The Last Confederate

by Gilbert, Morris

  Speers stood there silently, not trying to rush the young man. He had told the truth when he said he could hire another substitute, but his plan was shady. He would say, Both James and I were against hiring a substitute. James is anxious to go—but this young fellow, well, he begged so hard, we just couldn’t say no.

  Finally Thad looked up and his eyes were hooded, but there was a set look on his dark face.

  “All right, I’ll do it. But you’ll have to get Mr. Winslow to fix up the paper so I’ll know for sure Toby is all right.”

  Speers agreed quickly. “That will be fine with me. When do you want to do it?”

  “Today.”

  The answer took Speers by surprise, but he stood up quickly. “Let me get my hat, and we’ll ride over to see Mr. Winslow.”

  “I’ll meet you there.” Thad turned and walked out of the house.

  When he reached Dooley, he told him simply, “I’m going to be a substitute in the army for Mr. Speers’ son. It’ll be enough to get Toby free.” He held up his hand as Dooley started to protest, “Don’t argue with me, Dooley. My mind’s made up!”

  Dooley scanned the boy’s face and knew by his set jaw that there was no use to argue. “All right, it’s your say, Thad—at least we get to soldier together.”

  The two got on their horses and rode back to the Big House. That day was never very clear in Thad’s mind. He could remember Sky Winslow’s look of shock, and how his wife had protested his decision. He could remember going into Richmond with Winslow and Speers, to an office where he signed many papers. He remembered Winslow saying, “Toby is safe, Thad. My word on it.”

  Finally it was over, and he went back to Belle Maison in the carriage with Mr. Winslow. They said almost nothing, and the next morning, Thad went with Dooley to Richmond where they took their oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.

  The two were given uniforms, and that afternoon they boarded a train with other men to be rushed to Tennessee where the army was still struggling with Grant’s troops.

  Thad would never forget the sight of all the Winslows at the station. Mrs. Winslow cried as she hugged him. Pet could not say a word, but clung to him fiercely for one brief moment, leaving his new uniform moist with tears.

  As the train pulled out, Sky turned to his wife. “Rebekah, I feel as if another one of our sons has gone to war—but it’ll be harder for Thad because of this substitute business.” Then he put his arm around her and suggested, “Lets go by the church and have a time of prayer for all of them, Rebekah. Only God can help us now.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE RECRUIT

  The Third Virginia had been in the thick of the battle at Pittsburgh Landing. Their baptism in fire had left gaps in their ranks, and the carnage had driven all romanticism about the glory of war from their heads. They had been part of the force that attacked the center of the Union line after the flanks had been rolled up—but General Prentiss rallied the Yankee troops by placing them in an old sunken road, which proved to be the center of the battle.

  Mark Winslow had stared into that furnace of shot and shell, his heart beating. When Captain Lafcadio Sloan cried out, “Company A—let’s get the Yankees!” Mark had joined the charge; and after the first few seconds, he forgot his fears. Minie balls filled the air, and the sound of their own cannon was deafening. He had not gone fifty yards before Corporal Daily, the color-bearer, fell with several balls in his breast. A private he didn’t know picked up the standard, only to fall before he had gone ten steps. Mark learned later that six color-bearers died in the blazing fire which exploded in their faces.

  The Third Virginia was never able to take the position, being forced to retreat after all efforts to take it by assault failed. Afterward Pittsburg Landing was called “The Hornet’s Nest,” and many veterans remembered it as the hottest, most deadly single battle of the war. Mark had led the remnants of the company back to a refuge after retreat was sounded, a place which came to be known as “Bloody Pond.” So many of the wounded on both sides died that the water was stained red by their blood. When Mark got back to the main body, he heard that General Albert Sidney Johnston was down. Later they learned that his wound had not been mortal, but because he had insisted on staying on his feet, he literally bled to death.

  The brigade was pulled back to care for the wounded, and for several days after the battle the gruesome task of burying the dead went on. The bodies swelled and their faces turned black under the April sun. The Third Virginia was composed almost entirely of men from the same county, and many of them were relatives. To Mark and Tom, who helped bury the dead, it was worse than the battle. Time after time a man would find the body of a brother, and twice men found the bodies of their sons on the bloody field. Tom, his face pale, said in a shaky voice to Mark, “I can’t take much more of this. I keep thinking what it would be like if I found you out there!”

