29 The Night Battle

It was far in the night when I was awakened by a tall man in uniform, who gave me a rough shake.

“Get up, Philip,” said Major Northcote, who held a lantern in his hand.

I rose and in a moment was wide-awake, as a man is likely to be at slight provocation on a night that he fears is going to be his last. Major Northcote carried a lantern, the light of which fell upon his face, and I could see that he was making an effort to preserve his habitual look of pride and indifference.

“I am up; what do you wish?”

“The door is open, and the sentinels are away. Go!”

“Then you don’t mean to have me shot in the morning?”

“No; I ought to do it, and you deserve it, but I’ve changed my mind. You can put down that change to what you please; and whatever you please it will probably be wrong. Perhaps I did not intend it in the first place; the old Romans used to put even their own sons to death when they deserved it, but we are not the old Romans; perhaps it was my old liking for you; perhaps my dead cousin, your mother, who was my childhood’s playmate, interfered; perhaps it is because you are not worth the trouble, or perhaps a number of things. As I said, you can put it down to any cause or whim you choose.”

I judged by his face that he had been having some bad hours, but certainly I was not the one to complain on that account. There was, too, a certain expression in his eyes as if he were ashamed of himself for some weakness real or fancied. I caught, purposely or not, a little of his own cynical tone and manner.

“I am obliged to you, Cousin Gilbert, for more than I expected,” I said.

“You had better go before I change my mind and take the obligation off you.”

That in truth would be a calamity, and I started toward the door.

“Shall I have any trouble with the sentinels?” I asked.

“No, they are not there now.”

I stopped once at the door and told him I would not forget it, but he turned away impatiently. Then I stepped outside into darkness and freedom. How glorious the cool night air! What a change from eight or ten hours of life to fifty or sixty years maybe! What a magnificent forest out there! Even the swamp was beautiful. I laughed from the mere delight of living, and then crossed the clearing, which, as my kinsman had said truly, contained no sentinels, and entered the forest.

Though the men composing my little detachment had known the country through which we came, and I had been a stranger, I remembered enough of the general direction to reach New Orleans again after two days of hard travelling, and that Southern city, with its gay population, looked very welcome to me after my encounter with death in a black swamp. Despite the landing of the enemy in Louisiana and the imminence of battle, the city was gay in appearance and manner, for winter is the fine season there, and the presence of soldiers, especially young officers, in a town is not always depressing. As I hastened on I saw the handsome black-eyed women in the balconies with coloured Madras kerchiefs tied over their heads, while in the streets lounged the men, dandies after the Parisian custom, their necks inclosed in high collars with great fluffy cravats rising up and covering their chins, the long sleeves of their coats coming down over their hands and hiding them, the coats fine and brightly coloured, and their legs sunk in great boots with high flaps. Dandies in truth they looked, and dandies they were in some respects, but they were honest and brave men too, and true as steel they were to us in face of all allurements, for the British issued proclamation after proclamation to them—we could pick up their printed circulars anywhere—saying they came not to war against the Louisianians, who would be protected in their homes and property, only against the Americans; but the great promises availed nothing, the Louisianians remained faithful to us, and soon we were to have the final proof.

Dirty and tired as I was, I intended to go to General Jackson’s headquarters on Royal Street before seeking rest, food, or cleanliness, for I remembered that I had seen bargeload after bargeload of British troops passing from their fleet down Lake Borgne, and I believed that some formidable blow was menaced. My men continuing their scout, perhaps had not yet arrived in New Orleans, and I might be the first to bring the news of immediate danger. So I hastened through the streets, crossing the deep and miry gutters on narrow planks and sometimes holding my nose as I passed, until I came in sight of the house in which General Jackson lived. Several aides were at the doors, and it was about half past one o’clock of a cool December afternoon, the city looking luminous in the crisp winter sunshine.

I knew one of the aides, and I increased my pace, but before I had taken many steps I slackened it again, for behind me came the thunder of horses’ hoofs approaching swiftly. There were other people in the street, some sauntering along merely for air and exercise, but all of us alike turned to see who came so fast. There were three men on horseback, Creoles all, and one of them I knew, a young de Villere, a member of an old French family who owned much land about New Orleans. The men were whipping their horses and their faces showed excitement. Villere was as muddy as I with the black mud of the swamps, but they galloped straight towards the general’s headquarters, where Villere sprang at once from his horse. I knew that these men came so fast on no trifling errand, and I ran to the door.

