Forty-five minutes later the story ended with a gun thrust in the face of the poor unfortunate who owned the wagon on which they were riding. They rattled on for a mile or so in silence. The men did not know what to say.
“I was going to tell you what we’ve been up to,” Samuel said at last. “Two river battles, ship sunk under us, Sullivan killed. But frankly it seems pretty tame now.”
“So the mighty CSS Virginia’s gone, huh?” Taylor asked.
“Yup. Blown to the heavens. Molly and I were nearly killed when she fell back to earth.”
“She lived for four months and she changed the nature of sea-fighting forever,” Taylor said. “We won’t see the like of her again.” Bowater had never heard Taylor wax so sentimental, certainly not over any person.
They rolled on south, stopped in the town of White Haven because they were desperately hungry and thirsty. There was a store and an inn there, but between all the men crowded on the wagon they could come up with no more than a few Confederate dollars. That was when Ruffin Tanner suggested they open the little strongboxes, and they made the happy discovery of hoards of gleaming gold.
The innkeeper, who had regarded them with suspicion and fear, saw them in a quite different light when presented with actual specie, gold, the value of which only went up with the misfortunes of the Confederacy. The former General Pages ate well and were on the road again, because they all had the sense, unspoken, that they should get as much distance as they could between themselves and the Yankees.
They came at last to Commerce, Mississippi, though there seemed to be precious little commerce taking place. The sun was two hours set by the time they climbed wearily out of the wagon and stretched and groaned in front of the inn on the one main street. The inn was all but deserted, but still it was barely large enough to house all the men. They ate, another fine meal, and tumbled off to sleep, too exhausted to talk.
Samuel took a private room, as was fitting his status as captain, and saw of course that Wendy had a room to herself. In the dark he lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, a dull blue in the moonlight. Outside the windows the crickets and frogs were singing their opera, an ensemble cast of thousands.
The door creaked on its hinges and he did not startle, did not even ask who it was. He could see her in the muted light, her hair loose and hanging down her shoulders, a robe held tight around her. She paused and they looked at one another and neither spoke. Then Wendy slipped off the robe, slipped off her nightdress, and for a moment the light played over her naked body, her white skin. She stepped up to the bed, pulled back the cover, and slipped in next to Samuel.
Samuel put his arm out, wrapped it around her, pressed her tight. She lay her cheek on his chest and they seemed to melt together. They remained like that for some time, silent, serenaded by the crickets and frogs.
“God, I have missed you,” Wendy said at last.
“I have missed you too.” And he had, though he had not known until that moment just how much.
She propped herself up on her elbow, shuffled closer to him, kissed him on the lips. He ran his hands over her back, through that long thick hair he loved, cradled her face in his hands. They made love, as if they had been waiting their whole life for this and were not going to rush through it now.
Finally they lay side by side, their heads on the cool pillows, their bodies bright with sweat because it was June and it was hot and humid, even at two o’clock in the morning.
“What will we do?” Wendy asked finally.
“I don’t know,” Samuel answered, the only true answer, but he knew Wendy needed more than that and it was not kind to leave her without it. “We’ll have to get to some city, someplace where we can contact the Navy Department. I reckon—I imagine we can find a steamer, something to get us down to Vicksburg. That’s the last holdout on the river, and when that falls, the Confederacy is split in two.”
Wendy rolled over, flung an arm across his chest. “Will that end the war?” she asked. There was a note of resignation, a touch of hope. Win or lose, she was ready for it to be over.
“No. Not immediately. There’ll be plenty more war. The navy will have more work for me, of that I have no doubt.”
Wendy pressed tighter against him. “I don’t want you to go.”
And he did not want to go. For once in his life, it seemed, there was something better on shore than anything he could hope to find over the horizon. After years in the moribund United States Navy, where his coming or going was a matter of complete indifference to anyone, when he might have walked away at any point, he had at last found a reason to walk away, at the very moment he could no longer do so. Sometimes he thought God specialized in irony.
“The war will end someday,” he said, but the words did not sound as hopeful as he wanted them to. They had this day, and the next, and the next, and he would savor them and not think about the future. He knew how to cherish any given moment. It was one thing, at least, he had learned.
EPILOGUE
FORTINBRAS:
Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET,
ACT V, SCENE 2
By June 30, 1863, the Battle of Memphis was a year gone. Time, that great if arbitrary healer, had come to the aid of Hieronymus Taylor. A broken leg had been the death of plenty of men, but not Taylor. It took him four months to recover from the third break to his leg, brought about by the falling shaft, and he was left with a permanent limp, but nothing worse.
Time was not so kind to Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr. The wound to the knee was not nearly so bad as the injuries suffered by others who survived, but he nonetheless suffered infection and died two weeks after his great victory.
And by June 30, 1863, all of it—Fort Pillow, Memphis, the River Defense Fleet—it was all history. Samuel Bowater’s short tenure with the army was over, and he was a navy man once again, once again a part of the Confederate States Navy that would fight on until the war was truly and finally over. Likewise Hieronymus Taylor. Ruffin Tanner. By the summer of 1863, those events at Plum Point Bend and Memphis were largely forgotten by everyone who had not been immediately touched by them.
