Shattered Nation

by Jeffrey Brooks

  As he rode to the Turnbow house, for the first time in quite awhile, he had the time to think about all the events that had transpired over the last few days. He still could not quite believe that he had come so close to finding Cheeky Joe only to abandon his quest when he became aware of the deceptive Union movement. Why had he thought that his efforts to warn the high command would matter in the end? Surely, he should have expected Hardee, Cleburne and the rest to discover what Grant had been doing on their own. From what Cleburne had said, they had been entirely unaware that anything was afoot until McFadden had told them. Cleburne had even told him that he deserved credit for saving the city. McFadden was far too modest to acknowledge anything like that.

  From what McFadden understood, the two Union armies now attacking the city were the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Cumberland. The Army of the Ohio, near as he could tell, was nowhere nearby. That meant that Cheeky Joe was nowhere nearby. He tried to put the thought out of his mind. He had had a chance to avenge his brother, but now that chance was gone, perhaps forever. He had paid the price for doing what he felt was his duty.

  Since coming back, he had seen his beloved 7th Texas destroyed in battle. Of the remnant of Granbury’s men that had attached itself to him, Pearson and Montgomery were the only survivors of the old Lone Star Rifles and only six other men were from the old regiment. The other half dozen or so had been picked up from other Texas regiments. The disorganization and loss of so many men appalled him. As soon as he confirmed that the Turnbows were all right, he intended to get back to his men and then try to link up with whatever other Texas troops still remained in the ranks of the Confederate forces holding Atlanta.

  He thought about Cleburne for a moment and wondered why his division commander had taken such an obvious interest in him. Being the man who had captured George Thomas at Peachtree Creek had obviously put his name in Cleburne’s mind and bringing the news of Grant’s movement toward Atlanta had kept it there. But that didn’t explain why he had asked McFadden to ride out with him as his color bearer to meet with General McPherson. Perhaps he simply happened to be the most convenient nearby officer.

  He turned right down Hunter Street, now heading southeast. In the distance, he could see the shattered ruins of the Car Shed. The last time he had seen it, the rail depot had been bustling with people and activity as innumerable crates of ammunition and supplies had been offloaded from the trains and countless refugees had been trying to gain space on the next train out of the city. A series of direct hits had reduced the building to a heap of rubble.

  The streets were largely deserted. In front of a few houses, white women and an occasional black man sat with stern expressions on the porches, nestling shotguns on their laps, a clear warning for looters to stay away. A small number of people went to and fro with baskets of food, having obviously gone forth to find something to eat. McFadden nodded politely to each passerby, but no one seemed interested in talking. The fear hung so heavily over the city that he could almost smell it.

  The sound of breaking glass caught his attention. He glanced at a nearby house and saw three men, two of them in Confederate uniforms, breaking the window panes on a window and forcing their way inside. Clearly, they were looting. He glanced around, seeing no provost marshals or, for that matter, anyone else of any authority. Presumably the men were deserters trying to help themselves to plunder in the midst of the surrounding chaos. He considered trying to stop them, seeing as he was an officer, but thought better of it. If men were willing to desert the colors in order to pillage, they would just as likely be willing to kill an irritating officer. McFadden rode on.

  He thought back to the extraordinary conversation between Cleburne and McPherson. He had never heard anything like it. Until quite recently, McFadden had given relatively little consideration to the cause for which he fought. As far as he had been concerned, he had fought simply to fight. He had sought to burn away the rage and hate that consumed him. Meeting Annie had quenched that rage, though.

  This had left him with the disquieting question. What exactly was he fighting for now?

  It was obvious to McFadden that Cleburne knew what he was fighting for. The general was fighting to free the South, his adopted nation, from what he perceived as Northern tyranny. His commander obviously had no interest in the slavery question. Neither did McFadden or, for that matter, most of the men in the Confederate army. For all the talk about Northern tyranny, however, what had the North done before the war that might be considered tyrannical? At most, the Republican Party had been making noise about preventing slavery from expanding into the territories. This did not strike McFadden as especially tyrannical. It certainly would have had no impact on him. How, then, could the secession of the Southern states have been justified in the first place?

  McFadden was not an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, but the man was obviously no despot. After all, he knew all about despots. His parents had taught him about the kings of England who had ravaged Scotland until defeated at the Battle of Bannockburn. In reading the Kosciuszko biography, he had learned about the czars of Russia who had done the same to Poland. President Lincoln could not be compared with such tyrants, no matter what the politicians of the South said.

  As with Cleburne, McFadden’s decision to fight for the Confederacy had nothing to do with slavery. But what did motives matter? He was fighting for slavery, whether he wanted to or not. McFadden had told Cleburne as much: had there been no slavery, there would have been no war. If the Confederacy triumphed, slavery would triumph. If the Confederacy were defeated, slavery would be defeated. McFadden and Cleburne both might try to deny it, and so might tens of thousands of other Confederate soldiers, but it was the truth.

  In a certain sense, McFadden and Cleburne were the same. They were both outsiders. McFadden was isolated from his fellows by the wall his heart had erected around him in the wake of the tragedies of 1862. Cleburne, for his part, was isolated by his foreign birth and his lack of understanding of Southern society.

