1862

Chapter Twenty-One

Arrival at the crowded Philadelphia train station had been the end of a virtual triumphal march for General Patrick Cleburne and the men of the Irish Legion. Wherever their packed trains had gone, they had been cheered by the local population, with Cleburne and the other senior officers feted by local dignitaries and politicians. It was a heady experience with effusive compliments, good food, and liquor in abundance. Mornings often meant sore heads, and the rocking of the trains induced copious nausea. There were, however, few complaints.

Most amazing to the officers and men of the Irish Legion, the adulation came from the same population that had thought of Irish immigrants as little more than savages and not much better than the darkies the Union was fighting to free. The Irish immigrant, the Catholic shantyman, and the bog-trotter were well on their way to being accepted by Protestant America.

“Incredible.” said Cleburne as he finally fought his way through this latest crowd while his men prepared to get in marching order. They would not be staying in Philadelphia. Instead, they would be moving west to join the rest of General Thomas's army, which was encamped in that direction.

“Nothing more than we deserve.” responded Attila Flynn. He tried to sound blase, but his emotions betrayed him and there was a tremor in his voice. Philadelphia's welcome rivaled that of New York's. Philadelphia was yet another great city, and one of many he'd never visited before, but one that gave further indication of the strength of the Union. At the time of the American Revolution, Philadelphia had been the second-largest city in the British Empire, second only to London itself. Now it had been eclipsed in size by New York, and possibly Boston, but Philadelphia was still an enormous assemblage of people and industry. He'd never been in the Deep South, but he'd been told that none of the Confederate cities had anything like the wealth, population, and industrial power of the North. Nor, he thought happily, did England. Oh, she had her Liverpools and her Birminghams, but none so many and none so numerous, powerful, and vibrant as what the Union had to offer. God help England. No. he corrected himself. God damn England.

“I won't argue that.” Cleburne said, interrupting Flynn's mental wanderings, “but I do wonder just what we've done to deserve all this.” They had managed to work their way into a decent-looking restaurant near the train station. Cleburne's general's star had gotten them a table, and they'd cheerfully accepted the offer of a free meal. The men of the Legion were eating far less elegantly in the streets in preparation for the march out of town, but were suffering no hardships. Sympathetic townspeople were showering the troops with breads, cakes, and other delicacies, which the men gobbled up like children.

Flynn chuckled. “Let's just say that, thanks to some well-placed articles with sympathetic newspapers, the Irish Legion is considered one of the reasons Toronto fell and Britain is abandoning Canada.”

Cleburne was aghast. His Legion had done nothing to warrant such praise. Aside from some minor skirmishes, his men had done damned little since the fall of Toronto for the very good reason that the war in Canada had entered a lull. His men were far from combat veterans. The vast majority had yet to fire a shot at anything other than a stationary wooden target.

“You shouldn't tell lies,” he said.

“And what of it.” Flynn sniffed. “Every regiment is sending songs of its own praise back to the folks at home. Are we the only unit winning the war single-handed? I fervently doubt it. Politics and war go hand in hand and don't doubt it for one minute.”

Cleburne knew that Flynn's actions also served another purpose in that he was laying the groundwork by building the history of a blood debt the American government and people owed to the oppressed men and women of Ireland. The debt might be fictional, but the people of the North seemed to be enamored of men travelling from far-off lands to help preserve the Union. It also helped that the men of Ireland spoke a kind of English, unlike the more numerous Germans who, it was told, couldn't be understood by their mothers. It was something the devious Flynn hoped would be collectible from the U.S. government at a time in the very near future.

“Always planning ahead, aren't you?” Cleburne jibed. He no longer detested the angry Fenian leader, although he couldn't yet quite bring himself to like the man.

“One has to. And that is why I left those fools up in London to keep raising the flag every day on our new Irish Republic in Canada. That place is now a political backwater, although its presence and continued existence serve a purpose. For instance, as a hemorrhoid for Palmerston.”

“Not a bad thought,” Cleburne conceded. “And where are you off to now? Washington?”

“You don't want me tenting with your army?”

Cleburne laughed. “Not for one second. Winter's coming and I don't want to be held responsible for your freezing to death, which I am confident you'd manage to do in the middle of summer if forced to live outdoors.”

