Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals Part 18

Never had General, burdened with so many sins of omission and commission, as the conversation indicated, been so leniently dealt with, now that the Rebels in their favorite, and with him successful game of hide and seek, had again given him the slip, and were only in his front to annoy. As they had it completely in their power to prevent a general engagement at that point, his remark as to what would have been done was a very rotten twig, caught at in the vain hope of breaking his fall.

CHAPTER XIV.

_A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor--A Review of the Corps by Old Joe--A Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the Public--Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker--The Movement by the Left Flank--A Division General and Dog-driving--The Desolation of Virginia--A Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master--"No Hoss, Sir!"--The Poetical Lieutenant unappreciated--Mutton or Dog?--Desk Drudgery and Senseless Routine._

"It's about time, Bill, for you to have another sick on," said a lively lad, somewhat jocosely, as he rubbed away at his musket-barrel, on one of our last mornings at the Camp, near Warrenton. "Fighting old Joe has the Corps now, and he will review us to-day, the Captain says, and after that look out for a move."

"Don't say," drawled out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow, famous in the Regiment for s.h.i.+rking duty--who, when picket details were expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." "Well," continued he, "Lord knows what I'll do. I've had the rheumatics awful bad," clapping at the same time one hand on his hip, and the other on his right shoulder, "the last day or two, and then the chronical diarrhoear."

"You had better go in on rheumatism, Bill," broke in the first speaker.

"The Doctor will let you off best on that."

"That's played out, isn't it, Bill," chimed in another; and to Bill's disgust, as he continued, "It don't go with the little Dutch Doctor since Sharpsburg. Every time his Company's turn would come for picket, while we were at that Camp, Bill would be a front-rank man at the Hospital, with a face as long as a rail, and twisted as if he had just had all his back teeth pulled. The little Dutchman would yell out whenever he would see him--'What for you come? Eh? You tam shneak.

Rheumatism, eh? In hip?' And the Doctor would punch his shoulder and hip, and pinch his arms and legs until Bill would squirm like an eel under a gig. 'Here, Shteward,' said the Doctor the last time, as he scribbled a few words on a small piece of paper, 'Take this; make application under left ear, and see if dis tam rheumatism come not out.'

Bill followed the Steward, and in a few minutes came back to quarters ornamented with a fly-blister as big as a dollar under his left ear.

Next morning Bill didn't report, but he's been going it since on diarrhoea."

"He wasn't smart, there," observed another. "He ought to have done as little Burky of our mess did. He'd hurry to quarters, take the blister off, clap it on again next morning when he'd report, and he'd have the little Dutchman swearing at the blister for not being 'wors a tam.'"

Bill took the sallies of the crowd with the quiet remark that their turn for the sick list would come some day.

The Review on that day was a grand affair. The fine-looking manly form of Old Joe, as, in spite of a bandaged left ancle not yet recovered from the wound at Antietam, and that kept the foot out of the stirrup, he rode down the line at a gait that tested the horsemans.h.i.+p of his followers, was the admiration of the men. In his honest and independent looking countenance they read, or thought they could, character too purely republican to allow of invidious distinctions between men, who, in their country's hour of need, had left civil pursuits at heavy sacrifices, and those who served simply because the service was to them the business of life. With hearts that kept lively beat with the regimental music as they marched past their new Commander, they rejoiced at this mark of attention to the necessities of the country, which removed an Officer, notorious as a leader of reserves, and placed them under the care of a man high on the list of fighting Generals.

"Waterloo," says the historic or rather philosophic novelist of France, "was a change of front of the universe." The results of that contest are matter of record, and justify the remark. At Warrenton a great Republic changed front, and henceforth the milk and water policy of conciliating "our Southern Brethren" ranked as they are behind bristling bayonets, or of intimidating them by a mere show of force, must give way to active campaigning and heavy blows.

A rainy, misty morning a day or two after the review, saw the Corps pa.s.s through Warrenton, en route for the Railroad Junction, commencing the change of direction by the left flank, ordered by the new Commander of the Army. The halt for the night was made in a low piece of woodland lying south of the railroad. In column of Regiments the Division encamped, and in a s.p.a.ce of time incredible to those not familiar with such scenes, knapsacks were unslung and the smoke of a thousand camp-fires slowly struggled upwards through the falling rain. Its pelting was not needed to lull the soldiers, weary from the wet march and slippery roads, to slumber.

