Hooker threw the flower of his army across the river seven miles above Fredericksburg to flank Lee and strike him from the rear while the remainder of his army crossed in front and between the two he would crush the Confederate army as an eggshell.

But the unexpected happened. Lee was not only a stark fighter. He was a supreme master of the art of war. He understood Hooker's move from the moment it began. His gray army had already slipped out of his trenches and were feeling their way through the tangled vines and underbrush with sure, ominous tread. In this wilderness Hooker's four hundred guns would be as useless as his own hundred and seventy. It would be a hand-to-hand fight in the tangled brush. The gray veteran was a dead shot and he was creeping through his own native woods. On this beautiful May morning, Lee, Jackson, and Stuart met in conference before the battle opened. The plan was chosen. Lee would open the battle and hold Hooker at close range. Jackson would "retreat." Out of sight, he would turn, march swiftly ten miles around their right wing and smash it before sundown.

At five o'clock in the afternoon while Lee held Hooker's front, Jackson's corps crept into position in Hooker's rear. The shrill note of a bugle rang from the woods and the yelling gray lines of death swept down on their unsuspecting foe. Without support the shattered right wing was crushed, crumpled and rolled back in confusion.

At eight o'clock Jackson, pressing forward in the twilight, was mortally wounded by his own men and Stuart took his command. The gay, young cavalier placed himself at the head of Jackson's corps and charged Hooker's disorganized army. Waving his black plumed hat above his handsome, bearded face, he chanted with boyish gaiety an improvised battle song:

"Old Joe Hooker, Won't you come out o' the Wilderness?"

His men swept the field and as Hooker's army retreated Lee rode to the front to congratulate Stuart. At sight of his magnificent figure wreathed in smoke his soldiers went wild. Above the roar of battle rang their cheers:

"Lee! Lee! Lee!"

From line to line, division to division, the word leaped until the wounded and the dying joined its chorus.

The picket lines were so close that night in the woods they could talk to one another. The Southerners were chaffing the Yanks over their many defeats, when a Yankee voice called through the night his defense of the war to date:

"Ah, Johnnie, shut up—you make me tired. You're not such fighters as ye think ye are. Swap generals with us and we'll come over and lick hell out of you!"

There was silence for a while and then a Confederate chuckled to his mate:

"I'm damned if they mightn't, too!"

The morning dawned at last after the battle and they began to bury the dead and care for the wounded. Their agonies had been horrible. Some had fallen on Friday, thousands on Saturday. It was now Monday. Through miles of dark, tangled woods in the pouring rain they still lay groaning and dying.

And over all the wings of buzzards hovered.

The keen eyes of the vultures had watched them fall, poised high as the battle raged. The woods had been swept again and again by fire. Many of the bodies were black and charred. Some of the wounded had been burned to death. Their twisted bodies and distorted features told the story. The sickening odor of roasted human flesh yet filled the air.

It was late at night on the day after, before the wounded had all been moved. The surgeons with sleeves rolled high, their arms red, their shirts soaked, bent over their task through every hour of the black night until legs and arms were piled in heaps ten feet high beside each operating table.

Thirty thousand magnificent men had been killed and mangled.

The report from Chancellorsville drifted slowly and ominously northward. The White House was still. The dead were walking beside the lonely, tall figure who paced the floor in dumb anguish, pausing now and then at the window to look toward the hills of Virginia.

Lee's fame now filled the world and the North shivered at the sound of it.

Volunteering had ceased. But the cannon were still calling for fodder. The draft was applied. And when it was resisted in fierce riots, the soldiers trained their guns on their own people. The draft wheel was turned by bayonets and the ranks of the army filled with fresh young bodies to be mangled.

Hooker fell before Lee's genius and Meade took his place.

The Confederate Government, flushed with its costly victories, once more sought a political sensation by the invasion of the North. Lee marched his army of veterans into Pennsylvania.

At Gettysburg he met Meade.

The first day the Confederates won. They drove the blue army back through the streets of the village and their gallant General, John F. Reynolds, was killed.

The second day was one of frightful slaughter. The Union army at its close had lost twenty thousand men, the Confederate fifteen thousand.

The moon rose and flooded the rocky field of blood and death with silent glory. From every shadow and from every open space through the hot breath of the night came the moans of thousands and high above their chorus rang the cries for water.

No succor could be given. The Confederates were massing their artillery on Seminary Ridge. The Union legions were burrowing and planting new batteries.

Fifteen thousand helpless, wounded men lay on the field through the long hours of the night.

At ten o'clock a wounded man began to sing one of the old hymns of Zion whose words had come down the ages wet with tears and winged with human hopes. In five minutes ten thousand voices, from blue and gray, had joined. Some of them quivered with agony. Some of them trembled with a dying breath. For two hours the hills echoed with the unearthly music.

At a council of war Longstreet begged Lee to withdraw from Gettysburg and pick more favorable ground. Reinforced by the arrival of Pickett's division of fifteen thousand fresh men and Stuart's Cavalry, he decided to renew the battle at dawn.

The guns opened at the crack of day. For seven hours the waves of blood ebbed and flowed.

At noon there was a lull.

At one o'clock a puff of white smoke flashed from Seminary Ridge. The signal of the men in gray had pealed its death call. Along two miles on this crest they had planted a hundred and fifty guns. Suddenly two miles of flame burst from the hills in a single fiery wreath. The Federal guns answered until the heavens were a hell of bursting, screaming, roaring shells.

At three o'clock the storm died away and the smoke lifted.

Pickett's men were deploying in the plain to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand heroic men were forming their line to rush a hill on whose crest lay seventy-five thousand entrenched soldiers backed by four hundred guns.

Pickett's bands played as on parade. The gray ranks dressed on their colors. And then across the plain, with banners flying, they swept and climbed the hill. The ranks closed as men fell in wide gaps. Not a man faltered. They fell and lay when they fell. Those who stood moved on and on. A handful reached the Union lines on the heights. Armistead with a hundred men broke through, lifted his red battle flag and fell mortally wounded. The gray wave in sprays of blood ebbed down the hill, and the battle ended. Meade had lost twenty-three thousand men and seventeen generals. Lee had lost twenty thousand men and fourteen generals.

The swollen Potomac was behind Lee and his defeated army. So sure was Stanton of the end that he declared to the President:

"If a single regiment of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia in an organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to be Secretary of War."

The impossible happened.

Lee got back into Virginia with every regiment marching to quick step and undaunted spirit. He crossed the swollen Potomac, his army in fighting trim, every gun intact, carrying thousands of fat Pennsylvania cattle and four thousand prisoners of war taken on the bloody hills of Gettysburg.

The rejoicing in Washington was brief. Meade fell before the genius of Lee, and Grant, the stark fighter of the West, took his place.

The new Commander was granted full authority over all the armies of the Union. He placed Sherman at Chattanooga in command of a hundred thousand men and ordered him to invade Georgia. He sent Butler with an army of fifty thousand up the Peninsula against Richmond on the line of McClellan's old march. He raised the army of the Potomac to a hundred and forty thousand effective fighting soldiers, placed Phil Sheridan in command of his cavalry, put himself at the head of this magnificent army and faced Lee on the banks of the Rapidan. He was but a few miles from Chancellorsville where Hooker's men had baptized the earth in blood the year before.

A new draft of five hundred thousand had given Grant unlimited men for the coming whirlwind. His army was the flower of Northern manhood. He commanded the best-equipped body of soldiers ever assembled under the flag of the Union. His baggage train was sixty miles long and would have stretched the entire distance from his crossing at the Rapidan to Richmond.

Lee's army had been recruited to its normal strength of sixty-two thousand. Again the wily Southerner anticipated the march of his foe and crept into the tangled wilderness to meet him where his superiority would be of no avail.

Confident of his resistless power Grant threw his army across the Rapidan and plunged into the wilderness. From the dawn of the first day until far into the night the conflict raged. As darkness fell Lee had pushed the blue lines back a hundred yards, captured four guns and a number of prisoners. At daylight they were at it again. As the Confederate right wing crumpled and rolled back, Long-street arrived on the scene and threw his corps into the breach.

Lee himself rode forward to lead the charge and restore his line. At sight of him, from thousands of parched throats rose the cries:

"Lee to the rear!"

"Go back, General Lee!"

"We'll settle this!"

They refused to move until their leader had withdrawn. And then with a savage yell they charged and took the field.

