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

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Lord Paulet was not happy to see Wolseley. On the assistant quartermaster's advice, he had lost a company of the Scots Fusilier Guards at Cold Spring. He didn't give a damn about the Canadians that were lost. Her Majesty would not thank him for losing so many of her big Guardsmen-and to the bloody Irish! He would never live this down.

  Still, he could not dismiss the man out of hand; Wolseley had the ear of the commander of Her Majesty's forces in North America. He was also the protege of Maj. Gen. Hope Grant, a man whose star was very much on the rise. So Paulet weighed how much he could risk slighting the man and decided not much-at this time.

  He was relieved that his judgment had held him back. One of Wolseley's first comments when they sat down for business was that Hope Grant was on his way with almost twenty thousand men to assume command in British North America. "The home garrisons have been stripped to assemble this force. The object, my lord, is to hold Albany through the winter. We sit in the center of this state and paralyze it for months. With Maine in our hands and New York under our thumb-not to mention their Great Lake States in revolt, the Confederates pressing from the south, and the Royal Navy blockading their ports - they will be hard pressed everywhere. A coherent defense will become increasingly difficult to the point of impossibility. We must sit in Albany long enough for the Royal Navy's blockade to do its work of disintegration of their economy.

  "Your raids keep them off balance. I told General Williams that you took the raid on Cold Spring entirely on my suggestion and assurance that it was undefended." Wolseley paused to run his finger down the map of the Hudson Valley to where the latest information pushed Hooker's rapidly advancing army. "Because we must hold Albany, my lord, you will have to accept battle with Hooker and defeat him before winter closes down fighting. We are reinforcing you with two more brigades. With the three you already have, you should be a match for Hooker.

  "One more thing, my lord. Our coup de main to seize Portland did not succeed. We have had to settle into siege. Unfortunately, we do not have the heavy artillery to break into the city. Jonathan is bringing up a strong corps to relieve the city. This is where it gets sticky. If we do not take Portland, we lose the railroad link between the Maritimes and the rest of Canada, and our problems then begin to multiply. We had hoped to funnel Grant's reinforcements through Portland. Now we may have to move them either up the St. Lawrence or through a smaller port we have taken above Portland and march them around the city to pick up the railroad. Either way, reinforcements will not reach you before you must fight Hooker. And we cannot reinforce you more strongly unless we give up our grip on Portland. It all depends on you defeating Hooker, my lord."26

  Paulet was reconsidering his opinion of Wolseley. A victory in a pitched battle would certainly take the Palace's mind off the loss of the Scots. Then again, the Widow of Windsor had an uncannily good memory for little things like that.

  BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, 2:33 PM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

  Taylor's Confederates marched into the state capital to a welcome that was more unrestrained than that afforded them in the Crescent City only ten days ago. Leaving Bazaine to bring up the French Army, he had struck north just after the "Te Deum" was sung in the St. Louis Cathedral. For all his speed, he was hours too late. The Union garrison was marching out of the northern edge of the town just as his men entered it from the south, having just put the finishing touches to their orders from Franklin.

  Already tall plumes of black smoke, streaked with orange flames, were billowing skyward from the burning warehouses, depots, and docks. Baton Rouge had been thick with the logistics of the Union Army, for it had served for a year as the base of operations in Banks's attempts to take Port Hudson. Pursuit was out of the question. The sky was raining sparks that threatened to ignite the entire city, and Taylor had no choice but to send his men to put out the dozens of fires starting everywhere in the wooden city.

  Franklin had done his work well. He had emptied the supplies accumulated in the city almost immediately after arriving in Port Hudson. Every boat on the river and every wagon he could lay his hands on had been bent to this task. He had hoped to delay the inevitable attack on Port Hudson until reinforcements had rebuilt the army to enable him to march south and meet Taylor and Bazaine in the open field. Vermillionville would not be the last word in the war in Louisiana.

  He would have been less optimistic had he known that that Bazaine was coming quickly behind Taylor, for both generals had also taken seriously the reinforcement of Port Hudson. They had hoped to concentrate fifty thousand men to seize Port Hudson before that happened. The French Army had marched to Brashear City after Vermillionville, entrained there for New Orleans, and stopped only long enough to parade through the city and take on supplies and reinforcements from the French ships now crowding the docks.

