Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  But the attack is late and half-hearted. A few minutes later, Johnson countermands his order and withdraws the brigade without attacking in line of battle. In the cedars, Greusel’s infantry, their ammunition almost exhausted, watch them go. In the middle of the field, Major McReynolds vomits blood a final time and dies.

  Expecting Johnson’s brigade to come in on his flank at any moment, Lucius Polk drives in hard against Schaefer. Colonel Schaefer walks his line, the battle-calm on him, speaking in clearly enunciated English: “Fire low, soldiers. Fire low. Mind your targets.” Rebels fall by the score, while others keep coming, their yells raspy in dry, smoke-scorched throats. Schaefer positions himself behind his center, hands clasped behind his back, watches them come on until they break. “Save your cartridges, soldiers. They will come again.”

  Schaefer goes to sit on a boulder for a few minutes and, when no one is looking, counts the bullet holes in his clothes. Four. Out in front of the lines there are scenes too horrible to watch: men heaving, bucking, writhing, trying to crawl away from the reality of their wounding. One youngster in butternut screams and screams for his mother. There is the wet slap of a bullet striking flesh, a lone report from somewhere down the line, and the boy stops screaming. A murder of mercy or more likely irritation, Schaefer supposes.

  Colonel Arthur Manigault is a little insane by now. Inefficiency—it is worse than cowardice, amounts to murder when practiced in battle. Cheatham has ordered him to support Lucius Polk and Bushrod Johnson with an attack against Roberts’s stronghold on the opposite side of the salient from Schaefer. But the order is late arriving, and Manigault goes forward after Johnson has withdrawn and Polk is already falling back. Manigault’s brigade does not get far before Hescock’s and Bush’s guns, positioned on the knoll overlooking the juncture of the Wilkinson Pike and McFadden’s Lane, have the range and start gouging huge holes in the Rebel ranks. The ranks close up, press on almost to the cedars and Roberts’s line. Hidden in the thickets, the 22nd and 42nd Illinois wait until they can make out the glint of the Rebel bayonets only a few feet away, then stand and deliver a volley that seems to rip the atmosphere itself in two, leaving a long gash of gray smoke and a sigh as of air escaping, though one supposes it is actually only some equalization of pressure within the ear, a phenomenon of vacuum as natural as the ignition of gunpowder by a spark.

  Manigault’s regiments stampede from the field, trampling the dead and wounded into the mud. Raging, Manigault goes to Brigadier General J. Patton Anderson, commanding the brigade to his right. “Lend me two regiments, Anderson, and I’ll break that line and flank those goddamn guns.”

  Anderson, former doctor, U.S. marshal, Florida legislator, Mexican war colonel, and—until recently—a division commander, eyes Manigault coolly. “And why should I give you two of my regiments, Arthur?” (If the man is going to be familiar, Anderson will be doubly so.)

  “Because I can take those goddamn guns with them! And we are getting nowhere until we do that!”

  It takes no military genius to see that Manigault is correct. Anderson tightens his lips. “All right, you can have the 45th Alabama and the 24th Mississippi. Use them well.”

  But Manigault cannot get any further with six regiments than he did with four, as Houghtaling’s guns join Bush’s and Hescock’s to eviscerate the attack before it can reach the cedars. Cursing himself for a fool, Anderson rides to find his superior, Major General Jones M. Withers. In an army of powerful personalities, Withers is an exception: a soft-spoken, gentlemanly Mobile merchant, lawyer, and West Point graduate who has been in poor health much of the war. “Manigault’s shot his bolt,” Anderson tells Withers. “Worse, he’s half killed two of my regiments along with his own. We aren’t taking those guns by the flank; we’re going to have to go straight in.”

  Withers gazes at his field map for a long moment and then at the blue smoke against the cedars. In Professor Mahan’s class, tactics had seemed so simple, but he suspects no one—not even Bragg or Hardee—has a clear idea of what is happening now. He looks again at the map. “I sometimes think that the battle maps we see in books are a fiction, an attempt to introduce order into chaos after the fact.”

  Anderson grunts, scratches a louse and a fragment of charred wadding out of his elaborate muttonchops. I should shave before battle, he thinks. Maybe everyone should.

  Withers looks again at the forest. “I think you’re right. No one’s going to take those guns by the flank; you’re going to have to rush them.”

  “Yes, General.”

