MY DEAREST LEONA,
I am grieved to inform you that your brother, Duncan, fell wounded on the second day of our recent battle near Chancellorsville. His left forearm was smashed by a minié ball and shell fragments have lodged in his chest near the breastbone. His left cheek and forehead were burned, though mercifully his eye was spared. Although his injuries are grave, he has a strong natural constitution and Surgeon Lane assures me that he has seen young men with worse prospects recover fully. I would have written you sooner but was waiting for the surgeon’s report on the amputation of Duncan’s limb, which seems to be healing as well as might be hoped. Some shell fragments were recovered, others left as too dangerous to extract.
Duncan was taken to Camp Winder, which is a hospital of some seven hundred beds beside the river to the north of the capital.
You will have heard that Stonewall died of his wounds. Here in the capital the flags are still at half-mast and weeping men as well as women are unremarkable on the street. I will always be proud that I fought under General Jackson, and wonder if his strong Christian faith, that bright moral beacon, won’t be missed even more than his military skills. His last battlefield message was his prayer that Providence should bless our arms at Chancellorsville, and Almighty God answered his prayer. His dying words, we are told, were “Let us cross the river and rest under the trees.”
The circumstances of your brother’s wounding are as follows. On May the 2nd, we marched furiously—a march of some twelve miles across Hooker’s front to his unsuspecting flank, where that evening, at four o’clock, we assaulted his unsuspecting army. In the fury of our attack our regiment was mingled with others and I lost sight of Duncan. The Federals fled before us like sheep before wolves. It seemed almost shameful to slaughter them.
We fought until nightfall, but as we closed on the Federals’ headquarters, their resistance stiffened and great gusts of artillery crashed into us. Their newfound resolution, our weariness, and the ebbing of the light brought the blood-drenched day to a close. I found your brother, face blackened, unhurt but despondent. His mare, Gypsy, had been mortally injured, and it had been Duncan’s unwelcome duty to dispatch the poor creature. He could speak of nothing else. It was as if he had lost a child.
It was well after midnight before Duncan and I lay down. Alarms and tentative Federal assaults made the night bark with gunfire, but I think not much real fighting was accomplished. Duncan and I slept for a few hours.
Rations wagons had come up during the night, and we made a fine breakfast of hardtack and salt pork. Although Duncan still mourned his Gypsy, his appetite was good. Since five a.m. there had been fighting to our front: a hillock called Hazel Grove.
By half past seven we took that hill, where fifty of our guns now fired. Their noise was indescribable.
After Jackson and A. P. Hill were wounded, the gallant J.E.B. Stuart assumed command of Jackson’s corps and Stuart’s artillery commander, young John Pelham, directed our guns. Smoke wreathed Hazel Grove and wreathed the open ground over which our regiments were advancing through dense woods, woods so smoky that much of the time we fired at shapes rather than men. Although I could see the man to my immediate left and him on my right, everyone outside that narrow compass was invisible. When the Federal soldiers counterattacked, we withdrew past our wounded and dead, and when we counterattacked, we reacquainted ourselves with our less fortunate fellows. The fight had a ghostlike feel, as if the death we were suffering and inflicting was not quite real, and in fog and confusion, fighting might have been going on for untold centuries. Though blood darkened the waters of a small stream, thirsty men drank without qualm.
General Jones had fallen; now Colonel Garnett fell and Colonel Vandeventer replaced him. When we faltered, J.E.B. Stuart came, told a few jokes, and sang a verse of “Oh, Joe Hooker, Won’t You Come to the Wilderness” to inspire us. J.E.B. Stuart has had more hairbreadth escapes, more bullets pass through his clothes, more horses killed under him, than any other man in the Confederacy. He makes death seem a lark. When finally our assaults proved irresistible and the Federal line broke, we were issued thirty more rounds of ammunition and began the final drive.
At such a moment there is a feeling I cannot describe. Every man is aware of being part of something profound and terrible.
Just to the south was a once prosperous plantation: an open meadow, house, several barns, cherry trees in full bloom. This plantation house had been occupied by the Federal general, Hooker. From here he had plotted the mischief our army was confounding.
