by Ralph Peters
Couch turned his mount in the ever-deepening mud and the horse struggled off with the general hunched in his saddle.
Even on duty in Florida, Meade had never witnessed such a storm. His spectacles were useless, his clinging uniform a woolen prison, his rain cape merely adding sweat to the mix.
He gave necessary orders to the drenched, dutiful men who would, in turn, give orders to his soldiers, the men who suffered all and had no voices. Of all the tragedies, great and small, that had broken the campaign, what galled him, what gnawed at him most deeply, was the waste of good men’s lives. Hooker hadn’t fought: He’d staged a parade then quit.
And good men died for nothing.
George Meade swore that if ever such decisions were up to him, he would fight to win when a fight was on and never squander lives in a half-hearted effort.
Materializing from the drown-the-world darkness, John Reynolds found him.
“Took a while to sniff you out, George,” Reynolds said. “This rain.”
“Couldn’t smell a pig’s ass in this storm.”
Reynolds forced his mount closer. “George, I just wanted to tell you … bridges or not, if you stay here to fight, I’m staying with you. To the end.”
Meade was touched. “Couch wants to fight it out, too. He changed his mind.”
Face a white smear framed by a turned-up collar and cap pulled low, Reynolds said, “You know, George, I’d gladly serve under you, date of rank be damned. If you were in Joe’s place.”
Meade snorted. “Only the biggest damned fool in the world would accept command of this army.”
* * *
“No, no, no!” Hooker barked. “Answer him immediately. The engineers have two spans open again, the withdrawal resumes immediately.” He paced and snarled, “They want to embarrass me, that’s all. Couch, what has he done on this campaign? Now he wants to strike a heroic pose?” He scanned the floor as if hunting creatures to kill. “Meade’s behind it. Meade’s gotten to him. I should charge them all with mutiny.…”
“Keep your voice down, Joe. Sit down. I’ll handle everything,” Butterfield assured him.
* * *
Orders were orders, and George Meade was an obedient soldier. In the gray of a tardy dawn, he marched his last brigade through the mud and swollen air back to the crossings. He’d left a powerful skirmish line behind, enough to discourage any Confederates able and willing to struggle through the mire.
So far, there had been no sign of Rebel movement.
The last acres by the river were packed with troops, Couch’s corps and his own men waiting their turn: Reynolds’ corps was already across. The progress over the bridges was constant and orderly, but Meade felt the press of time.
Hooker had ordered them all to withdraw, and the order was explicit. Meade was not to fight. He could resist if attacked, but must seek to break contact promptly. There would be no last stand south of the Rappahannock.
Meade watched, alone, as the crowd on the south bank thinned and the endless blue columns finally neared an end. It was time, he decided, to call in the skirmishers. Then he would cross the river himself, accepting defeat.
He wondered what the future held for all of them.
* * *
If he’d suffered through an uglier night, Bill Smith couldn’t recall it. The feared attack had not gone forward, thanks to that hammer-hard rain, and his presentiment had come to nothing. But the squalor and near hopelessness of that night spent in the open, wrapped in a useless Yankee tent half, had been a discouraging business, enough to make the best of men lose heart.
And he wasn’t feeling like the best of men.
The rain had stopped, leaving behind mud to swallow a horse. True, they had captured Yankee rations to chaw on, but even those were wet through and befouled. In air as heavy as soaked towels, men quietly cleaned their rifles, those indispensable fifth limbs, and hoped their cartridges were dry enough.
The attack had only been postponed. Every man knew it, without being told.
Of course, the 12th Virginia was tasked for skirmishers. And Corporal Smith found himself among the anointed.
Still galled him to have built that bridge for the Yankees. Just scalded his innards to ponder it.
No man showed high spirits. Each one a picture of mortal ruination, the soldiers didn’t even step far off to flush their guts. Pride might return—it surely would—but for the present it was on the deserters’ list.
The only human being on God’s damp earth who seemed downright offensively and inexplicably cheerful was Little Billy. Mahone had come by on his too-big horse, kicking up mud and whatnot, cackling about going out to find him some Yankees for his breakfast.
Smith suspected that the Yankees had appetites of their own, not all congenial.
At last, the go-ahead-now order came down, well after the dawn had pretended to come. Unhappy soldiers stepped off under a dirty sky.
Hadn’t gone as far as a rifle shot before a man’s legs wore out. Down Southside way, you had to go deep in a swamp to find such mud. He had to keep on going, though. His legs just had to do as they were told. And as long as he had arms and strength left in them, Smith intended to hold his rifle high, defying the mud that leapt toward the weapon.
Yankees might catch him out many a way, but they wouldn’t catch him with a useless rifle.
“Guess this here’s ‘the merry month of May,’” a jokester snickered.
No one laughed.
The feel of things grew ominous. Ahead, every man could see the open stretches, freed of all but stumps, where the Yankees had cleared extensive fields of fire. Beyond, layers of abatis announced the presence of field fortifications.
“Going to get it now,” the jokester said. “Yes, sirree. Just you wait.”
“Shut up,” a sergeant told him.
Every man bent his shoulders. Tense as a coward’s finger on a trigger.