Lee sent Longstreet to turn Grant's left as Jackson had done at Chancellorsville. The movement was executed with brilliant success. Hancock's line was smashed and driven back on his second defenses. Wardsworth at the head of his division was mortally wounded and fell into Longstreet's hands. At the height of his triumph in a movement that must crumple Grant's army back on the banks of the river, Longstreet fell, shot by his own men. In the change of commanders the stratagem failed in its big purpose.

In two days Grant lost sixteen thousand six hundred men, a greater toll than Hooker paid when he retreated in despair.

Grant merely chewed the end of his big cigar, turned to his lieutenant and said:

"It's all right, Wilson. We'll fight again."

The two armies lay in their trenches watching each other in grim silence.



CHAPTER XLII

In Lee's simple tent on the battlefield amid the ghostly trees of the wilderness his Adjutant-General, Walter Taylor, sat writing rapidly.

Sam, his ebony face shining, stood behind trying to look over his shoulder. He couldn't make it out and his curiosity got the better of him.

"What dat yer writin' so hard, Gin'l Taylor?"

Without lifting his head the Adjutant continued to write.

"Orders of promotion for gallantry in battle, Sam."

"Is yer gwine ter write one fer my young Marse Robbie?"

Taylor paused and looked up. The light of admiration overspread his face.

"General Lee never promotes his sons or allows them on his staff, Sam. General Custis Lee, General Rooney Lee, and Captain Robbie won their spurs without a word from him. They won by fighting."

"Yassah! Dey sho's been some fightin' in dis here wilderness. Hopes ter God we git outen here pretty quick. Gitten too close tergedder ter suit me."

The clatter of a horse's hoofs rang out in the little clearing in front of the tent.

Taylor looked up again.

"See if that's Stuart. General Lee's expecting him."

Sam peered out the door of the tent.

"Dey ain't no plume in his hat an' dey ain't no banjo man wid him. Nasah. Tain't Gin'l Stuart."

"All right. Pull up a stool."

"Yassah!"

Sam unfolded a camp stool and placed it at the table. A sentinel approached and called:

"Senator William C. Rives of the Confederate Congress to see General Lee."

Taylor rose.

"Show him in."

The Senator entered with a quick, nervous excitement he could not conceal.

"Colonel Taylor—"

"Senator."

The men clasped hands and Taylor continued to watch the nervous manner of his caller.

"My coming from Richmond is no doubt a surprise?"

"Naturally. We're in pretty close quarters with Grant here to-night—"

Rives raised his hand in a gesture of despair.

"No closer than our Government in Richmond is with the end at this moment, in my judgment. I couldn't wait. I had to come to-night. You have called an informal council as I requested?"

"The moment I got your message an hour ago."

Taylor caught his excitement and bent close.

"What is it, Senator?"

Rives hesitated, glanced at the doors of the tent and answered rapidly.

"The Confederate Congress has just held a secret session without the knowledge of President Davis—"

He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it to the Adjutant.

"You will see from this letter of the presiding officer my credentials. They have sent me as their agent on an important mission to General Lee."

He paused as Taylor carefully read the letter.

"How soon can I see him?"

"I'm expecting him in a few minutes," Taylor answered. "He's riding on the front lines trying to feel out Grant's next move. He is very anxious over it."

"This battle was desperate?" Rives asked nervously.

"Terrific."

"Our losses in the two days?"

"More than ten thousand."

"Merciful God—"

"Grant's losses were far greater," Taylor added briskly.

"No matter, Taylor, no matter!" he cried in anguish, springing to his feet. He fought for control of his emotions and hurried on.

"The maws of those cannon now are insatiate! We can't afford to lose ten thousand men from our thin ranks in two days. If your army suspected for one moment the real situation in Richmond, they'd quit and we'd be lost."

"They only ask for General Lee's orders, Senator. Their faith in our leader is sublime."

"And that's our only hope," Rives hastened to add. "General Lee may save us. And he is the only man who can do it."

He stopped and studied Taylor closely. He spoke with some diffidence.

"The faith of his officers in him remains absolutely unshaken?"

"They worship him."

"My appeal will be solely to him. But I may need help."

"I've asked Alexander and Gordon to come. General Gordon did great work to-day. It was his command that broke Hancock's lines and took prisoners. I've just slated him for further promotion. Stuart is already on the way here to report the situation on the right where his cavalry is operating."

The ring of two horses' hoofs echoed.

"If Stuart will only back me!" Rives breathed.

Outside the Cavalry Commander was having trouble with Sweeney, his minstrel follower, an expert banjo player.

Stuart laughed heartily at his fears.

"Come on, Sweeney. Don't be a fool."

The minstrel man still held back and Stuart continued to urge.

"Come on in, Sweeney. Don't be bashful. I promised you shall see General Lee and you shall. Come on!"

Taylor and Rives stood in the door of the tent watching the conflict.

"Never be afraid of a great man, Sweeney!" Stuart went on. "The greater the man the easier it is to get along with him. General Lee wears no scarlet in his coat, no plume in his hat, no gold braid on his uniform. He's as plain as a gray mouse—"

Stuart laughed and whispered:

"He's too great to need anything to mark his rank. But he never frowns on my gay colors."

"He knows," Taylor rejoined, "that it's your way of telling the glory of the cause."

"Sure! He just laughs at my foolishness and gives me an order to lick a crowd that outnumbers me, three to one."

He took hold of Sweeney's arm.

"Don't be afraid, old boy. Marse Robert won't frown on your banjo. He'll just smile as he recalls what the cavalry did in our last battle. Minstrel man, make yourself at home."

Sweeney timidly touched the strings, and Stuart wheeled toward Rives.

"Well, Senator, how goes it in Richmond?"

Rives answered with eager anxiety. His words were not spoken in despair but with an undertone of desperate appeal.

"Dark days have come, General Stuart. And great events are pending. Events of the utmost importance to the army, to the country, to General Lee."

"Just say General Lee and let it go at that," Stuart laughed. "He is the army and the country."

He turned to Taylor.

"Where's Marse Robert?"

"Inspecting the lines. He fears a movement to turn our flank at Spottsylvania Court House."

"My men are right there, watching like owls. They'll catch the first rustle of a leaf by Sheridan's cavalry."

"I hope so."

"Never fear. Well, Sweeney, while we wait for General Lee, Senator Rives needs a little cheer. We've medicine in that box for every ill that man is heir to. Things look black in Richmond, he tells us. All right. Give us the old familiar tune—Hard Times and Wuss Er Comin'!—Go it!"

Sweeney touched his strings sharply.

"You don't mind, sir?" he asked Taylor.

"Certainly not. I like it."

Sentinels, orderlies, aides and scouts gathered around the door as Sweeney played and sang with Stuart. The Cavalryman's spirit was contagious. Before the song had died away, they were all singing the chorus in subdued tones. Sweeney ended with Stuart's favorite—Rock of Ages.

General John B. Gordon joined the group, followed by General E.P. Alexander.

Taylor called the generals together.

"Senator Rives, gentlemen, is the bearer of an important message from the Confederate Congress to General Lee. I have asked you informally to join him in this meeting."

Rives entered his appeal.

"I am going to ask you to help me to-night in paying the highest tribute to General Lee in our power."

Gordon responded promptly.

"We shall honor ourselves in honoring him, sir."

"Always," Alexander agreed.

Rives plunged into the heart of his mission.

"Gentlemen, so desperate is the situation of the South that our only hope lies in our great Commander. The Confederate Congress has sent me to offer him the Dictatorship—"

"You don't mean it?" Stuart exploded.

"Will you back me?"

The Cavalry leader grasped his hand.

"Yours to count on, sir!"

"Yes," Gordon joined.

"We'll back you!" Alexander cried.

Rives' face brightened.

"If he will only accept. The question is how to approach him?"

"It must be done with the utmost care," Alexander warned.

"Exactly." Rives nodded. "Shall I announce to him it once the vote of Congress conferring on him the supreme power?"

"Not if you can approach him more carefully," Alexander cautioned.

"I can first propose that as Commanding General he might accept the peace proposals which Francis Preston Blair has brought from Washington—"

"What kind of peace proposals?" Gorden asked sharply.

"He proposes to end the war immediately by an armistice, and arrange for the joint invasion of Mexico by the combined armies of the North and South under the command of General Lee."

Alexander snapped at the suggestion.

"By all means suggest the armistice first. General Lee won his spurs in Mexico. The plan might fire his imagination—as it would have fired the soul of Caesar or Napoleon. If he refuses to go over the head of Davis, you can then announce the vote of Congress giving him supreme power."

