He played a few more tunes that evening, but mostly we passed the jug from hand to hand, and by and by they got tired of music, and reached for me instead of the whiskey, but by then they had both got so drunk they couldn’t do it but one time each, so I told myself that I got off cheap on that occasion. I got no pleasure from rolling on the cold ground and being pawed at by the likes of them.
I endured it, but when Tom tried to jump me a second time and couldn’t manage it, he rolled over beside me and peered at my face in the pale moonlight. He rubbed the back of his hand along my cheek, which was sallow and rough, from the harsh winter. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Damn, Pauline, it’s too bad you ain’t pretty like your cousins. That would make it easier to do you. But for plain girls, once is my limit.”
I never forgave him for that. From then on, anything that happened to him, I figured he had it coming.
ZEBULON VANCE
“Our client’s husband served with you in the 26th,” Captain Allison told me.
“Melton… Melton…” I shook my head. “I cannot place him. There were so many…”
I joined the army early in the War-on May 4, 1861, only weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter-when there was a carnival atmosphere to the enterprise, with much flag-waving and cheering crowds, gold braid and shining swords, but I did not stay in the ranks to the bitter end. As a man of substance in Asheville, I was expected to raise a company of soldiers and to lead those men off to war in defense of our home state. I had no more military experience than a blind mule, but in those heady days in 1861, that was a commonplace. Suddenly a country that had one well-trained army split into two countries, with much of that original army going over to the newly formed Confederacy. This schism left vacancies on both sides of the conflict, and so the officers’ ranks were filled with amateurs-like myself.
In order to become a colonel, you needed to round up five hundred men who would agree to serve in your command, and you needed the means to buy yourself a horse, a sword, and an officer’s uniform. That was considered qualification enough for command. For the sake of the common soldier, I can only hope that Providence parceled out the fools equally to both sides-and I hope I was not one of those fools. I do not think I was. Anyhow, I was seldom anywhere important enough to do much harm.
I suppose I could have wrangled a desk job for myself if I had tried. My Harriette would have been overjoyed had I done so, but I wasn’t much past thirty, and I had no desire to sit at a desk in Raleigh, firing paper salvos and dodging requisition forms while the War whirled on without me. That was in 1861-early days. We were all fools back then.
They assigned us to the 14th Regiment of North Carolina to begin with, and by the middle of June we had settled in at Camp Bragg, some two and a half miles from the town of Suffolk, Virginia. Twenty-six miles away, in Newport News, the enemy had landed a large force, and, since Camp Bragg straddled the junction of two railroad lines (the Petersburg & Norfolk and the Roanoke & Seaboard), we thought ourselves in some danger of attack. Every night pickets were posted a mile and a half from camp, and the rest of us slept with our weapons at hand. The battle passed us by, though, that time, in favor of another railroad town: Manassas Junction, in proximity to Washington.
A few weeks after that, the government mustered new regiments, some of them comprising troops from the mountain counties. I was gratified, but not entirely surprised, to receive a letter from the Adjutant General of North Carolina’s troops, saying that I had been elected colonel of the 26th Regiment, and would I accept the commission?
I delayed just long enough to transfer my old command to another Asheville lawyer, Philetus Roberts, and then I hightailed it down to Raleigh, where I wasted some time trying to persuade the bureaucrats to transfer my original troops, the Rough & Ready Guards, to my newly formed regiment. They thought not, of course, so I had to leave my boys in the 14th, and, after a few weeks’ leave at home, I made my way over to Camp Burgwyn, on the Atlantic coast near Morehead City, where we whiled away the waning days of summer watching Yankee sailing ships cruising past, without bothering to waste a shell on our fortifications.
I chafed at the idleness of waiting for the War to find me. I declined an offer to run for the Confederate congress, because I had been so loath to leave the Union in the first place. Then I proposed to go on a recruiting trip back to the mountains to garner more troops, but my deliverance from that seaside monotony came from another quarter: in February 1862, I was ordered to take my regiment to New Bern, where on March 14, the Union forces, under General Ambrose Burnside, attacked.
Was James Melton there in the swamp with us?
If he was an enlisted man, I would have no way of remembering him, but I’ll wager that we’d have the same nightmares about that day. My regiment was stationed on the right wing, caught between the woods, through which enemy forces were advancing, and a swamp.
About midday we fell back, the last Confederate troops to retreat. When we got within sight of the River Trent, I saw that the railroad bridge was in flames. The other regiments, having made good their escape, had fired the bridge after them-leaving us trapped.
The river itself was impassable, but, fortunately, I knew something of the terrain thereabouts, so I led my men to nearby Briers Creek, seventy-five yards wide and too deep to wade, but it was our only hope of escape. The only boat to be had was a wooden boat that would hold three men at a time-and we had hundreds of soldiers to ferry across the water.
With the enemy less than a mile away and closing, I spurred my horse into the creek, but midway across he refused to carry me further, and so I was forced to swim for it. One of my men brought the horse ashore, and there I mounted him again, and, accompanied by some of my officers, I rode to the nearest house, where we commandeered three more small boats to effect the evacuation of my troops.
We had to carry the boats back to the creek on our shoulders, and then, amidst shell fire, and clouds of acrid smoke, we set back across the water to rescue the soldiers, a handful at a time. It took all of four hours to get my regiment translated to safety on the other side of Briers Creek, but, except for three poor fellows who were drowned, and those who fell in the redans holding off the enemy, we got the soldiers across.
That was my baptism by fire, and, while I hope I acquitted myself well and did my best for my men, the futility and haphazardness of war were impressed upon me.
The commanding officer in the Battle of New Bern had been my fellow congressman Lawrence Branch. He had taken the rank of colonel about the same time I did, but he had recently been promoted to Brigadier General, though I cannot say I was impressed with his performance in that position. I thought I could do at least as well, and so shortly after the battle, I set about trying to raise a legion-that is: to add twenty additional companies to the ten I already had, plus a complement of cavalry and artillery. If I could amass that number of troops willing to serve under me, I would be promoted to Brigadier General as well.
This venture went nowhere, for shortly after I began my campaign, the Adjutant General informed me that the newly passed Conscription Act had furnished enough soldiers to meet the quota for North Carolina. I am not a lawyer for nothing, though, and I spent a few more weeks trying to find a loophole in the recruiting laws, and thinking up ways to raise my legion in spite of the bureaucrats’ efforts to thwart me. It was like trying to swim in molasses. No sooner would I enlist recruits than the generals would assign those men to other people’s commands. I could see that they meant to keep me a colonel in perpetuity, so I abandoned the idea of trying to work in the military hierarchy, in favor of going back to the game I could actually play: politics.