  Withers glances at him. “Come, Patton. We don’t need formality now. Do you have the men to do it?”

  Anderson hesitates. He would like more, wishes he had not squandered so many in Manigault’s attack. “I’d rather go forward with what I’ve got than wait for more.”

  “All right then. Godspeed.”

  Anderson sends forward his three remaining regiments, the 27th, 29th, and 30th Mississippi. There is to be some subtlety to this assault. Oh, certainly not subtlety to elicit the admiration of a Sun Tzu or Frontinus, the great ancient admirers of stratagem and style; but not the straight-ahead pounding that has been failing for the better part of an hour. The regiments will take advantage of cover, maneuvering into position before making the desperate 200-yard rush across the open to strike the guns. Or at least that is how it is supposed to be.

  Captain Henry Hescock wishes he had some chain shot for the eight Union guns on the knoll. He has read of chain shot whirling like a medieval warflail through the rigging of sailing ships. How splendidly chain shot would work against the Rebel infantry coming now through the woods on the far side of the cornfield. When this is over, he must suggest to Sheridan that they experiment with chain shot. He lets his field glasses fall to his chest, thanking again his foresight in ordering from Amsterdam the finest field glasses made. He turns to his gunners. “Boys, we’re going to cut some boughs. Celebrate Christmas a little late with our Rebel friends.”

  The first shell dropping through the cedars into the midst of the 30th Mississippi explodes within a dozen feet of Colonel W. F. Brantly, killing three men and knocking the colonel senseless with its concussion. Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Scales takes command, pushes the regiment forward. A cyclone of shell, case shot, and canister lashes through the trees, felling men by the dozen. Scales tries to form a battle line at the edge of the wood. Better to go forward across the open than to stay longer here. The men know better, gaze in horror at the impossible distance. A scarecrow old man runs out in front of the color detail, shakes his musket at the blazing Yankee cannons. The 30th Mississippi steps into the open to follow Private Com McGregor.

  Com McGregor has lived half a hundred years and more, will not tell how many more for fear he will be sent home. He has married and buried three wives, raised fourteen children, all but three still living, and farmed the same forty acres of Mississippi bottomland all his life. He knows no Yankees, has never wanted to. He owns no slaves, and counts three or four free niggers of his acquaintance as better men than most white men he knows. Though he has never advanced the opinion to any man, black or white, Com McGregor considers slavery a moral evil that should be abolished lest the Almighty punish the South for its sin. Perhaps God is doing that now, scourging the land with war and famine. If so, so be it. Com McGregor will accept his part, will go forward to take his punishment along with the rest. And if the war is not God’s wrath come upon his People, if God has instead sided with them despite all their wickedness, than Com McGregor will fight as a Christian soldier to drive the Yankees back to their frigid north of dirty, sinful cities and lonely hardscrabble farms. Either way, he is a soldier in a holy cause.

  The Mississippians have advanced a bare dozen paces when two of Roberts’s regiments and three regiments from Colonel Timothy Stanley’s brigade of Negley’s division open fire. The sheer number of minié balls loosed gives the volley a brief visibility to the naked eye like cloud shadow, Raven’s wing, or the blade of a giant scyth
e sweeping across the cornfield. Lieutenant Colonel Scales stumbles, regains his footing, looks to either side, expecting to find that he alone is left alive. But the 30th Mississippi is still there, thinner but still advancing.

  The Yankee fusillade comes in a continuous blast. Nothing should live, ultimately can live, in the open. Seventy-five yards from the cedars, the Mississippians can go no farther, drop down into the muddy furrows. Scales tries to rally them but cannot make himself heard. Com McGregor rushes out front again, gesturing wildly at the Yankee line. He runs from group to group, trying to pull men to their feet. But the men refuse to rise, and McGregor turns, marches alone toward the trees. Shamed, half a dozen men climb to their feet to follow, but a Yankee Napoleon fires a double load of canister, and in a puff Com McGregor is gone as if he had never been.

  No hope at all remains of advancing across that last hideous distance. Scales orders a retreat, the word passing from man to man down the line. The men are only too happy to make use of their legs, run back the way they’ve come, leaving nearly half their number dead or wounded, while the small, absurd recollection of Com McGregor floats away like tattered smoke over the cornfield.

