Shattered Nation

by Jeffrey Brooks

  It is therefore not improbable that Early shall be dispatched to reinforce the rebel army at Atlanta. Do not be surprised if you find within the next two weeks enemy reinforcements on your front in number mentioned above.

  General Grant

  “What is it?” McPherson asked.

  “Telegram from Grant. He says that Jubal Early and twenty-five thousand men may soon reinforce Johnston.”

  McPherson pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “That could certainly complicate matters.”

  “An understatement if there ever was one, James. We have a bit more than a hundred thousand men. Our latest intelligence says that Johnston has a bit more than fifty thousand. If Grant is right and Early is on his way to reinforce Johnston, we may soon find ourselves confronted with an army of seventy thousand rebels.”

  “Behind some of the strongest fortifications in the world, no less.”

  Sherman nodded as he did some calculations in his head. “They would need to rest and refit for a few days, I would guess. And obviously moving them by railroad all the way from Virginia to Georgia would take awhile.”

  McPherson thought a moment. “When Longstreet and his two divisions were transferred from Virginia to Georgia just before the Battle of Chickamauga, it took them two weeks, if I recall correctly.”

  “If they do as well this time around, we might reasonably expect Early’s arrival in early August, then.”

  “It’s possible that we will be in Atlanta by then,” McPherson offered hopefully.

  “We’ll see,” Sherman replied. “That depends on many factors. I’d actually welcome this reinforcement of Johnston if it would get him to come out of his trenches and fight us in the open field. But he’s too smart to do that, the old fellow. He’ll stick behind his trenches, just as he has done every day since the start of this whole thing.”

  “If Johnston is reinforced, he might use his newfound strength to hold the defenses of Atlanta more securely, while maneuvering outside of the city with a large force that might be used to threaten our flanks.”

  “Or worse, our supply lines to the north. Were I in Johnston’s shoes and received twenty-five thousand reinforcements, my strategy would be to send an infantry corps back across the river to cut the Western and Atlantic Railroad. I shall instruct the commanders of all our units guarding the supply lines to strengthen the blockhouses protecting major bridges and be more diligent in sending out cavalry patrols.”

  “That should go without saying,” McPherson said.

  “Yes, yes, of course. But I wish to be as careful as possible.”

  “You know, Cump, it’s entirely possible that no rebel reinforcements are coming from Virginia. Grant might have sent us that message merely to advise us of the possibility.”

  “I know. But I always tend to assume the worst case scenario. That way, I shall never be surprised.”

  Sherman sighed and looked down at the map. His army was all on the south side of the river now, aside from a few units guarding the crossings to make sure the rebels did not try to launch a raid to the north bank. After several days of enormous logistical effort, sufficient supplies had been built up to allow for a period of unrestricted maneuver. More bridges were being built all the time, so he had little to worry about on that score.

  If twenty thousand rebel reinforcements were on their way to Johnston, it seemed to Sherman that the best course of action would to move forward even more quickly than he had planned. That way, he could defeat Johnston and capture Atlanta before the additional troops had time to arrive.

  It was time to move forward again.

  *****

  It had been a long time since McFadden had ridden a horse. In order to enable him to attend this foolish dinner with the Turnbows, Captain Collett had loaned him his own mount. McFadden was beginning to silently curse his commander for doing so. The animal reared up with annoying regularity and neighed loudly at the slightest disturbance. It was clear that the horse did not like McFadden one bit, a feeling he heartily reciprocated.

  He was riding down Marietta Street, which paralleled the route of the Western and Atlantic Railroad into the center of Atlanta. Everywhere around him, the city was in a tumult. The news that the enemy had crossed the Chattahoochee, the last major natural barrier that had shielded Atlanta from the Yankees, had clearly sent the civilian population into a panic. Everywhere McFadden looked, frantic people were loading up wagons with every conceivable household item, both useful and useless. The noise was loud and irritating.

  McFadden frowned when he saw more than a few healthy-looking men in civilian clothes hauling furniture out of their homes. Why, he wondered, were these men not in uniform and serving on the front lines? The horses hitched to the wagons also appeared to be in considerably better shape than those belonging to the army’s cavalry and artillery. He shook his head in disgust. If these men were not willing to put their own lives and fortunes on the line in defense of the Confederacy, why should he and his comrades shed their blood to protect them?

  He looked with skepticism at the black slaves helping their white masters load up the wagons and the black teamsters sitting on the front benches ready to drive the horses away. In the confusion, and with the Yankees so near at hand, he imagined that several of these slaves would take the opportunity to escape. After all, he would do the same in their place.

  Off to the east, pillars of black, inky smoke rose into the sky. Despite the proximity of the Union army, some of the war industries of Atlanta continued to work without letup, their factories churning out ammunition, rifles and cannon. If there were any truth to the rumors McFadden had heard, though, a good portion of the heavy machinery had already been evacuated south to Macon or east to Augusta on the orders of General Johnston. He wondered whether this was just a sensible precaution or evidence that Atlanta would soon be abandoned.

