by Ralph Peters
Washburne gripped the brigadier’s forearm. “Don’t let anyone give him liquor.”
“You don’t have to worry. Not about that. Not yet. He’s been on his best behavior. And Bill would let me know if he saw trouble coming.”
“I don’t trust that darkey.”
Rawlins laughed, coughed. “You don’t trust anybody, El. You’ve become a Washington man.”
“Strikes me there’s more politicking right here in this army.”
“It’s no worse than out west.”
The woods and roads had calmed to the common sounds of an army’s rear.
“Listen to me, John,” Washburne said. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be staying with the army. Battles have to be fought in the capital, too.”
Rawlins smiled. “Spooked?”
“You know better.”
“Well?”
The congressman took a deep breath that was almost a piece of rhetoric in itself. As if he were about to address the House. But his voice, when it emerged, was hushed.
“About those murdered U.S. Colored Troops? That report?”
“Ferrero’s men.”
“You need to quash it. Knock heads, if you have to. Work through Humphreys, he’s got more political savvy than George Meade.”
“Word may already have gotten out.”
“No. It hasn’t. I sounded out Cadwallader. If he hasn’t heard anything, the other newspapermen haven’t.”
“Hard to keep the cold-blooded execution of two dozen prisoners quiet. Whatever the color of their skin,” Rawlins said. “Still, it’s hardly Fort Pillow.”
“It’s bad enough. Listen to me. Grant has enough problems piling up in front of him. We can’t afford to have Greeley and every holier-than-thou abolitionist from here to Bangor screaming for vengeance and making things worse for Lincoln. And our mutual friend.”
“Ugly business, El.”
Washburne swept a darker-than-the-darkness arm toward the battlefield. “Compared to this? There are thousands of white men dead out there. And there’ll be more to come, that’s clear enough. Tell me exactly how much a few dozen darkies weigh in those scales?”
“All right,” Rawlins said. “I’ll do what I can.” He imagined the bodies of the captive Negroes in blue uniforms, lined up and shot by Confederate cavalrymen. It bothered him, and he was hardly a firebrand. But Washburne was right: They didn’t need pressure from stay-at-homes to make the war less merciful than it was.
He came back from the dead men: “What else?”
“Meade.”
“What about him?”
“Is he right?”
“About what?”
“That this isn’t working. That the army has to fight Lee on better ground.”
“Of course he’s right. These damned woods. This isn’t war, it’s two mobs pounding each other bloody.”
“Sam can be stubborn. Once he starts in at something.”
“No, I think he sees it.”
“He won’t want to go at Lee again tomorrow?”
“He may feel their lines, see if there’s any weakness. But, like I said, it’s been a shock to all of us, him included. Johnston would’ve collapsed after two days of this. If he lasted two days. This is a new kind of war, takes some figuring out.”
“In the meantime, we’ve got to look out for him. As regards Meade now … what would your response be if you heard someone … say, one of those newspaper people … suggest that Meade just wanted to retreat? And Grant had to overrule him? To put fight in this army?”
“I’d say he’s a damned liar.”
“Would you? Think about it.”
“For Christ’s sake, El. Meade wants to fight. He just doesn’t like throwing men away.” He put his hands on his hips and stretched his back. “Nor do I, for that matter.”
“You’re not in question. Meade is. Listen to me, John. The people back home … the voters … have high expectations of our friend. Very high expectations. At least half of them think he should be in Richmond before next week is out.” Washburne rubbed pale hands together, as if he needed to warm them. “Do you think we’re going to be in Richmond before next week is out?”
“No.”
“And the casualty lists. When the newspapers publish the casualty lists from this … this bloodbath … and then the lists from whatever comes after … there are going to be questions.”
“There always are. That’s natural.”
“And it’s also natural enough to want someone to blame, if things go wrong. Would you prefer the people blame Grant or Meade?”
“El, you can be a real bastard.”
