by John Jakes
Constance tugged the sleeve of his uniform. “George, look there—ahead.”
He saw Stanley’s carriage lying on its side. The horses were gone; stolen, probably. Isabel and the twins huddled around George’s brother, who sat on a roadside stone, his undone cravat dangling between his legs. Stanley’s hands were pressed to his face. George knew why; he had experienced a similar moment years ago.
“Christ, do I have to take care of him again?”
“I know how you feel. But we can’t leave them there.”
“Why not?” said Patricia. “Laban and Levi are hateful. Let the rebs get them.” Constance slapped her, turned red, hugged her, and apologized.
George refused to look at Isabel as he stepped in front of his brother. “Get up, Stanley.” Stanley’s shoulders heaved. George seized Stanley’s right hand and jerked it down. “Get on your feet. Your family needs you.”
“He just—collapsed when the carriage overturned,” Isabel said. George paid no attention, pulling and hauling till he got his brother up and pointed in the right direction. George pushed; Stanley started walking.
So the shepherd and his flock went on. Men continued to pass them, most dirty with powder and grime, many bloodied. They encountered a few volunteer officers bravely trying to keep a small squad formed up, but these were the exception; the majority of officers had no men and walked or ran faster than their subordinates.
Stanley’s breakdown infuriated his wife but, oddly, her anger focused on George. The twins complained and muttered disparaging remarks about George until near-darkness separated them from the others in a field. After five minutes of frantic shouting, the twins found the adults again. Henceforth they walked directly behind George, saying nothing.
The detritus of defeat lay everywhere: canteens, horns and drums, shot pouches and bayonets. Darkness came down, and the eerie cries of the hurt and dying made George think of an aviary in hell. In the shadow tide flowing by, the voices rose and fell:
“—fucking captain ran. Ran—while the rest of us stood fast—”
“—my feet are bleeding. Can’t—”
“—Black Horse. They was nigh a thousand of—”
“—Sherman’s brigade broke when Hampton’s voltigeurs hit—”
Hampton? George plucked the name out of the babble of voices, the creak of wheels, the complaints of his children. Wasn’t Charles Main riding with Hampton’s Legion? Had he fought today? Had he survived?
The rising moon provided scant light; translucent clouds kept floating across it. The air smelled of rain. George guessed it to be ten or eleven o’clock; he was so weary, he could have crawled in a ditch and slept. That told him how tired the others must be.
At Centreville, they finally saw lights again—and wounded everywhere. Some New York volunteers with a supply wagon noticed the children and offered to drive them on to Fairfax Courthouse. They had no room for the adults. George spoke earnestly to William, whom he knew he could trust, and when he was sure his son knew the rendezvous point, he and Constance helped the youngsters into the wagon. Isabel uttered objections; Stanley stared at the rainy moon.
The wagon disappeared. The adults resumed their walk. Along the roadsides beyond Centreville they passed more casualties, sleeping or resting or still. The sight of hurt faces, bloodied limbs, the moonlit eyes of lads too young to be asked to look at death, continually reminded George of Mexico, and of the burning house in Lehigh Station.
It was small consolation to know he had not been imagining danger then. The fire bells had signaled a greater conflagration, and now they were all trapped in it. Trapped in war’s folly and madness. Chicane seducing honesty. Ruin replacing plenty. Fear banishing hope. Hatred burying amity. Death canceling life. This fire was the mortal foe of everything the Mains and Hazards wanted to preserve, and it would not be extinguished quickly, like that at home. This day—this night—had shown him the fire was out of control.
“Stanley? Don’t fall behind.” The shepherd’s eyes began to water with dust and fatigue. The moon melted, and streaks of it dripped down the sky. Instead of the dim road, he saw the soldier striking the fallen horse. An unbelievable act. A change had begun that he couldn’t comprehend. Some terrible change.
“Isabel? Are you all right? Come on, now. You must keep up.”