At early dawn they left the Junction and its busy scenes--its lengthy freight-trains, and almost acres of baggage-wagons, to the rear, and struck the route a.s.signed the Grand Division, of which they were part, for Fredericksburg. "A change of base" our friends will read in the leaded headings of the dailies, and pa.s.s it by as if it were a transfer of an article of furniture from one side of the room to the other.

Little know they how much individual suffering from heavy knapsacks and blistered feet, confusion of wagon-trains, wrangling and swearing of teamsters, and vexation in almost infinite variety, are comprised in these few words. It is the army that moves, however, and the host of perplexities move with it, all unknown to the great public, and transient with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion.

Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find their ingenuity taxed to preserve their reputation for the vice with their fellows.

Why negroes are not more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery.

They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of able-bodied men for that duty. Capital and careful hors.e.m.e.n are to be found among the contrabands of Virginia, and many a poor beast, bad in harness because badly treated, would rejoice at the change.

Quarter-masters, Wagon-masters, Commissaries, _et id genus omne_, have their peculiar troubles. Our Regiment was particularly favored in a Quarter-Master of accomplished business tact, whose personal supervision over the teams during a march was untiring, and whose tongue was equally tireless in rehearsing to camp crowds, after the march was over, the troubles of the day, and how gloriously he surmounted them. In his department he held no divided command.

"Get out of my train with that ambulance. You can't cut me off in that style," he roared in an authoritative manner to an ambulance driver, who had slipped in between two of his wagons on the second day of our march.

"My ambulance was ordered here, sir! I have General ----" The driver's reply was here interrupted by the abrupt exclamation of the Quarter-Master--

"I don't care a d--n if you have Old Joe himself inside. I command this train and you must get out." And get out the driver did, at the intimation of his pa.s.senger, who, to the surprise of the Quarter-Master, notwithstanding his a.s.sertion, turned out to be no less a personage than General Hooker himself.

"It is the law of the road," said the General, good-humoredly--candid to his own inconvenience--"and we must obey it."

This ready obedience upon the part of the General was better in effect than any order couched in the strongest terms for the enforcement of discipline. The incident was long a frequent subject of conversation, and added greatly to his popularity as a commander. The men were fond of contrasting it with the conduct of the General of Division, who but a few days later cursed a poor teamster with all manner of profanely qualifying adjectives because he could not give to the General and his Staff the best part of a difficult road.

But perhaps the men held their General of Division to too strict an accountability. He was still laboring under the spell of Warrenton. His nervous system had doubtless been deranged by the removal of his favorite Chief, or rather Dictator, as he had hoped he might be. "No one could command the army but McClellan," the General had said in his disgust--a disgust that would have driven him from the service, but that, fortunately for himself and unfortunately for his country, it was balanced by the pay and emoluments of a Brigadiers.h.i.+p. Reluctant to allow Burnside quietly, a Caesar's opportunity to "cover his baldness with laurels," his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command, cursing the officers,--and that for fancied neglect of duty,--poorly concealed the workings of his mind.

In one of these rapid rides, his eye caught sight of a brace of young hounds following one of the Sergeants.

"Where did those dogs come from?"

"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."

"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. D--n you, sir, I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General, deploying his staff at the same time to a.s.sist in driving the dogs back, as notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant to send them to the rear, they crouched at a respectful distance and eyed him wistfully. "D--n you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by G--d, sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to the other in front of the Sergeant.

The affair speedily became ridiculous. Driving dogs was evidently with the General a more congenial employment than manoeuvring men. But his efforts in the one proved as unsuccessful as in the other, as notwithstanding the aid afforded by his followers, the dogs would turn tail but for a short distance. After swearing most _dogmatically_, as an officer remarked, he turned to resume his ride to the head of the column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the dogs. Squab was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling increased, and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were engaged in an attempt at its suppression. But in vain. Whistling in Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the adjacent Regiments.

