Meantime the men were being drilled by the Captain and his lieutenants, who had been militia officers of old.We were carried to see the drill at the cross-roads, and a brave sight it seemed to us: the lines marching and countermarching in the field, with the horses galloping as they wheeled amid clouds of dust, at the hoarse commands of the excited officers, and the roadside lined with spectators of every age and condition.
I recall the arrival of the messenger one night, with the telegraphic order to the Captain to report with his company at "Camp Lee" immediately;the hush in the parlor that attended its reading; then the forced beginning of the conversation afterwards in a somewhat strained and unnatural key, and the Captain's quick and decisive outlining of his plans.
Within the hour a dozen messengers were on their way in various directions to notify the members of the command of the summons, and to deliver the order for their attendance at a given point next day.It seemed that a sudden and great change had come.It was the actual appearance of what had hitherto only been theoretical -- war.The next morning the Captain, in full uniform, took leave of the assembled plantation, with a few solemn words commending all he left behind to God, and galloped away up the big road to join and lead his battery to the war, and to be gone just four years.
Within a month he was on "the Peninsula" with Magruder, guarding Virginia on the east against the first attack.His camp was first at Yorktown and then on Jamestown Island, the honor having been assigned his battery of guarding the oldest cradle of the race on this continent.
It was at "Little Bethel" that his guns were first trained on the enemy, and that the battery first saw what they had to do, and from this time until the middle of April, 1865, they were in service, and no battery saw more service or suffered more in it.Its story was a part of the story of the Southern Army in Virginia.The Captain was a rigid disciplinarian, and his company had more work to do than most new companies.
A pious churchman, of the old puritanical type not uncommon to Virginia, he looked after the spiritual as well as the physical welfare of his men, and his chaplain or he read prayers at the head of his company every morning during the war.At first he was not popular with the men, he made the duties of camp life so onerous to them, it was "nothing but drilling and praying all the time," they said.
But he had not commanded very long before they came to know the stuff that was in him.He had not been in service a year before he had had four horses shot under him, and when later on he was offered the command of a battalion, the old company petitioned to be one of his batteries, and still remained under his command.
Before the first year was out the battery had, through its own elements, and the discipline of the Captain, become a cohesive force, and a distinct integer in the Army of Northern Virginia.
Young farmer recruits knew of its prestige and expressed preference for it of many batteries of rapidly growing or grown reputation.Owing to its high stand, the old and clumsy guns with which it had started out were taken from it, and in their place was presented a battery of four fine, brass, twelve-pound Napoleons of the newest and most approved kind, and two three-inch Parrotts, all captured.The men were as pleased with them as children with new toys.The care and attention needed to keep them in prime order broke the monotony of camp life.They soon had abundant opportunities to test their power.They worked admirably, carried far, and were extraordinarily accurate in their aim.
The men from admiration of their guns grew to have first a pride in, and then an affection for, them, and gave them nicknames as they did their comrades; the four Napoleons being dubbed "The Evangelists", and the two rifles being "The Eagle", because of its scream and force, and "The Cat", because when it became hot from rapid firing "It jumped,"they said, "like a cat." From many a hill-top in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania "The Evangelists" spoke their hoarse message of battle and death, "The Eagle" screamed her terrible note, and "The Cat" jumped as she spat her deadly shot from her hot throat.
In the Valley of Virginia; on the levels of Henrico and Hanover;on the slopes of Manassas; in the woods of Chancellorsville;on the heights of Fredericksburg; at Antietam and Gettysburg;in the Spottsylvania wilderness, and again on the Hanover levels and on the lines before Petersburg, the old guns through nearly four years roared from fiery throats their deadly messages.The history of the battery was bound up with the history of Lee's army.A rivalry sprang up among the detachments of the different guns, and their several records were jealously kept.The number of duels each gun was in was carefully counted, every scar got in battle was treasured, and the men around their camp-fires, at their scanty messes, or on the march, bragged of them among themselves and avouched them as witnesses.New recruits coming in to fill the gaps made by the killed and disabled, readily fell in with the common mood and caught the spirit like a contagion.It was not an uncommon thing for a wheel to be smashed in by a shell, but if it happened to one gun oftener than to another there was envy.Two of the Evangelists seemed to be especially favored in this line, while the Cat was so exempt as to become the subject of some derision.The men stood by the guns till they were knocked to pieces, and when the fortune of the day went against them, had with their own hands oftener than once saved them after most of their horses were killed.
This had happened in turn to every gun, the men at times working like beavers in mud up to their thighs and under a murderous fire to get their guns out.
Many a man had been killed tugging at trail or wheel when the day was against them; but not a gun had ever been lost.At last the evil day arrived.