“You are correct, of course, both as to my destination and my abilities in the wilderness. I am off to Washington, where I am confident I will receive a better welcome than the last time. I have, for instance, been corresponding with Secretary of State Seward.”

“Ah, but has he been responding to you or are you just pelting him with letters?”

Flynn smiled. “Let's just say the correspondence has been one-sided; however, I attribute that to the confusion in the mails as caused by the war.”

“Of course.” Cieburne said drily.

Of course, Flynn thought. His smile and comments hid a growing desperation that nothing was going to happen to help free Ireland. He had to gain access to Seward, had to convince him that Ireland's cause was the Union's cause as well.

Abigail Watson was usually required to work on Sunday mornings, which meant that she could not go to church until well after any services were over. Her current owners, the Haskills, were decent people, but there were too many breakfasts to make and rooms to clean at the Haskills’ small but tasteful hotel where she worked to permit her to leave until her tasks were done. Besides. since when did Negroes have to go to church? Their needs were supposed to be taken care of by their owners.

Abigail had to admit that her owners didn't even have to permit her to leave at all. Most Southerners didn't agree that blacks had souls, so how could they be in need of salvation? What the Haskills thought about Abigail's salvation didn't matter. At least they were decent enough to permit her a degree of privacy, and time to pray, and she appreciated that.

All the while, however. Abigail prayed not for salvation but for a means to betray the Haskills and every other slave owner in the Confederacy.

A few of Richmond's churches tolerated the presence of Negroes so long as they didn't disrupt proceedings or didn't sit where they weren't supposed to. Abigail knew of several in the neighborhood who would let her in and let her sit in the back. She chose one. sat in the darkness, and made herself small. It didn't matter to her which church she was in, as the differences in Christian beliefs meant nothing to her. She believed in salvation and a God who would someday make things right for people like her. She believed in a God of justice. And of vengeance.

Hannibal Watson's sudden reappearance in her life and his equally sudden and brutal demise had brought feelings of rage to the surface, emotions that she had almost forgotten she'd had or was capable of.

Some people thought that most slaves were happy with their lot and used that as a reason for perpetuating slavery. What fools, she thought. How could someone who was owned by someone else ever be happy?

Oh, there were those slaves who knew no other life and were owned by fairly benign owners who treated them well. Those slaves had a level of contentment simply because they could comprehend no other way. Kind of like a blind man who had never seen a sunset, she thought. And there were those slaves who realized that the world outside slavery could be savagely hostile to anyone with a dark skin and who wished to improve themselves. For them, freedom was frightening.

Freedom, shed decided, was like that blind man getting sight. Once perceived, it could not be replaced, and a real human would never let anyone take it from them.

Abigail Watson had never known freedom, but she knew people who had. One was her son. She had just received a letter from him up in Boston. It thrilled her that he was able to read and write and be able to do so openly. Abigail was self-educated, but since teaching slaves to be literate was generally illegal, she had prudently disguised the fact of her learning. Why, she wondered, did anyone have to hide the value of their mind?

But, more important, how soon would God's righteous wrath bring down the Confederacy? How could she help? Could she kill someone important? Wealthy and influential people frequently stayed at the Haskills’ hotel, but certainly no one whose loss would end slavery. Worse, any act like that on her part would result in her own execution, and it would be just as dreadful as Hannibal's. What kind of civilization would treat its people like animals and then destroy them as if they were even less than animals?

She would pray. Maybe the God who delivered the Israelites from captivity would have an answer for her.

“I am flat damned exhausted, and I don't even have to do a lot of the work,” said Billy Harwell as he sat on the ground in front of his and Olaf’s campfire and waited for dinner to cook. Tonight it was a kind of stew. Olaf cooked, and Billy didn't want to know too much about what went into Scandinavian specialties. If they tasted good, then that was fine with him.

