The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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But in the end the matter had to be decided by lot. Now this chance
threw Wesley Boone out, and there was great rejoicing in the Acredale
group, who hoped that this stroke of luck would make place for their
favorite, Jack Sprague. But, to everybody's astonishment, a day or two
after the event, Wesley resumed his place in Company K, and gave out
that it was by order of the Governor. Jack was urged by the major of the
regiment, who had gone with the five hundred, to cast his fortunes with
the new body, promising a speedy lieutenancy. But Jack would not desert
the Caribees. All of Company K, and many in the others, had enlisted on
his word, and he could not in honor leave them. The opposition journals
had from the first denounced the division of the Caribees as a trick of
the partisans, and, sure enough, the men were given to understand that
there would be no move to Washington until after the election, then
pending. This was a municipal contest, and the Administration party made
good use of the incipient soldiery to obtain a majority in the town.
Promotion was quite openly held out as a reward for those who could
influence most votes for the Administration candidates. At night the
various companies were sent into the city to take part in the political
propaganda; to march in processions or occupy conspicuous places at the
party meetings. The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but
the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join
the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough
to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to
take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in
vehement disdain. He detested Oswald, who had quit his party, not on a
question of principle, but merely for place, and Jack did not spare him
in his satirical allusions to the new uses invented for the military.
A still more trying injustice befell the luckless Jack. For a long time
he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer
is virtually the executive functionary in the company. It is his place
to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for
the captain. The orderly sergeant is to the company what the adjutant is
to the regiment. He carries a musket and marches with the ranks, but in
responsibility is not inferior to an officer. One evening when it was
known that orders had come for the regiment to march, Jack, having
formed the company for parade, received a paper from the captain's
orderly to read. He opened it without suspicion, and, among other
changes in the corps, read, "Thomas Trask to be first sergeant of
Company K, and he will be obeyed and respected accordingly." Jack read
the monstrous wrong without a tremor. The men flung down their arms and
broke into a fierce clamor of rage and grief. Many of them were Jack's
classmates. These swarmed about him. One, assuming the part of
spokesman, cried out:
"It's an infamous outrage. They cheated you out of your captaincy; they
have put every slight they could upon you. But we have some rights. We
won't stand this. There are thirty of your classmates who will do
whatever you say to show these people that they can't act like this."
There were mutiny and desperation in the air. It needed but a spark to
destroy the usefulness of the company. But, as is often the case with
impetuous, hot-headed spirits, Jack cooled as his friends grew hot. He
was the more patient that the injustice was his injury alone. He
remained in his place at the right of the company, and confronted the
rebellious group with amazing self-control. Then loud above the
murmuring his voice rang out:
"Company, attention! fall in, fall in! Any man out of the ranks will be
sent to the guard-house. Eight dress, steady on the left."
Many a time afterward these angry mutineers heard that sonorous, clear,
boyish treble in stern and determined command; but they never heard it
signalize a more heroic temper than at that moment, when, himself deeply
wronged, he forced them to go back in the ranks to receive the
interloper. They "dressed up" sullenly as Jack called the roll for the
last time, and received Trask, the new orderly, at a "present," which,
though not in the tactics, Jack exacted as a penitence for the momentary
revolt. Poor Trask looked very unhappy indeed as his displaced rival
stepped back to the rear and left the new orderly to march the company
out from the narrow way to take its place in the parade. It was easy to
see that he would have been very glad to postpone or evade his new
honors, on any pretext, for the time. He was so confused that Jack, from
the flank, was obliged to repeat the few commands needed to get the
company to the field.
Fortunately for the efficiency of the raw army, as this public
discontent reached its most acute stage orders came to march the troops
to Washington. The Caribees were the first body of soldiers sent from
Warchester, and there was a memorable scene when the jaunty ranks filed
through the streets to the station. By the time the men reached the
train they discovered that they could never make war laden down as they
were by knapsacks filled with the preposterous impedimenta feminine
foresight had provided.
