Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services

by W. Patrick Lang

  The men in brown and grey were particularly envious of US Army rations and always looked forward to the prospect of emptying the knapsacks of dead men. They were starving in the Wilderness that spring, the victims of a system of government so decentralized that it could not force the states or the railroad companies to adequately support them.

  Eighty or ninety miles away and in opposite directions, the two presidents waited and brooded on the prospects for themselves, their peoples and their countries.

  Devereux’s two women brooded, united in two things, their feeling for him and their confusion over what to do about each other. They spent more time in each other’s company than was healthy. Perhaps they found solace in the presence of someone with whom it was unnecessary to discuss him...

  ----------------------------------------------------------Balthazar was confused by the tension he had seen between his cousin and Jubal Early, a commander whom he had come to respect deeply. “You should not annoy him,” he said to Claude. “Early is a good man. He has been a great friend to me and to the battalion.

  Devereux said nothing. He seethed with bitterness born of disappointed hopes, hopes for so many things important to him, but he was a guest in Balthazar’s camp and could say little.

  He had left Lee’s headquarters without permission after witnessing the fiasco in which Longstreet’s corps attack failed. He had found a courier headed for the Second Corps and had taken advantage of the opportunity. He expected to find Balthazar and Smoot. Claude had the gift of persuasion and used it ruthlessly.

  He expected that someone in Lee’s headquarters would be looking for him by now. He relished the thought.

  Yes, I will abide with these folk for a few days.

  The fighting would not end soon, and his soul needed the solace of this kind of companionship.

  “Let them look for me. I am not their servant.”

  Lee’s staff was already looking for him. The army commander had found a few minutes to renew his conversation with the spy and asked after him. The inability to produce him created the occasion for one of the rare but much feared outbreaks of Robert Lee’s temper. His cold rage was impressive. He never cursed, but this time seemed very close to doing so.

  After some enquiry the sergeant who took Devereux to Ewell’s headquarters was found. At first the man was bewildered by the commotion. Then, he was terrified when confronted by Lee who wanted to know why he agreed to take Devereux with him. From the look on the soldier’s face, Lee knew the answer to his own question.

  Claude is someone they always accept as a leader. They always will. I should have given him a regiment. Perhaps I could still persuade Benjamin to give him up. He hates this work. It is destroying him.

  Focusing on the man in front of him, Lee thanked him and mercifully let him escape. “Charles,” he said to Marshall. “You find him, and soon! I don’t want him to die in some thicket here!”

  There were reports that Grant would withdraw to the north behind the shield of the Rapidan River. Lee thought that this was largely wishful thinking. His impression of Grant was that the man’s bulldog heart would be hurt by the shock and trauma of Confederate attacks through the forest, but that he would persist. Looking at the maps, the beautiful old man traced the roads towards Richmond and put his finger down firmly at the crossroads village of Spotsylvania Court House. Looking up from the table, he searched among the faces in the twilight. “Martin… Where is General Smith? Where is the ‘Army Engineer?’”

  “I am here, sir.” The tall thin faced man stood by his side. “Martin, show me where the track of the road is, the road you marked for me in February. It must be very close to where we are now…”

  “Yes, sir. It crosses the Plank Road right over there…” The New York born officer turned and pointed west on the road.”

  “Where?” Lee asked again.

  Martin Smith picked up a rock and threw it at the trees. See the blaze on the trunk? Right there, it starts up on the turnpike about two miles north, runs through here, and then on down to the south until it comes out of the Wilderness near Spotsylvania. It is blazed, all the way, and we took out some of the bigger trees and rocks. It is ready…”

  “Good. Good, a fine job. Have the engineers start cutting the road from the turnpike to here and from here to Spotsylvania at the same time. Use all the colored pioneers, as well, all. I will tell Ewell and Anderson to give you all the infantry you need to help. Start Now! We must be at Spotsylvania Court House before Grant!”

  Having said that, he looked around for Walter Taylor, his chief of staff.

  “Right here, general, right here,” Taylor murmured, order pad in hand.

  Devereux woke slowly in the bed of the battery wagon. He was stiff in every joint and his leg hurt badly. The floor boards were uncompromising, but he was tired of sleeping on the ground and a tarpaulin had kept the drizzle off. He had crawled into the wagon bed, pulled the canvas over him, moved a few hard and angular objects in the bottom of the wagon and was instantly asleep. It began to rain about eleven and the random, halfhearted showers were just enough to soak everyone, including Devereux. As he came to his senses, he lay quietly, wondering where he was, and then remembered. He needed to urinate, but the half sleeping state that he was in did not allow movement. There was a lot of noise somewhere in the distance. He could not identify it at first. It could have been artillery, but perhaps it was thunder. If the noise was that of artillery, it was a long way off. There were voices nearby. He listened closely. After a few minutes he was sure he recognized one of them. Climbing awkwardly out of the wagon, he staggered to one side of the dirt roadway and unbuttoned. Shivering in relief, he heard Isaac Smoot speak from just behind him,

  “Hello, Claude, how long has it been? Last September, maybe? How is everything at home? Everyone well?”