  Mark was hollow-eyed and every movement was an effort. The sight of his men going down like stalks of wheat under the scythe seemed to be etched on the inside of his eyelids; he could not close his eyes without seeing the carnage. Though groggy with fatigue, he urged his brother on. “We’ve got to do it, Tom. Thank God you didn’t get hit!”

  Colonel Barton called a meeting of his officers that night, and it was a sober-faced group he addressed. Barton was not the same self-assured man he had been a year earlier. He had discovered that, unlike most officers, he was almost chronically afraid of battle, and his monumental struggle to keep this from his men had drained him dry. Now he said as cheerfully as he could, “I want to tell you how proud I am of you, gentlemen. The Third Virginia proved its metal.”

  Vance Wickham, his left arm in a sling, commented ironically, “What’s left of it, Colonel. If we prove ourselves in another fight like that one, we won’t have enough men to mount a guard.”

  Beau Beauchamp grunted his agreement. “Whoever sent us in against that fire ought to be court-martialed!”

  Mark added, “Well, I guess it was our only hope, Beau. If we’d made it, we could have cut the Yankees off—and I still think we could have done it if Buell’s forces hadn’t got there just when they did.”

  An argument broke out, and Shelby Lee, noting that the younger men were almost blind with fatigue, urged calmly, “Gentlemen, we mustn’t show any disagreement to the men. They’re in poor shape. Most of them have lost relatives, and they feel as if it was a defeat.” He went on talking to them in that vein and finally said, “We’ll be receiving reinforcements soon—and we’ll need them, for if McClellan’s army is half as big as our reports say, we’ll need every man we can get to whip him. Therefore, it’s important that we work hard to build morale. When these new men come, they need to find the Third in fighting trim.”

  Colonel Barton agreed quickly, “That’s very true, Major. Now, for replacements, we lost Captain Sloan. Lieutenant Wickham, you will be appointed to his place, and Mr. Beauchamp, you will be first lieutenant of Company A . . .” He continued doing what he did best: making appointments and plans.

  “Congratulations, Vance,” Beau said after they left the tent. “Any orders from the new captain?”

  “Bring me an easy chair and a mint julep, will you, old boy?” Wickham grinned. Then he sobered. “Lee is right, isn’t he? I reckon we’ll be sent back to face McClellan straight off. And he’s right about the men. They’re in a bad frame of mind. We’ve got to work on that.”

  When the first replacements came marching in, Company A got the first pick, but the company was not in a happy frame of mind. As the officers had indicated, the men were angry at their defeat and grieved over the loss of close friends and relatives.

  The men of Milton Calhoun’s mess had a fire going, fueled by rails from a farmer’s fence—which was strictly forbidden. Colonel Barton had ordered the troops to do no damage to local property. At one end of the group, Calhoun was frying ham on Sharp’s skillet; and at the other, Lafe Sharp was baking flour bread. The dough had been shaped into a loaf aro
und the ramrod of Sharp’s Springfield rifle, like a fleece on a distaff. As he turned the mixture in his hamlike hands, he sang in a whiskey tenor, “Oh, Lord, Gals One Friday.”

  None of the men appreciated Sharp or his singing, but they needed his skillet. Milton himself had owned one once, but it had been stolen. He’d been carrying it on a march, its handle down the barrel of his rifle, sticking out like a huge black sunflower, and a cavalryman had simply lifted it and carried the pan off. Now four men depended on that skillet: Sharp, Calhoun, Peyton Law, a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher, and Lew Avery, a dark-faced man of thirty who had been a gambler on a riverboat. All four looked half starved, for they had lived on short rations for months—eating everything from green apples to unripe corn. It had made havoc out of their digestive systems, all of them suffering from dysentery to some degree.

