A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  "Our chances are good," Smoke said. "Lincoln regularly walks to the War Department or to Sharpe's office to see the telegraph traffic. The way our friends have been stirring things up, he's back and forth all day. I'm the only one with him. We just have to be waiting for him. Just as we planned."

  Booth stabbed the metal tip of his cane at the cobbles. "Excellent. Almost as predictable as an entry stage right." This time he flourished the cane as if were a wand. "His exit will be more in the way of a magician's disappearing act."

  "Damn it, Booth. What have I told you? No play-acting. We do it fast and quiet. The last thing we need is an audience."

  Booth came down from his high quickly, "Of course, of course. Just as we planned."

  Then Smoke took Booth by the upper arms and looked intently at him. "This morning, Booth. This morning. It has to be this morning. The wagon is waiting."

  Booth seemed to shrink away at first. All the fine and heroic talk of kidnapping the president had played to his vanity. He had shown an unexpected attention to the details of the act and had coolly played his part in their brief rehearsals. But now was the moment when he had to fix his courage to the sticking point. The whole thing hung in the mist.

  Then, as if leaping onto the stage from a height, Booth took a step forward and grasped Smoke's hand. He cast his perfect pitch voice to carry just in the space between them, "Sic semper tyrannis!"16

  HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU (CIB), LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:30 AM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

  Much of the infantry garrison of Washington had already been stripped to reinforce Hooker and Sedgwick in the north, leaving mostly the heavy artillery regiments that manned the forts. Every fort and redoubt was on full alert and was tied to Sharpe's intelligence operation by telegraph, signal station, or messenger. The balloons went up again in the morning to the relief of the artillerymen who looked on them almost as if they were guardian angels. Their officers knew full well what the eyes in the sky could do for them. They would need every advantage now that the infantry regiments that had manned the miles of trenches and works between the forts were largely gone. They were lucky if there was one rifleman to twenty feet of trench line-not enough to stop a determined charge.

  Sharpe had left Lowe in full charge of the balloons with the assistance of a few of his officers. He returned to his headquarters on Lafay ette Square, arriving just as Lincoln walked across the square, tipping his tall hat to the statue of Andrew Jackson rearing on his charger. Looking up at the bronze visage of the sharp-nosed Tennessean, he said, "Wish you were here, General .1117

  Sharpe had just come in and thrown his hat onto a chair when the guard at the front door shouted inside, "President coming!" Sharpe met him on the steps as the guards presented arms. Sharpe was pleased that his boys from the 120th New York had responded smartly. "Sharpe, I hear you have as good a telegraph set up here as at the War Department Telegraph Office; I thought I would come over to see what turns up."

  "Glad to have you, sir." Sharpe's smile fell from his face as Lincoln went in and he got a good look at the new bodyguard. He'd never seen this man before. He was big and burly with a coarse face and beard. He did not like the look of him. Their eyes met and for a brief moment, Sharpe saw something savage in those eyes, which then furtively looked away.

  That gaze subconsciously triggered the memory of a story he had been told after he had arrived in Washington. It was about an old black slave named Oola. She was a frightening, wizened woman said to come by slave ship from Africa before the turn of the century. She terrified the other slaves with her piercing glance and her reputation of the evil eye and the ability to conjure spells. It was in early 1861, the time when the Lincolns were settling into the White House, when the issue of war and peace hung in the balance between North and South. At that time, a great comet had hung in the sky over the East. Old Oola had said, "You see dat great fire sword, blazin' in de sky? Dat's a great war comin' and de handle's to'rd de Norf and de point to'rd de Souf and de Norf's gwine take dat sword and cut de Souf's heart out. But dat Lincum man, chil- luns, if he takes de sword, he's gwine perish by it."18 Sharpe shook it off and attended the president.

