Darkness at Chancellorsville

by Ralph Peters

  “Do so, General Stuart. Do so.” Lee set a stern father’s eye upon his cavalry chief. “It’s of the greatest import, there must be no delay. And your men must contain them, while we decide upon matters. You must shield this army, prevent them from seeing us clearly.”

  “From seeing us at all,” Jackson put in.

  Nine p.m.

  Union Eleventh Corps headquarters

  I’m counting on you, Devens,” Oliver Otis Howard told the commander of his First Division, “you’ve got to be my stalwart. Your fellow division commanders are, well, you know…”

  “Germans,” Devens said, in his sharp New England voice.

  The two men stood on the tavern porch where Howard had fixed his headquarters. It had given him pleasure to have the orderlies empty all of the liquor onto the ground: Drunkenness was a bane, whether in an army or in private life, and he shared with his wife a deep commitment to temperance.

  “Well, it’s more than that, of course,” Howard added, quietly. “But you understand.”

  Devens nodded. “Shame you can’t remove at least one of them, hand Frank Barlow a division.”

  Howard smirked, but not in ill temper. “You Harvard men do stick together, don’t you?”

  Devens, more aristocratic than the aristocrats Howard had met, wasn’t one to give ground. He replied, “Well, I’d say that you West Point fellows form quite the club.”

  “A divided club, at present. Tragically, but inevitably, divided. The Germans, though … between the two of us, one daren’t rely on them. They’re already seeing Confederate hobgoblins everywhere.”

  “Matter of science,” Devens agreed. “Professor Agassiz’ research has proven it, beyond dispute. The Teuton’s inferior to the Anglo-Saxon, or to the Scot.” He smirked. “You should’ve heard von Gilsa, he’s terrified that Lee’s going to leap from the darkness and holler, ‘Boo!’”

  Howard wondered if he might have been too frank. “One mustn’t reveal one’s sentiments, of course. We do have to rub along. It’s only—”

  Meysenburg, the corps’ adjutant general appeared in the doorway. The man was efficient, in his way, but he had been all but forced upon Howard, another relic of the Sigel era.

  “Your pardon, gentlemen,” the adjutant said, with the lightest of accents. He faced General Howard. “Sir … are you certain … the commissary wagons … is it perhaps the wisest thing to bring them up? The road is very narrow, it’s hard to move as things are. We’ll have even less freedom of maneuver.”

  It rankled Howard to have an order questioned. Always did. He sought to restrain the peevishness in his voice:

  “Really, Colonel! If Lee is in retreat—as General Hooker just assured me is the case—we need to provision the men for the marches ahead.”

  “But earlier … with the beefs, the confusion…”

  “The correct form is ‘beeves,’ Meysenburg. And one can’t blame the cattle. The thing was poorly managed, that’s human incompetence.” He governed his tone again. “I expect better.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The adjutant retreated.

  Eyebrows climbing in mock despair, Howard looked at Devens.

  The New Englander’s face was noncommittal, but he did say, “Doesn’t seem a bad sort, actually, Meysenburg.”

  “Fine enough clerk,” Howard said. “But not the man I’d have chosen for such a position.” He indulged himself in the briefest flash of temper. “All their inane sensitivities! The dreary, petty politics of it! And half of them atheists! With their tin-pot revolution, which they botched utterly. Before fleeing like mice.” He grimaced, disgusted, almost outraged. “Schurz, for example. What on earth qualifies that man to command a division, even a small one? Politics, and politics alone. The blasted German vote. Oh, they’re fine when it comes to small details, the Germans. Argue for hours over nothing, but, lo and behold, the belt buckles have a high shine, come inspection. Never make first-rate soldiers of them, though—”

  He stopped himself short of employing the word cowards.

  The corps commander let his thoughts pass in review and then resumed. “Really, I think the Union would do better to enlist the Negro. In generous numbers. Let him take his rightful place, show all men his mettle. Don’t just free him, let him free himself. I’ve spoken to the president about it.”

  “And?”

  Howard moved to fold his arms, only to realize, again, after nearly a year, that his right arm wasn’t there. Habit outlasted reason.