The general suddenly paused at the familiar sound of Traveler's hoofbeat.

The officers stood and saluted as Lee entered. He was dressed in his full field gray uniform of immaculate cut and without spot. He wore his sword, high boots and spurs and his field glasses were thrown across his broad shoulders.

He glanced at the group in slight surprise and drew Stuart aside.

"I sent for you, General Stuart, to say that I am expecting a courier at any moment who may report that General Grant will move on Spottsylvania Court House."

He paused in deep thought.

"If so, Sheridan will throw the full force of his cavalry on your lines, to turn our right and circle Richmond."

Stuart's body stiffened.

"I'm ready, sir. He may reach Yellow Tavern. He'll never go past it."

In low, tense words Lee said:

"I'm depending on you, sir."

Stuart saluted in silence.

Lee turned back into the group and Taylor explained:

"I have called an informal meeting at the request of Senator Rives."

Lee smiled.

"Oh, I see. A council of both War and State."

Rives came forward and the Commander grasped his hand.

"Always glad to see you, Senator. What can we do for you?"

"Everything, sir. Can we enter at once into our conference?"

"The quicker the better. General Grant may drop in on us at any moment without an invitation."

Rives smiled wanly.

"General Lee, we face the gravest crisis of the war."

"No argument is needed to convince me of that, sir. Grant's men have gripped us with a ferocity never known before."

"And our boys," Alexander added, "in all the struggle have never been such stark fighters as to-day."

"I agree with you," Lee nodded. "But Grant is getting ready to fight again to-morrow morning—not next month. His policy is new, and it's clear. He plans to pound us to death in a series of quick, successive blows. His man power is exhaustless. We can't afford to lose many men. He can. An endless blue line is streaming to the front."

"And that's why I'm here to-night, General," Rives said gravely.

"Grant is now in supreme command of all the Armies of the Union. While he moves on Richmond, Butler is sweeping up the James and Sherman is pressing on Atlanta. We have lost ten thousand men in two-days' battle. In the next we'll lose ten thousand more. In the next ten thousand more—"

"We must fight, sir. I have invaded the North twice. But I stand on the defense now. I have no choice."

"That remains to be seen, General Lee," Rives said with a piercing look.

"What do you mean?"

"A few days ago, your old friend, Francis Preston Blair, entered our lines and came to Richmond on a mission of peace. He has now before Mr. Davis and his Cabinet a plan to end the war. He proposes that we stop fighting, unite and invade Mexico to defend the Monroe Doctrine. Maximilian of Austria has just been proclaimed Emperor in a conspiracy backed by Napoleon. The suggestion is that we join armies under your command, dethrone Maximilian, push the soldiers of Napoleon into the sea, and restore the rule of the people on the American Continent."

Lee looked at him steadily.

"Mr. Davis refuses to listen to this proposal?"

"Only on the basis of the continued division of our country. Lincoln naturally demands that we come back into the Union first, and march on Mexico afterwards. Mr. Davis refuses to come back into the Union first. And so we end where we began—unless we can get help from you, General Lee—"

"Well?"

"The Confederate Congress has sent me as their spokesman to make a proposition to you."

He handed Lee the letter from the Congress.

"Will you issue as Commanding General an order for an armistice to arrange the joint invasion of Mexico?"

"You mean take it on myself to go over the head of Mr. Davis, and issue this order without his knowledge?"

"Exactly. We could not take him into our confidence."

"But Mr. Davis is my superior officer and he is faithfully executing the laws."

"You will not proclaim an armistice, then?"

Lee spoke with irritation.

"How can you ask me to go over the head of my Chief with such an order?"

Alexander pressed forward.

"But you might consider a proclamation looking to peace under this plan—if you were in a position of supreme power?"

"I have no such power. I advised our people to make peace before I invaded Pennsylvania. I have urged it more than once, but they cannot see it. And I must do the work given me from day to day."

"We now propose to give to you the sole decision as to what that work shall be."

"How, sir?"

"I am here to-night, General, as the agent of our Government, to confer on you this power. The Congress has unanimously chosen you as Dictator of the Confederacy with supreme power over both the civil and military branches of the Government."

"And well done!" cried Gordon.

"We back them!" echoed Alexander.

"Hurrah for the Confederate Congress," shouted Stuart—"the first signs of brains they've shown in many a day—"

He caught himself at a glance from Rives.

"Excuse me, Senator—I didn't mean quite that."

Lee fixed Rives with his brilliant eyes.

"The Confederate Congress has no authority to declare & Dictatorship."

"We have."

"By what law?"

"By the law of necessity, sir. The civil government in Richmond has become a farce. I acknowledge it sorrowfully. Your soldiers are ill clothed, half starved, and the power to recruit your ranks is gone. The people have lost faith in their civil leaders. Disloyalty is rampant. In the name of ultra State Sovereignty, treason is everywhere threatening. Soldiers are taken from your army by State authorities on the eve of battle. Men are deserting in droves and defy arrest. You have justly demanded the death penalty for desertion. It has been denied. Bands of deserters now plunder, burn and rob as they please. You are our only hope. You are the idol of our people. At your call they will rally. Men will pour into your ranks, and we can yet crush our enemies, or invade Mexico as you may decide."

"He's right, General," Gordon agreed. "The South will stand by you to a man."

Alexander added with deep reverence:

"The people believe in you, General Lee, as they believe in God."

A dreamy look overspread Lee's face.

"Their faith is misplaced, sir! God alone decides the fate of nations. And God, not your commanding General, will decide the fate of the South. The thing that appalls me is that we have no luck. For in spite of numbers, resources, generalship—the unknown factor in war is luck. The North has had it all. At Shiloh at the moment of a victory that would have ended Grant's career, Albert Sydney Johnson, our ablest general, was shot and Grant escaped. At the battle of Chancellorsville in these very woods, Jackson at the moment of his triumph-Jackson my right arm—was shot by his own men. To-day Longstreet falls in the same way when he is about to repeat his immortal deed—"

He paused.

"The South has had no luck!"

Alexander eagerly protested.

"I don't agree with you, sir. God has given the South Lee as her Commander. Your genius is equal to a hundred thousand men. And in all our terrible battles, at the head of your men, again and again, as you were to-day, with bullets whistling around you, you've lived a charmed life. You're here to-night strong in body and mind, without a scratch. Don't tell me, sir, that we haven't had luck!"

Stuart broke in.

"You're the biggest piece of luck that ever befell an army."

Lee rose.

"I appreciate your confidence and your love, gentlemen. But I've made many tragic mistakes, and tried to find an abler man to take my place."

"There's no such man!" Stuart boomed. "Give the word to-night and every soldier in this army would follow you into the jaws of hell!"

Lee's eyes were lifted dreamily.

"And you ask me to blot out the liberties of our people by a single act of usurpation?"

Alexander lifted his hand.

"Only for a moment, General, that we may restore them in greater glory. The truth is the Confederate Government is not fitted for revolution. Let's win this war and fix it afterwards."

"I do not believe either in military statesmen or political generals. The military should be subordinate always to the civil power—"

"But Congress," Rives broke in, "speaking for the people, offers you supreme power. Mr. Davis has not proven himself strong enough for the great office he holds."

Lee flared at this assertion.

"And if he has not, sir, who gave me the right to sit in judgment upon my superior officer and condemn him without trial? Mr. Davis is the victim of this unhappy war. I say this, though, that he differs with me on vital issues. I urged the abolition of Slavery. He opposed it. So did your Congress. I urged the uncovering of Richmond and the concentration of our forces into one great army for an offensive—"

Rives interrupted.

"We ask you to take the supreme power and decide these questions."

Lee replied with a touch of anger.

"But I may be wrong in my policies. Mr. Davis is a man of the highest character, devoted soul and body to the principles to which he has pledged his life. He is a statesman of the foremost rank. He is a trained soldier, a West Point graduate. He is a man of noble spirit—courageous, frank, positive. A great soul throbs within his breast. He has done as well in his high office as any other man could have done—"

He looked straight at Rives.

"We left the Union, sir, because our rights had been invaded. Our revolution is justified by this fact alone. You ask me to do the thing that caused us to revolt. To brush aside the laws which our people have ordained and set up a Dictatorship with the power of life and death over every man, woman and child. For three years we have poured out our blood in a sacred cause. We are fighting for our liberties under law, or we are traitors, not revolutionists. We are fighting for order, justice, principles, or we are fighting for nothing—"

A courier dashed to the door of the tent and handed Lee a message which he read with a frown.

