Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862

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Bright swords flashed in the sunshine, a passionate shout burst from
every lip, and with one accord, the trot passing into a gallop, the
compact column swept on to its deadly purpose. Most of them were boys. A
few weeks before they had left their homes. Those who were cool enough
to note it say that ruddy cheeks grew pale, and fiery eyes were dimmed
with tears. Who shall tell what thoughts,--what visions of peaceful
cottages nestling among the groves of Kentucky or shining upon the
banks of the Ohio and the Illinois,--what sad recollections of tearful
farewells, of tender, loving faces, filled their minds during those
fearful moments of suspense? No word was spoken. With lips compressed,
firmly clenching their sword-hilts, with quick tramp of hoofs and clang
of steel, honor leading and glory awaiting them, the young soldiers flew
forward, each brave rider and each straining steed members of one huge
creature, enormous, terrible, irresistible.

"'T were worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array."

They pass the fair-ground. They are at the corner of the lane where the
wood begins. It runs close to the fence on their left for a hundred
yards, and beyond it they see white tents gleaming. They are half-way
past the forest, when, sharp and loud, a volley of musketry bursts upon
the head of the column; horses stagger, riders reel and fall, but the
troop presses forward undismayed. The farther corner of the wood
is reached, and Zagonyi beholds the terrible array. Amazed, he
involuntarily cheeks his horse. The Rebels are not surprised. There to
his left they stand crowning the height, foot and horse ready to ingulf
him, if he shall be rash enough to go on. The road he is following
declines rapidly. There is but one thing to do,--run the gantlet, gain
the cover of the hill, and charge up the steep. These thoughts pass
quicker than they can be told. He waves his sabre over his head, and
shouting, "Forward! follow me! quick trot! gallop!" he dashes headlong
down the stony road. The first company and most of the second follow.
From the left a thousand muzzles belch forth a hissing flood of bullets;
the poor fellows clutch wildly at the air and fall from their saddles,
and maddened horses throw themselves against the fences. Their speed is
not for an instant checked; farther down the hill they fly, like wasps
driven by the leaden storm. Sharp volleys pour out of the underbrush at
the left, clearing wide gaps through their ranks. They leap the brook,
take down the fence, and draw up under the shelter of the hill. Zagonyi
looks around him, and to his horror sees that only a fourth of his
men are with him. He cries, "They do not come,--we are lost!" and
frantically waves his sabre.

He has not long to wait. The delay of the rest of the Guard was not from
hesitation. When Captain Foley reached the lower corner of the wood and
saw the enemy's line, he thought a flank attack might be advantageously
made. He ordered some of his men to dismount and take down the fence.
This was done under a severe fire. Several men fell, and he found the
wood so dense that it could not be penetrated. Looking down the hill, he
saw the flash of Zagonyi's sabre, and at once gave the order, "Forward!"
At the same time, Lieutenant Kennedy, a stalwart Kentuckian, shouted,
"Come on, boys! remember Old Kentucky!" and the third company of the
Guard, fire on every side of them,--from behind trees, from under the
fences,--with thundering strides and loud cheers, poured down the slope
and rushed to the side of Zagonyi. They have lost seventy dead and
wounded men, and the carcasses of horses are strewn along the lane.
Kennedy is wounded in the arm and lies upon the stones, his faithful
charger standing motionless beside him. Lieutenant Goff received a wound
in the thigh; he kept his seat, and cried out, "The devils have hit me,
but I will give it to them yet!"

The remnant of the Guard are now in the field under the hill, and
from the shape of the ground the Rebel fire sweeps with the roar of a
whirlwind over their heads. Here we will leave them for a moment, and
trace the fortunes of the Prairie Scouts.

