The Day After Gettysburg

by Robert Conroy

  But of course, she should have realized that the feral north would lash out and punish those who dared defy it. Blood had been spilled, poor southern boys were dead, and it was all on her hands. Worse, there had to be those who suspected her of what they would call “treason.” She had no doubts that what she was doing was right, so how could it be treason and she a traitor? Still, if the investigators who swarmed her office at the Treasury could connect her to the attacks and subsequent deaths, she would hang. The thought of slowly choking and strangling terrified her.

  So distraught had she become that she had taken the liberty of writing a letter to Booth seeking his guidance. She had not used the drop—she didn’t trust Jessup, for one thing—but instead had sent it directly to his dwelling place, which she had discovered by following Jessup there one day after he had left the drop. As an introduction, she had mentioned how many times she had seen him perform, hoping that would soften his heart toward her. Then she had gone into her anxieties and fears concerning the raids and their results. A simple word from Booth would calm her fears, of that she was sure.

  But she had heard nothing. It had been over a week, and there had been no reply at all.

  The stress had affected her emotionally and she was now prone to outbursts of crying. Once had nearly fainted while at work. She’d passed it off by explaining that a dear young cousin had been killed near Chattanooga and that she’d only recently gotten the word. It had worked and she’d even gotten sympathy from her coworkers.

  “How are you today, Miss Cosgrove?”

  At the sound of the voice, she nearly jumped out of her skin. It was Mr. Rutherford from the Provost Marshal’s office, and a deadlier enemy did not exist.

  “You startled me, sir. You shouldn’t do that to an old lady.”

  “I do not see any old ladies,” he said graciously, “Just charming mature ones.”

  She recovered sufficiently to smile and even forced a simper. Rutherford was the most dangerous of the men investigating the source of the leaks. As usual, he was accompanied by a pair of young, tough-looking enlisted soldiers. She assumed they would jump into action if Rutherford simply pointed in her direction and said “arrest her.” They were his attack dogs.

  Rutherford nodded and moved on. She wished she had called in sick as she had so many times before. But that was a card she could not play too often. Too many times sick and she might be dismissed. The job didn’t pay very much, but it was her sole source of income. Without it she would be destitute and on the streets. She was trapped. She had relatives down south near Charleston, but they might as well be on the moon for all the good they could do for her.

  Across the noisy and crowded room full of overworked and underpaid clerks, she spotted Rutherford speaking to her supervisor. He turned his head, and it seemed to Annette that he was staring directly at her. Lowering her head, she pretended to be busy with her work.

  ★ CHAPTER 13 ★

  The Sixth Indiana had a large area to patrol and they took their job seriously. Thorne thought that it was too much territory to handle, but his complaints fell on deaf ears. Along with watching out for the unlikely forward move by Lee, there was the constant possibility of saboteurs entering Union lines. With lines now stable, the Army of the Potomac had accumulated vast quantities of supplies. All were considered targets.

  “Just who thought they saw something, Captain?” asked Thorne.

  “Several of the boys,” said Willis. “Granted the damned rain has washed away most of the footprints, but they were pretty certain that they led from the road into the storage depot.”

  “Dismount,” ordered Thorne, “and let’s spread out and see what we can find.”

  The men had done this before, many times before. Any sense of excitement had long since disappeared. Whatever human trace somebody had thought they had seen would likely be nothing more than somebody taking a shortcut or a drunk looking for a place to pee. It wasn’t even a break in the monotony of camp life.

  Thorne and Willis tried to set a good example. Their pistols were drawn and ready. “Dear God, there is so much of this,” Willis said as they walked through small mountains of wooden crates.

  “Don’t forget it’s not all ours. We’re sharing this cornucopia with the division and, who knows, maybe the corps.”

  “And all of it’ll burn, even though it’s been raining,” said Willis. “Let us not forget that Rebel saboteurs have become very adroit at setting fires. I hear rumors that half of Baltimore has been torched, along with a good deal of Washington. Washington they can burn, but I rather like some parts of Baltimore.”

