Cain at Gettysburg

by Ralph Peters

  “Nonsense,” Meade said. “He knows no honest Rebel would waste a ball on him.”

  The generals laughed. But Meade was already done with Newton and drafting a dispatch to Washington in his mind. The triumvirate of Halleck, Stanton, and Lincoln had to be fed and pacified, if he was to have the freedom to fight Lee his way.

  What was he forgetting? He had to be forgetting something, there was so damnably much to be done. He demanded of his mind that it be thorough, but his faculties wanted rest.

  All of it had to be done by strength of will.

  By the time he saw Newton off and returned to the headquarters, Howard had gone back to his corps, but Hancock had arrived, belching and barking, compounded of piss and vinegar. “Damned inhospitable,” he told Meade. “I expected a proper breakfast, after all that. You’re letting me down, George.”

  “Just make sure we don’t end up eating crow, Win,” Meade said. “Butterfield explain where you’re to go in?”

  “Gibbon’s bringing the men up. I see you’ve got me playing governess to Sickles on my left.”

  “He shouldn’t need much minding today. He just has to hold his position. I don’t see the left as the threatened flank just now.” Meade considered the problem one more time. “If I’m wrong, I can bring up the Fifth Corps and use Sickles as a pivot. He’ll be all right. Humphreys and Birney are both good men, they’ll handle their divisions properly.”

  Hancock grinned. “You’re just partial to Humph as a Philadelphia man.”

  “As you claim to be yourself,” Meade shot back.

  “Not the same, though. What the Hell ships did his granddaddy build? The Constitution and what the devil?”

  “The Constellation. There’s no harm in coming of good family, you know. Gives a man a standard to live up to.”

  “Well, hats off to Bobby Lee, then. He’s got more family history than the tsar of all the Russias.”

  “Not,” Meade said, “a Philadelphian, though.”

  They both laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Henry Slocum asked. Back from their reconnaissance, he and General Warren had tied their horses beside the house. They both appeared bewildered to find Meade in such good spirits.

  “Old George here was explaining to me why Marse Robert ain’t a blue blood,” Hancock told them. “No Philadelphia ties.”

  “Well, G.K. and I wouldn’t know about that,” Slocum said. “We’re both brown-dirt New Yorkers.”

  “You and Dan Sickles.”

  “City man,” Slocum said. “Doesn’t count.”

  “Well, what do you think, Henry?” Meade asked Slocum, bringing the conversation back to business. No matter the course he chose to pursue, an infernal amount of work remained to be done. “Can you attack to advantage?”

  Slocum shook his head. With a stand-by-me glance at Warren, he said, “We’d be damned fools to attack over that ground. Too broken up. Creek to get across, then God knows what. Be impossible to hold an attacking force together. If a regiment maintained its alignment for three hundred yards, I’d call it lucky.”

  Disappointment hit Meade. He had hoped for an opening to strike Lee first, to impose his will on the giant figure in gray. But this wasn’t about what he wanted to do. It was about what needed doing. If the ground was bad, he would not attack over it: Make no mistakes that can be prevented, and do not surrender to impulse.

  “G.K.? You agree with Henry?”

  “I’d rather see Lee attack up those hills, than us attack down and start uphill again. Troops up there are dug in nicely enough. Lee comes at us that way, it’ll be Injun-mean, but he’ll have the worst of it.”

  Meade nodded. “He’ll want that road. He has to see it.”

  “Well, he won’t get it, George,” Slocum told him. “We can hold that ground. Just let him try and take it.”

  “We should watch our left, too,” Warren said. “Remember Chancellorsville, how Hooker kept looking east, because that’s what made sense? Damn it, we saw Jackson moving west, but wouldn’t credit it. Because it didn’t fit the picture we’d painted for ourselves.”

  Meade was annoyed by the implied comparison of himself to General Hooker, but he suppressed the emotion. Let the man say what he has to say, he counseled himself. He could almost hear his wife’s voice speak the words.

