by Larry Hunt
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Many years before enlisting to fight for the Confederacy, Robert Scarburg had enlisted in another army, the United States Army. He had joined Captain Long’s Company, 5th Battalion, 1st Brigade of the South Carolina Mounted Volunteers in the fall of 1837. At twenty-three years of age he had ridden out of the Carolinas along with other young, wet-behind-the-ear, dirt farmers.
They had ‘jined up’ with Colonel Zachary Taylor to go south and fight the Seminole Indians in what later became known as the Second Seminole Indian War.
The Indian War began with young, Southern boys; Southern boys full of spit and vinegar thinking they could ‘whoop’ those ‘Injuns’ in less than a month. They were eager to fight. They believed they would put those Redskins in their proper place. They ‘wuz Americans fightin’ heathens.’ At an early age, immortality shields young men as a suit of armor. They think the specter of death will elude them. However, this day, twenty-six years later, Sergeant Scarburg is not thinking about those illustrious days of many years ago, his only thought today is to make sure he did not break his promise to Malinda. His two sons must survive ‘seeing the elephant’ of this current War.
His boys looked up to him, they believed he knew what he was doing – he was, in fact, a veteran. For over twenty-five years, men came to Robert’s house on Sunday afternoons and all would boast of their exploits in the war with the Indians. As the years passed the stories became more and more embellished. Their exploits and deeds became more heroic. As young lads Luke and Matthew sat on the porch mesmerized by the men’s war stories. They idolized their father – there wasn’t anything in this man’s army he didn’t know about, or so they thought. Today they listened to the sergeants and officers of their Confederate company, but when the showdown came they were going to follow their father – he was, after all, the real veteran.
Now at age forty-nine Sergeant Scarburg, the old man of this Rebel infantry company is embroiled in yet another clash of arms. It too began with the thought that these Southern boys could ‘whoop’ those invading damn Yankees. This war is different, they are not fighting Indians, in some cases it is fathers against sons, brothers against brothers or family against family, but the boastings of the youth are still the same. They believe they can put the Yankees on the run in less than a month. In fact, they believe one Southern boy is equal to ten of those sorry Yanks. Some Southern boys were even afraid the war might end before they had a chance to get into the fight and kill them a blue-belly or two.
These young men walking through the woods this summer day are no longer boys with the idle thoughts of their youth. They have grown up fast. These are men, regardless of their age, men fighting for the Confederate States of America.
Sergeant Scarburg tries to answer Matthew’s question, “Yes, I am fearful my son, fearful for the two of you,” he says looking at Matt, “but we should not be afraid of dying, death will catch up to us all eventually. Today let’s just hope that if death’s scythe seeks us out its blow will be quick and merciful, but Fear not boys, we have on the cloak of invincibility; nothing is going to harm us. Let us just do our duty.”
GENERAL THOMAS ‘STONEWALL’ JACKSON
The battle will be the first actual fight in which Matthew has participated. Upon his enlistment he had been assigned to the staff of General “Stonewall” Jackson.
General Jackson had made a special request to have Robert appointed as his aide, but Robert tactfully declined his request stating his promise to Malinda to take care of their sons. Robert knew a staff position with General Jackson would be safer than the toils and hardships of the common infantryman; therefore, Robert recommended his younger son Matthew to serve in his stead.
Robert realized Matthew was no fighter; he was the scholar of the family. When Matt was not at work on the farm, he could be found with his face buried in a book. Luke, on the other hand, was usually, in the forests, the sights of his old musket marking the spot on the whitetails body where his bullet would strike. Luke seldom ventured away from the house on one of his deer-hunting trips that he did not return with fresh meat. Robert’s two boys could not have been more different, Luke the rough outdoorsman and Matthew, the soft-spoken scholar. Luke is quick to anger and just as quick to fight; Matt is soft-spoken and more adept at talking himself out of a tenuous situation. Matthew was at the South Carolina College when the Confederate government sent out a call for eighteen thousand volunteers. The entire student body of the College voted to leave school to enlist. Matthew returned home to Alabama determined to honor his commitment to his classmates.
Luke resembles his grandfather; tall, lean and rugged with dark brown hair down to his shoulders; a haphazard grown of beard covers his face, which gives him the coarse look of a rough, western, mountain man. He is more at home in a deerskin jacket than a store-bought thirty-dollar suit from Atlanta. Matt’s appearance, on the other hand, must have come from his mother’s side of the family. He is of medium height, slightly on the portly side, hated beards and could not tolerate mustaches. His blond facial hair was probably the reason; it was thin and meager, as blond hair tends to be. Such hair, as everyone knows, does not make for a generous beard.
