“But who says we’re going to have a war?”
“It seemed to me, Zeph, that all the men at the meeting thought so, and if each had felt free to speak his mind, I do believe that most would have warned: ‘The South cannot win, in the long run, if the war drags on, and if the Northern advantages are applied with relentless pressure.’ ”
“Then why have a war?” He had always appreciated the ground-level common sense with which his wife approached any difficult problem: “If prospects are so bleak for our side, why fight? Can’t the differences be reconciled?”
“No! Flatly, no! Those in the North have put themselves in a self-righteous position from which they cannot retreat and save face.”
“Is the same true about us?”
“With me it is. I can’t agree to a situation in which one day we have two hundred slaves worth a fortune and the next day none and no way to keep this plantation functioning. You simply cannot ask men who have spent their lives building—”
“So you too think war’s inevitable?”
“No,” he said reflectively, “as traditions in our family affirm, I don’t want war. I want to see a rational solution.” But then he made a statement I’ve heard members of the Clay family repeat a score of times in this century: “But if they threaten your entire way of life you’ve got to do something.”
They continued all that night, if I understand correctly from the notes Jubal left, to discuss the serious problem of how they would function as a family if Jubal had to volunteer to help fight a war: “I’m thirty-seven and entitled to major’s rank in the Virginia Third. You’re thirty-four and the ablest woman I know—in all fields. When I went off to war in Mexico you managed—”
“But this would be a real war, wouldn’t it?”
Recalling the fight at Chapultepec, he told her: “Any war is real. A skirmish of three against six is real,” and this brought him to a major concern: “If the North is as strong as they say, and if we’re as good fighters as we know we are, this could be a long war. As years pass—”
“Years?” her voice trembled and said what he had been afraid to mention: “Our boys would be old enough …” and he nodded. Their older boy, Noah, was seventeen; his brother, Paul, fifteen. If the war dragged on, with the North always throwing in more men, the South would have to call upon boys as they neared manhood. This realization altered everything.
Zephania spoke first: “Rock-bottom truth. You think war’s inevitable?”
“Yes. Those in the North are determined and we Southerners are resolute. Result? War.”
“And you think we would lose?”
“I can’t say this to any man—it’d sound like cowardice, but I can tell you the truth. We’d run a great risk.”
The Clays sat silent and brooding. When the sun rose, she coughed before starting anew. “Did the men think a war, if it happened, might reach down here?”
“We didn’t discuss that. Didn’t even mention it.”
“Let’s think about it. Could the war reach down here?”
“In Mexico I learned one thing. If General Santa Anna starts his war in Texas he must consider the possibility that it will end up in his capital at Mexico City, six hundred and fifty miles farther south.”
“Our troops would never let them reach as far as Richmond, surely not.”
“Our troops won’t want them to reach that far, just as their troops would not expect us to reach New York. But once you cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war you cannot predict at whose house they will bay.”
“Oh, Jubal, that’s too horrible to contemplate.”
“But we are contemplating it, and I see this as our probable future. There will be a war. Those Northerners will insist on it. I shall volunteer, maybe within the week, and then we’re in till the end. You’ve already proved you can run Newfields, so long as the slaves do not take this as an opportunity to rebel. In due course Noah and Paul will be in uniform, which means that you and Grace—she’ll be old enough to help—must hold our little kingdom together. And when the war ends, we reassemble in peace and do our best to make up for the time we’ve lost.” After a moment’s silence he said: “The fields will need clearing of brush. It does sneak in, you know, if left untended for a while.”
The war did come as Jubal Clay had foreseen, but to his surprise it was triggered not by some insolent act of the North but by Southern hotheads firing on a United States fort in Charleston, South Carolina. From that moment there were two flags, the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes; two names, the Confederacy and the Union; and two groups of fighting men, Johnny Reb and Yank.
As expected, Jubal Clay reported for duty as a major in the Virginia Third and quickly became what I called in my wars a light colonel. During the early years of the war he seemed to be fighting incessantly, but since most of the fighting occurred in what was called the Peninsula Campaign, he was often engaged in fights defending Richmond, so that he was on familiar terrain in areas like Mechanicsville and Gaines’ Mill. This meant that he sometimes arranged to sneak home to see Zephania and the children. On such trips he repeatedly said: “It’s going to be a long war. We’re outnumbered badly, but one of our men trained in country shooting is worth six of their raw recruits straight from some overcrowded city, so in the end we have a chance to win.”
As he had anticipated, by the end of the second year both his sons had been called to duty. At a trivial skirmish, associated with the great Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, of which the official report said: “We repulsed the Union forces while suffering only minor losses,” a loss that was not minor to the Clays was the death of Noah. At another Confederate victory, about which the commanding general said: “Our losses were at the acceptable level,” the Clay’s younger son, Paul, was among those slain.
Now when Jubal managed a few days at the plantation his task was to console Zephania over the loss of her sons, but she would talk only about the problems of life on the plantation: “The Northern warships blockade our ports so fiercely that no cotton can be shipped to Europe. Slaves run away to join the Northern armies. Grace’s school has closed.” Never would she speak of her lost sons, and the loving communication that had always existed between husband and wife perished with the war.
