Mother Earth, Bloody Ground: A Novel Of The Civil War And What Might Have Been (Stonewall Goes West Trilogy)
Page 25
Becoming stuck, the mare reacted violently. Alarmed, Jackson forcefully jerked back on the reins, only adding to his mount’s panic. She bucked and threw him, and with his hand outstretched to instinctively break his fall, he landed badly.
Jackson tried to push himself up and instantly winced as pain shot through his wrist. Instead, he rolled over and sat up, awkwardly using his elbow to help himself up off the ground. Over on the road, the rearmost regiment of Govan’s column had turned around and was advancing on the marauding enemy cavalry as a phalanx, bayonets leveled. He also saw that his own horse had freed herself from the muddy quagmire and was standing nearby, shaking terribly.
“That’s alright, girl,” he said soothingly. “It is not your fault, and it’s alright.”
No sooner had he said that than Sandie rode up, rolling off his saddle and rushing upon Jackson. “Dear Lord, are you injured sir!?”
Jackson shook his head. “No, no. Well, yes. But not badly. I am afraid, Colonel Pendleon, I have broken my wrist. Can you help me to my feet?”
As he pulled Jackson to his feet, Sandie shouted to Quintard, who had ridden along right behind him, “Captain, help me get the General away from here! We must…”
The rest of what Sandie said was buried by the crash of a massed rifle volley.
Feeble, Jackson leaned on his chief of staff. “No, Sandie. Look there. The enemy leaves.”
Stopped by the fierce attack by the escorts and thrown into confusion by the musket salvo, the Federal horse was already withdrawing back across Big Rock Creek. Jackson soon found himself mobbed by not only Sandie, but also Cleburne, Polk, Govan, and many others besides, all inquiring about his injuries and demanding he leave the area.
Still feeling shaken, Jackson forced himself to stiffen up. “No, no. Gentlemen, I appreciate your concern, but you will desist. That is an order. I am not going to be pushed up on a horse and led away at a tether. I will wait on this spot until an ambulance arrives.”
Sandie was distracted by a courier, who thrust a message at him. “Message from General Stewart, sir.”
Jackson nodded inquiringly, but said nothing and let Sandie read the message. Sandie’s eyes widened, and he said, “General Stewart reports that the wagon train of Polk’s Corps took a wrong turn and crossed his line of march, clogging up the junction until Stewart rode back and set things right in person.”
Jackson’s outrage swept away his frailty. He wanted to snatch the scrap of paper away and read it for himself, only he couldn’t because of his injury, which only stoked his anger further.
“Who is that man?” growled Jackson.
Sandie blinked. “Polk’s quartermaster is Major Thomas Peters, sir.”
“Order his arrest. Immediately!”
“Yes. Sir,” stammered Sandie. His preference was to wait until the facts were better known before ordering an arrest, but he was not about to argue the matter.
Cleburne came up just then, having jogging across the field. “General Jackson, are you hurt, sir!”
“I fear my wrist is broken.”
“No! If only I had realized, I would never have driven your horse so!” cried Cleburne, clearly distraught. “Please, accept my most sincere apologies, I beg you!”
Jackson shook his head. “Apologies are unnecessary. My own inferior horsemanship did me in. And were it not for your prompt response to the crisis, I might have suffered worse, as might we all have. Providence put you where you were to do what you did, and that was good, so let us say no more of it.”
10:45 A.M.
Headquarters, Minty’s Division, USA
Shelbyville Road
One mile east of Farmington
Minty was giving instructions on where to park his modest wagon train when he saw riders galloping down the road and swiftly recognized the man in their center. Powerfully built and wearing long hair and a broad, handlebar mustache that gave him the air of a Sardinian outlaw chieftain, John Logan cut the kind of style one neither overlooked nor forgot.
He stepped out onto the road, and Logan pulled his horse to a halt in front of him. Coming around, Logan leaned over his mount’s neck and thrust forward his hand. Minty took it, and got an iron grip handshake.
