Across Five Aprils (16 page)

The triumphs along the Mississippi had made good news, and hopes throughout the North were at a high peak when chilling word came up from Tennessee. There two Confederate generals, Bragg and Smith, had driven the Federals out of the Cumberland Gap and were moving north to Kentucky, where they would surely reclaim that state if Don Carlos Buell couldn’t stop them. Young Tom had helped to clinch Kentucky to the side of the Union at Donelson; now Jethro read with a heavy heart that General Bragg was boasting of his intention to set up a Confederate governor of Kentucky.

Equally chilling was the news from the East. General Pope, hero of Island No. 10, was no longer a hero in Virginia. At the end of August, just thirteen months after the day when congressmen and their ladies had driven out to Bull Run for a day of picnicking and battle-viewing, a second disaster for the Federals took place on the same spot. The Confederate generals were Lee and Stonewall Jackson, together with James Longstreet, who brought up reinforcements that saved the day for the Confederates. A good part of McClellan’s army, as well as Pope’s, the papers admitted, was disorganized and hopeless.

Thus the high hopes that had given comfort to the North during the spring were almost crushed by early fall. Faith in the leaders was at its lowest ebb, criticism of the President poured in from all sides, armies were demoralized, and desertion began, first in a slow trickling, then in a flood, as the months dragged on. Jethro read the news in dismay, and for the rest of the war there was always a fear within him that disappointment and disaster inevitably followed hope.

But work on the farm had to go on although armies faltered and leaders fell in disgrace. Late in September, men from the nearby communities and from even as far away as Newton came to build a new barn, so that Matt Creighton’s stock might have shelter before the winter snows set in. There were twenty or more of them with teams and loads of logs, with saws and axes, and a barrel of cider to give their work a spark of holiday spirit. Ross Milton came, and although he was too crippled to work, the men were pleased to have him with them, and Jethro was delighted.

When he went out to greet the editor, Jethro noticed the young man who had cared for his team that day in Newton, now sitting on a high load of logs behind Ross Milton’s buggy. Milton jerked his thumb toward the wagon as he climbed slowly down from his seat.

“Charley is bringing that load of logs from a friend of yours,” he told Jethro quietly.

“I can’t think of anybody down your way that is a special friend of mine,” Jethro said, puzzled.

“Dave Burdow,” the editor answered. “I’d asked him to come with us today. He wouldn‘t, but he came to town yesterday and asked me to have someone bring up this load of logs he’d cut. He said, ‘Tell the young one Dave Burdow is sending them to him.’ ”

Jethro nodded. “I allow to get thanks—” he paused and flushed as he looked up at the editor. “I want to send thanks to him-one way or the other.”

“I’ve done it for you,” Milton answered, smiling briefly at the evidence that his book had been read. “Dave isn’t used to thanks; they make him restless. But he’s listened, and more than that, he’s shaken several hands that have been extended to him since the two of you rode together through that stretch of woods road last March.”

“I’m proud to hear it,” Jethro said soberly.

“I thought you might be.” Milton turned toward the porch, where Matt waited to speak to him, and Jethro went back to show Charley where to place his wagon and Burdow’s gift.

By noon Ellen, with the help of Nancy and Jenny, had spread a long table out under the silver poplars in the dooryard, and here the men ate roasted meats and potatoes, vegetables preserved from the summer garden, baked beans, and corn bread spread thickly with freshly churned butter. They had autumn peaches picked from the trees and sliced in golden cream, mounds of wild honey, and apples that Nancy’s little boys had polished until they gleamed rosily against the white cloth. The season of plenty in southern Illinois had not been touched by the war.

There might have been no war at all for an hour or so, as the men ate and joked in the mellow sunlight of the dooryard. But during the afternoon, as he carried water and ran a dozen different errands, Jethro heard them talk of a battle in the East. It was at a place he had not quite known how to pronounce when he had read of it in the papers. Antietam.

“Well, McClellan moved,” Israel Thomas was saying, “you hev to say that fer him. He finally moved. Ol’ Abe give him another chancet; maybe now he’ll git down to fightin’, if that ain’t askin’ too much of sech a fine-haired general.”

Ed Turner’s face was full of disgust as he strained to lift a log into place.

“Him git down to fightin‘-don’t ever think of it. He wants to strut around and brag and look han’some, but he don’t want to fight-not him. I reckon 01’ Abe was right; the Army of the Potomac is Mr. McClellan’s bodyguard.”

“Well, he druv Bobby Lee out of Maryland t’other day,” another man remarked. “That much is to his credit.”

“And if Bobby Lee had druv McClellan out, he’d afollered up and apestered the army that was in retreat. But not McClellan. No, he wastes thousands of boys; then he sets back and rests, waitin’ fer them that’s left livin’ to cheer him big.” Ed Turner wiped the sweat from his eyes with an angry gesture. “I got no use for McClellan. I don’t know what 01’ Abe means-tuckerin’ to him like he was some little sawed-off king.”

Then Tom Marin from Rose Hill spoke up. “If you ask my opinion of McClellan, I’ll tell you I don’t think he wants to win. I don’t think he’s ever really goin’ to move in on the Rebs, because their way of thinkin’ is his way of thinkin’.”