The men's backs bulged out with such a pack of supplies that when the
regiment halted each man was forced to kneel and let a comrade take off
or put on his knapsack. And then the march through the streets--every
man known to scores in the throng! The brisk, high-stepping drum corps
rat-a-tatting at intervals; then tempests of cheers, flashing banners
and patriotic symbols at every window; tears, laughter, humorous cries,
jokes, sobbing outbreaks. The whole city was in march as the Caribees
reached the thronged main thoroughfare. Ready hands relieved the
soldiers of their burden as the line filed in sight of the Governor, who
had come to speed the parting braves.
Lads and lasses made merry with the elated warriors. The muskets were
turned into bouquet-holders, and the first move toward real war took on
the air of a floral _fete_. There were popping corks and sounds of
convivial revelry that made the scene anything but warlike. Jack, in a
cluster of his town cronies, caught sight of his mother at one of the
windows of the Parthenon Hotel. He wafted her a joyous kiss, pretending
not to see the tears falling down her cheeks. Olympia was not apparently
very deeply affected. She made her way through the crowd to her
brother's side, and with an air of the liveliest interest demanded:
"Jack, what have you in your knapsack? Let me see."
"O Polly, it's such a job to close it! What do you want? It is harder to
manage than a Saratoga trunk. I can't really stuff another pin or needle
in, so pray keep what you have for my furlough."
"No, I am not going to put anything in." She bent over while Barney
Moore, one of Jack's Acredale comrades, gallantly loosed the straps. She
searched carefully through the divers articles, taking everything out,
Jack looking on ruefully while his companions gathered about in vague
curiosity. When she had removed and restored everything she arose,
saying: "I feel easier now. I merely looked to see if that marshal's
_baton_ I have heard so much about was there. I shall feel easy in my
mind now, because a _baton_ in your baggage would have made you too
adventurous."
There was a great shout of laughter as the fun of the incident flashed
upon the listeners, many of whom had heard the ingenuous Jack often in
other days sighing for war, and the chance that Napoleon said every man
had of finding a marshal's _baton_ in his knapsack. Jack bore the banter
very equably, knowing that Olympia was rather striving to keep his
spirits up and divert him from the tears in his mother's eyes than
indulge her own humor. Indeed, most of the gayety at this moment was
contributed by those whose hearts were heaviest. The consecrated
priesthood of patriotism must see no weakness in those left behind. The
only son, now brought face to face with the meaning and consequence of
his rashly seized chance for glory, must not be reminded that perhaps a
grave lay beyond the thin veil of the near future; must not be reminded
that heavy hearts and dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day,
hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes,
the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life,
it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They
laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting
with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility
compared with the abnegation of the million mothers who gave their boys
to the bestial maw of war.
The harrowing ceremonial of parting is ended. The train moves slowly out
of the station, and a murmur of sobs and cheers echoes until it is far
beyond the easternmost limits of the city. After a journey of two days
and a night the train readied Philadelphia. Jack was all eyes and ears
for the spectacle the country presented. In every station through which
the regiment passed crowds welcomed the blue-coats. Women fed them, or
those who seemed in need, thinking, perhaps, of their own distant
darlings receiving like tenderness from the stranger.
In Philadelphia, the regiment marched across the city to resume its
journey. It was a cold spring night, and the regimental quartermaster
and commissary had made no provision for the men. Indeed, as the
observant Jack afterward learned, it was part of the plan of the groups
that first began to create great fortunes during the war to make the
soldiers pay for their rations _en route_ to the seat of war, or depend
upon the charity of citizens along the railway lines. The Government
paid for the supplies just the same, while the money went into the
pockets of contractors and quartermasters. After a weary tramp through
what seemed to the soldiers the biggest city in the world, the regiment,
with blistered feet, hungry and cross, were halted before a long, low
wooden building, through whose rough glass windows cheerful lights could
be seen. A rumor spread that they were to have a hot supper, and, sure
enough, they were marched in, dividing on each side of four long tables
that stretched into spectral distance, in the feeble glimmer of the
oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling. Most of the men in Jack's company,
at least, were gently nurtured, but the steaming oysters, cold beef, and
generous "chunks" of bread, filled their eyes with a magnificence and
their stomachs with a gentle repletion no banquet before or after ever
equaled. The feast was set in the same place during four years, by the
Sanitary Society, I think, but the memory of that homely board,
plenteously spread, is in the mind of many a veteran who faced warward
during the conflict.
