“Just leave them behind?” Doc wondered, stunned.
“Reckon it’s the army, now, Doc,” Clyde said softly, his eyes on the vanishing lieutenant.
“War’s different, Doc,” Mays agreed. “It’s devil take the hindmost.”
With a gnawing unease in his gut, Doc took a deep breath and headed for his hospital. It was the army, damn it. Of course they couldn’t wait for the sick to heal before moving out.
13
February 22, 1862
The sleet, snow, and freezing rain during the tactical withdrawal from positions along the Green River toward Bowling Green, Kentucky, left Butler feeling colder than he’d ever been. And, miserable though it was for him, he suffered nothing in comparison to what the rank and file of the Second Arkansas endured as they muscled wagons and artillery down boglike, half-frozen roads.
Tasked with covering the Army of Central Kentucky’s retreat, they had no sooner occupied positions around Bowling Green, than the companies were ordered to move out. Hindman’s men set fire to the commissary and quartermaster stores and any supplies they couldn’t carry. Next they put the torch to bridges, the railroad depot, and any structures the Federals might consider of military value.
Either some of Bowling Green’s panicked citizens—already on the verge of hysteria—caught the fever, or arsonists with an agenda of their own began setting fires in the town.
On General Hindman’s orders, his troops had spent the night battling the blaze in freezing temperatures, only to evacuate the town the next morning as Federal shells announced the arrival of Buell’s forces.
“Lieutenant,” Hindman had told Butler as he reached from his saddle and handed over a leather bag, “I need these dispatches delivered, with my compliments, to General Johnston in Nashville. You will await the general’s response and rejoin us in Murfreesboro. We will be encamped there.”
“Yes, sir,” Butler had replied, glancing back at the plumes of black smoke rising from Bowling Green. The boom of Federal artillery carried on the cold morning air. Flakes of snow drifted down, indistinguishable from the falling ash that melted and ran in black streamers down his coat.
“Ride safely, Lieutenant,” Hindman had told him grimly. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding our new headquarters when you reach Murfreesboro. We’ll be crowded around the biggest bonfire in the area, staying warm!”
“I would have thought you’d had enough of big fires last night, sir,” Butler told him with a grin. “Go with God, General.”
Then he had wheeled his sorrel mare and pounded off along the treacherous and frozen road toward Nashville some sixty-five miles to the southeast. The way was not hard to follow, given the abandoned equipment, scattered personal items, broken wagons, and dead horses along the way. And then there were the stragglers, looking miserable as they stumbled their way toward Nashville in ever greater numbers as Butler overtook them.
As a staff officer on horseback, he shivered, and his teeth chattered. The poor infantry slogged through the snow and half-frozen mud, thinly clad, many suffering from frostbite; each morning men were found dead and partially frozen in their blankets.
Along with them went the fleeing civilians, most improperly dressed, carrying their most cherished valuables. The most miserable of all, however, were the lines of slaves. In long lines they plodded, barefoot, in the half-frozen mud, worn blankets over their heads and shoulders. Shivering, starved, often roped together and huddling, they were the living reminder of the root of secession. Property—planters’ wealth—being herded south out of reach of Yankee confiscation and the lure of freedom.
It brought a crawling sensation to Butler’s gut, an unsettling reminder—like a slap in the face—that the glorious cause of secession meant the continued abuse of an entire class of human beings.
God forgive us for inflicting such misery.
While Butler might question the ethics of such humanity, behind the grimace on his cold lips and chattering teeth, he was more proud than he’d ever been in his life. The organization behind Hindman’s clockwork retreat was his: a model of efficiency that even General Hardee praised.
Catching up with Hardee’s brigade as it entered Nashville, Butler might have marched headlong into chaos. The streets of the panicked city were full of desperate people, many of them wheeling their personal property out in wagons, carriages, on wheelbarrows, packed on horseback, or even in valises held over their heads against the cruel freezing rain.
Governor Harris and the state government had already fled to Memphis, adding to the sense of despair.
Here and there, structures burned. Sparks and smoke shot into the sky. Furtive groups of skulkers looted stores and residences. Women shrieked and pleaded, some groveling before drunken men who carried off household furnishings.
On a street corner, a lunatic laughed maniacally, a whiskey bottle dangling from his hand, his face reflecting a crazy relief at the sight of troops.
The arrival of Hardee’s half-frozen, sick, and dispirited men only added to the insanity of defeat. At the sight of them, even more people picked up and joined the columns of refugees that clogged the roads out of town. But most striking—the image Butler would carry away—was the terror in the children’s eyes. Their pale faces tear-streaked, gaping mouths like black holes.
This was the stuff of nightmares, the literature of disaster come to life. Like Euripides would have penned in Trojan Women. The sack of Rome. The razing of Carthage. Napoleon at Moscow.
In a daze he rode through the streets, his pistol in his hand for protection. He kept asking himself: Am I really seeing this!
If there were any joy to be found in the city’s misery, it was that after delivering his dispatches, and for the first time in a fortnight, Butler had enjoyed a full night’s sleep in a warm bed. Had had his uniform cleaned, and paid to have a seamstress add gold piping to his sleeves to augment his promotion to first lieutenant.
In too short a time, General Johnston’s replies were prepared.
Partially recuperated and refreshed, Butler rode south on the Murfreesboro Pike. He tried not to think of the cries and
