears in alignment, in hope that the terror of the moment would hold no more power over him than the passage of time held over the watchmaker.

  But so many had died . . . like Lowell and Franny Pratt at Fair Oaks. And so many had been wounded . . . some lightly, like Heywood, grazed by shrapnel at Malvern Hill, some terribly, like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., shot in the chest at Ball’s Bluff. So many . . . and yet they kept on . . . even Holmes, recuperated and promoted and back on the line.

  Neither Captain Holmes nor Lieutenant Warren flinched when the Confederate batteries on the far side of the woods opened up. There was a distant report of cannon fire, the whistle of shells arcing in over the trees, and explosions among the ranks of blue.

  The veterans kept moving ahead. But the green troops faltered, a few crouched, a few even fell to the ground in fright.

  Douglass heard someone behind him say, “No use duckin’, lads. We’re a target as big as the town of Sharpsburg. Duck and you just may duck the wrong way.”

  It was the voice of Dan Callahan, and it calmed Douglass to hear. Callahan had enlisted in the Twentieth because, he said, there were good officers in the Twentieth. The officers now said that there were good sergeants, too, like Callahan.

  A shot exploded between the second and third brigades, sending up clods of dirt, sprays of corn, and metal fragments that flew out like shards from a broken platter. Three men in the forward brigade were struck, and the second brigade went slack in the middle.

  “Dress that line!” shouted Heywood Wedge, motioning with his saber. “Dress it and keep it dressed!”

  Where Douglass tried to lead by calm example, Heywood led with shouting discipline, but his men obeyed. Every officer had his own way.

  And on they went, out of the cornfield, across the Hagerstown Pike, past the Dunker Church that looked like a little whitewashed cottage, and into the cool woods.

  The underbrush was thin, the trees wide spaced, so the brigades kept their formation. To their left were outcroppings of rock catching the sunlight. Good shelter there, thought Douglass, but the fight would be up ahead, where the trees fell away.

  And he was right. Almost as if it had been planned, the enemy engaged the first brigade just beyond the trees, in the next field, bright and green in the September sun.

  Douglass watched them go into it, but there was no room for the second or third brigades to be brought forward. So they bunched up behind the first, listened to the volleys, saw the smoke rise, and watched it all as though it were a baseball match.

  Douglass ordered his men to stand at ease. No use coiling yourself for a fight until it was time. His men rested the butts of their muskets on the ground and leaned on them, like satisfied hunters with full bags. One of them started to whistle. Douglass glanced at the rock outcroppings to his left and wondered what Professor Agassiz would say about their composition. Heywood Wedge broke out his pipe and struck a match.

  And it was as if he had touched a fuse that caused those rocks to explode.

  Douglass swore that he felt a blast of heat, so powerful was the volley.

  In an instant, thousands of Confederate muskets were raking the Federal lines. White smoke billowed out of these rocks, and the air pulsated with 50-caliber balls whizzing past and striking home, splintering tree trunks and smashing skulls. Instead of flanking the Confederates, Sedgwick’s Division had themselves been flanked.

  Captain Holmes shouted for his men to wheel left and face the rocks. But some of them were already turning to the rear and firing at will.

  Douglass shouted at one soldier to wait for orders, but the soldier reloaded and fired again, and so did several others.

  Then Holmes came riding over and struck one of them with the flat of his saber. “Dammit, man. Wait for orders. You’re firing into your own men.”

  “Bejesus, sir, but the enemy is behind us!”

  An instant later, there was another explosion of fire . . . from the rear.

  “By God, they are behind us.” Holmes raised his sword, opened his mouth, and a bullet struck him in the neck.

  It was the most withering fire that Douglass Warren had yet faced. In twenty minutes, half of Sedgwick’s Division was cut down in long rows, like the cornstalks they’d come through a few minutes before.

  It was then that Captain Macy called for a retreat. What was left of the 350 men in the Twentieth prepared to retire to their right in columns of four, at ordinary step, with arms at the shoulder. That was what the official battle report would say. But a report could not express the bravery of those men doing their job—forming their ranks, shouldering their arms, wheeling away, piece by piece, doing it like watchmakers, and doing it all under fire.