“The general! The general at once!” said Villere.

“He is busy,” said the adjutant.

“Not too busy to hear that the British army is before the city, advancing in full strength,” replied Villere.

The adjutant looked incredulous at first, but Villere’s face was enough to drive away doubts.

“Come!” he said, and he hurried the three men and me into the house. I think he took me for one of their party; my appearance was sufficient. I had no doubt that the men whom I had seen in the boats formed the army of which Villere and his comrades had come to tell.

General Jackson was at a table studying reports. He looked shabbier and older and feebler than ever, and his face spoke plainly of illness.

Villere told the story quickly, and the general listened without any trace of excitement. Villere and his brothers had been sitting on the piazza of their house beside an orange grove, only a few miles from the city, when English soldiers came from among the orange trees and surrounded them. They were sent to their rooms under guard, but Villere suddenly ran past the line of sentinels, jumped through a window, dashed across the yard, leaped the fence at one bound, with the musket balls showering around him, and darted across an open field toward a forest, still under fire. He escaped into a swamp and hid in the thick foliage of a cypress tree while his pursuers lumbered by. Then he descended, found a horse and two comrades, and galloped to New Orleans with the news that the British were only six miles away, when everybody supposed they were a hundred. Who could say now that the Creoles were not faithful to us!

We had been caught napping, but again there was none of that disorder, none of that alarm so manifest at Washington, for we had a different general now. He poured out some wine in decanters and asked each of us to take a glass while he sipped a little himself. Then he said:

“Gentlemen, the British are below; we must fight them to-night.”

There was to be no waiting for the enemy here. We would seek him. I left the building hastily to join my regiment, for I was attached to the Tennesseeans. The streets already were filling with excited people, for the news seemed to spread itself. The great bell of the cathedral began to boom, not a melody, but swift heavy strokes, like the peal of cannon, ringing far over the city, which said plainly: “Arm! the enemy is near!”

The women disappeared from the balconies, the children left the streets, aides with messages and orders galloped away from the general’s headquarters, the drummers were beating the long roll, and the great bell of the cathedral boomed incessantly. The soldiers began to pour into the Place d’Armes, and so good was the discipline, so severe the training of the iron general, that in twenty minutes from the arrival of Villere the regulars were in line, every gun and ammunition pouch in place, and after them came quickly the Creoles, the Tennesseeans, the free negroes, the San Domingan refugees, and a handful of French exiles, some of them old soldiers of Napoleon, a little army of many races and colours, but animated throughout and fused into a solid mass by the fierce will and courage of the man who commanded. I obtained a rifle from somebody and took my place with Mercer and Courtenay. Thirty minutes after the alarm we were on the march, swift but not hurried, in perfect order, yet but two thousand strong. The fourteen-gun schooner Carolina had cut loose from her wharf and was dropping down the river in a course parallel to ours.

We marched steadily, about six miles, I should think, down the river, and then, by an old canal, we halted. My place was at the edge of a cypress swamp, half hidden by tropic vegetation, and I could see nothing to tell me what was going on, for none near me knew; but, however long our waiting might be, I believed that it would end in a battle. I had acquired already Mercer’s and Courtenay’s confidence that Jackson was a general who would always fight.

“What do you see, Felix?” I asked of Courtenay, who stood ten feet from me.

“The cypress swamp, the sky, you, and a few soldiers,” he replied.

The twilight deepened fast and turned to darkness, for it was the shortest day of the year but two. Yet we waited and in the dark, some of us knee deep in the black mire of the swamp. The night was gloomy and chilly, and the clouds of fog rolling up from the river mingled with the air and made it heavy, damp, and raw. The wet cold crept into the marrow and we shivered. The sombre clouds stalked in battalions across the dusky sky. Only a few stars twinkled, and those feebly. A little distance away the figures of my comrades became dim and shadowy, and farther on they were invisible. The heavy breathing of the army rose and fell at regular intervals, and there came at times the swish of impatient feet in the mud.

A wall of blackness rose in front of us. Two or three points of light twinkled in it, disappeared, reappeared here and there, and then were gone again. We could hear nothing but ourselves, the flowing of the river, and the rustling of a fitful wind. The banks of fog continued to roll up from the river, and the night grew colder, damper, and heavier.

