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

by R. E. Thomas

  He called to the bartender for a beer, and then sat down with his fellows from the regiment. “Evening. Do you know who all these other fellows are?”

  “Bunch of fair-weather soldiers,” spat the commissary sergeant. “From the 180-day regiments they raised to thicken up the Nashville garrison, in case Stonewall comes knocking.”

  “This lot are Buckeyes,” muttered the quartermaster sergeant. “I’ve heard one big fat regiment of them 180-day boys came in from Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio each. Story is when the recruiting officers said they were forming a new regiment for a six-month term, men signed up like nobody’s seen since ’62, all of them figuring six months in Nashville beat sitting around waiting their turn in the conscription lottery.”

  “Where’s my manners?” said the commissary. “Spear, isn’t it? Will you have some whiskey with us? It’s rye, not corn.”

  The barkeep arrived with a mug of beer and a shot glass, placing both before Spear. “I’ll have one drink of whiskey with you, sure,” Spear replied. “But I’ll stick to beer after that.”

  The quartermaster stood up. “To the 7th Cavalry, 80th of the Line. The boys who put the sharp tip on Minty’s Sabers!”

  The trio of sergeants clinked shot glasses, swallowed, and sat back down. “Oh, I almost forgot,” the quartermaster said. “Be sly about it, but there is a general in the room. Over there, in the back.”

  Spear slouched in his chair, and looked back over his shoulder to see a thoroughly miserable-looking man, thickset with a thick head of curly black hair, sitting in a dark corner and drowning his sorrows alone in a bottle of whiskey. Now that he was looking right at him, Spear could see the star on his shoulder straps.

  “Who in God’s name is that?” Spear whispered.

  The quartermaster replied quietly “Barkeep said that is Sam Sturgis, the fellow got himself whipped by old Nate Forrest the other day.”

  Spear was about to say something when he felt breath on his ear and heard a whispered feminine drawl. “So lovely seeing you again George.”

  He grinned, his whole body tingling, but didn’t look back. Instead, Spear sat up straight and opened his lap a bit. “Ms. Higgins, lovely seeing you as well.”

  A raven-haired girl of ample, fetching curves and not much more than 20 years plopped down side-saddle on Spear’s lap. Placing her arms around him, she said, “Are you with us long, George?”

  “Just ‘til morning, I’m afraid. Would you join us for a drink, Molly?”

  “What a sweet suggestion. Don’t mind if I do.” Molly took Spear’s empty shot glass, poured herself a whiskey, and held it towards the pair of supply sergeants and nodded before knocking it back.

  “To answer your question, Molly, not long. I need to go back in the morning. My intention was to have a few more beers here, and then see about a bed to sleep in tonight. Mind if I share yours?”

  “That,” Molly purred, “would be delicious.”

  June 10th, 1864

  Early Evening

  Camp of the 41st Tennessee Infantry, CSA

  Hillsboro, Tennessee

  Willie asked the darkie cooks, “So what have y’all done with the game we done brought you today?”

  One of the cooks handed over some hoecakes and ladled out some stew onto Willie’s tin plate. “See for yourself, sir.”

  Nathan and Willie Grimes had had a very good run of trapping, bringing in two groundhogs, a rabbit, and a couple dozen squirrels. Usually the enlisted men in the regiment cooked their meals in small messes, but on occasions when special food was available, the negroes who tended to the officer’s mess cooked for everyone. With fresh meat on the table, today was such a day, and the cooks had combined it with captured Yankee salt pork, navy beans, and fresh wild onions into a stew.

  Taking his supper, Willie walked off to the First Sergeant’s tent, just a half-shelter fashioned out of one of the many dog tents captured at Lawrenceburg. It wasn’t much, but even so, First Sergeant Halpern was the only enlisted man in the company with a shelter all his own. Willie still ate breakfast and dinner with his brother Nathan and his old mess, but since making corporal, he joined Halpern and Sergeant Marks for supper.

  Halpern was sitting in a camp chair under his lantern post, and Marks had the tree stump, leaving Willie to sit on the ground. Halpern asked, “Where’s Nathan? I reckon he should have been back by now.”