"This discussion is closed, gentlemen. General Grant is moving on Spottsylvania Court House. My business is to get there first. My work is not to jockey for place or power. It is to fight. Move your forces at once!"



CHAPTER XLIII

Lee hurried to Spottsylvania Court House and was entrenched before Grant arrived. The two armies again flew at each other's throat. True to Lee's prediction the Union Commander hurled Sheridan's full force of ten thousand cavalry in a desperate effort to turn the right and strike Richmond while the Confederate infantry were held in a grip of death.

From a hilltop Stuart saw the coming blue legions of Sheridan. They rode four abreast and made a column of flashing sabers and fluttering guidons thirteen miles long.

The young Cavalier waved his plumed hat and gave a shout. It was magnificent. He envied them the endless line of fine horses. He had but three small brigades to oppose them. But his spirits rose.

He ordered his generals to harass the advancing host at every point of vantage, delay them as long as possible and draw up their forces at Yellow Tavern for the battle.

He took time to dash across the country from Beaver Dam Station to see his wife and babies. He had left them at the house of Edmund Fontaine. He feared that the Federal Cavalry might have raided the section.

To his joy he found them well and happy, unconscious of the impending fight.

For the first time in his joyous life of song and play and war he was worried.

His wife was in high spirits. She cheered him.

"Don't worry about us, my soldier man! We're all right. No harm has ever befallen us. We've had three glorious years playing lovers' hide-and-seek. I've ceased to worry about you. Your life is charmed. God has heard my prayers. You're coming home soon to play with me and the babies always!"

She was too happy for Stuart to describe the host of ten thousand riders which he had just seen. Their lives were in God's hands. It was enough.

He held her in his arms longer than was his wont at parting. And then with a laugh and a shout to the children he was gone.

At Jerrold's Mill, Wickham's brigade suddenly fell on Sheridan's rear guard and captured a company. Sheridan refused to stop to fight.

At Mitchell's Shop, Wickham again dashed on the rear guard and was forced back by a counter charge. As he retreated, fighting a desperate hand-to-hand saber engagement, Fitzhugh Lee and Stuart rushed to his aid and the blue river rolled on again toward Richmond.

At Hanover Junction Stuart allowed his men to sleep until one o'clock and then rode with desperate speed to Yellow Tavern. He reached his chosen battle ground at ten o'clock the following morning. He had won the race and at once deployed his forces to meet the coming avalanche.

Wickham he stationed on the right of the road, Lomax on the left. He placed two guns in the road, one on the left to rake it at an angle.

He dismounted his men and ordered them to fight as infantry. A reserve of mounted men were held in his rear.

He sent his aide into Richmond to inquire of its defenses and warn General Bragg of the sweeping legions. The Commandant at the Confederate Capital replied that he could hold his trenches. He would call on Petersburg for reinforcements. He asked Stuart to hold Sheridan back as long as possible.

On the morning of the eleventh of May, at 6:30, he wrote his dispatch to Lee:

"Fighting against immense odds of Sheridan. My men and horses are tired, hungry and jaded, but all right!"

It was four o'clock before Sheridan struck Yellow Tavern. With skill and dash he threw an entire brigade on Stuart's left, broke his line, rolled it up and captured his two guns. Stuart ordered at once a reserve squadron to charge the advancing Federals. With desperate courage they drove them back in a hand-to-hand combat, saber ringing on saber to the shout and yell of savages.

As the struggling, surging mass of blue riders rolled back in confusion, Stuart rode into the scene cheering his men. A man in blue, whose horse had been shot from under him, fired his revolver pointblank at Stuart. The shot entered his body just above the belt and the magnificent head with the waving plume drooped on his breast.

Captain Dorsey hurried to his assistance. There were but a handful of his men between him and the Federal line, The wounded Commander was in danger of being captured by a sudden dash of reserves. He was lifted off his horse and he leaned against a tree.

Stuart raised his head.

"Go back now, Dorsey, to your men."

"Not until you're safe, sir."

As the ambulance passed through his broken ranks in the rear, he lifted himself on his elbow and rallied his men with a brave shout:

"Go back! Go back to your duty, men! And our country will be safe. Go back! Go back! I'd rather die than be whipped."

The men rallied and rushed to the firing line. They fought so well that Sheridan lost the way to Richmond and the Capital of the Confederacy was saved.

The wounded Commander was taken to the home of his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles Brewer, in Richmond. He had suffered agonies on the rough journey but bore his pain with grim cheerfulness.

He had sent a swift messenger to his wife. He knew she would reach Richmond the next day.

The following morning Major McClellan, his aide, rode in from the battlefield to report to General Bragg. Having delivered his message he hurried to the bedside of his beloved Chief.

The doctor shook his head gravely.

"Inflammation has set in, Major—"

"My God, is there no hope?"

"None."

The singing, rollicking, daring young Cavalier felt the hand of death on his shoulder. He was calm and cheerful. His bright words were broken by paroxysms of suffering. He would merely close his shining blue eyes and wait.

He directed his aide to dispose of his official papers.

He touched McClellan's hand and the Major's closed over it.

"I wish you to have one of my horses and Venable the other."

McClellan nodded.

"Which of you is the heavier?"

"Venable, sir."

"All right, give him the gray. You take the bay."

The pain choked him into silence again. At last he opened his eyes.

"You'll find in my hat a small Confederate flag which a lady in Columbia, South Carolina, sent me with the request that I wear it on my horse in a battle and return it to her. Send it."

Again the agony stilled the musical voice.

"My spurs," he went on, "which I have always worn in battle, I promised to Mrs. Lilly Lee of Shepherdstown, Virginia—"

He paused.

"My sword—I leave—to—my—son."

A cannon roared outside the city. With quick eagerness he asked:

"What's that?"

"Gracey's brigade has moved out against Sheridan's rear as he retreats. Fitz Lee is fighting them still at Meadow Bridge."

He turned his blue eyes upward and prayed:

"God grant they may win—"

He moved his head aside and said:

"I must prepare for another world."

He listened to the roar of the guns for a moment and signaled to his aide:

"Major, Fitz Lee may need you."

McClellan pressed his hand and hurried to the front.

As he passed out the tall figure of the President of the Confederacy entered. Jefferson Davis sat by his side and held his hand. He loved his daring young Cavalry Commander. He had made him a Major-General at thirty. He was dying now at thirty-one. The tragedy found the heart of the sorrowful leader of all the South.

When the Reverend Dr. Peterkin entered he said:

"Now I want you to sing for me the old song I love best—

"'Rock of Ages cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee—'"

With failing breath he joined in the song.

A paroxysm of pain gripped him and he asked the doctor:

"Can I survive the night?"

"No, General. The end is near."

He was silent. And then slowly said:

"I am resigned if it be God's will. But—I—would—like—to—see—my—wife—"

The beautiful voice sank into eternal silence.

So passed the greatest cavalry leader our country has produced. A man whose joyous life was a long wish of good will toward all of his fellow men.

The little mother heard the news as she rode in hot haste over the rough roads to Richmond. The hideous thing was beyond belief, but it had come. She had heard the roar of battle for three years and after each bloody day he had come with a smile on his lips and a stronger love in his brave heart. She had ceased to fear his death in battle. God had promised her in prayer to spare him. Only once had a bullet cut his clothes.

And now he was dead.

But yesterday he dashed across the country from his line of march, and, even while the conflict raged, held her in his arms and crooned over her.

The tears had flowed for two hours before she reached the house of death. She could weep no longer.

A sister's arm encircled her waist and led her unseeing eyes into the room. There was no wild outburst of grief at the sight of his cold body.

She stooped to kiss the loved lips, placed her hand on the high forehead and drew back at its chill. She stood in dumb anguish until her sister in alarm said:

"Come, dear, to my room."

The set, blue eyes never moved from the face of her dead.

"It's wrong. It's wrong. It's all wrong—this hideous murder of our loved ones! Why must they send my husband to kill my father? Why must they send my father to kill the father of my babies? Why didn't they stop this a year ago? It must end some time. Why did they ever begin it? Why must brother kill his brother? My father, thank God, didn't kill him. But little Phil Sheridan, his schoolmate, did. And he never spoke an unkind word about him in his life! His heart was overflowing with joy and love. He sang when he rode into battle—"

She paused and a tear stole down her cheeks at last.

"Poor boy, he loved its wild din and roar. It was play to his daring spirit."