“And so can you. I’ve seen you, time and again. The way you’ve torn into Meade in public. You’ve got people thinking you’re the devil incarnate.”
“I’m just trying to keep them in harness. They all need to know who’s boss, including Meade. But to be fair, he’s done everything Grant’s asked.”
“So does a well-trained dog. Meade’s inconsequential. Compared to what you and I could make of Sam. What we have made of him.” Washburne grinned, teeth pale in the darkness. “As for being a bastard, I’m unashamed. I haven’t managed to stay in Congress by ladling out porridge for orphans. And I look at you, John, as the brother I inexplicably failed to have, a fellow bastard.” He patted Rawlins’ upper arm. “Between the two of us, we’re going to put Grant in the president’s house four years from now. But not if the public blames him … should matters with this army go awry. George Meade may be useful in more ways than one.”
“Meade’s a man of honor.”
“They’re the easiest to ruin.”
Rawlins shook his head in the darkness. “I’m not sure I could do that.”
“Oh, you could. You can. And you will, if need be. Fair chance, though, that we won’t have to ruin the man, just take him down a peg. Hear me out. I’m not asking you to do anything. Nor have I undertaken anything. Not yet. Perhaps such a necessity won’t arise and Meade can prance home to Philadelphia on his charger, hail the conquering hero! What I propose is merely that … if one day you should be asked to confirm that Meade proposed to retreat, while Grant insisted on defeating Robert E. Lee … all I ask is that you say nothing at all. Be enigmatic, you can do that. Let whoever might raise such a wicked query infer what they will from your considered silence.” He chuckled, inviting Rawlins to join in and be friends, as always. “After all, what’s one man’s reputation against the preservation of our Union? Or the presidency?”
Yes. What was one man worth? What, after all, did any of them matter? No more than those dead darkies by the roadside.…
“You really believe…,” Rawlins said, fighting down a cough, “you’re that confident about Grant being elected president?”
“If you keep him off the whiskey. And let me handle the newspapers.”
“I told you. There’s been none of that. He hasn’t gone on one of his binges in months.”
“Then I only have to worry about the newspapers.” Washburne chuckled. “And now I think I’ll find myself another cup of that government-purchased coffee. I fear I may have to investigate the purveyors. Say hello to Mrs. Rawlins, when you write.”
And Washburne was off.
Rawlins was tired. The smoke clogged his lungs fearfully. He made his way back toward his sleeping tent, erected in line with Grant’s, but not too near. By the campfire, he picked up a glowing splinter to light his candle. Bill, Grant’s grizzled Nubian, watched him from a stump.
After yanking off his boots, he took a long swig of water, coughed his throat clear, and bent to the battered trunk that held his belongings. He drew out a small wooden box containing an object wrapped in black velvet. With great delicacy, he unfolded the cloth. And he stared at the oval image in the gleaming silver frame.
It was a photographer’s rendering of his first wife.
* * *
Grant wept.
He had given orders to his manservant that he was not to be
disturbed by anyone. Then he had dropped the flap of his tent and thrown himself onto his cot. He had wept more than once in his life. The years had not handled him gently. But he did not recall weeping with such abandon since the night after handing his letter of resignation to his commanding officer out in the Territories. The alternative had been a court-martial.
He was paying for his pride now, for his brash abundance of confidence. He might find a thousand faults with the Army of the Potomac, picking at one officer for this and another for that, had he a mind to. But the truth was that he had underestimated Lee. The result had been slovenly butchery out in those woods.
And there would be more butchery to come, he saw that now. He still hoped to break Lee and his army by the summer. But he recognized that the cost would be higher, the effort required greater, and the risks more daunting than he and the men he trusted most had believed.
He assumed that Lee was reveling in his embarrassment, gloating about fighting him to a standstill in their first match. Nothing Grant had done, no order Meade had issued at his behest, had moved Lee. At least, not for long. The man’s skill and resilience were unsettling.
