by Peter Quinn
“Ahearn is an experienced officer,” Noonan said. “I served with him on the Peninsula. He was wounded at Fredericksburg.”
On the other side of the parade ground, Ahearn came down the front steps of his quarters. He walked with his head down, the same deliberate, plodding step as on that morning seven months before, when the Irish Brigade had crossed the pontoon bridges into Fredericksburg. The men had picked their way through the debris and smashed furniture scattered around the narrow streets. A storm of soft, fluffy goose feathers, the innards of disemboweled mattresses, blew about like snow. Noonan stood with Ahearn at the top of Hanover Street, the last protected space before the open fields that swelled in gentle waves toward Marye’s Heights. In the northern sky, above the rooftops and over the river, was an Army observation balloon, a large white sphere as bright and prominent as the moon. As the Union guns began to pound the heights above the town, the tiny figures in the basket suspended beneath the balloon waved signal flags that told the gunners how to adjust their fire.
In a short while, General Thomas Francis Meagher came up the crowded street on horseback. The men stood aside to let him pass. Ahead was a small bridge that they had to funnel together in order to cross. Once across, the brigade formed into battle ranks, and when Meagher rode out onto the field, he was cheered. He leaned over a row of evergreen bushes, tore off a sprig of green, and stuck it into his hat. The men broke ranks. They clutched and ripped at the branches and stuck green sprigs into their caps. Noonan shouted for them to get back into line. Meagher sat facing the Heights, oblivious to the confusion behind him, and raised his sword. He yelled something that Noonan couldn’t hear, and then the whole brigade went forward. They reached the first rise. The Rebels held their fire. Off to his right, Noonan saw Ahearn walking amid the ranks, encouraging the men, his face white and taut. As they approached the second rise, the thunderclap struck, Rebel artillery and muskets firing simultaneously; the entire front rank seemed to go down together, in unison, and the smoke rolled down on top of them. The gunfire was ceaseless. The sergeant in front of Noonan was hit in the mouth by a piece of canister that blew out the back of his head. Noonan fell over him, then stood and brushed off his clothes, aware of the ridiculous futility of his gesture even as he did it. He ran forward, sword in hand, and yelled at the top of his lungs. Through the smoke he caught glimpses of the Rebels: indistinguishable faces beneath slouched hats.
One ball hit him in the side and stopped him cold. The next one passed through his right thigh and lodged behind his left knee. He limped forward a few steps before he fell, and a soldier with a shattered chest fell on top of him, his eyes open and blood spurting from his mouth and the hole in his chest. Noonan rolled him off. He tried to stand but couldn’t. He looked up and saw Ahearn go past, quickly disappearing into a curtain of smoke.
Wool looked out the window of the coach when Ahearn entered. He grunted in response to Ahearn’s greeting. There were no more attempts at conversation. As the coach rolled off the ferry toward City Hall, the temperature seemed to increase appreciably. Hot as it had been on Governors Island, the city was far hotter.
At City Hall, Ahearn exited first. He offered his hand to Wool, but the old man glowered at him and came out unassisted. Noonan ascended the stairs of City Hall beside Wool. At the top, Mayor Opdyke greeted them. “Well, Colonel, I don’t think we have anything to worry about, do you?” The Mayor looked ill. His hair was matted with perspiration. Around his eyes there was a Nile tint to the skin.
“I will be better able to answer that question this evening,” Noonan said.
General Charles Sanford, Commander of the State Militia, came up behind Mayor Opdyke and put his hand on the Mayor’s shoulder. “Pardon me for interrupting, but I wish to offer the Colonel congratulations on a job well done.”
“We haven’t begun yet,” Noonan said.
“You’ve completed the enrollment of a hundred thousand men and established draft offices throughout the city, all without the slightest disturbance. I’d say you’re well begun and half done, as the Greeks put it.”
“The Colonel won’t permit himself such happy thoughts,” the Mayor said. “Perhaps he’s just being superstitious, a not uncommon trait among the Irish, or perhaps he’s merely being cautious, a necessary virtue among military men, I suppose.”
