Talons of Eagles (6 page)

It was a black flag with a pirate's skull and crossbones in the center.

Leaving his two companies resting in the woods, Jamie rode over to Beauregard's headquarters—his aide, Little Ben Pardee, rode with him. General Joseph E. Johnston was there. Johnston, being the senior officer, was in command of the entire Rebel army. But for the Battle of Manassas (the Yankees called it Bull Run), he left Beauregard in complete command.

It was the 20th of July, 1861.

Reinforcements were arriving almost hourly. General T.J. Jackson and his Virginia Brigade had arrived, as had General B.E. Bee from South Carolina and General E.K. Smith and his men. General Theophilus Holmes had arrived with his troops, as had Colonel Hampton and his South Carolina Hampton Legion and Colonel Bartow's Georgia Brigade. Many had their own flags, and it was getting confusing, for the flags were all different, some of them not even using the Confederate colors. The flag of the Florida Independent Blues, for example, was a blue background with seven white stars on top, a flower in the middle, and the words ANY FATE BUT SUBMISSION, in a half circle on the bottom. One flag from South Carolina had blue and red squares with a fox, a cannon, a quarter moon, and a palm tree embroidered on the flag. Soon most of the flags would be replaced by the Rebel battle flag, which had thirteen white stars against a blue X, the stars representing the eleven Confederate states plus the two that the Rebels claimed, Missouri and Kentucky.

General Beauregard's HQ during the Battle of Manassas was a private home near Manassas Junction. President Jefferson Davis would meet with Beauregard there, and some fifteen months later, President Abe Lincoln would meet with some of his generals in the very same house.

In addition to the thousands of Confederate troops already gathered, by July 21, more than nine thousand other Rebels had made the trip by railroad to beef up the Confederate army. At the same time, the Union forces were also being increased—by reporters and civilian well-wishers who came bringing picnic lunches and kegs of beer and stronger spirits. They pitched tents and laid down blankets and cots. They came by the hundreds, getting in the way and in general making a nuisance of themselves. They were in high spirits, some having traveled long distances to witness firsthand the Union army give the Confederate army a good sound licking and to teach these upstart Southerners a lesson. They settled in under whatever shade they could find and uncorked their spy glasses and field glasses and got ready to have a party after the battle that would soon and forever after be called the Battle of Bull Run.

One of Jamie's men who had lived for a time in Ohio, and did not have a pronounced Southern drawl, slipped into Yankee held territory and mingled with the crowds for a day, before slipping back across the lines that night.

“Must be near 'bouts a thousand civilians over there, Major. Man name of Matt Brady is over there with his cameras, and there are congressmen and senators from Washington, D.C., there. And they got troops comin' in just like we have.”

One of General Johnston's aides was in camp, and he asked, “Civilians? Why?”

“To watch the Yankees whip us, sir.”

The aide smiled. “They just might be in for a slight disappointment.”

“We're counting on that,” Captain Dupree said.

“Major MacCallister, General Johnston has orders for you and your Marauders. When the battle starts in earnest, he wants you and your men to cross the stream and launch a flanking action here.” He pointed to a map. “Create a lot of confusion.”

“We do that right well,” Sparks drawled.

“Yes,” the aide said with a smile. “We know.”

* * *

Long after the aide had left, Jamie studied the crude maps and the overall battle plan carefully and again immediately picked up the flaws in it. The northwest, or left, side of the line was grossly undermanned. Beauregard had placed the bulk of his troops far to the right, down around Mitchell's Ford, Blackburn's Ford, and McLean's Ford, leaving the left side of the line very nearly wide open.

But Jamie wasn't about to openly question the commanding general on his battle tactics. However, he could see to it that the Union forces he was to face in a few hours would think they were up against a much larger force. He didn't know quite how he was going to do that, yet, but he'd work it out.

He was awakened at three o'clock on the morning of July 21 by a runner. “The Yankees are on the move, sir,” the young man told him. “They were rousted out about an hour ago. Them that could sleep that is. Our people in the observation posts say the Yankees hardly slept at all.”

Pulling on his moccasins and tying his leggins, Jamie looked at the young man. “And you, son?”

The runner grinned. “I ain't slept none, Major. War's in the air, I reckon.”

“Indeed,” Jamie replied, standing up.

Jamie and his men drank coffee and ate cold biscuits, then doused their small fires and saddled up. With Jamie in the lead, they moved silently through the brush and timber over to Colonel Evans' position between Young's Branch and the stream called Bull Run.

Jamie and Evans shook hands, and Evans asked, “Your orders, Major?”

“To raise some hell with the Yankees, sir. I figure they'll hit us at dawn.”

“If they can ever get into position. My forward people report a lot of confusion and cussing over there.”

