The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  These blue-coated vagabonds looked a sorry lot, shoulders hunched around their dreary fires.

  Unprompted, he thought of the Black Hills, their beauty austere and forbidding, and the wary, doomed Sioux. Ah, how hard they’d tried to keep him out, the scrofulous lot of them. But he’d bluffed them cold without firing a shot, and he’d mapped their sacred lands because they had to be mapped. Those had been exhilarating days, a time of singular purpose and clean accomplishment. Unlike all this.

  A courier found him before he reached Griffin’s entrenchments.

  Saluting, the spattered fellow said, “General Meade’s compliments, sir. He’ll inspect the position at noon.”

  No, he won’t, Warren thought. He’ll be late by an hour, at least. With the roads churned into morasses. Even the quick-footed Johnnies were slow today.

  “How’s the general’s cold?” Warren asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. Will there be a reply?” The man’s horse nickered.

  “I think not.”

  Deciding to show his benevolence, Warren added, “If you’re hungry, see one of the commissary officers. I believe the men are enjoying a treat of mackerel.”

  Twelve forty p.m.

  Mahone’s Ravine

  “Just keep moving,” Davey Weisiger chided his struggling soldiers. “I’ll have no slackers. Get along, keep moving.”

  Hard to keep up spirits in the rain, Mahone understood. But he could count on Weisiger and his Virginians. As for Colquitt and Clingman, he’d have to see. Their brigades had reputations as good scrappers, but Billy Mahone would have liked to have his own Alabamians and Georgians for this fight—not least to redeem their reputations after his soldiers had been misused by others in front of Richmond. He just wished everybody, including Robert E. Lee, would keep their hands off his men.

  Weisiger forced his way through rain-whipped brambles to Mahone’s side.

  “Slow going,” Weisiger said.

  “Yankees will still be there,” Mahone told him.

  Around them, men complained but kept their voices low.

  The going was severe, Mahone had to allow. The undergrowth in the ravine had outdone itself since he’d led men through it in June, and the tangles had been sufficiently wicked then.

  The rain beat down harder. No thunder or lightning, though. Just an old Virginia downpour, Nature’s vengeance on those who’d despoiled her chastity. He’d taken her on in swamps and on dry land, and he’d put her flat on her back. Now she was having her petty revenge of eye-slapping squalls and thorns to leave a fine uniform in tatters.

  Well, he was going to bend her to his will, make her do service. If he knew the Yankees, Nature’s pranks would go much harder on them, keep their heads down low. Yankees just never saw that men don’t rust.

  Mahone did like his comforts and liked to ride. Enjoyed the way a saddle gave him stature. But this was a day to go afoot, to march along with his men. Show them what a tough-made man could do. Aides could bring on the horses after the soldiers had trampled a path.

  Men had to think he was proof against common feelings, that was the thing. They wanted to believe their leaders were forged by a higher order of blacksmith and out of different iron. So Mahone bluffed shamelessly, another one of his duties. Only frailty he couldn’t hide was the acid that plagued his belly, but that was only a trouble to himself.

  The men snatched wild berries as they went, gobbling them down. Lucky devils. He could only digest berries baked in a sugar cake, sometimes in a pie. With a glass of milk for the soothing. Wife teased him to a fret about his diet, calling him her “little ninny baby” to get his temper up. Otelia liked a man fiery and provoked.

  He loved that woman like a bear loved a dripping honeycomb, and the stings just went along with her. When she got too obstreperous, he’d put her over his knee and spank her rump. She’d laugh like a brazen thing and grow accommodating.

  Shoving a clot of branches out of the way, Davey Weisiger asked, “Have much to do with building the Weldon, sir?”

  Mahone just about spit. “Not likely. Or it would’ve been built a sight better. Damn fools had nothing but a straight line to survey and lay, and they couldn’t do that right. Bought unseasoned ties and rails a dog could chew.” It made Mahone angry to ponder the business: He hated shoddy work. But he added, “Going to take it back, though. Poor-built or not. Going to do as much killing as it takes.”

  A thorn scratched his cheek and drew blood. That just made him madder.

  Two p.m.

