Yancy left Richmond at dawn on September 2. On September 3, just before dawn, he stood at the entrance to General Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters tent. He had ridden about one hundred ten miles in twenty-four hours.
The tent flap was open, and Yancy could see the general inside, sitting at his camp desk, reading the Bible by the light of a single guttering candle. He looked exactly as Yancy had pictured him so often in the past two months—dusty, wrinkled, shabby, but still with that indefinable aura of strength and authority that Jackson emanated without effort.
“Sir?” Yancy called softly. “Permission to enter?”
Jackson looked up, squinting slightly, then rose and came forward without hesitation. Yancy stood at strict attention, but Jackson held out his hand and Yancy gladly shook it. “So, Sergeant Tremayne, I see you’re still alive. Glad to see it.”
“Thank you, sir. I am, too.”
Jackson turned and motioned for Yancy to follow him and sit on the camp stool opposite his desk. “I’ll have to write Anna; she’s been after me for news of you. I did hear at Chimborazo that Dr. Hayden took you home to care for you. Sounded like good news to me, though I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Hayden. Friends of yours, the Haydens?”
“Yes, sir. Very good friends.”
“Good, good. Looks like they took fine care of you.”
“They did, sir. I’m ready to rejoin. I’m sorry I was away for so long. I wanted to come back as soon as I could.”
Jackson’s startling blue eyes twinkled slightly. “Missed us, did you?”
“I did, sir. It’s hard to explain. I just know I belong here.”
“That’s explanation enough for me, Sergeant. We’re glad you’re back, and I’m especially glad Midnight is back. He runs circles around even General Lee’s couriers,” Jackson said with evident relish. “I would have conscripted him while you were out, but it wouldn’t have done any good since he won’t let anyone but you ride him.”
“Sir?” Yancy said, puzzled.
“You didn’t know?” Jackson asked in surprise. “Contrary horse threw half of my aides before we figured out that he wasn’t having any rider fumbling around on his back except for you. Even Sergeant Stevens couldn’t ride him.”
Yancy’s eyes grew wide. “Midnight threw Peyton?” he blurted out; then, recovering himself somewhat, he added, “Sir?”
“Sure did. Tossed him onto a caisson and bruised his collarbone. Stevens came back to headquarters riding his own horse with Midnight tethered behind him. Said it made him nervous, that stubborn horse behind him. Felt like Midnight was planning to attack him again, from the rear, at any time. So we went ahead and sent him on to you.”
Yancy was amazed at this speech coming from the terse Stonewall Jackson. He didn’t think he’d ever heard the general say so many sentences in a row. And then he astonished Yancy again, for he threw his head back and laughed aloud in a creaky, rusty manner. Yancy couldn’t help but grin.
Stonewall seemed to have amused himself mightily, for he laughed on and on, and finally Yancy started laughing, since it was contagious. Yancy thought, This is crazy, me and the great Stonewall Jackson sitting here laughing like the village idiot. Maybe I really did lose my mind when I got shot in the head.
Finally, though, the madness came to an end, and with a final chuckle, Stonewall rose. Yancy snapped to attention as Jackson said, “You look tired, Sergeant. I happen to know that Stevens’s tent is the second one down the lane there, on the right, though I don’t know how anyone could mistake it. It’s bigger than mine and usually sounds like there’s a rowdy party going on there. Go get some rest.”
“Yes, sir!” Yancy saluted then turned to leave.
But behind him he heard General Jackson say softly, “Sergeant Tremayne?”
Yancy turned back. “Yes, sir?”
“You are feeling well, are you not?”
“Yes, sir. Very well, sir. I’m ready.”
“Good, good,” he murmured his familiar refrain. He resumed his seat and put on his spectacles. “You’re going to need to be. We’re all going to need to be. Dismissed.”
Yancy gave Midnight to one of the “cubs,” very young soldiers of thirteen and fourteen that General Jackson had adamantly refused to put in the line of battle. He always had three or four of them ostensibly on his staff as “assistants.” Mostly they helped Jim with fetching and carrying and took care of the staff’s horses.
One of Yancy’s favorites, Willy Harper, was feeding apple quarters to Midnight, caressing his nose and murmuring nonsense to him. Willy reminded Yancy of Seth Glick, the young boy who had tailed after Yancy so much when he had first arrived in the community. Like Seth, Willy had red hair and freckles and a friendly grin. He was short and had a small frame. He looked even younger than his thirteen years.
