Under the Stars and Bars

By Terry P. Collins

A young man is forced to come of age struggling with internal and external demons while participating in the greatest conflict held on American soil, the Civil War.

Confederate Saddle-Volume II of the Lewis Brothers Trilogy nearing completion

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462828296

Terry P. Collins

The author was born and raised in southern California and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from San Jose State University, California. He resides in Phoenix Arizona, married and has two teenage children. This is his debut work and he is currently writing his second Civil War era novel.

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Copyright © 2010 by Terry P. Collins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Speech and verbiage used by characters in the book are not the writer’s common verbiage but are indicative of the time.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Mid April 1861 Virginia Military Institute

First Manassas July 21, 1861

The Battle Of Kernstown, March 23, 1862

Shenandoah Valley, Northern Virginia, Summer 1862

The Maryland Campaign September 1862

Chimbrazo Hospital, Richmond Virginia, Early October 1862

Early Morning, Fredericksburg Line, November 1862

Winter Quarters Near Moss Neck 1863

In honor of my hero, my mother

Jo Collins.

Mid April 1861 Virginia Military Institute

A low drumbeat rolled and skipped along the hills of the misty hollow while Thom and I hunted for wild turkey. I had slung the two we had bagged earlier over my shoulder as Thom lowered his sights on another. My hound laid there alert and still except for the twitching of his nose. The dew hung from the bushes and dripped from the tip of my nose. I wiped it away with my sleeve as the large gobbler strutted among some low brush. I glanced over at a grinning Thom as he sighted his musket and shot.

Then everything went black and the dream disappeared. The drumming became louder and more insistent. I became aware that the pounding was not from the drummers of my dream but outside my head. I awoke and watched the door shake and rattle as the banging continued. My lifelong friend and current roommate Thomas Nelson was still asleep, strewn across his bunk, and I was going to have to answer the door.

I looked over at the mist-covered window then rolled out of bed, prepared for the shock of the cold pine floor on my feet and scrambled over and opened the door. A few more seconds and that door would have busted right off its hinges. Caleb, Thom! Sinclair is knocking at our doors. He says Colonel Jackson has ordered us to assemble in the courtyard tomorrow at 5:00 am in preparation of moving out! a red-faced fellow cadet named Jones screamed.

I glanced over at Thom who was now miraculously and instantly awake and wondered what the hell was happening and where we were going as Jones scampered down the hall.

My name is Caleb Lewis and as a 19-year-old cadet I have been enrolled here at the Virginia Military Institute. I’ve been here a little over a year and share a dorm room with my friend and neighbor Thom.

Before Thom and I enrolled, there had been some disagreements among the states of the Union.

Much of the South were slaveholders or tolerant of it and had become increasingly fierce over self-government.

Many states to the North were against slavery and with some man named Lincoln having been elected president it felt as if a torch was being wielded to set afire the arrogant aristocracy we were perceived to be and that empowered the slave-owning system. Charges of abolition and secession were hurled across the nation and both sides asked where Virginia stood.

I might have made a career out of the military and maybe I would have become a farmer like my daddy does now. Daddy had different ideas and felt that my future was better served here at VMI rather than just playing around on the plantation. But now my future was chosen for me by something bigger than my father’s vision. I’m not quite sure I was ready for that choice.

Prompted by the firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina by Confederate troops, Virginia followed some of the lower southern states into secession. Now, not all of us were Virginia borne, but since we were all Cadets of the Institute, I think it was taken for granted as to whom we must show allegiance. There would be no question that we would fight for the honor of Virginia, being that we were enrolled here.

My understanding was that it was not all that black and white at the Academy up there in West Point, Maryland. But what little I knew about Northern culture seemed worlds apart from Southern culture and besides Maryland hadn’t seceded.

Northerners seemed less intelligent, less educated, and decidedly less chivalrous. The cities teemed with slope browed filthy immigrants who worked in small shops and factories, unlike the plantations owned by native-born families, with farms and woods that we in the South liked to govern ourselves. The worst thing was they were not even Americans.

Perhaps I was more alike those from the North than I realized at the time though. Thom and I were both a rarity. We certainly were not from the aristocracy, but both of us were sons of plantation owners and both of our fathers were veterans of other American wars. Our fathers as veterans were our tickets to VMI.

We were to march to Richmond; the teeming center and soon to be the capitol of the new Confederacy to train recruits for the ensuing conflict. Other cadets would fan out to the other secessionist states to enlist more volunteers. As we packed haversacks and sleeping rolls, I realized that quite soon we weren’t going to be toy soldiers anymore but expected to be real soldiers. To VMI’s credit, there had been occasional breaks from the boredom of geometry and mathematics by tales of the past gallantry of our very own teachers. In addition we had been schooled on the great Napoleon’s tactics so the military part of our schooling did exist.

Many had spoke of seeing the beast, being in combat. They had all fought in the Mexican War as my father had, so we Cadets all felt some urgency but it mixed with an equal if not greater amount of anxiety. I was more than willing to march under the command of Jackson, a truer soldier than I ever figured I’d see.

Some thought he was a little light in the head, and many of my classmates referred to him as Fool Tom but he was a fierce God-fearing man and I was proud to be led by him. He was one of my own teachers and been chosen or he had chosen himself, to lead us.

The next morning I stood in the gloomy courtyard, with several hundred more cadets, stock still, in muster, our cadet-gray uniforms pressed, muskets and bayonets gleaming, loaded with packs, looking at Old Jack astride his mount, his long legs dangling and blue-gray eyes blazing.

Men we have been called on by the new elected Confederate government for duty he said, and with the God Almighty’s help in this, we will not fail. That said he whipped around his horse, extended his arm and trotted out with us a following. The remaining cadets cheered us as we moved out into another crisp morning in Virginia.

It took more than a few days a marching to get to Richmond to train these new recruits and I knew Thom and I were not exactly eager to get going right away when we got there. But Jackson would not hear of it and we were set right to work training the volunteers that very day. These recruits for the most part, had no semblance of training as a soldier, but all of them knew how to shoot and all we had to do was get them to follow basic orders and move as a group rather than individual parts. Now I knew I wasn’t cut out to be an officer so I just kind of guided a group of men around.

Many of my fellow cadets and/or those with more extensive military backgrounds were commonly officers, but Thom and I were not. We shared the fight and our minds more with the volunteers arriving on a daily basis. Plantation families, laborers, even backwoods country boys from as far away as Tennessee and North Carolina were flocking to