  Here the situation got complicated. There was no railroad or decent road from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. The river had been the mighty highway that had substituted for both. Had they the use of the river, they surely would have made Franklin's position hopeless, but on its muddy waters, the U.S. Navy still reigned. Rear Adm. David Porter was gathering the gunboats and ironclads that been so vital in the long campaigns to seize control of the river and cut the Confederacy in two. After Vicksburg and Port Hudson had fallen in July, they had been scattered up and down the river to patrol its length. Now Porter was gathering them back, but it would take time.

  What had been its weakness at sea against the French was now a clear advantage on the river. Originally, almost all of the American ships had been merchant ships that had been converted for war; their mission was to blockade Southern ports and run down blockade runners. They were nothing like the purpose-built warships of the regular Navy in size and armament. Against the new ironclads, ships-of-the-line, and frigates of the French, they had no chance. But these same large French ships had deep drafts that prevented them from crossing the bar at the mouth of the Mississippi, the same problem faced by Admiral Farragut in April 1862 when his flagship, USS Hartford, could barely pass. So the French leviathans, including the ironclads Gloire, Couronne, Normandie, and Invincible, uselessly sailed the Gulf, unable to come to grips with the Americans.21 The shallower-draft French sloops and corvettes were able to come up the river with the squadron's supply ships, but they quickly discovered that operations on the river, with its shifting channels, mudflats, and snags, were a world apart from those on blue water.

  With the river closed to them, the allies had no choice but to move north by the Great Northern Railroad, detrain at the small station at Ponchatoula, then march the forty miles west to Port Hudson. From the observation tower at Port Hudson, Franklin could see a distant pall of smoke hanging over Baton Rouge and the river thick with boats coming north loaded with the supplies that would see him through the trial to come. He said, "Thank God for the Navy."

  BROWN'S FERRY, TENNESSEE, 3:42 PM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

  When you begin to starve, all you can think of is food. So it was not surprising when several thousand men in the trapped Army of the Cumberland volunteered for special duty that would take them out of besieged Chattanooga. It was Maj. James Calloway would do the choosing. For him, there was no dilemma -he chose the 81st Indiana.

  As the fighting raged at Chickamauga the month before, the commander of this hard-luck Hoosier regiment had been relieved on the spot for gross incompetence. Calloway was snatched away from his 21st Illinois to take command at a desperate moment of what was considered a had regiment. Then something miraculous happened. The 81st fought like lions. Calloway's presence had been electric. Under the power of his charismatic hand, the regiment morphed almost instantly into an outfit so stubborn and tough that they became the division rear guard in the fighting retreat that helped save the Army of the Cumberland on that deadly day.

  When Grant ordered Thomas to provide an officer and volunteers to train on Mr. Gatling's guns that were arriving with Sherman's corps, someone at Army headquarters remembered Calloway's request
to be allowed to recruit a new cavalry regiment to be armed with repeating weapons. Calloway had no sooner picked his men on the 26th than they were hustled out of the pocket the next morning and across the Tennessee River to Brown's Ferry where they were to marry up with the mysterious new equipment they were to train on. The first thing Calloway did was to see his men fed the first good meal they had had in over a month. Only the night before, Thomas had taken matters into his own hands and seized Brown's Ferry on a loop of the Tennessee River in a daring night operation that opened a robust supply line to his withering army. As Calloway's men ate, they watched a solid stream of supply wagons crossing the pontoons across the river.

  An officer sought Calloway out to give him his written orders and introduce him to Gatling. What looked like a strange artillery battery drove off the road to park in an open field with a bluff to its back. He marched the men to the field where they took a good look at the strange weapons, shining bundles of brass-bound heavy rifle barrels mounted on light artillery carriages. They viewed them with a healthy dose of soldier skepticism. Too many promises of wonder weapons had floated through the Army for the last two years, and all evaporated into nothing but hot air. More than one eyebrow arched as Gatling described the weapon, its operation, and its effect. Skepticism soured to sheer disbelief.

