Free Mr Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton Page A

time—1,040 young men
singing it, with a brass band playing and a great roll of drums and all the
feet rhythmically tramping on the pavement. And in Washington they sang it
again, and in no time at all the song was famous from the seacoast to the
Mississippi Valley, and all the troops around Washington were singing it. Then
one afternoon Julia Ward Howe sat in a carriage, heard a marching brigade
singing it—the Black Hat boys claim it was their brigade, which is as it may
be—and regretted that so fine a tune did not have better words. Early next
morning she sat by an open window and wrote the mighty battle hymn, which has
been a heritage of Americans ever since. And the 12th Massachusetts had started
it all—or, if one goes back farther, the workaday 2nd regiment of regulars,
aided by a pious hymnographer from the deepest south. 8
     
    But the dandy 12th was a long way from the
ladies of Boston now, and Colonel Webster was killed, and the 12th was finally
forced back, along with the rest of Ricketts's men and the Germans.
    For
whatever it might be worth to them, they had at least made Confederate John B.
Hood pause and call for help before they retreated—a thing not too many Union
troops were able to do, then or at any other time.
    Dusk came, and the field dissolved in a blur
of retreating regiments, bewildered stragglers, defiant batteries firing
canister to stay the advancing Confederates, and heavy waves of assault
crashing against the last hills this side of Bull Run Bridge, over which the
entire army had to retreat. John Gibbon found himself on one of these hills,
bringing his brigade and steady old Battery B back step by step in such fine
order that General McDowell, riding up, told him to take charge of the whole
rear guard and be last man over the bridge. McDowell rode away and Phil Kearny
came up, furious with the shame of defeat.
    "I suppose you appreciate the condition
of affairs here, sir?" said Kearny savagely. Gibbon looked at him
inquiringly. "It's another Bull Run, sir, it's another Bull Run!"
    Gibbon hoped it was
not as bad as that.
    "Perhaps
not," said Kearny. "Reno is keeping up the fight. He is not stampeded.
I am not stampeded. You are not stampeded. That is about all, sir, my God,
that's about all!" 9
    The sun went down, and in the twilight the
air was so full of smoke that the Union Army could not see the men who had
beaten it. But the bullets and the shell kept coming, and the rear guard hung
on and let the wreckage stream back across the bridge, and the Pennsylvanians
and Sykes's regulars and some of Sigel's Germans stayed grimly on the Henry
House Hill, where Stonewall Jackson had won his nickname the summer before, and
at last it was time to go. Gibbon's men got across, finally, and formed line
of battle along the far side of the stream, but there was no further pursuit.
The battle was over. Hungry Federals scrabbled among the wreckage of overturned
wagons near the bridge to collect hardtack.
    Late that night Phil Kearny overtook his
headquarters wagon and sat down to write out his report. He had a writing pad
on his knee, and since he had but one arm an aide stood by, steadying the pad
with one hand. The aide was young, and what he had been through that day had
shaken him, and he trembled, making the pad quiver.
    Kearny
looked up and asked him what was the matter. Frankly the youngster confessed
that he was afraid.
    Kearny gave him a
long, sober look.
    "You must never
be frightened of anything," he said. 10
     
     
    4.
Man on a Black Horse
     
    The
stone bridge and the road leading across it were a tangle of lost soldiers,
sutlers' wagons, jolting guns and caissons, and weary regiments and brigades
striving to keep some sort of formation as they forced their way through the
confusion. A dozen long wagon trains were trying to get on the road
simultaneously—some of them had been called from Centreville that morning, when
the army thought it was going to pursue someone, and they arrived just