When Foley brought his troop to a halt, Captain Fairbanks, at the head
of the first company of Scouts, was at the point where the first volley
of musketry had been received. The narrow lane was crowded by a dense
mass of struggling horses, and filled with the tumult of battle. Captain
Fairbanks says, and he is corroborated by several of his men who were
near, that at this moment an officer of the Guard rode up to him and
said, "They are flying; take your men down that lane and cut off their
retreat,"--pointing to the lane at the left. Captain Fairbanks was not
able to identify the person who gave this order. It certainly did not
come from Zagonyi, who was several hundred yards farther on. Captain
Fairbanks executed the order, followed by the second company of Prairie
Scouts, under Captain Kehoe. When this movement was made, Captain
Naughton, with the Third Irish Dragoons, had not reached the corner of
the lane. He came up at a gallop, and was about to follow Fairbanks,
when he saw a Guardsman who pointed in the direction in which Zagonyi
had gone. He took this for an order, and obeyed it. When he reached the
gap in the fence, made by Foley, not seeing anything of the Guard, he
supposed they had passed through at that place, and gallantly attempted
to follow. Thirteen men fell in a few minutes. He was shot in the arm
and dismounted. Lieutenant Connolly spurred into the underbrush and
received two balls through the lungs and one in the left shoulder. The
Dragoons, at the outset not more than fifty strong, were broken, and,
dispirited by the loss of their officers, retired. A sergeant rallied
a few and brought them up to the gap again, and they were again driven
back. Five of the boldest passed down the hill, joined Zagonyi, and were
conspicuous by their valor during the rest of the day.--Fairbanks and
Kehoe, having gained the rear and left of the enemy's position, made two
or three assaults upon detached parties of the foe, but did not join in
the main attack.

I now return to the Guard. It is forming under the shelter of the hill.
In front with a gentle inclination rises a grassy slope broken by
occasional tree-stumps. A line of fire upon the summit marks the
position of the Rebel infantry, and nearer and on the top of a lower
eminence to the right stand their horse. Up to this time no Guardsman
has struck a blow, but blue coats and bay horses lie thick along the
bloody lane. Their time has come. Lieutenant Maythenyi with thirty men
is ordered to attack the cavalry. With sabres flashing over their heads,
the little band of heroes spring towards their tremendous foe. Right
upon the centre they charge. The dense mass opens, the blue coats force
their way in, and the whole Rebel squadron scatter in disgraceful flight
through the cornfields in the rear. The bays follow them, sabring the
fugitives. Days after, the enemy's horses lay thick among the uncut
corn.

Zagonyi holds his main body until Maythenyi disappears in the cloud
of Rebel cavalry; then his voice rises through the air,--"In open
order,--charge!" The line opens out to give play to their sword-arm.
Steeds respond to the ardor of their riders, and quick as thought, with
thrilling cheers, the noble hearts rush into the leaden torrent which
pours down the incline. With unabated fire the gallant fellows press
through. Their fierce onset is not even checked. The foe do not wait for
them,--they waver, break, and fly. The Guardsmen spur into the midst of
the rout, and their fast-falling swords work a terrible revenge. Some
of the boldest of the Southrons retreat into the woods, and continue a
murderous fire from behind trees and thickets. Seven Guard horses fall
upon a space not more that twenty feet square. As his steed sinks under
him, one of the officers is caught around the shoulders by a grape-vine,
and hangs dangling in the air until he is cut down by his friends.

The Rebel foot are flying in furious haste from the field. Some take
refuge in the fair-ground, some hurry into the cornfield, but the
greater part run along the edge of the wood, swarm over the fence into
the road, and hasten to the village. The Guardsmen follow. Zagonyi leads
them. Over the loudest roar of battle rings his clarion voice,--"Come
on, Old Kentuck! I'm with you!" And the flash of his sword-blade tells
his men where to go. As he approaches a barn, a man steps from behind
the door and lowers his rifle; but before it has reached the level,
Zagonyi's sabre-point descends upon his head, and his life-blood leaps
to the very top of the huge barn-door.

The conflict now rages through the village,--in the public square, and
along the streets. Up and down the Guards ride in squads of three or
four, and wherever they see a group of the enemy charge upon and scatter
them. It is hand to hand. No one but has a share in the fray.