When word first reached them that Lees army was headed north and across the Potomac, there had been a lot of marching and countermarching until fear that the Confederate army was hiding over the next hill had subsided. Then, however, General Meade had taken a page from Grant's book and decided that the soldiers under his control should be worked hard and thus be in shape to fight a coming battle. As a result, the marching back and forth had continued until the men's blistered feet subsided into calluses. Now they could march barefoot on coals if need be. Billy wondered why, since right feet and left feet were shaped differently, shoes or boots didn't reflect that. Instead, shoes were shaped the same, and only continued painful wear served to shape a boot into the shape of the foot. It worked, but it took so much time and hurt like the devil until the shoe was gotten under control.

“At least marching is better than digging,” Olaf said. Since Billy was a sergeant, he supervised the digging: besides, Captain Melcher didn't want him hurting his shooting hands. Olaf got out of digging since he was the company clerk.

Billy conceded the point. Another brilliant idea had been to take men from regular units and put them to work strengthening the defenses of Washington. It also served to familiarize them with the places where they might just be fighting someday. But did they have to familiarize themselves by using shovels? Hell, he thought, the forts were so large, so heavily gunned, and so numerous that not even a mouse would be able to sneak in.

Of course, he knew that wasn't true. Most of the forts in the thirty-seven-mile-long perimeter were garrisoned by full-strength units called “heavies,” to differentiate themselves from combat units that had lost men and were at far less than full strength, The heavies had never fought, never seen men killed, and some of them were overweight, out of shape, and looked like pastry, They had never fought in the war and had never left Washington City. Billy wondered just what they'd do if a horde of rebels ran at them, screaming and shooting. Piss their pants and run off was the unpleasant thought.

The men in the heavy units had responded to not-very-gentle questions from the regular troops by proclaiming their bravery and the fact that the forts and outer defenses were so strong that no Johnny Reb would even get close enough to cause damage,

They had a point. Billy conceded, Earthen walls, ditches, and obstructions likechevaux-de-frise would keep attackers at bay, chevaux-de-frise were interlocking rows of large pointed stakes that were laid in rows or angles, Billy had to admit they were fearsome and effective, An army caught up in their entanglements could be shot to pieces before they could finagle their way through,

In the distance some men started to sing. “Someone's cat's dying,” Billy said with a grin. Olaf laughed. Singing in the evening was a common recreation when it got too dark to read or write letters. Singing took no talent, and the men in the distance were proving the point. Songs by Stephen Foster were favorites, but so, too, were songs that lamented the war. “Lorena” was a favorite on both sides, and the men of the North liked “Camping Tonight” and a handful of others.

“I think it's 'John Brown's Body,'“ Olaf said.

“Yeah, but it's with the new words. Remember, now it's the^‘ Battle Hymn of the Republic'“

“I liked the old words.” Olaf sniffed. “Why change it?” Billy yawned. It had been a long, tiresome day and he was getting sleepy. “Because nice people don't like to think about people's bodies moldering in a grave, even though John Brown sure as hell deserved it.”

“John Brown was a madman.” Olaf said.

Billy picked up his gear and crawled into the small tent he shared with Olaf and two other soldiers. “Yeah, he was crazy and killed people, and now all of us have got the crazies and are killing a lot more people. Christ. I hope Lee stays away. I hope he believes our ditches and shit are all too much for him.”

Olaf was puzzled. “They are, aren't they?”

Billy thought about the men in the untried, untested heavy companies. They were the weak link in the chain, not the fortifications. “Sure.”

Nathan closed the window softly. The air was temptingly fresh, but there was a chill in the night. The distant sounds of hundreds of men singing was haunting, as was the sight of so many campfires twinkling like stars that had landed on the ground but stayed alive. He knew what the men were doing. They were lonely, far away from home, and scared half to death. Singing and having others join in was a way of chasing away the demons. Sing tonight, for tomorrow we may die. As an officer, he hadn't sung with the men much lest he lose some of his precious dignity, but he'd listened to his men sing on many an occasion and often sang along in silence.

“What are they singing?” Rebecca asked. She was propped up in their bed and wearing, for the moment at least, a demure nightgown. “Anything they wish,” he grinned, “and all at once.”