  They were moving as quietly as two companies of dismounted infantry could, which meant they were making a considerable amount of noise. The crash, when it came, startled them and everyone froze. It was as if a whole pile of boxes had collapsed.

  “I don’t think that was a squirrel,” Willis said. Now the men moved forward more purposefully, weapons at the ready.

  They reached the point where they thought they’d heard the noise. “Surrender and come out,” yelled Thorne.

  “Come and get us, you goddamned Yanks.”

  Us, thought Steve. There was more than one man or at least he said there was. They smelled something burning. “Those are fuses,” a soldier yelled. “He’s gonna blow us all up.”

  With that, the men began to withdraw. In an instant, almost everyone was running. Thorne cursed. There was no ammunition or gunpowder stored here, was there? Nobody in the Quartermaster service could be that stupid, could they?

  Just as the men were getting under control, something exploded, followed by loud popping. Damn it to hell, he thought. Some jackass had indeed stored black powder with the supplies, and it was blasting God alone knew what all over the place. Small fires were developing and he could see where they would quickly form into larger fires, rain or no rain.

  The area alarm had been sounded and hundreds of men were running up and forming bucket brigades to put out the fires, all the while ducking as the powder exploded. Fortunately, the exploding missiles flew at low velocity. Still, nobody wanted to be hit by a piece of flying wood or metal.

  Several hundred men with shovels slowly brought the fires under control. It helped that the rain increased, drowning the smaller fires. Steve ordered a nose count of the regiment. With everyone all mixed up, it took a while to ascertain that no one had been killed, though three men had been injured or burned badly enough to require medical care.

  “We’re going to need more guards,” Willis said. Steve concurred. They were already stretched thin and this would not help. His shadow of a regiment had just too much responsibility.

  “We’re comin’ out.” Someone called from within the smoke. “We surrender.” Three men, their clothes smoking, emerged from the flames and the ashes. Two of them were coughing and retching uncontrollably. The third looked warily between Thorne and his men. His facial hair had been badly singed, his face covered with ash. He looked like a burned rat.

  The Rebel hopped backward as a trooper swung a shovel at him.

  “That’s enough,” Thorne shouted.

  “In the name of God, get us some water. We got trapped when the fire got too big. We thought we was gonna die.”

  “I say shove ’em back in,” said Willis.

  The first bucket was splashed directly on the men. Only then did the Union soldiers allow the Rebels to drink. They swallowed the water in huge gulps, though one seemed to cough most of it back up.

  Thorne shook his head. “I don’t know if you men are the bravest I know or the dumbest. What the hell were you thinking of, setting off explosions like that?”

  The Rebel laughed as best he could. “Hell, we didn’t know some fool put ammunition in there. We was just thinking of all the hurt we’d be putting on you Yankees by destroying all your supplies.”

  “You think this is all we got?” asked an incredulous Willis.

  “Well, hell yes,” said the first man. He smiled broadly, t
hat typical jackass Rebel smirk made all the more infuriating by the gray ash surrounding it. “You may have some other piles of shit here and there, but this has got to be the truly major one. We’ve really set your asses back a long time.”

  Thorne did not reply. If the Rebels thought that this was a “major” depot, did it indicate that the enemy was running low on supplies again? Maybe the great raid across central Pennsylvania hadn’t been such a flaming success after all. The damage to this storage depot had been significant, but it was nothing that wouldn’t be replaced before this time tomorrow.

  If this was what a group of Rebels thought was a large stockpile, what did the Confederates actually have as reserves?

  ★ ★ ★

  Otto Bauer took his job of protecting Major General Darius Couch very seriously. Of course there were guards around the headquarters, but they were tasked with protecting the whole operation and not just the general.