  Nathan had been dismissed with a pass after the new afternoon skirmish drill instituted by Old Pat Cleburne, allowing him to take some of his squirrels off to trade as a reward for bringing them in. Most likely he had it in mind to trade for cheap, pop skull whiskey, seeing as how he had gambled his pay away and Jackson had ordered all the captured Yankee whiskey destroyed, excepting some kept for medicinal purposes.

  Willie said, “I ain’t worried. He’s got papers this time, and it ain’t like he’s going to run off. Besides, he ain’t the only one. Where’s the Captain? He weren’t in the officers’ mess.”

  Halpern chuckled, “His boy told me that Captain Bell would be joining some of the other captains and going over to the widow Ross’s house for cards tonight.”

  Willie said sullenly, “I knew that lady weren’t right. Captain Fletcher wouldn’t go do something like that. Gambling. Drinking. Loose women.”

  Marks sopped up some stew juices with a hoecake. “I suspect the only reason old Captain Fletcher wouldn’t do such a thing is likely because Tillman wouldn’t grant him the pass.”

  Halpern grunted and Willie reddened a little. They all knew some of the regiment’s other officers, including Colonel Tillman, didn’t much care for their old company commander, on account of his stridently Whig sentiments. They also knew Tillman was very favorable towards their new company commander, the young Samson Bell, scion of one of the biggest land owners in Haywood County.

  After a few bites of stew, Willie asked, “How is Fletcher, anyhow? Any word from back in Lawrenceburg?”

  Halpern shrugged. “Regimental quartermaster told me just before afternoon drill that Fletcher was out of the hospital. Going home to his pa, to his homeplace out on Big Rock Creek.”

  Marks said quietly, “Shame he lost his foot.”

  “If he’d stayed or come back, reckon he would have made major?” asked Willie.

  Halpern said flatly, “Yeap. I reckon with Miller killed, it would either be Fletcher or nobody.”

  Suddenly uncomfortable with the subject, although he wasn’t sure as to why, Willie said, “Now I like this here stew, but that Sunday dinner we just had was better. Rhubarb crumble! I ain’t had it so good since…” Willie’s voice trailed off. He honestly couldn’t recall when he had last had any crumble, or cobbler, or pie. Confederate rations weren’t often so tasty, and it wasn’t like his bitter old pa set a good table either.

  Halpern said, “Fresh asparagus too.”

  “Ain’t like there aren’t farmers in these parts,” said Marks. “They just ain’t growing as much, because they ain’t got the hands. And they ain’t got full barns and smokehouses neither, because they’ve been picked clean. We been fighting here all through ’62 and ’63. Armies are hungry things. Only difference I can tell is we got a piece of paper saying we requisition things on behalf of Jeff Davis, while the Yankees got them a piece of paper saying they requisition things on behalf of Abe Lincoln.”

  “When the piece of paper is bothered with,” Halpern added.

  “You fellows reckon we’re here to stay?” asked Willie.

  “Well, Corporal,” replied Halpern, “I can’t rightly say. I do know one thing. Stonewall Jackson ain’t no Bragg or Pemberton. If he decides to leave, it’ll be because he wants to go, or because the Yankees well and truly licked us. We finally got ourselves a general with some iron in his back and fire in his belly, not like back in Mississippi or Chattanooga.”

  Willie polished off his meal and stood up. “Well, if you don’t mind, I have affairs see about in the latrine.” He walked out of camp and to where the regiment h
ad erected an outhouse, where the smell wouldn’t offend and the leavings wouldn’t contaminate the water.

  Concealed in a fold of ground nearby, Nathan watched as his brother closed the outhouse door behind him. A few seconds after doing so, three figures emerged from the trees marking the edge of the field, and quietly covered the short distance to the regiment’s latrine. In the moonlight, he could see each bore a club.

  He had guessed that since everyone knew he was out of camp that day, a yellowbelly, draft-dodging bucket of scum like Raglan Lloyd would take his chance to even things and bushwhack Willie. The only thing that surprised Nathan was that a couple of the other draftees could be bullied into joining him. Apparently they were all too stupid to realize that while little problems in the regiment were dealt with by some informal discipline, like the whupping Willie gave Lloyd the day before, laying into a corporal with clubs was the sort of thing they shot a man for.

