Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  “The star on his shoulder straps and an appointment from the president.”

  “And a West Point education,” Baldwin sneers.

  “Perhaps. I will communicate your desire to push forward, Colonel. But for the moment, set about positioning your regiments in the best manner you can for the ground at hand.” He touches spurs to his horse, leaves Baldwin glaring at his back.

  Baldwin calls the regimental colonels and his chief of artillery together. He assigns 1st Ohio to form behind a rail fence on the south side of the field. The 6th Indiana will move through the woods to the east of the field, forming under cover of the trees some fifty yards in advance of the left flank of the 1st Ohio. Seventy-five yards to the rear of the 1st Ohio, the Union 5th Kentucky will form a second line. The 93rd Ohio will remain in the woods fifty yards to the rear of the 5th Kentucky.

  Baldwin divides the six guns of the 5th Indiana Artillery, ordering the section of twelve-pounder field howitzers into the angle between the 1st Ohio and the 6th Indiana and placing the two sections of ten-pounder Parrott rifles to the right of the Union 5th Kentucky. He is just finishing his dispositions when a fresh regiment comes around the edge of the woods to the west, colors flying and apparently unscathed. He rides over, recognizes Colonel Sheridan Read of the 79th Illinois, one of Kirk’s regiments. “Good morning, Read. Where were you?”

  “Guarding the trains. Our turn last night. So we’ve got a hell of mess on our hands, I see.”

  “More than that. It’s Perryville and Shiloh all over.”

  Read shakes his head. “Christ, we never learn.”

  “We do, the men with stars don’t.” Baldwin hesitates. Even now, the etiquette must be maintained. “I don’t know that I can advise you to advance any farther. As far as I can tell, Kirk’s brigade is entirely smashed up. Willich’s, too.”

  “Then tell me where to form, Colonel. I submit my command to your authority.”

  “Thank you, Read. Form to the right of the 1st Ohio along the fence, please.”

  “Yes, sir.” Read rides a few yards and then turns. “What of General Johnson?”

  “He’s back in the trees, libidinously indisposed.”

  Read grimaces, goes off to put his men in line.

  Baldwin waits, occasionally sweeping the fields with his glasses. He is pleased to see men turning aside from their retreat in twos, threes, sixes, and tens, and trudging toward his line. A few larger groups are coming in as well. A sore-footed colonel without a hat, carrying a rifle-musket and cartridge box like an ordinary soldier, limps toward him. He smiles, teeth white in a face blackened by powder smoke. “Hello, Baldwin. It’s Dodge, Thirty-fourth Illinois.”

  “Why, Dodge. I’m glad to see you alive. Where’s Kirk?”

  “Wounded. I sent him back on a litter. Willich’s either dead or captured. I don’t know for sure. Where’s Bandbox Johnson?”

  Baldwin repeats the reply he gave to Read. Dodge scowls. “Then I suppose we’ll have to avoid this particular bandbox with a minimum of his advice. I’ve got a few of my boys and some tagalongs from other regiments. Major Collins kept some of the 29th Indiana together after Colonel Dunn went down. He’s putting them to the rear of my boys at the end of your line.”

  “I appreciate your help, Colonel. Who’s firing that gun over by the creek?”

  “Gibson of Willich’s brigade, I think. He’s got a couple of hundred men. All the rest are dead, captured, or headed for the barn from what I could tell.” He hesitates. “Don’t expect too much of my boys. They got knocked around pretty badly in the last hour. They’re shaky.”

  When Dodge is gone, Baldwin consults his watch. Only fifteen minutes since we took position. Impossible. I wonder if I will be alive in half an hour.

  Brigadier General St. John Liddell, commanding Second Brigade, Cleburne’s Division, does not much like Braxton Bragg. For that matter, he does not know anyone, save Mrs. Bragg and perhaps that boy Wheeler, who does like Bragg. Yet Liddell can at least stomach the company of the man. Very occasionally, he will share a drink with the general and listen to his complaints. Liddell assures him that he overestimates the number and strength of his enemies within the army: Let the general command and his generals will submit. If they do not, cause one or two to be shot, and the rest will certainly obey.

