Copperhead

“We think we’re invincible because we’re young. Not me, you understand, but the boys. I used to make it my business to educate the more stupid fallacies out of youth; now I try to preserve their nonsense.” Bird raised his voice so that the nearest company could hear him. “You’ll live forever, you rogues, as long as you remember one thing! Which is?”

There was a pause, then a handful of men returned a ragged answer. “Aim low.”

“Louder!”

“Aim low!” This time the whole company roared back the answer, then began laughing, and Bird beamed on them like a schoolmaster proud of his pupils’ achievements.

The Legion marched through the dusty main street of Leesburg where one small crowd of men was gathered outside the Loudoun County Court House and another, slightly larger, outside Makepeace’s Tavern across the street. “Give us guns!” one man shouted. It appeared they were the county militia and had neither weapons nor ammunition, though a handful of men, privately equipped, had gone to the battlefield anyway. Some of the men fell in with the Legion, hoping to find a discarded weapon on the field. “What’s happening, Colonel?” they asked Adam, mistaking the scarlet trim and gold stars on his fine uniform as evidence that he commanded the regiment.

“It’s nothing to be excited about,” Adam insisted. “Nothing but a few stray northerners.”

“Making enough noise, ain’t they?” a woman called, and the Yankees were indeed much noisier now that Senator Baker had succeeded in getting his three guns across the river and up the steep, slippery path to the bluffs peak, where the gunners had cleared their weapons’ throats with three blasts of canister that had rattled into the trees to shred the leaves.

Baker, taking command of the battle, had found his troops sadly scattered. The 20th Massachusetts was posted in the woods at the summit while the 15th had pushed across the ragged meadow, through the far woods and into the open slopes overlooking Leesburg. Baker called the 15th back, insisting that they form a battle line on the left of the 20th. “We’ll form up here,” he announced, “while New York and California join us!” He drew his sword and whipped the engraved blade to slash off a nettle’s head. The rebel bullets slashed overhead, occasionally clipping off shreds of leaf that fluttered down in the warm, balmy air. The bullets seemed to whistle in the woods, and somehow that odd noise took away their danger. The Senator, who had fought as a volunteer in the Mexican War, felt no apprehension; indeed he felt the exhilaration of a man touched by the opportunity for greatness. This would be his day! He turned as Colonel Milton Cogswell, commander of the Tammany Regiment, panted up to the bluff’s summit. “‘One blast upon your bugle horn is worth a thousand men!’” Baker greeted the sweating Colonel with a jocular quotation.

“I’ll take the goddamn men, sir, begging your pardon,” Cogswell said sourly, then flinched as a pair of bullets slapped through the leaves above his head. “What are our intentions, sir?”

“Our intentions, Milton? Our intentions are victory, fame, glory, peace, forgiveness of our enemies, reconciliation, magnanimity, prosperity, happiness, and the assured promise of heaven’s reward.”

“Then might I suggest, sir,” Cogswell said, trying to sober the ebullient Senator, “that we advance and occupy that stand of trees?” He gestured at the woods beyond the patch of ragged meadowland. By pulling the 20th Massachusetts out of those woods Baker had effectively yielded the trees to the rebels, and already the first gray-coated infantry were well-established among the undergrowth.

“Those rogues won’t bother us,” Baker said dismissively. “Our artillerymen will soon scour them loose. We’ll only be here a moment or two, just long enough to assemble, and then we’ll advance. On to glory!”

A bullet whipsawed close above both men, causing Cogswell to curse in angry astonishment. His anger arose not from the near miss, but because the shot had come from a high knoll on the eastern end of the bluffs. The knoll was the highest part of the bluff and dominated the trees where the northern troops were gathering. “Aren’t we occupying that height?” Cogswell asked Baker in horror.