A sob caught her voice and then it rose in fierce rebellion:

"Where was God when he fell? He was thirty-one years old, in the glory of a beautiful life—"

Her sister spoke in gentle sympathy.

"His fame fills the world, dear."

"Fame? Fame? What is that to me, now? I stretch out my hand, and it's ashes. My arms are empty. My heart is broken. Life isn't worth the living."

Her voice drifted into a dreamy silence as the tears streamed down her cheeks. She stood for half an hour staring through blurred eyes at the cold clay.

She turned at last and seized her sister's hands both in hers, and gazed with a strange, set look that saw something beyond time and the things of sense.

"My dear sister, God will yet give to the mothers of men the power to stop this murder. There's a better way. There's a better way,"



CHAPTER XLIV

While Sheridan rode against Richmond, Lee and Grant were struggling in a pool of red at the "Bloody Angle" of Spottsylvania. The musketry fire against the trees came in a low undertone, like the rattle of a hail storm on the roofs of houses.

A company of blue soldiers were cut off by a wave of charging gray. The men were trying to surrender. Their officers drew their revolvers and ordered them to break through. A sullen private shouted:

"Shoot your officers!"

Every commander dropped in his tracks. And the men were marched to the rear. Hour after hour the flames of hell swirled in endless waves about this angle of the Southern trenches. Line after line of blue broke against it and eddied down its sides in slimy pools.

Color bearers waved their flags in each other's faces, clinched and fought, hand to hand, like devils. Two soldiers on top of the trench, their ammunition spent, choked each other to death and rolled down the embankment among the mangled bodies that filled the ditch.

In this mass of struggling maniacs men were fighting with guns, swords, handspikes, clubbed muskets, stones and fists. Night brought no pause to save the wounded or bury the dead.

For five days Grant circled his blue hosts in a whirlpool of death trying in vain to break Lee's trenches. He gave it up. The stolid, silent man of iron nerves watched the stream of wagons bearing the wounded, groaning and shrieking, from the field. Lee's forces had been handled with such skill the impact of numbers had made but little impression.

Thirty thousand dead and mangled lay on the field.

The stark fighter of the West was facing a new problem. The devotion of Lee's men was a mania. He was unconquerable in a square hand-to-hand fight in the woods.

A truce to bury the dead followed. They found them piled six layers deep in the trenches, blue and gray locked in the last embrace. Black wings were flapping over them unafraid of the living. Their red beaks were tearing at eyes and lips, while deep below yet groaned and moved the wounded.

Again Grant sought to flank his wily foe. This time he beat Lee to the spot. The two armies rushed for Cold Harbor in parallel columns flashing at each other deadly volleys as they marched. Lee took second choice of ground and entrenched on a gently sloping line of hills. They swung in crescent as at Fredericksburg.

With consummate skill he placed his guns and infantry to catch both flanks and front of the coming foe. And then he waited for Grant to charge. Thousands of men in the blue ranks were busy now sewing their names in their underclothing.

With the first streak of dawn, at 4:30, they charged. They walked into the mouth of a volcano flaming tons of steel and lead in their faces. The scene was sickening. Nothing like it had, to this time, happened in the history of man.

Ten thousand men in blue fell in twenty minutes.

Meade ordered Smith to renew the assault. Daring a court martial, Smith flatly refused.

The story of the next seventy-two hours our historians have refused to record. Through the smothering heat of summer for three days and nights the shrieks and groans of the wounded rose in endless waves of horror. No hand could be lifted to save. With their last breath they begged, wept, cried, prayed for water. No man dared move in the storm-swept space. Here and there a heroic boy in blue caught the cry of a wounded comrade and crawled on his belly to try a rescue only to die in the embrace of his friend.

When the truce was called to clear the shambles every man of the ten thousand who had fallen was dead—save two. The salvage corps walked in a muck of blood. They slipped and stumbled and fell in its festering pools. The flies and vultures were busy. Dead horses, dead men, smashed guns, legs, arms, mangled bodies disemboweled, the earth torn into an ashen crater.

In the thirty days since Grant had met Lee in the wilderness, the Northern army had lost sixty thousand men, the bravest of our race.

Lee's losses were not so great but they were tragic. They were as great in proportion to the number he commanded.

Grant paused to change his plan of campaign. The procession of ambulances into Washington had stunned the Nation. Every city, town, village, hamlet and country home was in mourning. A stream of protest against the new Commander swept the North. Lincoln refused to remove him. And on his head was heaped the blame for all the anguish of the bitter years of failure.

His answer to his critics was remorseless.

"We must fight to win. Grant is the ablest general we have. His losses are appalling. But the struggle is now on to the bitter end. Our resources of men and money are exhaustless. The South cannot replace her fallen sons. Her losses, therefore, are fatal!"

War had revealed to all at last that the Abolition crusade had been built on a lie. The negro had proven a bulwark of strength to the South. Had their theories been true, had the slaves been beaten and abused the Black Bees would surely have swarmed. A single Southern village put to the torch by black hands would have done for Lee's army what no opponent had been able to do. It would have been destroyed in a night. The Confederacy would have gone down in hopeless ruin.

Not a black hand had been raised against a Southern man or woman in all the raging hell. This fact is the South's vindication against the slanders of the Abolitionists. The negroes stood by their old masters. They worked his fields; they guarded his women and children; they mourned over the graves of their fallen sons.

And now in the supreme hour of gathering darkness came the last act of the tragedy—the arming of the Northern blacks and the training of their hands to slay a superior race.

In the first year of the war Lincoln had firmly refused the prayer of Thomas Wentworth Higginson that he be allowed to arm and drill the Black Legions of the North. Later the pressure could not be resisted. The daily murder of the flower of the race had lowered its morale. It had lowered the value set on racial trait and character. The Cavalier and Puritan, with a thousand years of inspiring history throbbing in their veins, had become mere cannon fodder. The cry for men and still more men was endless. And this cry must be heard, or the war would end.

Men of the white breed were clasping hands at last across the lines under the friendly cover of the night. They spoke softly through their tears of home and loved ones. The tumult and the shout had passed. The jeer and taunt, blind passion and sordid hate lay buried in the long, deep graves of a hundred fields of blood.

Grant's new plan of campaign resulted in the deadlock of Petersburg. The two armies now lay behind thirty-five miles of deep trenches with a stretch of volcano-torn, desolate earth between them.

The Black Legions were massed for a dramatic ending of the war. Grant, Meade, and Burnside had developed a plan. Hundreds of sappers and miners burrowed under the shell-torn ground for months, digging a tunnel under Lee's fortress immediately before Petersburg.

The tunnel was not complete before Lee's ears had caught the sound. A counter tunnel was hastily begun but Grant's men had reached the spot under the center of Elliot's salient before the Confederates could intercept them.

Grant skillfully threw a division of his army on the north side of the James and made a fierce frontal attack on Richmond while he gathered the flower of his army, sixty-five thousand men with his Black Legions, before the tunnel that would open the way into Petersburg.

Lee was not misled by the assault on Richmond. But it was absolutely necessary to meet it, or the Capital would have fallen. He was compelled, in the face of the threatened explosion and assault, to divide his forces and weaken his lines before the tunnel.

His men were on the ground beyond the James to intercept the column moving toward Richmond. When the assault failed, Hancock and Sheridan immediately recrossed the river to take part in the capture of Petersburg and witness the end of the Confederacy.

The tons of powder were stored under the fort and the fuse set. The Black battalions stood ready to lead the attack and enter Petersburg first.

At the final council of war, the plan was changed. A division of New Englanders, the sons of Puritan fathers and mothers, were set to this grim task and the negroes were ordered to follow.

High words had been used at the Council. The whole problem of race and racial values was put to the test of the science of anthropology and of mathematics. The fuse would be set before daylight. The charge must be made in darkness with hundreds of great guns flaming, shrieking, shaking the earth. The negro could not be trusted to lead in this work. He had followed white officers in the daylight and under their inspiration had fought bravely. But he was afraid of the dark. It was useless to mince matters. The council faced the issue. He could not stand the terrors of the night in such a charge.

The decision was an ominous one for the future of America—ominous because merciless in its scientific logic. The same power which had given the white man his mastery of science and progress in the centuries of human history gave him the mastery of his brain and nerves in the dark. For a thousand years superstition had been trained out of his brain fiber. He could hold a firing line day or night. The darkness was his friend, not his enemy.

