Love and War

by John Jakes

  Questions are asked. Why is this being done? Why is Richmond the objective and not the Confederate Army, whose defeat would force a surrender beyond all question? Be it noted that such questions, though common, are not voiced within hearing of any of the ultra-loyal officers the general has gathered about him.

  The paradox of which I wrote is this. The general does little, yet is loved greatly. The men molded by his hand into the most superb fighting force ever seen on the planet lie idle—and continue to cheer him whenever he comes into their sight. Do they cheer because he keeps them safe from the hazards of a conclusive engagement?

  Brett, I am becoming bitter. But so are the factions in this army. Some call the general “McNapoleon.” It is not meant as praise.

  When the Confederates pulled back from the Yorktown line early in May, the engineers were among the first into the empty fortifications. Billy raced to a gun emplacement, only to curse what he found. The great black fieldpiece jutting into the air was nothing more than a painted tree trunk with a dummy muzzle cut in one end. The emplacement contained five similar fakes.

  “Quaker guns,” he said, disgusted.

  Lije Farmer’s white beard, grown long, snapped in the May breeze. “‘Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived. I am in derision daily—every one mocketh me.’”

  “Prince John’s a master artillerist. Loves amateur theatricals, too. A deadly combination. I wonder if there are more of these?”

  There were. Compounding the insult, a deserter said Magruder had paraded a few units up and down at Yorktown to convince the enemy that he was holding the line with many more than the thirteen thousand he had now withdrawn. While Magruder held his foes at bay with tricks and nerve, the main rebel army slipped away to better defense positions being secretly prepared farther up the peninsula. McClellan’s huge guns, three weeks in the placing, were now trained on worthless targets. Little Mac’s dallying had given Johnston a second advantage—additional time to summon reinforcements from the western part of the state.

  “This blasted war may last a while,” Billy said. “Our side may have more factories, but it strikes me the other side has more brains.”

  For that, Lije had no ready Scriptural reply.

  In May, on the Pamunkey River, Billy wrote:

  Last night I saw a sight that will stay with me until I die.

  Shortly after tattoo, duties took me on a course leading back across one of the low hills close by. There before me, unexpectedly, spread the whole of the Cumberland Landing encampment beneath a sky shedding light red as that from any furnace at Hazard’s. Struck dumb with wonder, I knew at last what Lije means when he says, ever paraphrasing the Bible, that we have come here with an exceeding great army.

  I saw below the hill rows of Sibley and A tents numerous as the tipis of some migratory tribe. I smelled the smoke of cooking fires, the homely stinks of the horses, the worse one of the sinks. I heard the music of war, which is more than song or bugling; it is a varied strain of courier horses and artillery; the lowing of our great cattle herd; the hails of pickets, the called-back countersigns; arms rattling and clicking as they are cleaned and stacked; and voices, always the voices, speaking of homes, families, sweethearts, in English, Gaelic, German, Hungarian, Swedish—the many and varied tongues of man. Two units of our “aeronautic corps” tethered for the night like beasts, rode the air above the holy of holies—the tents of those who lead us, surrounded by the chosen of the headquarters guard. Adding brightness were the flags—our own, whose integrity we fight for, and all the regimental banners, rainbows of them, handed to so many proud colonels by so many pretty girls at so many martial gatherings in so many cities and hamlets. All the arrayed flags I saw, and watched their hues all melting to the scarlet of the sundown, and then to gray.

  There is much of this war I am not clever enough to understand—and much I do not like. Nor do I refer solely to physical hazards. But as I stood watching the May wind snap the flags and ripple the white tops of five hundred wagons in their park, I had a sense of our purpose. We are here engaged in something vast and noble, and things will change because of it, though exactly how, I have not the wisdom to predict. Overcome by this feeling of epochal time and place, I lingered a while and then moved on. I soon came upon a civilian seated on a stump completing a sketch of our boys at bayonet drill. He introduced himself as Mr. Homer, said he had observed the drill earlier and was touching up his artwork for inclusion in a composite picture he will later prepare for Harper’s, which sent him here. He commented on the beauty and majesty of the evening scene. He said it made him think of the migration of the children of Israel.