His weeping slowed, leaving the bedclothes beneath his face as sodden as a consumptive’s. He would defeat Lee. It would just take a bit longer. And it would be bloodier. And so be it. If he had to bleed the South to death, he would.
He yearned for a smashing victory over the man once idolized by the old Army in which he had failed. Whatever sorrow he felt over the men who lay dead or maimed, he knew he would pay the price it took to win. That was what soldiers did. He would destroy Lee for the sake of President Lincoln and the Union, and for himself. Whatever it took, he would break the Virginia grandee like the head of a china doll bashed on a stone.
He was done fighting here, though, in this hopeless place.
Grant wept a little longer, easing toward sleep. But before he drifted off, he made his decision: Come morning, he would order Meade to ready the army to march.
South.
PART
III
A NEW KIND OF WAR
THIRTEEN
May 8, nine thirty a.m.
Shady Grove Church Road
Young gals in their Sunday best, sweet as wild honey, went their way afoot against the flow of trudging men. Demure, laced tight, and bonneted, the quality sort made their way along in bright-eyed detachments of sisters, followed by old men poking canes in the dust and joyless matrons with handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths. All buggy horses had long since been requisitioned for the army, so the middling sort and better of the succulents were as sweat-stained as the poor whites, heading to church, or maybe home from it, on the hottest day yet of the year, stepping as handsomely as they could through the dust of an army. Their fashions had not been renewed, Oates had the eye to tell that of a woman, but the only purpose of a skirt, after all, was to be lifted waist-high by a bold man. He would have liked to draw one black-haired creature, especially, up behind his saddle and ride off.
His men were respectful, admirably so, with the girls who looked properly raised, but when they came upon a chippy or two, they called out a range of greetings, most of them amiable. They were a weary, ragged bunch, his men. He still had the 48th Alabama under him, in addition to his 15th, but together they didn’t make one proper regiment. Their march had begun deep in the night, with but one stop for cold rations, and men who had not slept three hours in three days, men who had fought bitterly, plodded along as gamely as they could, first through the puke-up death-stink of the battlefield, then, startlingly, bewilderingly, through green and peaceful country where, despite the tattle and rattle of distant musketry, these ribbon-waisted Baptists and Presbyterians, equal before God in their virginity, intact or feigned, were all close to equal in beauty when judged by sunken-eyed men got up in the blackface of powder, men with dust glued to their flesh by sweat, foul and fouler, but awakened to high delight at the sight of bounty made flesh in a young gal’s form. A smile from one such slaked a thirst no water would ever vanquish.
Oates was never too worn to regard a woman. And that black-haired gal, perhaps not the best in virtue, nor perfect in her complexion—indeed, almost with the look of a French-talking slut come in from the bayous to a New Orleans house—that woman-gal’s imagined scent stayed with him as he rode another mile, his morning enriched by a dream of supple flesh. He let his fantasy roam, returning from the war to find her willing.
But if he burst to life at the sight of those perspiring angels, and if they made the men straighten their backs and step smartly, it was funny and crying sad at once to watch the lasses and their watchful families struggle to mask their shock at what they saw. And what they smelled. An army of black-mouthed ragamuffins stumbled along, not only trailing a shithole stink, but sending it out to precede them. The noble young ladies sought to bear up, committed to taking pride in their brave army, resolutely declining to bring their handkerchiefs—this one adorned with violets, the next embroidered with roses—anywhere near their nostrils, unwilling to shame the men marching along, but, oh, their eyes, their eyes betrayed them, appalled eyes, eyes that said, But this … surely these men … the novels never…, and, scrapping along behind, the little boys who once would have saluted and emulated their marching now pinched their nostrils shut and made idiot faces. The old men were angry and wet-eyed.
“Unfurl the flags,” Oates called back over his saddle.
The rags for which men die. Let them take note: We are still proud. But, oh, he wished to kiss that raven-haired missy’s lips, to press his mouth to hers and then do more.
