The Killer Angels (6 page)

Yet the words had been used too often and the fragments that came to Chamberlain now were weak. A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals? He thought finally, Well, I owe them the truth at least. Might’s well begin with that.

The regiment had begun to form. Chamberlain thought: At least it’ll be a short speech. He walked slowly toward the prisoners.

Glazier Estabrook was standing guard, leaning patiently on his rifle. He was a thick little man of about forty. Except for Kilrain he was the oldest man in the regiment, the strongest man Chamberlain had ever seen. He waved happily as Chamberlain came up but went on leaning on the rifle. He pointed at one of the prisoners.

“Hey, Colonel, you know who this is? This here is Dan Burns from
Orono. I know his daddy. Daddy’s a preacher. You really ought to hear him. Best damn cusser I ever heard. Knows more fine swear words than any man in Maine, I bet. Hee.”

Chamberlain smiled. But the Burns boy was looking at him with no expression. Chamberlain said, “You fellas gather round.”

He stood in the shade, waited while they closed in silently, watchfully around him. In the background the tents were coming down, the wagons were hitching, but some of the men of the regiment had come out to watch and listen. Some of the men here were still chewing. But they were quiet, attentive.

Chamberlain waited a moment longer. Now it was quiet in the grove and the clink of the wagons was sharp in the distance. Chamberlain said, “I’ve been talking with Bucklin. He’s told me your problem.”

Some of the men grumbled. Chamberlain heard no words clearly. He went on speaking softly so that they would have to quiet to hear him.

“I don’t know what I can do about it. I’ll do what I can. I’ll look into it as soon as possible. But there’s nothing I can do today. We’re moving out in a few minutes and we’ll be marching all day and we may be in a big fight before nightfall. But as soon as I can, I’ll do what I can.”

They were silent, watching him. Chamberlain began to relax. He had made many speeches and he had a gift for it. He did not know what it was, but when he spoke most men stopped to listen. Fanny said it was something in his voice. He hoped it was there now.

“I’ve been ordered to take you men with me. I’ve been told that if you don’t come I can shoot you. Well, you know I won’t do that. Not Maine men. I won’t shoot any man who doesn’t want this fight. Maybe someone else will, but I won’t. So that’s that.”

He paused again. There was nothing on their faces to lead him.

“Here’s the situation. I’ve been ordered to take you along, and that’s what I’m going to do. Under guard if necessary. But you can have your rifles if you want them. The whole Reb army is up the road a ways waiting for us and this is no time for an argument like this. I tell you this: we sure can use you. We’re down below half strength and we need you, no doubt of that. But whether you fight or not is up to you. Whether you come along, well, you’re coming.”

Tom had come up with Chamberlain’s horse. Over the heads of the prisoners Chamberlain could see the regiment falling into line out in the flaming road. He took a deep breath.

“Well, I don’t want to preach to you. You know who we are and what we’re doing here. But if you’re going to fight alongside us there’s a few things I want you to know.”

He bowed his head, not looking at eyes. He folded his hands together.

“This regiment was formed last fall, back in Maine. There were a thousand of us then. There’s not three hundred of us now.” He glanced up briefly. “But what is left is choice.”

He was embarrassed. He spoke very slowly, staring at the ground.

“Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came in mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came … because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. Most of us never saw a black man back home. We think on that, too. But freedom … is not just a word.”

He looked up into the sky, over silent faces.

“This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. I don’t … this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We’re an army going out to set other men free.”

He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, “This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what
you
do, not by what your father was. Here you can be
something
. Here’s a place to build a home. It isn’t the land—there’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me, we’re worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I’d die for, but I’m not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we’re all fighting for, in the end, is each other.”

Once he started talking he broke right through the embarrassment
and there was suddenly no longer a barrier there. The words came out of him in a clear river, and he felt himself silent and suspended in the grove listening to himself speak, carried outside himself and looking back down on the silent faces and himself speaking, and he felt the power in him, the power of his cause. For an instant he could see black castles in the air; he could create centuries of screaming, eons of torture. Then he was back in sunlit Pennsylvania. The bugles were blowing and he was done.

He had nothing else to say. No one moved. He felt the embarrassment return. He was suddenly enormously tired. The faces were staring up at him like white stones. Some heads were down. He said, “Didn’t mean to preach. Sorry. But I thought … you should know who we are.” He had forgotten how tiring it was just to speak. “Well, this is still the army, but you’re as free as I can make you. Go ahead and talk for a while. If you want your rifles for this fight you’ll have them back and nothing else will be said. If you won’t join us you’ll come along under guard. When this is over I’ll do what I can to see that you get fair treatment. Now we have to move out.” He stopped, looked at them. The faces showed nothing. He said slowly, “I think if we lose this fight the war will be over. So if you choose to come with us I’ll be personally grateful. Well. We have to move out.”

He turned, left silence behind him. Tom came up with the horse—a pale-gray lightfooted animal. Tom’s face was shiny red.

“My, Lawrence, you sure talk pretty.”

Chamberlain grunted. He was really tired. Rest a moment. He paused with his hands on the saddle horn. There was a new vague doubt stirring in his brain. Something troubled him; he did not know why.

“You ride today, Lawrence. You look weary.”