Book Two
The Downward Road
Nobody, no man, can save the country. Our men are not good soldiers. They brag, but don’t perform, complain sadly if they don’t get everything they want, and a march of a few miles uses them up. It will take a long time to overcome these things, and what is in store for us in the future I know not.
COL. WILLIAM T. SHERMAN,
after First Bull Run, 1861
33
ALL NIGHT LONG, RUMORS of disaster swept the city. Elkanah Bent, like thousands of others, was unable to sleep. He lingered in bars or in the streets where quiet crowds awaited word. He prayed there would be news of a victory. Nothing else would save him.
Around three, he and Elmsdale, the New Hampshire colonel, gave up the vigil and returned to the boardinghouse. Bent dozed rather than slept and heard the rain start sometime before daybreak. Then he heard men in the streets. He dressed quickly, went out to the boardinghouse porch, and in a vacant lot in the next block saw eight or ten soldiers resting in the weeds. Three others, visibly filthy, dismantled a board fence to make a fire.
Yawning, Elmsdale joined him with a supply of cigars. With a nod at the vacant lot, he said, “Looks bad, doesn’t it?” Bent felt a silent hysteria rising.
The two colonels hurried toward Pennsylvania Avenue. An officer’s horse walked by; the man in the saddle was asleep. At another boardinghouse, Zouaves begged for food. A civilian in a white suit staggered through the drizzle with several canteens and a musket. Battlefield souvenirs? Bent tried to control his trembling.
On the avenue, they saw the ambulances, the wandering men with defeated expressions. Dozens more lay sleeping in President’s Park. Bent saw bloodied faces, arms, and legs. He and Elmsdale separated for a short time. Then Elmsdale rejoined him.
“It’s what we feared. A rout. I knew it last night. If McDowell had won, the President would have sent word from the telegraph room. Well—” he lit a cigar under his hat brim, out of the drizzle—“it’s a taste of what’s in store for us in the West.”
Never religious, Bent had implored God yesterday for a Union victory. He and Elmsdale already had train tickets to Kentucky. Now he would have to use his. The war might last for months. He might perish in Kentucky, his trove of genius untapped, wasted—
He wanted to escape that fate but didn’t know how. He didn’t dare appeal to Dills again; the lawyer might make good on his threat. Short of desertion, which would definitely bring his dreams of military glory to an end, he saw no alternative but to use the ticket.
The child inside him screamed in futile protest. Elmsdale took note of his companion’s queer, strained expression and, muttering some excuse, once more strode away in the rain.
The day after Manassas, Charles and his troop encamped with the legion not far from Confederate headquarters at the Lewis house, which was named Portici. This was quite near the center of the field of battle and less than a mile from Bull Run, whose pink-tinted brown water still held dead bodies from both sides.
As the light faded, Charles set about rubbing and currying Sport. He was elated by the victory but angry with the circumstances that had denied him a part in it. On Friday, following his return from Fairfax County, the legion had been ordered to come up from Ashland and reinforce Beauregard. But the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac rail line had only enough cars for Hampton and his six hundred foot. There were none for his four troops of horse or his flying artillery battery.
After numerous delays, Hampton reached Manassas on the morning of the battle; his cavalry was still laboring across a hundred and thirty miles of winding road, fording the South Anna, North Anna, Mattapony, Rappahannock, Aquia, Occoq
uan, and many lesser streams. Despite maddening slowdowns caused by two heavy rainstorms, Charles had brimmed with unexpected confidence on that long ride. He believed his men, once in action, would be all right; in spite of their resistance to discipline, they were riding well as a unit. Most could sit the dragoon seat respectably, if not as perfectly as the already fabled Turner Ashby.
Charles never had a chance to verify his new feeling; the troopers arrived after the day was won. They learned the colonel had distinguished himself, sustaining a light head wound while leading his infantry against crumbling federal regiments. That did little to soothe some of Charles’s young gentlemen, who complained of missing not only the scrap but also the chance to pick through the weapons and accoutrements dropped by the fleeing Yankees. Charles sympathized with his men and mentally prepared for the next fight. It was already clear that this one wouldn’t end matters.