In early May 1864 it was clear that Butcher Grant, as many Confederates called him, intended muscling his way by brute force straight down the peninsula from the Potomac River south of Washington, fording the Pamunkey and Chickahominy rivers and stabbing the heart of the Confederacy by capturing Richmond. If he followed that route his troops would pass close to the Clay plantation but, more important, would then try to penetrate the Wilderness. When Clay heard that and visualized the impenetrable Wilderness he knew, he cried: “That would be insane. Impossible to march an army through there. Scouts couldn’t make it,” but when he tried to assure the Confederate command that they must have misinterpreted Grant’s intentions, they told him: “Maybe we did, but here he comes, straight for the Wilderness.” And when they showed him their maps, he understood their next orders: “You know the area, Colonel Clay. Take all your men, get the best engineers you can find, muster the backwoodsmen and make this vital crossroads impossible to attack,” and a big forefinger jabbed at a spot Clay knew well, less than eight miles from his home, the insignificant inland settlement with the curious name of Cold Harbor, only ten miles from Richmond and guarding the entrance to that capital.
Clay and a cadre of officers who had hunted the Wilderness as boys and young men borrowed from other units any soldiers who knew the area, and they in turn conscripted woodsmen in their fifties and sixties to help them erect around Cold Harbor a defensive network that could be breached only by piling dead Union soldiers six deep and marching over them. And even when that was accomplished, the surviving invaders would still have to fight hand to hand from below as they looked up into the faces of thousands of Confederate troops armed with the weapons they knew best: rifles, pistols and long knives. If Grant attacke
d Cold Harbor, he would be sending his men into certain annihilation.
But that was still not enough margin for Clay, so when he judged his ground defenses to be truly impenetrable, he wheeled into position as many cannon as he could muster and placed each one so that it commanded a different approach to the final line of breastwork trenches. No Union soldier would approach Cold Harbor without facing cannon fire from at least three angles, and the cannon would be firing explosive shells filled with a lethal mixture of rusty bolts, bits of iron, lengths of chain, lead pellets and even shards of broken glass.
When I say “impenetrable” I am not referring to these mechanical horrors. I mean that the Wilderness woodsmen, without orders from Clay, had converted the entire area that would have to be traversed into a natural death trap, an abatis, a French word my grandfather did not know, nor did I when I first heard it. An abatis, devised by European peasants to obstruct the lord’s cavalry, consisting of bending strong saplings forward into a woven impediment and then with a sharp ax slashing each sapling so that it presented a daggerlike point that could pierce a man through his belly or a horse in one of his four legs.
At twilight on Thursday, June 2, 1864, Colonel Clay, in surveying the defensive works for which he had been responsible, noted with grim satisfaction that all was ready. There were the nine cannon to rake the approaches, each field of fire interlocked with the others. There were the riflemen with their deadly fire. In front were the buried bombs that would explode if a foot touched them, and in front of all that was the abatis, its sharp spikes, hundreds of them, pointing straight at the invaders’ bellies. And beyond, to the north along the route the Yankees would have to take if they wanted to march on their way to Richmond, lurked the Wilderness itself—its swamps, its mud, its tangled trees, its miasma, its oppressive June heat, its confusing trails that led back upon themselves. It was to this assignment that General Grant had sent his men with clear, crisp orders that allowed no hesitancy or misinterpretation: “At 0430 on the morning of Friday, 3 June inst. you will assault the defenses at Cold Harbor and secure it for the passage of our troops to Richmond.”
In Confederate headquarters at a rough farmhouse behind the crossroads, Colonel Clay said as he lay down for a brief rest at three in the morning of June 3: “Not even Butcher Grant would dare try a frontal assault on what we have here. I pray that our flanks are prepared, because I’m sure he intends driving right at us to make us commit our troops, and then slipping off to the easier terrain on our left.” As he said this he looked to the east, where he supposed Grant would veer, and uttered a short prayer: “Dear God, protect our men over there. They may have a very rough day.” He had barely concluded this prayer when woodsmen who had been hiding in the Wilderness as scouts rushed into Cold Harbor by a hidden trail they had preserved for this purpose: “My God! They’re marching straight at us!” and when Clay shinned partway up a tree to see whether this could possibly be true, he saw to his horror that Grant’s troops, in gallant battle formation, were heading directly for the abatis and the interlocking fire of the nine great cannon.
In the first eight minutes of that June morning, three thousand Yankees died. In the next half hour, when the second wave pushed forward over the dead bodies of their comrades, five thousand more died, with not one of Colonel Clay’s Confederates dead. Four hours later, at nine in the morning, Butcher Grant issued new orders: “The entire front to resume the attack,” but when these insane words reached the line commanders they refused to accept them, even at the risk of suffering grave personal penalties.
Clay, barely a hundred yards from the Yankee lines, heard an enthusiastic Yankee blow his bugle for a massive charge right at the Confederate guns. “Dear Jesus!” Clay cried. “Don’t let them!” and when no Yankees left their improvised trenches he wept.
