Mother Earth, Bloody Ground: A Novel Of The Civil War And What Might Have Been (Stonewall Goes West Trilogy)

by R. E. Thomas

  Taking the report with him, he strode to the state dining room, where his high war officials and a lunch of butter and ham sandwiches with spring salad waited. Secretary of War James Seddon, ailing, but every inch the Virginia gentleman; General Braxton Bragg, his principal military adviser, a tall, cadaverously thin, scraggly man; and round and ruddy Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, easily the shrewdest man in the Cabinet.

  As Davis approached the table, he motioned for them to sit. “Gentlemen, I do not mean to deprive you of your midday meal, but we have pressing news to discuss before the meeting of the full Cabinet this afternoon.” Taking a seat himself, Davis continued, “Have any of you had the opportunity to read General Jackson’s dispatches of this morning?”

  Seddon swallowed a bite of greens and said, “I’m afraid just myself and, I presume, you, Mr. President. There wasn’t time to make additional copies, just yours. I have the original.”

  Davis frowned, noticing that Benjamin ate only salad, and then remembered that as a Jew, he could not partake of the sandwiches. “Mr. Benjamin, my apologies. I’ll send for some bread and cheese, or perhaps an egg or two if you prefer?”

  Benjamin smiled warmly. “Boiled eggs would be lovely.”

  “Well, now to business. I’ll summarize General Jackson’s dispatches for you. First, the butcher’s bill. The General reports that the Army of Tennessee suffered five thousand casualties at Lawrenceburg. Because he captured the Federal hospitals and had possession of the battlefield, he has a reliable estimate of enemy casualties, which he places at 700 dead, 3,700 wounded, and 4,100 captured. The wounded are, naturally, all prisoners as well, but counted separately.”

  “What does he intend to do with all those prisoners?” asked Bragg.

  “Jackson writes that he sent to General Sherman in Nashville to negotiate parole and exchange, but in keeping with Lincoln’s new policy, Sherman rebuffed the overture. So, he has sent those able to march back to Tuscumbia. The wounded remain in Lawrenceburg. He has detailed the regiments from Strahl’s Brigade, which apparently was badly damaged at Lawrenceburg, to serve as guards in both places. The General also reports that he captured 18 guns and a large stockpile of supplies at Lawrenceburg, and while the foraging in that part of Tennessee he controls is sparse, he now has a supply line open to the new depot at Tuscumbia.”

  “I’m not familiar with the details there,” Benjamin said. “Could you enlighten me?”

  Davis motioned to Bragg and took a bite of his sandwich. Bragg said “Yes, Mr. President. After the Federals abandoned Corinth, Mississippi, Mr. Secretary, Jackson ordered General Polk to reoccupy the place and repair the railroads there. So, northwestern Alabama is again connected to Corinth, part of a railway running all the way back to Selma. The Army of Tennessee can subsist from the plenty of the Alabama black belt and the Mississippi prairie.”

  Of course, Davis knew it wasn’t as simple as that, as did everyone else in the room. Confederate rolling stock was badly worn after four years of war. Southern industry simply could not keep up with the demands of maintenance or replacement. There were serious limits on how much food and materiel could be moved from the interior of the Deep South to Jackson’s army in Middle Tennessee. Still, a trickle was better than nothing at all, and a trickle was all they could manage.

  Davis continued. “As we know from earlier reports, the Army of Tennessee lost several generals at Lawrenceburg, not the least among them being John Bell Hood. His body is on its way back to Richmond for a state funeral. There are other command vacancies as well. General Jackson has several recommendations he wants to make for filling them. To replace Hood, he wants Patrick Cleburne promoted. To replace Cleburne at the head of his division, he wants Lucius Polk promoted. And to permanently fill the vacancy left by Loring’s arrest, he wants George Maney of Cheatham’s Division promoted.”

  Davis knew about Jackson’s plans for Cleburne and Lucius Polk already, as the latter’s uncle, Leonidas Polk, had already written ahead to encourage Davis to promote the two men, giving them both a fulsome endorsement. He had kept that to himself, however, preferring to wait and see what Jackson actually asked for, and in that he wasn’t disappointed. Jackson, much like Robert E. Lee, didn’t make demands. Instead, Jackson stated his preferences and asked for advice.

