Grant Comes East cw-2

by Newt Gingrich

  Though Jim did not know it, at this very moment his son and grandson, dressed in Union blue, rifles in hand, were most likely in Harrisburg, and in another month would march forth, and perhaps die in battle. Like the Savior, they would shed their blood for the sins of others, and he must see that there would be some offer of hope, some light at the end for them.

  A servant put a plate down in front of Lincoln and then one before Jim. Jim was looking at him, saying nothing, as Lincoln silently mused.

  "May I offer a prayer, Mr. President?"

  "Of course."

  The two lowered their heads.

  "Merciful God. Please guide this man who sits before me. Guide him as he leads our nation to a just peace, a peace where North and South, former slave and former master, can sit together and break bread together in charity and peace.

  And, dear Jesus, please extend Thy loving blessing to my son and grandson when they march upon the battlefield. If it is Your will that they should fall, let them die with honor in service to our country.

  "We thank You for the blessing of this food. Amen."

  Jim looked back up, gazing into Lincoln's eyes. Lincoln did not know what to say. Many had prayed over and for him over the years, but few prayers were as heartfelt as this one.

  He knew that this morning, like so many other mornings of these last few months, the fate of the nation might be in the balance. Sickles's army might just win, but if defeated it could give Lee a free hand yet again, perhaps to turn back here or to even force the Susquehanna and march on Wilmington and Philadelphia.

  But it was out of his hands now … and, strangely, he felt at peace.

  "Thank you, Jim," he said softly. "Now let's enjoy our meal together."

  Two Miles South of Gunpowder River, Maryland

  August 20, 1863 6:15 a.m

  Dan Sickles reined in atop a low rise where a knot of officers were gathered. He recognized Birney, dismounted, a field telescope resting across the saddle of his mount. Dan rode up to join him. "Damn strange," Birney announced, pointing south. A constant rattle of musketry echoed around them, but the fire was light all along the line. It was more like an open field skirmish than a major battle fought at a divisional level. They had advanced well over a mile in the last hour across the same ground that the Sixth Corps had charged yesterday, passing the horrible wreckage and destruction of the previous day, but there had been no hard contact. The dreaded woodlot, where so many hundreds had fallen, was now in their hands after a brief, sharp skirmish, but of nowhere near the intensity of the day before.

  Dan came up to Birney's side, and his corps commander offered the telescope.

  "Look down that road, about three or four miles, I'd judge."

  Dan took the long tube, balanced it on the saddle, adjusted the focus slightly. Yes, it was a column of troops, some wagons mingled in, and they were heading south, away from the fight.

  He handed the telescope back to Birney.

  "There's no fight in them this morning. We push and they give. I know we have Hood's old division to our front, some contact with Early, and McLaws to our right, but nothing else; it's damn curious. Anything from the cavalry?"

  Dan shook his head.

  As usual, Stoneman's troopers were almost useless. They had gone into this campaign not fully mounted; after the horrible drubbing of the last month they were timid, slow, and now easily contained by Stuart, who ranged along the left front and overlapped the left flank as well.

  "Prisoners?"

  "A couple of dozen. Mostly exhausted stragglers. Word is they pushed all the way up from Washington in yesterday's heat and are played out Most of them are saying the rest of Lee's army is stuck south of Baltimore; they just couldn't keep up the pace of the march and the order is to now fall back into the city and dig in."

  Dan took this in.

  "Any other reports?"

  'Two prisoners state the whole thing is a ruse, that all of Lee's army is out there. One of them says he's a deserter from a supply train and Hood is just waiting for us to close."

  "Any civilians?"

  "Very few; most lit out when the fighting started." Dan grunted, saying nothing, pacing back and forth for a moment, digesting the information. He had expected by now that they would have been into a full-scale, head-on fight, a toe-to-toe brawl where the Army of the Potomac would prove its mettle and drive the rebels from the field. Now this.

  Was it a trap, or was he retreating?

  Sickles wiped the sweat from his brow. Already the temperature must be well into the mid to high eighties. He uncased his field glasses, braced them, and scanned the ground ahead.

  It was a broad, open plain, gently rolling ground, scattered farmhouses, a few small villages. A half mile away, wavering lines of blue deployed in battle order moved forward, a quarter mile ahead of them a heavy line of skirmishers, puffs of smoke marking their advance. In front of his own skirmishers he could see darker forms, giving back. Firing a shot or two, running, falling in behind a fence or tree to fire another shot, then falling back again.

  Their retreat was orderly, unhurried, no sense of panic, as if they were following orders given before the start of the day.

  He lowered his field glasses and continued to pace.

  Hold, advance, or press on aggressively?

  Was it possible that yesterday's fight had broken something in Lee? Their advance had revealed the extent of casualties inflicted, five thousand, maybe seven or eight-if that many, it would be a goodly percentage of Lee's best troops.

  Could he have broken Lee's will to offensive action yesterday? If so, what a fitting testament to his boys of the Third, a laurel to a crown they so richly deserved.

  But what now?

  A small voice of caution whispered to hold up here, let Stoneman probe forward. Let his men rest through what would be a day of frightful heat, then push on in the evening.

