Drummer Boy at Bull Run (15 page)

Ira shook his head. “Don’t talk like that, Slim. They mean well enough. They’re just misled.”

Leah stayed for only a short while longer, then went to her father. “You know there’s a group of Rebel prisoners next to the hospital? The old Capitol building, they call it. I imagine they must be pretty lonely there. It’d be like being in jail, wouldn’t it? And wounded too.”

Her father looked at her carefully. “I expect you’re right, Leah. I’ll see what I can do about getting us a pass to go in. If you want to bake another one of your cakes, I’ll get some Bibles and tracts.”

“Do you think they’ll let us go, Pa?”

“Well, I can’t do anything but ask. But I don’t see why not.”

* * *

Lieutenant Nelson Majors had taken a turn for the worse. At first he seemed to be recovering from his operation, but, as the doctor had feared, some material from his uniform had been carried into the wound along with the bullet. The doctor had not been able to get it out. What started out as a simple fever turned out to be something much worse.

The doctor stopped by several times, and each time found this particular Confederate doing poorly. “Not much I can do for him,” he informed the male nurse in charge of the Rebel prisoners. “Keep the wound cleaned out as best you can and try to get him to eat something. You know how these things go.”

“Yes, Doctor. Three of them already died. I expect this lieutenant will be the fourth, if something doesn’t happen.”

Nelson Majors grew worse steadily so that at least half of the time he was in a strange coma—not conscious or unconscious but somewhere in between. The pain in his side was somewhat less, but the high fever that gripped him most of the time seemed to burn him up. He continually was crying for water. No matter how much he drank, it was never enough.

He awakened early one morning feeling about as bad as he had ever felt in his entire life. His side was aflame with the infection, and he was burning with fever. The guards brought him something to eat, but he only drank the water.

He drifted off into a sleep of sorts and dreamed of Kentucky—of plowing the fields there, of hunting in the hills with the dogs. He dreamed of his wife and baby. Finally, he seemed to hear a voice calling him. He licked his lips and moved his head from side to side.

“Nelson, can you hear me?” the voice said.

The wounded man slowly opened his eyes, but when they focused he saw only the outline of two figures. Blinking, he whispered, “Can I have a drink of water?”

Almost at once a cup was at his lips and hands were holding him up. He drank thirstily. “Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t you know me, Nelson?”

The lieutenant was dizzy, and the man who spoke had his back to the light.

“No, I don’t guess so,” he whispered, and then he saw a young girl beside the man. At once he gasped, “Leah!” Then he looked up at the man, who turned so the light fell on his face. He reached up his hand, saying, “Dan Carter! What in the world …”

“Don’t try to get up, Nelson,” Leah’s father said. “Me and Leah were sure surprised to see you. We came to visit the Confederate wounded, and there you were.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, not too long.” His old friend looked down at him and shook his head. “Sure sorry to see you here. If I’d known, we’d have been here a long time ago.”

“No, we didn’t even know there were Confederates here, Mr. Majors,” Leah said quickly. “Are you badly hurt?”

“Bad enough, I guess. They pulled a bullet out of my side, and it hasn’t done well.”

His visitors looked at the bandage and back at his face.

“Are you getting enough to eat?” Leah asked.

“I’m not very hungry, not with this kind of fever.”

She said, “Let me bathe your face with cool water. Maybe that will help.”

Leah sought out the guard and apparently bullied him into giving her a basin of water and some cloths. She came back at once and began to bathe not only the lieutenant’s face, but, pulling back the blanket, she bathed his body with the cool water.

“That’s good,” Nelson Majors whispered. He managed to smile. “You always were one for taking care of sick things—hurt animals. I remember that coon that got its paw cut off in a trap—how you and Jeff nursed him back to health.”

“Do you remember that?” Leah said.

“Of course I do. You was always taking in some kind of stray critter.” He looked down at himself and saw how much weight he had lost. “I guess that term really applies to me—a stray critter.”

“Are Jeff and Tom all right?” Leah asked, continuing to bathe his heated flesh.