President Davis had ridden the cars from Richmond personally to congratulate the various commanders, including Hampton, whom Davis and Old Bory called on in Hampton’s tent. By late Monday, however, Charles and many others were hearing of complaints from certain members of the government; Beauregard had failed to press his advantage, drive on to Washington and capture it.
Charles kept his counsel. Lard-assed bureaucrats who sat at desks and carped had no comprehension of warfare or the limits it imposed on men and animals. They had no grasp of how long you could drive a soldier or a horse to fight fiercely and expend maximum energy. It was not a long time, relatively speaking. Battle was hard work, and even the greatest courage, the hardest will, the strongest heart must give in to overwhelming exhaustion.
Complaints aside, Manassas had been a triumph, the proof of a long-held belief that gentlemen could always whip rabble. Charles shared some of that euphoria in the pleasant hours following the battle and tried not to take undue notice of certain stenches drifting on the summer wind or the ambulance processions passing in silhouette against the red sundown.
There had been losses less impersonal than those represented by the passing vehicles. The legion’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, of Charleston, had been killed by the first volley he and his men faced. Barnard Bee, one of Cousin Orry’s friends from the Academy, had been mortally hit just after rallying men to the colors of that reportedly mad professor from the Virginia Military Institute, Fool Tom Jackson. Bee had praised Jackson for standing like a stone wall near the Henry house, and it appeared that “Fool Tom” had now been replaced by a more complimentary nickname.
All the members of Hampton’s family who were serving had gotten through unscathed: his older son, young Wade, on the staff of Joe Johnston, whose valley army had come in on the cars of the Manassas Gap line; and Wade’s younger brother, Preston, a smart-looking twenty-year-old famous for wearing yellow gloves. Preston was one of his father’s aides. Hampton’s brother Frank, a cavalryman, had also escaped injury.
While Charles was using a pick to remove dirt and bits of dead tissue from Sport’s hooves, Calbraith Butler, another troop commander, drifted up. Butler was a handsome, polished fellow, exactly Charles’s age. He was married to the daughter of Governor Pickens and had given up a lucrative law practice to raise the Edgefield Hussars, one of the units Hampton had absorbed into the legion. Though Butler had no military experience, Charles suspected he would be fine in a fight; he liked Butler.
“Ought to have a nigra do that for you,” Butler advised.
“If I were as rich as you lawyers, I might.” Butler laughed. “How’s the colonel?”
“In good spirits, considering the loss of Johnson and the casualties we took.”
“How high?”
“Not certain. I heard twenty percent.”
“Twenty,” Charles repeated, with a slight nod to show satisfaction. Best to think of the dead and injured as percentages, not people; it helped you sleep nights.
Butler crouched down. “I hear the Yankees not only ran from our Black Horse, but they ran from the mere thought of them. They ran from bays, grays, roans—any color you care to name. Called ’em all the Black Horse. Sure sorry we missed that. One nice development—whether we fought or not, we’re to taste the fruits of victory in a week or so. Those of us who can manage to get back to Richmond, anyway.”
He went on to explain that grateful citizens had already announced a gala ball to which favored officers from Manassas would be invited. “And you know, Charlie, cavalry officers are the most favored of all. We needn’t tell the ladies we were miles from the battle. That is, you needn’t. Out of respect for my wife, I don’t suppose I’ll attend.”
“Why not? Beauty Stuart’s married, and I bet he’ll be there.”
“Damn Virginians. Have to be in the forefront of everything.” During the battle, Stuart had led a much-discussed charge along the Sudley Road, further enhancing his reputation for bravery—or recklessness, depending on who told the story.
“A ball. That does have a certain tempting ring.” Charles tried to keep his gaze away from more ambulances moving in slow file along the ridge, past the blazing disk of the sun.
