Cain at Gettysburg

by Ralph Peters

  More retreating men came on. Sickles watched as one threw down his rifle.

  Over the last two hours, he alternately had been lucid enough to commandeer fresh regiments and dazed by the realization that Meade would invoke a court-martial when all of this was over.

  If the insufferable Meade did it publicly enough, his friends might not be able to quash the proceedings. Even if he avoided a conviction, it would damage his ballot prospects for years to come. If found guilty of disobeying orders and causing a defeat, his lifelong aspirations would be dashed: He wouldn’t be chosen alderman from a pocketed Irish ward.

  The stumbling wounded were bad enough, but this flood of outright quitters was unbearable.

  Even de Trobriand’s brigade had failed—after raising hopes it would stop the Rebels. His corps was in collapse on every side. Now, to add to his humiliation, the Fifth Corps was attempting to shore up what remained of his left, with little success.

  He would be disgraced.

  He knew he should be active, rushing about to exercise control. But, somehow, he could not go. He had contemplated seeking a hero’s death on the field. But death had no appeal. Heroism’s point was to relish the fame.

  Tremain. Where was Tremain? Oh, yes. He’d sent the only aide he fully trusted with a message to David Birney, whose division had made a further hash of things. Could he blame all this on Birney?

  Was it too late to order Humphreys back from the Taneytown road? What was the condition of his division? Sickles knew he should ride out and see for himself, showing himself amid the shot and shell.

  But he could not go.

  What would the newspapers say? Could they be bought off? Before Meade ruined his name? He could claim that Meade had planned to run away, based on Butterfield drawing up that plan. That might stick. He could say that only he had been willing to fight, to stand up to Bobby Lee in defense of the Union.

  An orderly approached.

  “General, sir? You’re exposed here. You should go behind the barn.”

  Exposed? He hadn’t noticed. Yes. The Confederate guns had unlimbered in that orchard now. As he had predicted. Exposed. Different meanings to the word. Exposed to danger. Or exposed … as what? As a fool? Not a coward, they couldn’t make that stick, his record was good.

  “General?”

  Sickles nodded and turned his horse, flowing with the clots of disheartened soldiers. One called out angrily, “Where’s our goddamned bullets, Dan?”

  The man was unforgivably insubordinate. But Sickles just looked away, letting his horse lope toward the barn, with its stone foundation as solid as a fortress.

  There had to be a way to shift the blame. Not to Hunt, who’d been too visible. Maybe to Birney and Humphreys. But the great trick would be putting the blame on Meade. That horse might run. The old sourpuss had precious few real friends.

  Sickles thought again that he should rally the remnants of his dying corps. But he simply could not go forward. He had to stay put, that was it. He had to stay here, so couriers could find him. That was a safe explanation. He had to exercise higher command. That was his duty, after all.

  Where was Tremain?

  He should have seen to it that ammunition was sent forward, that the men were kept supplied. But Tremain was too small a fish to satisfy anyone.

  Shells plunged into the trees behind the farm. Sickles did not flinch. He wasn’t afraid. Not of that.

  Meade, Meade, Meade. What had Henry said to Becket’s assassins? “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” The line played well on stage, even in a wretched performance. Who would rid him of Meade?

  He turned his horse rearward and took his stand on a low rise beside the barn. Watching his corps disintegrate. Waiting to see Rebel battle flags aloft.

  Some of his men were still fighting. He could tell that much from the noise, although he could not see much through the smoke.

  His body jerked. Nerves, he told himself. His horse absorbed the motion, remaining calm.

  Who was allowing these men to flee to the rear? Where were their officers? He needed to know which regiments had broken first. He might be able to court-martial their colonels before Meade could act against him, to place the blame on a half dozen or so subordinates.

  Madill wouldn’t do, of course. His record was too solid. And the devil had been clever enough to carry off his regiment’s flag himself. But others must have faltered.

  The orderly reappeared. The man looked stricken.

  “General Sickles! You’re bleeding, sir.”

  Sickles looked down. What he saw astounded him. His right leg was a slop of blood, the knee impossibly mangled.

  Viewing the wound made him dizzy.

