“This changes things,” Lee said. “I had no idea the Union forces were so close.”
“It’s Stuart’s fault. You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
“No, I haven’t. It’s the first time he ever let me down, General Longstreet.”
“He ought to be broken for this.” Longstreet was a slow-moving man, the exact opposite of General Jeb Stuart. He liked to think things over and come to decisions slowly, whereas Stuart would throw himself in and worry later about the results.
“Never mind that now, General. We must make some decisions.”
Lee walked over to a map, looked at it for a moment, and said, “We’ll keep going here. We’ll come out of the mountains close to this little town.”
“What town is that, General?”
Lee peered at it. “Gettysburg,” he said.
The Battle of Gettysburg should never have been fought. Lee was not himself and made his worst decisions, which he himself admitted. He had a terrible case of dysentery, and the heart disease that would later kill him was giving him severe problems. He was without Stonewall Jackson, and in his place he had a man he did not fully trust.
Lieutenant General Richard Ewell was a good soldier, but he had lost a leg and apparently had lost some confidence along with it. Even before the first gray lines took the field, the Union forces had entrenched on the high ground, and the plains below were nothing but a killing field.
The battle started on July 3, 1863, and both sides incurred disastrous losses. On the second day, the next step was made by General Lee. He sent men around to his right to a place called Little Roundtop. The Confederates were unable to take it, and the following day General Lee ordered a full assault on the center of the Union line.
General Longstreet argued vehemently against the attack. He came as close to insubordination as he ever had with General Lee, for the Union army was entrenched on a ridge. They had the high ground, with full range to sweep the valley below with murderous fire. Lee listened to him, but finally he pointed at the ridge and said, “The enemy is there, and I’m going to strike him.”
The Confederate division that led the strike was under the command of General Pickett. He led his men across an open field into the mouths of the artillery and muskets of a huge army. They were shot to pieces, and only a few pitiful remnants were able to stagger back to the safety of the lines.
Jeb Stuart finally rode in and went to General Lee, but Lee was angry with him and showed it. Stuart had ridden up and dismounted, and Lee had reddened at the sight of him and raised his arm as if he would strike him. “General Stuart, where have you been?”
Stuart was shocked. “I have been carrying out my assignment, sir.”
“I have not heard a word from you in days, and you are the eyes and ears of my army!”
Stuart had swallowed hard and then said, “I brought you a hundred and twenty-five wagons and their teams, General.”
“Yes, General Stuart, and they are an impediment to me now!”
Stuart was dismissed, and he did well for the rest of the battle, but there was no hope for the Confederate Army. At Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee, for the first time, suffered a crushing, brutal defeat.
Chantel was horrified, as was everyone who had gathered to watch the Army of Northern Virginia come back from the battle. Endless lines of wagons were full of wounded men. Blood was dripping out of the wagons, and some were crying to be killed. “Shoot me! Shoot me!” she heard one voice pleading. “Oh, my wife! My poor babies! What will happen to them after I’m dead?” Other cries like this broke her heart. She hurried to the hospital.
Hours later she looked up and saw Clay, and she ran to him. “Are you all right, Clay?”
“I’m fine, just—tired,” he said dispiritedly. Then he laid his hands on her arms and said evenly, “Chantel, Armand was hit.”
Instantly she cried, “Is he dead?”
“No. I just stopped to see him for a minute. He’s—there are still a lot of men out there. At the fairgrounds. I came to the hospital to see if there were any doctors.” He looked around, anguished at the men lying on the beds and even on thin blankets on the floor. “But I can see that they have everything they can do right here.”
“I must go to him, Clay.”
“Yes, go,” he said. “I’m going to see to my men that are here, and then I’ll follow you.”
She ran to the fairgrounds. The big field was full of wounded men just lying on the ground. Finally she found Armand and knelt over him. He was feverish and thirsty. As always after a battle, she had replaced her bag with a canteen around her neck. Now she lifted his head and gave him a drink.