  But we are not many tribes bound to dwell peaceably in some promised land—we are many regiments bound to Richmond, to burn and kill and conquer. Behind the evening scene lay that truth, of which I said nothing to Mr. Homer as we walked down from the hill in companionable conversation.

  The May woods smelled of rain. Charles, Ab, and a third scout, named Doan, sat motionless on their horses, hidden by trees, watching the detachment pass on the country road: twelve Yankees in double file, moving at a walk from the direction of Tun-stall’s Station toward Bottom’s Bridge on the Chickahominy. Johnston had withdrawn to the other side of the river. Pessimists in the army were given to observing that at several points the watery demarcation line was little more than ten miles from Richmond.

  The three scouts had been on the Yankee side of the Chickahominy for two days, with inconclusive results. They had checked the Richmond & York rail line for signs of traffic, found none, doubled back, and were heading for the low, boggy land near the river when they heard the Yanks approaching. The scouts immediately hid in the woods.

  A yellow butterfly darted in and out of a shaft of sun a yard to Charles’s left. He had his .44 Colt drawn and resting on his right thigh and his shotgun within reach. He wanted a fight far less than he wanted to know the identity of these Yanks and their purpose on this road.

  “Mounted rifles?” he whispered, having seen that the pair of officers in the lead wore orange pompons on their hats.

  “Not likely ’cept for them two shoulder straps,” Ab answered. “If any of the rest of them boys has been on horses more than two hours in their whole lives, I’m Varina Davis.”

  Doan leaned close. “Who the devil are they, then? Their uniforms are so blasted dirty, you can’t tell.”

  Charles stroked his beard, which now reached to an inch below his chin. He connected mud to riverbanks and riverbanks to his friend Billy. “Bet anything they’re engineers.”

  “Might be,” Ab said. “Doin’ what, though? Scoutin’ the swamps?”

  “Yes. For bridges. Places to cross. This may be the first sign of an advance.”

  Sport shied. Charles steadied the gray with his knees as a far part of his mind noted a queer whispery sound on the ground. He didn’t ponder its meaning because Doan was talking.

  “Can we shoot ’em up a little, Cap?”

  “I wouldn’t mind, but I suspect it would be smarter to ride on to the next road. The sooner we’re over the river with news of this, the better.”

  “Rattler,” Ab whispered, louder than he should have. The snake tried to slither past the forehoofs of his horse. The horse danced back and whinnied, long and loud.

  “That’s done it,” Charles said. He heard halloos on the road; someone yelling orders. The snake, more frightened than any of them, disappeared. “Let’s ride out of here.”

  Ab had trouble with his spooked mount. “Come on, Cyclone, damn you—” Accustomed to gunfire but not reptiles, the scout horse reared and nearly unseated its rider. Charles grabbed the headstall, the forehoofs crashed down, and Ab kept his seat. But seconds had been lost, and the horse’s erratic behavior had placed it in one of the shafts of light falling through the trees. Two Yankees at the tail of the column spotted Ab and aimed shoulder weapons.

  Charles pulled his shotgun, discharged both barrels, then fired his revolver three times with hi
s right hand. As the fusillade faded, the Yanks skedaddled, shouting, “Take cover.”

  “Come on, boys,” Charles cried, leading the way. The Yanks would likely go to ground in the roadside ditches, giving the scouts a margin of time. He spurred Sport through the trees, not away from the road, as he had first intended, but toward it, up the side of an imaginary triangle that should bring them out well ahead of the detachment.

  After some hard riding, he burst onto the road, Ab a length behind, Doan bringing up the rear. A glance behind showed him two Yanks standing in the road. The rest were hidden.

  Both Yanks fired at the scouts. A ball flipped the side brim of Charles’s hat. Another few seconds and they were safely out of range of the enemy muskets. Charles shoved his revolver into the holster and concentrated on riding. The road serpentined through woods where swampy pools glittered.

