Book: The Crisis, Complete

W >> Winston Churchill >> The Crisis, Complete




Just then a fusillade broke from the thickets, nipping the branches from
the cottonwoods about them.

"Form your line," said the General. "Drive 'em out."

The force swept forward, with the three picket companies in the swamp on
the right. And presently they came in sight of the shapeless ironclads
with their funnels belching smoke, a most remarkable spectacle. How
Porter had pushed them there was one of the miracles of the war.

Then followed one of a thousand memorable incidents in the life of a
memorable man. General Sherman, jumping on the bare back of a scrawny
horse, cantered through the fields. And the bluejackets, at sight of that
familiar figure, roared out a cheer that might have shaken the drops from
the wet boughs. The Admiral and the General stood together on the deck,
their hands clasped. And the Colonel astutely remarked, as he rode up in
answer to a summons, that if Porter was the only man whose daring could
have pushed a fleet to that position, Sherman was certainly the only man
who could have got him out of it.

"Colonel," said the General, "that move was well executed, sir. Admiral,
did the Rebs put a bullet through your rum casks? We're just a little
tired. And now," he added, wheeling on the Colonel when each had a glass
in his hand, "who was in command of that company on the right, in the
swamp? He handled them like a regular."

"He's a second lieutenant, General, in the Sixth Missouri. Captain
wounded at Hindman, and first lieutenant fell out down below. His name is
Brice, I believe."

"I thought so," said the General.

Some few days afterward, when the troops were slopping around again at
Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg, a gentleman arrived on a boat from St.
Louis. He paused on the levee to survey with concern and astonishment the
flood of waters behind it, and then asked an officer the way to General
Sherman's headquarters. The officer, who was greatly impressed by the
gentleman's looks, led him at once to a trestle bridge which spanned the
distance from the levee bank over the flood to a house up to its first
floor in the backwaters. The orderly saluted.

"Who shall I say, sir?"

The officer looked inquiringly at the gentleman, who gave his name.

The officer could not repress a smile at the next thing that happened.
Out hurried the General himself, with both hands outstretched.

"Bless my soul!" he cried, "if it isn't Brinsmade. Come right in, come
right in and take dinner. The boys will be glad to see you. I'll send and
tell Grant you're here. Brinsmade, if it wasn't for you and your friends
on the Western Sanitary Commission, we'd all have been dead of fever and
bad food long ago." The General sobered abruptly. "I guess a good many of
the boys are laid up now," he added.

"I've come down to do what I can, General," responded Mr. Brinsmade,
gravely. "I want to go through all the hospitals to see that our nurses
are doing their duty and that the stores are properly distributed."

"You shall, sir, this minute," said the General. He dropped instantly the
affairs which he had on hand, and without waiting for dinner the two
gentlemen went together through the wards where the fever raged. The
General surprised his visitor by recognizing private after private in the
cots, and he always had a brief word of cheer to brighten their faces, to
make them follow him with wistful eyes as he passed beyond them. "That's
poor Craig," he would say, "corporal, Third Michigan. They tell me he
can't live," and "That's Olcott, Eleventh Indiana. Good God!" cried the
General, when they were out in the air again, "how I wish some of these
cotton traders could get a taste of this fever. They keep well--the
vultures--And by the way, Brinsmade, the man who gave me no peace at all
at Memphis was from your city. Why, I had to keep a whole corps on duty
to watch him."

"What was his name, sir?" Mr. Brinsmade asked.

"Hopper!" cried the General, with feeling. "Eliphalet Hopper. As long as
I live I shall never forget it. How the devil did he get a permit? What
are they about at Washington?"

"You surprise me," said Mr. Brinsmade. "He has always seemed inoffensive,
and I believe he is a prominent member of one of our churches."

"I guess that's so," answered the General, dryly. "I ever I set eyes on
him again, he's clapped into the guardhouse. He knows it, too."

"Speaking of St. Louis, General," said Mr. Brinsmade, presently, "have
you ever heard of Stephen Brice? joined your army last autumn. You may
remember talking to him one evening at my house."