  All of that changed in the instant Gatling began to turn the crank. The barrels spun in whirring circles of fire, and the targets simulating a Confederate battle line disintegrated into flying splinters and scraps of cloth with not one left standing. The firing ceased, but the barrels kept on spinning with a smooth mechanical whir, finally slowing to stop.

  FORT BERRY, VIRGINIA, DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON, 1:10 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  The officers who looked out from the fort's parapets in the dark, cool, early morning had their attention fixed on the Confederate artillery attack on the fort that covered Arlington Hill a mile and a half to the north. They did not see the men crawling forward in the darkness toward them. The first wave of engineers carried gunpowder charges to blow up the thick abattis, axes to chop through what was left, and ropes to drag it away. Men crawled behind them dragging rough ladders; the infantry followed, their metal accoutrements blackened or tied up with rags to prevent rattling. The officers had thrown away their scabbards to avoid unnecessary noise and to symbolize that this was all or nothing.

  The men of the Stonewall Brigade stopped to wait for the engineer first wave to go forward. All around them were the dead of that day's assault, stiffening as the last of life's warmth fled. The wounded were there, too, moaning softly. But one man in the trench before the infantry parapet was in agony beyond endurance, shrieking Christ's travail on the Cross, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me!" The poor wretch went on and on, but no man dared leave his place to go to aid, though it left a thousand souls in torment. Hard men wept into their hands.

  After a while, even orders lost their hold, and a dozen men had begun crawling forward when lights appeared on the parapet. A woman's voice gave orders as if she were used to command. Moments later, a gate opened, and a party with a stretcher came out led by a woman with a lantern. They found the wounded man. The nearest men pressed to the ground saw her kneel by the man and take his hand. The screaming stopped. A voice louder than the rest said, "We must hurry, ma'am. The Colonel does not know we are outside the wall." The party put the man on the stretcher and heaved it to their shoulders as the woman held the lamp in one hand and the man's hand in the other. They quickly disappeared through the gate.

  Relief washed over the men lying on the ground. They were warmed though the ground was cold and their clothes worn thin. At least they had eaten well, the first time in a very long time, courtesy of fat Union warehouses. They were stacked up in column of regiments, some of the most famous in the Confederacy. Some of the men had been with the immortal Stonewall from the beginning and remembered his words when they were sore-pressed at Second Manassas and he commanded the 2nd Corps, and their new commander begged for support. "The Stonewall Brigade! Go back, and give my compliments to them and tell the Stonewall Brigade to maintain her reputation."' Not many were there then that had made it through all the following battles but enough to make the moment grow in the retelling, so much that the men who came after believed they had been there, too. They lay there waiting for the opportunity to once more maintain their reputation. With Washington just behind the line of forts and over the river, they hoped it would be the last time.

  GUNSTON HALL PLANTATION, 1:15 Ann, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Four miles down the Potomac from Mount Vernon, the Gunston Hall manor house overlooked the waters of Pohick and Accotink Bays. Small boats and barges filled the two small inlets. Confederate infantry were boarding from a half dozen landings. Their crews of British sailors bent expertly at the oars and pushed off. The craft had been swept up from the U.S. Navy and commercial traffic as Milne's ships overran Hampton Roads. They had trailed the special striking force Milne had selected for his descent on Washington. He knew that his large ships would never make it over Kettle Bottom Shoals; the Royal Navy had made good use of its numerous peacetime port visits over the years.