  Nathan got up, pulled what had once been Captain Fletcher’s Navy revolver from his belt, and crept up behind them in the darkness. When he was a few yards away, he pulled back the hammer on the revolver and said, “If y’all don’t drop them clubs, I’m going to have to shoot you in the leg.”

  Alarmed, the men spun around. When the two boys saw Nathan standing there with a pistol, they dropped their clubs. One of them said, “This ain’t what it seems. We is just…”

  “Oh, stuff it,” spat Nathan. “Lloyd, drop that stick.”

  “You’ll get yours, Grimes. You’ll get yours.”

  Nathan smiled at Lloyd’s attempt to brazen it out. “Drop that stick, or I’ll put a ball in your thigh.”

  Lloyd dropped the stick. Willie threw open the door of the outhouse and stepped out wearing a confused look, buckling his belt up as he went.

  “What is…”

  “Willie, these fellows were laying in wait right over yonder,” said Nate, taking a nod at the trees, “with them sticks on the ground there. Aiming to whup you. Or worse. Reckon with this piss-yellow bastard Raglan here, worse.”

  Willie collected up the clubs. “Let’s get Halpern and take them to the Sergeant Major.”

  The next morning Captain Bell returned, bleary-eyed but with a pleasant, dreamy look on his face, having been successful in winning the attentions of the widow Ross last night away from his fellow captains. No charm had been involved, just some hard coinage. She was a somewhat plain woman, but had satisfied under the circumstances.

  I know he is a religious man, Bell thought, but why did General Jackson have to send all the whores packing anyway? It left scanty picking.

  Arriving at where the little road met the camp of the 41st, Bell found a man trussed up outside the camp, and recognized him as one of his soldiers. Damn, he thought, what’s this man’s name? Oh, what difference does that make. What the hell is he doing out here and hogtied?

  Raglan Lloyd had been bucked and gagged. He was crouched in a sitting position, with a pole run under his knees and over the crooks of his arms, with his wrists and ankles lashed together. A piece of wood had been placed in his teeth, bound in place by twine wrapped behind his neck.

  Bell rode into camp, found Halpern, and demanded, “First Sergeant, one of my men put in the stocks outside of camp?! This is disgraceful, a damned disgrace. What in God’s name happened?”

  Halpern said pleasantly, “Good morning, Captain. Private Lloyd and a couple of the other new fellows took it into their heads to show Corporal Grimes they don’t care much for army discipline. With clubs, you understand. I talked it over with the Sergeant Major and then we talked it over with Colonel Tillman. He was mite displeased, and ordered us to buck and gag Private Lloyd from sun-up to sundown, placing him right where we did so everyone could see him.”

  Bell was speechless, so Halpern continued. “Didn’t you see the paper hanging around his neck? It said ‘attempted assault of a non-commissioned officer.’ Tillman said he would leave it at that, but if Lloyd ever got up to any kind of insubordination again, he would have that man court-martialed and shot. Said a few choice words about the quality of men conscription was bringing into the ranks too.”

  “What about those others?” stammered Bell. “You said there were more.”

  “You didn’t see them sir? Sergeant Major took them with him into Hillsboro with the supply wagon, wearing packs loaded down with rocks. Orders were if they stopped for any reason, other than the wagon itself stopping, they were to be bucked and gagged on the spot.”

  Bell said reluctantly, “Well, if that is what Colonel Tillman ordered…”

  Halpern nodded “You had better go see him yourself, Captain.”

  Flustered, Bell rode off. Nearby, Nathan stood looking out towards the edge of camp, where Lloyd lay.

  He won’t let it go, Nathan thought. Not that one. He’s yellow, but yellow like the dog who bites only when your back is turned. He’ll wait until we’re in a fight, and if he doesn’t skedaddle straight to the next county, it’ll be to wait and kill either Willie or me or both, and then skedaddle.

  Chapter 6

  June 11, 1864

  Early Evening

  Rattle and Snap Plantation

  Maury County, Tennessee

  “Leo, I cannot begin to tell you how relieved myself and every man of dignity and substance is in this corner of Mother Earth that your army has arrived to relieve us from Northern tyranny. The loss of property has been terrible. Not just black property either, but valuables? Why, George and I had to pool what silver we could hide away from vile, grasping Yankee hands just to make a suitable presentation this evening!”