He was right about that. The terrain was totally unfamiliar to the Union troops, and many were stumbling around and tripping over things and falling down. The rattle of Yankee equipment clattering against rocks and such was enough to raise the dead.

The Rebels waited behind their guns, silent in the gloom of night.

From Ewell's command far to the right, all the way over to Evans' command, some six or seven miles away, the Rebels shared the same fear as the Yankees. It was hard to get enough moisture in their mouths to even spit. In a few spots along the snakelike line, Union and Confederate troops were only a few yards away from each other, with many of them taunting the other.

“You come acrost this crick, boy, you gonna die.”

“You go straight to hell, Rebel!”

“Hell's waitin' for both of us, I reckon.”

“Not for me, I don't own human beings as slaves.”

“I don't neither. Never owned a slave in my life. Ain't nary a slave on either side of my family. Never has been.”

A long silence followed that. Finally, the unknown Union soldier asked the equally unknown Rebel, “Then what the hell are you doing fighting?”

“So's you Yankees will stay out of my business, I reckon.”

“I'm not in your business!”

“The hell you say. You here, ain't you?”

The Yankee could not argue that.

“If you blue-bellies had tended to your own affairs, I'd be home asleep 'side my wife instead of on this damn cold ground.”

“Where are you from?”

“South Carolina. You?”

“New York. We're both a long way from hearth and home.”

“You damn shore got that right.”

“Silence up and down the line!” Rebel and Union sergeants ordered.

Both Yankee and Rebel told the unseen voices where they could shove their orders.

Both men would be dead in a few hours. Neither man quite sure what he was fighting for, but each firmly convinced he was on the right side.

At dawn, Jamie had moved his people several hundred yards away from Evans' position and was keeping them hidden in a stand of brush and timber. Nothing was happening down the line, and Jamie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had a strong suspicion that the whole of the Union army was going to come pouring right over and through his and Evans' men.

He wasn't that far from being right.

Just a few minutes after seven that morning, Colonel Evans sent a runner to tell Jamie, “The colonel thinks the Yankees are bluffing. They aren't going to attack in strength along our positions. He thinks they're going to strike at Sudley Ford. That's Burnside's Yankees. The colonel wants you and your people over there. He'll join you as quickly as possible.”

Jamie quickly shifted his Marauders over to the left, and they waited. Just a few minutes later, he saw the glint of Union bayonets flashing in the morning sun as the first troops moved into position in the trees around Sudley Ford.

Jamie sent Ben Pardee on the fly to tell Evans of the news. After Pardee blurted out the message, Evans quickly shifted his command around, putting Major Wheat and his red-shirted, five-hundred-man Louisiana Tigers just to Jamie's right.

Wheat's Tigers were a unit known for its bravery under fire. Later on during the Battle of Bull Run, one Union colonel, after witnessing his men being soundly thrashed by the Louisiana Tigers, called them, “The most belligerent bunch of bastards I have ever faced.”

Jamie rode over to meet with Wheat. He could look Wheat straight in the eye, for both men were over six feet, four inches tall, although Wheat outweighed Jamie's two hundred twenty-five pounds by a good seventy-five pounds. Major Roberdeau Wheat was a very imposing figure of a man.

“We're slightly outnumbered down there, MacCallister,” Wheat remarked, after lowering field glasses.

Jamie smiled. “About twenty-five to one, I'd say. But I have a plan.”

“Oh?”

“We'll charge!”

Wheat roared with laughter. “You're damn right, we will. I'll get my boys ready and wait for your signal.”

Jamie rode back to his Marauders and told them what he planned to do. His men grinned at him. Jamie, at the far point of the left side, watched for a time longer and then sent Ben Pardee racing back to Evans.

“We're being flanked, sir,” Pardee panted out the warning. “Just north of the Stone Bridge.”

“What's Major MacCallister going to do?”

“Us and Major Wheat is fixin' to charge, sir.”

“What?” Evans blurted, but Pardee was already back in the saddle and galloping away, not wanting to miss the charge against the Yankees. His haste was uncalled for. The first charge would not come for a couple more hours.

Colonel Evans was thoughtful for a moment; then he smiled. “That just might be a pretty good idea,” he said aloud.

Evans then began moving very fast. He ordered out skirmishers but kept the bulk of his troops well hidden. He did not want the Yankees to know just how few men he really had and just how vulnerable he was.

Then the Union troops came in a rush. Evans committed more of his Rebels, and they caught the Union troops in a blistering fire, pinning them down. The Yankee commanders started shifting troops around, somehow realizing how thin the Rebels' lines were. Just as the Union commanders were shouting the orders to charge, a thundering pound of hooves and spine-tingling Rebel battle cries filled the air.