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her and took her hand in his. She had given up any pretense of living with her brother's family and had moved in with him a couple of days earlier. So far, Washington society was preoccupied with the advent of the invasion of the North and hadn't noticed their scandalous breach of decorum. Bridget Conlin was delighted at the turn of events, and the two women had become close friends, with Bridget conspiring to do little things to pretend that Rebecca wasn't spending the night. Sergeant Fromm was discreetly silent, while General Scott appeared not to notice. Nathan thought he understood full well and that his silence meant tacit approval.

Nathan had asked Rebecca to marry him, but she had demurred. She loved him, but she felt that he would sooner or later be back in uniform and leading troops. She felt it would be tempting fate and just plain bad luck to get married on the eve of a climactic battle. Besides, she'd added only half in jest, she'd already been widowed once and had no wish to be one of those old women who collected dead husbands. They would marry, but not until the time was right.

Nathan agreed, and he understood that she was also giving him a chance to back away from the relationship if he wished, and he loved her all the more for it. “Any more news?” she asked. He had begun to discuss the days reports with her, but earlier in the evening they had both been overcome with the urge to make love. “Nothing of consequence. Lee is heading north and appears to be veering westward, which means that neither Baltimore nor Philadelphia is his target.”

“Then we are not in any danger?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then let's enjoy the moment.”

Nathan turned and watched as she slipped out of the nightgown and lay full-length on the bed. She was every bit as breathtaking and gorgeous as the first time he'd seen her naked. He stripped off his pajamas and lay down beside her. Their hands began the now-familiar ritual of exploration and arousal.

“What's your pleasure this evening?” he asked.

“Everything,” she answered huskily. “Remember what we did last night?”

“I'll never forget,” he whispered. He lowered his head beneath her breasts and her belly. He began to caress her moistness with his tongue and felt her quiver in response. What a wonder she was, he thought. Rebecca Devon was every bit as sexually spectacular and adventurous as his late Amy had been. Why did so many men feel that women were sexually inhibited and didn't enjoy lovemaking?

Rebecca groaned and arched her back in pleasure. She twisted her body and took his manhood in her mouth. God, he thought, what an utter fool her late husband must have been to have mistreated her so. Then Nathan was suddenly incapable of thinking coherently of anything.

Jeb Stuart had chased the fox. and then the fox had turned and caught Jeb Stuart. At least that was what an observer from the Prussian army, one Wolfgang Kraeger, had said to John Knollys as they watched the brutal tableau unfolding beneath them.

Wade Hampton, at the head of Stuart's cavalry, had flushed out a small division of about a thousand Union cavalry and had given chase. It was a trap. Within minutes, additional Union cavalry had surged from one of the many shallow valleys that were part of the normal landscape of southern Pennsylvania and had surrounded Hampton's men. This had forced Stuart to send in more troops to rescue his second in command, and this resulted in still more Union cavalry until the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America ebbed and flowed. All the while, Knollys, Kraeger, and a handful of others watched in morbid fascination through their telescopes.

The battle was strangely silent. Shouts and screams could sometimes be heard, but there was very little gunfire. This was a brawl fought horse to horse and sabre to sabre. Once pistols and carbines were emptied there was little opportunity to reload. Units from both sides were intermingled, which meant there was no artillery or infantry support, as fire from either would kill as many of their own side as of the other.

A group of several hundred Union horsemen disengaged, formed, and charged back into the melee, which swallowed them in a cloud of dust. “How long has this been going on?” Knollys asked. He'd lost track of the time.

“About an hour” was Kraeger's quick response. He held a pocket watch in his hand. The Prussian considered himself a true professional in a land of rank amateurs, but even he seemed taken aback by the awesome and awful pageantry unfolding below.

Knollys could only stare at the spectacle and hope he wasn't gaping like some of the others were. There was something inherently indecent about watching other men die. The scene below was something out of the Middle Ages, except he couldn't recall any battles that had been so totally cavalry like this one, which was taking place on the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Slowly, agonizingly, it appeared that the rebel cavalry was pushing the Union horsemen back. The rebels were the better horsemen after all, but there were so damned many Union cavalry. Then, after what might have been an eternity, bugles sounded, and the blue-clad horsemen pulled back. At least he thought they wore blue. As covered with dust and dirt as they were, their uniforms were indistinguishable from the rebels', and Knollys wondered just how many had been hacked down by friends. It would not have been the first time. As the two armies became covered by identical layers of dirt, there had been a number of incidents where men from the same side had fired on and killed each other.