  But if he did that, Lee would withdraw into the fortifications of Baltimore, and there was the other factor.

  He looked over his shoulder. Ely Parker was still trailing along behind his staff. There was no way he could order the man off the field; he was, after all, an official representative of the field commander. If I stop now, that man would again press me to retire as ordered, and it would be all but impossible to deny that order and keep my command. For that matter, unless he finished this with a resounding victory, Grant would most likely remove him anyhow.

  No, he had to continue the advance.

  He raised his field glasses yet again, focusing on the distant road. It was hard to distinguish, but it looked as if a wagon had just broken down. A dozen men were around it, disconnecting the mules, and then they simply upended it off the road.

  Curious. It wasn't like the rebels to abandon a wagon like that. Were they actually retreating, with orders to abandon anything that could not be taken along? Already his advance had captured a half dozen guns-spiked, true, but still abandoned and captured.

  Was this Chancellorsville again? Were they moving? He remembered the moment with deep bitterness. If Hooker had only unleashed him, he would have plowed into Jackson on the march and finished him. The same on the second morning at Gettysburg. — No, never again.

  He looked over at Birney.

  "They're retreating, that's clear enough."

  Birney reluctantly nodded, saying nothing, features flushed.

  "I want the advance redoubled. I want our main line to go forward quickly and establish contact. If they are retreating I think we can push them off balance, and once they are off balance we must drive them, sweep them up."

  "It's going to be a killer of a day," Birney offered, shading his eyes and looking at the blood-red orb of the sun.

  "The same weather for both us and them."

  His gaze fixed on Ely, who said nothing.

  "No orders from General Grant this morning?" Sickles asked.

  "You know the orders, sir."

  "I have a beaten foe in retreat, Colonel. My duty this
day is clear. Once I'm finished, General Grant may come down and claim what he wishes."

  Ely did not rise to the bait and the scornful looks of Sick-les's staff.

  Sickles mounted.

  "I want a general advance all along the line. Push the men on the double, if need be, until we establish contact I want to force them off those roads and to form a rear guard. Then we will overrun them. Gentlemen, this will be a footrace, and to the fastest runner goes the victory!"

  A ragged cheer erupted as he spurred his mount and headed forward.

  Ely reined up beside Birney, who was mounting as well.

  "Do you think all of Lee's army is in retreat?" Ely asked.

  "It's not my opinion that counts, Colonel," Birney replied coolly. "But I'll tell you this. This army has been misused too many times, mostly through temerity. We just might be on to Lee in retreat, his forces spread out We could see that at Antietam, at Second Manassas, at Chancellorsville-hell, in damn near every battle we've ever been in. If General Sickles is right, we could finish it this day, before they retreat into the fortifications at Baltimore."

  "And what does General Lee think at this moment?"

  Bimey looked at him, saying nothing.

  "There is a third corps, Beauregard's. Have you marked their position?".

  Bimey shook his head.

  "I would be concerned."

  "Every battle is a concern," Birney replied, now into his saddle, bringing his mount about, facing south.

  "You might not believe this, General," Ely said, "but I actually do pray that your General Sickles is right"

  "So do I," Bimey said with a smile. Spurring his mount, he galloped off, following his commander down into the open plains.

  Six Miles to the West,

  in the Valley of the Gunpowder River, Maryland

  August 20,1863 7:30 am.

  The vast columns were deployed, the twenty thousand men of Beauregard's brigades. For the men who had fought in the swamps and heat in defense of Charleston, this was nothing new, another day that promised temperatures near a hundred degrees. They had long ago grown used to it, or died. For the militia regiments, the home guards, some of them from the cool mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the last day had been a torture, their ranks already thinned by half from straggling, scores of their comrades dead, collapsing from heatstroke.

  They had filed west and north throughout the previous day, following back tracks and farm lanes, a route that Lee and Jed Hotchkiss had ridden over the week before, while contemplating what to do if Sickles should indeed jump first.

  Though Lee loathed analogies with Napoleon, especially when applied to himself and his army, he had to admit it was indeed something like Austerlitz. He had picked this ground long before the battle and analyzed it. He had conceded what Sickles would perceive to be the good ground, on the banks of the Gunpowder River down close to the Chesapeake. If he had fought him there, he would have held the good ground, to be certain, but it would have been a bloody, senseless fight, with severe casualties and little to show once Sickles was beaten and had retreated. Granted, he had lost five times the number he had wished for yesterday, but it had indeed lured Sickles across that stream.

  And now Sickles was pushing south. A courier had just come in reporting that the Union commander had increased the pace of his advance, was pressing into the rear of Hood's and Longstreet's supposed retreat. In another two miles he would finally run up against what the rebel forces were already calling "the line," a hundred and thirty-five guns concealed behind a reverse slope.

  Stuart was shadowing the flank, keeping any probing eyes back. All civilians, painful as it might be, had been rousted out, ordered, "for their own welfare," to abandon their homes and retreat toward Baltimore. In Virginia he would not have worried, but here in Maryland, one or two civilians bearing tidings of a rebel column having disappeared late the day before, marching to the northwest, might have been warning enough to stop Sickles.