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE POTOMAC.
The next morning, when the men debarked to march through Baltimore,
every one was on the _qui vive_ to fasten in his memory the scene of the
shameful attack upon the soldiers of Massachusetts on the 19th of April.
But, as the line marched proudly down Pratt Street, there were no signs
of the hostile spirit that made Baltimore a center of doubt and
suspicion in the North for many a day afterward. It was, however, when
the train dashed out from among the hills to the northwest of the sheet
of water behind the capitol that the Caribees glued their eyes to the
panes in awe not unmingled with delight. No American will ever look upon
that imperial dome again with the sensations that filled the breasts of
those who first saw its rounded outlines in the war epoch. What the ark
of the covenant was to the armies that marched in the wilderness, or the
cross of St. Peter to the pilgrims approaching Rome, that the great
dome, towering cloud ward in the perpetual blue, was to the wondering
eye of the soldier as his glance first fell upon it; that it was for
months--yes, ever after--on the plains of Arlington and in the deadly
exhalations of the Chickahominy. Every one looked anxiously to see signs
of war--indeed, since leaving Baltimore, there was a delicious feeling
of suspense--as the train shot over embankments or skirted the deep pine
woods. Perhaps an adventurous rebel vanguard might attack them. Perhaps
they might have the glory of fighting their way to the beleaguered
capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at
them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the
delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than
the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal
picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of
hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the raw young
warriors conjured.
But now the train was at rest, and the officers--who had not been seen
during the journey--turned out in resplendent plumery. The station--in
those days a tumble-down barrack--was already crowded with soldiery. The
Caribees were aligned along the track, the officers so bewildered by the
confusion that it was by a miracle some of the groups of moving men were
not run over by the backing engines. After an interminable delay, the
band set up "We're coming down to Washington to fight for Abraham's
daughter!" and with exuberant joy a thousand pairs of legs kept brisk
step and elastic movement to the inspiriting strain. Now the longing
eyes see the circumstance and even some of the pomp of war. The regiment
debouches into Pennsylvania Avenue, under the very shadow of the
Capitol, which looks sadly shabby and disproportioned to the eyes that
had an hour or two before opened in such admiration at the first view.
But there is no time for architectural criticism. They are moving down
the avenue toward the White House, toward the home of that patient,
kindly, sorely-tried ruler--the Democritus of his grisly epoch. The
Caribees excite none of the sensation here they have been accustomed to.
The streets are not crowded, and the few civilians passing hardly turn
their heads. Mounted orderlies dash hurriedly, with hideous clatter of
sabre and equipments, across the line of march, through the very
regiment's ranks, answering with a disdainful oath or mocking gibe when
an outraged shoulder-strap raised a remonstrating voice. At Fourteenth
Street the Caribees were halted until the colonel could take his
bearings from headquarters, just around the corner. The wide sidewalks
were dense with bestarred and epauleted personages in various keys of
discussion. Jack and his crony, Barney Moore, studied the scene in
wonder. Their company was halted exactly at the corner of Fourteenth
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and the two were standing at
Willard's corner.
"I wonder if the President just stands and throws the stars down from
that balcony?" Jack said, as the crowd of brigadiers thickened before
the hotel door. "What on earth are they all doing here?"
