The March

by E. L. Doctorow

  General Grant asked after Mrs. Lincoln, and the President excused himself for a moment to summon her, at which point Grant came over to Sartorius. The President appears to me to have grown older by ten years. What do you have in the nature of a nostrum to brighten him up? Do you have anything? It is hard for all of us, but we are in the field. He can only wait on our news, sitting in Washington without the hell-may-care that comes from a good battle.

  Before Wrede could reply, the President returned and announced that Mrs. Lincoln was not feeling well and had asked to be excused. The President’s heavy-lidded eyes suddenly widened with an alarmingly self-revealing glance directed at Sartorius. An embarrassed silence ensued.

  At this point the President and his generals retired to another cabin. Sartorius paced about and tried not to interpret the sound of their conversation as it drifted through the wall. He did not hear the actual words but the voices—the baritone murmurs of the President, the occasional gruff utterance of Grant, and the louder exclamations of Sherman, who sounded the upstart assuring his elders that he had everything in hand.

  Finally the cabin door opened and Sartorius, standing upon their return, was able to see now how tall the President was. His head almost brushed the cabin ceiling. He had enormous hands and large, ungainly feet, and the wrist where his shirtsleeve was pulled back showed curled black hair. The long head was in proportion to the size of the man, but intensifying of his features, so that there was a sort of ugly beauty to him, with his wide mouth, deeply lined at the corners, a prominent nose, long ears, and eyes that seemed any moment about to disappear under his drooping eyelids. Sartorius thought the President’s physiognomy could suggest some sort of hereditary condition, a syndrome of overdeveloped extremities and rude features. Premature aging might also be a characteristic. That would explain the terribly careworn appearance, the sorrows of office amplified by the disease.

  What is most important, the President was saying, by way of conclusion, is that we not confront them with terms so severe that the war will continue in their hearts. We want the insurgents to regain themselves as Americans.

  At this moment Mrs. Lincoln appeared, after all, a stout woman with her hair tightly bound to frame a round face, and eyes filled with undifferentiated suspicion. She seemed barely conscious of the visiting generals, to say nothing of Wrede, but went right to her husband and spoke to him of some later plan for the day as if nobody else were present. Then, frowning in response to some invisible disturbance, she departed as suddenly as she had arrived, the cabin door left open behind her, which Lincoln moved to close.

  The generals, who had risen to greet her, could only think to resume their conversation.

  Wrede was startled to find the President looming up. The odd exhilaration one felt in being directly addressed by Mr. Lincoln made it almost impossible actually to attend to what he was saying. One had to not look at him in order to listen. General Sherman tells me you are the best he has, the President said. You know, Colonel, this war has been as hard on Mrs. Lincoln as on the longest-serving battle-worn soldier. I do worry about her nerves. I sometimes wish she could have the advantage of the latest medical thinking, the same that is available to any wounded private in our military hospitals.

  It was only a few minutes later, as Wrede Sartorius accompanied General Sherman to the steamer waiting for the return voyage, that he was made to understand of what a presidential wish consisted. I’m sorry, Colonel, Sherman said, but you’re off the march. You are reassigned to the Surgeon General’s office in Washington. You will embark with the President’s party.

  Sherman made to go aboard but turned back. There can be tragic incongruities in a man’s life, he said. And so a great national leader suffers marriage to a disagreeable neurasthenic. They did lose a son. But so did I, so did General Hardee. All our Willies are gone. Yet my wife, Ellen, is steady as a rock. She does not plague me with her fears and suspicions while I attend to the national crisis. I will have your things sent to you. Good luck, Sherman said, and ran up the gangplank.

  IN CITY POINT, Sartorius bought some clothes and a bag to put them in and repaired to the River Queen for the trip to Washington. He had to accept his situation, there was nothing else for it. Mr. Lincoln may be under an illusion about the quality of care in army hospitals, he thought. If so, it is his only illusion.

  I have no nostrums—none. I have a few herbs, and potions, and a saw to cut off limbs.

