by Ralph Peters
That was never the way it turned out, though. The brave and best died first.
His horse danced across a corpse. It was hard to spot even living men in the dense vegetation. Barlow tugged the mount back toward Brooke’s trailing brigade, but didn’t get far. Brewster, one of Mott’s brigade commanders, found him. The man was disheveled, his horse dripped blood, and old blood crusted the side of his aide’s face.
“Thank God,” Brewster said. “My men need relief immediately.”
“Those who haven’t run away,” Barlow said coldly.
Brewster stiffened.
“Oh, bugger it,” Barlow told him. “Who’s up ahead?”
“You mean from my brigade?”
“I don’t give a damn about your brigade, Colonel. The enemy.”
“North Carolina boys. Lane’s crowd, I think. Tough as nails.”
“We’ll see,” Barlow said, and he left the brigade commander to his own business.
As he passed his 26th Michigan, Barlow warned its colonel anew not to let his men stop to fire volleys. An approximation of night had come to the fern glades and briars, and men from Mott’s division cursed as Barlow’s ranks passed over them where they lay, stepping on limbs and hands.
It would be but moments now.
Before he reached Brooke, a mighty shout erupted from his men, followed by massed firing. Barlow pulled his horse about.
His men were running forward, charging. Well, Brooke would know what to do. Remaining mounted, Barlow followed the fight, ignoring the maelstrom of lead. Calling, “Keep going, forward, forward!” and waving his saber, he kept up with his second line of troops, riding around obstacles and between men stricken with wounds.
“Keep going, get at them!” he yelled.
His troops had already rushed in among the Confederates, with men firing point-blank into each other’s torsos and clubbing each other with gun stocks, most still shy about using the bayonet, even hard men queerly timid about thrusting a blade deep into human flesh.
To his right, he saw Nellie Miles, a shadow on horseback, driving his men into a nest of Confederates.
Rebels appeared right at his side. Disarmed men. Herded rearward. But the firing hard to his right flank intensified.
An aide to Miles rode near, struggling through tangled flesh and vegetation.
“What’s happening?” Barlow demanded.
“Orders to the Hundred and Sixteenth Pennsylvania. Move to the right flank. Hot fight over there, sir.”
Well, he trusted Miles’ judgment.
A sergeant approached him, bearing a captured battle flag. Grinning as wide as Galway Bay in the gloaming.
“You!” Barlow said. “Give that to a private. Get back to your men.”
They’d take any damned excuse.…
He almost took his saber to a soldier headed weaponless to the rear. Then he saw that half the boy’s face was missing.
The lines kept moving, but the darkness thickened. Outraged at nature itself, that nightfall might deprive him of a triumph, Barlow cursed viciously.
Alarmed at the expression on their general’s face, the soldiers nearest him hastened toward more Confederates.
Another cluster of prisoners. Sullen men. Filthy. Faces blackened by a day’s worth of powder, dark now as the men they had enslaved.
A gray-clad youth wept in shame as he approached.
“What’s your unit?” Barlow demanded.
Responding instinctively to the tone of command, the boy said, “Seventh North Carolina, sir.”
“You don’t need to tell that sumbitch nothing,” another prisoner said.
Why had Hancock waited so long? Graced with just another twenty minutes, Barlow believed he would have rolled up the entire Confederate flank. But the dark favored the defender, who could stay put, not the attacker blundering forward. Soon, too soon, he would need to call off the hounds.
He rode over Confederate corpses and whimpering wounded. They lay interspersed with the fallen from his own army. The ratio seemed a good one, at least here.
More prisoners. Officers among them. Broken men.
The twilight had progressed so far that muzzle blasts turned into hundreds of monstrous fireflies. Patches of brush set alight by discharges made ghostly silhouettes of antic men.
Miles found him. “Frank, we’ve got to halt. We’re blundering about.”
“So are they.” His voice was remorseless, cold even to his own ears.
“General Barlow … Frank … we’ve done all we can tonight. We must be four hundred yards in advance of the corps. Maybe five.…”
And those bastards were too lazy, weak, and oblivious to catch up, Barlow thought. He would’ve cashiered Mott, had it been in his power. Even Birney, if it came to that. The fight had to be to the death. Didn’t any of them understand that basic principle?