  Another quarter of a mile and the sheets of water were solid on both sides. The trees appeared to rise from a surface fouled by green scum and speckled by tiny insects. A mile or less should bring them to the crossing.

  The road behind them erupted in a single jet of flame and a fountain of shrapnel. Ab was so unnerved, he nearly galloped off into the water. Charles reined around, saw a smoking hole and Doan dragging himself from under his fallen horse.

  Round-eyed, Doan made choking sounds. The horse was finished. The buried columbiad shell triggered by a friction primer had hurled lethal fragments into the animal’s shoulder, chest, and crest.

  Doan struggled free of the left stirrup. His horse slid tail first into the hole. Doan walked in a little circle like a confused child. Hidden by the looping curves of the road, the Yanks could be heard coming at a gallop.

  Charles began to sweat. He urged Sport to the edge of the hole, but the gray shied from the dying horse, shuddering down there and blowing out its breath in great sad gasps. “Get up,” Charles said, reaching behind to slap Sport’s croup. Doan’s confusion continued. Ab excitedly fired a shot up the road, though no Yankees were in sight.

  Suddenly Doan began crying. “I can’t leave him.”

  “He’s a goner, and Company Q is a better post than some Yankee stockade.” The first blue horseman came around the bend. Charles seized Doan’s collar. “Get up, damn it, or we’ll all be caught.”

  Doan managed to climb onto the gray and take hold of Charles’s waist. Charles pulled Sport’s head around, and they broke for the Chickahominy. Ab stepped his horse to one side to let the gray go by, then emptied his side arm at the oncoming horsemen. He had little chance of a hit, but the firing slowed the pursuers.

  Even carrying double weight, Sport performed valiantly, leading the escape to the river. Charles could feel Doan trembling. Suddenly the scout yelled, “Goddamn savages.”

  “Who?”

  “The Yanks who buried that infernal machine in the road.”

  “You’ll have to blame Brigadier Rains or somebody else on our side. Before we pulled out of Yorktown, Rains planted those torpedoes all over the streets and docks. How we doing, Ab?” he called to the scout riding alongside.

  “We’re way ahead of them thimble merchants and ribbon clerks. Look yonder—there’s the bridge.”

  The sight stopped the shouted discussion of the torpedo that had killed Doan’s mount. General Longstreet called the devices inhuman and forbade their use. Lot of good that did. What shook Charles as they raced to Bottom’s Bridge was realizing that the slain horse could just as easily have been Sport. A buried bomb didn’t differentiate.

  The gray hammered across the river bridge, hoofs pounding a rhythmic litany. Just as easily. Just as easily.

  Jealousy had as much to do with it as politics, Billy later decided. He had been primed for a scrap when he walked into the sutler’s tent that evening toward the close of May.

  A dour nervousness had gripped the peninsular armies for days. The rebs were dug in beyond the Chickahominy, prepared to die for Richmond. On the Union side, instead of expectancy or a giddy sense that one fierce blow could end it, there was uncertainty. The high command suffered from it, and the leakage spread. Rumor simmered with fact in a stew of negativism. Jackson was humiliating the Union in the Shenandoah. McDowell, holding near Fredericksburg, might be diverted to meet that threat. Little Mac continued to insist he had not nearly enough men, though he had over a hundred thousand. He also insisted the hounds of Washington were tearing at him, led by the rabid Stanton.

  Cliques had formed, holding and arguing each side. Little McNapoleon’s detractors claimed that his cadre of senior officers, Porter and Burnside among them, would execute any command of the general’s without question and would support and promote his policies and reputation in defiance of Washington and at the expense of a victory.

  All of this, together with the normal weariness induced by long hours on duty, wore Billy away, as it wore away many others, and primed him for trouble.

  The night he visited the sutler’s, a junior officer was present whom he didn’t know personally but nevertheless disliked. The young man, another Academy graduate, belonged to staff; Billy had seen him dogging behind Little Mac on horseback. The officer was pale as a girl and bore himself with the relaxed arrogance of a clubman. Even the fellow’s uniform irritated Billy. In a season of mud, it was immaculate. So were the sparkling boots. With long, light-colored curls and a red scarf knotted around his throat, he resembled a circus performer more than a soldier.