  He could not stop thinking of the President. Something of his feeling was turning to awe. In retrospect, Mr. Lincoln’s humility, which Wrede had descried as weakness, now seemed to have been like a favor to his guests, that they would not see the darkling plain where he dwelled. Perhaps his agony was where his public and private beings converged. Wrede lingered on the dock. The moral capacity of the President made it difficult to be in his company. To explain how bad he looked, the public care on his brow, you would have to account for more than an inherited syndrome. A proper diagnosis was not in the realm of science. His affliction might, after all, be the wounds of the war he’d gathered into himself, the amassed miseries of this torn-apart country made incarnate.

  Wrede, who had attended every kind of battle death, could not recall having ever before felt this sad for another human being. He stood on the dock, not wanting to go on board. Life seemed to him terribly ominous at this moment.

  IX

  WHEN THE LOCOMOTIVES SCREECHED INTO THE GOLDS- boro junction railroad yards, the earsplitting sounds were heard as a fanfare. Lines formed before the commands were given. Soon the soldiers were showing one another their sparkling new blue tunics and trousers. They marveled at the repeater rifles that came out of the crates oiled and gleaming. They clumped around delightedly in their thick-soled boots. Their rags and worn shoes were everywhere consigned to little celebratory fires. The bandsmen had new skins for their drums, new reeds for their clarinets, and the Quartermaster General was everywhere praised as the finest officer in the army. Mail had arrived, too, and allotments from the paymaster, and with the weeks of camp rest, and the refitting, and the mail from home, and their pay in their pockets, the ninety thousand men who moved out of Goldsboro punctually on April 10th were refreshed, replenished, and ready to end the war.

  Unwinding from its encampments, the army slowly extended itself in a forty-mile-wide swath along the Neuse River, and on roads that cut through rich acres of young green corn. Down the line to the lumbering wagon trains came the news that Lee had been driven from Petersburg and Richmond. That would account for the cheers that Stephen and Pearl had heard floating back to them over the hills. Now the intent of the march was simplicity itself. There would be no great wheel to the northeast and Richmond. It was on to Raleigh and the Reb army of General Johnston.

  Stephen and Pearl were too unsettled to share the prevailing mood. When Dr. Sartorius had not returned, another colonel from the Medical Department had merged the surgery with his own. Stephen having no credential as an army nurse, was ordered to return to his original regiment. Pearl being a civilian volunteer, was told she was not needed and to go home, wherever that was supposed to be. Pearl was frightened, but Stephen said to sit tight, and so they had ignored the orders. Stephen knew about the army as she did not. He knew that, given the turmoil of the refitting of the troops and the administrative reorganization General Sherman had implemented, there would be enough confusion for them to wait things out and find a place for themselves in the march. This was particularly necessary, because Calvin Harper was in their charge. When a detail from the Medical Department removed the two ambulances and one supply wagon assigned to Sartorius, Stephen had asked the lieutenant in command what to do about the black man standing there with his eyes bandaged. He’s all yours, son, the lieutenant said. That was hardly enough to relax their vigil. Another lieutenant, or captain or general, might come by with a different idea. Of course Calvin had told them the whole story. Pearl nearly wept that this man who so loved taking picture photos might never see a
gain. Dr. Sartorius had said that was possible. And not an hour passed when Calvin Harper didn’t lift up the bottom of his bandage to find out if his eyes were any better. I can see light, is all. Not anything but light. The boy David watched him closely, and it was his own idea to hold Calvin’s hand so that he could move about without hurting himself.

  While it was true that Calvin Harper had warned General Sherman and, more coherently, Colonel Teack, that the man behind the camera was a Rebel soldier, he knew the top general of the army, with everything he had to do, would never be bothered to depose, and that the Colonel, with a wound of his own, was unlikely to be a sympathetic witness. My only chance, Calvin said to them, is that I am a Negro and with everything else going on they will forget about such small potatoes. That’s my only chance.

