by Ralph Peters
“This ain’t good,” McLaws said.
* * *
Accompanied by the key members of his staff, Longstreet rode forward to amend McLaws’ battle orders. A courier had instructed the division commander to hold off attacking until Longstreet could survey the changed situation for himself.
The corps commander found McLaws agitated and befuddled.
“I need to attack,” he cried out to Longstreet. “I need to attack right now. Their artillery…”
“Just hold up,” Longstreet barked. “Let me have a look, damn it.”
Longstreet didn’t dismount, but rode out beyond the trees into the field that faced the enemy. Behind him, Union shells tore away branches. The limbs fell with a thump and a splash of leaves. When Sorrel and Fairfax followed, Longstreet waved them back. The troops who had taken to ground had to see him exposed and full of confidence. But he did not intend to risk the lives of subordinates to no purpose.
Porter Alexander had already rolled his guns out on the right and was giving the Federals about as good as he got. No cannon replied to the Yankees from the front of McLaws’ division, though. That wanted fixing.
At first glance, the Union lines appeared formidable through the patches of smoke. The Federals had advanced to a ridge that swept back from an orchard and ran southeast to boulder-studded high ground. The stony crest blocked the way to the two round hills. An attack on so strong a position had never been part of Lee’s plan. Everything seemed upended. Longstreet had learned, though, that few situations were as dire as they appeared at the moment of surprise. Forcing patience upon himself, he began to dissect the Yankee position.
A round of solid shot ripped through the air, shrieking close enough to shy his horse. Behind his back, it smashed through a tree. Falling timber groaned.
Longstreet refused to turn to regard the damage: The men had to believe he was unperturbed. Even if every organ from his brain to his belly jumped.
He coaxed his horse back to stillness.
Peering through his field glasses, he noted that those impressive lines of infantry in blue were, in fact, as thin as a young belle’s waist and backed by nothing. The Union batteries covered gaps in the line that were just too wide. Those gaps would be fatal, if struck just right.
Getting up there was going to be costly. Once on that ridge by the orchard, though, his men would sweep those regiments aside. There was an initial advantage, but no solidity, to the Union position. Viewed with a veteran’s eye, it seemed an amateur’s gambit, all bluff and fakery. Properly attacked, the Federals would have to sacrifice most of their guns.
He rode back toward his gathered staff, letting his mount lope easily. But his heart wanted to escape his chest.
McLaws remained on foot and appeared determined to stay that way. Longstreet dismounted and handed off his horse. He waved to Fairfax and Sorrel, indicating that they should join him. Unwilling to be left out, McLaws hurried over.
“Tom still not back from General Lee?” Longstreet asked.
Moxley Sorrel smiled through sweat and dust. “Even Goree can’t ride that fast, sir.”
Longstreet turned to Fairfax. “John, I need you to ride down and tell Hood the plan has changed. He’s to come up on the right immediately. He’ll lead the attack. As soon as he can get his men deployed.”
McLaws reddened. “That’s my privilege.”
Longstreet was out of patience. Even as he spoke, he understood he was making an enemy for life.
“The situation’s changed,” he told the division commander. “Honor can wait. First, we have to deal with those goddamned Yankees.”
“I insist on my—”
The pent-up fury of the day threatened to erupt. Longstreet drew McLaws aside. Not gently.
“General, you will do what I tell you to do, and you will do it when I tell you to do it. Or I will take direct command of your division. Do you understand me, sir?”
Longstreet kept his voice low enough to avoid a public shouting match. But it was difficult.
“And on another subject,” he continued, “why aren’t there any guns in front of your position? Your supporting artillery should be pounding away.”
McLaws spouted and sputtered: “If a battery’s placed in my front, it’ll draw the enemy’s fire right down on my lines. And we’re all formed up to charge, the guns would be in our way. It’d be demoralizing.…”
Longstreet stared right through the man. “You get a goddamned battery up there now, Laff. You expect your men to charge those guns before they’ve been softened up? Good God, man. Think what you’re about.”