  “I’m wounded,” he said dully.

  The orderly waved up another man. They helped him from his horse. The animal was unscathed.

  “Din’t you feel anything? Din’t you feel it, sir?”

  “Don’t let me bleed to death,” Sickles begged.

  “A cannonball went right straight through your leg. Darnedest thing.” The fellow shook his head. The gesture blurred. “Din’t you feel it at all?”

  “Don’t let me bleed to death.”

  Where was Tremain? Sickles felt faint. He knew that he must not pass out. The world began to craze around the edges.

  They propped him against the sheltered wall of the barn, against cool stones. He fought to control his destiny.

  “Get a horse strap,” he ordered, summoning a voice of command. “Get a goddamned saddle strap for a tourniquet.”

  Under Sickles’ direction, the two men cinched his leg tightly. There was no pain. Where was the pain? There was only a terrible fight to remain conscious.

  Revelation struck him: What a piece of luck! Meade couldn’t very well court-martial a wounded man, a hero struck down amid a desperate battle. The thought quickened all of his senses.

  He considered the mess of his leg. It might have to come off above the knee. The prospect chilled him. Yet, even that might be an acceptable price, he told himself. Assuming he lived, which he intended to do. A leg lost above the knee on the field of battle would play superbly during an election. He would not need to so much as mention his service, his mere appearance would testify on his behalf.

  He only had to live. To get through the next hours and days.

  Tremain was there. Suddenly, confusingly.

  “What’s the good news, son?” Sickles asked, attempting to sound jovial.

  The aide was dumbstruck.

  Sickles fished in his tunic and hooked his brandy flask. Closing his eyes to gather strength, he unscrewed the top and took a healthy swig.

  “I want Doc Sim to work on me,” he said. “Nobody else. Tell me … about Birney … his front … he’ll have to take command now.”

  And Birney could be blamed for further losses.

  Tremain didn’t have to speak. General Birney loomed up. Sickles forced a smile. Or thought he did.

  “You find me at a disadvantage,” Sickles told the division commander. “Hard luck, ain’t it? No more than many a brave man has suffered this day. Our beloved soldiers…”

  “I don’t believe we can hold,” Birney reported. “The Fifth Corps isn’t enough. If Meade doesn’t—”

  “Meade won’t. Don’t you see it, man? He’s left us hanging out, Meade has. He’s the one responsible. He’s to blame for all these fine men perishing. He didn’t support us, I begged him to support us. He did nothing … nothing…”

  “I don’t know,” Birney said. “He’s doing all he can.”

  “‘To and fro, to and fro.’ What the hell good does that do us? The man’s all show, no substance.” He took another drink from his flask, fighting to maintain his ebbing strength. “You have the corps now. But watch out for Meade, I tell you. He’ll try to make a scapegoat of you, too. The man has no shame.”

  He lost awareness, perhaps only for seconds, and was reawakened by the sounds of battle. Artillery grumped.

  Birn
ey was gone. Tremain … was gone.

  “Where’s Tremain?” he demanded.

  “He went to fetch an ambulance, General.”

  A horrid thought struck Sickles. “Don’t let me be taken prisoner. I mustn’t be taken prisoner.”

  That would look terrible. And it would prevent him from telling his side of the story. Nor would the Rebels be apt to treat him kindly.

  “I will not be taken prisoner.”

  “Rebs ain’t here yet, General. Boys are still fighting, just over the rise.”

  “Where’s Tremain? I need Tremain.”

  “He went for an ambulance. Like I told you, sir.”

  “Where is everybody? Is my ambulance here yet? Where’s Tremain?”

  The enlisted soldier, his lone companion now, just stared at him.

  Clarity returned. As if a cold-water shock had been administered. “Inside my coat, son,” he said calmly. “In here. My cigar case. Light me a cigar.”

  The soldier did as ordered.

  His men were still fighting. Someone had told him that. They were still fighting. Perhaps there would be a victory, after all. Battles could be opaque until the end.

  He couldn’t order his thoughts. He had commands to give. Didn’t he? He had been about to do something, but couldn’t recall what it was. He thought of his wife. Of her white and perfect breasts, of flesh impassioned.