  Seddon spoke up. “I don’t see any problems with that. All three have an excellent combat record. Both Maney and Polk are among the most senior brigadiers in that army, if not the most senior. Promoting Cleburne means passing over Cheatham, however, as Cheatham is his senior. Very much his senior.”

  Bragg interjected, “Cleburne has an excellent record as a division commander, it is true, but that does not mean he is fit for higher command. Save a few years as a ranker in the Queen Victoria’s army, he has no formal military training. I believe General Jackson is implying here that he doesn’t want Frank Cheatham for a corps commander, and we should accept that, but that is no reason to give Cleburne the job, not when we have other officers who can fill the role.”

  “Who did you have in mind, General?” asked Davis.

  “Major Generals French and Stevenson are already with the Army of Tennessee. Both went to West Point and both are senior to Cleburne. If that is not enough, Richard Taylor was confirmed as Lieutenant General just yesterday, and he has served under Jackson’s command before. Now that the Yankee’s offensive up the Red River is defeated, Taylor can be sent from Louisiana. I’m sure he would be grateful to serve with our famous Stonewall again.”

  Listening to Bragg, Benjamin looked up from his freshly delivered eggs and understood with alarm what the skeletal General was up to. Cleburne and Cheatham were Bragg’s private enemies, both part of the faction that had practically chased him out of the Army of Tennessee.

  Stonewall Jackson’s wishes be damned insofar as Bragg is concerned, Benjamin thought, just so long as Cleburne and Cheatham do not advance. Bringing up Richard Taylor was clever too. Taylor is Davis’s one-time brother-in-law. Best not to mention the hypocrisy that Taylor hadn’t been to West Point either, Davis won’t care for that, but I have to put a stop to this.

  “Mr. President, I believe General Bragg’s idea about General Taylor is a sound one, but it poses certain problems. Even if you were to immediately order Taylor to assume command of Hood’s Corps, it would be weeks before he arrived. In the meantime, I agree that implicit in Jackson’s request for Cleburne is that he prefers Cleburne over Cheatham, French, and Stevenson. Yet if he has to wait for Taylor, one of those men will inherit Hood’s Corps by virtue of seniority. You see what I mean, sir? It causes our Stonewall a great deal of trouble in the short term, and I’m sure he wants his command sorted out before he has to fight another battle. You would also have to find someone to replace Taylor, and send them to the Trans-Mississippi Department.”

  Davis nodded, but said nothing. He liked the idea of giving the job to Taylor, and disliked giving it to Cleburne. The Irishman had talent, there was no doubt of that, but he wasn’t a professional officer. As an immigrant, he wasn’t even a real Southron. The last point was revealed in the most startling fashion last winter, when Cleburne proposed to free and arm the slaves. The only reason they could even discuss promoting Cleburne is because that proposal had remained confidential. If the Senate knew of it, they would never confirm him.

  Benjamin went on. “I propose instead that we give Cleburne and Lucius Polk brevet promotions. That way Jackson can have the man he wants running Hood’s old corps for the short term, and if you decide not to retain Cleburne or the Senate rejects his lieutenant generalcy, then Lucius Polk’s promotion is just as temporary. Matters there would go back to the way they were.”

  Bragg soured. “We don’t use brevet rank.”

  “True,” Benjamin replied sweetly. “But it’s still on the books. And therefore legal.”

  Well that, Davis thought, is better. If he brought Taylor in, it would mean no promotion for Lucius Polk, too. That would leave dear old Leonidas very disap
pointed.

  Davis said sternly, “Very well. We brevet Cleburne and Polk as a temporary measure, while I propose to Jackson that we send him Richard Taylor to permanently replace Hood. And that we approve George Maney to replace Loring. Agreed?”

  Bragg said nothing, but Benjamin and Seddon both concurred.

  “General Jackson has one more request,” Davis said. “He reports some success with recruitment and conscription. That is unsurprising, I think, since he controls an area our government has not exercised direct and uncontested control over since the fall of Nashville. As the Bureau of Conscription effectively doesn’t exist north of the Tennessee River at present, he requests permission to incorporate anyone he gets his hands on above that line directly into the regiments, and once there to ‘train the new men on the march’ as he puts it, instead of sending them back to camps in the rear. I for one have no problem with that.”