“No need! No need! We’ll be advancing soon! On to victory!” Baker strolled away, blithe in his self-assurance. Tucked inside the sweatband of his hat, where he had once stuffed his legal notes before going into court, he had pushed the orders he had received from General Stone. “Colonel,” the order read in a hurried scribble, “in case of heavy firing in front of Harrison’s Island, you will advance the California regiment of your brigade or retire the regiments under Colonels Lee and Devens upon the Virginia side of the river, at your discretion, assuming command on arrival.” All of which, in Baker’s view, meant very little, except that he was in command, the day was sunny, the enemy lay before him, and martial fame was in his grasp. “‘One blast upon your bugle horn,’” the Senator chanted the lines from Sir Walter Scott as he marched through the northern troops gathering under the trees, “‘were worth a thousand men!’ Fire back, lads! Let the rascals know we’re here! Fire away, boys! Give them fire! Let them know the North is here to fight!”

Lieutenant Wendell Holmes took off his gray greatcoat, folded it carefully, then placed it beneath a tree. He drew his revolver, checked that its percussion caps were properly in place over the cones, then fired at the far, shadowy shapes of the rebels. The Senator’s fine voice still echoed through the woods, punctuated by the crack and cough of Holmes’s revolver. “‘Hail to the chief,’” Holmes quietly spoke the line from the same poem Baker was declaiming, “‘who in triumph advances.’”

Senator Baker pulled out an expensive watch that had been a gift from his associates and friends of the California bar on the occasion of his appointment to the U.S. Senate. The day was hurrying by, and if he wanted to capture and consolidate Leesburg before nightfall he would need to hurry. “Forward now!” Baker pushed the watch back into his fob pocket. “All of you! All of you! On, my fine boys, on! On to Richmond! On to glory! All for the union, boys, all for the union!”

The colors were lifted, the glorious Stars and Stripes, and beside them the white silk colors of Massachusetts with the arms of the Commonwealth embroidered on one flank and the motto Fide et Constantia stitched bright on the other. The silk streamed in the sunlight as the men cheered, broke cover, and charged.

To die.

“Fire!” Two whole regiments of Mississippi men were in the trees now, and their rifles whipped flames across the clearing to where the northerners had suddenly appeared. Bullets splintered the locust trees and shredded the bright yellow leaves of the maples. A dozen northerners went down in the volley. One, a man who had never sworn in his life, began cursing. A Boston furniture maker stared astonished at the blood spreading on his uniform, then called for his mother as he tried to crawl back to cover.

“Fire!” Colonel Eps of the 8th Virginia had the high ground that dominated the Yankees’ eastern flank and his riflemen poured a slaughtering fusillade down onto the northerners. So many bullets whined and sang off the bronze barrels of the Yankee howitzers that the gunners fled down the precipice of the bluff to where they were safe from the hornets’ whine and hissing slash of the rebel bullets.

“Fire!” More Mississippians opened fire. They lay flat among the trees, or knelt behind trunks and peered through the powder smoke to see that their volleys had sent the northern attack reeling back. Scattered among the Mississippians were men from Leesburg and from the surrounding farms who fired fowling pieces and shotguns at the faltering Yankees. A New York sergeant cursed at his men in Gaelic, but the curses did no good and a bullet shattered his elbow. The northerners were retreating back into the trees, seeking shelter behind trunks and fallen logs where they reloaded their muskets and rifles. Two of the Massachusetts companies had been recruited from German immigrants, and their officers shouted in that language, exhorting them to show the world how Germans could fight. Other northern officers feigned indifference to the storm of bullets that whipped and hissed across the bluffs crest. They strolled among the trees, knowing that a display of insouciant bravery was the quality necessary for rank. They paid for the display with blood. Many of the men from the 20th Massachusetts had hung their fine new scarlet-lined coats from branches and the garments twitched as the bullets plucked and tore at the rich gray cloth. The sound of the battle was constant now, like calico tearing or a canebreak burning, but under that splintering crackle came the sobbing of wounded men and the screams of hurt men and the rattle of dying men.

Senator Baker shouted at his staff officers to man one of the abandoned howitzers, but none of them knew how to prime a vent and the hail of Virginia bullets drove the officers back into the shadows. They left a major dead and a lieutenant coughing up blood as he staggered back from the gun. A bullet slashed a shard of wood from a howitzer’s wheel spoke, another smacked on the muzzle’s face, and a third punctured the water bucket.