  Liddell does not consider himself a West Pointer, though many others do. He had attended the Academy for a year, but had been expelled for wounding another cadet in a duel in 1834. The incident entered the folklore of the Academy, with Liddell cast in the hero’s role by his fellow Southerners. His opponent was a burly Michigan bully named Perry, who— unacquainted with dueling pistols—had discharged his accidentally in the air, leaving Liddell to take careful aim at his groin. Perry held his stance as long as he could, then turned to flee. At that point, Liddell fired, putting a ball neatly into Perry’s left buttock. Score one for Dixie. Liddell might have returned to the Academy the next fall, but he was a poor student and chose instead to become a sugar planter in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana.

  Building a plantation from a swampy tract was neither an easy life nor a gentle one. Slave, overseer, and master alike fought snakes, gators, and clouds of insects to drain the land for sugarcane. The slaves were frequently mutinous and required a hard hand. White neighbors were avaricious for land—however sodden—and testy on the subject of property lines. Liddell feuded with several, fought duels or, discarding formalities, settled differences in the street with his fists.

  In the late summer of 1855, five slaves on a neighboring plantation killed their overseer and escaped into the swamps. Liddell joined his neighbors in hunting the murderers. On the second day, he was paired with a stranger: a tall, grim man of military bearing with ferocious eyebrows. He introduced himself as Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Bragg. Liddell recognized the name, of course, since Bragg was famous for his exploits in Mexico. Following on horseback behind the dogs and trackers, the two became acquainted in the cool, formal way of Southern gentlemen. Liddell recounted his short career at West Point. Bragg talked of army politics, of his recent marriage, of his desire to make his fortune after all the years of impecunious living in the army.

  It took the Cherokee trackers four more days to discover the escaped slaves hiding in a rude dugout on an island in the swamps. The hunters shot three of them to death and wounded two, then the Indians piled dry cane atop the dugout and set it aflame as the two wounded niggers screamed and begged to be hanged or shot. Bragg stood apart, hands clenched behind his back, face expressionless.

  The death of five fieldhands was a costly loss for their owner, but it was justice that had to be done, a necessity they all understood if they were to survive amid the multitude of hard-muscled, murderous black men. That night, Bragg and Liddell talked over whiskey on the porch of Liddell’s plantation. They were bathed, well fed, and relaxed, the night beyond the mosquito netting buzzing pleasantly after the canicular heat of the day.

  “Do you find our methods harsh, Colonel?” Liddell asked.

  Bragg took a moment to reply. “Harsh but imperative. You are an army here, waging a bitter war against nature and the incipient chaos that always threatens a proprietary relationship involving human property. You invoked a necessary cruelty to maintain discipline. And now that it is restored, you may wage your war with greater prospects of success.”

  “Then you are likewise acquainted with the necessity for harsh discipline?”

  “Of course. Most recruits to our army require a good deal of it. I fancy myself not inexpert in the training of soldiers, although some among them have resented my methods.”

  “Violent resentment?”

  “Twice. In Mexico, a private discharged a musket through my tent and then attempted to bayonet me through the canvas. I shot him with a pistol. Unfortunately, I only had his shadow to aim at and I did him only moderate harm. He was captured the next morning a mile from camp with my pistol ball in his upper arm. The surgeon removed it, and General Wool ordered t
he soldier hanged.”

  “Without trial?”

  “With a minimum of formalities. We were on the march.”

  “And the other time?”

  “The other time, a disgruntled private in my battery placed an 8-inch mortar shell beneath my cot, ran a train of gunpowder off some twenty feet, and ignited it.”

  “My God, man! Did the shell fail to explode?”

  “No, it exploded, but the conoid shape of the blast saved me.” Bragg pointed to the candle burning on the table between them. “Above an explosion there is a conic section of vacuum, as there is above the wick of a candle. I survived in that vacuum and walked out of the shambles of my tent temporarily deafened but otherwise unhurt.”

  “And the man who did it?”

  “He deserted. Some two or three years later he was captured on other charges and hanged.”

  A few months later, Bragg bought a plantation north of Thibodaux, a hundred miles from Liddell’s. With the distance and the disinclination of both men to mix in society, they saw little of each other until the war, and it worries Liddell that Bragg has aged badly. The stern professional has become a crabbed and uncertain old man, and St. John Liddell fears that Bragg may equivocate under fire.