He felt victory slipping away and had to subdue an impulse to lash out at Miles, to reach across the space between their mounts and slap the man’s face. Not because Miles had done a single thing wrong—he had performed handsomely—but because he was the nearest living thing, other than his horse. Barlow wanted to hurt things, to destroy worlds.
But Miles was right, and he knew it.
Before he could give the necessary orders to re-form and consolidate their position, one of Hancock’s aides, Billy Miller, found him.
“Compliments, sir. General Hancock says well done, very well done. He desires you to break off the attack and align with the rest of the corps.”
“Withdraw?” Barlow was livid.
“To adjust the lines, sir. It’s a matter of asserting our position.”
“The last time I bothered with a dictionary, Captain, ‘asserting’ implied going forward, not retreating.”
“Yes, sir.”
Miles said, “It’s not Miller’s fault. He’s only carrying the order.”
“And your men are to be relieved as soon as practicable,” the captain added. “So you can re-form on the corps’ flank. In your previous position, sir.”
Barlow shook his head, a narrow shadow in the smoke-thickened night. “So we were only out for a stroll in the woods? Was that it? I might as well be back in goddamned Concord.”
Neither Miles nor Miller dared speak.
“Oh, bugger it,” Barlow said, breaking the spell that battle had cast upon him. “Colonel Miles, give the order to your men. I’ll pass it on to Brooke myself.” But he could not resist saying, “Sonofabitch.” Had he been afoot, he would have kicked the turf like a surly child.
As he rode southward toward Brooke’s brigade, he passed another band of prisoners herded toward the rear at bayonet point, cursed along by voices native-born and Irish, united in pleasure over their own survival and delighted at the predicament of their enemies. Oblivious to the pleas of the wounded and measuring the decline of the fighting by the diminishing gunfire, he felt the wondrous exhilaration return.
Really, it had all been splendid. Too short. But utterly splendid.
Francis Channing Barlow could not understand how a man could prefer a woman to a war.
Eleven thirty p.m.
Near Wilderness Tavern
Grant sat on a stool in front of his tent, smoking a pipe in place of a cigar. Hours before, he had ceased whittling and discarded his shredded gloves to give Meade orders for a general attack in the morning. No bits and pieces or hesitations this time, Hancock’s corps, reinforced, would strike along the line of the Plank Road, while Burnside brought the Ninth Corps in on Hancock’s right, driving a wedge between the wings of Lee’s army. Both Warren and Sedgwick would attack in support in the north, on the Turnpike line, to immobilize Ewell. Somewhere, there would be a weak spot. And Lee would break.
He tapped out the pipe, anxious for it to cool sufficiently for him to refill it. He had come to prefer cigars over the pipe that had been his companion in poverty, but sometimes, even now, he needed a change. All day long, he had revealed as little emotion as possible, watching Meade
and his men perform—some of them, like Warren, disappointingly—but he had been churning inside. The responses to orders within the Army of the Potomac had not been as crisp as he would have liked, although he sensed that the men were fighting well. Meade had been right about that: The men were fighters. Even if some of their leaders might be wanting. What troubled him was an awakened sense of Lee, a foreboding that not all of the warnings had been exaggerated, a sense that things were different here indeed.
He had never encountered such tenacious resistance in the past. Meade’s attacks had gone in hard. Yet, at best, the day was a stalemate. In the west, Confederate armies had collapsed or just plain quit when he hit them hard enough. Oh, they were dandy at yipping their way through a sudden attack. But when the tables were turned, they had always folded. At Donelson. On the second morning at Shiloh. At Champion Hill and Missionary Ridge.
This felt different. Even Rawlins’ mockery had grown subdued as the day burned into evening. Grant thought of Shiloh, of that first night, of Cump Sherman coming into his own, wildly capable on the battlefield, commiserating by a fire that, yes, the day had been hard, but they had held that last line above the river. And Grant had said to his friend, yes, it had been a hard enough day. “Beat ’em tomorrow, though.”