It was no mere coincidence that General Jackson requested Robert for assignment to his staff. As soon as the General was informed of Robert’s enlistment Jackson put the wheels of the Confederate war machine in to motion to have Robert assigned to his staff. It is easy to understand why - General Thomas Jonathan Jackson and Robert Steven Scarburg were first cousins!
As a young boy Thomas Jackson or TJ as he was called back then, was sent to Scarburg Mill to live with his uncle Thomas Scarburg and cousin Robert after losing both of his parents.
Although TJ was a few years younger than Robert, they grew up playing together in and around the Mill on Mink Creek. TJ was forever playing on the stonewall dam built across the creek to catch the water for the enormous water wheel. His uncle Thomas was constantly admonishing young TJ to stay off the stonewall dam warning, “I believe you like that stonewall dam more than life itself Thomas Jackson! Someday “Stonewall” Jackson you are going to find yourself swept up into the blades of that water wheel!” From that day forward they abandoned the nickname TJ; he was now “Stonewall.”
Slightly less than two months before today’s approaching battle Stonewall was shot and wounded, albeit a mistake, by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville; however, he died a couple of days later. After his Commander’s death, Matthew requested re-assignment to a line company, preferably E Company of the 48th Alabama.
Matthew’s request for line duty was granted. Now he was about to participate in his first battle or ‘see the elephant’ for the first time, alongside his father Robert and brother Luke.
THE CORNFIELD
Robert, Matthew, and Luke can smell the odors of sweat from the horses, unwashed men, and manure as they prod along. They also get a whiff of pine, moss, and rotting leaves as they trudge through the woods, but another smell, a pleasant aroma touches their noses, - the scent of ripened corn. This tantalizing smell reaches the hungry Confederate soldiers as they approach the edge of the trees. Just beyond the oak, elm, pine, and hickory they find a sun-dried patch of farmland covered with tall stalks of Yankee corn. Field corn as the Southern boys call it.
The soft, sweet, roasting ears of spring have already changed in to ears of hard, dry corn of summer. Corn in a field owned by a farmer on the outskirts of this small Pennsylvania village. Corn he is planning to use to feed his livestock and family during the coming winter. Presently, however, the soldiers of the South do not care how hard the corn has become. Most of them are breaking the ears from their stalks, quickly removing the shucks and hurriedly stripping the hard kernels from the corncobs with their teeth. The corn is hard to chew, but the Confederates are famished, they have been subsisting on scant rations for days. Hard or not they are going to eat it. Sergeant Scarburg, Luke, and Matthew join their fellow soldiers in the ‘feast
’ that for many is going to be their last meal on earth.
This Regiment of the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, is not expecting any resistance; they are, after all, only looking for shoes. Most of the Rebel infantry walks barefoot, their shoes long ago worn in to tattered scraps of leather. The commanders have heard shoes were available at this small crossroads place. A place with a name hardly anyone knows. Although few know the town’s name, the battle that will take place here over the next three decisive days will forever burn upon the pages of history. This action at the junction of ten roads will become the high water mark of the Confederate States of America’s bid to break from the United States. It is arguably an avoidable mistake from which the South will never fully recover. The irony of this battle for the South – there were no shoes to be had in the town.
The date, as recorded in General Lee’s Daily Log is Wednesday, the First of July in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Three.
Despite orders to the contrary by General Lee, Maj. Gen. Henry Heth, the commander of the Confederate’s Third Corps, orders his troops to attack the Union forces defending the northern side of town. The Union forces open fire – the bullets whizz over Robert and the heads of his two boys and plow through the dried stalks of corn. The Yankee mini-balls crashing through the corn have an eerie sound, and the ones flying close to their heads has a whine as though bees were passing by.
Sergeant Scarburg stops, shoulders his musket, and despite being unable to see the enemy fires forward into the forest of cornstalks. Matthew and Luke, following their father’s lead, do the same. Occasionally they hear screams of agony as a bullet finds its mark in someone’s body – is it the enemy? Or have they fired in to their own troops? No one will ever know, most never see the target of their blind shooting. By the time, the rebels emerge from the cornfield the Union troops have retreated back into town. The Confederates pursue and continue firing at anything that moves. Street to street fighting pushes the Yankees south of town where they establish defensive positions on a small hill known locally as Cemetery Ridge. Here the Union soldiers, under the recently appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George Meade, make their stand.
Realizing the potential strength of the Yankee defensive position, General Lee orders Lieutenant General Richard Ewell to attack and seize the hill ‘if practicable’ before the entire Union army can concentrate their forces there. New to command Ewell hesitates, he thinks it not ‘practicable.’
Sergeant Scarburg’s E Company, along with most of the 1st Corps, only slightly engages the Yanks during the first day’s fight. Most of that first day 1st Corps spends making a grueling forced march south with the intent of attacking General Meade’s left flank. Company E’s position in the line of attack is between two slight hills named Little and Big Round Top.