  “He said the time isn’t ripe.” Howard’s entire body, what remained of it, tightened in earnest. “I fear they’ll never think the time is ripe. Lincoln’s well enough, in his way, but…”

  He had given an arm. What had Lincoln given? That proclamation had not gone far enough, not nearly far enough.

  It had not been the best of days for Otis Howard, that was the truth of it. The order had come down to ready the corps to march on Fredericksburg, and he’d made the divisions snap to it. But the lead brigade had not gone five hundred yards before a second order arrived to halt the column. Later, an order came down to reoccupy their positions of the morning and prepare for a defense. Even a German would have seen that the failure to advance was a retreat.

  Joseph Hooker was an immoral man. Howard hoped he would not also prove an incompetent man, branded by the Lord and destined to fail. God’s judgment could be terrible: Entire cities had perished for a ruler’s sins. Didn’t anyone read Joshua or Kings?

  Nor was Hooker enlightened regarding the Negro.

  Oliver Otis Howard had first embraced the cause of emancipation because it guaranteed him protectors in Washington and favorable mention in crucial New York papers, but over the months his calculation had become a conviction. The more he saw of the South, the more he despised it. Slavery was evil incarnate, making brutes of all, master and man. And the Negro possessed a natural virtue, a simple will to goodness, that need only be cultivated. And some of the race—particularly those of mixed blood—might raise themselves up through education. It was long past time to break the grip of the South’s degenerate whites and empower freedmen.

  Nor had it helped his mood that this had been one of those bad days when his lost arm haunted him, when he felt pain where there was no flesh and bone, moments when he still reached out with a right hand long since lost.

  He wished his wife were present, long enough to pray together. And, perhaps, a bit longer. Under the sanction of holy matrimony.

  “Good night, Devens,” Howard said, abruptly. But before he took himself off to his tent to sleep, he added, “And you needn’t worry—I won’t forget Frank Barlow.”

  In a nearby field a German band struck up a foreign tune.

  Ten p.m.

  Hawkins’ farm

  Eine verdammte Schweinerei,” Schimmelfennig declared. “We have throwed this day away. Away, we have throwed it. Diese verdammten Idioten.”

  “Calm yourself, Alex. Tell me what your men found.”

  “Ach, the Rebels’ cannons have gone away. They have no wish to fight now. But they look at us. Es war eine Pruefung, nichts weiter. They test our lines, they judge. My men drive them away, but they come back tomorrow, ich wage es. Our position is false, verkehrt.”

  In the muted firelight, Schimmelfennig took on the look of Mephistopheles in a provincial theater. But that was merely a trick of the light: There was no devilry in the man at all.

  “Well, reinforce your pickets,” Schurz said. “And we’ll see what the morning brings.”

  He took the brigade commander—his old friend—by the arm and nudged him gently toward the other officers by the fire. Staff and line had been busy this evening, and only a few old acquaintances had appeared for Schurz’s Stammtisch, the little parliament in which old bonds trumped rank at the end of the day.

  Seated on camp chairs or logs rolled close, empty pipes clenched between their teeth from habit, a mere four officers lingered. Hecker, hero and comrade of 1848; von Gilsa, who had made a surpri
se appearance from Devens’ division next on; Peissner, a Bavarian who was both the corps’ chess champion and its finest fencer; and Prince Salm-Salm, who barely concealed his resentment of Peissner’s skill with saber, rapier, and foil. The prince remained an odd man out, a fervent royalist whose presence was a result of gambling debts in Germany, not a passion for freedom. But the fellow was largely accepted, since he was a distinguished soldier and, of no less import, possessed a wife of phenomenal beauty rumored to have rejected General Hooker’s advances with such grace that she remained a favorite at headquarters.

  Aren’t we a band of gypsies, though? Schurz thought to himself. We’ve traveled some difficult roads, and here we are. He held back a few steps himself, arms folded, listening to the argument in his old tongue. He insisted that military affairs be conducted in English, but here, between alte Kameraden, German prevailed.

