Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

Ahead, the firing ebbed and flowed, stalemated for the present. What on earth had possessed Meade or Grant or any man to imagine the path to Richmond lay wide open? Had they learned nothing over the past weeks? Of course Lee was going to fight.

  Bitten by the heat, he nudged his horse toward the coolness of a stand of poplars. His retinue followed. After the hard light of the slanting sun, the interior of the grove seemed almost black. The heat was bad, but worse was Hancock’s insistence on forever using him as the corps reserve, only to strip away his brigades, one after the other. First it had been Miles. Then Brooke. And now he had a Confederate corps to his front, Ewell’s men. The latest batch of prisoners flushed from the skirmish line—deserters, he suspected—were only too glad to blabber about reinforcements Lee had received. One verminous creature had spoken of the arrival of Pickett from the south and Breckinridge from the Valley of Virginia. Even if only a quarter of what those scarecrows said was true, it meant Lee intended anything but retreat.

  In fact, Barlow considered, it rather looked like they’d marched into a trap.

  His feet itched terribly.

  * * *

  “General Hancock says entrench, and do it fast,” Black reported to Barlow. The aide had ridden madly and his horse was blown. “He believes Lee may attack at any time.”

  “I’ve already given the order,” Barlow told him.

  Seven p.m.

  The Telegraph Road

  Hancock stood on a low ridge, just steps from the road, peering through the dust-addled light with his field glasses. Nothing worth seeing. But enough to hear to keep him alert and short-tempered. Sporadic fighting, most of it out of view, annoyed the evening, and oncoming clouds threatened rain, which meant more mud and misery for the troops. Instead of easy progress, his corps had run into resistance across its front. Resistance and, he worried, serious peril.

  Litter bearers lugged their burdens northward. Sweat-drenched and somber, the now silent bandsmen and medical orderlies stepped aside to clear the road as troops or guns rushed up, then resumed their journeys through the dust. Morgan had needed to send the ambulances rearward as shelling increased. The Chesterfield Bridge was under constant fire now, another surprising development. The only consolation was that Burnside had at last tied in to his flank, so Lee wasn’t going to come strolling in between them.

  Another cluster of wounded men plodded rearward. A blinded fellow held to a corporal’s shoulder, while the corporal cradled an arm that jutted bone. The sightless fellow swung his head wildly at noises, new to the state that would define his lifetime. The corporal stared ahead with a grim expression. A laborer by the looks of him, his days, too, would be forever altered. But it wasn’t the casualties—their number still minor by the measure of the campaign—that alarmed Hancock. It was the reports arriving every few minutes now, warning of Rebs where Rebs weren’t supposed to be.

  On impulse, Hancock handed off his field glasses and walked over to offer a few bluff words to wounded men trailing their comrades. One young man, still scrawny of beard, trembled fiercely on his litter, thumping his head back onto the canvas and grunting from his depths. His features had already set in a grotesque rictus. Reaching to pat the lad’s upper arm, Hancock was startled when the boy convulsed, jackknifing upward to spew a gut full of blood on the general’s sleeve.

  The boy tumbled from the litter. His eyes remained open after he slapped the dust, but the only light in them came from the dropping sun.

  Blood seeped through layers of cloth to Hancock’s skin. He caught himself before a curse burst out.

  He had blundered into a snakepit. He could only be thankful he had not behaved too recklessly as he’d edged his men forward that day. At first, it had indeed appeared that he faced only a rear guard, if one with spirit. Miles had advanced handsomely, and Smyth had quite distinguished himself in driving in the Confederates he encountered. But the next scrawled reports told of stiffening resistance, of enemy numbers larger than headquarters claims had led any man to expect. Now even Barlow thought it foolhardy to continue attacking.

  Lines had to be corrected, though. A few brigades, including one of Barlow’s, would have to press ahead to better ground. But where the advanced positions were defensible, the men already had orders to dig hard and deep.