And they had done it. Attacking, when the Rebels had expected to renew their own attack. Rage had grown overnight in the blue ranks, and his vengeful men had broken the hopes of the western Confederacy. But today he had been the attacker, as he preferred. And each attack had failed or fallen short.
Beat ’em tomorrow, though.
“I still think you ought to cashier that bastard Griffin,” Rawlins said. The chief of staff sat facing Grant, with Congressman Washburne rounding out the trio on camp stools placed in front of Grant’s tent. All other parties had been alerted to keep a respectful distance.
“What’s that?” Grant said, rising from his thoughts.
“Griffin. The one who went on a tirade. He should be court-martialed.”
Grant shook his head. “Meade said he’s a good man. Claims he needs him.”
“It was a public affront. To you.”
Again, Grant shook his head. Slowly. “Man was riled. That’s all.”
“At least, order Meade to give him a dressing-down. And a damned good one.”
“Meade’s no fool. He’ll talk to the man.”
Grant’s first sponsor in Washington and a mighty power back home in Illinois politics, Elihu Washburne entered the conversation: “What about Meade?”
“He’ll do,” Grant said. He began reloading his pipe.
“For now?” Washburne asked.
“Maybe longer. Meade isn’t the problem.”
“Then who is?”
“Lee. Near as I can tell.”
“Meade’s all right,” Rawlins put in. “I give him the devil. Poor bastard needs it. Stiffen him up. Wouldn’t admit it to his face, but he’s one of the few West Pointers I’d give you a nickel for.”
Grant smiled. “John’s in a generous mood. I feel my own worth climbing toward ten cents.”
Washburne looked to Grant. Haunted by distant firelight, the congressman’s face was a mask of shadows. “That’s good. About Meade. I’ve been thinking about your political future.”
A sharp exchange between skirmishers raised a commotion off to the west. None of the three men paid it any attention.
“I’ve told you,” Grant said. “I have no interest in politics. Not suited for it.”
“And I’ve told you, wait and see,” the congressman said. “Never burn a bridge or slam a door.”
“I agree,” Rawlins said. “It’s a good thing if Meade’s kept on. Don’t want this army and all the voters in and around it to feel slighted. They may not love him all the way to the shitter, but Meade’s their own.”
“Exactly,” Washburne said. “If you run for president, Sam, you’re going to have to carry the votes of all the veterans and their families. And Meade would bring in Pennsylvania. Can’t win a national election without Pennsylvania.”
“I’m not running for president. I told Lincoln I support him, and I meant it.”
“We’re talking about after the war,” Rawlins said.
“Exactly,” Washburne seconded. He leaned closer to the general in chief.
Grant lit his pipe anew. “I’ll never run for president. Or mayor. Or alderman. Meanwhile, boys, I’ve got a war to fight. In case you’ve forgotten.”
“Even in that regard,” Washburne told him, “I’m glad you don’t feel a need to relieve George Meade. At least, not yet. Oh, he’s got enemies aplenty. But he has friends, too. He should only be relieved by popular demand. Which, of course, can always be arranged.” The congressman chuckled. “He could be damned useful, if a catastrophe came upon us. He’d be just high enough to take the blame and leave your record clean.”
“There won’t be a catastrophe,” Grant said. “And I’m not about to lay blame on George Meade. Unless he has it coming.” He couldn’t say he liked the man particularly, but he had found Meade to be one of those rare officers who never seemed to connive, not even for his own advancement. Grant valued that.
“But if an unfortunate turn of events was his fault…,” Washburne continued. “It’s his army, after all. Ergo…”
Grant lowered the pipe. “The day may come when I tell Meade to pack up and go. But I’m not going to saddle a man with blame that ain’t his.” His voice was as firm as an oak stump.
“Dear God,” Washburne said, “you really may not be cut out for politics.”
The congressman and Rawlins laughed. Grant smiled along.
A shriek rose from the road below, where ambulance wagons rumbled through the darkness.