Underscoring his point, a wave of artillery rounds tore through the trees. To the left and rear, an explosion left men screaming. The carnage went unanswered.
Chastened for the moment, McLaws lumbered off.
“Wait,” Longstreet called. “Kershaw’s leading on your right. Who leads on your left?”
“Barksdale.”
“Good.”
“General Longstreet, let me charge. Let me go right now. We’ll take those guns. Give me one half hour. If we don’t take that gun line, you can hang me from a tree.”
“No.”
“I can take them, I swear.” McLaws looked pathetic, on the edge of tears.
Longstreet cleansed the anger from his voice. “Laff … we have to do this in a way that makes a hint of sense. It’s not about honor, yours or anybody else’s. It’s about winning this goddamned battle. Their position has more holes than a drunkard’s conscience, and we’re going to give them a lesson in tactics. But we’re going to do it right.” He softened further, grasping the turmoil within the man he had known since their first, grim year at the Academy. “You’ll get your chance. Hood goes in ahead of you, but you’re going to finish the job. You’ll have all the honor any man could want.” That was the most he could offer to McLaws: No more time for coddling. “Now get a battery up there.”
Longstreet rejoined Fairfax and Sorrel. Fairfax had brought up his horse, ready to mount.
“All right, John. Tell Hood to attack as soon as he can form up. He’s to find their flank and punch through it.” Longstreet shook his head, disgusted at the entire situation. “And I don’t mean go around them now. We’re out of time. He’s to punch right through. He’ll growl about that high ground in his front, but tell him the Yankees look fairly thin from up here. His right brigade’s to go for the low hill dead on, with his left close enough to the road to align with McLaws.”
He glanced from one man to the other. “If Hood can bull through, they’ll collapse. At a minimum, he’ll draw off any reserves they have up. As soon as he’s well under way, I’ll send in McLaws.” For a moment, he looked away. Then he told Fairfax, “Best get going, John. And use your spurs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fairfax cooed to his horse and swung into the saddle as smoothly as if riding to his foxhounds. He rode the most beautiful mount in the entire army.
The shelling intensified. Longstreet saw old Barksdale storm up to McLaws. He didn’t need to hear a word that passed between them to know that the brigadier was giving Laff hell. Barksdale didn’t just want to beat the Yankees. He took a righteous delight in killing them. And he wanted to get at them now. The man was one firebrand politician who hadn’t stayed safely at home to go on giving speeches.
Laff had his orders. He’d have to deal with Barksdale. As Longstreet had needed to disappoint McLaws.
“Moxley … find Alexander. My compliments on getting his batteries up handsomely. Then tell him I damned well want at least a battalion of guns up here to support McLaws. Fifteen minutes ago would’ve been too late. Get that Georgia pride of his on the boil.”
“Yes, sir.”
When his aides had ridden off, Longstreet walked back to the crest. In the woodline, a regiment lay belly-down, waiting for the order to advance. Spears of light pierced the treetops, pinning the men to the ground. Longstreet sensed the rambunctiousness soldiers feel as they wait under fire
: Visions of what might happen to their flesh in that hour of helplessness provoked a lust to go at the enemy any which way. Sweat-chilled now and chafed by crusted wool, each man had to wonder why the damned fool generals didn’t send them forward and get it done. Longstreet understood the private hells in that shell-torn grove. But he preferred to lose a few men to gunnery and falling branches, rather than throw away a thousand lives.
A battery thundered across the field behind them, outriders lashing the horses as they dragged up their bouncing twelve-pounders.
Longstreet felt a legion of eyes upon him.
He maintained his mask.
Entering the exposed field again, he stared across the ground over which he soon would send the men who lay under the trees. Shrouds of smoke hid stretches of the Union line, but the blue sky above touched perfection.
Death came for all men. But it was going to come a sight sooner than necessary for many a man this day. As it had come too soon, years and years too soon, for his children.
Would he and Louise find their way to each other again? What if he himself were killed? How would she grieve? Could she? As once she would have done? Back when they were so happy they both believed that no other love could ever have been so fine, so sweet, so true, as the one they shared?
