Lt. General Richard Taylor, CSA
“I am afraid you are a wicked fellow.” General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson to Taylor, near Winchester, Virginia 1862.
AND FOREVER BE FREE
By Rich Trzupek
Copyright 2009 Richard J. Trzupek
Chapter Four
They fled north.
There were almost 15,000 Union soldiers in Harpers Ferry. If there was anywhere safe in Virginia, it was there.
The road from Martinsburg was crowded with refugees fleeing the Southern Army. Family belongings, hastily packed, were piled atop wagons and buckboards in crazy heaps. It seemed to Sara that the whole of the Shenandoah River was fleeing from the Confederates.
In fact, that wasn’t the case. Very few people had chosen to leave there homes. Most would wait out the approaching storm. If they were Yankees, they might huddle quietly in their parlors or, at worst, hide in their cellars. If they were rebels, they were as likely to greet Stonewalls Army with hastily sown flags waving from their porches. Either way, few were anxious to leave there homes.
Yet for some, like Sara’s Aunt, the specter of war was too much. Jean took her responsibility for her young niece quite seriously. She could too easily envision Sara running off in the midst of battle, as though it were some adventure. She could too easily envision Sara being captured by the enemy, or hurt – or worse. She made the decision to leave, as did a few hundred others. All of them made the choice at nearly the same moment, almost as if it were planned.
They hurried up the road on foot, dodging wagons and carriages speeding past them. They walked through the late hours of the evening and into the early light of day. It was like a dream to Sara – something unreal. She felt almost as if she was watching a play, as if some actress were playing the role of Sara in a tense drama. She wondered how it would come out.
The Danhursts stayed behind of course. They had little to fear from a Southern Army. Their slaves might, but they were Danhurst property and had no choice in the matter. Mr. Danhurst dispatched Mr. Crampton and his men to be sure that no one tried to escape in the confusion.
Unbeknownst to anyone, one small, dark form had managed to escape. Little Lucinda, terrified by the stories she had heard, managed to slip past Danhust’s men into the late evening’s shadows. She crept along through the woods lining the road north, staying just out of sight.
When Sara and her aunt reached Harpers Ferry, they were shocked by what they found. The town was all but deserted. Perhaps a hundred citizens remained – too stubborn or too foolish to have left – out of the thousands who had lived there before the war. The town was deserted, for the most part. Wreckage and trash filled the streets. There was not a single shop that had not been vandalized. It was as if a tornado had hit the town.
The Union army was camped on the edge of town, hidden (they hoped) from view. A few lonely soldiers patrolled the streets proper. They stopped Sara and her aunt, warily questioning them in case they might be Southern spies.
Sara and Aunt Jean managed to find Sara’s old house, but it was a hollow shell of the comfortable home she had known. It had been ransacked along with the rest of the homes on the street. Old treasures had been stolen, or worse, smashed without reason. Sara came across an old porcelain doll she had been given as an infant, lying in pieces on the floor. With tears in her eyes, she tried to reassemble the shattered remnants.
“Who did this?” Sara asked her aunt quietly.
Aunt Jean laid an arm across Sara’s shoulders. “It’s impossible to tell. War brings out the best and the worst in people. It might have been someone who stayed behind. It might have been a soldier.”
“A rebel soldier you mean,” Sara said bitterly.
“Maybe,” Aunt Jean replied. “There are some bad men in both armies dear, just as there are many good men.”
Sara didn’t believe that there could be men in the Union Army who would have done something like this. The Union soldiers were there to protect them, not to destroy. It had to be a rebel, she was sure. “I think it was a rebel,” Sara said.
Aunt Jean understood; it was easier for her niece to think about it that way. She nodded and said simply, “we’ll never know…”
They left the deserted house and made their way to the great armory. There lie the Union Army, safe – for the moment – inside its great brick walls. The soldier guarding the gate let them in and directed them to the captain who was managing civilian refugees. A small tent city had been erected within the armory grounds to house any civilians who might need refuge. It was crowded and Sara and her Aunt found themselves sharing a tent with an elderly matron and her young grandaugther. There was just room enough for them all to spend a restless night lying on the rough ground inside the thick, itchy wool blankets the soldiers had provided.
