The Song of the Rappahannock

The colonel thanked Corporal Joe before the regiment for silencing the battery, and that was all the reward he received, or indeed cared for.

Absolute fearlessness is rare. Perhaps it does not exist in the heart of a sane man. The bravest are usually like our heroic lieutenant-colonel, who, when an officer said to him one day, "Colonel, you don't seem to know what fear is," replied in his abrupt way, —

"All a mistake. I am always afraid, miserably afraid, whenever I go into battle, but of course it would never do to show it!"

Yet there are exceptional characters for whom the voice of the battle siren possesses irresistible fascination, – men whose overmastering delight in danger seems to scare their very fears and send them slinking away to hide in some obscure corner of their souls. After our days at Marye's Hill and Salem Heights, we began to see such a man in Joe, and from that time onward his career, which was marked by a continued series of daring exploits, confirmed the judgment. Moreover, it was characteristic of the man that his peril-defying deeds were never the result of any rage of battle. They were always either deliberately planned, or else the quick and cool acceptance of some desperate chance.

It was my good fortune to be with him in one of the mildest of these adventures. After the brilliant affair at Franklin's Crossing just before the northward march of the army toward Gettysburg, our regiment was sent out beyond the captured earthworks as skirmishers. Night was coming on by the time our line was established, and we found ourselves in a romantic but risky position.

We were occupying the grounds of the old Bernard House. Across the broad driveways and once pleasant lawns and gardens, now neglected and weed-grown, we Northern invaders had stretched our picket line. Just behind us, its ruined and fire-stained walls touched with the mystery of moonlight, lay all that was left of the once proud mansion. In days not so very long gone by, on just such nights as this, those hospitable halls and the noble grounds had been alive with the festive gathering of Virginia's wit and beauty. Their spirits seemed to haunt the scene, so silent now save for the low-toned orders and warnings of our officers. In front of the ruined mansion stood a grove of ancient and noble oaks. They served to hide us, but they were not to be trusted. They also furnished a dangerous screen through which the enemy might easily come upon us unaware. So the lieutenant-colonel evidently thought, for he came to our company and asked quietly for half-a-dozen volunteers to act as scouts.

I think the colonel came to our company because he knew Joe was there, and he instantly responded. But I have often wondered at the strange impulse which seemed to compel me and the others to step forth by his side. After the men once knew him, Joe never went begging for followers; there was an irresistible infection in his example, and an allurement in his cheerful fearlessness that not only made men forget peril, but made it seem a privilege to go with him. It was so afterward in affairs compared to which our adventure of that night was but a pleasure trip.

The colonel himself led us out to the further edge of the grove, posted us in couples behind trees, and gave us our instructions which were, "Watch carefully for any signs of the enemy. Their picket line is out there somewhere in front of you; if you see any movement do not fire, but come in quietly and report, and in any case come in quietly at daybreak."

He left us; we heard his retreating footsteps until he reached the line, and then we began to realise the situation. We were between two possible and quite probable fires. It was bright moonlight; our regiment as we afterwards discovered, was perilously advanced and isolated; if by any chance the enemy knew our position there would be every temptation to attack, and, if that happened, even if they should advance their skirmishers, we scouts would certainly catch it from both sides, and the worst danger was from our own men. Very few of them would know we were outside the line, and it was wholly unlikely that we could "come in quietly and report" without having a hundred rifles levelled at us. When we did come in at daybreak one of us narrowly escaped death at the hands of a comrade in his own company, who, in the gray light, mistook him for a "Reb" and tried to shoot him. The colonel knew we were likely to be sacrificed, and therefore his call for volunteers.

But Joe was in his element. "This is bully!" he exclaimed, as he surveyed the scene when we were left alone. "No officers will bother us here to-night; they think too much of keeping their precious skins whole to stir outside the line."

The prospect was certainly fascinating. Behind us the giant oaks through whose shadows the moonbeams sifted their uncertain rays; before us a sweet expanse of pale-green meadow, weird with the mingled effect of tenuous curling mists and moonlight, shot across here and there with mysterious hedgerows and indistinct tree clumps, the possible and as we found in the morning, the actual cover of the foeman's skirmishers – a strange combination of peaceful beauty and lurking death.

The sounds too, which came to us through the still and misty air were full of ominous significance. Through the dark of the grove, the anxious but subdued voices of our officers patrolling the line, keeping the wearied pickets awake and watchful; beyond through the moonlight across the meadow the distant rumble from the railroad, the noise of unloading cars and loading wagons and the shouts of teamsters at the station within the enemy's lines perhaps a mile away, warning us that by morning he would be heavily reinforced.

We watched as the night wore away, half-expecting, half-dreading what each moment might spring upon us, but all was as still as death in that pale field, until some time after midnight a strange white Shape came moving through the mists. We watched it anxiously, perhaps at that chill hour a little apprehensively, but as it drew near our fears were banished. It was a poor old worn-out war-horse turned loose to die. We watched him grazing quietly in the meadow, and then Joe's instinct for adventure awoke.

"I say, let's go and capture that old beast. What a lark it would be to drive him before us into the line in the morning and make the boys think we had taken a prisoner!"

"No, sir," I replied; "we don't know where the enemy's skirmishers are, but I for one am just as near them as I want to be!"

It was well for Joe that he had a more cautious comrade with him, for he yielded at last to the counsels of manifest prudence; but all night long he looked at that old white horse with longing eyes.