“Ah, that was good,” he whispered. His face was pale, and his side was bloody. “Oh, it was so bad, cherie. So very bad.”
“I know, I know, Armand,” she said soothingly. “Here, let me see.” She gently pulled open Armand’s bloody tunic. She saw that his wound, though painful, was not likely to be serious. “You’re going to be all right, Armand,” she said with relief. “I’m going to clean this out a little and bandage it.” She poured some of the cool water in her canteen over his side, and he shivered. Pulling up her skirt, she ripped her petticoat to make a bandage.
Even wounded, Armand could not resist. “I never thought I’d see your petticoat, cherie,” he joked weakly. “Especially not this way.”
When she finished this rough field dressing, he drank again, still shivering, and Chantel wished desperately for a blanket. “You’re going to be all right, Armand. I know it hurts, but please believe me—you’re going to be fine.”
He nodded weakly then murmured, “It was a terrible thing. We had no chance at all, Chantel.”
“So many wounded,” she said sadly.
“And more dead. We had no chance,” he repeated. “We could not believe that General Lee could make such terrible decisions! Men heard, when Pickett came back from that last charge, General Lee met him. He kept saying, ‘It was all my fault. It’s all my fault.’ He was a broken man.”
Chantel stayed with him and tried to decide whether to return to the hospital and see if there was some way she could get some supplies to these many wounded men. But soon Jacob arrived with the wagon filled with supplies and medicine, and three medics were with him. She and Jacob stayed at the fairgrounds and worked all day until late into the darkness by lantern light. The wounded were still coming in, and many women from Richmond and from the country around came to the hospitals and out to the surrounding fields, the last places they had to put so many wounded. Many men died that night.
Chantel kept doggedly working, giving the wounded men water, sometimes dressing their wounds, comforting them. The medics had brought many tents, and they were organizing the wounded men and getting them all under shelter. Chantel had made sure Armand was taken care of and then had gone back to work.
She felt a soft touch on her hair as she knelt over a man who was unconscious, tucking a blanket around him. The medics had not gotten to this part of the field yet, but Chantel was bringing armloads of blankets to cover them and canteens to give them water. She looked up, and Clay was there.
He lifted her to her feet and took her arm. “I tried to get here sooner, but many of my men were taken down to the south field by the ironworks. I’ve been there all day. You look exhausted, Chantel. Come over to the wagon and sit down for a minute.”
She allowed him to lead her to Jacob’s wagon, and she sat on the back, as she had done so many times before.
Clay settled in beside her. “Did you find Armand?”
“Yes, and the medics said that he wasn’t badly wounded. I thought that, me, but I was glad to hear them say it.”
“I am, too,” Clay said. “I count him as a friend.”
Chantel sighed. “It was terrible, wasn’t it, Clay?”
“The worst I’ve ever seen. It was General Lee’s worst day. He was ill. He had no business trying to lead an army. But it really doesn’t matter who is leading you or who yo
u are. War is a cruel, senseless business.”
She took his hand and held it in hers. “I’m glad you’re back. I prayed for you so hard.”
Clay turned to her. “When the bullets were flying and the shells were bursting, I thought of you.”
He watched her hungrily, and with a little smile, Chantel put her hands on his face. “This time I really want you to kiss me, Clay.”
He kissed her then, softly and gently. “You know how much I love you, Chantel. I don’t have the words to tell you.”
“I know. I feel the same way. I do love you, Clay. I have, ever since I first saw you, so terribly hurt. I was so young. Maybe I don’t know exactly what love is then. But I do now, me.”
He swallowed, hard. In a distant voice, he said, “If we weren’t in this terrible war, you know what I would ask you, Chantel. But right now I can’t even think of it. I don’t want to say it, not right now, in this terrible time.”