The night was miserable enough, but the events of the next day made the previous evening seem almost like a picnic. About midday, while Sara and Aunt Jean were lunching on the bacon and biscuits that were the soldiers’ staple, there was a loud “boom” from the hills that surrounded the town. In an instant, all was chaos. Sara heard a loud shrieking sound that grew louder and louder, like a train roaring toward a station at tremendous speed. Sara’s aunt grabbed her and threw her to the ground as civilians and soldiers yelled in terror and scattered in all directions. A huge explosion shook the ground a moment later.
They had not been able to run from Stonewall Jackson after all. Having swept through Martinsburg, Stonewall had found them.
Sara had never heard anything so loud in her life. The ground under her feet rocked and seemed to groan. Screams filled the air. A few seconds later there was another explosion, even louder than the first. Then another – and another – and another. They all seemed to come on top of each other now. Sara’s ears rang with the echo.
A tall soldier in blue came up to Sara and her aunt, seemingly unconcerned by the storm of fire. He had sandy hair and beard and was wearing a dirty blue tunic with three chevrons on the sleeve.
“Come with me please ma’am,” he said to Aunt Jean.
Aunt Jean opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She didn’t budge from her sheltering position atop her niece.
The soldier stooped low and gently pulled her up by the soldier. “There’s nothing to fear ma’am,” he said. “They’re firing on our positions, not on this camp.” He gestured toward the far walls of the armory. “Come with me and I’ll take you someplace safe.”
Dumbly, Aunt Jean and Sara followed the tall soldier, along with a score of other civilians in his care. He lead them to a narrow stairway leading underground. At the bottom of the stairs lie a dark, musty room with stone floors and walls. There were about a hundred civilians huddled on the floor, some holding each other, some simply staring mutely into space. A “bombproof” the soldier called the room and assured his group that no shell could harm them there. Instructing them to stay put until a soldier in blue came to fetch them, he hurried back up the stairs. Sara and her aunt curled up on the floor, listening to the muffled thumps of the shells and the shouts of the soldiers above.
The siege of Harpers Ferry had begun.
Harpers Ferry is surrounded by three tall ranges of hills that dominate the town: Loudoun Heights to the southeast, Bolivar Heights to the west and Maryland Heights to the north. An army that controlled these hills could shell Harpers Ferry at will with their cannon from above. The army in the town would be almost powerless to stop them, since shooting up is much more difficult than shooting down.
Stonewall Jackson knew that he had to capture these heights to take Harpers Ferry. The Union commander, Colonel Miles left Loudoun and Maryland Heights unguarded and Stonewall had placed his cannon there. Now he was out to take Bolivar Height and completely surround Harpers Ferry. Harpers Ferry was a great prize, housing a large Union army, hundreds of cannon and thousands of rifles. Stonewall wanted them all. Once he had taken all of the heights, Harpers Ferry would be his.
At the same time, miles away in Maryland, a Union corporal, discovered a rare prize: three cigars wrapped in paper. Cigars were much prized in that day and age, but only officers could normally afford them. For a lowly corporal, this treasure was almost too good to be true.
As the corporal examined his prizes, he noticed something strange about the paper they were wrapped in. The paper had a great deal of writing on it. Curious he read it. As he digested the words, his heart quickened and his eyes widened in surprise. The paper was signed by General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army. It contained all of his secret plans for the invasion of the North. With these plans, the Union Army could not only defeat Stonewall, they could beat the rest of Lee’s army. The corporal gave a yell and rushed to find his captain.
At Harpers Ferry, there was pause in the siege. The quiet was almost deafening in the bombproof as the huddling civilians looked anxiously at the stone roof – wondering if it were really over. It wasn’t. It was just a pause, but after a few minutes a young soldier in blue came to the door to lead the group back up the stairs for a breath of air.
Sara and her aunt gulped the cool air greedily, hoping it was indeed all over. Sara’s eyes searched the grounds for some sign when her eyes caught a familiar face near one of the brick buildings on the grounds. It was the kind sandy haired soldier who had rescued them earlier. He seemed to be resting, sitting on the ground with his back to the wall. Sara left her aunt’s side to approach him, hoping that he could tell her what was happening.
As she came nearer, she noticed that the sandy haired soldier’s head was cocked at an odd angle and that he didn’t seem to be moving. His eyes were open wide and glazed over and his mouth hung agape. As she came near, she saw the puddle of dark blood on the ground and the ugly, jagged gash on the side of his neck where a piece of exploding iron – “shrapnel” – had entered his body.
The sandy haired soldier was dead. She stared for a long moment in disbelief, then turned and ran back to her aunt as fast as she could.
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