Traveller (23 page)

‘Course, as I've told you, Marse Robert believed in living real plain. I reckon he didn't want the men to think he lived any better'n what they did theirselves. But in headquarters we all figured that now and then he overdid it some—he often lived
worsen
they did! I seed ‘nuff to know that a good soldier's going to make hisself jest as comfortable as he can. But Marse Robert—-well, now, Tom, I'll tell you a little story. One evening, when headquarters had spent a long day on the move, Marse Robert was seeing to the camps and looking out for any tricks the Blue men might be up to, and so he asked one of our officers— Colonel Long, ‘twas—to find a place to camp for the night. ‘Course, Colonel Long knowed Marse Robert wouldn't never go into a house— leastways, real seldom. He thought he ought to camp jest like the men. So the Colonel asked these here farm people if'n we-all could use the farmyard—not the house—and ‘course they was delighted, seeing that it was the General. But Marse Robert, he wouldn't even have the farmyard! He told Colonel Long to find someplace else. So Colonel Long, he got mad at this—so his horse told me—and off he goes and chooses a field that was jest ram-jam full of the biggest stones you ever seed. They was so big and so thick there was scarcely no place to pitch the tents, let alone picket the horses. He figures he'd give Marse Robert a taste of what could be done to outsmart obstinate generals. But when Marse Robert gets there, he jest looks round at the stones and then he smiles and says, “Mighty fine! We won't be disturbing any farm folks here.” You should jest ‘a seed the Colonel's face!

Our headquarters was like most any other part of the camp, Tom. I wish you'd ‘a been there; you'd have had some good hunting. There'd be a few pole tents, with their backs to a fence, maybe, in amongst rocky ground and near a stream of clean water. Three-four Army wagons drawn up any which way, and us horses, like as not, jest turned loose in the field to graze—if there
was
any grazing, that is. Some of our people used to sleep in the wagons or get under ‘em. Perry and Meredith always did that—Bryan, too. They preferred it, I reckon. A lot of our stuff—tents and wagons; horses, too—had been lifted off'n the Blue men. When they first come, you could smell that, but it soon wore off. Marse Taylor, Major Talcott and the others, they slept two-three to each tent. They carried very little stuff and neither did Marse Robert. I remember a lady come to visit our camp saying to Marse Robert—she was feeding me some bread, that's why I was by— “Why, General,” she says, “this seems a rocky, uncomfortable kind of a place for your camp.” “Yes, ma'am,” says Marse Robert, smiling. “Colonel Long has put me here in revenge for my refusing to go to the farm.” He seemed real delighted.

Did I ever tell you ‘bout Jine-the-Cavalry and his music fella Sweeny? This Sweeny, he was one of Jine-the-Cavalry's men, and he was always kept round ‘cause he could play music. He had a banjo, and he'd sit there and make it go
pilly willy winky pinky pop
, sometimes for the whole evening, and the fellas'd all get to singing, an' Jine-the-Cavalry'd fill up a big brown jug and laugh and tell Sweeny to play some more. What with the firelight dancing round, it was real cheerful and pretty, and they'd all get to drinking and larking up. I remember once Marse Robert come out of his tent when all this here
plunka lunka lunka lunk
was going on, and he peers down into the jug and then he says, “Gentlemen, am I to thank General Stuart or the jug for this fine music?” Then they all lifted up their pots and cups and shouted, “Marse Robert! Marse Robert!” “Gentlemen,” he says, “this is a case of serious indiscipline! I shall postpone action until the morning, when you will each receive a headache!” Well, it was never dull, Tom, you know, when Jine-the-Cavalry was around with that Sweeny fella a-plunking away at night.

But jest the same, it was a hard winter, and in spite of building shelters the men was cold, and hungry, too. What's that you said? Warn't it strange going so many different places? No, it warn't, ‘cause all them places was really the same. Same rough old tents, same people, same horses, same Marse Robert, same noises and smells of the camp. And ‘bove all, I knowed Marse Robert would always
treat
me the same. Different sounds and smells have different meanings, but as long as each meaning stays the same, then a horse knows where he is. Us horses like to feel settled, you know, Tom, and know for sure what's wanted of us. Then we can do our best without getting all scary and strung-up. In the end I got almost to liking a rocky field and poor grass. Anything else, and I'd be wondering why it had been changed and what was wrong. As for cold, I don't so much mind a
dry
cold. But that winter there was too much wind and too much rain. Makes a horse nervy and irritable. Sure does.