The two armies separated and the Union cavalry withdrew. There was no pursuit from their Southern enemies. The rebel horsemen were too exhausted. The Confederates might have been the better riders, but the Union cavalry had also been quite good and more numerous, and had been surprisingly well led. One more Confederate advantage was evaporating as the mounted Union forces gained experience.

Kraeger moved his horse by Knollys. “My take on it is that Pleasanton was the Union commander who led Hampton into the trap.”

“Who was overall Union commander? Could you tell?”

“I think I saw Sheridan. He wears a strange little flat hat and I'm pretty certain I saw it.”

That coincided with what Knollys had observed. It helped to have an independent and uninfluenced confirmation.

Kraeger jabbed Knollys's arm. “Look. They're taking Hampton off the field. If he isn't dead, he's been seriously hurt.”

Several riders were helping keep a man upright in the saddle as they rode towards the rear. Knollys focused his telescope and saw that Hampton's left shoulder was bloody and that Hampton was barely conscious. He wasn't a doctor and no one would attempt a diagnosis from a distance, but the wound did appear significant. If so, the loss of Stuart's second in command at this critical point in time was a serious blow.

Knollys then swung his telescope over the battlefield that was now empty of combatants. It was blanketed with dead and dying men and horses. The field, now beaten smooth by thousands of hooves, looked like a carpet with a particularly horrible pattern woven into it. There were no good ways to die in war. but to be slashed by a sabre and then trampled by horses struck Knollys as a particularly bad one. He tried to estimate the number of dead who covered the ground, but gave up. Even allowing that the majority were Union casualties, Jeb Stuart had suffered badly for his victory. Lee had described Stuart as being the rebel army's eyes. Only now, with the loss of Hampton and so many other men, it looked like one of the eyes had been gouged out.

“Ach, this day's over,” said Kraeger, “and another rebel victory. But could they afford it?”

Good question, thought Knollys. Kraeger was an observer and allowed to let his mind wander, but Knollys was a part of the invading army and would share his thoughts with his own kind.

“By the way, Knollys, can you share any food to eat?” Kraeger mispronounced food as foot, which made the Englishman smile. “We have plenty of fodder for the horses, but not much rations left.” the German went on. “Like you. we had hoped to take sustenance from the countryside.”

Here, Knollys had to tell the truth. “None I can spare, I'm afraid. Sorry.”

Kraeger nodded and rode off, leaving Knollys to his thoughts, which, thanks to the Prussian, had switched from today's battle to thoughts of filling his stomach.

Knollys had hired a former Confederate soldier who'd been discharged because of wounds to find food and fodder, and cook for him. As Kraeger had noted, there was plenty of fodder since a horse could eat almost any grass and make do, but there was damned little in the way of food for people to eat. As yet, the rebels had not captured anything substantial in the way of a Union supply depot, and the Union soldiers were carrying off civilian supplies and burning what they could not carry. What small stores had been taken had not been enough to replace what more than a hundred thousand men ate three times a day. Thus, the rations they had carried north with them were all that was feeding Lee's army, and they had almost run out. It was not a good sign.

Ammunition reserves were also seriously depleted. While no major battle had yet been fought, there had been a score of minor ones like the cavalry brawl fought today. Again, without captured Union stores, the ammunition brought with them was the ammunition they would live and die with. Grant had proven too damned smart in that he had placed his depots well to the rear and in friendly territory. Knollys wondered just how much the loss of the ammunition supplies sunk by the Union Monitor at Hampton Roads would cost. Dearly, he felt.

He would write to Rosemarie and tell her of his problems. Mail service to and from the South was inconsistent at best thanks to Union patrols that operated in their rear, but messages still sometimes got through. She was an astonishingly pragmatic woman, which was one of the reasons he realized he cared for her. He owed it to her to tell her the truth about Lees campaign. The depressing fact was that, unless Lee performed some magic, or Grant did something incredibly stupid, the combined Anglo-Confederate armies would have to withdraw.

Sadly, he did not think Grant was stupid.