  Sickles was playing his hand as Lee thought he would. The tantalizing chance to finally catch the Army of Northern Virginia on the march would be too much for Wm to not grab for.

  All they needed to do now was to wait for the sound of the guns.

  August 20,1863 9:00 am

  ‘Sir, I think we got a problem ahead!" Dan looked over at the courier riding in, a cavalryman, John Buford's old division. "What is it?"

  "Sir, we're moving ahead of the Second Division of the Third Corps, and we seen a hell of a lot of guns." "What kind of guns?"

  "Artillery, sir, rows of 'em. Maybe twenty or more batteries. One of the boys climbed a church steeple to get a look around and he seen them down in the next valley. I was ordered to come back here and find you."

  "Are they moving?"

  "No, sir, that's just it. Their gunners are standing ready." "I'm coming."

  Following the cavalryman, his staff trailing, they rode across an open pasture. Some stragglers dotted the field, men already dropping out because of the heat and exhaustion. A few wounded in the field, an ambulance up to retrieve them, one of them a rebel officer, sitting on the ground, holding a leg up as a hospital orderly tightened a tourniquet. The man grimaced, saw Dan, and offered a salute, which Dan returned.

  "Hot day, General."

  'That it is, Captain."

  "Gonna get a hell of a lot hotter for you soon, General."

  The rebel was grinning now, and Dan rode on.

  He came to a split-rail fence, rode parallel to it for fifty yards until he found a place where it had been knocked down, a few more casualties, Union and Confederate together, sitting and lying under the shade of an apple tree, the men who had fought each other only minutes before now talking, a rebel holding a canteen for a young Yankee cavalryman, the boy gut-shot.

  He rode up through the orchard, its lower branches picked clean even in the middle of a running fight; soldiers of both sides would forage even if the apples were still green.

  More men ahead, a ragged combination of columns and lines, white insignia of the Third Corps, Second Division, on their caps. Few if any still had on field packs or blanket rolls. Many, against usual custom, had their bluejackets off in the heat, but they still carried rifles and cartridge boxes, which was all that mattered to him at this moment.

  The column was stalled as he rode past. He caught sight of a regimental commander.

  "Why are you stopped?" Dan shouted.

  "Sir, we just got word from the skirmish line up front that there's trouble ahead."

  "What, damn it?"

  "Artillery."

  "Then go forward and take it!" Dan shouted.

  He pushed ahead of the column. Looking to his left and right he saw where the entire division was stalled, formation ragged, some still in battle line, some in column by company front, flags hanging limp in the still, humid air.

  Ahead he could see a heavy skirmish line atop a low crest, each man several feet apart from comrade to left or right, some standing, others crouching. He rode up to them, men looking back as they heard his approach.

  "Keep this line moving, goddamn it! We are going to Baltimore by tonight. Keep it moving!"

  August 20,1863 9:10 am.

  ‘They’ve slowed Sir, Porter Alexander, at General Longstreet's side, pointed to the low crest six hundred yards away. A Yankee skirmish line was atop the crest having appeared only minutes ago, and the sight that greeted them had undoubtedly caused their coming to a halt.

  Twenty-six batteries, a hundred and thirty-five guns, nearly all of them pieces captured at Union Mills, were deployed across a front of more than half a mile. Most of the gunners were new to their tasks, men pressed into the artillery from infantry service, each crew having but one or two veterans to try and train and direct the new hands. But the men were eager, like boys with a new toy. Their morale was good, many gladly proclaiming that if they had known how soft life was in the artillery they would have joined years ago. Then again, none of them had yet
to endure a close-in fight, known the terror of mechanically loading while infantry took aim from fifty yards away, or the horror of what happened when a twelve-pound solid shot took the wheel off a gun, flying splinters tearing the crew apart.

  Longstreet was silent, watching the opposite crest If the skirmishers were this close, it was evident that the advancing army was not far behind. Even now they would most likely be pushing around the flanks of this position. The feigned retreat was almost over.

  "Now, Porter, give it to 'em now. Remember, this is a signal as well!"

  Porter grinned and stood up in his stirrups, clenched fist held heavenward.

  "Battalions, on my command!" The cry raced down the line. "Fire!"

  9:11 am.

  Even as Sickles shouted the order for his army to continue the advance, a deep thunder exploded to his front. It started in the middle, several batteries firing simultaneously, and then spread like a string of firecrackers along the entire front, thunderclap building on thunderclap into a continuous roar.

  He was a man of courage, and yet instinctively he hunched over when, three seconds later, the blizzard of solid shot and shrapnel swept the crest of the hill. Shells detonated; solid shot skipped and screamed; skirmishers fell flat on their faces, hugging the ground; branches were torn from apple trees, whirling into the air. One of his staff went down, his horse torn nearly in half, screaming horribly as it thrashed about, its legs tangled into its spilled intestines.

  The division he had ordered forward was coming up, the men protected by the low rise, but more than one fell from airbursts, from broken branches that drove through the ranks like javelins, thousands of splinters from trees raining down on them.