The Song of the Rappahannock

Many a pleasant evening we spent about our little fireplace. We talked about home, the girls we loved, religion, politics, literature, camp gossip, everything. Or we read, when we had books or papers from home, or wrote letters or our journals.

There was, however, little real privacy in those huts so close together with their canvas roofs. Any loud talk could be heard from one to the other and in the evening after "retreat" the camp became a very babel of men singing, talking, laughing, swearing, telling stories; a chorus in one tent, a game of cards in another; in three or four at once loud discussions of the doings in the regiment or of the state of the country.

At nine o'clock "taps" sounded, and the officer of the day went the rounds to see that all lights were out. This was early bed-time in the long winter nights, and by various ruses we managed to conceal the glimmer of candles re-lighted after the officer had returned to the guard-house. The Bible and Shakespeare were responsible for some of these evasions of military regulations, quiet little games of cards for more of them.

Speaking of cards and Bibles brings up the image of the chaplain.

A friend in a regiment distinguished for its high discipline and its severe losses in many battles said to me one day: "A good chaplain makes a good regiment." Then, in illustration he told me the story of their own chaplain, a man of fine culture, high social position and great devotion to his calling. In his pastoral visits through the camp if he surprised a group engaged in a game of "bluff," he would quietly scoop up the stakes, put the money in his own pocket and say: "Boys, this is for the hospital fund." Strange to say, the boys never murmured. The cheerful but shamefaced reply was always, "All right, chaplain."

I think no one will wonder who hears the rest of the story.

On the eve of battle this chaplain took personal command of the stretcher-bearers and when the combat was raging he would lead his little band of helpers into the thickest fire to succour the wounded. My friend told me: "I have known him to creep out between the opposing lines to bring off wounded men. The boys all knew that if they got into trouble, Chaplain H – would be there to help if this was in the power of mortal man." There were other chaplains of like spirit. Our own was not only untiring in his care for the sick and wounded in the hospitals, but always ready for any kindly service he could render to the members of the regiment or to their families at home. But it must be confessed that they were not all of this stamp. It was quite possible for the chaplain to be the most useless officer in a regiment.

It could not be said of our regiment that we were like the men of Cromwell's "new model," yet we came from communities in which Puritanism was traditional and in almost every company there were at least a few examples of strong Christian character. The two serjeants in our own company who died in the service, one by sickness and the other in battle were men of this sort, and one of our captains who fell in battle was a man whose Christian life was a benediction to the regiment.

But occasionally one met with what good people might consider strange inconsistencies. I have heard swearing euphemistically described as the utterance of "short prayers." One of our field officers was a man whose godly life was known to all, yet in intense moments short prayers of startling character would escape him.

On a Sunday, so it was said, a group of officers gathered in his tent fell into warm discussion of some troublesome regimental affair. The lieutenant colonel paced back and forth with his hands behind him taking no part in the conversation but biting his bristly moustache, as was his wont when annoyed. Suddenly he stopped short and, facing them exclaimed: "Well, gentlemen, let's stop this damned quibbling and go and worship God awhile." Then picking up his Bible he strode off by himself into the woods, leaving his guests to their reflections.

Religious men were apt to be more intense in the army than at home, and those who frequented the prayer-meetings in the tents or, in pleasant weather, under the trees, will never forget their atmosphere of warm and solemn earnestness.

On the night before we stormed Marye's Hill the moon shone through fleecy clouds and it was only partly dark. We lay in line of battle at rest, the most of us trying to sleep. Presently, out toward the front between us and the skirmish line voices were heard. The watchful major anxiously asked: "What is that? Who is talking out there?" One of the men answered, "Major, it is only some of the boys having a prayer-meeting;" and the major says that instantly, in place of his fears and vexation, a feeling of deep thankfulness came over him as he thought of the prayers ascending for us all on the verge of battle.

There was a young soldier in our company to whom his mother, when she parted from him, gave a little book of daily Scripture selections. She said to him: "I have another just like this and we will both read the same verses every day." The soldier kept true tryst with his absent mother and, no matter where he was read his text every day. As we lay in the sunken road on that fateful morning after the moonlight prayer-meeting and the bullets began to speak their deadly whispers in our ears and we were all feeling the chill and dread of the plunge into battle, he opened his little book. The text for the day was, "Fear not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God!" He has told me that if a voice from heaven had spoken it could not have been more clear, and for the remainder of that terrible day all fear was gone.

