44 The Field of the Slain

Gettysburg was ended. The little town, before unknown, and yet scarcely realizing it, took her famous place in history. The fire of the cannon and the rifles died, and one of those strange silences that marked at times the changes of this battle came over the field.

The two armies, North and South, stood upon their opposing hills looking at each other, the South a hedge of arms, fierce, challenging, sure that she could repel any attack, and inviting it.

The attack did not come. The silence lasted. The sun was yet high in the skies, and its dazzling light drove the smoke away. The valley, now truly a valley of the dead, stained, torn by cannon shot, filled with bodies, rose up from the vapours and confronted both North and South.

A deep sense of awe crept over us all. The collapse came from the passions, the tumults, the carnage, all the terrible struggles of so many days and nights; we saw between us what we had done: fifty thousand men killed or wounded, a wreck unparalleled, countrymen all, the grandsons of men who had fought beside each other to establish the same country. We were appalled, because the picture of Gettysburg, after the fiercest passion was over and while the field was yet fresh, made upon every brain the impression that the triumph was to none of us. We were destroyers, and we beheld our work!

The singular pause endured; the clouds and shreds of smoke floated far away over the ridges; the sky became again a sheet of burning blue; the heat of the sun grew more intense; its rays, brilliant and searching, were poured upon the hills, and the valley and every rock stood out like carving; there frowned the Round Tops; yonder, in the Devil’s Den, where the sharpshooters lay dead, the shadows still hovered. Upon the slope of Cemetery Hill, Lee could see the clump of trees, the dwarfed oaks, beneath which Armistead and Cushing had fallen side by side, the extreme point to which the fire and pride of the Virginians had carried them.

The silence was succeeded by that murmur and rumble so familiar to the ears of the troops; we began to recover from our stupefaction, the deep sense of oppression that overwhelmed us, and we moved about and began to talk again, glad that the battle was over, glad that we were alive, and seeking to discover what comrades also lived.

“Will they come again?” I asked of Shaftoe.

“I think not,” replied the veteran, willing for once to be a tentative prophet. “All of us have had enough. When I think of the last three days I wonder how you, or I, or anybody else come to be alive.”

I did not answer. I was enjoying the luxury of rest, lying upon the ground with every limb relaxed, feeling now the long strain of the three days, and thinking of Elinor.

The afternoon began to wane. The fire of the sun abated, the dense, tremulous heat yielded to the shadows of the twilight. The wounded turned their faces to the skies and thanked God that the night was coming. The west glowed redly, but the east was gray. The two armies, watching each other, saw figures become dim and blend into the group. Then night, lighted by the clear and full moon, sank down for the third time over this field of the slain.

Gettysburg was ended, but the country yet knew it not. The wires that had clicked so volubly for many days were still clicking, asking their unanswered questions; the rumours and reports that came to the great cities were swelling in volume, and sometimes spoke with a certain note, but men knew nothing to believe, much to disbelieve. Gettysburg was yet without its sombre fame, save to itself.

That night those of either army who had not work to do slept the deep sleep, or rather lay in the torpor of utter collapse, resting from three days of supreme effort and emotion—three such days as America had never known before. Some of the wounded were gathered up, but others who could not move lay where they had fallen, and they were many; far up the thousands went the tragic roll. But the noise was slight for that narrow area upon which so many men were gathered; the wounded, as usual, were uncomplaining, awaiting in silence the help that would or would not come.

It was about the twilight hour when I found Elinor again. She was sitting by the side of Pembroke, who was lying on a blanket, and the wounded man’s eyes followed her in a manner that stirred my sympathy. Elinor’s own face was pale—paler than I had ever seen it before, and I understood what it was to a woman to witness such a battle as Gettysburg.

“Is it all over, Henry?” she asked.

“I think so,” I replied.

“I shall hear all those guns again—many times,” she said.

Pembroke raised himself on his arm and looked at me.

“Henry,” he said, “I know that we were driven back. Major Tyler has been here, and he told me, but he says that we made a great fight.”

“There was never a better,” I replied. “The charge of the Virginians has no equal.”

A trim figure stepped into the light. It was Major Titus Tyler, a prisoner—my prisoner even, but restored to his own cheerful bearing.

“You have not conquered us, Henry,” he said. “We have simply worn ourselves out beating you, and shall have to give up. The odds against us are too great. I knew that we must fail when, looking across at this hill, I saw a general ride out on a white horse, and heard him shout to his men the command: ‘By nations right wheel; forward march the world!’”

Then he proceeded to prove to us his proposition.

The night passed on, and the darkest hours came, without a shot. Even the skirmishers were quiet; every unsatisfied ambition cherished by them had been gratified in those three days so full of opportunities; there was no need for industry, and they rested. The lights of torches and camp fires glowed again on the opposing hills and slopes, but, to those who watched, these beacons seemed more friendly to-night, as if an end had come for a time to passion, and men might sleep in peace, even under the guns of the enemy.