  Douglass was at the rear, standing straight, keeping calm. Heywood was at the head, waving his sword, shouting at the men to dress ranks, because discipline would get them out. Discipline would keep them alive.

  And as the regimental colors moved and the line kicked forward, Douglass saw Heywood go down, face first, a bullet just below his knee. The men around him hesitated, perhaps in shock at seeing another officer writhing in pain, perhaps in thought of saving him, but Captain Macy called for them to keep moving.

  As Douglass went by, Heywood called out to him.

  But Captain Macy shouted, “Lieutenant Warren! Keep your company moving!”

  “Yes, sir!” Douglass knew they had to keep the men in good order. But this was his cousin, so Douglass hesitated.

  That was when Dan Callahan stepped out and shoved his musket into Douglass’s hands. “Hold this, sir.” Then he picked up Heywood and threw him over his shoulder like a hod of bricks. “We can’t be leavin’ officers on the field.”

  And out of those bloody woods they came, out of the dappled, smoke-shrouded shade, into the bloody bright sun. But they did not run. They crossed the Hagerstown Pike at the quick step and went into the cornfield, where they formed a line. A unit that held its ground could turn a whole army, and a unit that covered a retreat could save one.

  Seeing the resolve of the Twentieth, the First Minnesota fell in next to them, and then came the remnants of other units. And then, like game flushed from cover, the last of the Federal stragglers came running, followed by the yip-yip-yip of the rebel yells.

  “Stand ready!” said Douglass, reloading his big Colt as calmly as he could—removing the cylinder, dumping spent cartridges, inserting new bullets one by one.

  Dan Callahan had placed Heywood at the rear and was back in line.

  “Make ready, lads!” shouted Captain Macy.

  Federal muskets dropped into position like gears.

  Douglass snapped his pistol shut and took a deep breath.

  “Give me one good volley!” shouted Macy, riding back and forth behind the men. “One good volley and fall back by company.”

  Yip-yip-yip! Hundreds of Rebels were pressing the attack, hundreds in homespun clothes dyed butternut gray, as gray as the tree trunks around them.

  “Hold your fire, lads,” said Dan Callahan to his company.

  “Ho
ld, hold!” cried Douglass.

  “Hold . . . Hold!” cried Macy. “And . . . fire!”

  Hundreds of muskets blasted into the mouth of that charge, turning the rebel yell into a great gasp, a moan, a cry of disbelieving shock.

  Then Captain Macy cried, “Retreat!” and the Twentieth bugler sounded the call.

  Douglass cast one look back at the field, at the hundreds of young southerners who were down, crying, dying, at all those hopes, all those years yet to live, all the love that had been spent on them, all thrown away in an instant.

  And that was when one of them shot him.

  He felt the bullet go through him, almost as if it were happening to someone else. It entered his chest on the right side, halfway to his belt, and almost knocked him over. He looked down at the hole and thought, for a moment, that it wasn’t that bad. Then he tasted blood in his mouth. He cursed and dropped to his knees.

  Just as he collapsed, Dan Callahan put a shoulder under him, another Harvard hod of bricks pouring blood down an Irishman’s back.

  The rest, for Douglass, was a series of bright flashes and fading images. . . .

  He was on the hard floor of a farmhouse . . . there were others around him . . . a veritable Harvard club, one of them said . . . Was it Holmes, ’61, bleeding from holes in both sides of his neck? Or Hallowell, ’61, leaning against a wall, left arm limp? Or Artemus Pratt, ’60, who sat with his boot off and blood pouring on the floor. Or Heywood Wedge, ’64, tourniquet on his leg, crying in pain as Dan Callahan laid him down . . .

  Somewhere men were yelling . . . guns were firing . . . sweat was dripping onto Douglass’s face . . . from Dan’s forehead, and it was Dan’s voice . . . “Ambulance corps is here, sir. They’ll get you to hospital in no time.”

  There were cracks in the ceiling . . . and smoke hung in layers . . . a black powder stain ran up the right side of Dan’s face.

  The locket . . . Yes . . . Douglass had felt it when he reached inside his tunic to feel the hole in his chest. . . . Now he pressed it into Dan’s hand. “See that Miss Amelia gets it. . . . See that she knows I love her. . . .”