  “But it could not be more clear,” Peissner insisted. “This war is Hegel pure, the dialectic fits perfectly. The Southern thesis excites the Northern antithesis. And the war will end in a new synthesis that becomes a thesis on a higher level. This is demonstrated philosophy, active thought.”

  “Hegel’s a bore,” Prince Salm-Salm remarked. The prince was ever the gadfly and once had spent a winter’s evening defending Goethe’s discredited theory of optics, die Farbenlehre.

  “I’m not convinced that philosophy moved forward one step after Kant,” Hecker put in. “Anyway, in such times, I’d rather read Schiller. Or Heine. We can philosophize when the war is won.”

  “Without philosophy, we are animals.”

  “My horse does seem to get on fine without Hegel,” Prince Salm-Salm noted.

  “And you”—Peissner went on the attack—“you will admit, I think, that you are a man who seeks recognition? Isn’t that true?”

  “All men seek recognition,” the prince allowed.

  Peissner clapped his hands. “There you have it! Hegel pure again! His theory of Anerkennung. Hegel was the great world thinker of this century! Schopenhauer is a feather, an after-comer.”

  “To a Bavarian.”

  It would go on like this until Schurz shooed them off, and he was on the verge of doing so when von Gilsa rose from his log and stepped toward him. The man, who had remained silent, had something on his mind. Tactfully—for once—Schimmelfennig stepped away.

  “What is it, Leo?” Schurz asked, drawing the colonel deeper into the shadows.

  Another former officer who had gone over to the revolution, the Prussian looked at the ground, at the darkness, at nothing.

  “My brigade,” he began. “General Devens has us on the flank, there is nothing beyond us.”

  “Someone has to be on the flank.”

  “But not in such a way. There is no cavalry. The flank is not refused properly, only two regiments. This is not the way. And General Devens mocks me, I think. He believes I am frightened.”

  “I know you’re not frightened,” Schurz said. “We all know that.”

  Von Gilsa waved that away. “But you are not my division commander.” His breath sounded like panting in the darkness. “I am not frightened. Yet, I have fear. For my men. This is not how things must be done.”

  “Double your pickets. You can do that much.”

  “No. Even there, I am restrained.”

  Schurz understood the problem all too well and he shared the Prussian’s concerns. But he was not von Gilsa’s superior officer. Military discipline—military courtesy—had to be observed.

  He wondered, though, if he might not have a quiet word with Devens.

  “Well, Leo, if we march tomorrow, it should all come right. General Devens has to get to know you. And you have to get to know him. In time—”

  “Carl,” von Gilsa said, voice earnest, “I think that I already know him, this is the problem.” The colonel’s eyes caught the firelight. “I worry, Carl, that things have gone wrong already.”

  When Schurz did not reply, von Gilsa repeated:

  “I worry.”

  Three thirty a.m., May 2

  The Plank Road at the Catherine Furnace Road

  So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found, and we will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground; and of him and of all the men that are with him there shall not be left so much as one.”

  The verse haunted Jackson this night, 2 Samuel 17:12. It wasn’t perfectly fitting, given the fate of Absalom, but it did express his sentiments: “there shall not be left so much as one.” He would kill them all, if he could. And then they would make peace.

  “Show us,” he said.

  Jed Hotchkiss placed a cracker box between the two generals and spread out the map in the lantern’s cast. Jackson left his own seat to kneel on the earth for a closer look. Lee remained still.

  “Chaplain Lacy was correct, sir. The Wellfords know a way. Happens the old colonel recently opened a logging road, not on the map. Couldn’t be better placed to solve the problem, makes just the connection we need to keep out of sight.”

  Jackson made a deep-throated sound of approval. There had been a scare, when the first route planned for the flank march had been found to lie partly inside the Union picket lines. His promise to Lee to march at four a.m. had, of necessity, fallen through. Frantic rides through the darkness had brought this answer, though.

  “Continue,” Jackson said.