That there hen I was telling you ‘bout—the one they didn't kill on ‘count of she laid eggs so good—she was a reg'lar part of camp, you know. ‘Most every day she laid an egg; and she had some sense, ‘cause she was jest ‘nother one of us to get to larn Marse Robert was fond of animals and birds. Do you know, every day she always used to lay her egg right in Marse Robert's tent and nowhere else? Under his bed, I ‘member hearing Perry say. She became as much a soldier as any of us. The guns upset her—she couldn't lay if'n the guns was firing. I remember once, when we was told to get on the move, the wagons was all loaded and everyone was ready, and then they couldn't find that there hen! So we was held up. Everyone was looking for the durned hen—yeah, even Marse Robert, he was hunting for her, too. In the end Meredith come on her: she was a-sitting on a baggage wagon and ready to go! Can you beat that?

Digging, digging, dirt a-flying and everyone waiting for an end to the winter. It put me in mind of that time when we was down south, the year before. Only difference was, now no one grumbled when Marse Robert said they had to dig. Why, they thought so much of him, they'd ‘a jumped in the river if he'd ‘a said so! Food running short, horses often too starved to pull the wagons, everyone bitter cold and a long, long winter, but no one lost their faith in Marse Robert. I knowed we was going to finish the Blue men in the end, and he knowed it, too. I could hear it in his voice and feel it in his hands. The way he talked to the men, too; easy and kind. I recollect, f'rinstance, one day when he was looking me over, he happened to see a fella standin' round near the tent. “Come in, Captain,” says Marse Robert. “Come in and take a seat.”

“I'm no captain, General,” says this man. “I'm jest a private, sir.”

“Come in, sir,” says Marse Robert. “Take a seat. You
ought
to be a captain, sir!”

I knowed Marse Robert so well—the whole feel of him—that I was the first one, along towards the end of that winter, to realize he was sick. One morning, when he mounted me and rode out of camp in the cold, I could feel his—well, his whole
balance
was wrong. All of a sudden he reined me in, stopped and gave a kind o' groan. The signals coming from him was all of pain and discomfort. There was something awkward ‘bout the feel of his arms and the set of his back. His pulse was wrong—I could feel the beat of his blood was different. It made me nervous and jumpy.

“Come on, Traveller,” he said at last, stroking my neck. “We'll turn around.”

Perry put him to bed—and if'n Perry said he had to go to bed, even Marse Robert couldn't say no. But the weather was that bad I guess even he figured he was in the best place. Finally they moved him out of camp altogether, somewheres where ‘twas warm. So maybe all of this here living like the men warn't sech a good idea after all—not at his age. And I'll tell you now, Tom—and if'n
I
don't know it, no one does—he's never been entirely right since—not the beat of his blood ain't, from that day to this. He's been an off-an'-on sick man.

Early spring, 1863. The unusually long, hard winter is at last drawing to an end. Since the beginning of February, General Burnside has been relieved of his command of the Army of the Potomac, to be succeeded by General Hooker, an ebullient character known as “Fighting Joe.” The battle of Fredericksburg, fought on December 13, 1862, has proved a costly error on the part of Burnside, whose attempt to storm the Confederate defensive front resulted in total failure and a casualty list of 12,500 against Lee's 5,000
.

The entire Union high command have now developed a certain feeling of inferiority to Lee as an adversary. “They are so skillful in strategy,” confessed General Meade, after the Maryland campaign, of the Army of Northern Virginia. Yet in their apprehension the Federals are overestimating not Lee's personal ability—as to that they are accurate enough—but the sheer resources at his disposal. While the enlisted plowboys and clerks in his ranks are ready to follow him anywhere and to fight like tigers, his commissariat remains perhaps the most incapable in the history of modern warfare. His men are half-starved. His horses are starved, and he now suffers a crippling and endemic shortage of remounts that will continue throughout the next two years. To him, the battle of Fredericksburg has been a disappointment—no true victory—for he lacks all means to follow it up or to pursue the Federals across the Rappahannock. Merely to inflict heavy losses upon an enemy whose manpower resources are so great confers little advantage beyond that of reputation. He cannot afford his own casualties. His only course is to prepare and wait, knowing that General Hooker is reorganizing the Army of the Potomac for a fresh offensive. General Stuart and his cavalry keep continual watch upon the river for any sign of a Federal crossing in force
.