We believed in our cause, in the war, and in final victory; but we were not soldiers for the love of it. The end of fighting and home was the goal of the hope of the army – a vain hope to thousands of us, yet the star that beckoned us all forward. How eagerly our thoughts turned northward might be seen on mail days. Letters came with varying regularity; in settled camp we could generally count on them, but in times of active campaign mails were uncertain and when one arrived it was pathetic to see the wave of expectation that would sweep through the ranks. Often a cheer would go up when the postman with mail bags slung across his horse, came in sight. Then there was impatient waiting until the letters for the company came down from headquarters and an anxious crowd around the captain as he called them off. The disappointment of those who received none was often pitiful. You would hear one and another say: "Captain, isn't there one for me?" "Captain, are you sure? I know I ought to have one this time."

Then, tired and hungry as we were after the day's march, supper would go untasted until we could read the news from home; and long afterward by our camp-fires we would talk it over; and you might hear letterless Tom come to Bill and ask, "What does your wife say about my folks? Has she seen them lately? Are they all well?" The most of us would read our letters with quiet gladness; but now and then you might see some poor fellow bending with tear-stained face over his message from home and hear his comrades saying in hushed tones of sympathy, "Jim has bad news; his little girl is dead."

The outgoing mail was far lighter than the incoming: we wrote under difficulties; yet there were times when the whole camp seemed filled with scribes. But our letters were apt to be brief, and when any important movement was at hand we knew that they would not be promptly forwarded. Inconvenient information sometimes travelled in army letters.

Our turn at picket duty was, with some of us, a favourite time for writing up our correspondence. In pleasant weather it was only at the outposts that the work was trying. "On the reserve," or even "the support," we had only to hold ourselves in readiness for emergencies. Picket duty was often a positively enjoyable change from the monotony of camp. When fires were allowed we would fell great oaks for the mere fun of it, cut off their tops and branches for our fire and let the trunks lie. War is wasteful in ways little thought of. Yet the scars of the picket posts were as nothing compared with the deserts made by the great camps.

But picket duty must be done regardless of weather, and at the outposts no fires were permitted at any time. I remember once leaving camp in a snow-storm which, by the time we reached our post had changed into a cold rain. Night was falling, we had no tents, none were allowed on the picket line; but a German comrade and I managed to prop up a rubber blanket upon sticks so that it gave a scanty shelter from the rain, and as we crept under it my friend exclaimed, "Ach, here dees is nice under an injun-rubber himmel!"

Some of the nights on the picket line will always dwell in my memory. There was one when our post was in the heart of a forest of giant pines. A wild north-wester was blowing and its elfin music roared among the tree-tops as if the myriad spirits of the power of the air were let loose. Yet down below where we stood, all was peace; not a breath stirred the feathery branches or the soft carpet of pine-needles under our feet. Even now I can feel the deep and solemn repose, the sense of mighty, restful shelter from the war of elements with which the shadowy forest pillars enwrapped us.

During our winter in camp along the Rappahannock the only danger on the picket line was from bushwhackers. But nothing is more trying to the nerves than the chance of being picked off in the dark by unseen skulkers. In the face of the enemy it is different: you then expect to be shot at and to shoot. It is far more dangerous, but scarcely less exciting. Soldiers are not fond of picket work, but they hate the monotonous restraint and night work of ordinary and yet perfectly safe camp-guard duty. A common punishment for slight delinquencies is to give a man an extra turn on guard. Severe punishments, such as "ball and chain," or even tying a man up by the thumbs so that his feet barely touch the ground were not uncommon, though I am glad to say that this cruel torture was never permitted in our own and many other regiments.

One night I was serjeant of the guard at brigade headquarters. The guard-house was a log building divided by a loosely built partition with wide crevices into two rooms: one for the guard, the other for a prison, in which at that time three deserters were confined. My duty compelled me to keep awake, and the prisoners, with the shadow of the death-penalty upon them spent the whole night in talk.

Without heeding the guard, they laid bare their lives to each other as men will sometimes do when the end seems near. They talked about their families – one at least was a married man – and about the doings of younger days when they were boys on the farm, and they seemed to hunt out every bit of wrong or shame in their lives as though it must be confessed, at least to each other. One of them was evidently a very decent man; but another, who had been a serjeant in his regiment and plainly the ring-leader, was, judging from his talk a desperado. Once, after he had told of some wild deed he said: "But I have done worse things than that; things that would hang me if they were known." Then, in answer to an inquiry of his companions: "No, I won't tell you even now about that."