  Warren shook his head at his recollections, then returned to the present question. “Lee may risk the bad ground and hit us on our right, but he’s got better space for maneuver on our left, out beyond Sickles. The Baltimore road may not loom as large to him as it does to us.” Warren’s face twisted, lifting his thick mustache on one side of his mouth and lowering it on the other. “What I can’t figure out is why he hasn’t hit us already. He must know our last corps haven’t come up.”

  “Maybe Longstreet’s not up, either,” Hancock put in. He looked at Meade. “I agree with G.K. Watch the left, as well as the right. Bobby Lee has a logic all his own.”

  “The left’s sound,” Meade declared. “All Sickles has to do is maintain his line and hold on to that first hill. I don’t think that’s asking too much.” Suddenly, though, he felt a new need for certainty. “George!” he barked. He didn’t look around, but expected his son to be near. And the boy was.

  “Sir?”

  “Ride down and make sure that General Sickles has taken up his position.”

  * * *

  Longstreet sat on a fallen log, with two sick men beside him. Lee was downright fidgety, his bowels still out of temper. As they studied the map that lay on the ground before them, the old man glanced around like a woman worried about mice getting under her skirts. Beyond Lee, gaunt Powell Hill looked like Death’s calling card.

  Lurking at a respectful distance, Harry Heth was the target of one of Sam Hood’s rare but potent diatribes. Struck in the head by a spent bullet and saved by the paper padding in his hat, Heth still had the wobbles and wasn’t fit to resume division command. But he wanted to be in on things. They all did. Hood looked ready to fight whoever came to hand, blue or gray.

  Earlier, when he and the old man had conferred alone, Longstreet had raised the prospect of a wide turning movement once more. Lee had been brusque, barely controlling his anger. He had made it clear that he wished to hear no more of grand maneuvers.

  The old man just could not resist a fight. But, God only knew, Lee had been right before, Longstreet cautioned himself. Perhaps Meade and his command would fall apart at a serious blow.…

  Longstreet wasn’t convinced, though. His presentiments shaded dark. The Yankees had taken a beating the day before, but their army had not turned tail. Meade was not faint of heart. And the thumping Hill’s divisions had given the Federals had punished the Army of Northern Virginia, too.

  The old man was ruthless in his pursuit of victories. Which was fine, up to a point. But the butcher’s bill could not be paid out endlessly. The casualty lists in the Richmond or Charleston papers had a finality to them that only a fool would ignore. Sometimes, he wondered if Lee truly grasped that the soldiers who loved the old man so unreservedly, with such blind trust, had flesh-and-blood lives of their own.

  Longstreet was a soldier. He understood that men had to die in war. But he deplored the waste of life he had witnessed. Modern weapons raised the cost of gallant charges to forbidding heights. This was no longer a matter of pikes and harquebuses, nor even of flintlock muskets. Artillery and rifled weapons were devastating—not for the generals who still made a god of Napoleon, but for the men in the ranks who followed their orders. War excited Longstreet, but slaughter appalled him. And the deaths of his children had made him treasure life.

  Where would this end?

  Fighting off a sulk, Longstreet could do no more than hope for the best. He feared that the combination of a bad stomach and vanity did not bode well for Lee’s judgment on this day.

  Bad bowels led to bad decisions. That was a story as old as war itself. Longstreet wanted to believe that Lee was regaining his strength. Although h
e remained unsteady under watchful eyes, at least the old man did not need to excuse himself as often as he had the evening before. He did not look as though he’d slept much, though. Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old.

  Longstreet took a stick to the map before them. “That road. And that one. If Meade brings up his entire army, he won’t have much in the way of lines of retreat. Now, if those roads were cut…”

  “Interior lines, though,” Powell Hill said. Even his voice seemed skeletal. “Meade’s got that advantage.”

  “I’ll speak with General Ewell about the matter,” the old man told them. “When we have settled things here.” He raised his face, peering above and beyond the town, searching the terrain that he couldn’t quite see. “I understand the ground’s irregular in front of General Ewell’s corps. And the town itself won’t do for an attack.”