Looking impatiently to the right, he strained to penetrate the smoke that rose from his own guns. He ached to see Hood’s men appear. It was too soon, of course. Fairfax would just be delivering the order. His anxiety was almost that of a child, demanding the impossible. He realized full well that a division of infantry uncoiled slowly from the line of march, no matter how experienced and disciplined.
But knowledge had no power to vanquish emotion. Longstreet yearned to see gray lines break from the cover of the trees and begin their advance. Time was a cruel master now. To have a hope of success, they needed to smash through the overextended Union position before the generals in blue recognized their folly.
As he turned to watch the enemy again, a Confederate shell hit near a Union gun. He raised his glasses, but the smoke from the explosion obscured the view. He waited, forcing himself to be patient. At last, as the fog from the blast thinned to gauze, he spotted bodies sprawled around the field piece, some inert and others writhing. Tiny figures rushed toward them. In the background, horses leapt, fighting their harnesses.
He turned again: Still no sign of Hood down in the low ground.
Longstreet stalked back through the woodline. From the head of the field on the rear slope, McLaws stared at him, a child unfairly chastised. For all the brutality war summoned in men, it could strip away decades, too. The wisdom of adulthood bled to death.
Another battery rumbled up past McLaws’ second line of brigades, rushing to fill in the gun line on the left. Alexander, at least, obeyed orders.
The first rider Longstreet spotted was Sorrel on his way back, but Fairfax came on at a gallop just behind him.
Longstreet didn’t like the look of it. If all was in order, Fairfax wouldn’t whip his horse like that: He was a gentle man with animals.
The Virginia grandee didn’t leave the saddle, but rode right up to Longstreet, pausing only to glance upward as a shell on a low trajectory screamed past.
“Sir, General Hood asks that he be allowed to march on the enemy’s rear. He’s had scouts out and there’s nobody on those two hills. Nothing behind them, either. He believes he could sweep right over them.”
Longstreet felt a brief rush of enthusiasm. It was what he had wanted to do all along. But that feeling collapsed promptly into anger. At Hood, at Lee, at himself.
It was too late. He couldn’t let a lone division peel off by itself. It was just too goddamned late. The battle was on and the afternoon was dying. It was too late for anything but a mutual pounding.
“Goddamn it, John. You ride back and tell Hood I said he’s to attack immediately. And to go in the way he’s been told. No more delays. I want to see his lead brigades crossing those fields before you can ride back here. Go!”
But Fairfax wasn’t gone five minutes before Major Sellers of Hood’s staff galloped up, interrupting Longstreet and Sorrel.
“General Hood’s compliments, sir. He asks your permission to move by the right flank, to envelop that knob hill.”
Longstreet liked Sellers. He understood that Hood had selected the man as an emissary because of it.
He fought down the worst of his anger again. “You go back and tell General Hood he is to attack according to my instructions. Now. No more delays. He must attack now. Tell him Major Fairfax speaks with my own voice.”
It was all turning into a farce, a series of witless pranks worthy of a minstrel show. McLaws wanted to attack, but had to wait. Longstreet wanted Hood to attack, but the Kentuckian, who had never shied from a fight, resisted his orders. Sellers had barely disappeared when Longstreet decided he had had enough. He strode over to McLaws, drawing him aside again.
“I’m riding down to see Hood. Do nothing until I return.”
He turned his back.
Calling for his horse, Longstreet felt more than half a fool. This pot of confusion was his responsibility. He had never before experienced such a devil’s dance of ill luck, misunderstandings, and pigheadedness. Battle was always a welter of confusion, but this took the prize. The attack should have gone in hours before, they should already be inside the Union lines, rounding up the remnants of broken brigades and shattered divisions. Yet, not one regiment in gray had advanced beyond the gun line.
He rode hard, spurring and lashing his horse until it whinnied in terror. Daring it to stumble, to throw him hard and put the load on other shoulders.
It had come to that.