As Yancy approached, Willy came to attention and saluted, and he looked like a little boy playing dress-up in a soldier’s costume. Yancy had to stifle a grin, because in Willy’s saluting hand was the last quarter of the apple. “At ease there, Private Harper.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m glad you’re back, Sergeant Tremayne. Did you get hurt bad?”
“Naw, just addled my brains a little bit,” Yancy answered, brushing one finger against the scar on his forehead. “I think they’re all back in order now. You going to take care of Midnight for me? We’ve had a long, hard ride. He needs to be brushed good, and then I’d appreciate it if you’d wash him down, Willy. We both got pretty muddy on the road.” Yancy looked down at his new thigh-high cavalry boots regretfully. They were splattered with gloppy red mud up to the knees.
“I’ll take really good care of Midnight,” Willy promised. “And—and then, if you want me to, I’ll report to your tent and clean your boots, sir.”
Yancy started to say a stern no—after all, Willy wasn’t his body servant—but then he realized, perhaps with a wisdom beyond his years, that the boy sort of hero-worshipped him, and probably Peyton Stevens, too, and this was Willy’s way of being included with them. So Yancy answered, “That’s nice of you, Private. I am tired and I would appreciate it if you’d take care of that chore for me. And bring me an apple, too, if you’ve got an extra one.”
“Yes, sir!” Willy said, saluting.
“Carry on,” Yancy ordered.
Like the young boy that he was, Willy led Midnight off, talking a mile a minute to the horse and grinning his goofy smile.
Yancy hurried to Peyton’s tent, which indeed was unmistakable. The tent flap was open. Inside Chuckins was stirring a big pot on the camp stove; a delicious scent of stewed beef floated out of the tent. Peyton lazed on his padded cot, reading a novel with a lurid cover. Sandy Owens dozed on another cot.
“Smells good, Chuckins,” Yancy said, strolling into the tent. “Daddy come through again, Peyton?”
They all hurried to him and clapped him on the back so many times that Yancy thought he’d be sore tomorrow. After their greetings they settled down to catch up on the last two months.
“First we heard that you got shot in the head,” Chuckins said soberly. “We were sure you were dead. But then General Jackson got word about one of the doctors at Chimborazo taking you to his house to take care of you and that you’d been shot twice but not mortally.”
Yancy nodded. “True. Bullet grazed my head”—he lifted up the heavy locks of his hair to show them the scar—“and fractured my skull. Another bullet got me in the arm, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m friends with the Hayden family, and Dr. Hayden was one of the doctors working at the hospital after the battle. He decided to take me home. I must’ve been real lucky. I heard there were about fifteen thousand wounded after the Seven Days battle.”
This launched a highly detailed, technical description of the battles Yancy had missed. After several minutes of Peyton and Sandy trying to describe the fields and order of battle, the four of them sat down on the floor of the tent and began to draw in the dirt. Chuckins produced some dried beans, and they were arranged to show the different units and their placement in the battles. They started talking about the top-secret march of the Army of the Valley to flank Pope as the Army of Northern Virginia began to march north to meet him.
Peyton told Yancy, “You missed the fireworks then, boyo. Stonewall kept the march so secret he wouldn’t even tell the division chiefs where we were going. I was given one fat envelope in my courier’s bag and told to go three miles north to the first crossroads I came to and wait there. Didn’t know how long, didn’t know what for. I found out later that Stonewall told the commanders, ‘March up this road. You’ll come to a crossroads and there’ll be a courier there with orders telling you which way to go. At the next crossroads, the same.’ ”
Peyton grinned mischievously. “So there I sat, me and Senator, in the middle of nowhere at these unnamed crossroads. Finally, after about six hours, I heard marching and saw a cloud of red dust, and out of it came Colonel B. W. Ripley of the 35th South Carolina, riding like thunder and fury. I mounted up in a hurry to meet him in the dead center of the crossroads. He came up, horse snorting and stamping, and him glaring at me with an evil eye. I handed him the dispatch. He tore it open, looked up at me, and commenced to cussing fit to turn the air blue. His command finally drew up, and he turned in the saddle and yelled, ‘That way!’ and pointed to the left-hand road. They started marching that way. The whole time they passed by he sat there and cussed me up, down, sideways, and back again.”
Through his laughter Yancy asked, “What did you do? Weren’t you mad?”