There was at least one soldier in the Southern ranks. A young officer,
superbly mounted, charges alone upon a large body of the Guard. He
passes through the line unscathed, killing one man. He wheels, charges
back, and again breaks through, killing another man. A third time he
rushes upon the Federal line, a score of sabre-points confront him,
a cloud of bullets fly around him, but he pushes on until he reaches
Zagonyi,--he presses his pistol so close to the Major's side that he
feels it and draws convulsively back, the bullet passes through the
front of Zagonyi's coat, who at the instant runs the daring Rebel
through the body, he falls, and the men, thinking their commander hurt,
kill him with half a dozen wounds.

"He was a brave man," said Zagonyi afterwards, "and I did wish to make
him prisoner."

Meanwhile it has grown dark. The foe have left the village and the
battle has ceased. The assembly is sounded, and the Guard gathers in the
_Plaza_. Not more than eighty mounted men appear: the rest are killed,
wounded, or unhorsed. At this time one of the most characteristic
incidents of the affair took place.

Just before the charge, Zagonyi directed one of his buglers, a
Frenchman, to sound a signal. The bugler did not seem to pay any
attention to the order, but darted off with Lieutenant Maythenyi. A
few moments afterwards he was observed in another part of the field
vigorously pursuing the flying infantry. His active form was always seen
in the thickest of the fight. When the line was formed in the _Plaza_,
Zagonyi noticed the bugler, and approaching him said, "In the midst of
the battle you disobeyed my order. You are unworthy to be a member of
the Guard. I dismiss you." The bugler showed his bugle to his indignant
commander;--the mouth-piece of the instrument was shot away. He said,
"The mouth was shoot off. I could not bugle viz mon bugle, and so I
bugle viz mon pistol and sabre." It is unnecessary to add, the brave
Frenchman was not dismissed.

I must not forget to mention Sergeant Hunter, of the Kentucky company.
His soldierly figure never failed to attract the eye in the ranks of
the Guard. He had served in the regular cavalry, and the Body-Guard had
profited greatly from his skill as a drill-master. He lost three horses
in the fight. As soon as one was killed, he caught another from the
Rebels: the third horse taken by him in this way he rode into St. Louis.

The Sergeant slew five men. "I won't speak of those I shot," said
he,--"another may have hit them; but those I touched with my sabre I am
sure of, because I _felt_ them."

At the beginning of the charge, he came to the extreme right and took
position next to Zagonyi, whom he followed closely through the battle.
The Major, seeing him, said,--

"Why are you here, Sergeant Hunter? Your place is with your company on
the left."

"I kind o' wanted to be in the front," was the answer.

"What could I say to such a man?" exclaimed Zagonyi, speaking of the
matter afterwards.

There was hardly a horse or rider among the survivors that did not bring
away some mark of the fray. I saw one animal with no less than seven
wounds,--none of them serious. Scabbards were bent, clothes and caps
pierced, pistols injured. I saw one pistol from which the sight had been
cut as neatly as it could have been done by machinery. A piece of board
a few inches long was cut from a fence on the field, in which there were
thirty-one shot-holes.

It was now nine o'clock. The wounded had been carried to the hospital.
The dismounted troopers were placed in charge of them,--in the double
capacity of nurses and guards. Zagonyi expected the foe to return every
minute. It seemed like madness to try and hold the town with his small
force, exhausted by the long march and desperate fight. He therefore
left Springfield, and retired before morning twenty-five miles on the
Bolivar road.

Captain Fairbanks did not see his commander after leaving the column in
the lane, at the commencement of the engagement. About dusk he repaired
to the prairie, and remained there within a mile of the village until
midnight, when he followed Zagonyi, rejoining him in the morning.