It is generally held that one of the best accounts of Cold Harbor is the one my grandfather wrote when he was called back to Richmond to receive a decoration for his tremendous defense of Cold Harbor and I can do no better than to cite it here:
Richmond, 19 June 1864
My Darling Zeph:
I can scarcely believe that the horrifying events of the last few days took place only a few miles from where you and Grace were residing peacefully at Newfields. If my hand trembles in writing it’s because I’ve not slept properly for six days nor washed for five. By the time this reaches you, you’ll already know that we’ve handed the enemy a crushing defeat. Butcher Grant who boasted that he would ride roughshod over us has been knocked back with losses that must make even his savage brain stop and wonder.
When it became apparent that a significant battle might be shaping up about the insignificant crossroads you know so well, Cold Harbor in the Wilderness, General Lee gave me the task of seeing that our batteries were in position to rake a murderous cross fire through every approach, and I used the Alabamans and Colonel Butler’s Virginians to that purpose.…
Clay went on to tell his wife about the preparations he had supervised for the protection of the Confederate positions and the carnage they exacted. It’s what Grandfather reported in his next paragraphs that has commanded the attention of historians and biographers:
Since the Union charge started at 0430 and lasted only half an hour, it must be clear that the destruction of the enemy troops occurred just before sunrise, which was fortunate timing, since that would allow the Union commanders to appeal for a truce, and this would allow them to leave their lines, come onto the battlefield and take back their dead and wounded, of which there were, lying about the field of fire, not less than a thousand, and my adjutant said, “More like two.” If they were to be left out there when the blistering sun rose to bake and scorch them, their pain would quickly grow to agony.
I therefore ordered my men: “Hold your fire when the rescue teams appear,” and they were more than ready to obey, because the slaughter they had perpetrated at point-blank range was permissible under the circumstances, and by that I mean I agreed with one of my men who said: “If they was stupid enough to march right into our bullets with no chance of firing back, they deserved to die,” but none on our side wanted to continue this awful killing. So we waited for the Union stretcher-bearers to come out and rescue their wounded. None came.
By ten in the morning the sun was beginning to beat down with great force and men were beginning to cry out for water, and medicine, and stretcher-bearers, but none came. By noon the heat was quite unbearable, even for those of us under cover, and you must understand, Zeph, that the wounded men between the lines lay so close to our lines that I could tell whether a fallen man with no cap was either blond or brunet, and had I known their names I could have called to them. It was they who called to me: “Please! Water! Help!” but there was nothing I could do.
I must explain why I was powerless to help these poor men. The battle was still under way. No Union general had applied for a truce, nor was he likely to, because that would be admitting we had won, and this Grant refused to do. So as the sun went down on Friday the third, a date that will be remembered for our great victory, the wounded out in the field between the lines at last had some relief from the blazing sun. But now, in the cool of the evening when they had time to think, the dreadfulness of their condition became clear. They were to spend the night out on the ground that would gradually become cold, and damp with dew, and miserable, so they began pleading with both their companions to the east and their enemies to the west: “Water! For God’s sake, water!” And all that night we heard their cries for the mercy we were powerless to provide.
Zeph, tears fill my eyes and I cannot describe the three days—Saturday, Sunday, Monday—with the sun hotter each long day, the ground more miserable at night and that incessant screaming of the Union men for help. One of my men, a farm boy from near Frederick, was so distraught by the cries—Zeph, they were only ten or fifteen yards away—that he disobeyed my orders and went into the field with a pail of water, but the Union sharpshooters fired at him. I think th
ey intended to miss, for he scrambled back to our lines. After that, our men shot at them if they tried to work in the field. And still Grant refused to sue for a truce.
On Monday night when the screaming became intolerable, we heard gunfire, and when I inspected with a throw-lantern I saw a Union soldier crawling from one fallen body to another and shooting the men whose badly wounded bodies were beginning to produce blood poisoning and horribly distended bellies. I did a terrible thing in throwing my light upon him, for when one of our men saw what he was doing, shooting his own companions, my man took aim and shot the Samaritan.… I can’t go on.
Zeph, I’m writing later. Tuesday morning, after four days of this horror, Grant finally conformed to battle rules and asked for a truce, but even then he delayed action and it was past noon on a blistering day before the white flags appeared and the medical teams came out from the Union trenches to rescue the few who remained alive. I calculate that Grant’s obstinacy in this affair accounted for an additional nine hundred deaths. And I hope there is a special hell for such a man, one with great heat and no water.
With all my love,
Jubal
The name Jubal at the end of the letter I’ve just quoted prepares the way for an amazing coincidence that would, in years to come, account for perhaps the most dramatic event in my grandfather’s life. The Confederate general in command of Lee’s left wing in this gruesome battle was Jubal Early, a crusty forty-eight-year-old professional soldier from the Western backwoods section of Virginia. A skilled cavalryman, a veteran of many battles, most of them victories, he had watched his namesake Jubal Clay perform superbly at Cold Harbor, and after the battle sought out the younger man, who was flattered to have attracted the attention of such a grizzled veteran.
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