“Charming female guests from miles around are to be invited. The sponsors don’t want our brave boys to suffer a shortage of dance partners.”
Thoughtfully, Charles said, “I just might go if I can scrounge an invitation.”
“Well! There’s a sign of life in the weary trooper. Good for you.” Butler strolled off, and Sport nuzzled Charles’s arm as he resumed his work. He found himself whistling, having realized that with a touch of luck he might find Augusta Barclay at the ball.
34
THEY HAD ARRIVED IN the capital at seven in the morning, soaked and on the verge of sickness. George, Constance, and the children went straight to Willard’s; Stanley, Isabel, and the twins to their mansion, with not so much as a syllable of good-bye exchanged.
George washed, shaved—cutting himself twice—drank two fingers of whiskey, and reported to the Winder Building in a daze. So widespread was despair over the defeat that nothing got done all morning; Ripley shut the office down at half past eleven. George heard that the President was in another of his depressive states. Small wonder, he thought as he staggered through crowds of army stragglers on his way to the hotel.
He fell into a stuporous sleep, from which he was gently shaken around nine that night. Constance felt he should take some nourishment. In Willard’s dining room, which was packed yet unnaturally quiet, George questioned those at nearby tables and winced at the answers. He asked more questions next day. The scope and consequences of the tragedy at Bull Run became clearer.
Everyone spoke of the disgraceful behavior of the volunteers and their officers, and of the ferocity of the enemy troops, especially something called the Black Horse Cavalry. George got the impression the rebs had no other kind, which couldn’t be true. Yet even Ripley spoke as if it were.
Casualty figures were vague as yet, though some losses were certain; Simon Cameron’s brother had died leading a Highlander regiment, the Seventy-ninth New York. Scott and McDowell were the identified culprits. While George snored away most of Monday, McDowell had been relieved and George’s old classmate McClellan was summoned from western Virginia to command the army and, presumably, organize and train it into something more nearly worthy of the name.
On Tuesday, office work resumed. George received orders for a flying trip to acquaint himself with activities of the Cold Spring Foundry across the river from West Point. His father had visited the foundry during George’s cadet years. Even back then, it had been turning out some of the finest ironwork in America. The foundry was now manufacturing great iron-banded artillery pieces designed by Robert Parker Parrott. The Ordnance Department’s on-site officer was a Captain Stephen Benét.
Tuesday night, after George packed, the high-command change took up most of the conversation before he and Constance fell asleep.
“Lincoln and the cabinet and the Congress all pushed McDowell. They forced him to send
poorly trained amateurs into battle. The volunteers failed to behave like regulars, and McDowell’s been punished for it—by Lincoln and the cabinet and the Congress.”
“Ah,” she murmured. “The first girl on the President’s card proved clumsy, so he’s changing partners.”
“Changing partners. That says it very well.” George hoisted his nightshirt to scratch an itch on his thigh. “I wonder how many times he’ll do it before the ball is over?”
George was thankful to exchange Washington’s air of hopelessness for the beauty of the Hudson River valley, all the more vivid because of the glorious sunshiny weather he found there. Old Parrott, class of ’24, ran the plant, and he insisted on showing the visitor every part of it personally. Bathing in the foundry’s heat and light was a kind of joyous homecoming. George was fascinated by the precision with which the workers bored out the cannon and heated, coiled, and hammered four-inch-square bars of iron to form the bands that were the maker’s mark on Parrott guns.
Parrott seemed to appreciate the presence in the Ordnance Department of someone who understood his problems as manufacturer and manager. George liked the older man, but the real find, personally as well as professionally, was Captain Stephen V. Benét, whom George remembered from the class of ’49.
A Florida native, so dark as to be mistaken for a Spaniard, Benét divided his time between the foundry and West Point, where he taught ordnance theory and gunnery. Together, the two men crossed the river to roam their old haunts one afternoon. They discussed everything from their own classes to the mounting attacks on the institution.