Our men burst onto open ground with a shout. Dearest, I am not a demonstrative man, but I was yelling as loudly as the rest. In my heart I wished to murder blue-clad soldiers. Interspersed among the fleeing Federals were horses and beef cattle and ambulances and forage wagons. When one of their regiments formed a line of battle we rushed toward that center of resistance as if pulled by magnets.
The air trembled from shot and shell, and riderless horses ran in all directions. Our rough-clad fellows fell snarling upon the Federal guns and slaughtered the gunners. Men cheered and sobbed and yowled. Streams of wounded men passed to the rear as if blood our army was bleeding. Columns of dirty white smoke laid a blanket between us and the sky. Amidst this scene, General Lee himself appeared, mounted on his gray Traveler. Ahead, his enemy’s headquarters was in flames, pouring a black, turbulent smoke. The woods through which we had passed was also burning.
Before his powder-blackened, underfed, weary battalions, General Lee passed, slouch hat in his hand uncovering his magnificent gray locks and fine features to every man’s view. We raised a wild cheer—infantrymen waving overheated muskets, cavalrymen spurring their exhausted horses, even, I swear to you, dearest Leona, our wounded and dying lying on the dirt. The man who had wrought this victory had come to take his bow; to stand unafraid before tens of thousands of fleeing Federal soldiers with their cannonade bursting around him, to savor his triumph and announce his mastery. I think in that moment I never loved a man so much. Lee was in that moment all we ordinary men aspire to be and rightfully fear to become: the ideal Christian Warrior surveying the dreadful work his brilliance and the valor of his soldiers had created. Darling Leona, I wept at the sight.
The Federals escaped into prepared positions, and our army pursued no further. When the 44th Virginia regrouped, I missed Duncan and volunteered to officer those searching for our wounded.
The battle had set the woods afire, and though we dragged many men of both armies from the flames, others were overcome. Their cries and entreaties were dreadful to hear. Your brother, thank God, had suffered his wound nearby the stream aforementioned and had had the presence of mind to immerse himself and escape the heat and flames.
“I am very glad to see you.” Duncan sat propped against the stream bank, a belt around his arm for a tourniquet. Litter bearers carried him to the surgeons. The flames made night bright as day while we Confederates searched thickets as yet unconsumed and rescued many a wretch who had expected the next face he saw would be an angel at Judgment Day. The only way to distinguish the dead of one army from the other was to roll blackened bodies over so that telltale scraps of butternut or blue might identify them.
I worked until rain cooled the smoking, stinking battlefield and Colonel Vandeventer ordered me to accompany our wounded officers to the field hospital.
Though the field surgeon had advised the removal of his arm, Duncan begged that the final decision be made in Richmond, and the surgeon, who was half mad with fatigue, told Duncan that he didn’t have time for damn fools, not with hundreds of men awaiting his knife: he placed a poultice on Duncan’s poor burned face and dismissed us. The limb heap outside that surgeon’s tent was the height of a man.
Duncan and I boarded the slowest most mournful train in the Confederacy. The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac is scarcely fit for the transport of cattle, let alone gravely injured men. There was an ambulance car for officers, and I laid Duncan on a bunk, his ruined arm acr
oss his chest.
The train trundled south not much more rapidly than a man can quickstep. Sometimes the railbed was so dangerous that those who could climbed down and walked beside the train, and twice the trainmen inserted iron prybars beneath suspicious rails as our cars passed over.
The ambulance car was filthy, and dark smears on the window moldings proved this was not its first engagement. A major of cavalry who had lost both his legs moaned in his delirium and cried, “Mary, beautiful Mary,” over and over again.
In small towns, citizens met us on the platforms, and while the engine recharged itself with water and wood, ministering angels came aboard our car to proffer sweet water and the blessing of their tears.
The enemy’s guns have taken so many of our young men, it is hard to think what our poor nation will do when the war is over. The only survivors may be the posturers and fools that inhabit Confederate statehouses. I would readily trade them all for a dozen good infantry privates!
I am sorry to seem unpatriotic, but our army sacrifices again and again and prevails, despite daunting odds. I am coming to think that we are the Confederacy and our leaders third-rate politicos, men suitable for no other employment if governing were not so agreeable to them. If it were not for what our army captures from the Federals, we would have no means to make war. The very locomotive drawing our train, I was told, was one of those Stonewall captured.