  Lincoln settled himself into a stuffed chair in the telegraph room as the analysts rushed down the hallway from room to room, comparing notes and the latest information. Sergeant Wilmoth came and handed Sharpe the latest telegram. Lincoln's interest perked up. "Young man, it's good to see you again. What do you hear from your mother in Indianapolis?" Wilmoth smiled from ear to ear and said all was well. The president had been an increasingly frequent visitor since he realized that Sharpe's headquarters was the place to find out what was going on. He had taken a personal interest in the bright young man who seemed to have the whole of Lee's army at his fingertips. Sharpe's faith in Wilmoth's knowledge and good judgment was even stronger, and he asked Wilmoth to brief them both on what he had been able to put together over the night 19

  The young sergeant calmly and clearly laid out their findings. "Late last night, the situation clarified after all the day's messages came from our cavalry pickets, the signal stations, and the Balloon Corps. Hill's corps marched past Mount Vernon late yesterday. We expect it to lead the attack on Alexandria. Ewell's corps is swinging to the west and coming down the Columbia Turnpike, we think, to cut Alexandria off from the north and drive to the river. Some of Stuart's cavalry is screening both corps and raiding north as well, though his entire division does not appear to be present. We estimate that they will attack sometime today."

  A look of consternation flew across Lincoln's face. "It is morning already. How will we get what troops we have to reinforce those forts in Lee's path?"

  Without missing a beat, Wilmoth said, "This morning I notified General Augur of this and recommend he reinforce in that direction. I took the liberty of signing your name, General." He looked straight into Sharpe's eyes.

  Sharpe suppressed a smile. "You took the liberty of signing my name, Sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir, I did."

  "What made you think you had the authority to set such critical things in motion? They pay generals to make those decisions."

  "My information was correct, there was no time to lose, and you were not here, sir."

  Sharpe stepped forward, put his hands on his hips, and cocked his head forward to look the sergeant in the face. He said, "And continue to do so when in your good judgment such action is necessary. You have my permission, forward and backward." He winked and then broke into a broad smile.

  As they laughed, the guns began to rumble to echo up the river and over the city. The three of them stopped and stared out the window.

  MOUNT EAGLE, ALEXANDRIA, VA, 7:15 AM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

  Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill had been riding among his troops, deeply echeloned in the terrain that they had occupied after dark. Morale had not been this high since the men had crossed the Potomac far upriver in June, serenaded by their bands, on the way to Gettysburg. Victory finally lay just ahead. Just a few weeks ago it seemed the Yankee's coils had been slowly crushing the South; it would be just a matter of time. Now it was the Union's turn, feeling the torch of an enemy trampling across her soil, her own people in revolt in the Midwest, and her ports shut by the Royal Navy's blockade. There was much grim satisfaction in the ranks. Now Washington itself lay just a few miles to the north across the river. One last battle, one last supreme effort, and it would all be over.

  Hill had forced himself into the saddle. He could not miss this battle because of sickness. There had been too much talk already about how he always seemed to take sick before a fight. No one, not even he, knew it was the gonorrhea spiking up through stress. The sun was coming up over the Potomac, sending the long fall rays to glint softly among the bayonets of his men packed together waiting for the order to move. As the sun topped the trees on the eastern side of the river, a balloon rose to their front to hover over the center of the Union fortifications.

  "Damned things," he
said to himself. "Thought they were gone after Chancellorsville." They had not seen them in Pennsylvania. He hated them. He was impatient to get going, sickness or not. That balloon made him feel uneasy, like some hovering black bird of ill omen. He turned in his saddle. Where was the order to attack? Move quick, strike quick, he had always believed. Where was that order? He turned to an aide, "Ride to General Lee and say we must move at once!"

  He heard the gun just as the aide spurred his horse. A shell burst in the field two hundred yards behind the men who sheltered behind in a rise of the ground and were invisible from the forts. A second shell fell a hundred yards closer. The ranks rustled nervously. There was a pause, and when nothing happened, the men relaxed.