  On this request, everyone agreed. Davis then passed his copy of the dispatches around for Benjamin and Bragg to read, and the four men finished their lunch.

  June 8, 1864

  After Midnight

  The White House

  Washington, DC

  Abraham Lincoln stood up and laid his pen down on the desk. He blinked to clear his head, withdrew a hankerchief from his pocket, and wiped the ink smudges from his fingers and hands.

  Turning around, he said to the men seated at various desks, chairs, and couches behind him, “Misters Seward and Blair, the missive to Dennison is finished, polished, and ready for the show. If you are done with me now, I would very much like to go to the telegraph office and await reports from Tennessee.”

  Seward, the Secretary of State, was reading near a window left slightly ajar and puffing on a cigar. His smoking was as much to discourage mosquitoes as it was to enjoy the tobacco. He looked up, smiled slightly, but said nothing, and went back to his newspapers.

  Lincoln smiled in turn, half-amused. Anyone who asked why Seward always looked as if braced for news that his house had burnt to charcoal and ash had never seen the man smile. His drooping ears, narrow face, and prominent nose gave even a little smile a comical cast.

  Montgomery Blair spoke instead. “Are you sure about that? The word from Baltimore will come directly and periodically. I know there is a battle going on in Tennessee, but it isn’t of much import, not next to the convention.”

  Lincoln placed his hands on the small of his back, stretched out his long, lanky frame, and then replied, “Sir, we’ve got the convention in Baltimore as done as we can make it. There will be no surprises. I am to be nominated for President of these United States again, God help me. If anything causes our esteemed colleagues of the National Union Party to give pause and reconsider the wisdom of putting me before the country again, it could only be word of what transpires in a little place not so far from Clarksville, Tennessee. Now, I’ve tended to the needs of our good friend, the Honorable Governor Dennison of Ohio, and now I would like to go tend to the needs of the country at large.”

  “Yes, of course. If anything should come…”

  “Yes, I know.” With that, Lincoln put on his coat, picked up his hat and a hefty walking stick, and left the room.

  In the hallway his chief private secretary, John Nicolay, sat behind a little desk that had been placed there. Nicolay continued to tend to his paperwork, but his main purpose was to send petitioners, office-seekers, and other such people packing. Those people usually did not come calling on the President at such unseemly hours, but Presidents were so rarely as certain of re-nomination as Lincoln was.

  John Nicolay looked up from his stack of letters. “I’m surprised you didn’t bolt the stable hours ago.”

  “Decorum dictates that a candidate cannot attend at his own nomination in person,” Lincoln said, “but practicality demands some of his epistles must go in his stead.”

  Lincoln set the walking stick and hat down on Nicolay’s desk. “Are any of these for me?”

  Nicolay nodded and motioned to the small pile to Lincoln’s right. Lincoln scooped them up, placed them in his hat, and then retrieved the heavy stick.

  “This thing is a nuisance. But if I fail to carry it, somehow my wife always hears of it.”

  Nicolay didn’t bother looking up from his correspondence. “If you would let us arrange a bodyguard for you, someone to be with you at all times instead of just sometimes, perhaps she would not insist you go around armed with that club.”

  “And what would they make of that? They would say I go around like a tyrannical Caesar of old, wearing a breastplate and proceeded by a phalanx of armed praetorians.”

  “The Copperheads already say that.”

  Lincoln chuckled. “Yes, but now it is all lie. Should I help them by making it a half-truth?”

  Taking his stick and hat, Lincoln said goodbye to Nicolay and made his way downstairs and out the west side of the White House. Pausing to place his hat on his head, he frowned at how unpleasant the night air was. Stuffy, just a touch of rot hovering in the air. Washington’s pestilential summer was just beginning to take hold, and he knew soon enough night would bring no relief from the steamy heat, nor the smells it brought with it.