"He's one of my boys!" cried the General. "Remember him? Guess I do!" He
paused on the very brink of relating again the incident at Camp Jackson,
when Stephen had saved the life of Mr. Brinsmade's own son. "Brinsmade,
for three days I've had it on my mind to send for that boy. I'll have him
at headquarters now. I like him," cried General Sherman, with tone and
gesture there was no mistaking. And good Mr. Brinsmade, who liked
Stephen, too, rejoiced at the story he would have to tell the widow. "He
has spirit, Brinsmade. I told him to let me know when he was ready to go
to war. No such thing. He never came near me. The first thing I hear of
him is that he's digging holes in the clay of Chickasaw Bluff, and his
cap is fanned off by the blast of a Parrott six feet above his head. Next
thing he turns up on that little expedition we took to get Porter to sea
again. When we got to the gunboats, there was Brice's company on the
flank. He handled those men surprisingly, sir--surprisingly. I shouldn't
have blamed the boy if one or two Rebs got by him. But no, he swept the
place clean." By this time they had come back to the bridge leading to
headquarters, and the General beckoned quickly to an orderly.

"My compliments to Lieutenant Stephen Brice, Sixth Missouri, and ask him
to report here at once. At once, you understand!"

"Yes, General."

It so happened that Mr. Brice's company were swinging axes when the
orderly arrived, and Mr. Brice had an axe himself, and was up to his boot
tops in yellow mud.

The orderly, who had once been an Iowa farmer, was near grinning when he
gave the General's message and saw the lieutenant gazing ruefully at his
clothes.

Entering headquarters, Stephen paused at the doorway of the big room
where the officers of the different staffs were scattered about, smoking,
while the negro servants were removing the dishes from the table. The
sunlight, reflected from the rippling water outside, danced on the
ceiling. At the end of the room sat General Sherman, his uniform, as
always, a trifle awry. His soft felt hat with the gold braid was tilted
forward, and his feet, booted and spurred, were crossed. Small wonder
that the Englishman who sought the typical American found him in Sherman.

The sound that had caught Stephen's attention was the General's voice,
somewhat high-pitched, in the key that he used in telling a story. These
were his closing words.

"Sin gives you a pretty square deal, boys, after all. Generally a man
says, 'Well, I can resist, but I'll have my fun just this once.' That's
the way it happens. They tell you that temptation comes irresistibly.
Don't believe it. Do you, Mr. Brice? Come over here, sir. Here's a friend
of yours."

Stephen made his way to the General, whose bright eyes wandered rapidly
over him as he added:

"This is the condition my officers report in, Brinsmade,--mud from head
to heel."

Stephen had sense enough to say nothing, but the staff officers laughed,
and Mr. Brinsmade smiled as he rose and took Stephen's hand.

"I am delighted to see that you are well, sir," said he, with that formal
kindliness which endeared him to all. "Your mother will be rejoiced at my
news of you. You will be glad to hear that I left her well, Stephen."

Stephen inquired for Mrs. Brinsmade and Anne.

"They are well, sir, and took pleasure in adding to a little box which
your mother sent. Judge Whipple put in a box of fine cigars, although he
deplores the use of tobacco."

"And the Judge, Mr. Brinsmade--how is he?"

The good gentleman's face fell.

"He is ailing, sir, it grieves me to say. He is in bed, sir. But he is
ably looked after. Your mother desired to have him moved to her house,
but he is difficult to stir from his ways, and he would not leave his
little room. He is ably nursed. We have got old Nancy, Hester's mother,
to stay with him at night, and Mrs. Brice divides the day with Miss Jinny
Carvel, who comes in from Bellegarde every afternoon."

"Miss Carvel?" exclaimed Stephen, wondering if he heard aright. And at
the mention of her name he tingled.

"None other, sir," answered Mr. Brinsmade. "She has been much honored for
it. You may remember that the Judge was a close friend of her father's
before the war. And--well, they quarrelled, sir. The Colonel went South,
you know."

"When--when was the Judge taken ill, Mr. Brinsmade?" Stephen asked. The
thought of Virginia and his mother caring for him together was strangely
sweet.

"Two days before I left, sir, Dr. Polk had warned him not to do so much.
But the Doctor tells me that he can see no dangerous symptoms."

Stephen inquired now of Mr. Brinsmade how long he was to be with them.

"I am going on to the other camps this afternoon," said he. "But I should
like a glimpse of your quarters, Stephen, if you will invite me. Your
mother would like a careful account of you, and Mr. Whipple, and--your
many friends in St. Louis."

"You will find my tent a little wet, air," replied Stephen, touched.

Here the General, who had been sitting by watching them with a very
curious expression, spoke up.

"That's hospitality for you, Brinsmade!"