“Oh, I reckon he ain’t
that
low. Ol’ Abe must not be quite that pore in pickin’ his head men,” Israel Thomas objected.

“Maybe Ol’ Abe ain’t losin’
his
breath to lick the Rebs either-did ye ever think of that? Why is it he ain’t freed the slaves? Is he afeared of hurtin’ the feelin’s of some of his woman’s kinfolk down in Kaintuck? Why does he put up with this no-account that’s runnin’ the Army of the Potomac? Does he
like
seein’ Bobby Lee run over us? I got a lot of questions about Ol’ Abe that I’d like an answer to.”

“Yore doubts ain’t goin’ to make me down on Ol’ Abe, Tom,” Israel Thomas answered angrily. “Things is tough right now, but this war is a big thing. It’s middlin’ easy fer us farmers and the big editors and the abolitionist preachers to run the job of bein’ president. Ol’ Abe is doin’ all he kin do, I say, and I’m fer him-all the way.”

One of the men took a drink from the water jug Jethro had brought up to the workers, and handing it back, he rumpled the boy’s hair with rough affection.

“Be glad you’re a boy, young feller, and don’t hev to pester yoreself with all these troubles that men be sufferin’ through these days,” he said genially.

Jethro had picked up a mannerism from his mother. He closed his eyes briefly, as if to hide from the world the exasperation with which the man’s words struck him. He knew he must keep quiet; these men were kind, generous men, and anyway, a boy had no right to contradict a man’s opinion. If they wished to think of him as an ignorant child, he must not try to change their idea of him, but it was a bitter dose to swallow.

A few days after the barn-raising a letter came from Shadrach Yale in which he too discussed General McClellan, from the viewpoint of a young soldier who had just known his first experience under fire. Antietam had been the baptismal battle for the young schoolteacher, and the letter to Jenny reflected the agony of a man new to the scenes of death and suffering.

This time Jenny read the letter in its entirety to the family, and then she quietly passed it to her father and to Jethro for rereading. The words of love that interspersed those of mental anguish were not ones that a silly girl blushed over and hoarded to herself. There was a new dignity about Jenny after that letter from Antietam.

Of General McClellan, Shadrach wrote:

The autumn months approached the end of the year in gloom. Fields of green corn turned yellow, and the leaves, withered during the frosty nights, rattled as if in protest as Jethro drove his wagon down the rows and piled it high with full golden ears.

Antietam was over—a name for future history books, a battle at which men in later years, blessed with the advantage of hindsight, would wonder. Jethro, in his manhood, would learn of the incompetence, the blindness, and the ghastly waste of life that followed a lost opportunity; in the autumn of ’62 he only knew that Antietam seemed much like Shiloh—a Federal victory in which one was hard put to find a step toward final triumph and peace.

The career of General McClellan was almost over, too; it would rise with another spurt later on, but that fall the papers blazed with the news that the President had relieved the general of his command, and the name that had outshone all others now plummeted into near-obscurity. Now another man dominated the headlines briefly—very briefly. The new name was that of Ambrose Burnside.

 

In
December Jethro looked for another river and another town in Shadrach’s atlas. The river was the Rappahannock in Virginia; the little town lying on the river was Fredericksburg.

The stories of the battle were ones that brought despair to the North. Fredericksburg had been undertaken with little probability of success, the papers claimed; nothing could have been expected under the shabby plans—if, indeed, they
were
plans—other than appalling slaughter. But Burnside was a stubborn man, determined perhaps to show action and confidence where McClellan had shown hesitancy and uncertainty. Wave after wave of men were sent up the slopes of a chain of hills from the tops of which the entrenched Confederates mowed the Federals down until the ground was piled high with blue-clad bodies. Rumor was that this general, far back from the line of battle, had insisted that still more divisions be sent up the deadly hills, but that he was finally dissuaded by officers of lower rank and keener perception.

Shadrach must have been at Fredericksburg; there could be little doubt of it. The family waited for days, during which Jethro’s waking thoughts were filled with foreboding and his dreams with troubled anxiety. Jenny went about her work silently, and although there was work enough to tire the healthiest of young bodies, she took to going for long walks alone through the wintry fields, as Bill had once done. There was nothing one could say to comfort her.

Finally a letter came, word from Shadrach that he was safe. He wrote:

In Tennessee there was a place called Stones River; John was there, and in the early days of 1863 he wrote to Nancy of what had happened in that battle. He wrote of a commander named Rosecrans (Old Rosy, the men called him) who had repulsed Van Dorn (the Van Dorn of Pea Ridge, Jethro thought) when the Confederates attempted to retake Corinth, and had later replaced Don Carlos Buell when Buell, too much the McClellan type of general, had been relieved of his command. John wrote of bitter cold and suffering that had finally ended with a victory of sorts when the Confederate General Bragg had left in full retreat, stopped short in his move toward Kentucky. Stones River was a victory, but there were thirteen thousand casualties, and John wrote wearily:
“The sufferin and scenes of deth was sech as to make a mans hart hate war.”