3. III.
The work of Ashby then began in earnest. The affair with
General Banks was only a skirmish—the wars of the giants followed.
Jackson, nearly hemmed in by bitter and determined foes,
fell back to escape destruction, and on his track rushed the
heavy columns of Shields and Fremont, which, closing in at
Strasburg and Front Royal, were now hunting down the lion.
It was then and there that Ashby won his fame as a cavalry
officer, and attached to every foot of ground over which he
fought some deathless tradition. The reader must look elsewhere
for a record of those achievements. Space would fail me
were I to touch with the pen's point the hundredth part of that
splendid career. On every hill, in every valley, at every bridge,
Ashby thundered and lightened with his cavalry and artillery.
Bitterest of the bitter was the cavalier in those moments; a man
sworn to hold his ground or die. He played with death, and
dared it everywhere. From every hill came the roar of his guns
and the sharp crack of his sharpshooters, but the music, much
as he loved it—and he did love it with all his soul—was less
sweet to him than the clash of sabres. It was in hand-to-hand
fighting that he seemed to take the greatest pleasure. In front
of his column, sweeping forward to the charge, Ashby was
“happy.” Coming to the Shenandoah near Newmarket, he
remained behind with a few men to destroy the bridge, and here
took place an event which may seem too trifling to be recorded,
but which produced a notable effect upon the army. While
retreating alone before a squadron of the enemy's cavalry in
hot pursuit of him, his celebrated white horse was mortally
wounded. Furious at this, Ashby cut the foremost of his assailants
out of the saddle with his sabre, and safely reached his
command; but the noble charger was staggering under him, and
bleeding to death. He dismounted, caressed for an instant, without
speaking, the proud neck, and then turned away. The historic
steed was led off to his death, his eyes glaring with rage it
seemed at the enemy still; and Ashby returned to his work,
hastening to meet the fatal bullet which in turn was to strike
him. The death of the white horse who had passed unscathed
through so many battles, preceded only by a few days that of
his rider, whom no ball had ever yet touched. It was on the
4th or 5th of June, just before the battle of Cross Keys, that
he ambuscaded and captured Sir Perey Wyndham, commander
of Fremont's cavalry advance. Sir Percy had publicly announced
his intention to “bag Ashby;” but unwarily advancing
upon a small decoy in the road, he found himself suddenly
attacked in flank and rear by Ashby in person; and he and his
squadron of sixty or seventy men were taken prisoners. That
was the last cavalry fight in which the great leader took part.
His days were numbered—death had marked him. But to the
last he was what he had always been, unresting, fiery, ever on
the enemy's track; and he died in harness. It was on the very
same evening, I believe, that while commanding the rear-guard
of Jackson, he formed the design of flanking and attacking
the enemy's infantry, and sent to Jackson for troops. A brave
associate, Colonel Bradley Johnson, described him at that moment,
when the bolt was about to fall: “He was riding at the
head of the column with General Ewell, his black face in a blaze
of enthusiasm. Every feature beamed with the joy of the soldier.
He was gesticulating and pointing out the country and
position to General Ewell. I could imagine what he was saying
by the motions of his right arm. I pointed him out to my
adjutant—`Look at Ashby! see how he is enjoying himself!' ”
The moment had come. With the infantry, two regiments sent
him by Jackson, he made a rapid detour to the right, passed
through a field of waving wheat, and approached a belt of woods
upon which the golden sunshine of the calm June evening slept
in mellow splendour. In the edge of this wood Colonel Kane,
of the Pennsylvania “Bucktails,” was drawn up, and soon the
crash of musketry resounded from the bushes along a fence on
the edge of the forest, where the enemy were posted. Ashby
rushed to the assault with the fiery enthusiasm of his blood.
Advancing at the head of the Fifty-eighth Virginia in front,
while Colonel Johnson with the Marylanders attacked the enemy
in flank, he had his horse shot under him, but sprang up,
waving his sword, and shouting, “Virginians, charge!” These
words were his last. From the enemy's line, now within fifty
yards, came a storm of bullets; one pierced his breast, and he
fell at the very moment when the Bucktails broke, and were
pursued by the victorious Southerners. Amid that triumphant
shout the great soul of Ashby passed away. Almost before his
men could raise him he was dead. He had fallen as he wished
to fall—leading a charge, in full war harness, fighting to the last.
Placed on a horse in front of a cavalryman, his body was borne
out of the wood, just as the last rays of sunset tipped with fire
the foliage of the trees; and as the form of the dead chieftain
was borne along the lines of infantry drawn up in column,
exclamations broke forth, and the bosoms of men who had
advanced without a tremor into the bloodiest gulfs of battle,
were shaken by uncontrollable sobs. The dead man had become
their
beau-ideal of a soldier; his courage, fire, dash, and unshrinking
nerve had won the hearts of these rough men; and now
when they read upon that pale face the stamp of the hand of
death, a black pall seemed slowly to descend—the light of the
June evening was a mockery. That sunset was the glory which
fell on the soldier's brow as he passed away. Never did day
light to his death a nobler spirit.