Colored pins and pieces of paper were attached to the large map of Pennsylvania on the wall of a small room on the ground floor of the White House. They represented the sum knowledge of the War Department as to the movements of the armies seeking each other in Pennsylvania.

The pins purported to show the latest news, but they were often wildly inaccurate. The Union forces were shown where they had been several hours earlier, and where they had been when someone remembered to report the information to Washington. Still, those pins and papers that showed Grant were far more accurate than those that represented Lee. These were estimates made by scouts and civilian informers, and might not be accurate. For instance, did one symbol identified on the map as being Stonewall Jackson actually represent his whole corps or just part? Or was the whole report wrong? Or even a falsehood planted by the rebels? As he stared at the map. Nathan allowed that he was glad he wasn't Grant and didn't have to deal with the possibility of an error that could prove catastrophic.

Yet some basic truths could be gleaned from the pattern of pins. They showed that Lee's army had crossed the Potomac north and west of Washington, and then marched north while Grant's armies shadowed it and stayed between it and the large cities that were Lee's apparent goal.

So far the strategy had worked. The Confederates had marched over a great deal of ground but had not taken anyplace of consequence. It did not appear that Lee was in the mood for a prolonged siege of any target, and General Scott was of the opinion that the Confederate general didn't have the resources to conduct such a siege.

Earlier in the day. Scott had given a particularly pedantic lecture in which he compared Lee to Hannibal and Grant to the Roman general Fabius, who had confronted the Carthaginian in a war well before the time of Christ. According to Scott, Fabius had rightly ascertained that Hannibal had no siege train and, therefore, would not attack cities. Thus, Hannibal was permitted to roam the countryside while pinprick battles weakened him and set the stage for his final defeat.

In history, Fabius had been castigated by wealthy Romans for letting Hannibal burn and pillage for years. Similarly, the population of Pennsylvania saw no grand strategy from Grant, only burned farms and ruined crops. Pennsylvania's Governor Andrew Curtin had called for Grant to be replaced by someone who would fight Lee and stop him. So far, Lincoln had shown faith in Grant.

Scott had reminded the president that, in Hannibal's day, Fabius had been replaced by a more aggressive general who had promptly been defeated. Is that what Lincoln wanted? Lincoln had assured Scott that it was not what he wanted, and that Grant's position was safe. With an impish twinkle in his eye, Lincoln then asked Scott if it was true that General Scott knew so much about Fabius because he had served with him?

Nathan recalled Scott's astonished reaction with a grin. Even the dour Halleck had cracked a smile.

“Everything to your liking, Nathan?” General Scott had entered the room quietly.

“Not as long as Lee is to our north, General.”

“Are you saying you doubt Grant?”

“No.” Nathan sighed. “I only wish it was over with. There is something frustrating about avoiding battle, even though I know that Grant is wearing Lee down. It's almost like a Chinese torture.”

“Which one is that, Nathan? The Chinese have so many tortures and they are all so marvelous,” Scott said with a smile. He had just come from another private conference with Lincoln.

“Sir, I'm thinking of the one where they incur a thousand small cuts on a victim's body. Taken individually, not one is dangerous or even particularly painful. Cumulatively, they will drive a man mad and eventually kill him.”

“And this is what Grant is doing?”

“Certainly.” Nathan replied. 'There have been a score of small battles, and a hundred skirmishes. Lee is bleeding from each one and using up supplies he can’t replace. Perhaps a better analogy would be a Mexican bullfight, where the mighty animal is weakened by small spears and then finally dispatched by the matador's sword. Soon Lee will weaken if he hasn't begun to already. He has lost men, ammunition, and supplies. Soon he will turn and then retreat south.”

Scott checked a clock on the wall. It's late and I'm tired. We need to get home. I need sleep and you should be with your lovely Rebecca. But tell me. What do you think Lee will do when he begins to retreat?”

Nathan pushed thoughts of Rebecca out of his mind. “That's the troubling part. I don't know what he will do. But I don't think he'll go peaceably back to the South. I think he'll be like that pain-maddened bull confronted by the matador. I think Lee will be more dangerous to us than at anytime in this campaign.”