Stars and Stripes Forever

THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC

The air was filled with the clatter of the telegraphs, the scratch of the operators’ pens as they transcribed the mysterious, but to them knowledgeable, clickings. Nicolay seized up one more sheet of paper and hurried to the President’s side.

“Montreal has been seized with unexpected ease. The ironclads bombarded the Royal Battery below the city, and the Citadelle above. The battery was destroyed and the Citadelle so knocked about that Papineau’s men took it on the first attack.”

“What about those Martello towers that General Johnston was so concerned about?”

“Papineau’s agents took care of that. The towers were manned by the local volunteer regiment of gunners — all French Canadian except for their officers. When the battle began they threw their officers out of the gun ports and turned their guns on the British. Within an hour of the first shot the defenders had either surrendered or ran. The Canadians are now in command.”

“Wonderful — wonderful! The doorway to Canada opened up — while Grant and Goldsborough have cleansed the West Indies of the enemy presence. I hope that I am not tempting fate when I say that the end may be in sight. Perhaps with a few more military disasters the British will reconsider their delaying tactics in Berlin. They must surely begin to realize that their disastrous adventure here must eventually end.”

“There is certainly no sign of it in their newspapers. You have seen the ones the French ship landed yesterday?”

“I have indeed. I was particularly enamored of that fine likeness of me with horns and pointed tail. My enemies in Congress will certainly have it mounted and framed.”

The President stood and walked to the window, to look out at the bleak winter day. But he did not see it, saw instead the bright islands in the Caribbean no longer British, no longer a base for raids on the American mainland. Now Montreal taken as well. Like iron jaws closing, the military might of a reunited United States was cleansing the continent of the invaders.

“It will be done,” the President said with grim determination. “General Sherman is in position?”

“He marched as soon as he received the word from General Grant that Jamaica had fallen and that Avenger was steaming north.”

“The die is cast, Nicolay, and the end is nigh as the preachers say. We offered peace and they refused it. So now we end the war on our terms.”

“Hopefully…”

“None of that. We have the right — and the might. Our future is in General Sherman’s most competent hands. Our joined armies are firm in their resolve to rid this country — if not this continent — of the British. I suppose, in a way, we should be grateful to them. If they had not attacked us we would still be at war with the Southern states. A war of terrible losses now thankfully over. Perhaps all hostilities will soon end and we can begin to think of a land at peace again.”

The kerosene light hung from the ridgepole of the tent, lighting up the maps between the two generals. Sherman leaned back and shook his head.

“General Lee — you should have my job, and not the other way around. Your plan is devastating in its simplicity, will be deadly and decisive when we strike the enemy.”

“We worked this out together you will remember.”

“I have assembled the forces — but the battle tactics are yours.”

“Let us say I have had greater experience in the field — and almost all of the time defending against superior forces. A man grows wise under those circumstances. And you are also forgetting something, Cump. Neither I nor any other general could take your place in command of our joined forces. No other Union general could command Southern troops and Northern troops at the same time. What you did for us in Mississippi will never be forgotten.”

“I did what had to be done.”

“No other man did it,” Lee said firmly. “No other man could have done it. And now that war between the states is over and, with God’s aid, it will soon be nothing but a bitter memory.”

Sherman nodded agreement. “May you be speaking only the truth. But I know the South almost as well as you do. Will there not be bitterness over the act to free the Negroes?”

Lee looked grim as he sat back in his camp chair, rubbed his gray beard in thought. “It will not be easy,” he finally said. “It is easy enough for a soldier to do, to follow commands. So we have the military on the side of justice, on the enforcement of the new laws. And the money will help see that all of the changes go down easily since most of the planters have been bankrupted by the war. The money for their slaves will put them back on their feet.”

“And then what?” Sherman persisted. “Who will pick the cotton? Free men — or free slaves?”

“That is something we must ponder upon — certainly the newspapers write of nothing else. But it must be done. Or all the death and destruction will have been in vain.”

“It will be done,” Sherman said with great sincerity. “Look how our men have fought side by side. If men who had recently been trying to kill each other can now fight shoulder-to-shoulder — certainly men who did not see war can do the same.”

“Some did not feel that way when the Congress of the Confederacy met for the last time.”

“Hotheads — how I despise them. And poor Jefferson Davis. Still attended by the doctors, his wound not healing well.”

Lee sat quiet for long minutes, then shook his head. “All that we have talked about, I am sure that it will work out well. Money for the planters. Jobs for the returning soldiers as the South begins to industrialize. I think that all of these tangible things will work, that slavery will be ended once and forever in this country. It is the intangibles that worry me.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I am talking about the assumed authority of the white race. No matter how poor they are, what kind of trash, the Southerner doesn’t think but knows that he is superior to the Negro just by the color of his skin. Once things have settled down and the men are home they are going to look at free blackmen walking the streets — and they will not like it. There will be trouble, certainly trouble.”

Sherman could think of nothing to say. He had lived in the South long enough to know that Lee was speaking only the truth. They sat in silence then, wrapped in their own thoughts. Lee took out his watch and snapped the lid open.

“It will be dawn soon, time for me to join my troops,” Lee said, climbing to his feet. Sherman stood as well — and impulsively put out his hand. Lee seized it and smiled in return.

“To victory in the morning,” he said. “Destruction to the enemy.”

After General Robert E. Lee left, General William Tecumseh Sherman looked once more at the maps, once more went over the details of the attack. His aide, Colonel Roberts, joined him.