  Hotchkiss, who seemed to love maps more than the world they described, pointed out the route, increment by increment, with named roads and nameless trails. There were twists and multiple changes of direction, taking them south only to turn north again. But the route did appear to be concealed and would bring them out beyond the Union flank. If Stuart’s midnight reporting was accurate.

  “It’s convoluted, sir. Forest tracks, hardly roads at all. And it’s long. But it can be done.”

  “How long?”

  Hotchkiss hesitated. “Ten miles, General. Maybe eleven.”

  That was long, indeed. With a battle to be fought at the end of it. But there was no alternative.

  “Can it pass artillery?”

  “I’m led to believe so, General. Though not without an effort.”

  The near silence of a great army in its slumber held them close. Lanterns flickered, as if the flames had grown drowsy.

  At last, Lee said, “General Jackson, what do you propose to do?”

  Jackson swept a finger along the route Hotchkiss had traced. “Go around here. As Captain Hotchkiss described it.”

  “And … what do you propose to make this movement with?”

  “With my whole corps,” Jackson said.

  “And … what does that leave me?”

  Jackson looked at his commander in surprise. Lee knew exactly what would be left to him. Only after a moment did Jackson grasp the vision Lee was sharing with him: The rump of the army left here, with Lee, would be the only barrier between the Union troops and the direct road to Richmond. And that barrier would prove slight, should Hooker find the courage to strike in force.

  “Only the divisions of Anderson and McLaws,” Jackson answered bluntly, belatedly. Yes, he was asking Lee to take an enormous risk. But this attack could not be half-hearted or weak, it had to succeed. If it were to be done at all, it had to be done with the might of avenging angels.

  Still … with Early’s Division and a brigade already peeled away at Fredericksburg, he was asking Lee to part with two-thirds of the army remaining to him, to take that great a risk. It was a terrible thing, he understood.

  Lee tormented the stub of a pencil with unsteady fingers. It was the clearest symptom of doubt he had ever seen in the man.

  Lee looked at him. “Well, go on. And Godspeed.”

  FIVE

  Nine a.m.

  The march

  A tribulation it was. Lordy. Hardly one hour of marching and his feet burned like he was setting them down on skillets, step after step. He had been an unruly youth and had not been mindful when brimstone preachers inveigh
ed against the corruption of the body, warning of its loathsomeness, but now he understood. His feet were surely corrupted.

  A pause. In the slant-shade cool of morning. A sharing of last crackers. No rations had caught up with them, no manna had fallen from Heaven, and deepest damnation to the man who had started the cruel, infernal, and demonic lie that commissary wagons would serve them before they set out.

  Great deeds were in the air, though, stirring a man’s pulse. When Old Jack rode by close, it gave Sam Pickens his first true, near-up sight of that man, a fellow finely assembled, though showing a bald spot when he lifted his hat. His comrades had cheered wildly for the black-bearded man on the runt horse. Then, not fifteen minutes later, word had come back down the column that there must be no more cheering, that silence was vital from that moment on.

  There had been some confusion to start. Used to marching early, the men, all of them, had been astonished to find the daylight already upon them when they were awakened not by grunting sergeants but by an artillery duel, a petty scrap between redlegs. Then there had been uncustomary dawdling, Pickens had even had time for a wash in a creek. The cold water soothed his feet, but only for as long as he stood in it. After that, commands cracked out and, where there had been lassitude, there was haste: They must march, although no one knew where.

  Certain to be a fight at the end of it, though.

  Pickens prayed the march would be short and the fight near, an inversion of his usual sentiment.

  As the going resumed—a misery unto him—he tried to bully his mind onto goodly things: the promise of a handsome day, and the faint, remaining softness of the forest roads, a last hint of damp that refused to give way to dust. A man could breathe, at least.

  Didn’t help.

  They marched, four abreast, no gabbing, not yet, morning stiff. He tried to think on his home, on the goodness of Umbria, but, again, he only conjured Auntie Delsie, this time her declaration after Romulus got his leg taken off and he rigged himself up a hobble-on, fit for light work by harvest: Cinnamon-fleshed and upright, fragrant and oracular, she had declared, “Rom ain’t minded to be the less, he got pride.”