“A good soldier must know when to be cautious and when to be brave,” Wool said. “Noonan knows both.” He walked away from them into City Hall; Noonan followed.
General Zook lay in state in a large rectangular room on the first floor. His catafalque was swathed in black bunting and banked with lily plants. Beneath, out of view, was a copper-lined vat of tightly packed ice in which the coffin sat. The heat was already causing the ice to melt. A steady drip fell, turning the red carpet around the coffin as dark as blood.
Zook had been dead over a week. Neither ice nor flowers nor the aromatic fragrances the undertaker had sprayed around the room could erase entirely the faint odor of corruption. Zook’s face had been given a fresh dusting of talc to cover its sea-green hue. Zook had been shot at Gettysburg in the chest and the groin; he’d fallen from his horse and bled to death. Now his eyes were closed, as if he were asleep, but despite the undertaker’s labors, the mouth was twisted rather than reposed, the final agony still on it. His gloved hands were crossed on the buckle of his sword belt, the gesture of the dead. Solid, reliable Samuel Zook. Noonan had last seen him alive on the morning of the assault on Fredericksburg. Zook had been supervising the repair of the pontoon bridges damaged by Confederate artillery fire. He wore spectacles at the end of his thick nose, and scratched at his frizzy brown beard as he moved back and forth. He looked more like a botanist gathering specimens in a spring field than a soldier in imminent danger of being punctured by a sniper’s bullet. He walked back to the Union lines in the same deliberate way as he had paced the bridges, as though taking his daily constitutional. Noonan stopped to greet Zook as the brigade moved down to the river. Zook was sitting on a campstool, his head bowed in a silent grace before he took his breakfast. Although he had abandoned the pacifist tenets of his Mennonite faith, he was a rigorously devout man who refrained from alcohol, tobacco, and swearing, and who encouraged his men to do the same. “Sanctity Sam,” they called him, yet it wasn’t so much piety Zook radiated as the rock-hard holiness of a biblical prophet, a grim resolve to wear down the evil in the world.
Zook had moved from Pennsylvania to New York in the 1840s as the superintendent of the Washington & New York Telegraph Company. He was one of the few men in the business who was willing to hire Irishmen, and the first winter Noonan was in the city, Zook had taken him on as an assistant. Their days were spent running and repairing wires in the financial district. It was a boom-time business. New trading offices opened constantly, some of them little more than a desk and a telegraph key, and the brokers made a sport of cutting one another’s wires. Zook liked to take his men out to drink after work, and the carousing often lasted until the following morning, when they went straight from the tavern to their jobs. Zook never seemed to tire of this routine, until the spring the cholera struck and carried away his twin sons, age six.
Noonan attended the funeral, at a Quaker church in the rural precincts of Brooklyn. Zook was crushed with grief. Noonan knew there were those who said that the cholera was carried by the Irish, as endemic among them as popery and vice, and that to associate with Paddies was to risk exposure to the onslaughts of the disease. But Zook neither shunned nor condemned Noonan. He simply stood by the graveside, the two small coffins laid at his feet, and cried out over and over, “O Lord, I am a sinner!”
Zook returned to work a changed man, reserved and religious.
Noonan left the telegraph company the next year and didn’t run into his erstwhile boss again until after Bull Run, when Zook arrived outside Washington at the head of the Fifty-seventh New York, no trace left of his lighthearted, whiskey-loving days.
Now Zook was this lifeless husk
. Noonan took his seat. He contemplated that Wool had been wrong when he had described the gap in the country as a matter of age, the ceaseless promotion of youth. In truth, it was a difference less measurable, if just as real. It was a contest between those like Zook, who understood war for what it really was, the business of killing, and sought to wind it up as efficiently as possible, and those who saw it as adventure, glorious and invigorating, a contest that ennobled its participants.