  The duty was a hell of a lot better than being an ordinary soldier. He didn’t have to worry about inspections or even keeping regular hours. And with the weather turning bad, he didn’t have to slog through the mud.

  Couch was a physically small man in his early forties, which should have put him in his prime. Instead, he was nervous and insecure and complained of a number of physical ailments. Otto overheard a number of soldiers wondering if the command was too much for him. Perhaps that was why he kept seeing danger in the shadows. But if the man wanted additional protection, then Otto and his friends would provide it. The simple fact of his presence seemed to calm the general.

  Bauer spent his time looking for die Besonderheit—“anomalies” was the English word. He’d set a series of patrols in the area surrounding the camp, particularly the high, forested ridge to the east, which was the easiest avenue of approach. Otto, along with the two enlisted men assigned to him, both experienced hunters, swept the area at irregular intervals, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  He had found exactly that this afternoon. Clear signs that someone had visited the ridge, their tracks and the disturbed ground showing that their attention had been directed at the camp below.

  He scratched at his mustaches as he walked just beneath the crest of the ridge. He was considering shaving them off. Molly had mentioned that her late husband had been clean-shaven, and Otto had detected a hint that she preferred it that way. Otto had first grown them back home, largely because so few men were wearing them. He’d gotten a lot of teasing, with people calling him the “Little Chancellor” or “Young Bismarck.” Much as he’d detested being associated with that bloody-handed old butcher, he’d kept the mustaches out of simple defiance.

  But over here it was different. When he’d first arrived, ten years ago, whiskers of any sort had been uncommon. But as soon as the war started, you saw them all over, some of them quite fantastic, such as those of General Burnside. Otto sometimes wondered if perhaps they might not do better leaping on horses and attacking the Rebels by themselves . . .

  He paused and dropped into a squat. Otto gave a lot of credit to instinct. Thus, when he felt a draft on the back of his neck and the hairs seemed to come alive, he paid attention. Something had alerted him just now—he couldn’t say what, a sound, a shadow, a change in the background buzz of the forest. He checked his ’55 musket—his rifle was little heavy for this kind of duty—and the Colt on his belt. He cocked his head at a sound, a low voice there, ahead and to his right.

  He got up and approached the patch of brush. Someone was behind it, of that he was sure. Carefully chosen to hide them from above? That would be his guess.

  He found the thinnest part of the brush and, after a pause to listen, burst through with his musket barrel high. On the other side were two men in Union blue. They shot to their feet as Otto appeared. They had been studying the camp, clearly visible through the trees.

  “Hey there, Sergeant,” the smaller man said. His partner stood without speaking.

  Otto nodded without answering.

  “We’re up here looking for a chicken got loose.”

  “A chicken? Ahh . . . chicken dinner’s nice on a cool day. A fine stew, maybe.”

  The small man smiled and nodded. The other stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Where ya’ll from, anyway? Germany, sounds like.”

  The other man’s accent had been unremarkable, but this Lümmel’s was clear enough. “And where are you from, Alabama?”

  The man cursed and reached into his jacket. Otto drew his pistol and shot him in the knee. He fell howling, gripping his leg, his blood spraying out over the pine needles. The smaller man raised a hand, but Otto cocked his pistol and switched his aim between the two of them.

  He heard shouts from the camp below. Men had begun running toward the ridge. Above him Otto heard the sound of running feet. A voice shouted, “Sergeant Bauer?”

  “Here, Kernan,” he called out.

  The wounded man snarled up at him. “You done kilt Jeb Stuart, you sumbitch.” The first man opened his mouth to speak but evidently thought better of it.

  “Just like a goddamn sneak,” the second man went on.

  “Ja? And who’s skulking around this hillside?”

  Kernan burst through the brush and came to a halt, staring wide-eyed at the two Rebels.

  “Here’s our spionen,” Otto told him.

  “What?”

  “Spies,” Otto said. The first man lowered his eyes at the word. Otto told Kernan to search the two. He came up with two pistols and several knives.