  Globe Tavern

  Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman knelt on the rain-beaten roof, striving not to slip and envious of the poise of the upright signalmen. Volunteer aide to General Meade, promising scientist, man of wealth, and eternal captive to his curiosity, whether regarding the quirks of starfish or the Boston gossip, Lyman found army culture as exotic as the Echinodermata he’d researched under the peerless Professor Agassiz. Indeed, the Army of the Potomac seemed able to regenerate itself as readily as Asteroidea renewed its limbs. Both were splendid oddities.

  Speaking of odd, he’d been thinking about Frank Barlow, his Harvard classmate. Barlow was back at City Point, frightfully ill, according to Ned Dalton. And that atop the tragedy with his wife. Lyman could sense all too sharply the blow such a loss might strike a man. If he were to lose Mimi …

  Down in the mud, before the ruined tavern, an artillery sergeant bellowed at his charges, his profanity a wonder of locution. The cannoneers struggled to free a caisson from a trough of mire. When the vehicle resisted, the sergeant put his own shoulder to a muddy wheel—rather to his credit, Lyman thought. Wet and sullen, infantrymen looked on, uninterested in offering assistance.

  Lyman did wish Barlow well, although he never could say why he liked the fellow. Frank was the awkward sort old breeding sometimes produced by accident, impossible to befriend in a civilized sense. At Harvard, Barlow had been respected, even somewhat feared, but little liked. Men sought his company, only to be rebuffed. It was as if an antimagnetic ring surrounded the man.

  Lyman remembered him back in June, during the march to Petersburg: Barlow perched up in a tree, picking cherries and hailing his classmate to join him, a boy of nearly thirty years granted godlike powers over a multitude.

  Barlow was quite the natural soldier, of course. Everyone thought so. Almost everyone. Jealousy abounded in the army, and Frank did have his critics. But they were generally the baser sort.

  As for himself, he cringed a bit when Frank turned that smirk toward him, communicating silently, “You’re only playing, Teddy, and late to the game.”

  Ever the plunger, Barlow had joined the war at the beginning, while he and Mimi had only returned from Europe the year before, after Gettysburg, laden with paintings bought in Rome and a bit ashamed of themselves. And Barlow had made his way by merit, while his own status as aide-de-camp and his rank were a gent’s allowances, the first a courtesy of grand old Meade, whom he had befriended in Florida, where the Philadelphian had been erecting lighthouses, and the latter courtesy of the governor, who was ever a good egg with the better families—the fellow simply groveled before the Lowells. Thus, Teddy Lyman refrained from critiquing military matters to the professionals, saving his thoughts for his diary and letters home.

  Which was why he had not said a word to Meade or Warren or anyone about the funny gap on the right flank: He didn’t want to seem asinine or boorish. Yet, what he had seen as he trotted about on errands from Meade and Humphreys nagged him more than a bit. He’d had to scramble up to the roof to escape the parleying generals below, just to avoid saying something untoward.

  He’d been told that Humphreys, who could be a bit of an ogre, had remarked, “Lyman may be bald up top, but he has a brain underneath.” A single foolish remark might dissolve that opinion.

  He wasn’t a courageous fellow, he didn’t think. It had even unnerved him to clamber over the beams where floorboards were missing, and his perch on the roof left him queasy. So it h
ardly seemed proper to fault Warren’s dispositions. And Warren’s recent tiff with Meade had been ugly. He didn’t want to start that up again.

  Instead, Lyman studied the scene before him, a phenomenon reminiscent of an ant colony, as a muddle of Fifth and Ninth Corps units engaged in that ordered confusion unique to an army. Charlie Wainwright’s artillery had settled nicely into its embrasures, commanding a field a bit larger than Boston Commons, and Griffin’s division looked to have the left flank well secured. Ninth Corps was arriving, bit by bit.

  No doubt things would be fine. Warren was capable, if eager to put himself forward. A New Yorker whose breeding came of the artisan class and a “West Point gentleman,” Warren was the sort welcomed on the north side of Beacon Hill, now that the better families were leaving, but who’d meet closed doors if he sought entrée on the south side. Still, whatever Warren’s social position, Lyman hardly dared second-guess a veteran corps commander.