Stephen and Mr. Brinsmade made their way across plank and bridge to
Stephen's tent, and his mess servant arrived in due time with the package
from home. But presently, while they sat talking of many things, the
canvas of the fly was thrust back with a quick movement, and who should
come stooping in but General Sherman himself. He sat down on a cracker
box. Stephen rose confusedly.

"Well, well, Brice," said the General, winking at Mr. Brinsmade, "I think
you might have invited me to the feast. Where are those cigars Mr.
Brinsmade was talking about?"

Stephen opened the box with alacrity. The General chose one and lighted
it.

"Don't smoke, eh?" he inquired. "Why, yes, sir, when I can."

"Then light up, sir," said the General, "and sit down, I've been thinking
lately of court-martialing you, but I decided to come 'round and talk it
over with you first. That isn't strictly according to the rules of the
service. Look here, Mr. Brice, why did you leave St. Louis?"

"They began to draft, sir, and I couldn't stand it any longer."

"But you wouldn't have been drafted. You were in the Home Guards, if I
remember right. And Mr. Brinsmade tells me you were useful in many ways
What was your rank in the Home Guards?"

"Lieutenant colonel, sir."

"And what are you here?"

"A second lieutenant in temporary command, General." "You have commanded
men?"

"Not in action, sir. I felt that that was different."

"Couldn't they do better for you than a second-lieutenancy?"

Stephen did not reply at once, Mr. Brinsmade spoke up, "They offered him
a lieutenant-colonelcy."

The General was silent a moment: Then he said "Do you remember meeting me
on the boat when I was leaving St. Louis, after the capture of Fort
Henry?"

Stephen smiled. "Very well, General," he replied, General Sherman leaned
forward.

"And do you remember I said to you, 'Brice, when you get ready to come
into this war, let me know.' Why didn't you do it?"

Stephen thought a minute. Then he said gravely, but with just a suspicion
of humor about his mouth:-- "General, if I had done that, you wouldn't be
here in my tent to-day."

Like lightning the General was on his feet, his hand on Stephen's
shoulder.

"By gad, sir," he cried, delighted, "so I wouldn't."




CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE MEETING

The story of the capture of Vicksburg is the old, old story of failure
turned into success, by which man is made immortal. It involves the
history of a general who never retraced his steps, who cared neither for
mugwump murmurs nor political cabals, who took both blame and praise with
equanimity. Through month after month of discouragement, and work gone
for naught, and fever and death, his eyes never left his goal. And by
grace of the wisdom of that President who himself knew sorrow and
suffering and defeat and unjust censure, General Grant won.

Boldness did it. The canal abandoned, one red night fleet and transports
swept around the bend and passed the city's heights, on a red river. The
Parrotts and the Dahlgrens roared, and the high bluffs flung out the
sound over the empty swamp land.

Then there came the landing below, and the cutting loose from a base
--unheard of. Corps behind cursed corps ahead for sweeping the country
clear of forage. Battles were fought. Confederate generals in Mississippi
were bewildered.

One night, while crossing with his regiment a pontoon bridge, Stephen
Brice heard a shout raised on the farther shore. Sitting together on a
log under a torch, two men in slouch hats were silhouetted. That one
talking with rapid gestures was General Sherman. The impassive profile of
the other, the close-cropped beard and the firmly held cigar that seemed
to go with it,--Stephen recognized as that of the strange Captain Grant
who had stood beside him in the street by the Arsenal He had not changed
a whit. Motionless, he watched corps after corps splash by, artillery,
cavalry, and infantry, nor gave any sign that he heard their plaudits.

At length the army came up behind the city to a place primeval, where the
face of the earth was sore and tortured, worn into deep gorges by the
rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias and
the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness, save
for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood tottering
on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out below. The
May weather was already sickly hot.

First of all there was a murderous assault, and a still more murderous
repulse. Three times the besiegers charged, sank their color staffs into
the redoubts, and three times were driven back. Then the blue army
settled into the earth and folded into the ravines. Three days in that
narrow space between the lines lay the dead and wounded suffering untold
agonies in the moist heat. Then came a truce to bury the dead, to bring
back what was left of the living.

The doomed city had no rest. Like clockwork from the Mississippi's banks
beyond came the boom and shriek of the coehorns on the barges. The big
shells hung for an instant in the air like birds of prey, and then could
be seen swooping down here and there, while now and anon a shaft of smoke
rose straight to the sky, the black monument of a home.