  Tremain appeared at his side again, along with a detail of men. They lifted him onto a litter, then carried him to an ambulance. The canvas had been removed. Smoke smeared the sky.

  A damned good target, Sickles thought. They’d have to get him off quickly. Through all of it, he held on to the cigar.

  “There’s a rumor you’ve been killed, sir,” Tremain told him. The ambulance began jouncing over the field.

  He felt the pain now. Oh, did he.

  He had to last a little while longer. To put up a good show.

  “Prop me up,” he told his aide. “I want the men to see me.”

  Sickles puffed on his cigar as he passed through regiments newly arrived amid the broken remnants of his corps—men who had fled the field but would live to vote.

  They saw him, cheery and breathing. He made sure of that. Twice, he even managed to wave to well-wishers.

  En route to the field hospital, they crossed paths with a chaplain, who climbed aboard the ambulance and made a wonderful show of prayers for the general. He was Catholic, too, and a fellow New Yorker. He’d spread the word back home that Sickles had carried off his wounding with aplomb.

  He had to live, that was the thing. The pain was severe now, but pain could be endured. That leg was going to save him.

  * * *

  Barksdale was elated. His beloved Mississippians were unstoppable. No joy in his life had been as thrilling, as exhilarating, as this.

  As his regiments wheeled rightward, ignoring the Yankee stand along the road, he rode into their midst again, standing tall in his stirrups.

  “Forward, boys, forward! They’re broken, you’ve broken the goddamned Yankee army … my brave Mississippians, my brave boys! Give ’em one more charge, just one more charge…”

  His men swept eastward through ripening fields of grain. Fired upon from the flank and from stray guns to their front, they disdained death. Their ranks had grown ragged and thinner, but they plunged toward the great gap in the Union line, not half a mile distant now. Battle raged on their left and off to the right, but their charge had won through.

  Two of Barksdale’s regimental commanders, Griffin and Holder, strode up and blocked his horse.

  “General, we need to re-form. We need to stop and organize our regiments, they’re scrambled like Mammy’s eggs,” Holder said.

  “Half my regiment’s down,” Griffin added.

  Barksdale valued these men, but not their opinions. Not now.

  “Hell, boys. We’re not stopping now. We have those sonsofbitches on the run. It’s time to crowd them.” He pointed eastward with his saber, toward the far, still grove. Treetops caught the death-throes of the sun. “We’ll re-form over there. Keep your boys moving.”

  Bodies weary, their ranks dissolved into clans around torn banners, but the Mississippians surged forward again. They ignored stray Yankees seeking to surrender, men who had lost their bearings in the smoke. Nothing short of God’s own hand would bring them up short now.

  Ahead, the wheat gave way to low ground, a water meadow speckled with brush and briars. Beyond lay the promised land, a glorious emptiness, the end of this battle, perhaps the end of this war.

  “Forward, Mississippi, forward!” Barksdale called.

  This was the climax of decades of bitter struggle. First, he had tried to defend his world with words, as a newspaperman. Then he had fought for his way of life as a lawyer. When that failed and the Yankees increased their demands, he had done all he could as a politician to preserve his people’s rights. But none of the words on paper, no speeches or bills submitted, had been enough. Northerners made continued union impossible. War had been thrust upon a cornered South.

  Here, at last, amid the gore of this battlefield, he finally had achieved something that no Yankee could refute.

  His boys were worn, he knew, but their hearts were mighty.

  Diminished bands of threadbare men plunged into the marshy ground between them and their goal. Afflicted by the earth, by soil wet even in summer, their progress slowed. As if the earth itself begrudged them victory.

  “Go on, boys, go on,” Barksdale cried. “Just get on through there.”

  The light was failing prematurely, bedeviled by clotted smoke. Hellish flames erupted from obscured guns.

  Good men fell. Too many were down, too many.

  “Keep on moving, press ’em, push ’em. Go on!”

  Fickle air gathered smoke from other fields, enclosing them in the marsh. They were fighting earth and sky now. His men charged slowly through a twilit world. Time lost its grip, its order. The last pretense of maintaining ranks faded into random figures in a fog.

