by Ralph Peters
“The men,” Lee said, intoning each word distinctly, “have been splendid.”
“Yes, sir,” Ewell said. He bent to scratch his wooden leg, a gesture that always seemed unsound to Lee. “Yes, sir, that’s true, that’s true. I was thinking … in the night, we could withdraw to the Mine Run line. Better ground. Much better.”
Lee almost admonished the man, tempted to remind Ewell of his orders the previous morning to refuse battle. Certainly, Mine Run was a preferable battleground. But the choice no longer remained to them.
“We will not retreat,” Lee said.
His tone carried a warning, but Ewell was flustered and said, “I wasn’t talking about a retreat.…”
“We cannot leave this field. Grant and Meade must abandon it. We dare not permit them a supposition of victory.”
“No … no, sir,” Ewell responded. “I see that. I was talking through my hat.”
Lee turned his gaze on each of the division commanders, then shifted it back to Ewell. “Is there nothing to be done here, General? Nothing?”
A brave but calculating man, Early leaned forward. He reached the edge of speech, then paused.
“General Early?” Lee said. “Have you something to offer us?”
Early looked at Ewell, then back to Lee.
“Gordon’s been pestering me all day. Insisting Sedgwick’s flank is hanging out, that the Yankees left it dangling. I told him Burnside’s corps was out there, but—”
“General Burnside has been engaged elsewhere,” Lee said sharply. Warning himself against a display of temper. “He is not on this flank.”
“Yes, sir, true enough. But Gordon was just too big for his boots this morning, talking all sorts of nonsense—he can be an impetuous man, General—and we didn’t know where Burnside was for certain. All I had was word from your own staff, and your people had Burnside on the Germanna Road. Later on…” Early waved a hand, shooing a fly. “Well, I figured Gordon was talking hogswallow by then. The Yankees must’ve tucked their flank in proper and fixed things up. Even if Gordon was right first off, they wouldn’t have left it like that.”
“Find out,” Lee said.
Seven p.m.
The sun rushed to meet the horizon; minutes had grown more valuable than gold. At last, Gordon had the order to attack. All day, he had been as Tantalus, yearning for grapes of victory but a short grasp away. Then, cruelly late, Early galloped up, impatient for Gordon to do what he had begged to do since morning.
To add weight to the charge, his superior gave him Johnston’s Brigade as well. Early even said Pegram’s Brigade might follow, if Gordon delivered success. The division commander’s tone was urgent and peevish, suggesting a story waiting to be told. Gordon ignored the rudeness and leapt to his task.
He ordered his own men to leave behind anything that might rattle or creak and give them away as they approached the Yankees. Johnston’s Brigade would be a help, but it was a hindrance, too. Bob Johnston turned thickheaded when Gordon explained his plan. More time was consumed as Johnston passed his own instructions to his subordinate officers. One frustration had piled atop another as the bright evening softened toward dusk.
There was no time for rousing speeches or even a flourish of prayer.
But they were ready at last, three thousand men sneaking through the woodlands, Johnston on the left and ordered to drive into the Union rear. Gordon’s own men would strike the Yankee flank directly and roll it up. And if Early did send in Pegram’s Brigade, much could still be accomplished.
Gordon’s vision of a complete rout had faded, though. The attack should have been made by two divisions in the morning, not two brigades at nightfall. Despite that, he refused to be pessimistic. He had gotten his chance, however flawed, and he meant to make the most of it. He remained confident the he and his men could deliver a blow their opponents would never forget.
It seemed impossible—downright amazing—that the Yankees hadn’t detected their advance. The light had weakened, further limiting vision through the woodlands, but strive for quiet as they might, thousands of men made a certain amount of noise. And Gordon and a number of other officers rode their horses, contributing snorts and whinnies.
Still the men in blue suspected nothing, derelict even in the duty of posting pickets at a proper distance. The gray brigades covered the final stretch, the last fateful yards where they might have been challenged.
Gordon saw Yankees cooking their supper, carefree as if having a race-day picnic.