“Not really,” Peyton carelessly replied. “It was, you know, impersonal. Like watching a force of nature. I was kinda fascinated, to tell the truth. He ended it when the last troops turned up the road. It was like capping a boiling pot. Thump. Silence. He rode off. Kinda hated to see him go.”
Another one of the couriers, Smithson “Smitty” Gaines, suddenly stuck his head in the tent. “Oh, hi, Yancy. Glad you’re back. Y’all won’t ever guess.”
Yancy sighed. “We’re marching.”
Smitty nodded. “Yep. Cook up three days’ rations, strike the tents, and pack up tonight. We’re leaving at dawn tomorrow.” He popped out of view as abruptly as he had appeared.
“I knew it,” Yancy muttered.
“You always do, but I didn’t think even you could read Stonewall’s mind from Richmond,” Peyton said with no inkling of how close to the truth his words seemed to Yancy. “You know what, Yance? You’re looking pretty rough. Why don’t you eat some of that stew and take a rest.”
“Sounds good,” Yancy admitted. He stood up, took off his boots, and plopped down on his cot. “Except I think I’ll eat when I wake up. I’m pretty tired.”
The other three tiptoed out and pulled the tent flap shut, but Yancy could still hear his friends talking.
“I’m glad he’s back,” Sandy Owens said quietly, and Peyton agreed.
Chuckins said happily, “Me, too. I think it’s a good sign. Stonewall’s Boys are back again.”
Yancy grinned as he closed his eyes, and in just a few moments he was asleep.
If he could have, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson would have kept their destination secret from everyone in the Army of Northern Virginia except for himself and General Lee and General Longstreet, and he had his doubts about Longstreet. But of course this was not possible. It was known to everyone in the South that on September 4, 1862, General Lee led his 40,000 battle-hardened men toward Maryland.
The first leg of the march was from the army’s headquarters in Chantilly to a small Virginia town on the Potomac, Leesburg. Yancy and Peyton were, as usual, riding with the other couriers just behind Jackson’s staff, who followed him. The staff officers kept a very loose formation behind the general. Yancy and Peyton had become favorites of the staff, as they were also obviously favorites of their general, so they often let them slowly ride up until they, too, were just behind Jackson.
As they passed through the small village, a woman standing in a doorway suddenly stiffened with recognition when she saw Jackson, her eyes wide. She ran fast, dashed into the road, and threw her scarf down in front of Jackson’s horse.
General Jackson halted and stared at the woman on the sidewalk, obviously mystified.
One of the staff officers rode up close to him and murmured, “She means you to ride over it, General.”
Now he smiled at the lady, who smiled back as if her face were suddenly lit by heavenly beams. Jackson doffed his cap and slowly rode over the scarf.
Behind him, the staff and aides exchanged delighted grins. Jackson was famous now, perhaps second only to Robert E. Lee. His face was well known from portraits in the newspapers. Ever since his triumphs at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas, the people along the marches had recognized him. They often crowded Little Sorrel, hugging her; others touching the general’s boots; mothers holding up babies for him to lay his hand on their heads; ladies thrusting handkerchiefs up to him to touch; still others handing him flowers and small flags and often, since his oddities had become known, lemons. No matter how often it happened, no matter if it was one lady or a crowd, General Jackson was obviously baffled by the attention, and it made him embarrassed and awkward. His staff loved it.
They marched and marched. On the ninth, General Lee ordered Jackson to his old command and the scene of such drama, Harpers Ferry. The strategic village was once again in the hands of the Federals, and it was vital for Lee to take it to protect the rear of the army, who were to march to Hagerstown, Maryland, and then farther north to engage the enemy.
After arranging his artillery in a careful sweep surrounding the town, Stonewall stood with his staff on a crag of Bolivar’s Heights, looking down at the Federals ensconced in Harpers Ferry. The town was surrounded by hills, which made it easy to attack and impossible to defend.
One of Jackson’s officers said, “It sure is down in a bowl, isn’t it?”
Jackson said succinctly, “I’d rather take the place forty times than undertake to defend it once.”
And so, almost before the first rolling artillery volley was finished, the Federals sent up the white flag, and 12,000 men surrendered. Jackson again had captured a rich unspoiled treasure—13,000 small arms, seventy-three cannons, and countless foodstuffs, supplies, and other stores.