Logan liked Minty, although he had only made his acquaintance the month before, just before Lawrenceburg. He thought the Irishman, with his full beard, red cheeks, cocked and plumed hat, and brilliantly polished scabbard and saber, was the closest thing he had seen yet in this war to resemble the flair of the Napoleonic picture books on either side. Yet even with all the showy panache, Minty was no dandy popinjay. The man was a real soldier.
Logan asked, “General Minty, what happens here?”
Minty replied with a grin, “I gave Cheatham a poke for starters. He’s due west of here, about two and a half miles, on a low, open rise on the other side of East Rock Creek. He is dug in now, but both his flanks are in the air. Anchored on nothing but a little cavalry on either side. I have put the Sabers and Smith on his front and sent Klein around north on a foray to Berlin, on the Franklin Turnpike, see what’s what back there.”
“Did you now?! Well done, well done.” Logan felt pleased by Minty’s enterprise, reminding him as it did of the pluck of the march to Vicksburg.
“What are your orders, sir?” asked Minty.
“John Smith’s Division is just a few miles back down the road. They will take your place on the line. That done, I want you to send a full brigade straight up the Nashville Road and occupy Fishing Ford. Let’s not forget that the rest of Stonewall’s army is north and northwest of here, and I don’t want a whole corps crossing the Duck and coming down on my flank.”
“I’ll send the Sabers.”
“Bully choice.” Logan swung down off his saddle and looked to his chief of staff. “Major Hotaling, find us a suitable place to set up the corps headquarters.” Looking back to Minty, he said “May I have the use of a tent and desk for a time?”
“Yes, of course. Use mine,” said Minty, gesturing towards a nearby wall tent.
Logan settled in and composed a dispatch to McPherson:
To A of T HDQRS:
Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson,
XV Army Corps has arrived before Lewisburg as directed, but has encountered Cheatham’s Division west of Farmington. My intentions:
Cavalry under Brig. Gen. Robert H.G. Minty to screen flanks, secure Fishing Ford, and vigorously reconnoiter for approach of enemy reinforcements.
XV Army Corps to extend its line to the south, until friendly line reaches beyond Confederate right flank.
Attack Confederate right flank if practicable, drive the enemy back to the north, and secure Lewisburg crossroads.
Confirmation requested.
Your obedient servant,
Maj. Gen. John A. Logan
U.S. Volunteers
Logan handed the paper over to an aide. “Lieutenant, send that message to General McPherson at once.”
2:45 P.M.
7th Pennsylvania Cavalry, USA
Nashville Road
Chapel Hill, Tennessee
1 ½ miles north of the Duck River
Spear sat on his horse along with the bulk of his company, inside a woodlot and enjoying the comfortable shade. It’s a damn sight better way to wait here for Johnny Reb, he thought, than down there with the others on the road, out in the full heat of the day.
After stopping by the wagons and topping up their ammunition, Spear and his comrades rode to Fishing Ford, half a dozen miles north. The ford was located in a bend in the river, with a shoulder of land on the south bank jutting north. The bulk of the brigade dismounted and started to dig in on some high ground a third of a mile from the ford, neatly sealing up the shoulder, while Jennings’s battalion went across the river.
Two of the battalion’s three companies were dismounted in a skirmish line half a mile back down the road, alongside a sharp bend in Spring Creek, which flowed south into the Duck. Spear’s company had continued beyond t
hat skirmish line for another mile and set up an ambush. Lieutenant Brandt led the troop blocking the road, while the rest of the company waited in the woods a couple hundred yards to the west.
Looking to his men, Spear noticed Crowder gnawing at a cracker and shook his head. He was too anxious for hunger and had never understood how nothing stopped Crowder’s appetite in the first place. To chew on some bland old hard bread now, Spear wondered, now of all times. How does he do it?
Spear felt a current of tension shoot through the company and looked to the road to see several dozen butternut troopers cantering down the road from the village of Chapel Hill in a loose mass, an advance guard bearing carbines, musketoons, and shotguns. Brandt’s men opened fire from horseback at about 200 yards, prompting the butternuts to dash forward, hollering and firing wildly as they went. Brandt and his troop tucked tail and ran, as intended, and when the Rebels galloped across the front of the woodlot, Captain Vale shouted for his men to charge.