  It simply wasn’t done. Not by an amateur and supernumerary.

  And yet … that right flank gnawed him. Earlier, he’d ridden to Ju White’s headquarters in search of Potter and had found the two Ninth Corps division commanders together and ready to march to Warren’s support as soon as Willcox’s soldiers cleared the road. Message delivered and mission fulfilled, he’d cut across the fields to catch up with Meade, passing behind a skirmish line that seemed not only badly placed, but dangerously thin—the only connection between Warren’s corps and the army’s fortified line. The generals seemed untroubled, but Lyman feared that a nasty gap lay open—a gap of just the sort the Confederates fancied.

  Down below, the caisson lurched from the mire, squirting mud and chased by still more curses. The weather really was beastly. Hot and dry, then wet and hot. Poor Meade had a cold so severe the old fellow could only hear when you shouted at him. Indeed, Lyman heard fond shouting down below, where a covey of generals and colonels had taken refuge.

  Teddy Lyman felt yet another impulse to descend and warn them about that feeble skirmish line, that all-but-naked flank. But a fellow mustn’t become a pest or make himself an ass.

  Barlow’s braying laugh rang in his memory.

  Four p.m.

  Fifth Corps right flank

  Mahone wrung the water from his long beard. Look like a damn billygoat, he figured. Nothing for it. Did like to look his best on a battlefield, though.

  Three brigadiers stood before him, rain-smacked.

  “Look here,” Mahone said. “Damned fools let us in, and they’ll have a peck of trouble getting us out.” He’d been nicely surprised, if not astonished, at the scanty nature of the Yankee picket line. Couldn’t even call it a line, just soggy boys left cowering under trees. Swept right over them, with only one or two Federals getting off shots, their powder soaked and not even up to a fizzle when their caps sparked.

  “What do you want us to do with those Indiana boys?” Colquitt asked.

  Mahone went sour-mouthed. “Had rope, I’d just tie ’em up and leave ’em. Hate to lose a single rifle running them. Tell you what. Pick out the two worst soldiers you got. Should be plenty to herd those boys, they aren’t in a fighting mood.”

  Colquitt nodded.

  “Listen now,” Mahone told them. “Tell you how we’re going to do this, gentlemen. General Clingman, you’ll advance on the right.” He gestured with both hands. “Want you facing just this way. Understand?”

  The old politician turned general nodded.

  “Just that way,” Mahone repeated. “And you keep going that way. Going to be confusing in the brush, but do your best to keep your bearings and drive them.” He turned to Colquitt, another politician on whom rank had fallen. Pointing out his attack position, Mahone went on, “You’re on the left, General. You’ll align on Clingman’s Brigade and guide on his left initially.”

  He regarded both men, judging each rain-flinch, each tic. “General Colquitt, you’re going to bust out of those trees first, the way that grove runs. You’ll see the old tavern ahead, tad to your left. Keep right of it and sweep across the rail line, take their left flank in the rear. General Clingman will be in the woods the while, so you may outdistance him once you reach open ground. As long as you’re driving the Yankees, that’s all right.”

  The rain grew louder, as if excited.

  “General Weisiger, you’ll follow in reserve, moving by column of regiments. We’ll see how things develop, I’ll be near you.” He met each man’s eyes in turn. “I don’t want any slowing just because we roust up more pickets. Run right over them. We need to come up on their main line fast and roll it up, before they can get their hands out of their drawers. Surprise has to step in for numbers, so no early volleys. Hold off until you’re sure it’ll make a difference.”

  “If the rifles will even fire,” Colquitt said. “This rain…”

  “That’s why the Good Lord made the bayonet. Now … General Heth will move as soon as we hit their main position. There’ll be plenty of firing then, wet cartridges or not, and that’s his signal. We’ll be in their rear, he’ll hit them head-on. Crack ’em open like a dried-up walnut.”

  Clingman, who’d been a senator once and seemed to retain his fondness for oration, shook an abundance of water from his hat.