  Devereux turned to see two men standing within a few feet. Smoot’s stocky silhouette was easily recognized. “Isaac, good to almost see you. Mighty dark right just now. My parents are well. Victoria is well. Hope is well… I understand that you are major of this battalion, congratulations! I would shake your hand, but…”

  “No, not yet. I am still a captain.” Smoot remembered the man standing with him. “I am sorry. This is Raphael Harris. He’s our adjutant and now has the guns that we captured two days ago… He knows who you are. Most of the officers here know who you are. That’s a bad thing, but John Quick showed up in winter camp and ran his mouth before we could stop him. He said a lot, much too much. The soldiers don’t know who you are…” He stopped for a moment. The noise was growing louder.

  “The engineers are cutting a corduroy road through the woods from here to Spotsylvania,” he said. “The colonel has gone to see how they are doing. He’ll be back soon.” There was a pause and then he continued. ”Are you going to be here for a while? I think we will move tonight.”

  There was something in the man’s voice that had not been there in the long period in which they had worked together in Washington. Smoot had risked much as a part of Devereux’s team.

  What is this? Claude asked himself. I will have to ferret this out.

  Balthazar walked into the conversation. “Ah, you are awake. Good. We will move now, down to the head of the road cut. The engineers are making good progress. They want some infantry with them in case they suddenly find themselves to be guests of the enemy. Claude, please step over here for a minute I would ask you of Victoria and the boys.”

  By two in the morning, the battalion was strung along the rough new road watching and listening as the engineers and pioneers chopped and cursed their way forward ahead of them. The crude path through the forest ran in a patternless way around the larger rocks and over little gullies that the engineers filled with earth and new logs. General Smith’s winter survey parties had done well and the work went forward through the night. At four o’clock the officer in charge asked Balthazar for help. He had been given soldiers from Ewell’s Corps. These men were now exhausted and he
pleaded for more help. Balthazar gave him half the men in each company. Their excess belongings would be carried by their comrades. The ability to do that marked them as fit to be members of Balthazar’s battalion and their willingness to do so was the unspoken token of their commitment. Balthazar made his way to the front of the construction project, and after listening to what was wanted put his infantry to work. He and Claude worked side by side with axe and shovel in the flickering light of the torches.

  “Smoot seems to be well,” Devereux remarked as they stopped for a momentary break. The blackness of the wood was beginning to disintegrate as dawn approached. The trunks of trees could now be seen twenty or thirty yards away.

  A shout went up at the front end of the road, the end where the axes rose and fell continuously. Balthazar picked up the axe he had been leaning on and walked forward without answering. They emerged from the walls of vegetation into an open space where the gathering light of the coming dawn made the world seem a more encouraging place.

  Looking around, Devereux knew the place. “This is where I came across the lines,” he whispered turning to the left apprehensively. “Grant’s people must be just a short way off over there!”

  An officer from Lee’s engineers, who had been waiting for the road to open into the clearing, spoke from nearby. “No, they pulled back last night. We went looking for them but they are moving away from us towards the south.”

  He saw Balthazar’s two stars and pointed to the far side of the meadow.” There’s where the road continues, colonel!”

  The sun was rising steadily.

  The engineers and black pioneer troops who had led the work thus far from the Orange Turnpike moved out of the line of march, and by the time that Balthazar’s column passed them were already building fires for whatever passed for coffee. Many were already asleep in the tall grass.

  General Lee stood in the middle of the field to greet the soldiers as they passed. There were a few people with him, but he was really alone and stood within a few hundred yards of the enemy’s main force.

  Balthazar saluted and stopped for a word as the battalion’s column began to enter the dark path ahead.

  The two artillery pieces with their horses and wagons were something new to Lee. “Where did you get these?” he asked Balthazar.

  “Good morning,” the Frenchman said cheerfully. “We captured them.”

  Lee smiled. “Congratulations. Put them to good use. I suppose you have artillerymen?”

  Balthazar nodded.

  “I continue to hear nothing but good of you and your men…” He was looking past Balthazar at Devereux. “I see that you have a guest.”

  Claude said nothing, sure that this chance meeting would be the end of his visit to the Army of Northern Virginia.

  “Yes, my cousin came to visit us. I do hope it will be possible for him to stay a few days. We have much to talk of, concerning the family…”

  Lee looked thoughtful. “Claude,” he said. “You are troublesome. I do not have time to deal with you in the midst of all this… Your lack of self-discipline is… disappointing. You are not to be captured. Do you understand?”

  Devereux nodded, strangely pleased at the provisional sentence of death that had just been passed on him by a man whom he had known from boyhood. Lee’s irritation was less important for him than the assurance that he derived from it that at least he had been missed.

  Lee looked at Balthazar, who nodded. “Oui, mon general, je comprends…”

  Lee held out his hand to Devereux. “You should not be here. Your place is with those people. That is your duty.”