The only two sounds left in the world were birds at their own doings and the suck-slop of men struggling forward, many barefoot by choice to save their shoes.
What the devil were the Yankees waiting for?
Movement. Ahead. Smith clutched his rifle tighter, thumb set to cock back the hammer.
Waving his arms wildly to signal Don’t shoot!, a gray-clad figure clambered up from behind the Yankees’ earthen parapet. He called the Virginians forward.
The Yankee fortifications were impressive—daunting—but abandoned. A handful of soldiers from a sister regiment had found easier going through a grove and made it inside the Yankee barricades first.
“I’ll be…,” Smith said to himself.
They held up then, waiting on further orders, which took a fair time to come. By the time they resumed their advance, the hour pushed noon. Here and there, forgotten Yankees or men who’d slept through everything materialized to be taken prisoner—not without enduring some hard teasing and the ritual of having their pockets emptied for the immediate benefit of the Confederacy. Some of the Federals were confused, others were sheepish, and some were plain relieved.
One Yank had dirty pictures you wouldn’t believe.
Later, facing another Union line even more formidable, the 12th Virginia was halted for the last time. Other regiments, other brigades, had already gone ahead to clear things out.
Word came back that the whole Yankee army was gone.
* * *
Disgusted, Lee retreated into quiet. A victory had been won, indeed, but a great chance had been lost. Still, he believed he had learned a thing of value: The Union army had lost the will to fight. The soldiers in blue might range from brave to indifferent, along with the cowards who disgraced every flag, but the generals—so many of them men he’d known and respected—hadn’t the heart for an all-or-nothing fight. They did not lack strength of arms but strength of purpose.
The Union generals behaved like frightened men.
His mood was raw and forbidding, his stomach gone sour, but a vision had already begun to take hold, a co
urse he’d pursued too timidly the year before, when he had crossed the Potomac into Maryland. He had lacked the confidence then to drive any deeper, fearful that he might be cut off and cornered. The price of his caution had been that he’d handed the initiative to McClellan, who, blessedly, had failed to make the most of it. Still, the Army of Northern Virginia had been driven to near destruction outside of Sharpsburg.
He saw now that his mistake had been lack of boldness. It was an error he would not make again.
The North beckoned. Virginia might be spared yet another summer of war. With Baltimore or, better, Philadelphia threatened or seized outright, even the most unforgiving men in Washington would be persuaded that further conflict was useless.
Robert E. Lee was confident that the Union army would remain ill-led, surly, but incapable of stopping him.
And his own army, Lee believed, could not be defeated.
The prospect of marching north demanded much consideration, of course. He would discuss it with Longstreet, when that truculent naysayer arrived, to test its logic and practicability. If a feasible plan matured, he would put it to President Davis.
When Lee turned back to his staff, his face had eased.
* * *
After a march that would have undone old Job, confinement in verminous railcars, and more slogging thereafter, Sam Pickens had stumbled across Washington City in a rainstorm that beat all, ending up in what the guards called the “Old Capitol Prison.”
At least a man got fed and not so badly. The Yankees were more curious than wicked. A few of the guards put on a swagger that seemed more farce than fierce, but most seemed to know they were high-yella lucky to be guarding Rebs in the rear and not facing them in battle.
Nobody seemed to know how the fight was going or had gone, but some rumors put Marse Robert just outside Washington, while others claimed he’d been driven back on Richmond. Other hearsay, more credible, held that they’d be exchanged in no time at all, since a mighty passel of Yanks had been taken prisoner. True or not, it was pleasant to believe it.
Through all his travails, Pickens had managed to hold on to a silver dollar, and when the guards let the sutlers come braying down the gangway between the cells, he bought his fellows a pie and a jar of molasses, hoarding the change.
A Yankee surgeon or some such like came by to inspect them for smallpox, measles, and fevers. He smelled Pickens’ rotten feet before he got near him.
After marveling that those feet were a case for the medical books, the Yankee had his orderly fetch a bottle of liniment then wash down Pickens’ feet and bandage them up.
* * *
In the U.S. Military Telegraph office in Washington, a haggard man read through the latest dispatches. Then he read them again.
When he rose at last, his broken expression silenced the last whispers in the room, leaving only the tick of the keys and the scratch of pencils as evidence that the world had not come to an end.
Very tall, but bent at the shoulders—as if he bore an invisible hod of bricks—he muttered:
“What will the country say?”
Then he walked back to the house the people had loaned him.
Epilogue
Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson died on the tenth of May 1863. Weakened by his wounds and the trauma of amputation, he could not long resist when pneumonia struck. He saw his wife and child before his death, but despite his proximity, Lee made no effort to visit him.
Of the other generals portrayed in this book, Union and Confederate:
John Reynolds died at Gettysburg.
Carnot Posey died from wounds suffered at Bristoe Station.
“Uncle John” Sedgwick died at Spotsylvania.
J. E. B. Stuart died from wounds received at Yellow Tavern.
Robert Rodes died at the Third Battle of Winchester.
Stephen Ramseur died at Cedar Creek.
Ambrose Powell Hill died at Petersburg.
