A Chain of Thunder

by Jeff Shaara

  He had long ago accepted leadership as the most important responsibility of his life, was deeply appreciative that those above him, Halleck, and of course Grant, had shown more confidence in him than he believed he deserved. But Shiloh was a year past, and thus far the army, and Sherman, had yet to confront a similar disaster. The embarrassment at Chickasaw Bayou had been exactly that, an embarrassment, a humiliating failure, but that failure was about logistics and support, and a well-prepared enemy who held the good ground. The greatest lesson learned there had much more to do with tactics and positioning than the nagging doubts about his own abilities. No matter the hostile reaction of the cursed newspapers, or those fat men who filled offices in Washington, Sherman was still here, was still leading troops through the enemy’s ground. With no ambush, no great surprise assault, Sherman’s determination had grown, that when the fight came, the voices might just be gone altogether, and in their place a different voice, courageous, furious, his own shouts into the terrified faces of the enemy. It was not revenge, not some need to cleanse himself of his failures. It was just the job at hand, following Grant’s orders, executing a plan that he had finally come to appreciate. The army had driven a spear deep into rebel land, and Sherman had accepted that what Grant was doing now might be the most brilliant tactic of all. The rebels had shown nothing of comprehension, no ability to anticipate Grant’s strategy, had done nothing at all to impede Grant’s advance.

  For a larger version of this map, click here.

  Near the town of Raymond, McPherson had stumbled into a rebel force that was woefully unprepared for what they faced, as though the rebel command had no real idea what kind of power Grant was shoving through their territory. There was confusion on both sides, certainly, the ragged ground disguising the numbers, the positioning. But in less than a day’s time, the town of Raymond lay firmly in Grant’s hands, the road that way now apparently wide open. And so Grant had gone forward to see that himself.

  Instead of making a sweeping turn to hit Vicksburg from the east, Grant had ordered his three corps to make the best advantage of what Pemberton was giving them. Between Vicksburg and the capital city, the railroad and communication lines were seemingly unprotected, Pemberton keeping his forces west of the Big Black, and whatever strength the rebels had in Jackson seemed content to remain where they were. To anyone with a map, Grant’s army looked to be pinned between two halves of a vise, such that a vigorous offensive from either direction could catch Grant in a dangerous bind, possibly cutting him off from a retreat back to the Mississippi River, eliminating any hope of a supply line, any hope of reinforcements. But the rebels had yet to do anything vigorous at all. It was the kind of hesitation Grant had hoped for, and the orders that came to Sherman now were received with complete enthusiasm. Vicksburg was still the ultimate target, but with no one yet standing in their way, Grant ordered the army to shove northward, slicing the connection between Vicksburg and Jackson, and then, with McClernand guarding against any sudden attack from the west, McPherson and Sherman would make a rapid march straight to Jackson. If there was any strong force there waiting to surprise Grant at Jackson, a potential threat to Grant’s eventual assault on Vicksburg, that force would first be eliminated. If the city of Jackson was captured in the bargain, even better. Sherman knew as well as his superior did that the capture of any Confederate state capital produced headlines back east. And should Jackson fall into Federal hands, even Grant’s harshest critics would be made toothless. Sherman’s opinion of newspapermen had not changed, but even he had to admit that this time, they might serve a useful purpose after all.

  He had found a soft patch of deep grass near a fence line, most of the rails long gone, firewood for men who needed very little to keep warm. But there were some fires, the hum of low talk from tired men who had still not faced the enemy. The talk was all about McPherson, the brief fight near Raymond, the town now along their own route of march. The rumors flew, unstoppable, that the rebel army was just beyond the town, waiting, that McPherson had merely driven back a tough skirmish line. Sherman did nothing to stop that kind of talk, knew that nervous men were alert men. If it cost them some sleep, they just might take that out on the first rebels they saw.

  Sherman’s makeshift bed was close to the edge of the road, the dense grass of the fence line too comfortable to ignore. He had actually slept, waking once to the sound of hoofbeats, some courier moving quickly past. He had waited for the poke from a staff officer, one more order from Grant, a report from one of his own division commanders. But the hoofbeats had passed with no other disturbance, and within minutes the sleep had come again.

  He dreamed of California, the ocean, San Francisco, but there was something new, tearing the dream away, a hard, painful jolt in his back. He blinked, felt it again, a stiff kick, and now, a voice.

  “Hey! Where’d you come by the liquor? You got any left? This old throat is a-mighty parched.”

  Sherman rolled over, still felt the pain where the man had booted him, tried to see the man’s face, hidden by the darkness, the brim of a hat.

  “What the hell …”

  Sherman sat up, and the soldier let out a short gasp, backed away a step, turned, and with an eruption of motion, vanished down the road.

  “Sir!”

  Men were moving toward him, the familiar sounds of his staff, the voice of Colonel Dayton.

  “Sir! Did something happen? Who was that man? An assassin perhaps? A spy? He ran off that way. We’ll find him, sir.”