A troubled look came into Nelson Majors’s eyes. “I can’t find out anything. I’ve been too sick to move.” Eagerly he looked up. “Maybe you could find out for me, Leah. Could you write for me?”

“Why, I’ll do that,” Leah said quickly. “When was the last time you saw them?”

“It was in the battle. They were all right when I left, but I got ahead and then got cut off. Then I got hit and don’t remember much after that.”

“Don’t worry,” Leah said. “Now that I know you’re here, I’ll be in every day. I’ll bring you something good to eat, and you’ll be well soon. You’ll see!”

* * *

Leah was as good as her word. For the next week, she was at the prison hospital every day. At first the administrator, a young major, was reluctant to admit her, but finally she wore his resistance down, and he threw up his hands. “Well, all right. Go ahead and do what you can for him. We’ll have to make sure you don’t let any of them escape.”

Leah smiled up at him. “Thank you, Major. God bless you for your kindness.”

This brought a flush to the young man’s face, and he seemed not to know how to answer her.

At once Leah wrote a letter to Nelson Majors’s commanding officer and posted it. However, she had been told that the mails were slow, especially those crossing the enemy lines, and she warned Jeff’s father not to expect a quick reply.

“I just pray that they’re all right,” he said. He smiled as, sitting in the chair beside him, she fed him the broth that she had brought. “I bet you never thought you’d have me for a patient, did you, Leah?”

“I’m glad that I’m here to help.” When she finished, she sat back and began to speak of Esther. “She’s a darling child, Mr. Majors,” she said. “One of the prettiest babies I’ve ever seen. And such a good baby too.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for you and your family, Leah.” He gave her another look. “It’s a good thing you and Jeff are such good friends, or I never would have had that kind of help.”

Two days later, Leah came in, her face beaming. “I have a letter from home,” she said. “Esther is fine. Let me read it to you.”

She read aloud the letter from her mother, and when she had finished she said, “Now you see the baby is fine, and I know that Tom and Jeff are going to be fine too.”

Nelson Majors had lain quietly listening to the news. “I wonder if I’ll ever be able to be a father to Esther. It’ll be hard with this war on.”

“It’ll be all right. The war will end, and you’ll have Esther back again—and Jeff and Tom too.”

He looked at her fondly. “You’re a fine girl, Leah. I thank God for you and the help you’ve been to me.” Then he smiled and said, “I guess you Carters get pretty tired of taking care of us Majorses, don’t you?”

Leah looked up. “No,” she said quickly, “we never get tired of that.”

“You’re growing up real fast. It seems only a week or two ago that you and Jeff were just small children playing under the wagon. Those were good days, weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were,” Leah whispered. Then she leaned forward and patted his arm. “And they’ll come again—don’t you worry about it. Jeff and I may be too old to play under a wagon, but we’ll be together again, and you’ll be with Esther, and maybe some day Tom and Sarah will be together too.”

“I’m glad you feel like that—always thinking things will end right. I hope you always do, Leah,” Lieutenant Majors said. Then weariness seemed to come upon him, he closed his eyes, and he dropped off to sleep.

Leah arranged the blanket around him, then sat back thinking of those days when she and Jeff had played under a wagon and gone hunting for birds’ eggs—and the thousand-and-one times they had wandered through the hills together.

“I wish it were now,” she whispered. “I wish that Jeff and I could do those things right now!”

T
he victory of Bull Run—or Manassas, as people from the North called it—proved to be the greatest misfortune that could have befallen the Confederacy.

The victory was taken by the Southern public as the end of the war—or at least its decisive event. This conviction was not only held by the man in the street, but after the battle even President Jefferson Davis assured his friends that the recognition of the Confederate states by the European countries was now certain. The newspapers declared that the question of manhood between North and South was settled forever, and the phrase “One Southerner equal to five Yankees” was used in all speeches about the war—although sometimes the rule moved up to one Southerner to seven Yankees.