  Coming out of the trees a half mile from Baldwin’s line, Liddell is relieved to find McNair’s brigade on his left. He halts his brigade and rides over to find the Arkansas merchant. McNair is a seasoned soldier with combat experience dating from Buena Vista, and an excellent record in command of troops at Wilson’s Creek, Elkhorn Tavern, and Richmond. But McNair seems shaken by the bloody fight with Kirk, starts talking too fast, too vehemently. “I’m very glad to see you, General. Rains and Ector angled west toward Overall Creek, and I lost contact with them. I tried to stay to your front, but I must have wandered off course, too.”

  “And I’m glad to see you, McNair. We were confused when you disappeared from our front. But no matter now. Bushrod’s just attacked on my right, and the Yankees are fighting like hell. Let’s go break up that Yankee brigade in front, then we’ll wheel and give Bushrod a hand.”

  McNair hesitates. “Better that you go in first, John. We’ll come behind in support.”

  Liddell disagrees, and they argue in increasing heat as the Yankee Parrotts behind Baldwin’s line crack every forty seconds, the case shot exploding over the ranks of butternut soldiers waiting for their generals to agree. McCown dashes out of the woods at the head of his staff, anxiety twisting his pale features. “Good morning, Liddell. McNair, where are Rains and Ector?”

  “Over west, General. My left lost touch when we broke through the Yankee line. It was hard business, General, and we have many casualties. Liddell proposes attacking the Yankee brigade to our front. I think we should be in support this time.”

  “By all means. Excuse me, I must find Rains and Ector, get them wheeling according to General Bragg’s plan.”

  Liddell attempts to control his temper. Damn it, hit them with everything! “General McCown, I beg you to reconsider! If we all go in at once, eight Arkansas regiments in line, nothing can stand in our way. We will make quick work of that Yankee brigade to our front and then be able to move to General Johnson’s relief with all dispatch.”

  McCown stares at him, mouth working fishlike. Hadn’t he made the right decision? He wanted to be agreeable, wanted both these men to be satisfied. But somehow he’s blundered. “Uh, certainly, General. If that is your tactical judgment, then by all means let the regiments go in together.”

  McNair begins to protest, but McCown has spun his horse and, riding bent forward as if to protect his back, gallops west in search of Rains and Ector. “Very well, General,” McNair says stiffly, “I will conform to your left.”

  Watching McNair and Liddell’s line, Colonel Baldwin is mystified by the delay. Finally, the Rebel line moves, its left lagging a little. Baldwin rides to the center of his line where four guns fill the gap between the 1st Ohio and the 6th Indiana. When the Rebs are 150 yards away, Baldwin gives the signal. The guns and the infantry open fire simultaneously. The combined weight of canister and minié balls staggers the Rebel brigade on Baldwin’s left, but still it comes on, an officer out in front waving his hat wildly. How can he live? Baldwin wonders, as he has wondered many times before at the seeming invulnerability of some men in battle.

  Lieutenant Colonel Hagerman Tripp, commanding 6th Indiana hidden in the woods fifty yards to the left front of the 1st Ohio, tastes blood, releases his lower lip from between his teeth. Steady, he tells himself. The Rebels are pushing forward slowly now, as if fighting through knee-deep snow. Tripp waits, running his tongue over his bleeding lip, until at last the Rebs come abreast. “Sixth Hoosiers,” he screams, “aim low. Commence fire!”

  The sudden whirlwind from the right flank tears Liddell’s hat from his hand. He feels his horse struck by half a dozen bullets in quick succession. The animal grunts, stumbles forward. Liddell pulls his right foot out of the stirrup, swings his leg over the pommel, and jumps free, landing nimbly for all his forty-seven years as the horse rolls on its side, snorting blood.

  All around him, Liddell can hear bullets striking flesh, men falling, some silent, some yelling, a few screaming, though usually the screaming comes later when a man has absorbed the fact of being shot. The ranks go to ground without orders, men firing as well as they can on their stomachs. From Liddell’s right flank all the way across his front, the Yankee line is delivering sheet on sheet of musket fire while the howitzers thump and farther away there is the bang-crack of the Parrotts. “Come on, boys, we can’t stay here!” Liddell shouts. “With me, on three, charge!”