  Sherman probed the ache in his back, stood slowly.

  “Don’t bother, Colonel. Just one of our boys doing a little scavenging. Mistook me for a drunkard, sleeping off a good fog.”

  “Did he recognize you, sir?”

  He couldn’t help a chuckle, glanced at his shoulder straps, the two gold stars reflecting the firelight.

  “Seems so. He’ll run for a while yet. It’ll give him a story to tell his friends. You hear anything about that, ask a few questions. Otherwise, just let it go.”

  “My apologies, sir. The guards should not have let anyone slip into camp like that. There will be punishment, sir.”

  “I said, let it go. The boys have spirit. They’re itchy for something to do. Have to admit, I share that. We march early, and we move quickly.”

  “Yes, sir. That order has been communicated to the senior commanders.”

  Sherman stretched his back, glanced at his pocket watch, tilted it toward the nearest fire. Midnight.

  “Has Grant come back to us yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Might not tonight. Might stay with McPherson.” Sherman kept the words to himself now, thought, That engineer doesn’t need Grant tucking him in tonight, but sure as hell he’ll be nervous. The fight at Raymond loosened his men up a little. Good. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll do some loosening of our own.

  He sent the staff away, a half-dozen men who would still be cautious, who knew that whatever nameless soldier had been allowed to stumble upon Sherman might have had far more on his mind than a bottle of spirits. They worry about their own asses, he thought, as much as they worry about mine. Good. Keep them sharp. I doubt that thirsty fellow will go wandering through a strange camp again. Not this one, anyway.

  He stepped out into the road, saw clouds moving past the moon, the night darker still. He realized suddenly he missed Grant, had a ripple of fear about where Grant could be. We need him, for damn sure. Don’t you go riding into some fool ambush, or have some jumpy jackass guard mistake you for a rebel.

  He pulled a cigar from his jacket, lit it, the smoke rising into his nostrils, warming him, fogging his eyes. He suddenly thought of Napoleon, a lesson from long ago, a text at West Point: Strike the enemy when he least expects it. And if he’s divided, strike him harder. Well, from all we can tell, he’s divided now. Grant’s doing exactly what he should. Before we commence anything at Vicksburg, protect us from behind by busting hell out of anybody lurking out past our backside. Solves all kinds of
problems, before they become problems. And, along the way, we might just grab a city full of civilians … and teach them just what a war really is.

  JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

  MAY 13, 1863

  The rains had come, the streets of the city already soft, oozing mud stinking of the horses. He rode away from the train, stiff in the saddle, always observing, inspecting, the kind of attention to detail that kept his men alert. But the usual show was draining him, his strength barely keeping him in the saddle. The illness had come weeks before, some malady no one seemed able to treat, but there was no time now for the luxury of rest. He had come to Jackson, after all, because the president had ordered him to.

  The feud between Johnston and Jefferson Davis had begun even before the bloodshed at First Manassas. In the United States Army, Joseph Johnston had held the rank of brigadier general, and so had outranked every other officer who had made the decision to go south. It was only logical to Johnston that his higher rank would grant him the same consideration in the new army of the Confederacy. But Jefferson Davis had a completely different view, and in what he could only describe as a slap from the president, Johnston had been named the fourth most senior commander, behind Davis’s adjutant and inspector general, Samuel Cooper, as well as the now deceased Albert Sidney Johnston, and Robert E. Lee. Only Pierre Beauregard was subordinate to Johnston in the Confederate’s highest ranks. Johnston certainly believed the credit was his for victory at Manassas, but Davis blamed him for the failure of the Southern forces to drive home their success by crushing the Federal army completely before it could escape back to the defenses at Washington. Johnston knew better, that both armies were ill-prepared for such a bloody confrontation, and that even in victory, the Confederate forces suffered from the inexperience of so many of the officers in the field. The fact that Beauregard had received loud praise from the newspapers for his own role in the fight had only added fuel to Johnston’s fire.

  In 1862, Johnston had commanded the Confederate forces that first confronted George McClellan on the Virginia peninsula, and it was there that Johnston suffered the greatest indignity of all. Throughout his lengthy career, he had faced a variety of enemies, from the Seminole Wars in Florida to the war with Mexico, serving with enormous distinction alongside another of Winfield Scott’s more prominent officers, Robert E. Lee. Johnston had been wounded a number of times in a number of engagements, his coat usually riddled with holes, the purest sign of a man in the thick of the fight. But the year before, in June, the confrontation with McClellan at the Battle of Seven Pines produced a pair of wounds too serious for mere pride. With Johnston unable to command from his saddle, Jefferson Davis had responded by replacing him with Robert E. Lee. Since their days together at West Point, Johnston and Lee had been close, as close as either man’s temperament could allow. But now Lee was a rival, as he had been in Mexico, a thorn in their friendship that seemed far more significant to Johnston than to Lee. Since awarded command of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s star had risen, victories over a parade of inept Federal commanders, most notably the crushing success against Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg. Naturally, to President Davis, this was validation that Lee was the right man for that job. To Johnston, it was one more slap. But Davis could not just ignore Johnston’s value to the army. The death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh had given command of the West to Pierre Beauregard, and although Beauregard was widely heralded in the newspapers as the South’s first real hero, the man who had ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, many in the army had a very different opinion of the Creole, many blaming him for the devastating loss at Shiloh, and various setbacks soon after. It was an opinion shared by the president, and by November 1862, with Joe Johnston healthy once again, Davis had appointed Johnston to the overall command in the West.

