Northern soil. We stepped with little straggling
in our brigade this time, and somewhere near
Frederick the pace picked up as if some charge
of lightning had been fed to headquarters.
You could sense sterner purpose in the march.
Some Indiana boys had found Lee’s orders
and now Little Mac and our generals knew
the Rebs had split. Now we knew what to do.
South Mountain
On the fourteenth we marched to South Mountain
from our camp near Frederick. The day was warm
and many of the boys just shed their twenty
extra cartridges. Carry sixty pounds
of knapsack, rations, steel—and there’s more harm
in too much weight than waste. Forty’s plenty.
Your piece would foul before you’d get past forty.
The Rebels bragged about how light they marched,
and so they did. And how, their blacks could tell.
We hoisted ours and carried it ourselves.
The Black Hat brigade drew the hardest task—
up Turner’s Gap astride the National Road.
It’s nothing but a steep ravine: trees, rocks,
and Rebels with that hatred in their souls
for Yanks that only Southerners can nurse—
two lines of them looking down at you behind
their muskets’ sights, smiling. A fifty-eight
calibre ball would knock you on your arse,
shatter bones, remove your face, or if fate
were kind, kill you. Such is the force of hate.
Our Little Mac was watching two miles back.
At first our rifles shone golden—the sun
a mass of yellow fire as we attacked
their skirmishers on green and level ground;
then silver, as we ascended the shadowed
slope in sudden twilight—our lines did slow
but did not stop; now bronze, lit by discharges
veiled in drifting gray: marching to Zion,
marching to Zion, something drove us hard.
McClellan said, “They must be made of iron.”
So we were named the Iron Brigade. That night
we stayed on the slope of South Mountain, not
quite at the top but close enough, not licked
and not going back down, slept with our heads
behind stones and trees and those who were shot.
In the morning the graybacks had gone, quick
as rabbits in the night. The way was open.
The Army of the Potomac poured through. One division
removed their caps, saluting us. We took it in our stride,
and left our friends dead on the mountainside.
Army of Northern Virginia
Orders in the Hands of God
The Book of Revelation has a scroll
of writing coming out an angel’s mouth
as if to say, “These words are from the Lord.”
Well, Lee’s orders made in duplicate sent
to all four corners of our army found
their men. Stonewall Jackson committed them
to memory, then tore the order up;
and so did Lafayette McLaws, promptly.
Old Peter Longstreet, making sure, reversed
the picture in Revelation, stuffing
the paper into his mouth—chewed it up
and spat the ugly mush back out—as good
as never issued, except in his mind.
And Harvey Hill was many things, but careless
was not one of them. Yet he was blamed.
As good a general as he was, he never
could get right with the Old Man, or Jackson,
or anybody else. His own men liked
him well enough. He thought well and fought well
but seemed meant to be alone, which is how
he spent most of the war after Sharpsburg:
independent command, outposts, defenses—
brooding on the Will of God perhaps: why,
exactly, someone dropped a copy, wrapped
around three seegars; and why, exactly,
some damnyankee soldier boys happened to
take a rest in just that field, in that green
pasture, beside some still water, and spot
those seegars with the sharp eye only Yanks
have got, and bored or thinking, actually read
the paper tied with string around the smokes—
signed by Lee’s adjutant, the signature
recognized by a Yankee officer—
and that, they say, made all the difference.
Well, I don’t know. You’d like to think nobody
beat us, short of God Himself, least of all
an army full of nothing but Yankees—
but that Potomac army was the best
of any on the planet, except for one
which modesty forbids my mentioning.
Which is why I say Never, do not ever,
underestimate a people who fight
for principle, however self-righteous,
irreligious, and murderous it is.
I am saying that the reason the Army
of the Potomac had the dumb luck
or was given our plans by the clean hand
of Providence, was that they were coming
after us in the first place. Those Yankee
boys in that meadow were on our track, if
the truth be told. They had been whipped all summer,
outgeneralled and humiliated,
but they were not defeated. We were better,
keep in mind, so let them come: we would turn
and fight them. And that is what Harvey Hill
did, his men all alone, the way he wanted,
on South Mountain, while the rest of the Army
tried to concentrate. See, many