He looked down the shadowed ranks of his men, all of them champing like thoroughbreds, and glanced through the mesh of treetops to the heavens: There was no time to waste on straightening lines or etiquette.
He drew his sword.
“Georgia! Charge!”
His men swept forward with a wild yell, flying from the undergrowth like demons. Gordon rode among them, calling encouragement, sword flashing back the light of cooking fires. At first, the Yankees did nothing, utterly stunned. By the time the first bluecoats leapt to their feet or lunged for their rifles, Gordon’s men were already behind their worthless entrenchments, firing point-blank at men fool enough to resist and grabbing dumbfounded prisoners by their blouses.
“Push on! Drive on!” Gordon shouted. The dusk was already deepening into the gloaming that heralded night. If only … if only the order had come at breakfast, not supper.…
The enthusiasm and delight of his men made his heart swell. The advance was nearly bloodless. The soldiers simply trotted along, collecting befuddled Yankees and telling them, “Walk on back thataway, Billy Yank, you git along now.” And the prisoners obeyed.
Other Federals just ran. The better-handled Yankee units struggled to get up a defense, but had no time. Regiment after regiment collapsed, as Gordon had promised all day.
He couldn’t see as far as Johnston’s men and could only hope their success had been as great. Certainly, there was no sign of firm resistance.
Looting was a temptation: The boys had little enough to adorn their lives. Yet, all but a few kept chasing the Yankee hares.
The light was dying.
“‘Dying, Egypt, dying…,’” Gordon recited.
“We got us a general! We got us a general here!” a pack of soldiers cried.
Captive generals were always welcome, but the attack’s very success was breaking up what remained of Gordon’s ranks. He ordered Clem Evans of the 31st Georgia to get his boys back into a semblance of order. Clem saluted, but Gordon was not sure how much could be done. He rode along his advancing, dissolving regiments, telling the men to rally to their flags.
There was more fighting now. They had gone a good half mile, he estimated, and some of the Yankees had started to figure things out. It grew dark enough for muzzle flashes to capture the eye and blot a man’s vision. Shadows wrestled in front of cooking fires, and a human torch ran off into the night.
“Tom,” he told the commander of the 60th Georgia, “keep ’em in what order you can, but don’t stop pushing. Make this a night the Yankees will never forget.”
“I believe we already have, sir.”
Herds of Yankee prisoners passed to the rear like sheep, with hardly a guard in evidence. There had to be hundreds of them.
A lieutenant approached Gordon, calling for his attention. “We got us two Yankee generals, sir. One’s Shaler. And somebody else.”
Shaler commanded a brigade, Gordon believed. Or had commanded one.
“Fine, son, that’s fine. You get on back to your men now.”
Ahead: Ripples of fire announced a Union line standing its ground. His own men howled and, amid the confident, angry, exuberant shrieks, Gordon heard the bull call of Private Spivey.
What, besides a glorious love, filled the heart as fully as triumph in war? Homer knew, he knew.…
That afternoon, of all times, a letter from a creditor back in Georgia had caught up with him, threatening to sue over promises broken, all to do with the family mining concern. Well, let the
man try to drag him into court. No one was going to fare well against a hero.
He wished Fanny could see him.
“You’re driving them, boys,” he called, waving his saber again. “You just keep on, don’t let ’em form up.”
But as the night robbed his ranks of their last coherence, the Yankees did form up. His men moved in packs now, like wolves. Martial order was a bygone thing.
Unexpectedly—and unhappily—he heard a great commotion on his right flank, heavy firing where none should have been. He spurred his horse through the wreckage of Yankee encampments to see to the matter.
Clem Evans met him.
“Christ almighty, the damned fools have been firing into our flank.”
“Who?”
“Our own men. Back in our lines. Nobody told ’em about our attack, I guess.” He caught Gordon’s bridle. “Eddie’s seeing to it, don’t get yourself shot. We’re a damned mess, anyway. Can’t tell our men from the Yankees, for all the smoke and the dark.”