  The rest of Patton Anderson’s assault fails just as certainly. The 29th Mississippi takes shelling every step of the way to the Yankee line, where it receives a single tremendous volley that sends it flying. The 27th Mississippi makes it into the open, only to see its colonel shot through the brain. It falls back to regroup as command is passed, then retreats.

  It is 10:30 A.M. Sheridan’s division has absorbed assaults by eight Rebel brigades. Casualties are huge, ammunition and energy nearly exhausted. The men fight without water or food, many of them wounded, holding on with a grimness beyond simple courage or stubbornness. The fight itself has become something immeasurably precious: a struggle in which they have invested all but life and will do that as well, rather than give way.

  More order is coming to the Rebel attack as the ring tightens around the Yankee salient. No overall commander engineers it. Rather, it is the outgrowth of individual brigade and regimental commanders recognizing the need for concerted action after so much ill-spent time and blood.

  The new Rebel discipline brings an increase in the accuracy and volume of musket and cannon fire. In the cedars, Sheridan’s men cling to their shallow rifle pits, limestone caves, and low breastworks of rocks, logs, and bodies. Though most of the Rebel musketry is aimed blindly from two or three hundred yards, chance shots take a steady toll. The cannon fire is worse. Case and canister rounds spray clouds of iron and lead balls through the brush. Shells bounce across the forest floor to explode at wildly random heights. Most unnerving are the solid cannonballs that tear through the trees and ricochet off the limestone slabs in clouds of whirring splinters.

  Major General Lovell Rousseau is pushing his division in on Sheridan’s right. He gallops into the cedars to speak to Sheridan, finds him striding across the limestone slabs, sword in one hand, crushed black hat in the other. Before Rousseau can speak, a sergeant bending to sight a Napoleon stumbles back, a splinter the size and shape of an ax head embedded between his eyes. “Get a man in there,” Sheridan snarls. “Keep that gun firing.” He turns to Rousseau. “Get down from there, Rousseau, before they blow your goddamn head off!”

  Rousseau dismounts, finds himself almost amused at Sheridan’s pugnacity. He will fight them hand to hand, he thinks, go down kicking and gouging like a drunken Mick in a barroom fight. “I have contact with Greusel’s flank,” he shouts. “How long can you hold?”

  Sheridan seems surprised by the question, frowns for a moment. “An hour if we die right here without resupply, half the afternoon if I can get the goddamn cartridges.”

  “I’ll send you what I can find,” Rousseau yells, begins to mount.

  Sheridan shakes his head. “Go back on foot a hundred yards. Then ride.”

  Rousseau complies—for it is not cowardice, but survival. And, like Phil Sheridan, he intends to survive long enough to kill many Rebels.

  Brigadier General Alexander P. Stewart refuses Patton Anderson’s request for regiments to renew the attacks on Roberts. He sends a note to Withers: General, I shortly intend to assault the Yankee salient to my left front. Having trained my brigade and sharing with my soldiers what I believe is a mutual confidence, I trust that I may be accorded the privilege of leading them personally. It is vintage Stewart: cool, correct, befitting a commander his men have dubbed “Old Straight.”

  Withers replies: General, I trust completely in your success.

  Stewart prepares carefully as he might for a lecture in mathematics or natural and experimental philosophy, the disciplines he has followed since leaving the army in 1845. His four regimental commanders are fully briefed, his artillery in place, the brigade carefully aligned when he orders it forward against Roberts.

  In the Federal line, men count the last few cartridges in their boxes, shout for ammunition. Roberts, who has refused to dismount all morning, rides along his line, calling on the men to hold position with the bayonet. They can do it, these splendid men. He knows it, feels that he can lend them each and all the strength he feels welling up inside. We can do this, he thinks, stand against the charge, break it like a headland before a hurricane.

  Stewart’s brigade looses a volley. Three bullets strike Roberts and he pitches forward from his horse. “Get me up. Get me up,” he gasps. Aides boost him into the saddle but he goes limp and they must ease him down. He convulses once, as if trying to shake off a chill, and dies. In armor, he might have ridden lifeless like El Cid down the cheering ranks of his men; but that, like George Roberts, is a romance out of time.