Here was work in the trenches, digging the flying sap by night and
deepening it by day, for officers and men alike. From heaven a host of
blue ants could be seen toiling in zigzags forward, ever forward, along
the rude water-cuts and through the hills. A waiting carrion from her
vantage point on high marked one spot then another where the blue ants
disappeared, and again one by one came out of the burrow to hurry down
the trench,--each with his ball of clay.

In due time the ring of metal and sepulchred voices rumbled in the ground
beneath the besieged. Counter mines were started, and through the narrow
walls of earth commands and curses came. Above ground the saps were so
near that a strange converse became the rule. It was "Hello, Reb!"
"Howdy, Yank!" Both sides were starving, the one for tobacco and the
other for hardtack and bacon. These necessities were tossed across,
sometimes wrapped in the Vicksburg news-sheet printed on the white side
of a homely green wall paper. At other times other amenities were
indulged in. Hand-grenades were thrown and shells with lighted fuses
rolled down on the heads of acquaintances of the night before, who
replied from wooden coehorns hooped with iron.

The Union generals learned (common item in a siege) that the citizens of
Vicksburg were eating mule meat. Not an officer or private in the
Vicksburg armies who does not remember the 25th of June, and the hour of
three in an afternoon of pitiless heat. Silently the long blue files
wound into position behind the earth barriers which hid them from the
enemy, coiled and ready to strike when the towering redoubt on the
Jackson road should rise heavenwards. By common consent the rifle crack
of day and night was hushed, and even the Parrotts were silent. Stillness
closed around the white house of Shirley once more, but not the stillness
it had known in its peaceful homestead days. This was the stillness of
the death prayer. Eyes staring at the big redoubt were dimmed. At last,
to those near, a little wisp of blue smoke crept out.

Then the earth opened with a quake. The sun was darkened, and a hot blast
fanned the upturned faces. In the sky, through the film of shattered
clay, little black dots scurried, poised, and fell again as arms and legs
and head less trunks and shapeless bits of wood and iron. Scarcely had
the dust settled when the sun caught the light of fifty thousand
bayonets, and a hundred shells were shrieking across the crater's edge.
Earth to earth, alas, and dust to dust! Men who ran across that rim of a
summer's after-noon died in torture under tier upon tier of their
comrades,--and so the hole was filled.

An upright cannon marks the spot where a scrawny oak once stood on a
scarred and baked hillside, outside of the Confederate lines at
Vicksburg. Under the scanty shade of that tree, on the eve of the
Nation's birthday, stood two men who typified the future and the past. As
at Donelson, a trick of Fortune's had delivered one comrade of old into
the hands of another. Now she chose to kiss the one upon whom she had
heaped obscurity and poverty and contumely. He had ceased to think or
care about Fortune. And hence, being born a woman, she favored him.

The two armies watched and were still. They noted the friendly greeting
of old comrades, and after that they saw the self-contained Northerner
biting his cigar, as one to whom the pleasantries of life were past and
gone. The South saw her General turn on his heel. The bitterness of his
life was come. Both sides honored him for the fight he had made. But war
does not reward a man according to his deserts.

The next day--the day our sundered nation was born Vicksburg surrendered:
the obstinate man with the mighty force had conquered. See the gray
regiments marching silently in the tropic heat into the folds of that
blue army whose grip has choked them at last. Silently, too, the blue
coats stand, pity and admiration on the brick-red faces. The arms are
stacked and surrendered, officers and men are to be parolled when the
counting is finished. The formations melt away, and those who for months
have sought each other's lives are grouped in friendly talk. The coarse
army bread is drawn eagerly from the knapsacks of the blue, smoke quivers
above a hundred fires, and the smell of frying bacon brings a wistful
look into the gaunt faces. Tears stand in the eyes of many a man as he
eats the food his Yankee brothers have given him on the birthday of their
country.

Within the city it is the same. Stephen Brice, now a captain in General
Lauman's brigade, sees with thanksgiving the stars and stripes flutter
from the dome of that court-house which he had so long watched from afar.

Later on, down a side street, he pauses before a house with its face
blown away. On the verge of one of its jagged floors is an old
four-posted bed, and beside it a child's cot is standing pitifully,--the
tiny pillow still at the head and the little sheets thrown across the
foot. So much for one of the navy's shells.

While he was thinking of the sadness of it all, a little scene was acted:
the side door of the house opened, a weeping woman came out, and with her
was a tall Confederate Colonel of cavalry. Gallantly giving her his arm,
he escorted her as far as the little gate, where she bade him good by
with much feeling. With an impulsive movement he drew some money from his
pocket, thrust it upon her, and started hurriedly away that he might not
listen to her thanks. Such was his preoccupation that he actually brushed
into Stephen, who was standing beside a tree. He stopped and bowed.