  All too aware of the corps’ present disarray, Hancock feared that the enemy—at least a full corps and quite possibly a second—would strike before his divisions could prepare to receive an attack. Division flanks remained loose, and the reinforcing artillery was not up. If Lee’s devils came on now …

  He decided to go farther forward and inspect matters himself. It was a risk, of course—Sedgwick’s death was still fresh in everymind—but he needed the reassurance that could only come from seeing entrenchments deepen. He waved to the orderly holding his horse.

  It bewildered him that Lee had not swooped down on him. The emerging picture he had of the Reb positions suggested they’d had him flanked all afternoon. Had Lee hit him earlier, hit him hard, it might have been a debacle as bad as that first grim day at Gettysburg, with Reynolds dead and Howard hanging on by one of his Bible verses. For hours, they had even had the chance to cut off the bulk of his troops from their river crossings.

  It prickled his flesh to think of what might have been. And what might still be.

  Why on earth had they waited? Why were they waiting now?

  Heaving his stiff leg across the saddle, he knew full well he was putting off another burdensome task.

  He needed to write to Meade. To fill in more of the situation that lay before the army. But that would be a trick, alerting Meade and the rest of them to the apparent scale of the Confederate presence, without appearing to be afraid of his shadow. Meade would understand him, but Grant was another matter, and Grant read every dispatch. With Grant, a man had to put up a front of immaculate and unimpeachable confidence. Anything less marked a man as undependable, as surely as the “D” branded into a deserter’s cheek marked him as dishonorable.

  Yet, confidence was one thing, folly another.

  His thoughts had grown teeth: Why didn’t the Johnnies come on with their yells and howls? Were they beaten down, after all? Had Robert E. Lee grown timid? That was a prospect Hancock found hard to credit.

  The long day’s shadows stretched eastward, trailing from the groves like the trains of widows. New widows aplenty there would be, if Lee made use of the last few hours of light.

  Hancock caught himself and suddenly felt ashamed. Where was his old spirit? He straightened in the saddle, feeling only a wince of pain from his thigh. To Hell with them all! Grant could kiss his ass if he didn’t like the way he handled his corps. And if Lee was such a blundering ass that he failed to attack by dark, he’d get a fine surprise if he tried in the morning. Just let him wait and try it then. That high-flown sonofabitch would be in for a fight.

  Seven p.m.

  Confederate reserve position on the Virginia Central line

  Gordon was out of coffee, out of speeches, and out of temper. What was Lee waiting for? There were rumors that Lee was ill, but surely he was well enough to give a simple order to attack? Gordon had watched, first with chagrin, then with building rage, as the Yankees snuffled forward like witless hogs, begging to be trussed and slaughtered squealing. But the order hadn’t come. His division had waited in reserve, along with Breckinridge’s men and a stack of additional brigades, as the Yankees blundered into skirmishers, then rifle pits, then the Confederate line itself, baffled as dunces called up to the chalkboard. And still the order to attack hadn’t come. The Yankees sent more regiments forward, followed by full brigades, all spread out in delectable disarray, as the afternoon advanced into evening, but the order to strike them did not come then, either. Now, belatedly, infuriatingly, the Federals had begun to grasp that they weren’t on a frolic, after all, and had begun to dig their own entrenchments, clawing at the soil with a haste that would have been comical had so great an opportunity not been slipping away. A
nd still the word to attack did not come down.

  There was still time. Not much, but enough to do them real damage. If the order came soon. Gordon had repeatedly ridden forward to scout matters for himself, even dismounting and scurrying out to Law’s rifle pits. He had seen an opportunity even grander than the one he’d discovered on the morning of that second day in the Wilderness. But now this spectacular chance, this gift from the heavens and Ulysses S. Grant, looked about to be thrown away. The Yankees had been as befuddled and vulnerable as the Persians in the lapping surf at Marathon. But Lee had been no Miltiades this day.

  The comparison soured. What was the use of his classical pretensions? Asinine, all of them. The last three weeks had made that clear enough. His rhetoric had roused men falsely, coaxing them to their deaths to swell his vanity. If anything, he had been a vulgar Siren, his song as fatal as it was alluring. What had he to offer men from the Greeks, when the truth was that he could not read their alphabet? What did he really know of the Romans, beyond schoolboy Latin and a few legal terms?