Passing Fairfax on the major’s return ride, Longstreet just struck his horse harder. Soldiers bearing armloads of canteens leapt from his path.
When he found Hood, the Kentuckian’s forward brigades were finally stepping out to the attack. That was something, at least. Longstreet calmed down to a frozen rage.
Spying him, Hood hurried over. His eyes lacked their usual steel.
“General Longstreet … call off this attack, I beg you. Let me go around them.”
“You have your orders, General. See to your advance.”
“We’re throwing men away.”
Longstreet refused to hear another word. “We must obey the orders of General Lee. All depends on you now.”
But something had broken inside of Hood. Longstreet could feel it. He’d lost the goodwill of McLaws. Would Hood turn from him, too? Command was not the Sunday treat the stay-at-homes imagined.
Hood saluted and rode off to lead his soldiers.
Longstreet sat in the shade on his heaving mount, watching Hood’s forward line advance into a cauldron of smoke and sunlight. His own batteries fell silent as the infantry swept past them. The gun-thunder from the Union lines intensified.
“Go now,” he told the gray ranks, “and God go with you.”
FOURTEEN
July 2, Late Afternoon
Meade would have liked to slash Sickles from his horse. Instead, he mastered his temper yet again and spoke with as much control as he could muster.
“General, I’m afraid you’re too far out. You’ve compromised the army’s position.” He surveyed the indefensible salient again, the peach orchard before them and the declining fields beyond. Shots from skirmishers prickled the air. “If Lee attacks from both sides, you’ll lose your guns. If not your corps.”
Fear marred Sickles’ eyes now. He knew that he had erred. But the man still possessed sufficient bravado to trivialize his blunder.
“This is higher ground. The lines of fire are better. I needed elevation. This seemed better than the low ground I was in.”
The horse Meade rode pranced nervously. Old Baldy had been unsaddled for a rest when word of Sickles’ unauthorized movement arrived. Meade had accepted the loan of his cavalry chief’s mount, but Pleasanton’s horse was odd to the bit and obstreperous.
&nb
sp; Meade’s temper swelled back toward its breaking point. “General Sickles … this is, indeed, higher ground than the position you left to your rear. And there’s even higher ground in front of you, if you want to keep going. If you’d like to advance right past the Confederate lines, you’ll find constantly higher ground all the way to the mountains.”
His voice, if not his logic, abashed Sickles.
In a subdued tone, the Third Corps commander said, “I can withdraw.”
“You’ll have to do it damned quick,” Meade told him.
But as he spoke, the Confederate guns opened, condemning them all to defend the ground they occupied. Short or long, rounds sought the range of the peach orchard, the apex of the position Sickles had chosen. The gun-by-gun battery firing quickly became a steady roar. Pierced by muzzle flashes, smoke fumed and thickened where Lee’s infantry lurked.
Sickles’ forward cannon replied, booming and recoiling. Stripped of their jackets and even their shirts, artillerymen leapt to swab and feed their guns.
Raising his voice to be heard, Meade said, “I wish to God you could withdraw, but it’s too damned late for that now.” He shook his head in disgust. “The enemy will not permit it. You’ll have to fight.”
“I just wanted higher ground,” Sickles repeated. His face had gone as pale as a man struck by the first pangs of cholera. “I didn’t want the Rebels to have this position.”
“Damn it, Sickles … this is neutral ground,” Meade shouted. “Don’t you understand that?” Artillery shells plowed the fields behind their escorts. Meade’s horse rebelled again and had to be reined in tightly. “You can’t hold it, and neither can the enemy.”
Meade’s fury assailed himself above all others. To be beaten by Robert E. Lee would be a terrible thing, but to be defeated by Dan Sickles was abhorrent.
The entire affair was grotesque. Upon receiving word that Sickles had advanced his line without authorization, Meade had summoned the straying commander to headquarters. Twice called, Sickles sent excuses for not appearing, responding only to a third, peremptory order. Then he had galloped up with a swollen entourage—just as heavy skirmishing erupted back on his lines. Meade had been forced to send him back to his compromised troops immediately.