Spear walked his horse out of the trees, drawing his saber and applying the spurs only after he was on open ground. Roaring, he plunged forward with Vale, Crowder, Rose, and the others in the first wave of men in the charge. A few shots cracked out from the Johnnies as they turned about, returned by the blue riders who chose pistols over sabers. Then the charge struck the Rebel horsemen, landing squarely on their face.
Slowing down his horse, Spear passed into the gray ranks before coming to grips with a Rebel horseman. He caught the Rebel in the midst of twisting around in the saddle to shoot him with a revolver. Spear swung his saber, slicing through his enemy’s chest and bicep. Passing the wounded rider, he looked over his shoulder and swung again as he went, striking the man in the back and knocking him to the ground.
Not immediately under threat, Spear sheathed his saber, drew his revolver, and cast about looking for another victim. All he saw was that the Rebel cavalry was already in flight. Brandt had turned about and hit them on the side, and with their backs to Spring Creek, the Johnnies broke on the spot and ran. He fired a few shots at the fleeing Rebels, knowing Webster wouldn’t order a pursuit, because having bushwhacked the advanced guards, they were supposed to fall back on the skirmish line. Pursuit wasn’t any part of it.
As the First Sergeant bellowed “Rally! Rally on the Captain! Rally,” Captain Vale shouted “Sergeant Spear! There is one of ours back on that field. See if you can’t get him up on his horse.”
Spear took note of the bloodletting as he brought his horse around. The clash had left four Rebel dead and wounded on the field, including the man he had cut up, who was now moaning and clutching his wounded arm from the ground. There were others, no doubt, but they had ridden away.
Riding back towards the woodlot, Spear saw it was Dodson, one of the volunteers from ’62. A friend, but not a close one. He saw Dodson with his hand over a wet, red spot on his chest, heard his wheezing, and gulped. Dodson was shot through the lung.
Raising his head, Dodson coughed blood. He tried to speak, but the effort only brought on more wet, bloody coughing. Spear grimaced. Lung-shot was a dreadful way to die. At the thought he should put Dodson out of his misery, he clenched his teeth. He knew he couldn’t do that, he just couldn’t, but neither could he force himself down off his horse, to comfort the dying man.
“It’s alright, John. I know. I’ll stay with you as long as I can. I’ll write your folks, and I’ll call on them after it’s all over. I promise.” Spear didn’t get down off his horse, and said nothing more. As the rest of the company rode away, he stayed there for a few minutes more, waiting until Dodson was dead. Only then did he turn and gallop away.
3:15 P.M.
41st Tennessee Infantry, CSA
The Stone Wall
1/3 of a mile east of Bethbirei Church
“On your guard!” Halpern cried. “On your guard!”
Nathan knew an attack was coming, a big one, long before Halpern shouted his warning. The signs of a massing of infantry on the other side of East Rock Creek, just barely within sight, were unmistakable to his seasoned eye. With his sights already raised to 400 yards, Nathan stayed crouched behind the wall and waited for the inevitable swarm of Yankee skirmishers to cross the creek, followed by the ordered host of their main line.
Farther down the wall, Captain Fonville spoke quietly to Bell. “Now Captain, if you will look behind you, you will see not so much as a shrub between this here wall and the main position. The artillery is up now, so when we leave, they will give us some protection. Still, we must leave quickly. When I give the signal, both companies fall back 250 yards. Then we turn and see if we can’t discourage them Northrons from following us. You understand me?”
Bell bristled, seeing in Fonville’s choice of words a rebuke for his handling of the pickets at Stewart’s Creek. But he nodded, saying, “Yes, of course, Captain. It’s your command.”
The wait went on for several more minutes. Nathan muttered, “Them Yankees sure is taking they’s own sweet time,” as the first loose row of bluecoats climbed over the creek bank and emerged onto the plain.
It was a minute more when the wall crackled with musketry. Nathan set about loading and firing his musket with practiced briskness and was rummaging his right pocket for the last cartridge kept there when the word came to fall back. He plucked up his ramrod, and without bothering to return it to holder, sprinted off with both, trotting along behind Willie and Pete.