The New Englanders were pushed forward for the attack. The grim preparations were hurried. The pioneers were marshaled with axes and entrenching tools. A train pulled in from City Point with crowds of extra surgeons, their amputating tables and bandages ready. The wagons were loaded with picks and shovels to bury the dead quickly in the scorching heat of July.

The men waited in impatience for the explosion. It had been set for two o'clock. For two hours they stood listening. Their hearts were beating high at first. The delay took the soul out of them. They were angry, weary, cursing, complaining.

The fuse had gone out. Another had to be trained and set. As the Maine regiments gripped their muskets waiting for the explosion of the mine, a negro preacher in the second line behind them was haranguing the Black Battalions. His drooning, voodoo voice rang through the woods in weird echoes:

"Oh, my men! Dis here's gwine ter be er great fight. De greatest fight in all de war. We gwine ter take ole Petersburg dis day. De day er Juberlee is come. Yes, Lawd! An' den we take Richmon', 'stroy Lee's army an' en' dis war. Yas, Lawd, an' 'member dat Gen'l Grant an' Gen'l Burnside, an' Gen'l Meade's is all right here a-watch-in' ye! An' member dat I'se er watchin' ye. I'se er sargint in dis here comp'ny. Any you tries ter be a skulker, you'se gwine ter git a beyonet run clean froo ye—yas, Lawd! You hear me!"

He had scarcely finished his harangue when a smothering peal of thunder shook the world. The ground rocked beneath the feet of the men. Some were thrown backwards. Some staggered and caught a comrade's shoulder. A pillar of blinding flame shot to the stars. A cloud of smoke rolled upward and spread its pall over the trembling earth. A shower of human flesh and bones spattered the smoking ground.

The men in front shivered as they brushed the pieces of red meat from their hands and clothes.

The artillery opened. Hundreds of guns were pouring shells from their flaming mouths. The people of Petersburg leaped from their beds and pressed into the streets stunned by the appalling shock and the storm of artillery which followed.

The ground in front of the tunnel had been cleared of the abatis. Burnside's New England veterans rushed the crater. A huge hole had been torn in Lee's fortifications one hundred yards long and sixty feet wide and twenty-five feet in depth.

The hole proved a grave. The charging troops floundered in its spongy, blood-soaked sides. They stumbled and fell into its pit. The regiments in the rear, rushing through the smoke and stumbling over the mangled pieces of flesh of Elliott's three hundred men who had been torn to pieces, were on top of the line in front before they could clear the crumbling walls.

When the charging hosts at last reached the firm ground inside the Confederate lines, the men in gray were rallying. Their guns had been trained on the yawning chasm now a struggling, squirming, cursing mass of blue. Slowly order came out of chaos and Burnside's men swung to the right and to the left and swept Lee's trenches for three hundred yards in each direction. The charging regiments poured into them and found the second Confederate line. Elliott's men who yet lived, driven from their outer line by the resistless rush of the attack, retreated to a deep ravine, rallied and held this third line.

Lee reached the field and took command. Mahone's men came to the rescue marching with swift, steady tread. They took their position on the crest which commanded the open space toward the captured trenches.

As Wright's brigade moved into position, the Black Battalions were ordered to charge. They had been hurried through the crater and into the trenches on the right and left. At the signal they swarmed over the works, with a voodoo yell, and in serried black waves, charged the men in gray. In broad daylight the Southerners saw for the first time the plan of the dramatic attack.

The white men of the South shrieked an answer and gripped their muskets. The cry they gave came down the centuries from three thousand years of history. It came from the hearts of a conquering race of men. They had heard the Call of the Blood of the Race that rules the world.

Without an order from their commanders, with a single impulse, the whole Southern line leaped from their cover and dashed on the advancing Black Legions in a counter charge so swift, so terrible, there was but a single crash and the yell of white victory rang over the field. The Blacks broke and piled pell mell into the trenches and on into the hell hole of the crater.

Fifty of Lee's guns were now pouring a steady stream of shells into this pit of the damned.

The charging gray lines rolled over the captured trenches. They ringed the edge of the crater with a circle of flaming muskets. The writhing mass of dead, dying, wounded and living, scrambling blacks and whites, was a thing for devil's joy. At the bottom of the pit the heap was ten feet deep in moving flesh. In vain the terror-stricken blacks scrambled up the slippery sides through clouds of smoke. They fell backward and rolled down the crumbling walls.

Young John Doyle stood on the brink of this crater, his eyes aflame with revenge. His musket was so hot at last he threw it down, tore a cartridge belt from the body of a dead negro trooper, seized his rifle and went back to his task.

Sickened at last by the holocaust, the officers of the South ordered their men to cease firing. They had charged without orders. They refused to take orders. The officers began to strike them with their swords!

"Cease firing!"

"Damn you, stop it!"

Their orders rang around the flaming curve in vain. They seized the men by their collars and dragged them back. The gray soldiers tore away, rushed to the smoking rim and fired as long as they had a cartridge in their belts.

It was the poor white man who got beyond control at the sight of these yelling black troops wearing the uniform of the Republic. Had their souls leaped the years and seen in a vision dark-skinned hosts charging the ranks of white civilization in a battle for supremacy of the world?



CHAPTER XLV

When the smoke had lifted from the field of the Black Battalions, Lee stood in Richmond before a secret meeting of the leaders of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided. The meeting was called by request of the Commander. He had an important announcement to make.

Facing the anxious group gathered around the Cabinet table he spoke with unusual emphasis:

"Gentlemen, the end is in sight unless I can have more men. So long as I can burrow underground my half-clothed and half-starved soldiers will hold Grant at bay. I may hold him until next spring. Not longer. The North is using negro troops. They have enrolled nearly two hundred thousand. Their man power counts. We can arm our negroes to meet them. They will fight under the leadership of their masters. I speak as a mathematician and a soldier. I do not discuss the sentimental side. I must have men and I must have them before spring or your cause is lost."

Robert Toombs of Georgia leaped to his feet. His words came slowly, throbbing with emotion.

"Any suggestion from General Lee deserves the immediate attention of this Government. He speaks to-night as an engineer and mathematician. He has told us the worst. It was his duty. I honor him for it.

"But I differ with him. He can see but one angle of this question. He is a soldier in field. It is our duty to see both the soldier's and the statesman's point of view. And our cause is not so desperate as the science of engineering and mathematics would tell us.

"The war of the revolution was won by Washington in spite of mathematics. The odds were all against him. We have our chance. This war is now in its fourth year. The outlook seems dark in Richmond. It is darker in Washington. What have they accomplished in these years of blood and tears? Nothing. Not a slave has been freed. Not a question at issue has found its solution. The millions of the North are in despair and they are crying for peace—peace at any price. The Presidential election is but a few weeks off. They have nominated Abraham Lincoln again for President. They had to, although he is the most unpopular man who ever sat in the White House. All the mistakes, all the agony, all the horrors of this war, they have unjustly heaped on his drooping shoulders.

"McClellan is his opponent on a peace platform.

"The Republican Party is split as ours was before the war. John C. Fremont is running on the Radical ticket against Lincoln. Unless a miracle happens General George B. McClellan will be elected the next President. If he is, the war ends in a draw.

"It's a fair chance. We can take it.

"But our chance of success is not the real question before us. It is a bigger one. The question before you is bigger than the South. It is bigger than the Republic. It is bigger than the Continent. It may involve the future of civilization.

"The employment of these negro troops, clothed in the uniform of the Union, marks the lowest tide mud to which its citizenship has ever sunk. The profoundest word in history is race. The ancestral soul of a people rules its destiny. What is the ancestral soul of the negro? The measurement of the skull of the Egyptian is exactly the shape and size of six thousand years ago. Has the negro moved upward? This republic was born of the soul of a race of pioneer white freemen who settled our continent and built an altar within its Forest Cathedral to Liberty and Progress. In the record of man has a negro ever dreamed this dream?

"The Roman Republic fell and Rome became a degenerate Empire. Why? Because of the lowering of her racial stock by slaves. The decline of the Roman spirit was due to a mixture of races. The flower of her manhood died on her far-flung battle lines. Slaves and degenerates at home bred her future citizens.

"Have we also placed our feet on the path of oblivion? History is littered with the wrecks of civilization. And always the secret is found in racial degeneracy—the lowering of the standard of racial values. Civilization is a name—an effect. Race is the cause. If a race maintains its soul, it must remain itself and it must breed its best. Race is the result of thousands of years of this selection. One drop of negro blood makes a negro. The inferior can always blot out the superior if granted equality.