It was September 15, 8:00 a.m. Even before he went down into the town, Jackson called Yancy to him. “Dispatch to General Lee. Double-quick, Sergeant Tremayne.”
“Yes, sir.” Yancy saluted and Midnight took off in a flurry of dust and smoke that lingered on the air. It was sixteen hard miles, on the old Shepherdstown Road and crossing the Potomac at Boteler’s Ford, to Lee’s headquarters just west of Sharpsburg, Maryland.
At three o’clock, Yancy returned. He was covered in dust, his boots wet to the knee. Midnight was lathering, his legs covered with mud up to his hocks. Still he pranced and stamped.
Yancy jumped off and hurried to Jackson, who was still in the village making arrangements to parole the prisoners. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “I have a return from General Lee.”
Eyeing him shrewdly, Jackson took the note. He looked up at Yancy and asked, “Did you see the ground?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“General Lee is hard-pressed, sir. Vast numbers of the enemy have massed east of Sharpsburg.”
Jackson nodded. Lee’s dispatch had said that if Jackson had not overcome Harpers Ferry that day, Lee was contemplating a retreat. He urged Jackson to come to Sharpsburg with all speed.
They marched all night, quite a feat after the last two weeks of marching and maneuvering and skirmishing. But they were Jackson’s foot cavalry, and they were relentless. They reached Sharpsburg early on the morning of September 16. Two armies faced each other, intent on destruction, across a winding, cheerful little creek called Antietam.
It was September 17, 1862. Johnny Rebs called it the Battle of Sharpsburg; Yankees called it the Battle of Antietam. Each of the places on that horrendous battlefield carried its own too-clear imprint.
Dunker Church, where the bloodletting began at six o’clock that morning. And where Stonewall Jackson, calm and imperturbable in the midst of screaming bullets and murderous artillery, directed his men in his final counterattack, saving the Confederate left from complete destruction.
The North Woods, where General Joe Hooker’s Union troops harassed the Confederate left all the day, visions of blue coats weaving in and out of the soft-wooded shadows, and sometimes storming out in waves, men in gray falling before them.
The East and West Woods, where both blue and gray fought and died, the sweet glades scarred by rifle fire and artillery explosions and men lying on the ground, coloring it scarlet.
The Cornfield, twenty acres of what had been well-ordered rows of sweet corn, with men of both the North and the South lying as they fell, just as the cornstalks lay from the onslaught. On that day the lines surged back and forth over the Cornfield no less than eight times. In the end neither army possessed it, only the dead.
The Sunken Road, which came to be known as Bloody Lane, because it was filled in some places six deep with Confederate dead.
Burnside’s Bridge, surrounded in some places six deep with Federal dead.
General John B. McClellan was timid. He imagined General Robert E. Lee as all-powerful, and in his head he always was certain that the Army of Northern Virginia was half again, or sometimes twice as numerous as it was. “Little Mac,” as he was affectionately known in the army, hated to risk his men. He could map out grand strategies, but when it came to completely committing his army to an aggressive offense, as General Lee always did, Little Mac would procrastinate, always asserting that the job could not be done unless he had more reinforcements, more cannons, more rifles, more ammunition, more aides, more couriers, more food, more tents, more blankets, more shoes, and more intelligence. Even his defensive moves were halfhearted and ineffective because of his reluctance to fight.
At Sharpsburg he outnumbered General Lee’s army almost two to one, with a force of 75,000 facing Lee’s army of 40,000. All that day McClellan attacked and defended in a piecemeal fashion. The Confederates cut up those Yankee pieces even more, and in pieces they retreated.
The Army of Northern Virginia lost over 10,000 men, killed, wounded, and missing. Federal casualties were close to 12,500. When the final awful numbers were tabulated, 22,546 men had fallen on that Bloodiest Day.
One thing happened to Yancy that day that should have made him glad. But because it happened at such a grim and critical moment during the Battle of Sharpsburg, he recalled it with wonder, mixed with the pall of dread that overlaid his every image of that battle.
When Jackson had withdrawn from Harpers Ferry, he had left General A. P. Hill’s division behind to deal with the parole of their 12,000 prisoners and to inventory and transport the captured guns and material to Sharpsburg. Consequently, he was late arriving on the field; in fact, he arrived just at the moment that the Confederate right was about to crumble, and thus the Federals could easily have flanked them and then utterly destroyed them.
