Talons of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  Jamie’s men captured more than two dozen of them, and they were disarmed and brought to Jamie.

  Boys, Jamie thought, looking at the scared young men standing in front of him. They should be playing games and sparking young girls.

  Jamie walked the short line, eyeballing each prisoner for a few seconds. The imposing figure of Jamie MacCallister stalking up and down in front of them caused many of the soldiers to tremble in their hot and ill-fitting uniforms. Jamie wore his customary black shirt and gray britches, a yellow kerchief tied around his neck. With his moccasins and high leggins, deeply tanned face, and muscular build, he looked sort of like a pirate to the young men. They didn’t know who the hell had captured them.

  Jamie cleared that up promptly.

  “I am Major Jamie MacCallister, MacCallister’s Marauders.”

  “Oh, shit!” a young private muttered. “They’re gonna shoot us for sure.”

  Jamie hid his smile. “You boys are the lucky ones. You’re out of this war.”

  Jamie ordered the young soldiers to be taken to Beauregard’s HQ for questioning and then settled down to wait for some action. But none came that night, and the Marauders all got a good night’s sleep. Mid-morning of the 17th, a runner found the major and told him to fall back; Union troops were only about a mile from Fairfax Court House.

  Dupree grinned. “The Yankees are takin’ the bait, Major. It won’t be long now.”

  Jamie looked toward a black spiral of smoke. “Beauregard’s set the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Bridge on fire. Fall back, boys.”

  Beauregard had given orders to his troops at Fairfax Court House to leave food still cooking on the fires, giving the Yankees the impression they were so frightened they had fled without eating. The Union soldiers were jubilant. They ate the hot food and sang victorious songs with their coffee. Their jubilation was to be short-lived.

  The Union general, McDowell, was giving conflicting orders to his commanders and being forced to rethink his strategy every hour or so. Nothing was working out as he had planned. He had reached Fairfax Court House expecting to find another of his generals, Heintzelman, waiting for him. But now he had no idea where General Heinzelman might be (Heinzelman and his men had been slowed down to a crawl by the dense brush and poor roads). McDowell was also beginning to suspect a trap. He had just learned that Centerville had been abandoned by the Rebels and also that all along the Rebel line the Confederates were pulling back. That seemed very odd to him.

  McDowell ordered another of his generals, Dan Tyler, to ride through Centerville at first light to check out the situation. And McDowell also gave him firm orders not to engage the enemy—just check it out and report back with his findings.

  Jamie and his two companies of Marauders had pulled back as ordered and were cooling their heels in the dense timber, hoping to see a blue coat to shoot at. So far, they had seen nothing, nor had they heard the first shot.

  A runner found Jamie and handed him orders. Jamie was to take his Marauders over to a stand of timber not far from Mitchell’s Ford and throw up a line. Beauregard suspected something was up.

  Something sure was.

  Just moments after Jamie and his Marauders got into place, after having circled wide and come up from the south, Tyler exceeded his orders and decided to take the town of Manassas. His thinking was that since the Rebels seemed to be in full retreat, why not take advantage of it and forge on ahead. It would be quite a feather in his cap.

  That decision not only got the plume in Tyler’s hat shot off, it almost cost him his life.

  Since his men were going to be engaged in regular army field tactics for a time, Jamie had taken the rifles from the dozen captured Yankees and passed them out to his best shots. The rifles were British Enfield rifles, which could use the American .58 caliber bullet and could fire farther and with more accuracy than the shorter barreled carbines.

  “When they come into range are they fair game, Major?” one of Jamie’s men asked.

  “As far as I’m concerned they are.”

  The snipers looked at one another and grinned.

  Tyler was at that time giving orders to send several companies of the First Massachusetts forward and at the same time ordering several twenty pounders to open fire where he suspected Rebel artillery to be hidden in the thickets. He also ordered two other companies of infantry to seize and hold a wooded area that lay off some distance from the suspected Rebel artillery battery. He had no way of knowing that Jamie and his men were in those woods waiting. The batteries commenced firing as the two companies began advancing on the hidden positions of the Marauders.