  When the food was cooked, the soldiers sat around and ate hungrily, washing the meal down with sips of river water from their canteens. They had finished and lit up their pipes or taken a chaw, as the case was, when Captain Wickham approached and spoke loudly enough for most of the men of Company A to hear. “All right, boys, you can rest easy. Our reinforcements from Richmond are here. You may have heard that the Confederate Congress passed a conscription law. Well, the conscripts are at the gate, and I expect you will go and exchange your old equipment for their new, but let me give you a word of warning. Some of them are substitutes. Some wealthy boy was drafted and rather than join our party himself, he paid another fellow to take his place. Now, there’s just one thing about these substitutes—we need them bad! So you can use a sharp tongue on them, but you are not to harm them bodily, nor after this first day humiliate them—and you had better heed what I say. Now, let your eyes feast upon them, for they come through yonder gates.”

  Wickham waved his hat toward a group of fifteen men who were marched like harried chickens to the camp. The third lieutenant stopped and yelled: “These fifteen are for you, Lieutenant Wilson!” Then cutting out the assigned group, he herded the rest of his flock to the next brigade.

  “Mind what I said,” Captain Wickham warned his men, and walked off. As soon as the captain disappeared around a clump of trees, the volunteers of Company A descended like vultures on the wide-eyed and helpless recruits. One conscript would be surrounded by four or five of the company, and in no time he would be stripped of his new uniform and forced to put on the lice-infested rags of his tormentors. The veterans went through the conscript’s haversacks and took coffee, tobacco, food, and anything else they fancied.

  Some of the conscripts resisted, but it was no fair contest. They had already been derided as latecomers to the fight, and there was little spirit left in them—except for a few.

  Lafe Sharp had swooped upon the conscripts like a whirlwind, depriving several of choice items, at last coming to a small man with a huge mustache. The newcomer looked innocently at Sharp and said, “Hidee.”

  He was carrying a full haversack, and Lafe reached down to snatch it, but somehow found himself on the ground looking up. His head throbbed and the sky whirled. He crawled to his feet and looked around to find the Regulars laughing at him. He turned to look at the recruit, and realized that the fellow had used the musket in his hand, leaving a deep cut in Sharp’s skull.

  “You didn’t say please,” the little man remarked.

  “I’ll kill you!” Lafe yelled, but as he reached for the throat of the smaller man, Sharp’s bare toes were smashed by the butt of the recruit’s rifle, and he fell to the ground cursing and holding his foot.

  “My name’s Dooley Young,” the recruit said. “Come to help you fellers fight the Yankees.”

  “Hey, Dooley!” Les Satterfield, a tall, thin boy with stringy yellow hair, came up to thrust out his hand. “We was wonderin’ when you’d get here.” He laughed at Sharp, who was glaring at the man. “Lafe, this here is my cousin. Don’t reckon it’d profit you none to mess with him. He’s so ornery a rattlesnake bit him five times and died!”

  Just at that moment a harsh voice drew every eye to where a hulking recruit stood, holding a tall young man by the arm. “And this here,” he rasped, “is one of them paid substitutes—of which there ain’t nothin’ lower—’ceptin’ the yellow dog who paid him!”

  Tom Winslow had been alerted by Captain Wickham to keep close to the men to see that none of the new recruits were abused. He had kept still while the veterans had helped themselves to the newcomers’ fresh supplies, but now he started to move forward, for he recognized the speaker as Studs Mellon—and the pug was holding Thad Novak by the arm! Tom was brought to a stop, however, when Dooley blocked his way and whispered, “Better let it go jest now, Tom.”

  The others moved to surround the pair, and Dooley quickly explained the circumstances to Tom. “He done it for Toby. You know them two is great friends. But they ain’t no way that you nor me can fight the boy’s battles, Tom. He’ll have to prove hisself to the men.”

  Tom realized that truth, and stood with the rest, listening to Mellon. “And this here Yankee boy ain’t jest no ordinary paid-for substitute—oh, no! Tell these fellers what you done with the bounty money, Novak!”

  Thad’s face was pale as he faced them all, held in place by a massive hand. The burly Mellon had tormented him ever since the group had been assembled at Richmond. Somehow the bully had discovered the details of Thad’s enlistment, probably through Sut Franklin, a crony of his, and he had never let the matter rest.

  “Why, he took that money and bought a slave loose with it!” Mellon bellowed. “Reckon he couldn’t steal him and git him up North, so he done jined up jest to git the job done.”