From the south bank of the river the city of Quebec loomed up clearly in the light of dawn. Sherman lowered his telescope and looked again at the map.

“It is just a little over a hundred years since Wolfe took the city,” he said. “Appears that little has changed.”

“If anything the defenses are stronger,” Colonel Roberts said, pointing at the upper city on the headland of Cape Diamond. “The walls and gun batteries have been built up since then. I would say that they are impregnable to frontal attack.”

“A frontal attack was never considered.”

“I know — but there was ice on the river last night.”

“Just a thin film. The St. Lawrence rarely freezes before the middle of December, almost two weeks from now. What we must do will be done today.”

“At least we don’t have to land men at Wolfe’s Cove and have them climb the path to the Plains of Abraham — as Wolfe did.”

Sherman did not smile; he found nothing humorous in war. “We shall not vary from our agreed plan of operation unless there is sufficient reason. Are the ironclads in position?”

“They went by during the night. Shore observers report that they are anchored at the assigned sites.”

“General Lee’s divisions?”

“Cleared out some British positions on the Isle of Orleans above the city. His troops are now in position there and on the St. Charles side of the city.”

“Good. There is enough light now. Start the attack on the gun positions at Point Lévis. Report to me when they are taken and our guns are in position.”

Sherman raised his telescope again as the telegraph rattled the command. An instant later the deep boom of cannon could be heard to the south, mixed with the crackle of small arms fire.

The British would be expecting an attack from the north, across the Plains of Abraham, the flattest and easiest approach to Quebec. Their scouts would have reported the advance of General Wallace’s divisions from that direction. So far, everything was going as planned. The armies north and south of the city, the ironclads in the river, the guns all in position.

There were shouts from the field behind the telegraph tent, a rattling and clatter as the wagons swung off the road. Almost before they had stopped the trained team of soldiers had started to pull out the crumpled yellow form and stretch it along the ground. Soon the sharp stench of sulfuric acid cut through the air as it was poured into the containers of iron filings. The lids slammed down and within minutes the hydrogen gas generated by the chemical reaction was being pumped through the rubberized canvas hose. As the balloon inflated more and more men grabbed onto the lines: it took thirty of them to keep it from breaking free. When the line was attached to the cage the observer and the telegraph operator climbed in. As the observation balloon rose the telegraph wire dangled down to the ground, all eight hundred feet of it.

General Sherman nodded approval. Now he had the eyes of a bird, something generals had been praying for for centuries. The iron frame of the telegraph in the wagon tapped out the first reports from the operator above.

It appeared that everything was going smoothly and to plan.

Within an hour the American cannon, and the captured British cannon, were firing their first shells into the besieged city.

“Can’t anything be done about that bloody contraption?” General Harcourt said, then stepped back as a shell struck the parapet nearby sending stone fragments in all directions. The yellow observation balloon hung in the still air, looking down into the besieged city.

“Sorry sir,” his aide said. “Out of range of our rifles — and no way to hit it with a cannon.”

“But the blighter is looking right down into our positions. They can mark the fall of every shell…”

A messenger ran up, saluting as he came. “Captain Gratton, sir. Reports troops and guns from the north. A field battery already firing.”

“I knew it! Plains of Abraham. They can read history books as well. But I am no Montcalm. We’re not leaving our defensive positions to be shot down. Going to see for myself.” General Harcourt swung into his saddle and galloped off through the city streets, with his staff right behind him.

The city of Quebec was now surrounded by guns. Those parts of it that could not be reached by gunfire from the opposite banks of the river were attacked by ironclads in the river. Some of these had mortars that lifted a 500-pound shell into a lazy arc up above the battlements, to drop down thunderously into the troops behind it. No part of the defenses was safe from the heavy bombardment of the big guns.

The ironclads were constantly on the move, seeking out new targets. Three of them, those most heavily armed, came together at exactly eleven o’clock, leaving the St. Lawrence and entering the St. Charles River that passed the eastern side of the city. At that same moment the yellow form of a second observation balloon rose from behind the protection of the trees and soared high into the air behind the warships.

The cannonade increased, explosive shells dropping with great accuracy on the defenses on this flank of the city. The telegraphed messages from the observation balloon were passed on to the gunships by semaphore.

When the bombardment was at its fiercest, the battlements blinded by the pall of smoke, General Robert E. Lee’s men attacked. They had landed on the city side of the river during the hours of darkness and had remained in concealment under the trees. The dawn bombardment had kept the British heads down so their presence had not been detected. The Southern force reached the crumbled defenses just as the British General Harcourt, on the far side of the city, was told of the new attack. Even before he could send reinforcements the attacking riflemen had gone to earth in the rubble and were firing, picking off any British soldier who stood in their way.

A second wave of gray-clad soldiers went through them, and still another. The rebel yell sounded from within the walls of Quebec; the breech had been made. More and more reinforcements poured in behind them, spreading out and firing as they attacked.

They could not be stopped. By the time General Sherman had boarded the ironclad to be ferried across the river there was no doubt of the outcome.

An entire division of Southern troops was now inside the city walls, spreading out and advancing. The defending general would have to take men from his western defenses. General Lew Wallace’s division had a company of engineers with them. Coal miners from Pennsylvania. Charges of black powder would bring down the gates there. Trapped between the pincers of the two armies and hopelessly outnumbered, the only recourse for the British was to surrender or die.

Within an hour the white flag had been raised.

Quebec had fallen. The last British bastion in Southern Canada was in American hands.