Men collapsed by the roadside, ruined by the heat and the hour still short of noon. But he knew his men, they’d come along when they could. Those who remained in the ranks would remain to the end, or until killed or shredded unto uselessness. Oates smirked. Except for Lowther, of course. His major had convinced a surgeon to dispatch him to Richmond for medical treatment for a wound that was no more than a bruise to his foot. Well, good riddance. Lowther wasn’t worth a damn, present or gone off larking. The man had pull, though, at home in Alabama and in Richmond. Oates couldn’t quite figure it, but for all his sick leaves and even one murky letter of resignation, Lowther kept reappearing when things were easy, then disappeared again when a scrap got going. And for all that, Evander Law himself, the best of men, had ordered Oates not to chastise the major or put him on report.
Christ, it was hot.
At least they had pride of place this morning at the head of the division. The dust was wicked enough at the front of the column, pity the sorry devils who marched in the rear.
The churchgoers thinned, then disappeared, gone to their prayers and hymn singing, but no bells marked the hour or called the faithful, all their pealing sacrificed on the altar of Tredegar, melted down for cannon, and his mother, boiled in belief, able to bear the loss of a beloved son because she knew she would see him again eternally, young John, sweet John, his mother who could barely write had scratched out a letter mourning the loss of the slap-tin bell from the ramshackle church past Oates’s Corners half a mile, the only complaint she had made through all the war, aching to hear that most unmusical bell on a Sunday morning, her Gideon’s trumpet, or, perhaps, the voice of Jesus metaled over … how could she believe, how could those fine, sweat-bothered, unknowing, good people off to church or chapel, how could they believe, Oates wanted to know, in a merciful God after three mad years of this? He liked to fight, didn’t mind killing, but, damnation and worse, there was nothing godly he could see in this war. Sometimes it delighted him, exciting his blood as powerfully as any woman had done, more powerfully even, but he could not reconcile sermons with the slaughter. Mixing war and religion struck him as the blasphemy of blasphemies, redolent of unforgivable sin even to one who did not believe a whit. His mother’s faith, once bearable from a distance, now seemed naught but the frothing of a rabid bitch in Hell-dirt. He could not believe. And he would not believe. Once, he had wished
he might find faith, but now he had no interest in a parson’s tales. Better a kiss from that black-haired gal, one kiss, than eternity on a cloud where neither fist nor cock was of use to a man. When he killed men, he killed them, and he didn’t need a Bible verse to excuse it.
And yet, he knelt when his men knelt. Not out of respect for God, but out of care for those who fought beside him.
All the grand and eloquent speeches, all the books and pamphlets extolling the nobility of their cause—of any cause—even the scrawls and scribbles he had committed on the newspaper side of his lawyering, all of it had less value than a turd, which might at least fertilize a few inches of furrow. They weren’t fighting for their rights. They were fighting because they damned well had wanted to fight, because it had just come time to fight, and fighting had seemed like a mighty fine idea.
Now this, they had come to this: filthy men whose odor made young girls ill. And those men were the fortunate ones.
Yet, he would fight until he could fight no longer. Because that was what he was formed for, from sacred clay or bloody jissom, no matter. He would fight. But he would not beautify blood-glutton deeds with lies.
Gunfire. Lots of it. Cannon, too. To the left, a mile or so off, almost behind the marching columns now. For hours, quick, hot fights had pecked the morning, always to the left, but first ahead, then alongside the marching column, and now, queerly, behind the bent shoulders of the marching men. An accident of how the roads bent? Oates wondered. He had no map, no familiarity with this stretch of Virginia, with its deep-down creeks that weren’t quite rivers and fields that looked plowed by womenfolk, even the earth grown war-weary. All he had was the name of a more-or-less destination: Spotsylvania Court House.
And more gunfire. A serious to-do. He could feel his men quicken behind him, their pace the same until commanded otherwise, but blood coursing through them, eyes opened all the way.
A rider came back from Colonel Perry’s party, which had gone on ahead. The courier hardly got his yap open before the colonel himself galloped back to Oates.