"This uniform is the first step toward racial oblivion for the white man in America. It is the first step toward equality. A people of half breeds have no soul. They are always ungovernable. The negro is the lowest species of man. Through Slavery he has been disciplined into the family of humanity. We cannot yet grant him equality. Abraham Lincoln who has consented to arm these blacks against us has himself said:

"'There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid them living together on terms of political or social equality.'

"How can he prevent social and political equality once these black men are clothed with the dignity of the uniform of a Nation? He has declared his intention of colonizing the negro race. General Lee also holds this as the solution. If Slavery falls, it is the only solution.

"In the meantime we hold fast to the faith within us. Dare to arm a negro, drill and teach him to kill white men, and we are traitors to country, traitors to humanity, traitors to civilization. Robert E. Lee himself is the supreme contradiction of the sentimental mush involved in the dogma of equality. His genius and character is a racial product.

"The man in gray stands for two things, Reverence for Law and the Racial Supremacy of the White Man.

"If we must clothe negroes in gray to save the Confederacy, let it go down in blood and ashes. We'll stand for this. And hand our ideal down to our children. If defeat shall come, we may yet live to save the Republic. We hold a message for Humanity."

There was no further discussion. The South chose death before racial treason.



CHAPTER XLVI

The miracle which Toombs feared came to pass. In the blackest hour of the Lincoln administration, his own party despaired of his election. The National Republican Committee came to Washington and demanded that he withdraw from the ticket and allow them to name a candidate who might have a chance against General McClellan and his peace platform.

And then it happened.

Sherman suddenly took Atlanta and swung his legions toward the sea. A black pall of smoke marked his trail. The North leaped once more with the elemental impulse. A wave of war enthusiasm swept Lincoln back into the White House. And a new line of blue soldiers streamed to Grant's front.

The ragged men in gray were living on parched corn. Grant edged his blue legions farther and farther southward until he saw the end of the mortal trenches Lee's genius had built. The lion sprang on his exposed flank and Petersburg was doomed.

The Southern Commander sent his fated message to Richmond that he must uncover the Capital of the Confederacy, and staggered out of his trenches to attempt a union of forces with Johnston's army in North Carolina.

Grant's host were on his heels, his guns thundering, his cavalry destroying.

A negro regiment entered Richmond as the flames of the burning city licked the skies.

Lee paused at Appomattox to await the coming of his provision train. His headquarters were fixed beneath an apple tree in full bloom.

He bent anxiously over a field map with his Adjutant. His face was clouded with deep anxiety.

"Why doesn't Gordon report?" he cried. "We've sent three couriers. They haven't returned. Grant has not only closed the road to Lynchburg, he has pushed a wedge into our lines and cut Gordon off. If he has, we're in a trap—"

"It couldn't have happened in an hour!" Taylor protested.

"Order Fitzhugh Lee to concentrate every horse for Gordon's support and call in Alexander for a conference."

Taylor hastened to execute the command and Lee sat down under the flower-draped tree.

Sam approached bearing a tray.

"De coffee's all ready, Marse Robert—'ceptin' dey ain't no coffee in it. Does ye want a cup? Hit's good, hot black water, sah!"

Lee's eyes were not lifted.

"No, Sam, thank you."

The faithful negro shook his head and walked back to his sorry kitchen.

Taylor handed his order to a dust-covered courier.

"Take this to Fitz Lee."

The courier scratched his head.

"I don't know General Fitz Lee, sir."

"The devil you don't. What division are you from?"

"Dunno, sir. Been cut to pieces so many times and changed commanders so much I dunno who the hell I belong to—"

"How'd you get here?"

"Detailed for the day."

"You know General John B. Gordon?"

The dusty figure stiffened.

"I'm from Georgia."

"Take this to him."

Taylor handed the man his order as the thunder of a line of artillery opened on the left.

"Which way is General Gordon?" the courier asked.

"That's what I want to know. Get to him. Follow the line of that firing. You'll find him where it's hottest. Get back here quick if you have to kill your horse."

Sam came back with his tray.

"I got yo' breakfus' an' dinner both now, Marse Robert."

Lee looked up with a smile.

"Too tired now. Eat it for me, Sam—"

Sam turned quickly.

"Yassah. I do de bes' I kin fur ye."

As Sam went back to the kitchen he motioned to a ragged soldier who stood with his wife and little girl gazing at the General.

"Dar he is. Go right up an' tell him."

Sweeney approached Lee timidly. The wife and girl hung back.

He tried to bow and salute at the same time.

"Excuse me for coming, General Lee, but my company's halted there in the woods. You've stopped in a few yards of my house, sir. Won't you come in and make it your headquarters?"

"No, my good friend. I won't disturb your home."

The wife edged near.

"It's no trouble at all, sir. We'd be so proud to have you."

"Thank you. I always use my tent, Madame. I'll not be here long."

"Please come, sir!" the man urged.

Lee studied his face.

"Haven't I seen you before, my friend?"

"Yes, sir. I'm the man who brought the news that General Stuart had fallen at Yellow Tavern."

Lee grasped his hand.

"Oh, I remember. You're Sweeney—Sweeney whose banjo he loved so well. And this is your wife and little girl?"

"Yes, sir," Mrs. Sweeney answered.

The Commander pressed her hand cordially.

"I'm glad to know you, Mrs. Sweeney. Your husband's music was a great joy to General Stuart."

The little girl handed him a bunch of violets. He stooped, kissed her and took her in his arms.

"You'd like your papa to come back home from the war and stay with you always, wouldn't you, dear?"

"Yes, sir," she breathed.

"Maybe he will, soon."

"You see, General," Sweeney said, "when my Chief fell, I threw my banjo away and got a musket."

"If I only had Stuart here to-day!" Lee sighed.

"He'd cut his way through, sir, with a shout and a laugh," Sweeney boasted.

A courier handed Lee a dispatch and Sweeney edged away. The Commander read the message with a frown and crumpled the paper in his hand. The wagons at Appomattox had been cut to pieces. His army had nothing to eat. They had been hungry for two days and nights.

"It's more than flesh can bear, Taylor—and yet listen to those guns! They're still fighting this morning. Fighting like tigers. Grant's closing in with a hundred thousand men. Unless Gordon breaks through within an hour—he's got us—"

Lee gazed toward the sound of the guns on the left. His face was calm but his carriage was no longer quite erect. The agony of sleepless nights had plowed furrows in his forehead. His eyes were red. His cheeks were sunken and haggard. His face was colorless. And yet he was calmly deliberate in every movement.

An old man, flushed with excitement, staggered up to him.

Lee started.

"Ruffin—you here?"

"General Lee," he began, "will you hear me for just one moment?"

"Certainly."

Lee sprang to his feet.

"But how did you get into my lines—I thought I was surrounded?"

"I came out of Richmond with General Alexander's rear guard, sir, six days ago."

"Oh, I see."

"Ten years ago, General Lee, in your house, I predicted this war. Last week I saw the city in flames and I hope to God every house was in ashes before that regiment of negro cavalry galloped through its streets."

"I trust not, Ruffin. I left my wife and children there."

"I hope they're safe, sir."

"They're in God's hands."

A courier handed Lee a dispatch which he read aloud.

"President Davis has been forced to flee from Danville and all communication with him has been cut."

"General Lee," Ruffin cried excitedly, "this country is now in your hands."

"What would you have me do?"

"Fight until the last city is in ashes and the last man falls in his tracks. Fools at your headquarters have been talking for two days of surrender. It can't be done. It can't be done. If you surrender do you know what will happen?"

"I've tried to think."

"I'll tell you, sir. Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Leader of Congress, has already prepared the bill to take the ballot from the Southern white man and give it to the negro. The property of the whites he proposed to confiscate and give to their slaves. He will clothe the negro with all power and set him to rule over his former masters."

Lee answered roughly.

"Nonsense, Ruffin. I am better informed. Senator Washburn, Mr. Lincoln's spokesman, entered Richmond with the Federal army. He says that the President will remove the negro troops from the United States as soon as peace is declared. He has a bill in Congress to colonize the negro race."

"Stevens is the master of Congress."

"If the North wins, Lincoln will be the master of Congress. We need fear no scheme of insane vengeance."

Lee took from Taylor two despatches.

"General Mahone has taken a thousand prisoners—"

"Glory to God!" Ruffin shouted. "Such men don't know how to surrender!"