  As he continued southeast, he came closer to the immense structure known as the Car Shed, where three railroad lines came together. He could hear steam whistles of locomotives either coming or going and saw immense crowds of people milling about all around the building, no doubt hoping to find a way to board one of the departing trains. The only thing McFadden saw that was even somewhat heartening was a battery of heavy artillery being unloaded from the trains and hitched up to wagons. He figured that the big guns were to be taken north and incorporated into the defenses of Atlanta.

  He passed on, entering the business district known as Five Points. Uniformed men stood about, leaning on their rifles and eyeing him warily. McFadden assumed that these were the provost marshal’s men, whom Collett had advised him to avoid. Though ostensibly charged with ensuring law and order in Atlanta, they were said to be little more than brigands with a tendency to get drunk and steal from just about everyone. He rode on, avoiding eye contact.

  McFadden struggled to concentrate and remember the directions to the Turnbow home that he had been given. Having departed the camp of the 7th Texas at around eleven in the morning, it was almost three in the afternoon when he finally reined in the horse in front of the house.

  It was a lovely house, picturesque without being overly ostentatious. The front door was sided by two small pillars in the Greek style and the brick structure of the entire house was completely white-washed. Unlike many of the finer houses in Atlanta, it did not have a second floor balcony. To McFadden, the home seemed designed more for comfort than display. Compared with the noise and confusion everywhere else, the Turnbow house seemed strangely quiet and calm, as if a bubble had descended to protect it from the adjoining chaos.

  He dismounted and tied his horse to the fence by the sidewalk. He then paused, looking around. With all that was going on, someone desperate to flee the city was likely to steal the animal. But if Collett lost his horse, the captain would have only himself to blame, since he had pressured McFadden into going to this dinner in the first place.

  McFadden opened the small, wrought-iron gate and began walking up to the door. He then stopped
. In concentrating on the city and the chaos sweeping through it, he had almost forgotten why he had come into Atlanta in the first place. He had thought the invitation to dinner at the Turnbows was rather ludicrous, coming as it did in the middle of a war and only a few miles from the front lines. Still, McFadden had been serving in the Confederate Army long enough to have learned that the line between the ludicrous and the mundane was often quite blurry.

  The last time McFadden had sat down to a proper dinner in a respectable household had been before the war. Not only had that been years before, but he had been an entirely different man then. But he desperately wanted to see Annie again, for reasons he found difficult to articulate. He had only met her once, and then only for a few fleeting minutes, yet the very thought of her made his pulse quicken and his face flush.

  It had not just been a physical attraction, he was sure. Granted, she had been stunning, perhaps the most beautiful woman McFadden had ever seen. Even in their brief conversation, he had sensed that something more had been at work, something that had warmed his heart in a way he had not experienced since before his family had been killed.

  And then there was Robert Turnbow. The gratitude he had displayed toward McFadden for saving his life and that of his daughter had also sparked something in him. For the past few years, those who had expressed any kind of admiration for McFadden had done so only in regards to his ability to kill. To have a man like Robert Turnbow hold him in esteem for something other than slaughtering other human beings was a new and refreshing experience.

  He glanced down at himself one final time. The new uniform that Collett had provided fit reasonably well, but he was suddenly overcome with concern that it had become unacceptably dirty during his ride from the regiment’s encampment into the city. However, if that were the case, there was nothing he could do about it now. Steeling himself, McFadden knocked loudly on the door.

  A moment later, a black woman in her early fifties opened the door, staring out at him with a cautious gaze.

  “Sergeant McFadden?” she asked.

  He nodded but said nothing. He never felt very comfortable around slaves.

  “Well, come on in,” she said, stepping aside. McFadden stepped inside the house, looking around uncomfortably at the elegant furniture with which the parlor was filled. “The Turnbow ladies will be with you shortly. Mr. Turnbow is in the study. If you will follow me, please.”

  She led him through a short hall to the left of the foyer and he emerged a few moments later in what looked like a library. The walls were covered with tall bookcases filled to capacity with volumes bound in attractive red leather. Mr. Turnbow was standing at one end of the room, a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  “Ah, Sergeant McFadden!” he said with a warm smile. He set his glass down and walked over, extending his hand. “I am very glad to see you again.”

  McFadden shook his hand firmly. “I am glad to see you, too, sir. I greatly appreciate the invitation to dinner.”

  “Not at all. After all, I owe you my life, as does my daughter. Set against that, dinner is a small matter. A whiskey?”

  “Certainly,” McFadden said, gazing at the bookshelves as Turnbow poured his glass. “You have a fine library, sir,” McFadden said. “The leather binding of these books is quite impressive.”

  “Thank you. A good many of the volumes belonged to my father-in-law. He spent a fair amount of his fortune on these books, though I doubt if he ever read more than a handful of them. He was one of the first white settlers to arrive in the Atlanta area. Made his money by helping bring the railroad to the city.”

  “A pioneer,” McFadden said with admiration.

  “Yes, I suppose you could call him that. But you would know more about pioneers than I do, wouldn’t you? What with being a Texan and all.”

  McFadden nodded.

  “When did your family arrive in Texas?”