  From the mansion's porch, Captain Hancock and Confederate colonel John Rogers Cooke watched the lanterns on the boats move across the dark water as if they were crosses between water bugs and fireflies. Before his spectacular demise, Hill had selected Cooke's brigade for this mission for two reasons - the brigade was his reserve, not attached to any division, and he had complete faith in the intelligence, initiative, and fighting spirit of its commander. Cooke was born at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri in 1833. He was the son of Virginian general Philip St. George Cooke. When war came, his father honored his oath to the Union, and the younger Cooke resigned his commission to offer his sword to his mother state, severing all family ties. He had commanded the 27th North Carolina at Antietam with such grit as to earn the admiration of the Army. Ordered to hold a line at all costs, he had replied that though ammunition was exhausted, he would hold it as long as he had a single man with a bayonet left. It had come close to that. His regiment lost eighteen of twenty-six officers holding that line. He was nearly one of the dead when he received a bullet wound in the forehead. A Prussian officer serving with James E. B. Stuart, his brother-in-law, said it was "the most beautiful wound I ever saw." Now he commanded four North Carolina regiments -15th, 27th, 46th, and 48th - of whom he was immensely proud. They had a mission that would earn them and the South eternal glory.2

  For command of the naval descent on Washington, Milne's choice of commander fell on Commodore Hugh Dunlop, another veteran of the Crimean War in Russian waters who had also ably commanded the Jamaica Station. Milne selected a flotilla of sloops and gunboats for their shallow draft. Dunlop's force included the 17-gun corvette Greyhound, and the sloops Icarus, Peterel, Spiteful, Racer, and Hydra. Philomel-class gunvessels, gunboats of 570 tons with five guns-such as Landrail, Steady, and Cygnet, and the smaller Cheerful-class Nettle and Onyx with two guns each-had been brought from the harbor defenses of Bermuda for just this mission. Distributed among the ships was a Royal Marine battalion fresh from the Channel Fleet.'

  These ships had also crowded into the two bays, a warlike assemblage the Potomac had not seen since McClellan's vast waterborne invasion of the Peninsula partly sailed down the river the last year. Fully appreciating the sight was a six-man cavalry patrol of the 3rd Indiana. They had trailed the Confederate infantry brigade as it marched away from Hill's corps in the night. Four crept up to the water's edge, leaving two to hold the horses among the trees. They could see the ships and boats thick on the water, lit by their lanterns and the starry night. Boats slipped by them, the English of their boatswains' orders clear in the still air. In fifteen minutes, they had seen enough. Their sergeant signaled to withdraw when a gentle splashing in the water drew them back to the ground. Someone was swimming to the bank with a practiced sailor's stroke. He found his footing as the water shallowed and hunched over to s
cramble up the bank-and right into the sergeant's pistol. The dripping man spoke first in a whisper, "Faith, and is this my welcome to the New World?"

  "Shut your gob, Paddy." The pistol found the small of his back. "Now, move and be quiet."

  What the scouts had seen was the fruit of much planning. On the news that the Royal Navy filled the lower Chesapeake, Lee had instantly departed down the Northern Neck to the bay to request a meeting with Milne. The admiral pulled out all the stops to honor Lee as he climbed aboard his flagship, HMS Nile. A full compliment of sideboys stood to as Lee was piped aboard. A Marine honor guard -a full company - presented arms as a naval band played "Dixie." The deck was crowded with Royal Navy officers eager to see the Southern legend. They were not disappointed in his bearing, immaculate uniform, and the courtliness of his greeting to Milne. But Milne and Lee did not linger on deck. A cold wind blew down the hay, and they had much to talk about in the admiral's cabin 4

  From that meeting came the plan that was now unfolding below Gunston Hall. Lee's offer to cooperate in a strike on Washington was eagerly accepted by Milne, for it solved two of his three major problems. Lee supplied the pilots who would take his ships easily through the shoals, and his land attack would seriously distract the garrison of the Union capital. His third problem, and the one that would most seriously prevent his approach to Washington, was the city's naval fortifications. Although there were sixty-eight forts in the land defenses of the capital, there were only two naval forts meant to defend the city from an attack from the river. They were just below the city on either side of the Potomac. Battery Rogers at Jones Point was on the southern edge of Alexandria about six miles from the Washington Arsenal. Fort Foote was on the Maryland shore about one mile south of Battery Rogers. Both forts were only a quarter mile from the main ship channel. It would be a dead ly gauntlet. Rogers and Foote were reported to be armed with 15-inch Rodman guns; Foote was also reported to have four 200-pounder Parrott rifles. One hit could sink a sloop and turn the gunvessels into kindling .5