"And our cavalry has captured. General Gregg and a squadron of his men—"

"Surrender!" the old man roared. "They'll never surrender, sir, unless you say so. Our wives, our daughters, our children, our homes, our cause, our lives, are in your hands. For God's sake, don't listen to fools. Don't give up, General Lee—don't—"

General Alexander sprang from his horse and approached his Commander.

Lee spoke in low, strained tones.

"I'm afraid we're caught."

He turned to the old man.

"Excuse me, Ruffin, I must confer with General Alexander."

Ruffin's reply came feebly.

"With your permission I will—stay—at—your headquarters for a little while."

"Certainly."

Taylor led the old man toward his baggage wagon.

"Come with me, sir. I'll find you a cot."

"Thank you. Thank you." His eyes were dim and he walked stumblingly. "Surrender, Taylor! Surrender? Why, there's no such word—there's no such word—"

Lee and Alexander moved down to the little field table.

"We must decide," the Commander began, "what to do in case Gordon can't break through. How many guns in your command?"

"More than forty, sir. We've just captured a section of Federal artillery in perfect order."

"Forty guns! And Grant is circling us with five hundred—"

"We have fought big odds before. We have ammunition. The artillery has done little on this retreat. They're eager for a fight, if you wish to give battle."

"I can rally but eight thousand men for a final charge. They are tired and hungry. What have we got to do?"

"This means but one thing, then—"

"Well, sir?"

"Order the army to scatter—each man for himself. They can slip through the brush to-night like quail, and reach Johnston's army."

"You think this best?"

"It's the only thing to do, sir. Surrender—never. Scatter. And when Grant closes in to-morrow his hands will be empty. He'll find a few broken guns and wagons. Our men will be safe beyond his lines and ready to fight again."

"That's the plan!" Taylor joined.

"We can beat Grant that way, General. The Confederacy may win by delay. At least by delay we can give the State Governments time to make their own terms as States. If you surrender, it's all over."

"I do not think the North will acknowledge the sovereignty of the States at this late day."

"It is reported that Lincoln has offered to accept the surrender of States and make terms—"

"This would, of course," Lee slowly answered, "prolong the war as long as one held out—"

"And don't forget, sir," Alexander urged stoutly, "that the single State of Texas is three times larger than France. She has countless head of cattle and horses on her plains. She can equip armies. Her warlike sons, with you to lead them, would laugh at conquest for the next ten years. The territory of the South is too vast to be held except at a cost the North cannot afford to pay—"

"Armies may march across it," Taylor interrupted, "a million soldiers could not hold it unless you surrender!"

"Guerrilla warfare is a desperate resort," Lee answered sadly.

"There are things worse," Alexander cried passionately. "This army is ready to die to a man before we will submit to unconditional surrender. The men who have fought under you for these three tragic years have the right to demand that you spare us this shame!"

"General Grant will not ask unconditional surrender. I have been in correspondence with him for two days. He has already put his terms in writing. They are generous. All officers may retain their swords and every horse go home for the spring plowing. He merely requires our parole not to take up arms again."

"He would offer no such terms," Alexander argued, "unless he knew you yet had a chance to win—"

Lee waved his hand.

"Our only chance is to continue the struggle by a fierce guerrilla war—"

"For God's sake, let's do it, sir!"

"Can we," the calm voice went on, "as Christian soldiers, choose such a course? We've fought bravely for what we believed to be right. If I enter a guerrilla struggle, what will be the result? Years of bloody savagery. Our own men, demoralized by war, would supply their wants by violence and plunder. I could not control them. And so raid and counter-raid. Houses pillaged and burned by friend and foe. Crops destroyed. All industry paralyzed. Women violated. We might force the Federal Government at last to make some sort of compromise. But at what a cost—what a cost!"

"You can control our men," Alexander maintained. "Your name is magic. The South will obey you."

Lee gazed earnestly into the face of his gallant young Commander of Artillery and said:

"If I wield such power over our people, is it not a sacred trust? Is it not my duty now to use it for their healing, and not their ruin?"

General John B. Gordon suddenly rode up and sprang from his horse.

Lee eagerly turned.

"General Gordon—you have cut through?"

"I have secured a temporary truce to report to you in person, I have fought my corps to a frazzle. The road is still blocked and I cannot move."

"What is your advice?" Lee asked.

"Your decision settles it, sir."

A courier plunged toward the group on a foaming horse.

"Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry's broken through!" he shouted. "The way's opened. The whole army can pass!"

"I don't believe it," Gordon growled.

"It's too good to be true," Taylor said.

"It's true!" Alexander exclaimed, "of course it's true!"

"You come from Longstreet?" Lee inquired.

"Yes, sir. He asks instructions."

"Tell him to use his discretion. He's on the spot."

The courier wheeled and rode back as the crash of a musket rang out beside the baggage wagon.

"What's that?" Taylor asked sharply.

"It can't be an attack," Gordon wondered. "A truce is in force."

Sam rushed to Lee.

"Hit's Marse Ruffin, sah," he whispered. "He put de muzzle er de gun in his mouf an' done blow his own head clean off!"

"See to him, Taylor," Lee ordered. "The old ones will quit, I'm afraid."

A courier rode up and handed him another dispatch. He read it slowly.

"Fitzhugh Lee says the message was a mistake, the road is still blocked. Only a company of raiders broke through."

"It's too bad," Gordon said.

"It's hell," Alexander groaned. "Let's scatter, sir! It's the only way. Issue the order at once—"

A sentinel saluted.

"Colonel Babcock, aide to General U.S. Grant, has come for your answer, sir."

All eyes were fixed on Lee.

"Tell Babcock I'll see him in a moment."

An ominous silence fell. Lee lifted his head and spoke firmly.

"We've played our parts, gentlemen, in a hopeless tragedy, pitiful, terrible. At least eight hundred thousand of our noblest sons are dead and mangled. A million more will die of poverty and disease. Every issue could have been settled and better settled without the loss of a drop of blood. The slaves are freed by an accident. An accident of war's necessity—not on principle. The manner of their sudden emancipation, unless they are removed, will bring a calamity more appalling than the war itself. It must create a Race Problem destined to grow each day more threatening and insoluble. Yet if I had to live it all over again I could only do exactly what I have done—"

He paused.

"And now I'll go at once to General Grant."

He took two steps to cross the stile over the fence, and turned as a cry of pain burst from Alexander's lips. He sank to a seat, bowed his face in his hands and groaned:

"Oh, my God, I can't believe it! I can't believe it. After all these years of blood. I can't believe it—my God—to think that this is the end!"

"I know, General Alexander," Lee spoke gently, "that my surrender means the end. It has come and we must face it. We must accept the results in good faith and turn our faces toward the east. Yesterday is dead. To-morrow is ours—"

His voice softened.

"I don't mind telling you now, that I had rather die a thousand deaths than go to General Grant. Dying is the easiest thing that I could do at this moment. I could ride out front along the lines for five minutes and it would be all over. But the men who know how to die must do harder things. I call you, sir, to this battle grimmer than death—to this nobler task—we've got to live now!"

Alexander slowly rose with Gordon and both men saluted.

Within an hour he was returning from the meeting with his brave and generous conqueror. A loud cheer rang over the Confederate lines.

"It's Lee returning along the road crowded with his men," Gordon explained.

Another cheer echoed through the forests.

Gordon smiled.

"Alexander the Great, when he conquered a world, never got the tribute which Lee is receiving from those men. There's not one in their ranks who wouldn't die for him."

Louder and louder rolled the cheers mingled now with the pet name his soldiers loved.

"Marse Robert! Marse Robert!"

Alexander's eyes flashed.

"The hour of his surrender, the supreme triumph of his life."

Lee rode slowly into view on Traveler's gray back. The men were crowding close. They cried softly. They touched his saddle, his horse and tried to reach his hands.

He lifted his right arm over their heads and they were still.

"My heart's too full for speech, my men. I have done for you all that was in my power. You have done your duty. We leave the rest to God. Go quietly to your homes now and work to build up our ruined country. Obey the laws and be as good citizens as you have been soldiers. I'm going to try to do this. Will you help me?"

"That we will!"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Marse Robert!"

Grizzled veterans were sobbing like children.

The war had ended—the most futile and ferocious of human follies. When it shall cease on earth at last, then, and not until then, will the soul of man leap to its final triumph, for the energy of the universe will flow through the fingers of workmen, artists, authors, inventors and healers. On this issue the saving of a world awaits the word of the mothers of men.

THE END