  Jamie told his men to open up.

  Twelve Rebel riflemen fired, and ten Union soldiers went down, four of them dead and the others badly wounded.

  Tyler ordered the companies back and into cover. He looked toward the timber, confusion in the glance. Then his gaze was averted as the First Massachusetts came under heavy fire from Rebel snipers far to the right side of Jamie’s position.

  Tyler not only ignored his orders, but threw all caution to the wind and ordered his men to take the Rebel positions. But they could not. They were caught in a heavy cross fire and pinned down. Tyler called for his entire command, just over a brigade strong, to come up.

  Tyler had no way of knowing that General Beauregard had more than half his army facing his one brigade.

  “Pull back, you damn fool,” Jamie muttered. “You’re throwing good men out to be slaughtered.”

  “That’s what it’s all about, Major,” Sparks said, standing a few feet away. “One side slaughters the other.”

  Jamie could not argue that.

  Dupree called, “Them facin’ us is showin’ a white flag, Major. I reckon they want to get their wounded.”

  “Let them. I’ve done the same with Indians and with Santa Anna’s men at the Alamo.”

  The colonel commanding the Massachusetts waved his men out to collect the wounded. The dead would lie where they fell. After a few minutes, both sides started once more banging away at each other.

  Tyler ordered another line set up facing Jamie and his men, but Tyler’s only option was to place them on the crest of a hill. After a few minutes of deadly fire from the Marauder snipers, they were withdrawn.

  “If this is the best showin’ their officers can do,” Corporal Bates remarked, “we just might win this war.” But it was said without a lot of conviction. Bates had traveled the North and East with his father, a railroad engineer. He knew full well the might of the Yankees.

  In a desperate move, General Tyler placed men from the Twelfth New York, the First Massachusetts, and the Second and Third Michigan stretched out along a line facing the Rebels. But they could not advance. After less than a half hour of fierce fighting, Tyler ordered his men to withdraw.

  The weakest point of the miles-long line was at Blackburn’s Ford, but that was due to the terrain and not the resolve of the Southerners under the command of Longstreet.

  Now General Tyler was faced with some tough decisions. He had no way of knowing that Jamie’s Marauders were only two companies strong without a single cannon to back them. Had he taken a chance, he might have broken through and begun a flanking movement. But he did not. He elected to pull back the Twelfth New York and send them directly at Longstreet’s men. But Beauregard had sent Early’s brigade to beef up Longstreet and went there himself with his men. He and Longstreet stood up behind their troops, sabers in hand, the sight of them braving the bullets only adding to the courage of their men.

  After only twenty minutes, the Twelfth New York began to retreat, and it was not an orderly withdrawal . . . it was a rout. That retreat left other Union troops under Tyler’s command wide open, and Longstreet sent men from his Virginia command charging across the stream. The Union line broke, and the troops began running toward the rear. Longstreet did not pursue—a decision that was questioned for some time by other Confederate officers; instead he ordered his Rebels back and to resume the
ir positions south of the creek.

  The battle for Blackburn’s Ford was over, with the Rebels clearly victorious.

  McDowell arrived on the scene, clearly irritated, and took Tyler into a hastily erected tent and posted a guard and closed the flap. It was not known exactly what McDowell said to Tyler, but congratulations certainly were not in order.

  For the next several days, all was mostly quiet along the long lines. Jamie and his men held their positions in the woods and rested, wrote letters home, and talked among themselves.

  The men of the Marauders were gradually adopting a battle dress, and Jamie did not object. While Jamie wore a black shirt and gray trousers, the men were now nearly all wearing gray shirts and black trousers. All now wore the yellow bandanna around their throats and the standard Confederate cavalryman’s hat. Dupree’s wife had gathered together several Louisiana ladies and sewed a battle flag for the Marauders. Jamie smiled when he saw it, but offered no objections to its use . . . as a matter of fact, he was rather amused by it.