  “Ewell can’t just sit there with a third of the army,” Longstreet said. “If he could just cut that one road, get around in back of them…”

  Nettled again, Lee said, “I do not foresee any portion of this army ‘just sitting,’ General Longstreet. But I’m inclined to make our main effort on our right and the enemy’s left. If Captain Johnston makes a favorable report.”

  Johnston, one of Lee’s staff engineers, had been sent off while it was still half-dark to feel Meade’s southern flank, to see if it extended as far as the two hills that blocked the horizon.

  “Think they’re all up?” Hill asked. Speaking across Lee to Longstreet.

  “Nope. But they’re coming. How fast … your guess is as good as mine.” Longstreet gazed across the broad fields to the right. The blue lines on the ridge had lengthened since he had first observed them the evening before. “Looks like Meade might have some fight in him.”

  “General Meade will be methodical,” Lee snapped. “I expect that. But let us hope that he will also be predictable.”

  Wearied of Harry Heth’s impenetrability, Hood sauntered over to his superiors. He touched the brim of his hat, acknowledging Lee’s authority.

  “Been looking at those Yankees up there,” the Kentuckian said. “Done set themselves up nice. Half of me wants to have at ’em … but the other half’s wondering if it wouldn’t be prettier to let them come on down and attack us.”

  Longstreet was grateful that Hood had said it. But the old man wasn’t pleased. Lee thought of Hood in terms of fierce attacks.

  The old man stabbed a finger toward the blue lines. “Meade is there. If we do not whip him, he will whip us. We will not surrender the initiative to those people, General Hood. We will attack them.”

  An odd thought struck Longstreet: Was it about Meade? Was Lee insulted that he’d been offered no grander opponent? Carefully hidden from the world, the old man’s pride could take peculiar turns.

  Hood caught the queerness in Lee, too. Longstreet saw the Indian-fighter wariness come up in the other man’s eyes. Then the thump and clatter of mounted men arose behind the tree trunk where Lee had centered his command.

  Hood peered into the morning. “Just the Army of the Grand Coalition,” he reported. “Damned circus.”

  Lee looked up sharply. He did not countenance swearing.

  Hood missed the cue, his grimace didn’t alter.

  The old man said nothing.

  Longstreet gestured to Moxley Sorrel to come to him.

  “Keep them off us for a while yet,” he told his subordinate. The “Grand Coalition” consisted of the international observers and a few newspapermen.

  “Yes, sir,” Sorrel answered. But his disappointment was clear. He, too, wanted to listen in on the generals’ deliberations.

  Another, more welcome party rode in afterward. It was Captain Johnston, Lee’s engineer, and his scouts. He’d been gone for hours.

  Johnston looked bright-eyed: dusty, sweat-greased, and pleased with himself.

  The captain approached, saluting and righting his sword belt. Boyishly enthused, he halted before the generals, waiting for a word from the old man.

  Lee pointed at the map. “Report, sir. Tell us what you have found.”

  “They’re not there,” Johnston said. Instead of indicating his discovery on the map, he gestured diagonally across the fields, toward the two round hills. “We were right there, on the slopes of those hills. And there wasn’t a Yankee in sight, not a single one.”

  “Did you get there?” Lee asked in a tone of disbelief. “I can’t believe Meade would leave those hills unoccupied.”

  “New in the job,” Hill put in. “Right about now, George Meade’s likely feeling overwhelmed as a one-armed rat-catcher.”

  But Lee focused on the captain. “You can assure me that those people are not on those hills?” He pointed toward the heights himself, still unconvinced.

  “Sir, there was nobody up there. That’s the plain truth.” Johnston knelt before the map. After orienting himself, he guided their eyes with a finger. “And here. This road, the one from Emmitsburg. We rode right up it, as far as a peach orchard. About here. Map doesn’t show it, but there’s a low ridge.”

  “You got that far?” Lee asked, still incredulous.

  “Yes, sir. And the only Yankees we saw were four cavalry strays.”

  “And you saw nothing of their army? Heard nothing?”

  The captain shook his head. “No, sir. Not down there.”

  “And you’re certain you reached those hills?”

  Johnston looked unjustly accused of fibbing. “I don’t know where else we could’ve been.”