A group of Mississippi men, enraged because their Colonel had been shot, tried to charge across the patch of rough meadowland, but as soon as they showed themselves at the tree line the frustrated northerners poured fire at them. It was the rebels’ turn to pull back, leaving three men dead and two wounded. At the right flank of the Massachusetts line the fourteen-pound cannon was still firing, but the Rhode Island gunners had used up their small stock of canister and now had nothing to fire but solid iron bolts. The canister, tearing itself apart at the cannon’s muzzle to scatter a lethal spray of musket balls into the enemy ranks, was ideal for close-range killing work, but the solid bolts were intended for long-range accurate fire and were no good for scouring infantry out of woodland. The bolts, which were elongated iron cannonballs, screamed across the clearing and either vanished into the distance or else struck slivers of freshly splintered timber from tree trunks. The smoke from the cannon pumped its foul-smelling cloud twenty yards in front of the muzzle, forging a smokescreen that hid the right flank companies of the 20th Massachusetts. “Come on, Harvard!” an officer shouted. At least two-thirds of the regiment’s officers had come from Harvard, as had six of its sergeants and dozens of its men. “Come on, Harvard!” the officer shouted again and he stepped forward to lead his men by example, but a bullet took him under the chin and jerked his head sharply back. Blood misted around his face as he slowly crumpled to the ground.

Wendell Holmes, dry-mouthed, watched the stricken officer kneel and then slump forward. Holmes ran forward to help the man, but two other soldiers were closer and dragged the body back into the trees. The officer was unconscious, his bloodied head twitching, then he made a harsh rattling sound and blood bubbled at his throat. “He’s dead,” one of the men who had pulled the body back to cover said. Holmes stared at the dead man and felt a sour surge of vomit rise in his throat. Somehow he kept the vomit down as he turned away and forced himself to stroll with apparent carelessness among his company. He really wanted to lie down, but he knew he needed to show his men that he was unafraid and so he paced among them, his sword drawn, offering what help he could. “Aim low, now. Aim carefully! Don’t waste your shots. Look for them now!” His men bit cartridges, souring their mouths with the salty taste of the gunpowder. Their faces were blackened with the powder, their eyes red-rimmed. Holmes, pausing in a patch of sunlight, suddenly caught the sound of rebel voices calling the exact same advice. “Aim low!” a Confederate officer called. “Aim for the officers!” Holmes hurried on, resisting the temptation to linger behind the bullet-scarred trunks of the trees.

“Wendell!” Colonel Lee called.

Lieutenant Holmes turned to his commanding officer. “Sir?”

“Look to our right, Wendell! Maybe we can outflank these rogues.” Lee pointed to the woods beyond the field gun. “Find out how far the rebel line extends. Hurry now!”

Holmes, thus given permission to abandon his studied and casual air, ran through the trees toward the open right flank of the northern line. To his right, below him and through the trees, he glimpsed the bright, cool surprise of the river, and the sight of the water was oddly comforting. He passed his gray greatcoat folded so neatly at the foot of a maple tree, ran behind the Rhode Islanders manning their cannon and on toward the flank, and there, just as he emerged from the smoke and could see that the far woods were indeed empty of rebel enemy and thus offered a way for Colonel Lee to hook around the Confederate left flank, a bullet struck his chest.

He shuddered, his whole frame shaken by the bullet’s whipsaw strike. The breath was knocked hard out of him, leaving him momentarily unable to breathe, yet even so he felt oddly cool and detached, so that he was able to register just what he was experiencing. The bullet, he was sure it was a bullet, had struck him with the impact he imagined equal to the kick of a horse. It had left him seemingly paralyzed, but when he tried to take a breath he was pleasantly surprised to discover his lungs were working after all, and he realized it was not true paralysis, but rather an interruption of his mind’s control over physical motion. He also realized that his father, Professor of Medicine at Harvard, would want to know of these perceptions, and so he moved his hand toward the pocket where he kept his memorandum book and pencil, but then, helpless to stop himself, he began to topple forward. He tried to call for assistance, but no sound would come, and then he tried to raise his hands to break his fall, but his arms seemed suddenly enfeebled. His sword, which he had been carrying unsheathed, fell to the ground, and he saw a drop of blood splash on the mirror-bright blade and then he fell full-length across the steel and there was a terrible pain inside his chest so that he cried aloud in pity and agony. He had a vision of his family in Boston and he wanted to weep.