  Stephen thought that was probably right. It was a multitude, this army, and its war was winding down fast in a way that loosened military discipline. The generals, in anticipation, had built themselves a new bureaucracy in hopes of controlling things. The right wing was now the Army of the Tennessee, the left the Army of Georgia, and that new column from the coast was the Army of Ohio. What did it all mean? There were corps, divisions, brigades, detachments, now battle flagged and distinguished from one another for administrative purposes that escaped the ordinary foot soldier plodding along under the sun. Stephen didn’t even know if his old regiment was still the 102nd New York. You could go for miles without seeing an end to the procession of troops and horses and wagons. An eagle aloft in the April winds high over the landscape would only see something iridescently blue and side-winding that looked like the floodplain of a river. Stephen proposed to float on this the Josiah Culp U.S. Photography wagon and hope that as he sat up on the driver’s box his fresh blue uniform would be all the credential needed.

  The only problem was Bert.

  THEY HAD TAKEN a place toward the rear of the wagon train, so many miles behind the advance corps that they couldn’t hear the usual sound of skirmishing as the Rebel cavalry pecked away and fell back and pecked away. There was only the April breeze and the creak of the wagons and the steady clopping of the hoofs on the hard dirt road. But Bert the mule did not like walking directly behind one wagon and in front of another. He kept balking and holding things up behind him. He kept trying to get out of the procession and into the cornfields. When cavalry galloped by too close alongside the road, Bert raised his head and showed his teeth and brayed.

  This mule of yours, Stephen called back to the wagon tent. He is not enjoying the trip.

  That’s Bert for you, Calvin said. He always did have a mind of his own. He is like an old friend to me. You let me talk to him a minute and see what I can do.

  That is not a good idea, Stephen said. I think you’d better stay under wraps there.

  A while later, they came to a stream where the bridge was blown and the engineers had had to put down their pontoons. The current was swift and the pontoons sashayed a bit, and Bert, not liking the hollow sound of his own hoofs, almost directed himself and the Josiah Culp U.S. Photography contingent into the water.

  Stephen got him across but immediately took the wagon out of the line and stood with Bert under a pine tree.

  Pearl hopped down from the wagon. What we going to do?

  We’ll wait. They’ll have their led horses and mules coming along. We’ll trade this creature for an army mule.

  Who would want him?

  Then I’ll try to cadge one however I can.

  You need to buy it, Pearl said. No one make you a gift of a good army mule.

  They looked at each other. Stephen had not gone to collect his pay. It was the sure way to end up back in his regiment.

  Pearl took her knotted handkerchief with the double eagle out of her pocket.

  No, listen, Stephen said. You gave away the other one.

  Don’t matter. Calvin, she called, where you say you live?

  Baltimore, came the reply.

  We gettin a new mule, Calvin. This one of yours won’t ever see Baltimore.

  There was a long silence. O.K., Calvin said.

  BOBBY BRASIL, WITH the advance in the town of Smithfield, found himself under fire from Rebs. Muzzle flashes came from warehouses and second-story windows. One Reb was firing from the bell tower of a church. Brasil turned a corner and down the street saw a barricade and ducked back just in time. A shell burst right where he’d been, and when the smoke cleared the street was cratered. He’d been made a sergeant for having outlived two predecessors. His platoon were upstate farm boys. They crouched down in the shelter of an alley in complete bewilderment. War was supposed to be fought from dirt pits and behind trees, across rivers, and in swamps. Not down streets. Not from building to building. You yokels are lucky, he assured them. Bobby J. Brasil has been a street fighter since the day he first walked. He is a terror of the Five Points, and the scourge of Centre Street. It’s about time this war became civilized.

  Leading his men down the alley, he brought them into an area of trash yards and outhouses. They climbed over wood fences, broke open the back door of an empty hardware store, and came out the front door, having turned the barricade. They flung themselves down on the porch and commenced firing. Before the Rebs knew what was happening they were shot down, a good half dozen of them, including the two artillerymen manning the Parrot gun. The barricade taken, Brasil and his men received the salutes of cavalrymen riding past.