Fifty miles away, in Richmond, the Confederate government has shown unrealistic incompetence. Congress spends its time in disputing niceties of political principle inappropriate to the situation of a country engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. No adequate system has been devised for making good the depletion of an army originally raised in the initial fervor of voluntary enlistment. Conscription has been adopted with reluctance. Meanwhile, inflation has progressively reduced the value of the currency and the economy has entered a spiraling decline. While General Lee, rallying from a pericardial attack probably due in large part to hardship and stress, constructs earthworks and looks out with grim realism upon the falling Rappahannock and the enemy massing beyond it, his political masters bicker in an ideological Cloud-Cuckoo-land. As April draws to a close, Lee, with some 57,000 men, faces General Hooker's army of 132,000, re-equipped and ready for renewed battle
.

Scurvy has begun to appear. But so has the spring, the young leaves burgeoning among miles of spindly virgin forest and half-cleared, second-growth brush. Colonel Northrop, the Confederate Commissary General, may be useless, but nature is not. Foraging parties from the Confederate lines are sent out to gather sassafras buds, wild garlic, onions and the green hawthorn leaf buds that children call “bread-and-cheese.” Four ounces of bacon a day, ten pounds of rice per hundred men every third day, dried fruit when available, no sugar whatever; in their loyalty to General Lee (who eats as they eat) his men will endure on this, but will they be able to march and fight on it?

Before daybreak on April 29th, the General, at his headquarters south of Fredericksburg, is wakened by a messenger from Stonewall Jackson. Union troops are crossing the Rappahannock and concentrating below the town. At noon General Stuart reports strong Federal forces fording the river thirty miles upstream. By that evening they have crossed the Rapidan. General Anderson is ordered to proceed at once to the road junction at Chancellorsville, a lonely house in the wilderness ten miles west of Fredericksburg, to secure the Confederate left, pending the advance of the greater part of the Army of Northern Virginia. General Lee, having discerned that Hooker's main attack is intended to come from upstream—from the west—has decided to do the last thing that might be expected of an army less than half the size of its enemy. He will strike first
.

We met some more little girls, Tom, when we was out s'afternoon. I don't mind Marse Robert's being fond of little girls, but when we stop and talk to ‘em it certainly does a power to interrupt a good afternoon's run in the country. At least this time it warn't that poor old Frisky we met up with. It was a little girl Marse Robert and me know well. Her name's Jennie. Her ma sometimes brings her up here to tea, ‘specially this time of year when the weather's fine. Well, we was trotting long nice and steady, jest somewhere on the outskirts of town, when we come upon this here Jennie ‘side the road. She had another little girl with her, an even smaller one, and she was a-telling her to get on home, ‘cause she didn't want her following after her. The smaller girl was a-sitting by the side of the road, and you could see she warn't figuring on moving, neither.

When Jennie seed us, she ran up almost agin me, and Marse Robert had to pull me in pretty sharp.

“Oh, General Lee,” she says, “won't you please make Fannie go home to Mother? I can't make her.”

Marse Robert and me, we walked over to where Fannie was a-sitting, and he jest leaned over in the saddle and pulled her up onto his lap. I reckon that took care of all
her
objections. She was delighted to find herself a-sitting in front of Marse Robert; and Jennie, she got up as well. So we give ‘em a ride for a block or two and seed ‘em home. When we got there, their mother was on the porch, and ‘course Marse Robert raises his hat and tells her what's happened.

“Good gracious!” she says to Jennie, “whatever do you think you're doing, giving General Lee so much trouble?”

“Well,” says Jennie, “I couldn't make Fan go home, but I thought General Lee could do
anything
!”