It is against the principles of war to fight on a dark night, but it was not Andrew Jackson’s way to pay much heed to the authorities, a fact that we had begun to learn. So we trusted him, and were not concerned about the future. Standing there in the mud, the dark, and the cold, and not knowing what was before us nor what we were to do, we carried fewer troubles than at Bladensburg in the full blaze of noonday. I drew my sword from its scabbard—I was an officer now—and held it ready, for I knew that sooner or later we would have work to do in that wall of blackness in front of us.

The sound of a rifle shot came presently from the left, then another, and then a dozen, but they ceased in a moment, and we heard no more, nothing to tell us who fired and who was hurt. The army breathed a little harder, but the waiting began again, and we could hear the rustle of the wind through the foliage, the soft flowing of the river, and the impatient shuffling of the men’s feet, and nothing else. Courtenay stepped upon a cypress log.

“What do you see, Felix?” I asked again.

“Nothing new, but the increasing darkness,” he replied.

A stern old man passed along our line, and every figure straightened, but there was no other movement. We remained fixed, growing into the earth like saplings, Courtenay said. Twice again we heard distant rifle shots, and knew the skirmishers were doing a little work, but we knew no more. Some of the men had brought food and drink, and they shared it with each other; I took a bite, for at such times one wants all his strength. Lights began to flare in the darkness ahead of us, and the whisper was passed that they were the camp fires of the British.

“We are going to stir ’em up a little, just to show ’em this is not Washington,” said Courtenay, “and when we’ve warned ’em sufficiently we’ll draw off.”

But the “stirring up” did not seem to hurry itself, and in order to keep my mind busy I began to count the hostile watch fires gleaming through the night—one, two, three, four, five, six—but soon they became too numerous, and some of them were blurred together. I gave it up, took out my watch, and, by holding it close to my face, was barely able to see the time—half past seven.

“Boom!”

A cannon shot, so close by that it made me jump, rang and echoed through the night, a broad flash of light shooting out at the same instant and quivering on our faces. It came from my right, and I knew in an instant what it was, that the Carolina was beside us in the river and had opened fire on the enemy’s position, shown by his watch fires.

A cannon flashed again, and the report was doubled by the silence of the night. By the vivid blaze I could see the schooner in the river, the black figures of men on her deck, and the muddy Mississippi gleaming for an instant like gold in the cannon flare. I moved a little nearer that I might see better, and then the whole ship seemed to break into flames as the fire of gun followed gun, while her spare men aided with a steady discharge of rifles. The blaze never ceased now, and the schooner, with the men working at the guns, and the sharpshooters, rifle at shoulder, were always visible to us.

From the British camp came the answering fire, a mingled discharge of cannon, Congreve rockets, and muskets, all aimed at the little ship, and the air was filled with the red and blue fire of the rockets and the whizzing of missiles. We expected then the word to advance, but it did not come. I saw again, by the light of the cannonade, our stern old general walking up and down the line, but he did not say a word. So we looked and listened, and in distant New Orleans a great crowd of old men, women, and children, gathered in the square before the Statehouse, were listening as we listened, though they could not know what we knew, and could only guess in their suspense. They had heard the first shot and seen the far flash of the powder, and there they stood, an ever-increasing crowd, filled with dread.

We shuffled about in our impatience. It was a hard thing to remain motionless and behold that flashing tempest, two streams of fire which met halfway and blended and passed almost in front of our faces, though we were out of its course and were yet in the dark. The shouting of men rose and mingled with the crash and rattle of the cannon and rifles, the rockets whizzed and hissed, and the air was full of flame. The ship in the river was a huge core of light, for her crew loaded and fired her guns so fast that their number seemed to double or triple. The rising fog from the river and the smoke of the cannonade added to the night, and made it pitchy dark.

But through this obscurity the fire of the schooner and the British army cut a road, the rival flames meeting and blending halfway. We shuffled about, impatient at mere looking on, and the army began to talk, but we kept our lines and watched the combat, which was waxing in strength and volume.

I lost my anxiety for a while in the grandeur of the sight. The men on the boat were no longer our friends—human beings—but machines working those other machines, the guns. I could see them by the light of the cannon fire, mere shadows of men, a black tracery, Sometimes a few seconds would come between a volley, and the boat would disappear in the darkness, as if the river had swallowed it up; then the cannon would fire and it came back in the centre of the blaze of light as busy and terrible as ever, a live thing that was stinging the British army. There was a great shouting in the British ranks, but on the boat they fought in silence, save the roar of their guns.