  Abruptly, the smoke cleared. They had gotten through it, if not through the last thorns and mud.

  A long blue line stretched before them, rifles leveled.

  They weren’t supposed to be there. It was as if they had risen from the underworld.

  The Yankees fired.

  Fewer soldiers pushed forward now as more and more men toppled. A red flag flapped earthward, grasped anew before it reached the mud. It fell again. The Rebel yell was reduced to defiant catcalls.

  Barksdale guided his horse through the wretched ground, lofting his sword with a tired arm and calling for one last effort.

  A hideous mass of men in blue, the Yankees fired at will.

  So close, they had come so close. He could not let those bastards stop him now. Rising in his stirrups, Barksdale roared, furious beyond words, howling in the voice of a primitive warrior, as if his personal rage could turn the tide. He pointed his sword toward the enemy line, ordering his brigade to keep on going.

  And then he saw nothing but the sky, with darkness closing in. Thin as lace, smoke drifted across his gaze. A paleness remained in the heavens, but night held the winning hand.

  Why was he looking at the sky? He couldn’t understand it. The smoke grew thick as swabs. He had been standing in his stirrups, leading his men. How could he be lying on his back? Wet earth seeped through his garments. Sucking him down.

  “I’m all right,” he said. Or thought he said. The world spun. As if he had drained a keg of applejack. “Go on, boys, go on,” he said. “Victory … victory…”

  Where were his men?

  The pain was there, but it had a flirting, roaming quality, a confusing inexactness. A weight within him pushed him down, cooperating with the greedy earth.

  He heard the battle he could no longer see. It seemed to be at a great distance.

  “Rally the men,” he cried. “Holder … rally your men.”

  He could not see his brigade at all. Only purp
le sky jarred by battle’s lightning.

  With the greatest effort of his life, he raised himself onto an obedient elbow. A rush of warm wet greased him.

  He remembered now. Falling. Faces around him. He had told them to tell his wife and children that he fell doing his duty. Hadn’t he? Where were those faces now, where were his boys?

  In the gloaming, he saw no upright men. Only bodies, cuddled slugs on the earth.

  He was cold. July could not be so cold. Not even here, in hateful Pennsylvania.

  Why had his men forsaken him? Surely, only to carry on the attack. He listened for cries of victory, but heard only the guns.

  He remembered his boils. They no longer pestered him. He wondered if they had burst in his fall. What a trivial matter that had been. His body felt cold as an ice cellar. There was blood.

  A lone figure appeared. Wandering. Unsure of its footing. Barksdale opened his mouth to call out, but could not gather words. He watched the soldier meander. It was a boy, arm in a hasty-made sling.

  He wore a gray uniform. Of sorts. Barksdale’s movement caught his eye. He plodded over, stumping through the marsh.

  “General Barksdale!” the boy exclaimed. His tone revealed innocent fear. The sling was dark with blood.

  “Water.”

  Obedient, the boy knelt down and opened his canteen. Between them, they shared a total of two good arms. Barksdale struggled to rise far enough to drink.

  In velvet light, the boy’s eyes flared. Barksdale followed the line of their concern: The water he had swallowed seeped from his chest, along with blood.

  “I’m killed, boy. You go on. Tend to that arm.”

  The young man seemed to fear him, as if blameworthy. Perhaps he feared Death’s approach, the unwanted companion.

  When would it come? Before his men returned for him? Or the Yankees found him?

  “You go on. I’ll be cared for. Go on now.”

  Capping his canteen, the boy wobbled to his feet like a newborn fawn. He began to step away.

  “Son?” Barksdale called. “Soldier?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did we lick ’em?”

  “No.”

  * * *

  Meade had been fighting two battles throughout the evening. The first was with Lee’s army, which had attacked with a fury that shocked even his veterans. The second was a struggle to check his emotions. The only hope he had was to keep his powers of judgment at their sharpest, to view the field with more than mortal clarity. To be decisive, but never rash. He had to maintain control of this unwieldy beast, to give clear orders while others just stared at the slaughter or gave up hope.