  “In 1837, just after the revolution freed it from Mexican rule. They left a comfortable life in Scotland for the Texas frontier.”

  Turnbow’s eyes narrowed. “Why did they do that?”

  “My father was a Presbyterian minister. He wanted to help establish the Presbyterian Church in Texas.”

  This was only partially true. His father had owned, or at least had thought he owned, a healthy bit of land in the Scottish Highlands. Due to legal trickery, he had lost control of the land during the Highland Clearances, which saw large numbers of small landowners lose their property to wealthier men backed by corrupt government officials.

  His father had not told him about that anguish until he had been older. McFadden remembered his father as a strong and happy man, but he had seen both sadness and anger in his eyes when he had told the story of the hired thugs who had arrived at their home and told them that they had to leave.

  “You’re Presbyterian?” Turnbow asked in some surprise.

  “I am,” McFadden replied. He found the question slightly alarming and worried that Turnbow might be the type of man who found certain churches objectionable. He also was not sure if his answer was, strictly speaking, true any longer. He had not felt any particular religious impulse since his family had been killed.

  Turnbow’s mouth curled into a wide smile. “So are we,” he said with delight. “Coincidences abound, I say.”

  “So they do, sir.”

  “Your parents? They are still in Texas?” Turnbow asked.

  McFadden shook his head. “No. They were killed by Comanches in the spring of `62.”

  “I am sorry,” Turnbow said. It was not an empty platitude. His voice was respectful, speaking as one man does to another.

  McFadden shrugged. Comanche raiders were a fact of life on the Texas frontier, rather like the thunderstorms that would occasionally come booming out of the northwest with scarcely an hour’s warning. That made the loss no less heartbreaking, though.

  “I thought the threat of the Comanches had been eliminated,” Turnbow said.

  “Before the war, to a degree. They had been pushed into the western part of the state. But when the Yankees started the war, the system which had secured the frontier fell apart. They’ve been raiding the settlements of central Texas with impunity for the last few years.”

  Turnbow nodded. “The Yankees have much to answer for, certainly.”

  McFadden decided to move the conversation in a more suitable direction. “My father was an educated man and had a library of his own. I doubt it would have filled a single one of your bookshelves, however.”

  “You are too kind.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did your father have any particular favorites?”

  “Mostly theology,” McFadden said, a hint of the dismissive entering his voice. “But he loved Robert Burns. So did my mother. My mother taught me to read with the Bible in one hand and the collected works of Burns in the other.”

  “I assume that regular schooling was hard to come by on the Texas frontier?”

  “Nonexistent, rather. Everything I know I learned from reading on my own and I owe the ability to read to my parents.”

  “Well, you are surprisingly articulate for a sergeant.”

  McFadden momentarily thought that perhaps he should have found this comment insulting, but he did not. For one thing, he was only a sergeant because he wanted to be a sergeant, having turned down previous offers of promotion. Furthermore, Turnbow was only being honest.

  McFadden’s eyes were drawn to a portrait hanging on the western wall of the study. It was of a man possessed of broad shoulders, wavy black hair, and eyes that burned with a passionate intensity. He wore the uniform of the Continental Army from the age of the American Revolution.

  “Who is he?” McFadden asked, waving his whiskey glass toward the portrait.

  Turnbow smiled. “That is Thaddeus Kościuszko.”

  “Kościuszko?” McFadden asked, struggling to make sure he pronounced the name correctly. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  “One of the greatest men in history
!” Turnbow said with enthusiasm. “A Polish noble and a patriot of the highest order. He was so moved by reading the Declaration of Independence that he left Europe and came to America to join our fight against the British. He served as the chief engineer for George Washington. After the war was over, he returned to Poland and fought against the Russians, pursuing the dream of an independent Poland.”

  “Impressive,” McFadden said. “A man can hold his head high if he fights in a single revolution. To fight in two different revolutions represents an even greater service to mankind.”

  “I should say so.”

  “I’m embarrassed to admit that I know nothing of this man. I may have heard his name before, but I could have told you nothing about him other than what I have just heard you say.”

  Turnbow thought for a moment, then limped over to one of the bookshelves and swiftly withdrew a volume. He extended it to McFadden.

  “A biography of Kościuszko,” he said with a smile. “My gift to you, Sergeant McFadden.”

  McFadden shook his head. “I thank you, sir, but I could not accept a gift from you.”

  “Nonsense. You saved my life. The least I can do is give you a book.”

  He took the book, rubbing his hand with admiration over the elegant red morocco leather. “I thank you very much, sir.”

  “I am glad for you to have it.”

  “If I may ask, sir, why do you have his portrait on your wall? Is it simply due to admiration or is there some other connection?”

  “The father of my father-in-law was one of the Polish soldiers who came to America with Kościuszko.”

  “Your wife is Polish?”

  “As Polish as Frederick Chopin, I should say.”

  McFadden had no idea who Chopin was, but decided against asking for fear of looking foolish. “And your own family, sir? From what country do your ancestors come?”

  Turnbow’s eyebrows arched slightly upwards and he took another sip of whiskey. “I don’t know, actually.”