  As for legal affairs, that very morning a letter had caught up with him, another missive from a judge threatening action over a defaulted loan. What did such nonsense matter in these hours? Must so much be made of a sum so small it barely reached one thousand dollars? Amid a war such as this? The way men clutched money seemed absurd to Gordon. Women were for clutching, money for spending. And he had spent what came his way. Now it was gone, and creditors had to wait.

  Worse, the coffee had run out, the last beans from those treasure sacks seized back in the Wilderness. His officers had not rationed it, but consumed it with abandon. Money was to be spent, and coffee was to be boiled and drunk down hot. They were spendthrift people, his kind, and he was not last among them. For such as they were, the day sufficed, and tomorrow could only dawn brighter in the mind, if the mind had to be bothered with tomorrow. It was their glory and their weakness, this passion for delights to be seized right now. How far into the future had they peered when they began this war, cocky as roosters? How many of them had looked beyond the chance to wear a dashing uniform and add a rank to their visiting cards? How many had foreseen the carnage? Not one. The intoxication of the moment had been all that mattered to them. They had not even counted their iron foundries.

  They were a backward-looking people, he saw that now. Instead of thinking through the complex demands of modern war, they had celebrated battles fought by their grandfathers. Or the grandfathers of their grandfathers. They had decorated the past the way a plantation mistress did up her mantels at Christmas, covering cracks and stains with branches and boughs already dead, but charming in their scented illusion of life. What was his love—no, his tawdry exploitation—of the classics, if not a means of clinging to the past, of robbing the achievements of long-dead men, all for the sake of a gimcrack, threadbare elegance? It was an affectation so cheap and false it was vile.

  Was there a single thing about his people that was true, or solid, or worthy in itself? Beyond this spiteful sacrifice of blood, ennobled only by their stubborn pride? The Yankees were right that the war was born of slavery: the enslavement of his people by the past, their Negro chattels only one manifestation. His men were dying for a graveyard romance.

  The Yankees were men of the future. He would not say such a thing to any peer, nor to the rapscallions who fought under his command. But Gordon saw it as clearly as a veteran knew a death wound.

  He and Fanny would have a future, though. He would fight to the end, even die if death was ordained, but should the Lord let him survive the war, this folly’s end was not going to be his end. The present day might stink of death, but tomorrow smelled of industry, power, and money, of government by the clever and fortunes for the astute. He had no intention of betraying his heritage. But he sensed it was more malleable than men knew, than men wanted to know. The South would not be finished by this war, but it would be changed. And the men who understood how to change while praising continuity would be the masters of all that rose from the wreckage.

  As for his fellow Southerners, he was astounded by their courage and ever more appalled by their neglectfulness. What could you make of a people who failed to grasp such an opportunity as the one lingering before them even now? John Brown Gordon had never felt as pessimistic about his infant nation as on this sweltering, waiting-for-the-rain evening, nor had he ever felt more lust for a fight. If the war was to be lost, he did not want it lost from inattention.

  He wanted to cry aloud, “For God’s sake, let us attack!”

  A courier galloped up in the softening light, exciting a last burst of hope, but the man only asked for directions to the supply trains.

  Eight p.m.

  Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia

  The doctor left Lee’s tent with a worried look. After he passed the three aides without a word, Walter Taylor said, “We should all go in together. And tell him.”

  Marshall looked doubtful.

  “No,” Venable told his comrades. “Only one of us. And I’m the logical choice.”

  “It would be stronger coming from the three of us.”

  “No. It would look like we conspired.” Venable held his hands upturned in front of him, weighing the air. “We can’t have him feeling cornered. Or betrayed. And I’m on his bad side already. Over that damned buggy.”

  “He needed it,” Marshall put in.

  “He’s not interested in what he needs. He hates to need anything. Or anybody. You know that, for God’s sake.” With time racing by, Venable added, “Walt, he trusts you and likes you. Better than anyone else. We can’t afford to damage that.” He turned to Marshall. “And Charlie here. Comes to getting out orders, he knows what the old man wants before the old man knows it himself. He needs the two of you, needs to trust you both. If any of us is going to be cast out, it has to be me.”