I was last in Richmond with Duncan and his friend Spaulding, in that spring of 1861, when all things seemed possible. We were such a brave new nation! The long slow evenings after a day of drill, rich with the jests of healthy young men, full of ardor and as yet untouched by war. One morning I tugged on my boots to discover that some wag had cut away the soles the night before and my bare feet went through to the floor. To think we were so wealthy we would cut up perfectly serviceable boots!
The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac station, that noble edifice, has been visibly darkened by war. In the yards a gang was removing boiler plates from a damaged engine. Two damaged engines make one whole one: that is Confederate arithmetic.
I accompanied Duncan and several other officers to Camp Winder Hospital. One begged me to notify his family of his wound. Dearest Leona, can you perform this service for me? Please write Mrs. Martin, Raleigh Springs, North Carolina. Her husband, Lewis, is shot in the knee and he hopes they will not amputate. He would be pleased if his wife could come to Richmond and bring his best trousers.
The surgeon sniffed Duncan’s wound and, ignoring Duncan’s protests, proceeded with the amputation. Since I was fatigued to the bone, a busy matron directed me to an empty stall in the hospital’s cow barn, where I slept the clock around. The next day I walked into Richmond and procured a meal for only ten dollars! Somewhat comforted by my repast, I went into a church—St. Paul’s Episcopal—and sat in a back pew. Though there were no services that morning, the pews were filled with citizens at prayer. Many were women, some dressed in mourning, but there were veterans too, some on crutches, others dandling children on their knees. I cannot describe the satisfaction I derived from sitting on a clean wooden bench in a clean place where all thoughts were of love, mercy, and forgiveness.
I was saddened by the news of Aunt Kate’s sudden demise but cannot help thinking she may be better off in Paradise. Grandmother Gatewood is an all-consuming companion.
Kiss dear little Pauline for me, tell Thomas I expect him to act as a man, and know that you are the last vision in my mind before sleep and the first upon arising.
Your Loving Husband,
Catesby
CHEAP GLOVES
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
MAY 23, 1863
ON SATURDAY MORNING, the ward was quiet, sunlight streaming through open windows across the floor swept by the one-armed convalescent, whisk, whisk, whisk. Mosquito netting was rolled onto frames above each narrow cot. At the far end of the room an Alabama corporal was dying while a chaplain murmured verses from the Bible. In the next bed a corpulent quartermaster major complained in a high whine about his wound, which was not particularly serious. Beside him lay a blinded drummer boy, and beside him a captain of J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, also blinded.
The one-armed convalescent set the butt of his broomstick in his armpit and maneuvered the broom with his remaining hand. He took especial care in the corners, because he had been a machinist before the war and was meticulous by nature.
In the cot beside Stuart’s captain was a Jewish colonel of artillery who was visited by his rabbi each Saturday. Both the rabbi and the Alabama boy’s chaplain were elderly, called back into active service by the nation’s great need.
Families were in attendance, and through the open windows came the bright noise of children at play. Next to the Jewish colonel was the cot of a fiftyish private with pneumonia who was not expected to pull through. His gray-haired, drawn-faced wife arrived at dawn, left at dusk, was never seen to take nourishment.
Samuel Gatewood stood, hat in hand. Catesby Byrd said, “Duncan’s fourth on the left. I’ll smoke a pipe outside.”
Samuel Gatewood set down Abigail’s wicker basket and laid his soft hat on the lid. Although Duncan’s stump was exposed on top of the blanket, Samuel didn’t look at it. His son’s head was thoroughly bandaged. “Catesby said your eye . . .”
“It is saved. I’m swaddled like an Egyptian mummy until my face heals.”
“Dear boy, dear boy. I . . . I was so sorry to hear about Gypsy.”
“She was a fine horse.” Duncan’s voice was little more than a whisper.
Samuel leaned near. “What a spirited creature she was. When I bought her from Alex Seig she was so wild I did not believe you could handle her. You were only twelve. Only twelve.” Samuel shook his head, wondering. “That first summer, you were just as wild as she was. We wouldn’t see you from morning until night. Your mother turned gray that summer wondering what mischief you two were up to.”