"Oh, they come to make requisition on General Bacchus; he's the
commissary-general of the brigadiers--don't you know?" Barney said,
innocently.
"General Bacchus? Barney, you're crazy--there's no such officer in the
army--I know all the names--you mean General Banks, don't you?"
"Oh, no, I'm not mistaken--General Bacchus has been selected to deal out
the _esprit de corps!_"
"_L'esprit de corps_? Barney, you're certainly tipsy. I'm ashamed of
you!"
"Yes, the spirit of that corps, as you can tell from the whiffs that
come this way, is the whisky-bottle. Bacchus presides over that spirit.
One would think you'd never read an eclogue of Virgil--you're duller
than a doctor of divinity's after-dinner speech! A tutor's joke is the
utmost wit you ought to bear."
"And so you call that a joke?"
"Well, it isn't a cough, a song, an oath, or--or anything old Oswald
would say, so it must be a joke."
"Well, in that sense it may pass, like a tipsy soldier without the
countersign."
"Oh, come now, Jack, these stars are really dazzling you!"
"Not but I'll make you see some that will dazzle you, if you don't treat
your superior more respectfully."
"Oh, the punch you think of giving me wouldn't solve this star problem;
it requires to be made in the old--the milky way."
But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of
the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many
big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the
steep hill, out Fourteenth Street--then a red clay thoroughfare of
sticky mire with only here and there a negro's shanty where the palaces
of the rich rise to-day. The men learned something of their future
enemy, Virginia mud, as they climbed the red gorge and debouched on
Meridian Hill, where, presently, an aide-de-camp marked the ground
assigned the regiment, and the real life of the soldier began. How tame
to tell, but how "imperial the hour" when these one thousand lads first
went, on guard! Yes, the fact was now before them. They were no longer
segregated atoms, inert, ineffective, eccentric. They were part of that
mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion,
between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.
How proud and glad and manly they felt, these bright-eyed boys--for boys
they mostly were; not a hundred in the regiment had seen their
five-and-twentieth year. One razor would have been ample for the beards
of the whole battalion. And oh, the nameless, the intoxicating sense of
solidarity as they swept the vast reach of hillsides, and saw the white
tents in brooding immensity on either hand! Yes, yonder, far across the
wondrous belt of water, touching loyalty and rebellion in its mighty
rush seaward, they could distinguish the cities of canvas on the distant
Virginia shore.
"It makes a fellow feel as Godfrey's hosts felt when they came in sight
of the Bosporus, and the hordes of the Saracens on the plains of the
Hellespont," Jack said, exultingly, as Barney stood on a pile of camp
equipages above him, surveying the quickening spectacle.
"I don't know how Godfrey's fellows felt, Jack, but it _do_ make a man
feel kinder able to do something with so many near by to lend a hand.
But, stars and garters! what a head it must take to manage all these!
Fair and square, now, Jack, you feel the fires of military genius in
your big head--do you think that you could disentangle this enormous
coil--put each corps, division, and regiment, in its proper place--at a
day's notice?"
"Oh, I couldn't perhaps do it just to-day; but give me time!"
"Yes, I'll give you to the age of Methuselah, and then if you can manage
it I shall not lose faith in you."
"Come, men, the tents must be up before dark. Sergeant Sprague, your
squad has five tents for its detail. You'll find axes and tools at the
quartermaster's wagon on the hill yonder!" It was the captain who spoke,
and, an instant later, the plot of ground, perhaps an acre and a half in
area, was a scene of rollicking labor. Each company had a street, the
tents--calculated to hold four each, but the number varied, going up
often as high as six--faced each other, leaving room enough for the
company to march in column or in line between the white walls. As the
regiment would be presumably some time on the ground, the canvas tents
rested on the top of a palisade of logs cut in the neighboring woods.