Convinced that his Army of Northern Virginia was invincible, Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania.
George Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac three days before the Battle of Gettysburg. He defeated Lee on an open battlefield with roughly equal numbers, turning the tide of the war.
At Gettysburg, Dan Sickles made an unapproved advance with his division, exposing the Union left flank. His movement led to the battle’s gravest crisis. Sickles lost a leg but lost no time in hurrying to tell Lincoln that the Gettysburg victory was due to his sagacity and courage, while any mistakes made on the field were Meade’s.
On the third day at Gettysburg, Henry Hunt’s massed artillery destroyed Lee’s last hope of victory.
Joseph Hooker received command of the Twentieth Corps under Sherman and fought well, only to quit the field when denied another army-level command. After the war, he married, drank, and died.
Dan Butterfield stood by Hooker until 1864, commanding a division in his Twentieth Corps. After the war and to the surprise of many, Butterfield remained in the U.S. Army as a brevet major general until 1870, all the while growing wealthier through private business interests. Maneuvering past the scandals of the Grant administration, he prospered until his death in 1901. His notable legacy to the U.S. Army remains the bugle call “Taps.”
Oliver Otis Howard continued to command the Eleventh Corps, which collapsed again at Gettysburg (thanks to a blunder by Francis Channing Barlow), earning him the nickname “Uh-oh Howard.” His corps was ordered west for a fresh start under Sherman, and both Howard and his men built a solid record as fighters. Impressed by Howard’s battlefield performance, Sherman chose him over Hooker to command the Army of the Tennessee.
Howard’s greatest achievements came after the war: A zealous champion of “Negro” rights, he headed the Freedmen’s Bureau for nearly a decade. Although his tenure was marred by the corruption of subordinates—as at Chancellorsville, Howard trusted the wrong men—he was instrumental in gaining the vote for former slaves. When other reform efforts failed, it was because he confused the desirable with the possible.
Howard remained on active duty until 1894, with years of frontier service, but he continued to press for the integration of religious congregations and for the foundation of colleges that would educate blacks (as well as founding a college to serve poor whites in Appalachia). Today, the greatest of those institutions, Howard University, continues to bear his name.
Immediately after Chancellorsville, the Northern press vilified Carl Schurz, based upon a false report that his division, not Devens’, had been positioned on the Union flank and simply fled. His fellow generals knew better and Schurz continued to lead his division until a falling-out with Hooker in the western theater, after which he campaigned for Lincoln’s reelection. Schurz then returned to the battlefield and served in the Carolinas through the war’s end.
In peacetime, Schurz founded a newspaper in St. Louis and became the country’s first German American senator—and a fierce campaigner against government corruption. Appointed secretary of the interior by President Hayes, Schurz took on the spoils system, shielded the Bureau of Indian Affairs against the War Department, removed corrupt Indian agents, insisted that treaties be honored, and championed what later generations would call “human rights.” In the age of the robber barons, he fought to protect public lands, and he always stood up for der kleine Mann, “the little guy.” He served as the editor for the New-York Evening Post and The Nation and became the lead editorial writer for Harper’s Weekly, the most influential periodical of the era. Revered among German Americans, the doggedly anti-imperialist Schurz remained a political force and an outspoken voice for justice until his death in 1906.
Then we forgot him.
Emory Upton earned his general’s star for his innovative attack at Spotsylvania. Having commanded artillery and infantry units, he went on to command a cavalry division that crushed Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederates and tore through Alabama and Georgia in the closing days of the war. In subsequent years, he bec
ame the most important reformer in the history of the United States Army. Afflicted with what appears to have been an agonizing brain tumor, he shot himself in 1881.
Initially opposed to the war and no friend to slavery, Jubal Early became the foremost mythologizer of Robert E. Lee and the leading champion of the “Lost Cause” movement.
Fitz Lee survived the war and became the governor of Virginia.
John Brown Gordon became Georgia’s governor and a United States senator, adored in the South and respected in the North. He and Fanny shared one of the great love stories of their century.
Clement Evans became a much-beloved Methodist preacher. Resisting all attempts to promote him to higher dignities within the church, he chose to minister to the country folk and small-town citizens who had been his soldiers.
Author’s Note
Joseph Hooker’s impressive plan for the Chancellorsville campaign failed for many reasons, but three stand out:
First, the plan was too complex for the communications technologies of the era. Hooker’s initial moves, including an artful deception plan conceived by Dan Butterfield, went flawlessly, and the plan continued to unfold well until the first significant contact with the enemy. Thereafter, inadequate communications triggered a breakdown of the Union effort. Not only did Hooker have no idea of the location of most of his cavalry, at key moments he lacked awareness of the activities of the nearby Union Sixth Corps, and time-sensitive orders went awry. Still worse, his leadership style all but prohibited initiative. Overall, Hooker conceived a twentieth-century plan for a mid-nineteenth-century army.
Second, Hooker, despite earnest intentions, could not rise to the responsibilities of army-level, independent command. Personally brave and tactically able, Hooker had simply risen above the competencies of his character and skill. Faced with the resolute and implacable Robert E. Lee, he froze and failed.