When General Jackson sighted the first of Hill’s troops as they appeared on the Shepherdstown Road, Jackson sharply called out for Yancy. He rode up and the general grabbed Midnight’s bridle. “General Hill is just arriving on the road, there, to the south. No time to write a dispatch; ride to him as fast as you can and ascertain if he is still at his strength and numbers or if he has lost stragglers along the road. And hurry back to me.”
“Yes, sir,” Yancy said and hurried off toward the south.
General A. P. Hill was already at the line of battle and was directing the first brigades marching into their positions.
Yancy rode at a blinding gallop to the front, through confusion of soldiers hurrying to get placed along the line. He drew up to the head of the brigade. Then he reined in Midnight so abruptly that he reared and screamed. General Hill turned, and in a single blinding instant, Yancy’s mind was filled with images imprinted as surely as if he were seeing them with his eyes instead of his brain:
General A. P. Hill, in his blazing red flannel shirt, shouting orders and cursing at the top of his lungs on the bloody center of the Battle of Gaines’ Mill.
Grinning at Yancy. “Orders from Stonewall, huh? What? Attack the North Pole?”
Looking down at his right arm, watching the dark stain spread.
Stunning blow to his head…gray…then black.
Yancy remembered it all—the noise, the screams, the guns, the smell, the fear, the pain. It filled his mind for a moment, and he had to shake his head to clear it. Then he rode up to General Hill and shouted, “General Hill! Message from General Jackson!”
And so he thought no more about it. He knew he would not have time until much later that night.
As night fell, the few guns firing here and there spluttered out. Lee’s officers were expecting an order to retreat. In spite of the fact that the Confederates had undoubtedly driven the Federals from the field in a shamefaced retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia had been mauled badly, and withdrawal would have been understandable and perfectly honorable.
But Robert E. Lee stood his ground.
The Army of Northern Virginia camped that night. Fatalistically they ate confiscated supplies more plentiful than they had since Second Manassas, anticipating another cruel fight the next day. Faithfully they believed in Robert E. Lee and with certainty believed, in spite of their cruelly reduced numbers, that they would drive the hordes of men in blue from the field once again.
Yancy and Peyton Stevens found a grassy swath under a bullet-scarred oak tree in the West Woods, where General Jackson had set up his overnight headquarters. Both of them were deadly tired, though they only felt a peculiar numbness, and they were ravenously hungry. They built a fire, neither of them speaking, only gathering up wood and hollowing out a shallow hole and going through the business of lighting the wood in a light breeze.
Peyton Stevens was pale and drawn and looked twice his age. Yancy was pasty-faced, the hollows of his jaw deep, his cheekbones sharp, his eyes red. They had fat peaches from one of the orchards they had passed on their march from Harpers Ferry. As always, Peyton had plenty of stores of tinned beef, peas, salmon, and even lobster. Yancy had brought a loaf of fresh bread from the prison bakery at Harpers Ferry that had, miraculously, survived in his haversack, along with some confiscated beef jerky.
As they ate, they slowly began talking, just a little, about the day, telling each other of the dispatches they had taken to which commander, and of the situation at the time. Both of them had been to General Lee’s headquarters twice that day, and they compared notes on the beloved “Marse Robert” as his army called him.
“It’s too bad that Chuckins can’t do courier duty sometimes, as he loves General Lee so much.” Yancy stopped, sat up, and looked around blankly. “Where is Chuckins, anyway?”
Peyton answered, “General Jackson called all his clerks together. He’s taking them to tour the field hospital to get the information about the dead and wounded.”
“Oh,” Yancy said unhappily. “I’d rather ride through a hail of bullets than do that.”
Peyton didn’t answer.
Knowing that General Jackson could call them to duty at any time, after they ate they spread their blankets and went to sleep.
Long after midnight, Yancy was roused from feverish, hateful dreams of blood and gore by a small, pitiful sound. He sat up.
Charles Satterfield sat against the trunk of the oak tree, his knees drawn up, his arms hugging them, and his head resting on them. His shoulders shook. The little noises that Yancy heard was Chuckins sobbing quietly.
Yancy went to him, sat down by him, and put his arms around him. Chuckins buried his face in Yancy’s shoulder. Chuckins cried for a long time, but finally the sobs subsided and he drifted off to sleep, leaning against Yancy’s side, Yancy’s arm still around him. They slept until dawn.