Yes. Darkness. What did Milton speak of? “Darkness visible.”
Up ahead, the fighting had grown fierce, with volley fire resounding. And that would not be coming from his men. His boys were still screaming to wake the dead, though, never ones to lack spirit.
Darkness visible. Hail, brazen arms of Chaos!
Heart sinking, Gordon realized there was little more he could do.
Early and Ewell had both acted like damned fools. Had he only been allowed to strike sooner, even by an hour …
He had hurt the Yankees severely. He attempted to console himself with that. But a brace of shattered brigades was not the destruction of a corps or an army.
Gordon refused to give up hope. His brigade had done all it could, but he might ride back and persuade Pegram’s men to make one more attack, to see if they couldn’t tip the Yankees end over end, after all.
If Jack Pegram hadn’t been wounded in the earlier fighting, he would have agreed to extend the attack at once.
If, if, if …
At the edge of his advance, the firing declined. When he heard Union troops hurrahing, it struck like a fist.
Searching for Pegram’s men, he encountered two soldiers who’d called it quits after fighting for nearly a mile. They were picking through abandoned Yankee treasures. When they spotted Gordon, they ceased rifling knapsacks and stood up straight, caught out.
By the light of an abandoned campfire, their faces shone with perspiration and powder. They were of the sharecropper class, earnest and lean; Gordon knew them by sight. Their expressions were doubtful now, expecting chastisement. They were men who had done what could be done and knew, perhaps better than he or the other generals, what could not be done.
As he reached the firelight himself, astonishment froze the expressions of the two soldiers.
Gordon realized his face was covered with tears.
Eight p.m.
Headquarters, Army of the Potomac
As the lieutenant colonel ranted on, Meade folded his arms and tucked in his chin.
“You’ve got to flee,” the man pleaded. “The Sixth Corps is all broken, the Rebs are in behind us. All the generals have been captured, Shaler, Neill, Sedgwick…” Eyes burning fever-bright, he seemed about to grasp Meade by the coat and drag him away.
“Nonsense,” Meade said. “General Sedgwick was just here.”
The lieutenant colonel, a Sixth Corps man named Kent, paid no attention and raved on: “It’s a total collapse … you must save General Grant.…”
The noise of battle to the north was already fading. Meade spoke calmly, if cynically: “And those brigades Sedgwick told me he could spare? Are they doing nothing? How about Upton?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“So … I may expect no more fighting from the Sixth Corps in this campaign?”
“I … I fear not, sir.”
“Kent, you’re an ass,” Meade said, and turned away.
Under the fly of the headquarters tent, Humphreys was at his duties as chief of staff, invigorated by the urgency of the moment, but no more flustered than Meade. He looked up at his superior’s approach.
“Well?” Meade asked.
“Neill’s solid. Sedgwick’s moving up more men. Upton led a couple of regiments into the fight on his own initiative.”
“That’ll be it for the night, then. Lee couldn’t sustain an attack in the darkness, they’ve done what damage they could.” He paused, then added, “What do you make of it all, Humph?”
“When they didn’t attack all along the front, I stopped worrying. Not that we haven’t had a blow.”
“Who got hit? Which brigades?”
The chief of staff shrugged. “If the dispositions I have are accurate, Shaler and Seymour got the worst of it.”
Meade smiled wryly, casting a glance toward the cacophony to the rear of the headquarters, in the forest and on the roads. “That’s the worst of it. Teamsters, hostlers, quartermasters … they panic at a sneeze.”
Humphreys let a ghost of mirth cross his face. “Shitting bricks. Like Gettysburg.”
Yes, like Gettysburg. When the rear echelon had collapsed in a fit of terror while the men behind the wall and the fence stood their ground and shattered the enemy.
“Tell Patrick I want him to get all that sorted out. Quickly.”
“He’s already at it, sir.”
“And let Sedgwick know that I never want to see that man Kent at this headquarters again.”