“Forward!”

It was our general’s command, and with a sigh of relief we left the mire and poured into the road which ran along the river bank, right under the fire of our own schooner, which flamed and blazed as it passed over our heads.

On we went, with only the light of the cannonade to guide us. Suddenly, before us, I saw the dim outline of the fence and something dark in front of it which looked like a ditch. We checked ourselves with involuntary motion, and at the same instant a blinding stream of light flamed in our faces, followed by the rattle of muskets. Men fell dead in our ranks and others cried aloud in the sudden pain of a wound. By the flash of the musketry I could see the red coats of the English beyond the ditch and fence. We felt that shiver and tremble which comes of a night surprise, and paused a moment before the shock of the volley. Then one of our men, a colonel, ran forward and shouted to the enemy:

“Come out on the open ground and fight like men!”

Whether any one replied I know not, for we began to fire in our turn, and we poured in a discharge so fast and hot that by its light we saw the English leave their post and run. Then we scrambled over the ditch and fence into their place and found ourselves attacked by a strong force of the enemy, coming to the relief of their beaten comrades. The blackness in front of us seemed to burst into a continuous blaze as hundreds of muskets were fired on us at close range, and the deadly showers of lead beat down our lines. A terrible tumult arose. The death cries, the moans of the wounded, mingled with the commands of our officers and confused us all. The muskets continued to flash in our faces and behind us, before us and over us roared the cannonade of the ship and the British camp. We were enveloped in the smoke of our fire and that of our enemies.

“Confound such night fighting!” shouted Mercer in my ear. “The military treatises ought not to allow it. I may get killed here in the dark and never know it.”

The battle grew hotter and our lines thinner, for our men were falling, but we held our ground. The Tennesseeans are a fighting stock, and personal courage and tenacity, not any ordered plan, kept them there, for the rapid fire of our enemies, the shots which seemed to come from every point of the compass, the incessant crackling of the rifles and muskets, the roar of the cannon battle which was going on between the ship and the British, the blackness of the night broken in irregular streaks by the blaze of the firing, made a mêlée so confused and terrible that one knew nothing but to stand where he was and shoot straight before him at what he saw or did not see.

My nerves began to quiver. I could not help it, with the roaring and crackling all around me, the alternate blaze of light and the returning darkness, the cries and shouts of which I understood nothing, the thick drifting smoke which stung our eyes and nostrils, and the fall of some dead man against me. Above it all thundered the unceasing cannonade, and looking once at the river I saw that the ship was a tower of light as if she were on fire, though I knew that it was not that, but the unbroken flash of her guns.

Some one raised a cry that the cannon were coming; the fence was dashed down and over it the gunners rushed with two little field pieces which they brought up with a jerk and turned on the column before us. Glorious little cannon they were! I don’t know who made them, and I don’t know where they are now, but they were thrice welcome comrades in our little band that night, for when they began to talk with the loud emphatic boom! boom! that a cannon uses when it is angry, the hostile column in front of us began to melt away, their line of fire retreated and sank, and in the alternate light and darkness we told each other how brave we were, and asked who were dead, questions soon interrupted by the tramp of many men and horses and the rolling of cannon. A broad red flare, marking the advance of the red-coated English, appeared through the darkness.

“The whole English army’s on us!” shouted some one, and it looked as if the truth had been spoken, for they opened such a heavy fire that we were thrown into disorder again and our ranks were riddled. The gunners were shot at the guns, and the long British line, spreading around our flanks, beat upon us from three sides. But the men, though confused and unable to hear the orders in the tumult, again showed their courage and constancy and stood firm upon the ground which they had won. The horses attached to our cannon were wounded, and screaming aloud in fright and pain with a scream far wilder and more terrible than that of man, reared and plunged about in the darkness, tearing up the soft earth with their feet. They overturned one of the cannon and it rolled down into the ditch, sinking deep in the mud. The confusion increased, and we knew nothing amid the shouting. A heavy column of the enemy charged down on our flank straight toward the remaining cannon, bent upon capturing it. Men knew not what to do, and each began to ask his neighbour—evidence of a coming panic. Suddenly the general himself dashed among us, his seamed brown face showing in the battle flare, while he shouted in a voice like the roar of a tempest:

“Save the guns! Save the guns, my boys!” The men at the guns were marines, trained to fight, and they did not flinch. They leaped down in the ditch, and with brute strength dragged out the cannon and turned it again on the enemy, its comrade assisting. All of us rallied around the general, while re-enforcements came down the road, rushing to our help; greater re-enforcements arrived for the enemy, though we did not know it then; off from the left came the rolling crash of another battle, as Coffee and his Indian fighters— Dirty Shirts we called them because they tramped so far to New Orleans through the mud—had opened fire there, and the strong British force was replying. On the horizon we could see the flash of their guns, and the tumult swelled and rolled steadily to our ears. Encouraged, we rushed forward upon the enemy, and they came to meet us. Along a long vague line, winding in the darkness through wood and swamp and over canal, the two armies met and mingled in a battle that was without form or order, man against man, weapon against weapon, the British with their bayonets, we with clubbed rifles, and many of the Tennesseeans with their long hunting knives. All the wild beast in a man comes out in such a battle as this in the darkness, in the swamp, showers of the slime kicked up by the trampling feet falling back upon you, no orders but to fight and to strike at the man in front of you. Two blind armies locked and writhed in the mud. Sometimes I could see the hot eyes of an enemy gleaming in front of me, but when I struck, the man was gone; again the edge of my sword would meet something, but if I had slain I did not know, and was glad of it. I heard death cries around me, but whether those of friend or enemy no one knew. Bayonet and knife edge flashed in the light of the firing, and steel rang against steel.

Our stubborn line had met another stubborn line; we refused to give backward, so did they, and through all the tumult we could hear our own officers shouting at us, and theirs to them, to destroy the enemy.

Thus in the blur of the night and darkness the battle raged back and forth on the moist plain of the delta. I began to laugh, why I knew not, but I felt a wild exultation; the British boast might be true that theirs were the best troops in Europe, but we would show them, untrained and half-armed backwoodsmen though we were, that they were not the best troops out of Europe, and maybe not so good.

I stumbled into the edge of a cypress swamp and fell my full length. I rose covered with the black slime, and as I dabbed at my eyes to clear them some one shouted in my ear:

“Give it to the Yankee dogs, comrade!”

A half dozen British soldiers were around me, and I blessed the black mud which had disfigured me and made them think me one of them. So I, too, shouted with loudness and vigour to give it to the Yankee dogs, and in my zeal to obey my own command I rushed away from them and in a moment was with my rightful comrades again.

Along our own part of the line the firing had sunk to an intermittent crackle, for it was hand to hand now, and we had no time to reload our pieces. I could hear the dull crash of rifle stock upon human skull and flesh; once something warm and moist flew in my face, and with a shudder of repulsion I wiped it off. The soft mud squirted up under the trampling of heavy feet, the wounded groaned or cried out, and the men who fought swore and yelled, but above all their voices roared the steady thunder of the cannon.

There was a sweep in the wild night battle, something that set the blood tingling, though it made one shudder at the same time, that carried me on with it. But that great crowd back yonder in New Orleans, in the square before the Statehouse—old men, women, and children—could feel none of the feeling that swayed us. Theirs was the painful task of waiting, to stand there through the hours and listen to the thunder of the distant battle and watch its blaze, and not know whether friends were losing or winning.

The battle deepened, and with it the confusion. We made prisoners of our own men, and the British did the like with theirs; in the darkness friend and enemy fought side by side against they knew not whom. The cannoneers, theirs and ours alike, fired in whatever direction the mouths of the guns had been turned when the battle began.

All this time the fog from the river had been rolling up in dense heavy columns, and now it was banked so thickly over the plain on which we fought that the flash of the guns could scarcely clear a way through it. The ship suddenly ceased her fire, and the great core of light that she had made on the river went out. The smoke and fog hung heavier and heavier, and the cry ran along our line to cease firing. It seemed to come from British and American officers both, and like two well-proved antagonists we fell apart, each seeking his own ground again. It was time to stop, since in the darkness and the mingling of our lines friend was as likely to fight friend as foe, and for that reason the ship had ceased firing, not knowing now whether she was throwing her balls into their army or ours.