  Only the company nearest can hear his command, but when they rise up, so do the other companies and then the regiments left and right. They charge forward, colors waving, are dashed to earth by another hail of Yankee musketry. Liddell stalks among them. “Good, boys. Good. We’ve made a start. This time we’ll keep going. Right over the top of them. Get some use out of those bayonets.”

  To the rear of McNair’s line, Lieutenant Henry Shannon, commanding the Warren Mississippi Light Artillery, deploys his four Napoleons against the Yankee Parrotts and howitzers. His crews must fire over the heads of the infantry down in the grass. Shannon and his men are careful, risk their lives taking extra care in cutting the fuses on the shells and sighting and resighting the guns. But accident is inevasible in battle and one of the Napoleons fires short, the powder charge, perhaps damp from the rain, igniting with a foommp instead of a bang. The shell lands in the midst of the 6th-7th Arkansas, a combined regiment made up of veterans from two regiments decimated at Shiloh and Perryville. Men scramble away from the hissing shell, one man makes a grab for it, perhaps with some wild intention of trying to extinguish the fuse. The explosion kills half a dozen, maims a dozen more, body parts and torn clothing thrown up with the shrapnel.

  McNair knows that he must charge, that Liddell’s brigade will be slaughtered if he does not. He gives the order to rise up and, like Liddell, positions himself forward of the front rank. Dear God, he prays, let me see my home again. I shall forever be thy servant thereafter. He waves his sword and the brigade surges forward.

  Colonel Dodge, commanding the 30th Indiana and what’s left of Kirk’s brigade, watches McNair’s line come. “Take careful aim, boys,” he shouts. “We’ve got some catching up to do.” But the survivors of the last hour’s fighting are, as Dodge predicted, unsteady. They fire, reload, fire again, all the while watching the Rebel charge coming faster, crashing through a fence of rails as if it were made of jackstraws. They begin to waver.

  To Dodge’s immediate left, Colonel Read is walking calmly behind the as-yet unbloodied ranks of the 79th Illinois. He raises his sword to leash the first volley, then, for a reason he cannot for a moment quite understand, stumbles backward. He stares down at his chest, sees the hole in his blouse below the left side of his rib cage. Why, I’m shot, he thinks. I wonder if I can darn the hole in my blouse or if I’ll have to bu
y a new one. Might as well get the pants, too. These are nearly worn through in the seat.

  Read falls backward, sword flying from his hand. His regiment immediately begins to panic. Officers call on them to steady, their own voices tinged with hysteria. The regiment holds, fires, fires again, and then breaks as Dodge’s survivors give way on their right before the onrush of McNair’s Arkansans.

  Baldwin watches his flank tearing away, calls to Major Stafford, commanding the 1st Ohio: “Fall back on the 5th Kentucky, Major. I’ll meet you there.”

  Stafford waves a salute, gives the command to fall back. But the Buckeye blood is up: they have held against three charges in twenty minutes and they’ll be goddamned if they are going to give in now. Stafford glances hastily to his right, sees the 79th Illinois come completely apart. “Fall back, First!” he shouts as loud as he can over the roar of fire. Again he is ignored, and Stafford, who is a parson’s son and among the most pious men in the army, lets fly with a tirade so graphically profane that it shocks even the Buckeye veterans and becomes a legendary event in the history of the regiment. Stafford concludes with the comparatively mild: “And I’ll hang as high as Jesus fucking Christ crucified any goddamned man who ever ignores another goddamned order from me!”

  Casting awed looks at their young major, the Buckeyes fall back on the 5th Kentucky.

  Coming into the woods in the wake of the Federal retreat, Private John Berry of the 6th-7th Arkansas finds a wounded Yankee propped against a tree, a knee shattered by a minié ball. The Yank has looped a belt around his thigh above the wound, his right hand pulling the tourniquet tight to staunch the bleeding. He holds up the palm of his free hand. “I ain’t got no gun, John. Don’t shoot.”

  For a second Berry wonders how the man knows his name, then realizes that the Yank has only shortened the sobriquet by which all Southern soldiers are known. “You look in a bad way, Yank.”

  “Reckon so. But as long as I can keep this here belt tight, I won’t bleed t’death. Maybe I can wait it out until the hospital boys find me.”