The day came, the morning of July 4, 1863, the national anniversary, flooding the world with light, and showing to the Army of the Potomac its enemy fortified on Seminary Ridge and defying attack, even inviting it. Its front was a hedge of cannon mouths, and behind these the riflemen stood in deep rows; it was impervious to assault, and Meade again waited, content now to watch his formidable antagonist.

The sun, so bright at daylight, was soon dimmed by gray vapours rising on the far horizon; the close, tremulous heat was again in the air, the earth perspired; the morning was growing hotter, closer, and darker.

The day, the national anniversary, spent in so strange a manner, was verging on toward noon, and the heat was increasing in density; the vapours rising on the horizon grew to clouds of steely blue, darkening to gray, and then to black, rolling in sombre waves before the sun and hiding its light; the faint breeze died; the trampled grass ceased to quiver, the red stains upon it turned to brown; imprisoned in this damp, close air, which lay so heavily upon the lungs, the men lost their energy and the horses drooped.

“A storm is about to break,” said a young soldier beside me.

“It’s time,” said another.

The earth was in complete stillness, save for the murmur and movement of soldiers. The day darkened to the verge of twilight, the clouds in formless legions rolled ‘across the sky, the deep hush of Nature seemed full of expectancy. Like the army, it was waiting, but the stillness was broken in a few moments by the mutter of thunder from the west; the mutter grew to a rumble, and the rumble to a crash and a peal; strokes of lightning burned across the sky and blazed in the eyes of the soldiers, a rushing noise mingled with the peal of the thunder, and afar we saw the sweep of the rain and the wind; the big drops began to fall, and the dry earth steamed at their touch; the wounded felt the cool water on their faces, and were grateful.

“The tear-drops of God!” said a young soldier with florid imagery as he looked over the bloody field.

The rush of the rain deepened to a roar, and then it burst in torrents upon the camps, flooding the armies, soaking the dry earth, which thankfully drank it up, giving back the deep green to the foliage, rushing in streams down the slopes on which the brigades lately had been fighting with such fire, and washing from the grass the plentiful red that war had put there.

All Nature responded, indifferent to the battle that had raged so long, or forgetful that it had been. The trampled grass, free from its red stains, straightened up and glowed in green again, the wheat shone in pure gold, on the far hills the forests were masses of fresh foliage, and the earth, so lately burned and dead, leaped to life, luxuriating in new sap and growth.

“This makes marching difficult,” said Shaftoe. “The artillery will plough to the hubs in the mud.”

“But nobody is marching,” I said.

Shaftoe did not reply, nor did he take his attentive, inquiring eyes from the army on the opposite ridge.

The rain ceased by and by, and when the sunlight broke through the thinning clouds, the Army of Northern Virginia turned its head toward the south and began to march away, leaving behind it the fatal field of Gettysburg, but as defiant as ever, its rear and flanks lined with batteries, the cavalry covering the wagons containing its supplies and wounded, these wagons forming a chain so long that, when the first at midnight were beyond Cashtown, sixteen miles away, the last were still at Gettysburg—an army conscious that it had failed in a great attempt, yet had made a new record for courage and endurance, and was still saying to its enemy, “Touch me if you dare!” There was no sign of fear or even panic in the ranks of its men; their faith in their commander was still complete. No complaints arose from the sixteen miles of wounded who stretched in a long, black line over the muddy roads and fields and through the darkness; men with the white faces of pain who lay in rough carts and had nothing to cheer them but their own courage and the sympathetic gaze of the watchful horsemen riding beside them and bending down now and then to ask what they wished.

There have been few processions more solemn than the one that took its way toward the south that night with its fifteen thousand or more of wounded, marching in the rain and the darkness, but without lament. Many began to believe now that the Southern invasion had rolled back forever; that the little clump of trees on Cemetery Hill was the Southern high-water mark, and would remain so; that the brilliant period of the war had passed for the South, and henceforth she was to fight without hope, and many more were to know these facts soon. Yet none thought of yielding. The only way to conquer the Southern army was to destroy it. The North was to find the road to Richmond still long and weary.

* * * *

When the Southern army began to retreat, our generals held a council. Should they or should they not attack? They looked around at their broken brigades, estimated their vast losses, and with the one voice said “No.” The Army of the Potomac had done enough for the present.

The same day the voluble wires ceased to click and ask their unanswered questions. The proclamation of the President announced to the nation that the Army of Northern Virginia had been defeated. Throughout the North swelled the mighty wave of rejoicing.

The next morning the last Southern soldier was gone from Seminary Ridge.

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