On the whole, the unfortunate victory was followed by a period of fancied security and relaxed exertion. The best proof of this was to be found in the decrease of enlistments by volunteers. Then there actually arose a controversy between different Southern states as to the location of the capital of the government—which was strange, considering its existence was in peril.

Stonewall Jackson echoed the sentiments of a few wise leaders in the South when he said, “It would have been better if we had lost at Bull Run.
Our people have been lulled into a sense of false security, and when the Yankees come back with the enormous army they are bound to raise, all of us will soon know the truth of what a hard war this will be.”

The North, although bitterly disappointed by the outcome of the battle, did not fold up and quit as Southerners expected. They gritted their teeth, settled down for a long war, and moved toward producing a war machine the like of which the world had never seen.

The leadership of the North’s military was in confusion, however. Those who commanded at Bull Run, especially General MacDowell, were considered ineffective, and President Lincoln began to search for a new commanding officer.

The soldiers themselves presented a rather gloomy front. Some of them were ready to go home, and one officer came to General Sherman and announced, “General, I’m going to take my group back to New York today.”

Sherman said, “I don’t remember signing a leave for you.”

When the officer argued with him, General Sherman said sharply, “Captain, if you attempt to leave without orders, I will shoot you like a dog!”

Later that same day, President Lincoln arrived. After he had addressed the troops, the officer who had attempted to leave forced his way to the president’s carriage. “Mr. President, I have a cause of grievance. This morning I went to General Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me.”

Mr. Lincoln looked at him and then at Sherman. Stooping his tall, spare form toward the officer, he said to him in a loud stage whisper, “Well, if I were
you, and General Sherman threatened to shoot me—I would not trust him—I believe he would do it!”

Finally recognizing that the war against the Confederacy would not be a walkover, Lincoln cast around for the right man to put the army together. He chose George B. McClellan, only thirty-four years of age, former president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. McClellan proved to be an excellent organizational man, and soon the Army of the Potomac began to swell with new volunteers and rapidly became a powerful weapon for the North.

In the South, the Confederate administration strove to bring order out of chaos. The Tredegar Works in Richmond glowed all night. Its tall chimneys belched out dense, luminous smoke. Huge trainloads of heavy guns and improved ordnance of every kind were shipped off to points threatened by the Federal troops.

The medical department, destined to play so important and needful a part in the coming days, was thoroughly reorganized. Surgeons of all ages, some of them with the highest reputation in the South, left their homes to take service with the army.

The Confederate soldiers knew the odds they confronted numerically. And they not only had to face overwhelming numbers, but the arms and the ammunition of the Federal soldiers were abundant and good.

The Confederate soldiers were deprived of chloroform and morphine—these were excluded from the Confederacy as contraband of war. Then, some actually opposed certain improvements that their government tried to bring about, such as a sanitary
commission and even the newly equipped ambulances. They got few of these, while the Federals got many.

But of all this Jeff and Tom were only vaguely aware. After Bull Run, the Stonewall Brigade rapidly filled the gaps in its ranks with volunteers. The time would come when men would have to be drafted into the service, but at this point there was still enough excitement and glamour to the war to entice young men from all over the South to join up. The Stonewall Brigade easily was the most famous in the entire Confederate army. Stonewall’s gallant performance at the Battle of Bull Run had made his name a household word.

But if General Jackson was a famous man, he was also a hard-driving man. He pushed his troops into a training program that left them exhausted. Almost every day he led them on forced marches and again earned them the name of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry.

At first, Jeff nearly collapsed under the strain of the long marches. Many of the men did, simply walking themselves into the ground and falling to one side. Strangely enough, Jackson, who was a compassionate man in almost every other respect, seemed to have little thought for such men. He was a hard general, and one of his officers said, “I tremble every time General Jackson comes up. I always half expect him to give me an order to storm the North Pole!”

Slowly, however, as time passed after Bull Run, the army toughened up.

Jeff and Tom stayed very close together, waiting anxiously for word to come from their father. One day after retreat had been sounded and the two
were seated before a campfire, staring into it and saying little, Jeff broke the silence.