I will now return to Major White. During the conflict upon the hill, he
was in the forest near the front of the Rebel line. Here his horse was
shot under him. Captain Wroton kept careful watch over him. When the
flight began he hurried White away, and, accompanied by a squad of
eleven men, took him ten miles into the country. They stopped at a
farm-house for the night. White discovered that their host was a Union
man. His parole having expired, he took advantage of the momentary
absence of his captor to speak to the farmer, telling him who he was,
and asking him to send for assistance. The countryman mounted his son
upon his swiftest horse, and sent him for succor. The party lay down by
the fire, White being placed in the midst. The Rebels were soon asleep,
but there was no sleep for the Major. He listened anxiously for the
footsteps of his rescuers. After long, weary hours, he heard the tramp
of horses. He arose, and walking on tiptoe, cautiously stepping over his
sleeping guards, he reached the door and silently unfastened it. The
Union men rushed into the room and took the astonished Wroton and his
followers prisoners. At daybreak White rode into Springfield at the head
of his captives and a motley band of Home-Guards. He found the Federals
still in possession of the place. As the officer of highest rank, be
took command. His garrison consisted of twenty-four men. He stationed
twenty-two of them as pickets in the outskirts of the village, and held
the other two as a reserve. At noon the enemy sent in a flag of truce,
and asked permission to bury their dead. Major White received the flag
with proper ceremony, but said that General Sigel was in command and the
request would have to be referred to him. Sigel was then forty miles
away. In a short time a written communication purporting to come from
General Sigel, saying that the Rebels might send a party under certain
restrictions to bury their dead, White drew in some of his pickets,
stationed them about the field, and under their surveillance the
Southern dead were buried.

The loss of the enemy, as reported by some of their working party, was
one hundred and sixteen killed. The number of wounded could not be
ascertained. After the conflict had drifted away from the hill-side,
some of the foe had returned to the field, taken away their wounded,
and robbed our dead. The loss of the Guard was fifty-three out of one
hundred and forty-eight actually engaged, twelve men having been left by
Zagonyi in charge of his train. The Prairie Scouts reported a loss of
thirty-one out of one hundred and thirty: half of these belonged to the
Irish Dragoons. In a neighboring field an Irishman was found stark and
stiff, still clinging to the hilt of his sword, which was thrust through
the body of a Rebel who lay beside him. Within a few feet a second Rebel
lay, shot through the head.

I have given a statement of this affair drawn from the testimony taken
before a Court of Inquiry, from conversations with men who were engaged
upon both sides, and from a careful examination of the locality. It was
the first essay of raw troops, and yet there are few more brilliant
achievements in history.

It is humiliating to be obliged to tell what followed. The heroism of
the Guard was rewarded by such treatment as we blush to record. Upon
their return to St. Louis, rations and forage were denied them, the men
were compelled to wear the clothing soiled and torn in battle, they were
promptly disbanded, and the officers retired from service. The swords
which pricked the clouds and let the joyful sunshine of victory into the
darkness of constant defeat are now idle. But the fame of the Guard is
secure. Out from that fiery baptism they came children of the nation,
and American song and story will carry their heroic triumph down to the
latest generation.

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL.

_To the Editors of the_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Jaalam, 6th Jan., 1862.

GENTLEMEN,--I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my
letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany,
though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the
beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on
New-Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable
abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My
third grand-daughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have
trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis, (a practice too much
neglected in our modern systems of education,) read aloud to me the
excellent essay upon "Old Age," the authour of which I cannot help
suspecting to be a young man who has never yet known what it was to have
snow (_canities morosa_) upon his own roof. _Dissolve frigus, large
super foco ligna reponens_, is a rule for the young, whose wood-pile is
yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the
best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath
of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to
feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these
latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less
inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more
and more our own wisdom, (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap
ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment,) do reconcile ourselves
with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might
have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon
Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the
part of the publick, (as I have reason to know from several letters of
inquiry already received,) but would also, as I think, have largely
increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. _Nihil humani
alienum_, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbours which
is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more
fitting season.