Chantel, as always, was a very practical girl. “We are going to marry, you and me,” she said firmly. She reached up again, pulled his head down, and kissed him solidly. Then she put her head on his shoulder. “We are going to trust God to bring us out of this terrible war, and then we will be together, and we will be happy, Clay. I know this, because it is the desire of my heart.”
CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR
It is difficult to put a finger on the exact moment that a war makes a final turning. Most wars are either brief affairs wherein a huge force overruns a small one, or they are long tedious affairs that go on for years. In these long wars, much is done, but very few turning points in which the whole direction of a war is changed can be specifically cited.
The Civil War, however, presented a clear-cut and definite turning point. The South won many battles during the early part of the war, and this drove Abraham Lincoln and, indeed, all the Northern leaders, nearly to distraction. The source of the strength of the Confederacy was in General Robert E. Lee. He was the South’s greatest military asset, and beside him was Stonewall Jackson, perhaps the second most potent force that kept the Confederacy alive and fighting ferociously.
Lincoln tried general after general, all of them failing to defeat Lee and Jackson. At Bull Run, Lincoln sent General McDowell, which proved to be a sad mistake, for McDowell was sadly defeated. In the Seven Days Battle, which was a short but very bloody affair, General McClellan, who was the idol of the North and one of the neatest men who ever wore the uniform, proved that he was unable to stand against these two soldiers. In the Battle of Second Manassas in August of 1862, General Pope was Lincoln’s choice. He failed miserably, as had his predecessors. At Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, Lincoln tried McClellan again. McClellan had the battle in his grasp. All he had to do was make one great charge, but he was psychologically and emotionally unable to send men to their deaths. In the Battle of Fredericksburg, Ambrose Burnside threw himself against Lee and Jackson and introduced the Army of the Potomac to a slaughter from which Burnside and the army had to turn and run. Hooker spoke well and was a fine-looking general, but in the Battle of Chancelorsville, he lost his courage.
The South won that battle, but they lost Stonewall Jackson, which was a grievous loss indeed. No one can know if Gettysburg would have been any different, if this giant among men had been there, standing sure and true “like a stone wall.” He was not there, and Robert E. Lee was defeated, though the Army of Northern Virginia was not decimated. Still they fought on.
But then came the turn of the tide, a point in time that fated the South to a full and final defeat. Abraham Lincoln chose Ulysses S. Grant to be commander-in-chief of all the Union armies. This sealed the fate of the Confederate States of America. Unlike most of the commanding generals before him, Grant was very unimpressive to look at and was not much of a one for talking, nor parades. His uniform was usually scruffy, and at times he even wore the uniform of a private, with the general’s stars, denoting his rank, only showing on his collar.
His choice to succeed him as commanding officer of the Military Division of Mississippi, which was the command of all the troops in the Western Theater, was a general named William Tecumseh Sherman. These two men spelled the death of the Confederacy. Grant told Lincoln, “I’m going to go for Lee, and Sherman is going to go for Joe Johnston. That’s the plan.”
The first battle Grant engaged in with Lee was a bloody affair called the Battle of the Wilderness. As usual, the Northern troops suffered great losses.
Always before when this had happened, the Northern generals had retreated to Washington and built up their forces again. But Grant was different. He and Sherman both were men who believed in total war, with no mercy shown, to bring a quick end to a foe. Grant was determined to wear down the South, and if he had to lose three men for every death the Southern army incurred, so be it. Behind him lay the immense numbers in the North, while the South was already sending sixteen-year-olds and fifty-year-olds into battle. Sherman was a cold-eyed realist, and his most famous statement was, “War is hell.” And he set about to make it so. He set out for Georgia, and the South has never forgotten the cold-blooded and terrible devastation that followed in the wake of Sherman and his men.
With the appointment by Lincoln of Grant and Sherman, it was as if a steel door had suddenly slammed on the South and their army. For after this there really was little hope.
It was October 9, 1863, and Jeb Stuart stood beside the bed where his wife, Flora, lay. He was holding the newest Stuart, a daughter. He looked down at Flora, reached over, and put his hand on her hair. “You choose a name, dear, and I’ll choose one.”