  It was a black flag with a pirate’s skull and crossbones in the center.

  Leaving his two companies resting in the woods, Jamie rode over to Beauregard’s headquarters—his aide, Little Ben Pardee, rode with him. General Joseph E. Johnston was there. Johnston, being the senior officer, was in command of the entire Rebel army. But for the Battle of Manassas (the Yankees called it Bull Run), he left Beauregard in complete command.

  It was the 20th of July, 1861.

  Reinforcements were arriving almost hourly. General T.J. Jackson and his Virginia Brigade had arrived, as had General B.E. Bee from South Carolina and General E.K. Smith and his men. General Theophilus Holmes had arrived with his troops, as had Colonel Hampton and his South Carolina Hampton Legion and Colonel Bartow’s Georgia Brigade. Many had their own flags, and it was getting confusing, for the flags were all different, some of them not even using the Confederate colors. The flag of the Florida Independent Blues, for example, was a blue background with seven white stars on top, a flower in the middle, and the words ANY FATE BUT SUBMISSION, in a half circle on the bottom. One flag from South Carolina had blue and red squares with a fox, a cannon, a quarter moon, and a palm tree embroidered on the flag. Soon most of the flags would be replaced by the Rebel battle flag, which had thirteen white stars against a blue X, the stars representing the eleven Confederate states plus the two that the Rebels claimed, Missouri and Kentucky.

  General Beauregard’s HQ during the Battle of Manassas was a private home near Manassas Junction. President Jefferson Davis would meet with Beauregard there, and some fifteen months later, President Abe Lincoln would meet with some of his generals in the very same house.

  In addition to the thousands of Confederate troops already gathered, by July 21, more than nine thousand other Rebels had made the trip by railroad to beef up the Confederate army. At the same time, the Union forces were also being increased—by reporters and civilian well-wishers who came bringing picnic lunches and kegs of beer and stronger spirits. They pitched tents and laid down blankets and cots. They came by the hundreds, getting in the way and in general making a nuisance of themselves. They were in high spirits, some having traveled long distances to witness firsthand the Union army give the Confederate army a good sound licking and to teach these upstart Southerners a lesson. They settled in under whatever shade they could find and uncorked their spy glasses and field glasses and got ready to have a party after the battle that would soon and forever after be called the Battle of Bull Run.

  8

  One of Jamie’s men who had lived for a time in Ohio, and did not have a pronounced Southern drawl, slipped into Yankee held territory and mingled with the crowds for a day, before slipping back across the lines that night.

  “Must be near ’bouts a thousand civilians over there, Major. Man name of Matt Brady is over there with his cameras, and there are congressmen and senators from Washington, D.C., there. And they got troops comin’ in just like we have.”

  One of General Johnston’s aides was in camp, and he asked, “Civilians? Why?”

  “To watch the Yankees whip us, sir.”

  The aide smiled. “They just might be in for a slight disappointment.”

  “We’re counting on that,” Captain Dupree said.

  “Major MacCallister, General Johnston has orders for you and your Marauders. When the battle starts in earnest, he wants you and your men to cross the stream and launch a flanking action here.” He pointed to a map. “Create a lot of confusion.”

  “We do that right well,” Sparks drawled.

  “Yes,” the aide said with a smile. “We know.”

  * * *

  Long after the aide had left, Jamie studied the crude maps and the overall battle plan carefully and again immediately picked up the flaws in it. The northwest, or left, side of the line was grossly undermanned. Beauregard had placed the bulk of his troops far to the right, down around Mitchell’s Ford, Blackburn’s Ford, and McLean’s Ford, leaving the left side of the line very nearly wide open.

  But Jamie wasn’t about to openly question the commanding general on his battle tactics. However, he could see to it that the Union forces he was to face in a few hours would think they were up against a much larger force. He didn’t know quite how he was going to do that, yet, but he’d work it out.