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might
be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry,
and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from
Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I
know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the
time of a civil war worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it
may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of
serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of
present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has
adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the
name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase, (for, though
the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by
Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its
capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments
and expressions,) while it is also descriptive of real scenery and
manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question
(which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my
correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as
the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole
is little better than [Greek: skias onar.] The plot was, as I believe,
suggested by the "Twa Briggs" of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the
last century, as that found its prototype in the "Mutual Complaint of
Plainstanes and Causey" by Fergusson, though the metre of this latter
be different by a foot in each verse. I reminded my talented young
parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the
edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there
was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had
no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into
activity, it were _better_ to be in for the whole sheep than the
shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,--an expression
questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he
is not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of what he
affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken out
as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this place
because they rightly define "punkin-seed," (which Mr. Bartlett would
have a kind of perch,--a creature to which I have found a rod or pole
not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books of
arithmetic,) and because it conveys an eulogium on the worthy son of an
excellent father, with whose acquaintance (_eheu, fugaces anni!_) I was
formerly honoured.

"But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show,
So much ez Em'son, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau.
I know the village, though: was sent there once
A-schoolin', coz to home I played the dunce;
An' I've ben sence a-visitin' the Jedge,
Whose garding whispers with the river's edge,
Where I've sot mornin's, lazy as the bream,
Whose only business is to head up-stream,
(We call 'em punkin-seed,) or else in chat
Along'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat
More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence."

Concerning the subject-matter of the verses I have not the leisure at
present to write so fully as I could wish, my time being occupied
with the preparation of a discourse for the forthcoming bi-centenary
celebration of the first settlement of Jaalam East Parish. It may
gratify the publick interest to mention the circumstance, that my
investigations to this end have enabled me to verify the fact (of much
historick importance, and hitherto hotly debated) that Shearjashub
Tarbox was the first child of white parentage born in this town, being
named in his father's will under date August 7th, or 9th, 1662. It is
well known that those who advocate the claims of Mehetable Goings are
unable to find any trace of her existence prior to October of that year.
As respects the settlement of the Mason and Slidell question, Mr. Biglow
has not incorrectly stated the popular sentiment, so far as I can judge
by its expression in this locality. For myself, I feel more sorrow than
resentment; for I am old enough to have heard those talk of England who
still, even after the unhappy estrangement, could not unschool their
lips from calling her the Mother-Country. But England has insisted on
ripping up old wounds, and has undone the healing work of fifty years;
for nations do not reason, they only feel, and the _spretae injuria
formae_ rankles in their minds as bitterly as in that of a woman. And
because this is so, I feel the more satisfaction that our Government has
acted (as all Governments should, standing as they do between the people
and their passions) as if it had arrived at years of discretion. There
are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any
language, (and I suspect they were no easier before the confusion of
tongues,) but which no man or nation that cannot utter can claim to have
arrived at manhood. Those words are, _I was wrong_; and I am proud,
that, while England played the boy, our rulers had strength enough from
below and wisdom enough from above to quit themselves like men. Let us
strengthen the hands of those in authority over us, and curb out own
tongues,[A] remembering that General Wait commonly proves in the end
more than a match for General Headlong, and that the Good Book ascribes
safety to a multitude, indeed, but not to a mob, of counsellours. Let us
remember and perpend the words of Paulus Emilius to the people of Rome:
that, "if they judged they could manage the war to more advantage by any
other, he would willingly yield up his charge; but if they confided in
him, _they were not to make themselves his colleagues in his office, or
raise reports, or criticize, his actions, but, without talking, supply
him with means and assistance necessary to the carrying on of the war;
for, if they proposed to command their own commander, they would render
this expedition more ridiculous than the former." (Vide Plutarchum in
vita P.E.)_ Let us also not forget what the same excellent authour
says concerning Perseus's fear of spending money, and not permit the
covetousness of Brother Jonathan to be the good-fortune of Jefferson
Davis. For my own part, till I am ready to admit the Commander-in-Chief
to my pulpit, I shall abstain from planning his battles. Patience is the
armour of a nation; and in our desire for peace, let us never be willing
to surrender the Constitution bequeathed us by fathers at least as wise
as ourselves, (even with Jefferson Davis to help us,) and, with those
degenerate Romans, _tuta et presentia quam vetera et periculosa malle._

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