A minister read Psalm 25: “Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee: Let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.” Zook’s widow, a stout, German-looking woman, wept quietly. At one point there was a small commotion at the back of the room as late arrivals took their place. The minister looked up without interrupting his reading. The service over, a diminutive man in black walked down the aisle to Mrs. Zook. He spoke a few words to her, patting her hand as he did. The undertaker, Noonan thought; then the little man turned to come back up the aisle, and Noonan recognized General George McClellan. Although in civilian clothes, McClellan was accompanied by a retinue of officers, who waited for him by the door. He walked solemnly, at a deliberate pace, stopped at the door, and greeted each mourner as he departed. It was as if Zook had been a son or brother of his.
Noonan and Wool were last in line. Wool shuffled his feet impatiently as they waited. He whispered to Noonan, “I think our boy here is going into politics.” McClellan seemed delighted to see Wool. “Ellis, old friend,” he said, “how goes it?”
Wool’s face was expressionless. “I’m doing my best, George,” he said.
“No doubt of that, never was. We couldn’t have had a Peninsula Campaign without you. If you hadn’t saved Fort Monroe for the Union in ’61, the door to Richmond would have been slammed in our faces.”
“It got slammed anyway,” Wool said as he moved on.
McClellan called after him, “That was the President’s decision, not ours, Ellis. It was the President who decided to withhold the forces we needed to take Richmond.”
Wool walked away without responding.
McClellan turned to Noonan. “Colonel Noonan, of the Sixty-ninth New York, adjutant to Thomas Francis Meagher.”
Noonan was astonished that McClellan remembered him. They had met only once, a year ago, on Malvern Hill, on the morning of the last battle of the ill-fated Peninsula Campaign. Noonan had accompanied General Meagher. They had walked to the top of the hill, through a wall of guns, to a large field tent with its flaps raised. In the middle, atop a portable wooden floor, was an Oriental rug that had been confiscated from the home of some departed Rebel planter. Officers stood around, leaning over tables and examining maps. From the direction of the James came a galloping squad of horsemen. McClellan was in the lead. He held his hat at his side in continuous acknowledgment of the soldiers and artillerists who cheered his approach. He dismounted gracefully in front of the tent. Meagher stepped forward to greet him, and McClellan clasped Meagher’s hand. Meagher introduced Noonan, who was struck by McClellan’s boyishness, which was suggested not only by his shortness and his thick stock of black hair but by his smooth, soft face.
An orderly brought them hot coffee in white ceramic mugs. McClellan sat on a campstool.
“General,” Meagher said, “I want you to know that your leadership has inspired us all.”
“No, no,” McClellan said. “It’s my men. They’re the real heroes of this campaign.” He blew on his coffee and slurped it loudly.
“I can’t speak for the other men,” Meagher said, “but I can speak for my own, and we Irishmen are a race that looks to chieftains, it’s in our blood, and when we find one with your combination of courage and skill, we’ll follow him anywhere, even to hell.”
McClellan stood. He stared down at the Oriental rug, a dizzying pattern of intricate coils and vines. He studied it as if it were a map, a place where he might find some clue to the devious stratagems of his Confederate adversary. After a moment, he looked up from the rug and its impenetrable designs. “You are kind, General Meagher,” he said. “You also have the customary eloquence of your race. And because you have been so forthright with me, I will be the same with you. I have husbanded my troops and exposed them to risks only when I judged there to be an opportunity to break the enemy’s line or the necessity to defend my own. In the face of overwhelming odds, and denied the reinforcements I had been promised, I have brought this army here with its honor and strength preserved.” McClellan’s eyes returned to the rug. “And yet, there are those ready to describe what I have achieved as treason. Treason. That is part of the villainous vocabulary being employed in Washington to impugn not only my competency but my loyalty.”
“A man’s deeds are his gold,” Meagher said, “and yours are minted in the same imperishable metal as Hannibal’s, Caesar’s, and Sarsfield’s.”
McClellan looked up again. “Sarsfield?” he said.