“Lieutenant Holmes is down!” a man shouted.

“Fetch him now! Take him back!” Colonel Lee ordered, then went to see how badly wounded Holmes was. He was delayed a few seconds by the Rhode Island artillerymen who shouted for the infantry to stand clear as they fired. Their cannon crashed back on its trail, jetting smoke and flame far out into the sunlit clearing. Each time the gun fired it recoiled a few feet farther back so that its trail left a crudely plowed furrow in the leaf-covered dirt. The gun’s crew was too busy to haul the weapon forward again and each shot was fired a few feet farther back than the one before.

Colonel Lee reached Holmes just as the Lieutenant was being lifted onto a stretcher. “I’m sorry, sir,” Holmes managed to say.

“Be quiet, Wendell.”

“I’m sorry,” Holmes said again. Lee stopped to retrieve the Lieutenant’s sword and wondered why so many men assumed that being wounded was their own fault.

“You’ve done well, Wendell,” Lee said fervently, then a burst of rebel cheering turned him around to see a rush of new rebel troops arriving in the woods opposite, and he knew he had no chance now of hooking around the enemy’s open flank. Indeed, it looked as if the enemy might hook around his. He swore softly, then laid Holmes’s sword beside the wounded Lieutenant. “Take him down gently,” Lee said, then flinched as a corporal began screaming because a bullet had plowed into his bowels. Another man reeled back with an eye filled with blood, and Lee wondered why in God’s name Baker had not ordered a retreat. It was time to get back across the river before they all died.

On the far side of the clearing the rebels had begun making the demonic sound that northern veterans of Bull Run claimed had presaged the onset of disaster. It was a weird, ulullating, inhuman noise that sent shivers of pure terror up Colonel Lee’s spine. It was a prolonged yelp like a beast’s cry of triumph, and it was the sound, Lee feared, of northern defeat. He shuddered, gripped his sword a little tighter, and went to find the Senator.

The Faulconer Legion climbed the long slope toward battle. It had taken longer than anyone expected to march through the town and find the right track toward the river, and now it was late afternoon and some of the more confident men were complaining that the Yankees would all be dead and looted before the Faulconer Legion could get its share of the spoils, while the timid noted that the battle still crackled on unabated. The Legion was close enough to smell the bitter stench of gunpowder carried on the small north wind that sifted the gunsmoke through the green leaves like a winter fog shifting through branches. At home, Starbuck thought, the leaves would all have changed color, turning the hills around Boston into a glorious surprise of gold, scarlet, flaming yellow, and rich brown, but here, on the northern edge of the southern Confederacy, only the maples had turned gold and the other trees were still heavy with green leaves, though their greenness was being plucked and twitched by the storm of bullets being fired from somewhere deep inside the woods.

The Legion marched across the leprous scatter of scorched stubble that showed where Duff’s company of Pike and Chickasaw County men had fought the advancing Yankees to a standstill. The burning wads of their rifles, coughed out with the bullets, had started the small fires that had burned and died away to leave ashy scars in the field. There were a couple of patches of blood too, but the Legion was too distracted by the fight at the hilltop to worry about those signs of earlier battle.