Humphreys almost forgot himself and grinned. “If any of us ever see Kent again.…”
Meade had been careful from the first to show no sign of alarm, and the men of the staff, at least, had patterned themselves on his comportment.
“Teddy,” he called to Lieutenant Colonel Lyman, a fellow whose discretion Meade trusted completely. “Go down there and let Grant know how things stand. Tell the general in chief I’ll join him shortly.”
“I’m surprised Rawlins isn’t up here tearing into us by now,” Humphreys said in a voice intended only for Meade’s ears.
“I’d better go down and see him. Grant, I mean. He’s been all right.” Meade thought for a moment, then said, “You and I may not agree with all of his decisions—”
“That’s putting it mildly. He fought this army piecemeal.”
“We fought it piecemeal. Following his orders.”
“We threw men away.”
“Humph, listen to me. I know you’re angry about how things have been handled. And Kent or no Kent, we’ve just had a bit of a scare. But credit Grant with one thing: He accepts responsibility for his actions. The man hasn’t tried to cast blame when things disappointed him.” Meade thought again of Grant’s whittling and his silence. “I’d say he takes setbacks with remarkable aplomb. I rather wish I had his even temper, I’d be better off.”
Humphreys grunted. “Grant may sit there like a wooden Indian, but I’ll bet he’s been jumping every which way inside. And I wouldn’t trust Rawlins or Washburne for an instant.”
In the background, the shooting had died down to occasional pocks, but the self-inflicted uproar in the army’s rear continued to make an appalling noise: crashing wagons, braying beasts, and the wails of terrified men. The provost marshal had his work cut out for him.
“They’re Grant’s men,” Meade said. “Naturally, their loyalty goes to him, not us.”
Humphreys gave an ungentlemanly snort. “Washburne’s loyal to Washburne. George, the man’s a politician, for Heaven’s sake. Haven’t you had enough of that sort of creature?”
“He’s Grant’s man.”
“That’s not the way he sees it. He thinks Grant’s his man.” Humphreys smirked. “Watch Grant’s face. From a distance. When Washburne starts wagging his finger.”
“Speaking of Grant…” Tired or not, he had to relate the latest developments to the general in chief, who had remained down in the hollow where his tent had been moved in the hopeless hope of quiet.
On his way down the
path, Meade passed Lyman coming back.
“How is he?” Meade asked quietly.
“Odd, sir. He’s been so calm the past two days. But he strikes me as somewhat agitated tonight. I believe this last fuss got to him.”
“About-face, Lyman. Come along. I may want another set of eyes and ears.”
Stepping off again, Meade guided on the campfire ahead. The racket out on the road truly was a disgrace, the sound of fear.
As Meade emerged from the darkness, Rawlins and Washburne had been taking leave of Grant. They decided to stay.
Meade was about to report that Uncle John Sedgwick had things under control when a major Meade didn’t recognize crashed through the brush toward them.
“Great God!” the man cried, spotting Grant. “General, you must retire!” Out of breath, the major wheezed. “I know Lee’s methods, he’s going to throw his army between us and the Rapidan, he’ll cut us off from our communications—”
Shocking everyone, Grant exploded. Tearing the cigar from his mouth, he said, “You shut up, damn you.” He stamped the earth, a stubborn, outraged child. “I’m heartily tired of hearing what Lee’s going to do.” His eyes were cold no more, but blazed with fury. “Some of you seem to think Lee’s suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time.” He stepped toward the major. “You, sir! Go back to your command. And try to think what we’re going to do ourselves, instead of about what Lee’s going to do.”
Chambers emptied, Grant went quiet. Unable to raise his eyes from the fire now. No one dared speak.
The major disappeared.
* * *
When Grant shut himself in his tent, Washburne led Rawlins aside for as much privacy as the circumstances allowed.
“Is he all right?” the congressman asked.
“I think so.” Rawlins considered how much else to say. “It’s all been a shock of a kind. You heard what he said earlier. This isn’t like fighting Joe Johnston.”