  “Well enough, sir,” Clingman said. “Well enough. I do expect a proud day for North Carolina.” He cleared his throat, the sound announcing: I got something for all of you to pay heed to now, so listen, ’cause I been a senator. “Given that we’re in between their old lines and the new, we may come in behind them well enough … but it strikes me they might do the same to us shortly thereafter. If they’ve got reinforcements on the way. It could prove an embarrassment, sir. Were they to take us in the rear while we were engaged.”

  “General,” Mahone told him, “that’s my lookout. Your duty’s in front. Now get your men formed quick, there’s work to be done.”

  Four twenty p.m.

  Union Fifth Corps lines

  Brigadier General Samuel Wylie Crawford worked his way forward through the brush, alerted by a sprinkling of rifle fire off to the right. Didn’t sound like much of a scrap, but he wasn’t taking chances. The position assigned him was awkward, much of it stretching through woods so dense he had almost stumbled beyond his own forward line.

  Rain cascaded from punished trees, and long thorns scratched like cats.

  Followed by a party from his staff, Crawford scraped through the brush behind Lyle’s brigade. Things looked to be in reasonable order, given the weather. Making his way on toward Coulter’s line, he still heard bursts of firing, but the spark-up seemed to be easing. Probably skirmishers seeing spooks, he decided. Or straying pickets.

  If Coulter hadn’t gone sick …

  In command of the brigade in Coulter’s absence, Colonel Wheelock was a solid officer, but a brigade was a different beast from a single regiment. Crawford had questions for Wheelock, the military equivalent of an ear pressed to a suspected consumptive’s back. Then he’d see to Hartshorne and that skirmish line.

  Thrashing along, he passed men hunkered down, wet through, and resigned. He didn’t need his medical training to tell him that the sick list was going to swell and that he’d lose good men to rotten feet. Strange life, his had been. He wondered at it still. A U.S. Army surgeon trained at the University of Pennsylvania—quite a rarity—he had spent his dusty outpost years mastering every ailment known to the frontier, clap to cholera, only to find himself in charge of a battery at Fort Sumter as South Carolina seceded. Then he’d become an infantry officer, with a better record than most in the recent bloodbaths. What might be next?

  Crawford pressed on, with aides and orderlies struggling to keep up. The veterans on the line wore disgusted looks, but they took good care of their rifles.

  The firing picked up again. It sounded closer.

  A running soldier almost crashed into Crawford. As the fellow recoiled, his eyes flashed dread.

  “What in the…”

  That quick,
the man was gone.

  A few other skedaddlers crashed through the undergrowth.

  Slapping brambles out of his way with his fists, Crawford increased his pace to a stumbling trot. How in the devil was he supposed to command a division he couldn’t even see? What was going on?

  More men bolted past. A winded captain found him.

  “General … Rebs … thousands…”

  “Stand up straight when you talk to me.”

  Flushed, the fellow bucked up his spine. “The One Ninetieth Pennsylvania … and the One Ninety-first…”

  “What about the Pennsylvanians?”

  “Surrendered. All of them … all…”

  “Captain, consider yourself under arrest. And if you spread any more panic, you’ll face a court-martial. For cowardice.”

  The boy didn’t look as though he understood.

  “Damn you,” Crawford said, rushing on.

  There was more firing now. Somewhere out in the bush. But it seemed to be moving away. Then another racket flared nearby. The burdened air played tricks.

  More men ran past, scampering like rabbits. Many had thrown down their weapons. His aides couldn’t stop a one of them.

  Rebel yells. Ungodly close.

  He stopped and waved up an aide. “Dash ahead. Find Wheelock. Tell him to leave the works by the left flank. He’s to reestablish his line facing east. Go.”

  Artillery shells began to splinter treetops. The shot patterns made no sense. It seemed as though both sides were shelling his soldiers, with as many or more rounds coming from Charlie Wainwright’s guns in the rear.

  How were the men supposed to hold up under that? Who on earth had given the order to fire?

  He turned to summon another aide and found himself facing a band of delighted Confederates.

  “Got us a general, ain’t that the cake and the pie?”

  A shell burst in the trees, flinch close.

  “No tomfoolery from y’all. Jes’ drop your belts and sidearms and go thataway. Plenty of company waiting. Hendricks, see them on their way a piece.”