  A mutter ran through the group, and Thad saw distrust, even hatred, in the eyes of some of the veterans. He lifted his head and stared back at them, determined not to give them the satisfaction of seeing him show any fear. Will Henry, one of the few aristocrats who had entered the army as a private, recognized Novak at once. He was now second sergeant, and spent much of his time with Tom. He had been at the New Year’s party when Wickham had made his bet with Beau Beauchamp. Henry, still hopelessly in love with Belle, had followed the history of the young Yankee who had nearly won the shooting match. He knew that Sky Winslow valued the young man, and he knew as well that if something didn’t happen, Novak would have a wretched time in the army. A thought occurred to him.

  “Wait a minute, boys,” Henry said; and winking at Tom and Dooley, he stepped forward. “Before you start in on any of these recruits, I think we better check them out. If they can shoot, I don’t give a hoot why they came. McClellan is headed for Virginia with the biggest army anybody ever saw, and we lost some good men at Shiloh—and I want all the firepower we can get in Company A.”

  “Aw, I can outshoot any Yankee that ever lived!” Lafe snarled. He was, as a matter of fact, a deadly shot, and Will Henry saw his chance.

  “Wouldn’t be so quick to brag, Lafe, especially about a man you never shot against,” Sergeant Henry replied mildly.

  Lafe Sharp had always hated Will Henry, as he hated all aristocrats, so he looked at him and grunted, “That wouldn’t take long to prove.”

  Tom Winslow added quickly, “Might not be a bad idea, Corporal. Let’s have these recruits fire off a few rounds. Need to see how good they are, anyway.”

  Lafe grinned at his friends, and then saw that Novak was carrying a new Whitworth rifle, a parting gift from Sky Winslow, and he snarled, “Hey, nigger-lover, that rifle gun’s too good fer you. How ’bout a little bet—my gun agin’ yours?”

  Dooley interrupted. “Why his gun is worth five of that old musket you got! Make him throw in some boot, Thad.”

  Thad had an idea, and said, “I’ll put up my gun against yours—and the only boot you have to anti-up is to give me back all my things.”

  “It’s a bet!” Lafe shouted gleefully. “Come on, boys, I’m gonna have me a new rifle gun!” Tom and Dooley followed the group to the shooting range, an open field with several huge oak st
umps, some as far as half a mile away. Sergeant Henry sent Peyton Law to set up some empty cans, waving him back to a distance of two hundred yards. “Take your shot, Lafe,” he said.

  Sharp took a steady rest, knocked the can off, then turned and bragged, “Beat that, nigger-lover!”

  Thad stared at him and shook his head in disgust. “We’ve got twelve-year-olds that can make that shot. I thought this was a grown-up shootin’ match.” He whirled around and shouted, “Move that can back!”

  Peyton moved another fifty yards and paused.

  “Move back!” Thad yelled. Three times he had Peyton set the mark back until the distance was well over five hundred yards. The can was a mere speck, and a murmur of doubt rose from the soldiers.

  “He’s bluffin’, boys!” Lafe laughed.

  Thad knew that Sharp was half right, for it was a difficult shot. He had hit harder ones, but he had also missed easier ones. He loaded the Whitworth so quickly that a gasp went up from the men, and Milton Calhoun remarked, “If he shoots as good as he loads, he’s a wonder!”

  Nothing short of a great shot will do me any good, Thad thought. So he did what he had often done—took a snapshot of the target. He was fairly certain of hitting the mark if he took a steady rest, bracing his rifle against a tree or a stump, but there was no tree nearby. He decided to gamble. He had long ago discovered that it did little good to try to hold a rifle steady for any long period of time. The weight of the heavy weapon inevitably pulled his arms down, causing the rifle to waver. But for one split second, he could hold the rifle as steadily as if it were encased in rock—and that was what he did.

  Sweeping the Whitworth up, he caught the dim vision of the distant can, froze the motion of the rifle, and instantly pulled the trigger. The explosion and sudden firing caught the men off guard, for they were waiting for a careful shot. A cry from the lips of Dooley rang out: “He done ’er!” and a spontaneous cheer went up.