  Inside the forts, the gunners adjusted the elevation of their huge 15inch Rodman guns as the gun captain shouted the corrections based on the telegraph message that had come from the balloon overhead. "Fire!" The guns recoiled as they spat their enormous projectiles to fall on the reverse slopes of the gentle hills to the south. They laced into Hill's dense ranks in a line of orange-red pulses of energy that flared before the sound could be heard. Hill did not have to wait years for the gonorrhea to kill him. A jagged fragment of shell cut him nearly in two.zo

  HEADQUARTERS, BMI, WASHINGTON, D.C., 7:17 AM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

  Lincoln covered his tenseness that morning by likening the telegrams as they came in to hotcakes right off the griddle and so good they could be gobbled up without any molasses. As the morning went on, he noted they were getting tastier and tastier all by themselves. Hill's attempted attack had been disrupted by the artillery's indirect and adjusted firing by balloon observation. Where the Confederates had been able to move forward and press home their attacks between the forts, the defenders had been able to direct their meager infantry reserves to stop them. Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell's attacks down the Columbia Turnpike had run into the same web of forts supported by balloon intelligence. The high morale of their attacks had not been enough but left only a carpet of bodies in front of the fortifications. The day ended badly for Lee who could see the roof of Arlington House on its hill. It pained him to see that the beautiful groves that had once surrounded it had been chopped down, surely to build the very forts that stood in his way.

  The fighting stopped as the sun set and the balloons settled to earth. The good news clicked over the telegraph and was read with immense relief in the headquarters on Lafayette Square. Lincoln picked up his hat to go and looked out the window. The shadows had faded into night and the statue of Jackson in the square was lit by a few gas lamps, picking out the obdurate image of the hawk-faced warrior president. "Well, General, it's been one of my better days. It reminds me of the boy who was talking to another as to whether General Jackson could ever get to Heaven. Said the boy, 'He'd get there if he had a mind to.' I think we will prevail if we have 'a mind to."121

  Over Sharpe's shoulder, Lincoln saw Sergeant Wilmoth absorbed in writing at his desk. "It occurs to me that a lieutenant's shoulder straps would look just fine on young Wilmoth. Good night, General." Sharpe bid him goodnight and watched as the tall figure in black walked across the square with his hulking bodyguard trailing discreetly behind. Sharpe saw him tip his hat as he passed the statue before the bulk of the bodyguard blocked his view. A wave of unease came over Sharpe.22

  A man had been lounging on a park bench under one of the gas lamps near the Jackson statue. The lamplight made the polished silver head of his cane gleam. He got up and gracefully took off his hat as Lincoln passed, lost in his thoughts. A wagon rumbled up from an alley nearby. The man got up and followed Lincoln.

  Sharpe motioned to the guards, "See him home safely, boys." They hurried down the stairs, trailing arms at a run to catch up with the tall figure. The man from the park bench froze as the soldiers rushed past him, their blued bayonets picking up the lamplight's glint. He slipped into the shadows. The wagon turned sharply away.

  HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, ARLINGTON MILL, VIRGINIA, ON THE COLUMBIA TURNPIKE, 8:25 PM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

  Night had fallen on the countryside along with bitter disappointment around the campfires of the Army of Northern Virginia. Nowhere was the disappointment as keen as it was in Lee's tent. Lee's only comfort at the moment was the fresh coffee his aide and adjutant, Major Walter H. Taylor, had brought him, courtesy of a Federal supply warehouse. Lee would not touch such little pleasures unless assured that most had been distributed to the men first, and even then he would more often deny himself. But at this moment, it was a most necessary comfort.

  "Major Taylor, had General Longstreet been with us, he would have remonstrated most strongly not to attack prepared positions. And after Gettysburg, I would have to agree with him, but we had victory within our grasp, and I thought it worth the terrible cost. We have no choice but to try again tomorrow. But we must not play our hand the same way again."

  Just then, the soft caress of a hymn wafted through the still night of the camp. Lee stood up and walked to the tent entrance and placed his hand on the pole as he listened.