In Pennsylvania they were worried about more than history. In particular, attention was focused on the gathering of armies in a place called Gettysburg for what had the makings of a major fight. The coming battle would throw the Southern invaders out of the North, or allow them to push on toward Washington, D.C.
And Lieutenant Tom Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, bone weary from the day’s march, was hoping for a moment’s reprieve. He longed for a moment during which he did not have to think about army things.
They had been marching hard, had covered eighteen miles the day before and twenty-three that day. They were marching north, pursuing Lee through Pennsylvania. The locals had been glad to see the Union Army, and had even obliged them by setting up roadside stands to sell food and drink at usurious prices. But Tom had noticed that the closer the civilians were to the Rebel army, the more obliging they became to the Army of the United States, and the more reasonable their prices.
He sat on his camp stool and leaned back against a small oak. He pulled his boots off and allowed himself the luxury of a groan. Around him, hundreds more men were doing the same, sitting around their little fires. It was hot, and no promise of rain, so the men eschewed their tents and slept on the ground. They would not be there long. Ten hours if they were lucky.
Tom Chamberlain had driven a nail into the trunk of the oak and hung a lantern from it, which gave him light enough to read. He pulled the dog-eared book out of his haversack. It, like the 20th Maine, had seen hard use, being passed from man to man with a smile and a “Hell, you got to read this.”
Chamberlain opened the book to where he had stuck a maple leaf as a bookmark the night before. Chapter Fifteen—Mississippi Mike Turns the Tables on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, His Heb
rew Pards.
He smiled in anticipation and began to read. Soon he was chuckling, he could not help it, and then laughing outright. It was perfect, magnificently crafted.
He read for the next hour, until he was done, then put the book down with a satisfied smile on his face. Lord, that’s funny. I cannot wait until Joshua has a go at it.
Tom’s brother, Joshua, colonel of the 20th Maine, would genuinely appreciate the genius of this subtle parody. Joshua was an educated man, a professor at Bowdoin College before joining the army. He knew his Shakespeare and would appreciate this skewed take on the bard.
He held the book up and read the title in the light of the lantern. Mississippi Mike, Melancholy Prince of the River, or, The Rebels’ Hamlet, written by a Union Officer Serving on Western Waters.
Tom wondered who the officer was. There was good reason for him to avoid putting his name on it. The people back in Washington would not look kindly on an officer with so much time on his hands that he could write such a bit of doggerel.
And there was no doubt that Washington was aware of the book—it was immensely popular throughout the North, and particularly among army officers. Whoever that officer was, he had been in the South long enough to have a genuine feel for the colloquialisms of that illiterate, ignorant race of people.
He had to be a Yankee. Who but a New England man could be so thoroughly versed in Shakespeare, and able to craft so perfect a parody? No doubt he was making a small fortune off his royalties, with all the copies that had been sold. It was just too bad that the anonymous author would never get the credit he deserved.
HISTORICAL NOTE
THE RIVER DEFENSE FLEET
When New Orleans fell to David Farragut’s fleet, it signaled the beginning of the end for Confederate control of the Mississippi, and a great blow to the Confederacy overall. Not because New Orleans was an active shipping port—the river had been sealed off from the sea by the Union blockade for some time—but because the city was still an important center for shipbuilding and the natural command center for operations on the Mississippi.
Despite its importance, and the obvious threat of Farragut’s fleet in the Gulf, Secretary of the Navy Mallory believed that the greater threat to New Orleans was the squadron of City Class gunboats and the Union Army coming down from the north. Mallory insisted that Flag Officer George Hollins keep his small squadron in Tennessee to oppose the Union advance. It was only at the last moment, and largely on Hollins’s initiative, that the naval forces of the river were moved south to oppose Farragut, a case of too little too late.
With Hollins’s fleet nearly wiped out at New Orleans, the bulk of the Mississippi River defense rested with the River Defense Fleet.
This fleet was not a part of the navy, but rather of the War Department, and under the command of the general of the army in the Mississippi Department, Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson. The fleet was first organized in January of 1862 and consisted of fourteen steamers fitted with rams in the bow and a single gun fore and aft. The ships were specifically not gunboats, as the army had no faith in the riverboat crews’ ability with ordnance. They were designed to be fast rams, sinking their enemies in the manner of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
For command of the ships, the army looked specifically to experienced river men, captains and pilots. The men they found were fiercely independent, which is not usually a good quality for military men who must work in organized and concerted efforts. General Lovell, in command in New Orleans, recognized the potential for trouble when he wrote, “Fourteen Mississippi captains and pilots would never agree about anything after they once get underway.”
THE BATTLE AT PLUM POINT
The Union Navy on the Mississippi had a bad record of letting Confederate forces take them by surprise. It happened at Head of the Passes, when Commodore Hollins caught Captain John Pope’s Union fleet napping and sent them racing for the Gulf in a humiliating incident known as “Pope’s Run.” It happened later when Arkansas steamed out of the Yazoo River and blasted her way through Farragut’s fleet at Vicksburg. And it happened at Plum Point.