"Excuse me, seh," he said contritely. "I beg your pardon, seh."

"Certainly," said Stephen, smiling; it was my fault for getting in your
way."

"Not at all, seh," said the cavalry Colonel; "my clumsiness, seh." He did
not pass on, but stood pulling with some violence a very long mustache.
"Damn you Yankees," he continued, in the same amiable tone, "you've
brought us a heap of misfortune. Why, seh, in another week we'd been
fo'ced to eat niggers."

The Colonel made such a wry face that Stephen laughed in spite of
himself. He had marked the man's charitable action, and admired his
attempt to cover it. The Colonel seemed to be all breadth, like a card.
His shoulders were incredible. The face was scant, perchance from lack of
food, the nose large, with a curved rim, and the eyes blue gray. He wore
clay-flecked cavalry boots, and was six feet five if an inch, so that
Stephen's six seemed insignificant beside him.

"Captain," he said, taking in Stephen's rank, "so we won't qua'l as to
who's host heah. One thing's suah," he added, with a twinkle, "I've been
heah longest. Seems like ten yeahs since I saw the wife and children down
in the Palmetto State. I can't offer you a dinner, seh. We've eaten all
the mules and rats and sugar cane in town." (His eye seemed to
interpolate that Stephen wouldn't be there otherwise.) "But I can offer
you something choicer than you have in the No'th."

Whereupon he drew from his hip a dented silver flask. The Colonel
remarked that Stephen's eyes fell on the coat of arms.

"Prope'ty of my grandfather, seh, of Washington's Army. My name is
Jennison,--Catesby Jennison, at your service, seh," he said. "You have
the advantage of me, Captain."

"My name is Brice," said Stephen.

The big Colonel bowed decorously, held out a great, wide hand, and
thereupon unscrewed the flask. Now Stephen had never learned to like
straight whiskey, but he took down his share without a face. The exploit
seemed to please the Colonel, who, after he likewise had done the liquor
justice, screwed on the lid with ceremony, offered Stephen his arm with
still greater ceremony, and they walked off down the street together.
Stephen drew from his pocket several of Judge Whipple's cigars, to which
his new friend gave unqualified praise.

On every hand Vicksburg showed signs of hard usage. Houses with gaping
chasms in their sides, others mere heaps of black ruins; great trees
felled, cabins demolished, and here and there the sidewalk ploughed
across from curb to fence.

"Lordy," exclaimed the Colonel. "Lordy I how my ears ache since your
damned coehorns have stopped. The noise got to be silence with us, seh,
and yesterday I reckoned a hundred volcanoes had bust. Tell me," said he
"when the redoubt over the Jackson road was blown up, they said a nigger
came down in your lines alive. Is that so?"

"Yes," said Stephen, smiling; "he struck near the place where my company
was stationed. His head ached a mite. That seemed to be all."

"I reckon he fell on it," said Colonel Catesby Jennison, as if it were a
matter of no special note.

"And now tell me something," said Stephen. "How did you burn our
sap-rollers?"

This time the Colonel stopped, and gave himself up to hearty laughter.

"Why, that was a Yankee trick, sure enough," he cried. "Some ingenious
cuss soaked port fire in turpentine, and shot the wad in a large-bore
musket."

"We thought you used explosive bullets."

The Colonel laughed again, still more heartily. "Explosive bullets!
--Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how
we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers--dare-devils, seh
--floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with
two hundred thousand. He's the pride of our Vicksburg army. Not afraid of
hell. A chivalrous man, a forlorn-hope man. The night you ran the
batteries he and some others went across to your side in skiffs--in
skiffs, seh, I say--and set fire to the houses in De Soto, that we might
see to shoot. And then he came back in the face of our own batteries and
your guns. That man was wounded by a trick of fate, by a cussed bit of
shell from your coehorns while eating his dinner in Vicksburg. He's
pretty low, now, poor fellow," added the Colonel, sadly.

"Where is he?" demanded Stephen, fired with a desire to see the man.

"Well, he ain't a great ways from here," said the Colonel. "Perhaps you
might be able to do something for him," he continued thoughtfully. "I'd
hate to see him die. The doctor says he'll pull through if he can get
care and good air and good food." He seized Stephen's arm in a fierce
grip. "You ain't fooling?" he said.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.