We fell back to our lines, ignorant how many among us had fallen, but elated and full of zeal for the future, for in the wild battle of the night we had fought three times our number of the English and had held them fast; they had not been able to gain an inch; the triumphant parade into New Orleans, of which they had spoken so sanguinely in London, was stopped, and the ready-made and ticketed new government aboard their ships would have to wait a while for something to govern. And the results were even greater than we supposed, for the British, sanguine at first, victories won before the battle, warned by such a reception, rushed now to the other extreme, grew cautious, even timid, magnified our forces tenfold, saw armies that did not exist, earthworks that had not been built, and ditches that had not been dug, all of which gave precious time to us, as the Kentuckians long hoped for, almost despaired of, would soon be at hand to swell our numbers.

I found Mercer and Courtenay, unwounded both, and we threw ourselves upon the muddy ground and sought sleep. The night was cold and a sharp frost formed, but hot with excited blood we did not feel it and slept heavily until awakened to take our turn at the watch. The fires had been lighted and they flared over the plain, across which the fog-banks still rolled. Beside one of the largest, with its smoke enveloping them at times, sat Jackson, Carroll, Coffee, and other high officers planning for the morrow. By some lay the wounded, over whom surgeons were working, and by others lay the dead, for whom the grave was waiting. Afar the enemy’s camp fires too twinkled through the darkness, but no sounds were heard on the plain save the flowing of the river and the occasional cry of a wounded man. Later on shots were fired and alarms were sounded, but it was only those restless fellows, the skirmishers, and the armies settled back and lay still.

Day came at last, with a sharp white frost covering the ground, and then it was wheelbarrows and shovels; we would intrench where we stood, with the shallow old canal, dug long ago by one Rodriguez, across the plain as our front line, and the enemy should not come a foot nearer the city. Then we went to work digging as we had fought the night before, while another schooner that we had, the Louisiana, came down the river to help her sister, the Carolina, which had done such splendid work already.

The fog lifted slowly from the plain and revealed the British camp in our front, and with the light, too, came the people from New Orleans, exulting over the stopping of the enemy, and toiling in the mud with us, even the women handling the shovel and the spade.

“If they only knew how small our army is they could sweep us out of their way with a well-sustained charge,” said Courtenay to me.

But they did not know, and General Keane, their commander, was afraid to attack; he was waiting for Pakenham and re-enforcements who were due now, and we looked hourly for the Kentuckians, who were due too, but did not come.

Shovels and wheelbarrows, wheelbarrows and shovels it was throughout the day, and then some one proposed cotton bales, and these, too, were soon brought and placed in line. Across the plain our intrenchments ran for a mile, and before us the British also were intrenching, placing hogsheads of sugar against our bales of cotton. They were receiving re-enforcements, too, from their ships and were dragging heavy cannon across the delta to reach the Carolina and the Louisiana in the river, which hung on their flank and scorched them with an incessant fire. Not a column could be formed upon the plain in the face of the fire of these terrible schooners, and not a man who worked on their intrenchments was safe for a moment from their balls. An entire army of many thousands was besieged by two little schooners carrying scarcely two hundred men. Behind the protecting veil of their fire we worked at our defences and prayed for time, that the Kentuckians might come to our help.

Those were days of danger, excitement, and, for me, a certain exhilaration too. I had witnessed the great disgrace of Washington, and the spirit here was so different that I thrilled with enthusiasm. I toiled at ditch and breastwork with the rest, and ate with sharp appetite the food which the people of New Orleans brought to us. God bless their Creole souls! We must never forget that in all this time they were among the bravest and most faithful.

In the British camp they toiled too, tried to devise some shelter from the scorching fire of the schooners, and hastened forward the heavy cannon with which they intended to destroy them. Christmas morning came, clear, bright, frosty, but not like our snowy holidays of the North, where, even in Kentucky, zero often comes knocking at your door, and you can draw close to the glowing coals as you drink your eggnog. On that morning some of us scouting and skirmishing heard a great shouting in the British camp, and we thought they must be taking their Christmas very well indeed, but they were rejoicing over the arrival of their commander in chief, General Sir Edward Pakenham, son of the Earl of Longford, hero of Salamanca, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, and his favourite officer. With him came more re-enforcements and the man who was to be his second in command. Their camp was now full of generals and baronets and their troops outnumbered ours three to one. We looked longingly for our Kentuckians, but the muddy Mississippi did not bring them.

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