“Gypsy never flinched. Little Sorrel, Stonewall’s horse, if she hadn’t reared when those North Carolina boys fired the volley at them, likely the general’d still be alive. Oh, Stonewall was a hell of a rider. He’d been a jockey as a boy and still rode like one, forward in his stirrups.”
“I see the army has not improved your language.” His son turned his bandaged head. “Do you suffer?”
“It hurts like hell. My face itches terribly, but I am not to rub at it. There’s nothing where my arm used to be but it hurts anyway. Sometimes I feel the bullet in an arm I don’t have.”
“What will we do after this war is over—so many men gone. . . .”
“There’s Federals to spare. Them and their negroes can run things.”
His son’s bitterness was new and unwelcome.
Duncan indicated but did not touch his stump. “My injury is not without advantages. I’ll save time washing hands. And that big fellow near the door, Sergeant Crenshaw, he’s lost his right arm and I’ve lost my left. We’ve made an agreement to purchase gloves together. We should realize considerable savings.”
After a moment, Samuel said, “Your mother sends you her love. Between her and Jack the Driver, we manage. It has been a tolerably wet spring, but we planted the oats in the river field and sowed corn on the uplands. Your mother’s kitchen garden is larger than you remember it. We have our women servants still, though many of the men have run away or been taken by our government. Withal, I believe we are more fortunate than most. I am told that matters are completely desperate in the Piedmont.”
A matron hurried to the Alabama boy’s side.
“We were making our assault on Fairmont,” his son said dreamily. “There was Hazel Grove here”—he raised a knee under the blanket—“and Fairmont here”—he raised another mound. “So we had to go down this slope and up the other. Guns on both hills, theirs and ours. First time we got within a hundred yards before they broke us. We were making our second assault when I got shot. I was still mad about Gypsy. I wasn’t thinking of getting hurt.”
&n
bsp; “When you come home, you’ll find changes. You’ll recall that cave in Strait Creek gorge? We’ve taken to keeping tubs of butter and cheese and honey in the cave. It’s cool there and the commissary officers aren’t likely to find it. If I knew a haven for the milk cows, I’d move them too, but they need to be near for milking.”
The Alabama boy’s chaplain closed his Bible.
“I flopped down when I was shot. Oh, I went right down senseless. When I woke it was burning all around me and I couldn’t move my limbs and I thought I must perish. A Federal dragged me into the creek. He was a redheaded fellow. I sometimes wonder about him, whether he got killed or not. Something was wrong with me. I could make my good arm go, but couldn’t wiggle my legs. I thought I’d been shot in the legs too.”
“Aunt Opal sent you one of her pies. She said to be sure I didn’t eat it myself. I said I’d reserve that pleasure for you.”
A wan smile crossed Duncan’s face, and encouraged, Samuel Gatewood continued, “We make all our clothing now, honest homespun. Your sister, Leona, has made you and Catesby shirts. She did not know how long a sleeve you require, so made both regular length. Colonel Warwick suffered a similar wound at Second Manassas but is no worse a planter than he ever was.”
“Did they tell you how the woods burned?” Duncan said dreamily.
“Dear son, it isn’t healthy for you to dwell on such matters.”
“Father, losing an arm is in some respects an enlightening experience. You do not wish to hear about the fire? Very well, I shan’t speak about the fire. How are my nephew and niece? I imagine young Thomas is useful on the plantation?”
Samuel Gatewood said young Thomas was doing the work of a fulltask hand—when he felt like it. He said Uther Botkin was unwell. He said Colonel Warwick believed the war would be over by year’s end, and Samuel prayed so, since Thomas was almost old enough to enlist.
Samuel’s son turned his head on the pillow.
Undaunted, Samuel opened the wicker basket and described the items contained therein. Blackberry preserves. Three pair of socks and Leona’s shirt. A book of sermons provided by Grandmother Gatewood. A novel, Lady Audley’s Secret, from his mother. A new treatise on common animal illnesses which, if Duncan studied it, would better prepare him for rebuilding Stratford after the war.
Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War Page 31