Grant winced. He did not like to think of wounded men. And he did what he could to avoid seeing them. He did not like blood. His meat had to be charred to a crisp before he could lift it to his mouth. He did not like the sight of suffering, whether of man or beast. A general could not think of such things, he knew: War was slaughter, and only when enough slaughter had been done did any war end. But he did not care to dwell on a battle’s aftermath.
Grant puffed fiercely on his pipe, as if its smoke might suffocate his thoughts.
The congressman slapped his knees. The sound was as sharp as two quick shots. He asked, “What about tomorrow? Think you can smash up Lee’s army?”
“Like to,” Grant said. “He may have a say in the matter.”
“Meade’s people are worried about the Ninth Corps, you know,” Rawlins told him. “About Burnside. They don’t think he’ll be up in time to do his part.”
“He told me he’ll be up,” Grant said.
“Nobody else believes it.”
“We’ll give him a chance. I never was one for execution before trial.”
“Burnside has a constituency in Washington,” the congressman warned Rawlins. “He’s a likable man. And well liked, accordingly. The very opposite of Meade, with that snoot-in-the-air attitude of his.”
“Burnside’s a fat-assed dandy,” Rawlins said. He turned exclusively to Grant. “I don’t like this arrangement. Senior or not, Burnside should be directly under Meade. This is a damned mess. ‘Unity of command,’ ain’t that how you put it?”
“Can’t do it,” Grant said. “Not yet. Army rolls. Matter of pride for Burnside.”
“And for his people in Washington,” Washburne added. “We want Burnside and his allies happy. Right through November.”
Grant turned to Rawlins. “Maybe you could go a little softer on Meade, John? And Humphreys? In front of others? Given how you’re always lawyering for him when it’s just you and me.…”
“No,” Rawlins told him. “Meade needs to feel the pressure. Humphreys, too.”
“Good man, Humphreys,” Grant said.
“That’s not the point, Sam. They need driving. All of them. And that’s my job. You’re the big chief who don’t take scalps himself. I’m the dirty sonofabitch with th
e knife. Near as I can tell, it’s the one true duty of a chief of staff.” Grown excited, Rawlins coughed. He felt wetness on the fist he pressed to his mouth, but refused to examine it. “Damned smoke,” he said, clearing his throat and spitting. “One thing I never get used to is the smoke. And the stink. You don’t get a sense of that from the illustrated papers. Everybody charging in perfect rows, flags waving. And not one sorry mick bastard squatting to shit.”
Grant winced. Unreasonably, the image had called up the worst ordeal of his life, a memory that often plagued him out of the blue. It had been worse even than his failure in the Northwest, his fateful weakness, his humiliation, the agony of missing Julia. The trial had come suddenly, during his passage to California, while he led a train of soldiers, women, children, drovers, and mules across the isthmus. Cholera had struck them, and the deaths, not least of the women and their little ones, had been as gruesome as anything seen on a battlefield, ladies who had stood primly on their dignity in the morning shitting and puking themselves to death at noon. Nothing had ever been as grim as their flesh blackening in the heat before they could be hidden in shallow graves. And all he could do was to drag along the survivors. He remembered—could never forget—one captain’s wife, headed to San Francisco to join her husband. She had been fair, with chestnut locks and the features of a princess in a fairy tale. The last time he had glimpsed her she had become a corpse, three-quarters naked in a shit-covered shift, her face set in an open-mouthed rictus and coated with the rice-pudding cholera spew, a hideous death of agony and shame. Nothing was ever as bad as that. Nothing. He had begun drinking afterward.
“Tell you what,” Washburne said. “Sam, you finish off Bobby Lee tomorrow, we’ll give Old Abe a second term, then put you in the White House in ’68.”
Grant had had enough of such talk. He needed the grand attack in the morning to work. He could not allow Robert E. Lee to feel superior in any sense, to judge himself the master of this battlefield. Even if the Army of Northern Virginia could not be destroyed on the spot, Lee’s will had to be weakened, he had to feel doubt, to know that he had a tougher opponent now, one who would not relent. Lee had to learn to fear him. The onetime captain of engineers whom they had all admired in Mexico had to sense that this was the beginning of the end of things for his people and that continuing the war was naught but futility.