  By that time the men from the camp had reached them. They stood looking breathless between Otto and the Rebels. Otto gave them a brief explanation. “All right, let’s bring ’em in,” a lieutenant said.

  “This one’s wounded.”

  “He can walk.”

  “No, no, no—get him a stretcher.”

  The lieutenant bit his lip, but evidently thinking of Otto’s relationship with the general, finally nodded.

  “Go on,” Otto gestured toward two enlisted men. “Mit einem affenzahn.”

  He sat on a fallen branch, not looking at the two Rebels. They were spies, there was no question about that. They had seen their last sunrise. They would likely be hanged before dark. It was a pity—the smaller one looked like a decent fellow.

  At last the stretcher came, and the two of them were led off the ridge. The lieutenant asked him if he wanted to come along, but Otto refused. General Couch would certainly have much to say, but he didn’t need to hear it from him just now.

  He watched as they descended the slope. Those two hadn’t been after Darius Couch. Oh, maybe they had, but as an alternate target. No, they had been after one Otto Bauer, expert marksman, late of the Kingdom of Bavaria. They’d been looking for a German with a rifle, that was clear enough.

  “What we do now?” Kernan, a fine woodsman, but nobody’s idea of a scholar, wanted to know.

  “We go back on patrol.” He took in Kernan’s expression. “You don’t think they’re the only Rebels in Pennsylvania, do you?”

  Kernan considered it. “I suppose.”

  “Let’s go.” Otto shouldered the musket and started up the slope. He was fingering his mustaches when it occurred to him—he might not be able to help his accent, but there was certainly one thing he could change.

  Those mustaches were going to go.

  Abraham Lincoln stood waving a copy of the previous day’s New York Times. Slightly older copies of the Detroit Free Press and the Chicago Times were scattered on the table. Their editorials all said the same thing. The White House, the government, and the army were all slacking. Robert E. Lee was making an international ass out of the American Republic. The Confederates had to be expelled from their stronghold in Pennsylvania posthaste.

  “Stanton, this article has the gall to say that Washington City is withering and dying because it is in a state of siege. And there are other newspapers saying essentially the same thing. The implication is that people are starving or eating rats in order to survive
. Worse is the publicity they are giving to those generals of ours who have tried and failed in the past. Do they actually think that McClellan would do any better today than he did earlier? Now the insufferable man wants to be President and not a victor in the battlefield.”

  Stanton laughed. “And what about the editorial that calls on you to give the command to Burnside for a second attempt at total disaster? Dear God, it is as if they never heard of Fredericksburg and the catastrophe of Marye’s Heights. At least Burnside was an honest man. He said he wasn’t qualified to command the Army of the Potomac and then went out and proved it.”

  Lincoln allowed himself a smile. “God save us from honest men.”

  “All of which brings us back to George Gordon Meade. He is and will remain commanding general until you make a change, sir, and it doesn’t sound like you’re ready to do that.”

  Lincoln looked out a window, keeping himself in the shadows in case a madman with a rifle was lurking about. As always, there was a large crowd around the White House and in the parks surrounding it. A good-sized group was forming to march. They had been present for the last several nights and they bore signs urging the President to launch the Army of the Potomac at the forces of Robert E. Lee. They didn’t seem to care who commanded. They just wanted action, and Lincoln sympathized with them.

  He stepped back from the window. He regretted not going to his second residence at the Soldiers’ Home, where there would be a little more peace and quiet. Mary was already there, and she was feeling melancholy as she kept recalling the deaths of two of their children, Willy and Eddie. Now even Robert had come down with a fever.

  “Edwin, I will direct General Meade to take the Army of the Potomac on the offensive. He will fight General Lee and let the chips fall where they may. If he can be the general he was during the first days of Gettysburg, we will be able to drive Lee from Pennsylvania. If not . . . then I will have a momentous decision to make regarding General Grant.”