More detritus of battle showed at the woodland’s edge. A dozen officers’ horses were picketed there, and a score of wounded men were being tended by doctors. A mule loaded with fresh ammunition was led into the trees while another, its panniers empty, was brought out. A slave, come to the battle as his master’s servant, ran uphill with canteens he had refilled at the wellhead in the nearest farm. At least a score of children had come from Leesburg to watch the battle and a Mississippi sergeant was attempting to chase them out of range of the northern bullets. One small boy had fetched his father’s huge shotgun to the field and was pleading to be allowed to kill one Yankee before bedtime. The boy did not even flinch as a fourteen-pound solid bolt streaked out from the trees and slapped close overhead. The shot appeared to fly halfway to the Catoctin Mountain before it fell with a mighty splash into a stream just beyond the Licksville Road. The Legion had now come to within sixty yards of the trees, and those officers who still rode horses dismounted and hammered iron picket pins into the turf while Captain Hinton, the Legion’s second-in-command, ran ahead to establish exactly where the left flank of the Mississippi boys lay.

Most of Starbuck’s men were excited. Their relief at surviving Manassas had turned to boredom in the long weeks guarding the Potomac. Those weeks had hardly seemed like war, but instead had been a summer idyll beside cool water. Every now and then a man on one or other riverbank would take a potshot across the water and for a day or two thereafter the pickets would skulk in the shadows, but mostly the two sides had lived and let live. Men had gone swimming under the gunsights of their enemies, they had washed their clothes and watered their horses, and inevitably they had struck up acquaintances with the other side’s sentries and discovered shallow places where they could meet in midstream to exchange newspapers or swap southern tobacco for northern coffee. Now, though, in their eagerness to prove themselves the best soldiers in all the world, the Legion forgot the summer’s friendliness and swore instead to teach the lying, thieving, bastard Yankees to come across the river without first asking for rebel permission.

Captain Hinton reappeared at the edge of the trees and cupped his hands. “A Company, to me!”

“Form on A Company’s left!” Bird shouted to the rest of the Legion. “Color party to me!”

One of the cannon bolts slashed through the trees, showering the advancing men with leaves and splinters. Starbuck could see where an earlier shot had ripped a branch from a trunk, leaving a shocking scar of fresh clean timber. The sight gave him a sudden catch in the throat, a pulse of fear that was the same as excitement.

“Color party to me!” Bird shouted again and the standard-bearers raised their flags into the sunlight and ran to join the Major. The Legion’s own color was based on the Faulconer family’s coat-of-arms and showed three red crescents on a white silken field above the family motto “Forever Ardent.” The second color was the national flag of the Confederacy, two red horizontal stripes either side of a white stripe, while the upper quadrant next to the staff showed a blue field on which was sewn a circle of seven white stars. After Manassas there had been complaints that the flag was too similar to the northern flag and that troops had fired on friendly units believing them to be Yankees, and rumor had it that a new design was being made in Richmond, but for today the Legion would fight beneath the bullet-torn silk of its old Confederate color.

“Dear sweet Jesus save me, dear sweet Jesus save me,” Joseph May, one of Starbuck’s men, prayed breathlessly as he hurried behind Sergeant Truslow. “Save me, O Lord, save me.”

“Save your breath, May!” Truslow growled.

The Legion had been advancing in columns of companies and now it peeled leftward as it turned itself from a column of march into a line of battle. A Company was first into the trees and Starbuck’s K Company would be the last. Adam Faulconer rode with Starbuck. “Get off that horse, Adam!” Starbuck shouted up to his friend. “You’ll be killed!” He needed to shout for the crackle of musketry was loud, but the sound was filling Starbuck with a curious elation. He knew as well as Adam that war was wrong. It was like sin, it was terrible, but just like sin it had a terrible allure. Survive this, Starbuck felt, and a man could take anything that the world might hurl at him. This was a game of unimaginably high stakes, but also a game where privilege conferred no advantages except the chance to avoid the game altogether, and whoever used privilege to avoid this game was no man at all, but a lickspittle coward. Here, where the air was foul with smoke and death whipped among green leaves, existence was simplified to absurdity. Starbuck whooped suddenly, filled with the sheer joy of the moment. Behind him, their rifles loaded, K Company spread among the green leaves. They heard their Captain’s whoop of joy and they heard the rebel yell sounding from the troops on the right, and so they began to make the same demonic wailing screech that spoke of southern rights and southern pride and southern boys come to make a killing.

“Give them hell, boys!” Bird shouted. “Give them hell!”

And the Legion obeyed.

Baker died.