That authority should be thus abused by the General in endeavoring to enforce his ridiculous order, and set at naught by the men in thus mocking at obedience, is to be deprecated. The men took that method of rebuking the inconsistency, which would permit Regular and many Volunteer Regiments to be followed by all manner of dogs,

"Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, And cur of low degree,"

and yet refuse them the accidental company of but a brace of canines. A simple report of the offender, supposing the Sergeant to have been one, would have been the proper course, and would have saved a General of Division the disgrace of being made a laughing-stock for his command.

"Talent is something: but tact is everything," said an eminent man, and nowhere has the remark a more truthful application than in the army.

A favorite employment after the evening halt, during this three days'

march, was the gathering of mushrooms. The old fields frequent along the route abounded with them, and many a royal meal they furnished. To farmers' sons accustomed to the sight of close cultivation, these old fields, half covered with stunted pines, sa.s.safras, varieties of spice wood, and the never-failing persimmon tree, were objects of curiosity.

It was hard to realize that we were marching through a country once considered the Garden of America, whose bountiful supplies and large plantations had become cla.s.sic through the pen of an Irving and other famous writers. Fields princely in size, but barren as Sahara; buildings, once comfortable residences, but now tottering into ruin, are still there, but "all else how changed." The country is desolation itself. Game abounds, but whatever required the industry of man for its continuance has disappeared.

Civilization, which in younger States has felled forests, erected school-houses, given the fertility of a garden to the barren coast of the northern Atlantic and the wild-wood of the West, could not coalesce with the curse of slavery, and Virginia has been pa.s.sed by in her onward march. This field of pines that you see on our right, whose tops are so dense and even as to resemble at a distance growing grain, may have been an open spot over which Was.h.i.+ngton followed his hounds in ante-revolutionary days. The land abounds in memories. The very names of the degenerate families who eke out a scanty subsistence on some corner of what was once an extensive family seat, remind one of the old Colonial aristocracy. Reclamation of the soil, as well as deliverance of the enslaved, must result from this civil war. Both worth fighting for.

So "Forward, men," "Guide right," as in very truth we are in Divine Providence guided.

The long-haired, furtive-looking fathers and sons, representatives of all this ancient n.o.bility, after having given over their old homesteads to their female or helpless male slaves, and ma.s.sed their daughters and wives apparently in every tenth house, were keeping parallel pace with us on the lower bank of the Rappahannock. It was the inevitable logic of the law of human progress, declaring America to be in reality the land of the free, that compelled these misguided, miserable remnants of an aristocracy, to s.h.i.+ver in rags around November camp-fires. "They are joined to their idols"--but now that after years of legislative encroachment upon the rights of suffering humanity, they engage in a rebellious outbreak against a G.o.d-given Government, we will not let them alone in an idolatry that desolates the fair face of nature and causes such shameful degeneracy of the human race. Justice! slow, but still sure and retributive justice! How sublimely grand in her manifestations! After years of patient endurance of the proud contumely of South Carolina, New England granite blocks up the harbor of Charleston--Ma.s.sachusetts volunteers cook their coffee in the fireplaces of the aristocratic homesteads of Beaufort, and negroes rally to a roll-call at Bunker Hill, but as volunteers in a war which insures them liberty, and not as slaves, as was once vainly prophesied.

"Who commands you?" inquired a long, lean, slightly stooped, sallow-faced man of about fifty, with eyes that rolled in all directions but towards the officer he addressed, and long hair thrown back of his ears in such a way as to make up an appearance that would readily attract the attention of a police officer.

"I command this Regiment, sir," replied the Colonel, who, at the end of the day's march, was busied in directing a detail where to pitch the Head-quarter tents.

"Goin' to stay yer--right in this meadow?" continued the man, in the half negro dialect common with the whites of the South.

"That is what we purpose doing, sir. Are you the owner?"

"Y-a-a-s," drawled out the man, pulling his slouch felt still further over his eyes. "This meadow is the best part of my hull farm."

"Great country, this," broke in the Quarter-Master. "Why a kill-deer couldn't fly over it without carrying a knapsack. You don't think that camping upon this meadow will injure it any, do you?"

"Right smart it will, I reckon," rejoined the man, his eyes kindling somewhat, "right smart, it will. $1500 at least."

"What! What did the land cost you?"

"Wall, I paid at the rate of $15 the acre for 118 acres, and the buildings and 12 acres on it are in this meadow, and the best bit of it, too."