Plum Point was perhaps the least excusable, since the Federals were perfectly aware of the existence of the Confederate fleet just a few miles downriver at Memphis. And while the presence of seven “cotton clad” rams might not have been reason to remain on high alert, still there was no excuse for being caught without enough steam up to turn the paddle wheels.
The much and deservedly maligned River Defense Fleet had its moment of glory on May 10, 1862, when they steamed around Plum Point Bend and found the Cincinnati and Mortar Boat Number Sixteen tied to the bank, the rest of the fleet upriver in various states of unreadiness.
Despite the Yankees’ being able to get into battle quickly, the Rebels accomplished a great deal in their attack. The Cincinnati and Mound City were sunk by that most ancient of weapons, the ram. The ram had become unworkable when sail took the place of the galley slave, an early example of jobs lost to technology. It was steam that made it feasible again after several thousand years.
Union and Confederate reports of the fighting might lead one to believe they described two different battles. The Confederates elevated their accomplishments to the level of stunning victory, while the Federal officers brushed over the damage the River Defense Fleet did and laid erroneous claim to having damaged or destroyed a number of ships.
In his official report, Captain Davis, commanding the Federal forces, wrote, “Commander Walke informs me that he fired a 50-pound rifle shot through the boilers of the third of the enemy’s gunboats of the western line, and rendered her, for the time being, helpless. All of these vessels might easily have been captured if we had possessed the means of towing them out of action….” It is an absurd claim, but typical of the spin added to Union reports of the action.
There can be no question that the River Defense Fleet carried out a well-executed and successful surprise attack on the Union forces, a clear Southern victory. Unfortunately for the Confederates, the resources of the Union rendered the sinking of two ironclads little more than an inconvenience to the Union Navy.
The ships were raised and sent upriver to Cairo for repair, and soon were back in action. Even Captain Stembel of the Cincinnati, who was shot during the action, recovered, despite the fact that the bullet “entered his shoulder just above the shoulder blade, on the right side, and passing through the neck, came out in the front of the throat, directly under the chin.” But the ability of the Union Navy to repair the damage does not change the fact that the Battle at Plum Point Bend, one of the war’s few fleet actions, was a complete—and rare—victory for Confederate forces afloat.
THE IRONCLADS ARKANSAS AND TENNESSEE
Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory was a great believer in ironclads, feeling that their technological superiority would give the South an edge against the numerically superior Union Navy. He was not the only one in the Confederacy to feel this way. Soon after the start of the war, shipbuilders and aspirants to shipbuilding began to apply to the Navy Department for contracts to build ironclads.
One of those men was John T. Shirley of Memphis, a man who enjoyed the friendship of a number of influential people in the Confederate government and military. In August of 1861, Shirley contracted “to construct and deliver to the secretary of the Navy, of the Confederate States, on or before the 24th of December, 1861, two vessels of the character and description provided….” Four months was not an excessive amount of time to build two ships, but it was adequate. Adequate, that is, if the workmen and material had been readily available, which they were not.
By April of 1862 the ships were still under construction, with the Arkansas planked up and her armor being fitted, while the first planks were just being applied to the Tennessee. With General Grant and Admiral Foote, and later Davis, pressing down from the north, and Admiral Farragut gathering his forces in the Gulf of Mexico, there was a growing sense of urgency. Months before, Mallory had written, �
��the completion of the ironclad gunboats at Memphis, by Mr. Shirley, is regarded as highly important to the defenses of the Mississippi.” With the fall of Island #10 and New Orleans, urgency turned to desperation.
There is some question as to exactly when Arkansas was launched. It was sometime around the fall of New Orleans, for immediately following that event, plans were made to tow the ship to the Yazoo River, where it was thought she would be safe long enough for her crew to complete her construction.
Arkansas, with the material needed to complete her loaded on a barge, was towed downriver, and then up the Yazoo. In Yazoo City, her new commander, the energetic and highly competent Isaac Brown, saw her finished. The following July, Brown drove the Arkansas straight through Farragut’s fleet at Vicksburg, and assured her a place in the annals of naval history.
The Tennessee was not so lucky. By the time New Orleans fell, it was pretty clear that she would never be completed. So clear, in fact, that her engines—a rare and valuable commodity in the South—were sent away with Arkansas to preserve them from the Yankees. The night before the Battle of Memphis, the very last night that Memphis would remain in Confederate hands, the ship was put to the torch.
THE CAPTURE OF NORFOLK
The reader might well find the notion of Abraham Lincoln himself boarding a tug and scouting out a suitable place to land troops at Norfolk quite unbelievable, and understandably so. It is so unbelievable that it would not have been a part of this work of fiction if it had not actually happened in fact.
On a few occasions during the war, Lincoln took it upon himself to be a hands-on Commander-in-Chief, appearing personally at the front lines and even on occasion directing troop movements. To this end he had more motive and opportunity than any other President, save, perhaps, for James Madison. America’s wars, as a rule, did not take place within a day’s journey from the White House. Nor have many Presidents been saddled with the kind of lethargic and incompetent military leadership that Lincoln suffered.
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