  His two friends opened their mouths to protest, but Venable shushed them.

  “Take yourselves off. I’ll handle this.”

  He turned his back on his friends and walked to Lee’s tent. He didn’t need to open the flap to scent the old man’s sickness.

  As he stepped inside, a grasshopper leapt away, landing on Lee’s boots. They were still covered with mud and, perhaps, worse. Venable decided to have a word with Lee’s body servant. Afterward.

  Lee lay on his cot in tawny light, covered to the armpits with a blanket. Sweat jeweled the old man’s exposed skin, spotting his forehead with diamonds. His eyes were closed, almost clenched. Like his fists.

  “General Lee?” Venable said.

  The eyelids did not flutter, the head did not turn.

  “General Lee, can you hear me?”

  Nothing but a brief tic at one corner of his mouth.

  Venable reached down and did something he suspected no man had done for many a year: He gripped Lee’s shoulder and shook it. With some force.

  The old man’s eyes popped open. Venable saw fear.

  “General Lee, you are not fit to command this army. You must send to Richmond for General Beauregard.”

  The old man’s eyes found Venable. The aide watched as the familiar gaze moved from alarm, to doubt, to resolve.

  “No,” Lee said.

  Eleven p.m.

  Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, Quarles’s Mill

  Rawlins coughed. The hacking announced his arrival like a trumpet. As Humphreys watched, Grant’s chief of staff drew off his waterproof and tossed it to an orderly. His eyes burned.

  Rain battered the roof of the old house.

  “All of you,” Humphreys said, “clear out.”

  When the shabby parlor had emptied, he signaled to a guard to shut the door.

  Rawlins looked feverish. There was no doubt in Humphreys’ mind: The man was a consumptive, rotting away.

  “I would’ve come to you,” he said.

  Rawlins shook his head. “Better this way.”

  Humphreys looked down, then up again. “John, things can’t go on lik
e this.”

  “I know.”

  “Meade’s a tough old bird. But he has his pride. Shaming him in front of his own staff…”

  “Dana isn’t worth a pound of horseshit.”

  Humphreys refrained from pointing out that only weeks before, Rawlins had set the precedent for embarrassing Meade in front of his subordinates. Rawlins and the better of Grant’s paladins had grown quieter, though, as the casualties mounted and Lee didn’t up and quit. But even beyond that, Humphreys had come to see the value of Grant’s right-hand man. At first, he had thought Rawlins a boisterous ass, but under the press of relentless campaigning, he had discovered that the small-town lawyer was the only man who could really challenge Grant, who could temper the general in chief’s worst impulses, and who could keep Grant on the straight and narrow. Grant’s great strength—his determination to see things through, no matter the cost—was also his weakness. Only Rawlins could whisper contrary advice and not be rebuffed, once Grant had been captivated by an idea.

  “Well, do what you can. Please. Meade’s as dutiful an officer as I’ve ever served under. But humiliating him hardly brings out his best qualities.”

  “Meade’s a good man,” Rawlins agreed. Nearing another cough, he cleared his throat. “Grant knows that. Otherwise, he’d be back in Philadelphia.”

  “Sheridan—”

  Rawlins held up a hand: Stop. “Nothing I can do about Sheridan. Maybe have a word with Dana, he’s a burr under everybody’s saddle. But Grant likes Sheridan just the way he is. And he did finish Stuart, just the way he promised.”

  “The man’s an insufferable egotist.”

  Rawlins half closed one eye and the other shone. “You’re wrong there. He’s plenty sufferable. To Grant, anyway. Phil entertains him, that’s the thing. Grant likes a good story, a joke, a laugh.” Rawlins stepped closer. Humphreys thought he saw dried blood in the man’s beard, below his lip. “That’s the thing of it, see. Grant values George Meade. Values him highly. But he doesn’t like him. Not that he dislikes him particularly, either. They’re just different animals. Talk military matters, and they understand each other. More often than not, anyway. But when it comes to sitting under a tree and talking friendly, Meade and Grant don’t even speak the same language.” Rawlins thought about what he had just said, then added, “Sometimes, even I can’t figure what Grant’s got in his head.”