“The greatest of Irish heroes,” Meagher said. “He was a brilliant commander in the Williamite War. After the Irish defeat and the mass flight of the Irish soldiery to the Continent, Sarsfield joined the French army and died fighting with them, at the Battle of Landen in 1693.”
McClellan’s thick black eyebrows knitted, in something between puzzlement and a frown. He took a gulp of his coffee. An adjutant came across the rug. “General,” he said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the enemy approaches.” McClellan looked off to the James, toward the vast flotilla of flag-bedecked ships that had gathered to evacuate the army, and without another word he went outside and remounted his horse.
“I never forget my brother soldiers,” McClellan said, “particularly my brave Irishmen. If I’d been given a hundred more brigades like yours, the war would be over today and the Union restored. But I wasn’t. There were those who were willing to see the killing continue in order to deny me the victory. The words of this morning’s psalm, then, rang with special meaning in my heart: ‘Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred.’”
Noonan said, “The brigade did its best for you.”
“Of course, of course. The same may be said of the whole army. Its loyalty has been an inspiration. A mutuality of affection, I might add, for if it’s true that never in the history of warfare has a commander, had more confidence in his men, it’s equally true that never has an army had more confidence in its commander. This latest engagement is the final, conclusive proof of that.”
In the first week of July, the papers had reported that McClellan was in Albany helping with the organization and dispatch of militia troops to Pennsylvania. Noonan was sure now that McClellan had been nowhere near Gettysburg.
“Which engagement is that, General?”
“Gettysburg.”
“You were at the battle?”
“In spirit, yes. Practically every dispatch from the battlefield reported that the troops believed I had been returned to command. The rumor was so universal it took on the force of truth, and the army went into battle thinking it was fighting for me. It was, if you’ll pardon the expression, ‘McClellan’s ghost’ who won the field. There will be no doubt of that when the histories are written. The evidence is overwhelming. I mean, George Meade is a decent enough sort, but to conceive of him beating Lee in a three-day struggle—really, it’s preposterous on the face of it.”
The undertaker approached. He was eager to replace the ice around Zook’s coffin and to cover the wet carpet before the public viewing began. “Gentlemen, please, if I may ask you to step outside.”
“It’s been an honor to see you again, General,” Noonan said. “But I must be going. I have business to attend to.”
McClellan moved in front of Noonan as-if to leave, but then stopped. He stood blocking the doorway.
“Gentlemen, please, if you don’t mind moving outside,” the undertaker said.
McClellan ignored the undertaker and stood his ground. “The papers make increasing mention of your business, Colonel Noonan
.”
“The news from Gettysburg and Vicksburg, which has been most welcome, has overshadowed our work,” Noonan said, “but now it’s our turn for attention.” He could see Wool pacing the lobby impatiently.
McClellan put on his hat but didn’t move. “If ever there were proof of the bankruptcy of the administration’s policy, this is it. I know you’re doing your duty, Colonel Noonan, as any soldier must, but the political strategy being dictated by the President cannot save the Union.”
Instead of trying to outflank McClellan, the undertaker walked straight toward him. McClellan stepped out of the way. Noonan moved around McClellan’s flank into the lobby. Wool had left the building and was slowly descending the steps.
“Remember what I tell you, Colonel Noonan,” McClellan said. “The draft will not help us win the war.”
McClellan out of the way, the undertaker closed the door to the chamber where Zook’s body lay.
“But, General,” Noonan said, “you yourself encouraged the President to impose the draft almost two years ago.”
“Was a different war back then, a war solely for the Union, the Constitution, the national destiny. In such a struggle, conscription was not only conceivable but enforceable. The honest, patriotic mechanic and farmer could clearly see the necessity of it. But the administration has made this a war for the Negro. That is what we are asking our boys to fight and die for, the confiscation of the South’s population of woolly heads. Before the administration can hope once more to have the support of the people, it must return to the one issue this war was begun upon. If it won’t, the country will demand a new administration.”
“I must take my leave, General,” Noonan said. “But I make no apologies for the draft. To my mind, conscription and emancipation are both weapons that must be used in the winning of this war.”