Flora was exhausted from the struggles to bring the child into the world, but she answered, “I’ve always wanted a daughter named Virginia.”
“Excellent! That’s who she’ll be.”
“And what name will you choose?” Flora managed a weak smile.
“Of all the men I’ve known, my gunner Pelham was the most noble. He was indeed the gallant Pelham as everyone called him, and to this day I miss him terribly. I’d like to call this child Virginia Pelham Stuart.”
“A fine name, Jeb.”
Jeb walked the floor, looking into the face of his new daughter, smiling, taking her tiny hand in his strong one. Finally he gave the child back to Flora and then sat down beside her in a worn walnut rocking chair. As he rocked, he grew strangely quiet.
Flora saw that he was grieved. “What’s the matter, Jeb? You look troubled.”
“I guess I am, my dear Flora.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“It’s hard to say. I feel, Flora, that I let General Lee down at Gettysburg. All the papers say so, and some of my best friends in the army accused me of not being a good soldier.”
Flora shook her head and extended her hand, which he took. She squeezed it and said, “You mustn’t grieve, dear. You did what you thought was best. If you made a mistake, others have made theirs.”
“I’ve told myself that many times,” Jeb said in a subdued tone. “I don’t know what made me act as I did. At the time it seemed as if I was following orders, doing exactly what General Lee had asked me to do. But now, looking back, I can see that I made a terrible mistake and should have come back to him days earlier.”
“Jeb, you are a man of God, and you put your trust in Him,” Flora said steadily. “Don’t look back with useless regrets. As you said, you were doing your best, your utmost to perform your duty. That is all a man can do, even the great General Jeb Stuart. Now, let’s talk about something else, something cheerful. What are we going to do when this awful war is finally over, do you think?”
Stuart looked up at her with surprise. It was as if he had never given a thought to that time. “Why, I suppose I’ll stay in the army. Get a nice, comfortable command. I can sit behind a desk, and then every night I will come home to you and the children. Maybe we can have two or three more.”
Flora smiled and said, “Right now I just want to hold Virginia Pelham Stuart. She is prec
ious.”
“Yes, she is. I think she’s going to look like you, Flora, and I hope she does. And I hope she is loving and kind like you. You’ve been the best wife a man ever had.”
Tears came to Flora’s eyes, for Jeb was often jocular and paid her many light, sometimes silly compliments, but this, she knew, came from his heart. “Thank you, Jeb. You can’t know how much that means to me.”
“It’s true, Flora. I thank God for you every day. With His help and your love, I know I can fight on.”
Clay and Corporal Tyron dismounted, took off their hats and gauntlets, and wearily threw themselves down to lean against a big spreading oak tree. The tree was on a small rise, and because of its deep shade, it had minimal undergrowth. It stood like a sentinel, its branches sketching a graceful silhouette against a shroud-gray sky. The two men were silent for a while, taking sips from their canteens, savoring even the tepid, gritty water.
Idly Clay said, “You know, Corporal, I had some funny ideas about battle before I saw one.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“Well, I’d seen pictures in books, you know, of armies out on open fields all neatly lined up with their rifles all held in the same position. Not a man was out of step, and they squared off facing each other, and then they marched right toward each other.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s not like that. It’s nothing like that.”
Corporal Tyron said, “That may have happened in Europe, but when those lobsters came over here fighting for old King George, they found out that that nonsense won’t do over here. We’re not strutting fools. We’re soldiers, and we fight hard. We fight any way we can, anyplace we can.”
“It’s especially true here in the South,” Clay observed. “Too many trees, too many forests, too many rivers. It’s hard to find a place to have a review, much less to put two huge armies together.” He looked out over the desolate landscape.
The sky was a death-gray caul, and a layer of stinking gray smoke hovered over the ground. They had just fought for two days in what was to be called simply the Battle of the Wilderness.
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