These were five feet or more in length, and when driven into the ground
a foot, and banked by the sticky clay, served excellently as walls upon
which to rest the A tents. Two berths, sometimes four, were fastened
laterally on these walls, frames running up to the center of the A held
the guns, while lines stretched across from above served as wardrobes
for such garments as could be hung up.
All this manoeuvring for space in such close quarters was great fun for
lads accustomed to roomy houses, and careless, almost to slovenliness,
in the matter of keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may
seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and
training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in
its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection of quarters
every Sunday morning, and during the week the non-commissioned officers
were expected to see that cleanliness was not intermitted. The company
"street" was "policed" every morning after breakfast, swept and
garnished, that is, with the care of a Dutch housewife. Order is the
first law of the soldier as well as of Heaven, and many a careless lad
brought from his four years' drill method and painstaking that made him
of more value to himself and his neighbors.
Personal traits, too, could be divined in these toy-like interiors. The
regulations prescribed the arrangement of the "bunks," blankets folded,
knapsacks laid at the head of the bed, accoutrements burnished until, at
first sight, the four guns in the rack seemed to be a mirror for the
orderly spirit of this thrifty grot. The shining plates, cups, and
spoons, would have done no discredit to the most energetic, housewife,
as they hung from pegs either above the bunks or along the wall. If
running water were not accessible, every tent had a tin basin for the
morning ablution, each soldier taking turn good humoredly. The household
duties were scrupulously observed, each man assuming his _role_ in the
complicated _menage_.
It was fully a week before the Caribees were installed ready for Sunday
inspection, as no exigency was permitted to interfere with morning and
afternoon drill, guard-mount, and parade. Battalion and brigade drill,
too, were new diversions for the Caribees, as now, camped near other
troops, these more complicated movements were part of the regiment's
allotted duty. After they were sufficiently trained in this they were to
take part in a grand review by the general-in-chief, when the President,
the Secretary of War, and all the great folks in Washington rode out to
witness the spectacle.
There was no time for dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon
became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best
master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to
detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false
command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit for efficiency
and alertness on guard! The rapture the bit of paper brought, and the
exultation with which the hero thus signalized went off to town for the
day, wandered through the waste of streets, stood before Willard's and
admired in awe and wonder the indolent groups from whose shoulders
gleamed one and sometimes two stars! One day Jack and Barney, walking in
Fifteenth Street, saw a stout man, with no insignia to indicate rank or
station, coming out of the headquarters hurriedly. He walked to the edge
of the pavement, and, looking up and down, seemed disconcerted. Noticing
the two lads, he came to where Jack was standing in a preoccupied way,
and the two saluted decorously. He returned the salute and asked:
"Sergeant, are you on duty?"
"No, sir; I'm on leave for the day."
"Ah, good; my orderly was here a moment ago, but I don't see him
anywhere. Would you mind taking this telegram to the War Department,
through the park yonder?"
He gave Jack an envelope and hurried back into the building as the two
lads started with alacrity across the street.
"I've seen that chap before, somewhere," Barney said, panting with the
rapid pace.
"He's a staff officer, I suppose, not very high rank, for he only had a
blouse on. General officers always wear double-button frocks even if
they don't carry the insignia."
The War Department was easy of access, an old building not unlike Jack's
own home in Acredale. He asked the sentry at the door where his envelope
was to be delivered. The man looked at it, pointed to a closed door, and
Jack, receiving no response to his knock, entered. Three men were in the
room. One was seated at a vast desk with papers, maps, dispatches, and
books piled in disheartening confusion, within reach of his hand. Behind
him a young captain in uniform sat writing. But the figure that fixed
Jack's reverential attention was half sprawling, half lying over the
heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of
the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a
thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it
was the President--hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time.
All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he
realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute
adoration there is no telling. The restless, keen eyes looked up sharply
and a dissonant, imperious, repellent voice jerked out:
"Well, my man, what is it?"
Without a word Jack handed him the envelope, and with a sort of
reverence to the tall figure whose face was turned kindly toward him he
backed to the door.