  Colonel Fazilo Harrington of the 27th Illinois takes command of the brigade. Within minutes a shell tears away his lower jaw, killing him. Colonel Luther Bradley of the 51st Illinois assumes command, readies the men as well as he can to hold with bayonets and clubbed muskets. Then Sheridan is suddenly there, leaning down from his tall horse. The noise is too great for either to be heard. Sheridan shakes his head, points toward the rear. “We are to retreat?” Bradley screams. Sheridan nods, points again toward the rear.

  The brigade backs out of the fight. The men try to bring the guns off but it is too late. Several cannons are dismounted, nearly all the artillery horses dead, the gun crews decimated. Houghtaling is carried to the rear, a fearful wound in his thigh splashing the limestone with blood. Stewart’s men are close now, maintaining ranks, coming hard, straight in.

  Watching Sheridan’s line at last begin to give, Major General Ben Cheatham can no longer hold himself back. “Come on, boys, follow me!” he shouts to Maney’s brigade. But the men are unprepared, and Cheatham has to turn and gallop back. “Follow me, boys! Follow me!” he keeps yelling. Private Sam Watkins, Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry, has been lying patiently in the field in front of the line since taking two wounds in the left arm in Maney’s first assault. He sighs, pulls himself to his feet. “Well, General, if you’re so determined to die, I’ll die with you.”

  McCook meets Rousseau riding out of the cedars to the rear of Sheridan’s salient. “Alex, you should see Sheridan!” Rousseau shouts. “It’s hell in there, but he’s fighting like the devil incarnate! He’ll have to pull back soon, but if he can hold just a little longer, I’ll be in position to reach across the gap to Negley.” Rousseau kicks his horse, gallops toward his guns.

  Alex McCook is immensely relieved. Rousseau is here to take the weight. Now he can pull Sheridan back. He’ll reorganize his corps north of the Nashville Pike. By late afternoon, perhaps he can counterattack like Grant did at Shiloh, regain ground and reputation. Tonight he will write to his father, tell Old Dan how the Rebs had done their worst but that he had stood it, taken the blows and, when the time was right, had attacked, driven them, won for the Union and the family.

  He hurries forward, finds a thin brigade holding the right end of Sheridan’s line. A handsome, clean-shaven colonel turns inquiringly to him. “Whose br
igade is this?” McCook shouts.

  “Sill’s, General. But General Sill is dead. I’m Greusel. I’m in command.”

  “Fall back to the far side of the Nashville Pike! I’ll send a staff officer to guide you. We’ll re-form and resupply and then come back to give them a whipping.”

  Greusel stares for a moment at McCook. Well, certainly Sheridan must know of this. McCook is, after all, the corps commander. “Yes, sir,” he shouts.

  By this time Greusel has only the 88th Illinois and the 24th Wisconsin under his direct command, but their disappearance from the line produces a dangerous gap. Schaefer is astounded when the news reaches him. He sidesteps his already thin line, filling the hole with the 15th Missouri, and then sends to Sheridan for orders. Swearing, Sheridan dashes to Schaefer’s position. He sees at a glance that it is too late to save the line. “Schaefer, charge that brigade coming in on Roberts!” (Roberts is dead, he remembers. Does not take time to correct himself.) “Stop them and then fall back.”

  Schaefer has little left in the way of men or ammunition, but he manages to stretch the 15th Missouri and the 24th Illinois along the length of the line while the 73rd Illinois and 2nd Missouri charge Stewart’s left flank. The charge is both brief and costly, but it gains the ten minutes needed for Bradley to lead Roberts’s brigade out of the fight. Schaefer watches calmly as his men fall back, many of them clicking empty muskets at the Rebels, as if the mere threat of a shot could momentarily slow the onslaught. A minié ball drills Schaefer’s forehead neatly, blows off the back of his skull. Without expression, he topples backward off his horse.

  Of his 6,500 men, Sheridan has lost 1,796 enlisted men and 72 officers dead or seriously wounded, including all three of his brigade commanders, four regimental commanders, and the captain of one of his batteries. Eight of his eighteen guns have been left behind, captured or too seriously damaged to pull off.

  Rosecrans and Garesché watch Sheridan’s men emerge from the cedars: exhausted, bloody, panting, faces black, angry. That anger is the universal, unreasoning emotion among them as they troop by. Rosecrans understands, takes off his hat solemnly, his staff following suit. Sheridan rides up on his tall gelding. “Here we are, General. All that’s left of us… . General, if we’d just had some goddamn cartridges, we could have held off the whole goddamn bunch of them!”