We had not more than safely reached our company in the morning before the foe discovered himself, and the venerable oaks grew vocal with singing bullets; but I shall always cherish the memory of that risky but harmless adventure in Joe's dear company, for he and I were soon to part.

I have often wondered if the shadow of his fate did not even then come over him at times! Recklessly cheerful as he always was in the face of danger or difficulty, there were moments when, to me at least, he showed another mood. In those gloomy days after the tragedy of the first Fredericksburg, when the issue of the great conflict seemed doubtful, he said to me one day: —

"You and I are young men; life is all before us, but what will our lives be worth in this country if the South succeeds? For my part I do not mean to live to see it."

We had in our company a lot of very young fellows, some of them less than eighteen years old, whose ardent patriotism and willing courage and endurance shamed many of their elders. We were talking one day about the readiness of these bright boys to face death and danger, when Joe said very solemnly:

"Yes! the more a man's life is worth, the less he cares for it."

A year had passed since our summer night's adventure under the oaks, and Joe had been made a commissioned officer in another regiment. Men of ours, whose time had expired, flocked to him to re-enlist under his command, and his company was largely composed of old comrades. His next real service was in that memorable and bloody siege of Petersburg. I met him once during the winter; he had been at home on furlough and I have always suspected that he came away with a heart wound, – the only wound he ever received until he met his death. We were boys when first we were thrown together, and bashful about such things, and intimate as I afterwards became with him he was always reticent about his love-affairs; but I had a feeling that one fair girl at home could have told why Joe returned to his perilous duty robbed of that light-heartedness which used to diffuse itself about him like an atmosphere. Was it that, or was it the gloom of the apparently endless conflict which had entered his soul? I could never be quite sure.

He told me in curt phrase all about the position of his regiment close by that famous redoubt to which the soldiers had given the significant name of "Fort Hell," and then he said, "Some day, I think soon, Grant is going to break through those lines, and when he does, I am going to distinguish myself or get killed!"

Shortly after his return to the post of duty I had a letter from him which showed an exaggerated gleam of his old humour. It told of the loss of a number of his men in the incessant picket firing and of his own narrow escapes, and then contrasting my prospects with his own, he said, "As for me I am wedded to the Goddess of Liberty, and, by Jove! the old girl met me half way and gave me my shoulder-straps for marrying her. I like my spouse; though it is well I am not of a jealous disposition, for the Old Lady has now near a million husbands and is on the lookout for more!

Then we heard of another of his characteristic escapades. It was evident that some change had taken place in the disposition of the enemy's troops. The officer in charge of the picket line was anxious to know what this meant, and Joe at once offered to investigate. Taking two men with him he pretended to desert to the enemy. The opposing lines were close together, and between them all was bare and open, so that no secrecy could be practised. Joe and his two companions sprang across the trenches and ran toward the Confederates, shouting as they neared them, —

"Say, Johnnies, will you take deserters?" The fire ceased and the answer came, "Yes, Billy, come on! come right in!"

Then Joe left his two men and went up closer for further parley.

"Johnnies, we want to come in, but we're rather afraid of you Twenty-second South Carolina fellows!" and the reply was, —

"Oh, you needn't be afraid, we're not the Twenty-second South Carolina, they were sent away from here yesterday. We're the Eighteenth Georgia!"

This was precisely the information he wanted, and with a little more artful parley he edged backwards, watching his chance, and then sending his men before him to their own lines, he ran back himself, reaching shelter barely in time, escaping unhurt through the storm of bullets which his baffled and enraged foes sent after him.

The great day came at last, the day of that awful assault on the Petersburg entrenchments. Joe had been on picket all night and, according to army rules would have been exempt from duty for the next twenty-four hours. But as he came in from his weary and perilous night watch, in the gray dawn he saw the preparation for the struggle and heard a call for volunteers. A "forlorn hope," an officer and thirty men, were wanted to lead the storming column and drive in the enemy's entrenched pickets. Joe at once offered himself; men were always ready to follow whither he led, and more than thirty came forward at once.

Out from the massed lines in the dim light of dusky dawn the devoted little band moved. Those who were with him said that, as they came to the picket posts, – rifle-pits with five or six men in each, – Joe would rush far ahead of his men straight up to the rifle-pit with drawn sword and imperious command.

"Throw down your arms and surrender!"

And thus by sheer boldness he actually captured a half-dozen groups of pickets in succession, until at last his summons was answered by a volley, and one bullet struck him in the breast. The wound, his first (unless it was that heart wound), was his last and mortal.

As we, his old comrades, far from the bloody field heard the news, we could scarcely believe it. Death in battle was common enough God knows, in those dreadful days; but somehow Joe had always seemed to bear a charmed life. It was hard to think of him among the slain. Yet there were many "I told you so's," and not a few with wise wag of prudent head declared, "It was bound to come to Joe, he was always rash; this time foolhardy."

But such talk was little heeded by those of us who knew Joe. We knew too well that even in most desperate moments he would think with melting heart of the brave men under his command, and take any risk to spare them. We also knew how thoroughly he believed that audacity was the right hand of success. Such men are the nerve of an army. There never are very many of them; very few survive a great war, for victories are won by their blood. They are literally offerings upon the altar of their country. Under Joe's rude jest about the Goddess of Liberty I knew there was the feeling that his life was devoted to the land he loved with passionate ardour.

When the news of Petersburg came, our old lieutenant-colonel, a grizzled veteran who had been through most of the great battles of the war came to me and eagerly asked, – "Had I heard from Joe?" I told him. The tears came into his eyes as he turned away exclaiming, —

"My God! Such men sacrificed!"