  Claude knew instantly that Lee meant that he should be with the Union Army, that his duty called him to that place and task. The words re-opened the wound of loneliness.

  “Try not to kill your mother with your foolishness,” Lee said softly. “One dead son is enough. Be on your way, gentlemen, on your way. Come and see me,” he told Claude. “If we have some time, come to see me. I have to get you back to their side of the line or at least out of here.”

  They ran a quarter of a mile to reach the head of the battalion column. It was already far down the track. The distant end of the road was now two miles south of where they met Lee and the work moved forward fast in country that opened up as the marching column moved into open farmland.

  All day long the Army of Northern Virginia marched south at a pace that the long gone “Stonewall’ would have praised in his silent, solemn way, passing up and down the line of march, nodding and bowing to the men as he went. His spirit went with them.

  Jubal Early’s new command, the Third Corps was last in the order of march. They had been left astride the Plank Road facing east to cover the army’s rear as it moved away from the ground on which it had fought Grant for three days. By the time they began their long walk, Balthazar had halted his men a few hundred yards beyond the hole in the forest wall through which everyone emerged.

  They were Early’s men and they would wait for him to arrive. Balthazar sited his battalion in a half circle facing east with the two guns in the middle. The digging began. There was no way to know how long they would be in this position. Balthazar made them dig themselves into the ground like voles at every stop. He would wait for Early and, while waiting, he would block the chance of the Union Army’s accidental discovery of the new road.

  Far ranging cavalry on scout were always a danger.

  Devereux had no duties to keep him busy. Inactivity raised his level of frustration. Too much idle time in which to think of real or imagined slights affected him badly. Left to himself, his feelings of loneliness grew. He tried to talk to Smoot and found that his perception of coldness in the man was persistent. Smoot answered questions if they were asked, but that was all.

  Devereux asked Balthazar what the problem was. This time he demanded an answer. His cousin looked at him for a moment. “Your man Quick has a big mouth,” he said. When he came in March he made it clear that you are deceiving your wife, your lovely Hope. I thought you had made amends to her…”

  “Did he say with whom?”

  “Someone named Biddle…”

  Claude cursed. “God damn him! But what is that to Isaac?” Even as he said this, the scene in the kitchen of his parents’ home the night of Balthazar’s arrival came back to him.

  She reached up and held his hand. He looked down at her… Of course, what a fool I am.

  “He has good taste,” he said. “She is very lovable, very devoted and unfortunately for him, very faithful.” He said this to Balthazar with a grin. “Yes, he has very good taste. What about his own family? He has a wife and children I believe?”

  Balthazar looked at the ground. He was beginning to see why many people disliked Claude Devereux. He was not pleased to find himself discussing the personal life of one of his men. “He has moved on from that. The children…” He shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but to say that he is in love with your wife is simply the truth, and you have wronged her. You can not deny that. You really deserve this. You have wronged the woman he loves and can not have. He may kill you. A duel is likely if time permits. It is between the two of you. You should leave as soon as possible. As Robert Lee said, your place is with the people across the way… Your duty lies there. Ours is here.”

  “I never wanted this. I never wanted this work… Benjamin forced me into this!”

  Balthazar shrugged again. He fished the red beads out of a pocket.

  “I will not fight him in a duel,” Claude whispered. “I did that once. It was once too often. I killed a friend, for nothing, for nothing…”

  The beads clicked. “Yes, you will fight him. There will be no choice. Unfortunately, I will be compelled by family obligation to act for you. We will all be court-martialed if it comes to that, those of us who are still alive… For now, stay away from him.” He laughed. “Ask Lieutenant Harris to find you a rifle. It will be needed soon.” With that, the French officer walked away. There were many defensive arran
gements to make.

  Devereux spent the Tenth of May, talking to the men of the army as they came from the mouth of the woods road.

  Joseph White followed him as he wandered from unit to unit.

  Claude had known Joe since he was a baby. The relationship was too strong to be broken by Devereux’s philandering and misbehavior. In Joe’s experience Claude had always been the same man. He was what he was, and Joe accepted that, however regretfully. In any case, the family tie was too strong to be abandoned.

  As units came out of the woods, they were dispatched by waiting staff officers to whatever part of the line around Spotsylvania Court House that Lee wanted them to be in. There was a lot of line to extend. It ran away to the southeast following the contours of the ground.

  Devereux judged that troops would still be arriving after dark.

  In his roving, he found some troops from the First Corps. Pickett’s Division belonged to them. The 17th Virginia Infantry Regiment was with them in Corse’s Brigade. His brother and Bill White were with the 17th Virginia, as he had once been. According to Union Army reports that he had read in Washington, the division was in North Carolina. They had been there all winter training recruits and trying to recreate what had been destroyed at Gettysburg the previous July. He asked if Corse’s Brigade was with them. He was told that they were somewhere around New Bern on the coast, bottling up the Union garrison in the small coastal town. He thought of the reports from New Bern, from the federal force there.