But the Yankees had breech-loaders, too; their Springfields were a match for the Confederate Tredegars. Their commanding officer had left no more than a regiment and a half behind. Even so, Jackson feared for the first few minutes of the fight that the Yankees, with the advantages of position and cover the defender enjoyed, would beat him at Kernstown again.
His men had less practice at advancing by rushes and supporting one another with fire than at close-order drill and at shifting into the looser formations from which they could attack. The galling enemy resistance served to concentrate their minds on the task at hand better than weeks of exercises might have done.
After close to an hour's fighting, the first Confederate soldiers leaped down into the Yankee field works off to Jackson 's left. That let them pour enfilading fire along the length of the U.S. line. Once the position began to unravel, it soon disintegrated. U.S. soldiers in dark blue emerged from their trenches and fled back toward Kernstown. Confederate small arms and artillery took a heavy toll on them. More Yankees threw down their rifles and threw up their hands in surrender. Guarded by jubilant Rebels, they shambled back toward the rear.
"We have a victory, sir," Colonel Harris said.
Jackson fixed him with a coldly burning gaze. "We have the beginnings of a victory, Colonel. I want the pursuit pressed to the limit. I want those Yankees chased out of Kernstown, out of Winchester, and back to Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg. I want them chased across the Potomac-that part of West Virginia should never have been allowed to leave the state of Virginia-but 1 am not certain we can bring that off in this assault. Still, if we put enough fear in the U.S. forces, they will skedaddle. We'll see how far they run."
Harris stared at him. "You don't want to just lick the damnyan-kees, sir," he said, as if a lamp had suddenly been lighted in his head. "You want to wipe 'em clean off the slate."
"Why, of course." Jackson stared back, astonished the other officer should aim at anything less. "If they face us, the volunteer brigade will take them in the flank. If they face the volunteers, we shall take them in the flank. If they seek to face both forces at once, we shall defeat them in detail. Now let the thing be pressed."
Pressed it was. The U.S. troops retreated straight through Kernstown; the locals clapped their hands when Jackson rode through the hamlet. The Yankees tried to make a stand at Winchester, but pulled out just before sunset. The racket of rifle fire coming from the east said the volunteers were at hand.
Their commander, a bespectacled fellow named Jenkins, rode up to Jackson in the middle of a wildly cheering crowd in Winchester (though Jackson saw not a single colored person on the streets). "What do you want us to do now, sir?" he asked. "We've about marched our legs off, but-"
"Your men won't fall over yet," Jackson said. "We head north, as long as there is light. As soon as it grows light in the morning, we go on. Our task is to drive the foe from our soil, and I do not intend to rest until that is accomplished." He drew his sword and pointed with it; dramatic gestures were all swords were good for these days, but dramatic gestures were not to be despised.
Jenkins looked as astonished as Colonel Harris had south of Kernstown, and then as exalted. He turned to his troops and cried, "You hear that, boys? You see that? Old Stonewall wants us to help him run the damnyankees clean out of Virginia. I know you're worn down to nubs, but are you game?"
The volunteers howled like catamounts. The veterans of the War of Secession had already taught their younger comrades the fierce notes of the Rebel yell. Jackson waved his hat to thank the men for their show of spirit, then pointed with the sword once more. Through the shrill yells, he spoke one word: "Onward."
There were, Abraham Lincoln reflected, undoubtedly worse places in which to be stranded than Salt Lake City. Technically, stranded was the wrong word. He'd had several speaking engagements canceled because of the outbreak of war, and had decided to stay where he was till more came along. The Mormons who made up the majority of the population were unfailingly polite and considerate to him. Whatever he thought of their religious beliefs, they were decent enough and to spare.
Even so, he felt more at home among the Gentiles, the miners and merchants and bureaucrats who leavened the town and surrounding countryside. Most of them, especially the officials, were Democrats, but that still left them closer to his way of looking at the world than were the Mormons, who thought in terms of religion first and politics only afterwards.
"They wish we'd all go away," Gabe Hamilton said at breakfast one morning at his hotel. "They wish we'd never come in the first place, matter of fact." He popped a piece of bacon into his mouth, then turned to the waiter, whom he knew. "Isn't that right, Heber?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hamilton; I wasn't listening," Heber said blandly. "Can I get you and Mr. Lincoln more coffee?"
"Yes, thanks," Hamilton told him, whereupon he went away. Sighing, the sharp little Gentile spoke to Lincoln: "What do you want to lay that every word he wasn't listening to goes straight into John Taylor's ear before the clocks chime noon?"
"I don't know what Mr. Taylor is in the habit of doing of a morning," Lincoln answered. "That aside, I'd say you're likely right."
"Or which of his wives he's in the habit of doing it to, do you mean?" Hamilton said, winking. Mormon polygamy roused some people to moral outrage. It roused others to dirty jokes. So far as Lincoln could tell, it left no one not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints indifferent.
He said, "I am glad to have had the chance and taken the opportunity to have learned more about other aspects of the Mormons' way of life while here. I did not know, for instance, that they formerly practiced what might be described as a communistic system during their earlier years in Utah."
"You mean the Deseret Store?" Hamilton waited for Lincoln to nod, then went on, "I'd call it syndicalism myself. People brought their tithes to the store, and it sold what they brought to whoever needed it. The church-and that meant the government-kept some of the profit, too. Brigham Young didn't die poor, Mr. Lincoln, I'll tell you that. I expect you've seen the Lion House?"
"The long, long building where he housed his wives? One could hardly come to Salt Lake City and not see it." Lincoln paused to eat a couple of bites of tasty ham. "I do thank you, by the way, Mr. Hamilton, for arranging lectures hereabouts to tide me over and help keep me going until other engagements come through."
"Think nothing of it, sir, nothing at all," Hamilton replied. "You're educating the workers about labour and capital, and you're educating everybody else about the war. I can't think of anybody who'd know more about it who doesn't wear stars on his shoulders."
"The proper relation of labour to capital has concerned me since before the War of Secession," Lincoln said, "nor has defining and, if need be, regulating it grown less urgent since the war. The Mormons seem to employ the strictures of religion to lessen its harshness, but I do not think that a solution capable of wider application. The Mormons are the godly, pious folk we profess ourselves to be."
"That's a fact." Gabe Hamilton's eyes twinkled. "They won't skin each other, exploit each other, the way capitalists do-or the way they do with Gentiles, come to that. What they skin each other out of is wives."
He couldn't leave that alone. Few of the Gentiles who lived in Utah Territory could leave it alone, from what Lincoln had seen. That was why Utah had several times failed of admission to the Union as a state. Although the Book of Mormon spoke against it, the Latter-Day Saints would not renounce polygamy, while those outside their church could not countenance it.