  Bishop Polk smiled pleasantly at his older brother, Lucius J. Polk, owner of Hamilton Place. He had already heard a similar tale from his eldest brother George, master of the family seat of Rattle and Snap.

  “This,” his older brother continued, raising his frosty, silver julep cup “was part of a set of 18 I kept for entertaining. I lost the six I kept on display two years ago, to some filthy, jumped-up Pennsylvanian cavalrymen.”

  “I do appreciate your efforts, Lucius. And your difficulties. Sincerely, I do. By the grace of God, our army is in Tennessee to stay, and with His blessings, I hope the family fortunes will be repaired after this terrible war is justly won.”

  Polk surveyed the scene. The double parlor had seen better days, what with some of its better pieces of decoration and furniture gone missing, but the veranda and garden were as lovely as ever. Enjoying either mint juleps or a non-alcoholic punch in the splendor of Rattle and Snap’s hospitality were all the division commanders of the Army of Tennessee: nephew Lucius Polk, Frank Cheatham, William French, Carter Stevenson, Henry Clayton, and George Maney. Also present were some two dozen members, gentlemen and their wives, of the region’s prominent families, such as the Carters and the Websters.

  “You know, Leo,” the older brother Lucius said chuckling, “I think we should perhaps refer to nephew Lucius as Lucius the Younger, and to myself as Lucius the Elder. So as to not confuse our guests.”

  Polk smiled, half-sad, recollecting nephew Lucius’s father William, gone to God four years before. “Or General Lucius? Our nephew has become quite a soldier. Billy would be proud.”

  Older brother Lucius nodded, sadly and slowly. “That he would.”

  Keeping an eye on the space behind his brother, Polk saw the moment he had been waiting for had arrived. Carter Stevenson stepped away from small talk and went out the back for some air. Polk excused himself from his brother and followed him.

  “A lovely evening, is it not, General Stevenson?”

  “Yes, indeed it is,” Stevenson agreed. “I was just thinking to myself how much I am obliged to thank each and every one of your family for this hospitality. A reminder of what we’re fighting for, truly. So thank you, sir. Thank you.”

  “We all make our contributions, as we must. My brothers told me if they could help lift spirits, then they would bring the silver out of its hiding place, clear out the secret smokehouse, and retriev
e the last of the fine wine from under the cellar stones.”

  “But insofar as spirits are concerned,” Polk continued, “and morale, I must confess disappointment that General Jackson’s dispatches did not make greater mention of the contribution made by you and your division to our victory at Lawrenceburg. Most of the credit went to poor John Bell Hood, which is only appropriate of course, that report being his eulogy and all. But then the remainder went first to Cleburne, and then to Forrest and Cheatham. Only a few words were said about anyone else.”

  Polk studied Stevenson’s long, drawn face carefully. He knew French, Featherston, and most of the brigadiers in his corps were aggrieved that Jackson had not praised their role in the Battle of Lawrenceburg to their satisfaction. Although Cheatham had been uncharacteristically silent to date about Stonewall Jackson, he was a proud man who had just been passed over for corps command, so Polk was sure Old Frank would soon grow more hostile towards the commanding general. Nephew Lucius was blood and could therefore be counted upon.

  Against that, all the other senior officers in the army—Clayton, Cleburne, Forrest, Stewart, even George Maney in his own Army of Mississippi—owed their elevation to Jackson. They would be unlikely to side against Jackson in the event of a dispute. Stevenson was the only one Polk was unsure of, and because Stevenson was from A.P. Stewart’s Corps, Polk had not been able to sound him out as of yet.

  “I thank you for your sentiments, General Polk. I appreciate them, but I must confess I thought Jackson’s report a fair one. Stewart’s Corps was assigned to pin down the Federal XV Corps, and that is what we did. It was not the most glamorous task that day, but we did our duty, and the record reflects that.”

  “But Jackson, perhaps unfairly, said nothing of your valiant effort at trying to head off the Yankee retreat to Nashville. You very nearly made it.”

  “True,” Stevenson said, “and we strove mightily, but did not succeed. And we were not criticized for that failure, so I feel we were treated very fairly by army headquarters. Very fairly.”