  He was awakened at three o’clock on the morning of July 21 by a runner. “The Yankees are on the move, sir,” the young man told him. “They were rousted out about an hour ago. Them that could sleep that is. Our people in the observation posts say the Yankees hardly slept at all.”

  Pulling on his moccasins and tying his leggins, Jamie looked at the young man. “And you, son?”

  The runner grinned. “I ain’t slept none, Major. War’s in the air, I reckon.”

  “Indeed,” Jamie replied, standing up.

  Jamie and his men drank coffee and ate cold biscuits, then doused their small fires and saddled up. With Jamie in the lead, they moved silently through the brush and timber over to Colonel Evans’ position between Young’s Branch and the stream called Bull Run.

  Jamie and Evans shook hands, and Evans asked, “Your orders, Major?”

  “To raise some hell with the Yankees, sir. I figure they’ll hit us at dawn.”

  “If they can ever get into position. My forward people report a lot of confusion and cussing over there.”

  He was right about that. The terrain was totally unfamiliar to the Union troops, and many were stumbling around and tripping over things and falling down. The rattle of Yankee equipment clattering against rocks and such was enough to raise the dead.

  The Rebels waited behind their guns, silent in the gloom of night.

  From Ewell’s command far to the right, all the way over to Evans’ command, some six or seven miles away, the Rebels shared the same fear as the Yankees. It was hard to get enough moisture in their mouths to even spit. In a few spots along the snakelike line, Union and Confederate troops were only a few yards away from each other, with many of them taunting the other.

  “You come acrost this crick, boy, you gonna die.”

  “You go straight to hell, Rebel!”

  “Hell’s waitin’ for both of us, I reckon.”

  “Not for me, I don’t own human beings as slaves.”

  “I don’t neither. Never owned a slave in my life. Ain’t nary a slave on either side of my family. Never has been.”

  A long silence followed that. Finally, the unknown Union soldier asked the equally unknown Rebel, “Then what the hell are you doing fighting?”

  “So’s you Yankees will stay out of my business, I reckon.”

  “I’m not in your business!”

  “The hell you say. You here, ain’t you?”

  The Yankee could not argue that.

  “If you blue-bellies had tended to your own affairs, I’d be home asleep ’side my wife instead of on this damn cold ground.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “South
Carolina. You?”

  “New York. We’re both a long way from hearth and home.”

  “You damn shore got that right.”

  “Silence up and down the line!” Rebel and Union sergeants ordered.

  Both Yankee and Rebel told the unseen voices where they could shove their orders.

  Both men would be dead in a few hours. Neither man quite sure what he was fighting for, but each firmly convinced he was on the right side.

  At dawn, Jamie had moved his people several hundred yards away from Evans’ position and was keeping them hidden in a stand of brush and timber. Nothing was happening down the line, and Jamie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had a strong suspicion that the whole of the Union army was going to come pouring right over and through his and Evans’ men.

  He wasn’t that far from being right.

  Just a few minutes after seven that morning, Colonel Evans sent a runner to tell Jamie, “The colonel thinks the Yankees are bluffing. They aren’t going to attack in strength along our positions. He thinks they’re going to strike at Sudley Ford. That’s Burnside’s Yankees. The colonel wants you and your people over there. He’ll join you as quickly as possible.”

  Jamie quickly shifted his Marauders over to the left, and they waited. Just a few minutes later, he saw the glint of Union bayonets flashing in the morning sun as the first troops moved into position in the trees around Sudley Ford.

  Jamie sent Ben Pardee on the fly to tell Evans of the news. After Pardee blurted out the message, Evans quickly shifted his command around, putting Major Wheat and his red-shirted, five-hundred-man Louisiana Tigers just to Jamie’s right.

  Wheat’s Tigers were a unit known for its bravery under fire. Later on during the Battle of Bull Run, one Union colonel, after witnessing his men being soundly thrashed by the Louisiana Tigers, called them, “The most belligerent bunch of bastards I have ever faced.”