  Since November, Johnston had kept his headquarters closer to Braxton Bragg’s army in Tennessee, overseeing what seemed to be the greatest threat from Federal efforts to drive toward Chattanooga, and possibly Atlanta. It was a supreme annoyance to Johnston that he was assigned to command Pemberton’s army as well, hundreds of miles from Bragg. To Johnston’s efficient mind, his sphere of command was spread out over a geographical area no single commander could hope to manage. It was little more than Davis’s attempts to put him in a position where success was impossible. Davis could then claim that his negative appraisal of Johnston was completely justified.

  Though Johnston was far from Richmond, there were frequent reminders from the pen of Jefferson Davis that his command was most certainly not independent. The most recent order had come as a result of the crisis confronting John Pemberton in Mississippi, the obvious threat to Vicksburg. To Johnston’s intense irritation, Pemberton had no hesitation bypassing his immediate superior in Tennessee with a flow of urgent communications sent directly to the president. It was one more reason for Johnston to despair. He had very little respect for Pemberton. The man was, after all, a Pennsylvanian, and thus far Pemberton had done very little to inspire anyone that he was the right man to secure the defense of anyplace as valuable as Vicksburg. Now Pemberton was facing a very real threat. No matter the potential for disaster in Tennessee, Johnston had been bluntly ordered by Richmond to travel to the city of Jackson, to take charge of the growing threat from Federal forces now seemingly slicing through Mississippi at will. Johnston had learned only in piecemeal messages the details of what Pemberton was confronting; that told Johnston that Pemberton himself didn’t fully grasp what was happening around him. Thus Davis’s order for Johnston to travel to Mississippi actually made sense. Illness or no, Johnston was compelled to board the train to Jackson.

  The train ride had taken three days, a naggingly methodical trip made necessary by the constant repairs to the tracks resulting from damage inflicted by cavalry of both armies. When Johnston finally arrived in Jackson, the rain seemed only to punctuate his lingering illness, his energy drained further by the parade on horseback to what had been arranged as his headquarters. It was, after all, customary that the commanding general would keep to his mount, moving beneath the flag that signaled the gravity of his presence. Most of the time, he actually enjoyed that, made it a point always to show the men the finest uniform, the most prominent adornments, whether the bright sash at his waist, the silver spurs, or the feather in his hat. But there was little to celebrate now, the rain and his growling stomach making for a depressing arrival to a city he had no real interest in protecting. He would get an argument about that, of course, knew already that Mississippi’s governor, John Pettus, had fled the area, reestablishing some kind of state capital at the town of Enterprise, near the Alabama border. It was no surprise to Johnston that Pettus, like every other civilian politician, was pleading that Johnston call forth a massive army to destroy Grant, an army that did not even exist in the imagination of Jefferson Davis. Johnston had no real concerns about Pettus or any worries about the state’s civilian affairs. It was one more piece of the annoyance of trying to manage an army in the midst of anxious civilians. They would come, as they always came, would seek Johnston out in a display of obsequiousness, a false front from men who served this army only by offering an endless tide of complaints.

  He peered out through a stream of water pouring from the brim of his hat, shivered, and followed the directions from a staff officer, the man just as miserable. They rounded a corner, and he saw the hotel, the Bowman House, an imposing structure highlighted by the prominent painting of a Confederate battle flag on the wall above the veranda. He halted the horse, impatient for the groom to take the reins, the man splashing up close to him, unspeaking, knowing what to do. Johnston swung his leg weakly over one side, dismounted into a thick splash of slop, hesitated, could not help thinking of the effort that had gone into the sheen of polish on his boots. He straightened his back, an instinctive habit inspired by his short stature, made every effort to move to the veranda with some kind of decorum. At the top of the steps, gray-coated officers spread out to meet him, some of
them from his own staff, men who had hurried away from the train station to make ready his new office. But the others had a different look, worn men, the uniforms not nearly as dapper, rough beards and dirty hats. He didn’t mind that. From their stare alone, it was quite clear that these men had met the enemy.

  He stepped up to the veranda, protected now from the soggy breath of the shower behind him.

  An officer stepped forward, with an air of importance. Johnston knew the look: someone’s adjutant.

  “Sir! Welcome to Jackson. Please come inside. This weather was unexpected. It has been miserably dry here for some time. I regret deeply that the skies have seen fit to insult your arrival.”