  By the time they had advanced to the town square, bluecoats were pouring in from all directions. Smithfield was taken. The men gave a cheer, and after twenty minutes of milling about they fell in again to continue the march.

  AT THE WEST end of town the Rebs had burned the bridge across the Neuse River. The march was halted, and the men sat down on the hillside. The upstate yokels smoked their pipes, and Brasil lay with his hands behind his head and stared at the sky while the engineers brought up their pontoons. Brasil was beginning to enjoy his command even if it was this hapless bunch of nine Dutchmen as he suffered now. This truth might have embarrassed him even a month ago, but he had to acknowledge that he had become a good soldier. From nowhere, it seemed, he had developed a sense of responsibility. His idea of army life was no longer entirely personal, no longer just a matter of looking out for himself in any and all situations. He chuckled, thinking what his da’ would say or his uncles, the Brasils being a family of pure spitting copperheads. But an army was an interesting thing and he was beginning to take pride in it, as if it in some way belonged to him, or he to it. He thought he could do well enough running a company or even a regiment. He knew that only West Pointers became generals, but there was a lot more to an army than its generals.

  When the bridge was across, the marchers continued down the road to Raleigh. They passed burned-out farmhouses, crops that had been trampled. Children barefoot and half dressed, with their thumbs in their mouths, stared at the soldiers from porch shacks. In the fields well back from the road was the occasional plantation, shuttered and with no sign of life. All along the march, black people came down to the road to walk along with the troops and dance and shout and praise God.

  Brasil realized that he was happy. He felt accomplished—never before in life had his rebellious nature rewarded him with that feeling.

  An early camp was made in the meadows about ten miles east of Raleigh. The rifles were stacked, the tents pegged, and cook fires started. Some of the men went down to the river to cool their feet. Brasil was sitting before his pup tent thinking he might do the same when he heard a noise that he couldn’t identify. It definitely wasn’t gunfire, it was a harsh but smallish sound, like wind blowing through a window that was opened a crack. But then he did hear muskets going off, and he grabbed his rifle and stood up because it was louder now, and he could hear voices shouting, and some of the sound was almost in distinct shrieks, and it was getting closer, coming from the east back toward Smithfield where most of the army still sat. All the troops in his company were on their feet. Some came runn
ing up from the river, and everyone was asking everyone else what in hell was going on. And then they heard horns blowing, the regimental band tubas humphing and the trumpets pealing, and it was nothing like music, everything was going crazy, those were tin cups beating against tin plates, and it seemed everyone in the army knew what had happened except Bobby Brasil, until a cavalry officer came riding through, waving his hat, rearing his horse, circling, and yelling Hazoo! like a maniac, and then a couple more just like him, completely lacking in the dignity of their rank, Brasil thought, until he heard the actual words, or put them together from all the yelps and hats flying into the air, and idiot soldiers dancing with one another, and it was now become like a great hoarse male chorus echoing over the hills, with muskets shooting into the sky like firecrackers and the whole Army of the West in voice sounding the ground up through his feet like a cathedral organ in deep basso tones as if it was even God joining in celebrating the surrender. Because that’s what it was: Lee had surrendered, and it was over, the damn war was over! The roar was enough to scare the birds out of the trees, it was enough to scare the rabbits into their holes, the foxes into their dens, and the Rebs into their cups. Brasil sank to the ground in the cross-legged Indian fashion and put his hands over his ears so he could hear himself thanking God for letting him survive. I thank you, God, for allowing this city lad to survive, he prayed, and, yes, he was joyful, of course, and someone came along and picked him up off the ground and soon he was yelping and dancing around with the rest of them, and joining his company commander, who was serving drinks out of his tent, and he lifted his tin cup to Father Abraham and again to Uncle Billy Sherman and again to the Grand Army of the Republic, while thinking under his grin that it was just his luck for the war to end when he had finally found something for himself that he could believe in.