  The old man turned to Longstreet. “Surely you see it, General? Our plan is made for us. Your corps will assault their left.” Lee traced a line on the map again. “Directly up this road.”

  “We could go deeper. Get in behind them.”

  “No. Right up this road,” Lee said sternly.

  “I only have two divisions present, sir. Pickett won’t be in until late in the day. And Hood’s still missing Law’s brigade. Law’s marching in from New Guilford.” He looked at Hood, the only like-minded man present. But Hood could not help him.

  “It will be enough,” Lee said. “We must strike those people swiftly. Before General Meade corrects his error. General Hill will cooperate with you.” Lee’s demeanor altered: His decision had been made, the time for discussion was at an end. “You’ll roll up his flank. If practicable, General Hill will then strike the center. And since General Ewell seems unwilling to visit me, I shall visit him. Perhaps he can demonstrate on General Meade’s right, confuse him and keep him from bolstering his left.” Lee stood. “Ready your troops, sir,” he told Longstreet. “We shall finish this business today.”

  Behind Lee’s back, Longstreet raised his eyes to Heaven. But all he saw was the varmint of an Englishman, Fremantle, up in the high branches of a tree. Whether the ass had climbed up there the better to see the Yankees or to eavesdrop was open to question.

  Before his orderly could bring up one of his horses, Lee’s departure was delayed. Laff McLaws, Longstreet’s other division commander on the field, rode into the headquarters. He guided his horse right up to the fallen tree. A man of prosperous physique, Laff didn’t care to walk more than he had to.

  Longstreet felt sick at heart. The whole situation baffled him. He couldn’t believe those hills were undefended. From what he knew of Meade, the man would not be such a fool. For that matter, he wasn’t certain that he believed half of Johnston’s report.

  He did not want to attack. He feared it. And James Longstreet did not fear many things.

  His dread bloomed into anger: Why was Lee doing this? At what cost to his corps? None of the possible explanations soothed him. The old man’s back was up, and that was that.

  Thick as a well-fed bear, McLaws dismounted. Puffing.

  “Ah, General McLaws,” Lee said. “Please join our discussion. You’re something of the subject of it.”

  McLaws saluted, big beard pulling at his chubby face.

  The generals gathered around the map again.
Speaking to McLaws, Lee said, “You and General Hood will take your divisions into the attack on our right and the enemy’s left. Meade has made a grave error, and we will not forgive it.” He took up his stick again, then traced a specific attack route. “I wish you to place your division across this road, and I wish you to get there, if possible, without being seen by the enemy. Can you do it?”

  McLaws looked at Longstreet, bewildered that his corps commander had been cut from the chain of command.

  Longstreet nodded, but fumed. The situation was intolerable. He himself was the man who should give orders to McLaws.

  “Well, I know of nothing to prevent me,” McLaws told Lee. “Of course, I’d like to have a look at the ground myself, take out a scout.”

  “No, sir,” Longstreet interjected, voice edged like a weapon. “I do not wish you to leave your division.” He knew even as he spoke he was being unfair. But he was smoldering. Leaning over the map, he contradicted Lee. “I wish your division placed so.”

  “No,” General Lee said. His voice was cold, not loud. “I wish it placed just perpendicular to that.”

  Befuddled by the contest of wills into which he’d blundered, McLaws turned to Longstreet again. His plump face shaped a plea. “I need to have a look at the ground, then. I could go right now, be back right quick…”

  “You will remain with your division,” Longstreet snapped. The man had already been tardy once today, he reasoned. But anger, not reason, had spoken.

  “Now lookee there,” Hood cried, stealing their attention. He pointed across the fields. “More goddamned Yankees.”

  TWELVE

  July 2, Morning into Afternoon

  “Jesus weren’t no fool,” Cobb declared.

  Blake looked up from the corpse whose belt he was tugging off. He and his men had been ordered to retrieve items useful to the army and stack them by the roadside. Before laying the bodies in the trenches others were digging.

  Meeting Blake’s stare, Cobb grinned, black as perdition. The little man had been distant throughout the morning, but seemed more himself now. Among the dead.