The Federal troops must have thought somebody opened the gates to hell. On one side there were some two-hundred-odd gray-shirted and black-trousered men on horseback, screaming as they charged them, a horrible-looking black flag with a ghastly white skull and crossbones against the black flapping in the wind. The mounted charge being led by a black-shirted man who held the reins in his teeth, both hands filled with pistols.

On the other side, there came what appeared to be a sea of red-shirted soldiers led by a huge man with a pistol in one hand and a Bowie knife in the other. Wheat and his men were screaming Rebel yells as they charged down the hill, straight into the startled Union troops. Jamie's Marauders hit the Union forces from one side, and Wheat's Louisiana Tigers slammed into them from the other.

Jamie emptied both pistols, holstered them, and grabbed for the two on the left and right of his saddle and began firing. He charged Satan into the sea of blue, and the big horse knocked men spinning in all directions.

The charge was costly for both the Marauders and Wheat's Tigers. In Jamie's unit ten men were killed and a dozen wounded. Wheat lost almost fifty men, dead and wounded, and was hard hit himself.

Jamie's and Wheat's men retreated, having created chaos and confusion, giving Beauregard time to send in reinforcements. Wheat was badly wounded, so gravely the doctors told him he didn't have a chance and to make his peace with God.

Wheat, showing all the belligerence he and his Louisiana Tigers were famous for, was reported to have told all the doctors (among other things) to go right straight to hell; he had no intention of dying just yet. He turned over his command to his executive officer and was back on his feet in a month, once more leading the Tigers into battle.

But it was the Union forces who took the greatest casualties: several hundred blue-shirted troops lay dead or wounded as Jamie and his Marauders and Wheat's Louisianans retreated back over the ridge to safety, carrying their dead and their wounded.

Their combined actions had bought a little time for Evans. But after assessing the situation, Evans decided it was time for a major pull-back; he had received word that another Yankee column was crossing the bridge at Sudley Ford. Evans ordered a withdrawal just as two Confederate brigades came running and riding up, bringing with them much needed artillery.

“We're out of here!” Jamie shouted to his men, swinging into the saddle. “Follow me!”

Units from Alabama and Mississippi, under the command of General Bee, and units from Georgia, under the command of Colonel Bartow, formed a line facing the Yankees, some of the Rebels as close as fifty yards from the Union forces. The Rebels began alternately taunting and shooting at the Yankees. They would jump up, fire, fall down in the ditches or behind whatever cover they had, and reload and yell at the Yankees. Where they were, on the extreme left side of Beauregard's line, looking at the Union troops over on Matthews Hill, there were approximately five thousand Rebels facing some fifteen thousand Federal troops. Even though, or probably because, they were outnumbered at least three to one, the Rebels charged the Yankee lines, the bold move surprising the Union commanders. General Bee's troops quickly pulled out in front of the rest of the Rebels, leaving both flanks badly exposed. Bee ordered Evans and Bartow back and withdrew to Young's Branch.

Jamie sat on a ridge not far away and watched the action through field glasses while his men rested behind him. He could see no reasonable course of action for his men to take. Just as he was rising to his feet, a runner from headquarters reached his side.

“Orders from General Beauregard, sir. You are asked to take your men up to the Warrenton Turnpike and try to prevent Burnside's troops from flanking Evans.”

Jamie smiled. “Less than two hundred lightly armed men against five thousand? Of course! We're riding now.”

It was eleven o'clock in the morning, the fight had been raging for several hours, and both sides had taken terrible losses, the dead and badly wounded littering the ground.

General McDowell ordered General Tyler to mount an attack—to take his troops across Bull Run. Jamie and his Marauders and about three hundred other Rebels, men who had gotten cut off from their units, were gathering in a thickly wooded area along the Warrenton Turnpike. Jamie looked around for an officer among the regular soldiers; there was none.

“What do we do, sir?” a badly frightened young Rebel asked. He was gripping his rifle so tightly his knuckles were white from the strain.

Jamie looked at the lad; no more than sixteen or seventeen years old. He put a big hand on the boy's shoulder as twenty or thirty others gathered around him. “First of all, men, we calm down and get our wits about us.” The group around him had swelled and now fell silent, listening, those men cut off from their units glad to finally have some leadership.

Jamie had no way of knowing that more than five thousand men were bearing down on him, only minutes away. Had no way of knowing that two Union brigades, commanded by Sherman and Keyes, were heading directly toward his position.

Command Sergeant Major Huske galloped up and leaped off his horse, pushing through the crowd to Jamie's side. He whispered in Jamie's ear.

Jamie did not change expression at the news. Huske stepped away, and Jamie said, “Fall in and start moving back. And we will do this in an orderly fashion. You're soldiers, so act like it. Sergeant Major Huske will take command of you men. Now move out.”