Chamberlain nodded. Ellis Spear was up. He was Chamberlain’s ranking officer, an ex-teacher from Wiscasset who was impressed with Chamberlain’s professorship. A shy man, formal, but very competent. He gestured toward the prisoners.

“Colonel, what do you suggest we do with them?”

“Give them a moment. Some of them may be willing to fight. Tom, you go back and see what they say. We’ll have to march them under
guard. Don’t know what else to do. I’m not going to shoot them. We can’t leave them here.”

The regiment had formed out in the road, the color bearers in front. Chamberlain mounted, put on the wide-brimmed hat with the emblem of the infantry, began walking his horse slowly across the field toward the road. The uneasiness still troubled him. He had missed something, he did not know what. Well, he was an instinctive man; the mind would tell him sooner or later. Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it. But then … you were asking them to die.

Ellis Spear was saying, “How far are we from Pennsylvania, Colonel, you have any idea?”

“Better than twenty miles.” Chamberlain squinted upward. “Going to be another hot day.”

He moved to the head of the column. The troops were moving slowly, patiently, setting themselves for the long march. After a moment Tom came riding up. His face was delighted. Chamberlain said, “How many are going to join us?”

Tom grinned hugely. “Would you believe it? All but six.”

“
How many?
”

“I counted, by actual count, one hundred and fourteen.”

“Well.” Chamberlain rubbed his nose, astounded.

Tom said, still grinning, “Brother, you did real good.”

“They’re all marching together?”

“Right. Glazier’s got the six hardheads in tow.”

“Well, get all the names and start assigning them to different companies. I don’t want them bunched up, spread them out. See about their arms.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel, sir.”

Chamberlain reached the head of the column. The road ahead was long and straight, rising toward a ridge of trees. He turned in his saddle, looked back, saw the entire Fifth Corps forming behind him. He thought: 120 new men. Hardly noticeable in such a mass. And yet … he felt a moment of huge joy. He called for road guards and skirmishers and the 20th Maine began to move toward Gettysburg.

The land west of Gettysburg is a series of ridges, like waves in the earth. The first Rebel infantry came in that way, down the narrow gray road from the mountain gap. At noon they were in sight of the town. It was a small neat place: white board houses, rail fences, all in order, one white church steeple. The soldiers coming over the last ridge by the Lutheran Seminary could see across the town to the hills beyond and a winding gray road coming up from the south, and as the first gray troops entered the town there was motion on that southern road: a blur, blue movement, blue cavalry. They came on slowly around the last bend, a long blue smoking snake, spiked with guns and flags. The soldiers looked at each other across vacant fields. The day was very hot; the sky was a steamy haze. Someone lifted a gun and fired, but the range was too long. The streets of Gettysburg were deserted.

Just beyond the town there were two hills. One was wooded and green; the other was flat, topped by a cemetery. The Union commander, a tall blond sunburned man named John Buford, rode up the long slope to the top of the hill, into the cemetery. He stopped by a stone wall, looked down across flat open ground, lovely clear field of fire. He could see all the way across the town and the ridges to the blue mountains beyond, a darkening sky. On the far side of the town there
was a red brick building, the stately seminary, topped with a white cupola. The road by the building was jammed with Rebel troops. Buford counted half a dozen flags. He had thought it was only a raiding party. Now he sensed power behind it, a road flowing with troops all the way back to the mountains.

The first blue brigade had stopped on the road below, by a red barn. The commander of that brigade, Bill Gamble, came up the hill on a muddy horse, trailed by a small cloud of aides, gazed westward with watery eyes. He wheezed, wiping his nose.

“By God, that’s infantry.”

Buford put the glasses to his eyes. He saw one man on a black horse, waving a plumed hat: an officer. The Rebel troops had stopped. Buford looked around, searching for other movement. He saw a squad of blue troopers, his own men, riding down into deserted streets. Still no sound of gunfire.

Gamble said, “That’s one whole brigade. At least one brigade.”

“Do you see any cavalry?”

Gamble swept the horizon, shook his head.

Strange. Infantry moving alone in enemy country. Blind. Very strange.

Gamble sneezed violently, wiped his nose on his coat, swore, wheezed. His nose had been running all that day. He pointed back along the ridge beyond the cemetery.

“If you want to fight here, sir, this sure is lovely ground. We tuck in here behind this stone wall and I’d be proud to defend it. Best damn ground I’ve seen all day.”

Buford said, “It is that.” But he had only two brigades. He was only a scout. The big infantry was a long day’s march behind him. But Gamble was right: It was lovely ground.

“By God, I think they’re pulling back.”

Buford looked. The gray troops had turned; they had begun to withdraw back up the road. Slowly, very slowly. He could see back-turned faces, feel the cold defiance. But he felt himself loosen, begin to breathe.

“Now that’s damned strange.” Gamble sniffled. “What do you make of that?”

Buford shook his head. He rode slowly along the stone wall, suspending judgment. There was no wind at all; it was exactly noon. It was very quiet among the gravestones. Superb ground. He thought: they must have orders not to fight. Which means they don’t know who we are or how many. Which means they have no cavalry, no eyes. He stopped by a white angel, arm uplifted, a stony sadness. For five days Buford had been tracking Lee’s army, shadowing it from a long way off as you track a big cat. But now the cat had turned.

Buford said aloud, “He’s coming this way.”