In the morning I saw this man. He was strikingly handsome, a most soldierly-looking fellow. He talked with me freely and pleasantly; there was something fascinating about him.

The deserters were not shot. With sentence suspended they were replaced in the ranks and told that, if they did their duty the next time their regiment was called into action, they would be pardoned.

Shortly afterward came the bloody but brilliant little battle at Franklin's Crossing. In the first boat which left the shore – the same in which our noble Captain D – was killed – was the dare-devil ex-serjeant. Before the boat reached the opposite bank he was out of it, and without waiting for any one, he rushed straight at the enemy's earthwork alone. We expected to see him drop, but he bore a charmed life; he was one of the first to enter the works, and by sheer boldness he brought off half-a-dozen prisoners and coolly marched them before him to the rear.

We never saw a military execution; but that which I remember as the saddest scene of our army life was the degradation of an officer. He had been condemned for cowardice before the enemy.

The division was drawn up in a great hollow square, and the officer in full uniform was marched under guard into the centre where all could see him. There in loud tones the finding of the court-martial and its sentence were read, after which the adjutant approached the condemned officer, tore off his shoulder-straps, took his sword from him, ran it half way into the ground and broke it before his face. The guard then closed about the disgraced and degraded man and marched him away.

I had never seen him before – he was from another brigade – but as he passed near and I could look into the deathly pale face of that young man with the heart-break of despair written on every feature, I said to myself, "This is a hundred times worse than death"; and I found myself wildly wishing that he had been shot dead in battle! When the parade was dismissed we went back to our quarters in awe-struck silence, broken only by expressions of deep compassion.

In strong contrast with this, the grandest and most impressive scene we witnessed was the review of the army by President Lincoln.

It was on a dull wintry day. We marched several miles from our camp before we came, early in the morning to the reviewing ground, which was a vast, desolate, open space, mostly level but with little hillocks here and there. Upon one of these we halted waiting for the mustering of the gathering host. For hours the dark lines of men in blue poured in from every direction until all the plain and every little hilltop was alive with them.

For six or seven months we had been members of the great army; we had shared its toils and perils, we had lived its life, we had felt the throbbing of its mighty pulse in our own blood, we had been part of its long line of battle; yet we had never as yet seen the assembly of our brethren in arms. Now the plain was growing black with them; a hundred thousand men were forming in apparently solid masses, the battle-flags of the regiments waving close together.

The scene was the more impressive because there were no idle spectators. This was no gala day for curious, gazing, merry-making crowds, and brilliant costumes, and feasting and huzzas; but solemnly, silently save for the measured tramp of battalions and the rolling of the drums a nation's strength was massing as if to weigh itself, to feel itself and ask its own soul if it were fit for the mighty work and the awful sacrifices awaiting it.

We could not know then that Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, written across the scroll of a short two years to come were holding in their fateful though glorious names the doom of death or wounds for more in number than all the thousands of us who beheld each other that day. But we felt that a heavy-laden future was swiftly coming toward us; we could almost hear the rustling of her wings in the air of the leaden sky under which, apart from the world, alone with ourselves and God, we stood a great brotherhood of consecrated service.

But now our moment has come. We take our place in the moving ranks. We marched in close column with double company front, so that each regiment took up small space. As we neared the reviewing stand the tall figure of Lincoln loomed up. He was on horseback and his severely plain, black citizen's dress set him in bold relief against the crowd of generals in full uniform grouped behind him. Distinguished men were among them; but we had no eyes save for our revered President, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the brother of every soldier, the great leader of a nation in its hour of trial. There was no time save for a marching salute; the occasion called for no cheers. Self-examination, not glorification had brought the army and its chief together; but we passed close to him so that he could look into our faces and we into his.

None of us to our dying day can forget that countenance! From its presence we marched directly onward toward our camp and as soon as "route step" was ordered and the men were free to talk they spoke thus to each other: "Did you ever see such a look on any man's face?" "He is bearing the burdens of the nation." "It is an awful load; it is killing him." "Yes, that is so; he is not long for this world!"

Concentrated in that one great, strong yet tender face, the agony of the life or death struggle of the hour was revealed as we had never seen it before. With new understanding we knew why we were soldiers.