  Lincoln launched himself forward, using a brisk walking pace to shake out the discomfort from his joints. The stick he used not at all, but instead clutched it casually by his side. With his long stride, it took little time to reach the War Department, located as it was practically on the side doorstep of the White House. He tipped his hat to greetings of “Mr. President, sir” from the guards, all of whom were familiar with his habits and odd hours, and went straight to the telegraph office.

  Walking through the door, Lincoln motioned to the cipher-clerks that they should remain seated. Gideon Welles, the Navy Secretary, was there. But Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was not, which meant he was next door in his office. Lincoln knew Stanton often slept in his office when a battle was in the offing or the running and made a habit of keeping late hours, battle or no. Awake or asleep, who knew?

  As he went to the pile of recent messages, Lincoln asked the nearest clerk, “Has General Rosecrans’ reply from St. Louis come in yet?”

  The clerk, busily clacking away, replied, “Yes, Mr. President, it’s in there. It came only a short while ago, so it should be near the top” without looking up from his telegraph key.

  Lincoln plunged his hands into the drawer, lifting the pile of messages out and placing them on the desktop. He then removed his hat and set his other papers down alongside the War Department messages. He started with the latter first, turning over the first few messages until he found the one he wanted.

  William Starke Rosecrans, the former commander of the Army of the Cumberland, the loser of Chickamauga, was now out of the big show and serving as the commander of the Department of Missouri. Ostensibly, Lincoln and Rosecrans were cabling back and forth about some mundane matter of how to handle confidential communications, but Lincoln knew that Rosecrans’ former chief of staff, James Garfield, headed the Ohio delegation to the Baltimore convention and that Garfield had wired Rosecrans earlier that day to inquire if Rosecrans, who remained popular with Ohio War Democrats, might be interested in the Vice Presidential nomination.

  Lincoln also knew that Stanton, always a petty, vindictive man, had intercepted Rosecrans’ reply, and as of yet, had neither released it or spoken of it.

  If Rosecrans truly wanted to be Vice President, Lincoln thought, then he should also drop some hint of it here, cryptic as per his usual style. But there was no mention of it. Was there more? Would Stanton dare to doctor official War Department messages? Perhaps he would, but the document looked genuine, original.

  The neighboring cipher clerk looked up from his desk, having finished keying his encoded message. “Mr. President, if you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t know how you can be here at a time like this. I know a battle was fought today and all, but those fellows up in Baltimore are talking about making you President again. Well, both are
important, but I reckon…”

  “Lieutenant, the convention of the National Union Party is as an African menagerie. Giraffes, a lion or two, a big white elephant, and far too many chimpanzees. Now I procured for myself, as the owner of any menagerie must, some able keepers from the circus, and I let them handle it. I prefer to wait here for those fellows to arrange the show, and not by the cages, which must by unfortunate necessity smell strongly of chimp and elephant dung.”

  The army clerk and Lincoln shared a chuckle. Of course, Lincoln thought, this young fellow knows little of what goes on in Republican party politics. I’ve brought the War Democrats and most of my fellow Republicans together into the National Union Party, and the nomination from them is tucked away like a week-old kitten in a neat silk stocking. Some of the Radicals left the herd and nominated John Fremont, mind you, but time remains to deal with them, persuade them to rejoin the fold.

  Lincoln had been considering a story to tell the clerks when Stanton thundered in, coatless and open-collared, looking bleary-eyed and even more humorless than usual. He held a newspaper and shook it at Lincoln. “Have you seen this latest New York Tribune?”

  Impassive, Lincoln replied, “Yes, I’ve seen it.”

  “Horace Greely’s gone mad! Stark, raving, drooling mad! Calling for Fremont to replace Sherman and Hooker to replace McPherson! And while you are sitting there so calm and serene, Mr. President, you might give thought to what it means when a prominent editor such as Greely goes on the record for naming the figurehead of your party’s malcontents as the man to solve the supposed leadership problems of our western armies!”

  Lincoln grunted. “Oh, I know what it means. Senator Wade called on me this morning, threatening an investigation of the Committee on the Conduct of the War. Then Secretary Chase visited this afternoon, suggesting that if I were to swap Hooker and McPherson, it might be enough to sooth the feelings of the Radicals, cause them to heave Fremont over the side, and get back on our wagon.”