  Yes, he thought to himself. Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee. He was humbled at the glory of Christ's love. He said to the night itself, "We are all sinners. Can God forgive us this war?"

  Major Taylor said, "Sir?"

  Lee turned with a father's smile to the young man. "That line of the hymn,'On to the close,' Major Taylor,'On to the close.' May God give us that close."23

  Lee sighed as the hymn ended and with it, his hope-filled exaltation. He had more to oppress his thoughts than the failure of the day's assaults. Yes, he had outwitted Meade and stolen a march on Washington, but Meade would not stay fooled long, especially with screams of help raging over the wires to him. Lee had sent Stuart and most of his cavalry and an infantry division to hold Meade as long as he could. That would give him one more day and one more chance to break through to the river and bring Washington under fire. With that, the enemy's capital would cease functioning. With so many other blows, this could well be the one that shattered the Union's will to stay in the fight. The Washington area was also the logistics hub from which Meade's army and all other Union efforts against him were centered. His only frustration was that the Potomac lay as a barrier to actually occupying the city. He could not assume that a single bridge would remain standing when he reached the river.

  "Are the Stonewall Brigade's preparations progressing well?" Lee asked. Before Taylor could answer, the noise of horses riding up to the command group was heard along with fragment of a statement, "must see General Lee immediately." Lee looked up from his field desk as Colonel Marshall, his senior aide, and a cloaked man entered.

  "General Lee, may I present Captain Hancock, Royal Navy, emissary of Vice Admiral Milne."

  THE OLD SENATE HOUSE, KINGSTON, NEW YORK, 10:15 AM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

  Hooker waved his hat as he rode his white charger through the dense crowds that rushed to cheer him through the streets of Kingston, New York's first capital after the Revolution sundered royal authority. The crowd was swelled with refugees from nearby Rondout, Kingston's river port, which was now ashes and ruins, courtesy of a British raid. Tom Meagher rode at his side, waving to the delighted throngs. He leaned over to Hooker and said, "A little early for the victory parade, General, don't you think?"

  Meagher's remark was not lost on Hooker, who smiled and waved back at the crowd as the band played behind him, and his color bearer was careful to shake out the magnificent army command flag Hooker had had specially made in New York. "Oh, Tom, enjoy it," he laughed. "It's all a matter of morale. Must give the people hope, you know. Then every hand will turn out to help us."

  He pulled up at the stone Senate House and drew his sword to return the salute of the home guard that had turned out to defend the town if the British raid had come inland. Mostly they were invalids from the local regiments off with Meade - the 20th New York State Militia, the 120th and 156th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiments. He remembered then that the 120t
h was Sharpe's old regiment. A one-armed captain returned the salute with his surviving left hand.

  Hooker gave a short speech to the thunderous applause of the sea of faces massed before the Senate House. It crossed his mind that these people might be as devoted to him when it came time to vote for president one of these days. He introduced Meagher, the victor of Cold Spring. The trees seem to shake with the applause and shouts of the people, scattering their red and gold leaves.24

  Hooker knew he had made the right decision to give Meagher command of XI Corps. If any unit needed a heroic leader who carried victory fresh on the tip of his sword, it was the damned Dutch. The Irishman had that rare touch for the grand statement. After Cold Spring, he had returned to New York City and paraded his "Glorious 200" down 5th Avenue, every man carrying a red coat dangling from the tip of his bayonet to sway in unison with the perfect step of the men. New York loved it, roaring its delight in a deafening din that echoed off the tall buildings that lined the avenue. The last flowers of the year fell like a rainbow rain on the Irishmen. Young women who would not have given them the time of day a month ago ran up to them to plant kisses on their cheeks. Grown men and women who had starved in the Great Hunger burst into tears as the emerald green flag with its golden harp and the Stars and Stripes marched by, followed by the swaying red coats. After that day, not a business window could be found posting that old sign stating, "No Irish Need Apply.""

  GOVERNOR'S MANSION, ALBANY, 10:30 AM, OCTOBER 27, 1863