Cannon fire reverberated across the weedy fields, sending shells screaming down onto the abandoned wall. Halfway up across the plain, Fonville called a halt. Nathan turned, knelt, and snapped off a shot.
His pockets emptied of ammunition, Nathan drew a round from his cartridge box and went through the several motions of loading his musket as the stone wall began to crackle with return fire. He shouldered his gun and fired another shot before the crackle surged into the tearing racket of massed, sustained musket fire, sending a clutch of bullets whizzing over or past him with every second.
Fonville ordered a retreat, which Bell repeated to his own company. “Fall back, fall back!” he cried, shrieking the last word as a ball tore through the empty top of his kepi. He stumbled over, and getting back to his feet, Bell restrained his instinct to run for safety. The Yankees might shoot him, but he wouldn’t shame himself before the regiment.
They fell back onto the regiment, who were lying in wait just before the top of the low ridge, snug behind the earthworks they had spent the morning and early afternoon digging with tools collected from local farms, tin cups and plates, and their bare hands.
3:45 P.M.
Headquarters in the Field, XV Corps, USA
3/4s of a mile south of the Shelbyville Road
When he launched his attack on Cleburne’s Corps half an hour before, John Logan had every expectation of success. His plan was for John Smith’s, Osterhaus’s, and Morgan Smith’s Divisions to demonstrate forcefully against Cleburne’s 1 ½-mile long line, while Harrow’s Division moved beyond Cleburne’s right. Just before the attack began, his own chief topographer had returned from a personal reconnaissance of the Confederate right, reporting nothing but cavalry there.
Harrow’s 4,500 men should have pushed straight through that Rebel cavalry to attack Cleburne on the flank. Instead, Logan could hear the terrible din of a pitched battle down where Harrow was, louder than anything his other three divisions were doing.
Logan yelled, “Dammit! Harrow should be rolling the secesh up like an oriental carpet. What in blazes is going on over there?”
Without a word to his staff, he spurred his horse to a gallop and tore off, leaving his officers to scramble after him. A short, hard ride later, he found Harrow studying the enemy with binoculars alongside an Iowa battery of 10-pounder Parrotts, the guns busily and noisily bellowing at what was clearly a battle line of Southern infantry up on the low ridge.
Shouting to be heard as one gun boomed after another, Logan said, “General Harrow, seems like you’ve come into trouble.”
Harrow said, “I’ve come into resistance, sir, that is correct. I had only just started forward when the first of those butternut bastards appeared, but I surmised they would dig in if I didn’t pitch in with them, so I attacked. More reinforcements came up, though, so I got pushed back.”
Logan regarded Harrow briefly. He had never really liked Harrow, not caring for having cast-off Eastern officers imposed upon him. Worse, Harrow had proven to be the sort of disciplinarian who was cruel rather than strict, and he liked his drink. Yet Logan tolerated him politely, as Harrow was an Indiana crony of President Lincoln. As a politician himself, Logan knew better than to make enemies with anything other than the greatest of care.
But in this instance, Logan could find no complaints with Harrow’s conduct. “You acted rightly there, General. I reckon a whole new division has arrived, from the looks of it.”
Harrow’s eyes shifted nervously. “Yessir. If you look down thataway, you’ll see the butternuts extending southward. Now they are out past my flank! So, I’ve pulled back and started digging in myself.”
Logan brightened, thinking of how the first division of the XVI Corps was now in Farmington, standing in reserve, with the other two not far behind. “Well, we’ve got reinforcements of our own. Yes, we do! I’ll be right back, Harrow, and I’ll bring Mower’s Division with me. But I want you to pay close attention to your left flank, you understand me? You have naught but Smith’s troopers and open fields down there. Refuse that flank, entrench it, and anchor it with some guns.”
“Yessir,” Harrow said, thinking to himself as Logan rode away that he would do no such thing. Oh, of course I will refuse and entrench, of course, but send guns down there? Poppycock. I placed that artillery myself, and see how beautifully the guns pound those Rebel vermin! Lovely. No, Jack Logan can go to hell for all I care. I shall not slacken my fire just to shore up a flank that will have Mower coming alongside it soon enough.