  Most galling to Billy, hunched there at one end of the plank counter with a dirty glass in hand, was the officer’s attitude. He was three or four years younger than Billy and wore no shoulder straps at all because of his junior rank. But he behaved like a senior man.

  A loud one.

  “The general would win posthaste if it weren’t for the abolitionist scoundrels in Washington. Why he tolerates them, I don’t know. Even our revered President humiliates him. He dared to call the general a traitor last week. To his face!”

  Billy drank; it was his second glass. The sutler piously proclaimed that he served only cider. That cider, however, was harder than a New Hampshireman’s head. Even so, it was safer to drink than some of the misbegotten combinations—brown sugar, lamp oil, grain alcohol—purveyed as whiskey.

  But the cider—the sutler’s name for it was oil of gladness—wasn’t very good on the gut or the disposition if you hadn’t eaten since noon. Superintending a detail making gabions, a routine job of the battalion, Billy had somehow been too busy for food.

  The officer paused to toss off a double glass of cider. He had a lithe build and knew how to hold the stage the way actors did. His little coterie, five other officers, captains and lieutenants, waited expectantly for him to resume and paid close attention when he did.

  “Have you heard the latest outrage? The estimable Stanton is attacking the general’s honor and questioning his bravery—behind his back, of course—while influencing the Original Gorilla to withhold the men we desperately need.”

  “Sounds like a conspiracy,” another lieutenant muttered.

  “Exactly. You know the reason for it, don’t you? The general likes and respects the Southern people. So do many in this army. I do. The estimable Stanton, however, favors only a certain class of Southerners—those with dark complexions. He’s like all the Republicans.”

  Billy whacked his glass on the counter. “But he’s a Democrat.”

  The long-haired lieutenant parted his group like Moses parting the sea. “Did you address a comment to me, sir?”

  Back off, Billy said to himself. For some reason he couldn’t. Damn strange that he, no partisan of the colored people, was defending one who was.

  “I did. I said Mr. Stanton is a Democrat, not a Republican.”

  A cold smile from the junior officer. “Since this is an informal meeting place, may I have the pleasure of knowing who is offering such valuable information?”

  “First Lieutenant Hazard. Presently assigned to B Company, Battalion of Engineers.”

  “Seco
nd Lieutenant Custer, headquarters staff, at your service.” There was no service or respect in it, only conceit and contempt. “You must be from the Academy, then. But a few years before my time. I was in the four-year bunch graduated last June. Last of the lowest—thirty-sixth among thirty-six.” He seemed to relish that. His cronies snickered dutifully. “As to your statement, sir, it is only narrowly correct. Shall I set aside considerations of rank and tell you what Stanton really is?”

  The young officer walked toward Billy. His hair smelled of cinnamon oil. Behind Custer, his coterie hung on each word. A mangy dog, yellow and muddy, trotted into the tent. There were scores of dogs in camp, pets and stray; this one went straight to Custer and rubbed against his boot. A dozen other officers at flimsy tables stopped their own conversations to listen to the second lieutenant.

  “Stanton is a man so vile, a hypocrite so depraved, that if he had lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas would have been respectable by comparison.”

  Several of the eavesdropping officers reacted angrily. One started to stand, but his companion held him back. Only Billy, with alcohol boiling in his empty stomach, was irked enough, rash enough, to answer.

  “That kind of talk doesn’t belong in the army. There’s too much politicking already.”

  “Too much? There isn’t enough!” The coterie responded with nods and knuckles rapped on the plank.

  Billy persisted. “No, Lieutenant Custer, it’s winning we should worry about, not whether—” an example flashed into mind “—whether a singing group can or cannot perform in our camps.”

  “Oh, you mean that damn Hutchinson Family?”

  “I do. My brother’s in the War Department, and he wrote me that it was a bad decision. Trivial in the first place, and it offended some important cabinet members and congressmen who heard about it.”