  Even the Yankee general, James McPherson, had sensed this when he had called out Cleburne as an Irishman rather than a Southerner. McFadden remembered the conviction he had seen in the face of General McPherson. He realized that he actually admired the Yankee, which was a surprising thought. McPherson had clearly believed the preservation of the Union and the destruction of slavery were sacred causes for which he would have happily sacrificed his life. For a long time, McFadden had seen the Yankees as little better than barbarians come to loot and burn. He had at times grudgingly admitted a respect for their courage in battle, but that had been the limit of any positive feelings he had held toward them.

  In McPherson, though, McFadden had seen Cleburne’s doppelganger. Cleburne’s idealistic motives revolved around his conviction that the South must be free to determine its own destiny. McPherson’s motives, no less idealistic, revolved around his belief that the Union must be preserved and slavery must be extinguished. Neither man was entirely right or entirely wrong. Whatever idealism the South possessed was tarnished by its connection to slavery, while that of the North was tarnished, at least in McFadden’s mind, by burned towns, destroyed farms, and shattered lives all across the South.

  The biography of Thaddeus Kosciuszko was still in his knapsack. He envied the Polish patriot. Fighting the British in America and the Russians in Poland, Kosciuszko had not been burdened by doubts and questions such as those now tormenting McFadden. He had simply fought as a pure son of liberty, both for his own native Poland and for the whole of mankind. McFadden found himself wondering which side Kosciuszko would have chosen in the conflict between North and South. From his reading, McFadden knew that the man had been a ferocious opponent of slavery.

  What looked like a regiment emerged from a side street and moved at the double quick past him, heading to the west. Presumably they had been ordered to move from one position on the defenses to another, more threatened sector. He exchanged a quick salute with the captain leading
the small column, but said nothing. The looks on the faces of the men, officers and enlisted men alike, were all pensive. Trapped and besieged, with a massive enemy attack likely to come at any moment, the Southern troops holding Atlanta were all under a severe psychological strain.

  McFadden shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Perhaps it was not wise to question what he fought for. If he did, it might drive him insane. He had a duty to his commander, Patrick Cleburne, as well as the men under his command. He had a duty to protect Annie Turnbow and her family. Moreover, he needed to survive the war so that he might have some future with Annie when the guns finally fell silent.

  The thought brought a smile to his face, as did the fact that he was getting closer to the Turnbow house. Despite the animal’s fatigue, he kicked his horse into a trot, now more anxious than ever to see Annie. As he turned from Hunter Street onto Mitchell Street, which would bring the house into view, his heart turned to ice.

  The Turnbow house was nothing but a charred and burned-out shell.

  *****

  September 26, Afternoon

  “It’s confirmed, sir,” the staff officer was saying. “There is at least a brigade of Union cavalry on the railroad just west of Decatur. They’ve been tearing up the track for the last few hours. The telegraph line has been cut, too.”

  Cleburne nodded, having expected the news. With East Point lost to the Yankees and enemy cavalry on the Augusta railroad, Atlanta was now completely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. Not only could the railroads no longer bring any men or material in or out of the city, but the severance of the telegraph lines meant that he could no longer send or receive messages. Cleburne was entirely on his own, as cut off from the outside world as a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Cleburne had set up his headquarters in City Hall. It made pretty good sense. The building was centrally located, allowing him to remain abreast of developments on the southern, western, and northern defenses of the city with equal ease. It also was spacious enough to accommodate the entire staff.

  He leaned over a large map that showed the city and its defenses. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the staff officers had done a fairly good job of reorganizing the troops. His old division, now under the command of General Granbury, held most of the southern portion of the defenses. What was left of Bate’s division, now under the command of Finley, held the southwestern portion and much of the western section. Walker’s division held the remainder of the western defenses, the northwestern portion, and some of the northern sector. Maney’s division, composed entirely of Tennessee troops, held the remainder of the northern sector, although one brigade had been detached to serve as the emergency reserve.

  The eastern sector was held by the five thousand men of the Georgia Militia. Aside from the enemy cavalry reported near Decatur, there did not seem to be much Union activity on the eastern side of the city, leading Cleburne to believe that the area would not be subject to any serious attack. Still, he needed to maintain some sort of defense there and the militia seemed ideal for the task.

  According to reports sent back by the two divisions that had fought at East Point, the two days of fighting had cost them about four thousand casualties. Though they had inflicted more than twice that number of casualties on the enemy, these losses meant that he had only around fourteen thousand men left to defend the city of Atlanta. It was estimated that Grant had between fifty and sixty thousand under his command.

  Despite the loss of so much artillery at East Point, Cleburne still had plenty of cannon in the Atlanta defenses, as each redoubt along the lines held at least two guns. Another comforting fact was that he had plenty of ammunition for both the infantry and the artillery. The Atlanta depots bulged with crates of munitions and Johnston had not had enough rolling stock to take it all with him when he had departed for Alabama. Whatever problems his men were soon to face, running out of bullets and shells would not be among them.

  He lifted his head as the sound of artillery fire suddenly increased in intensity. The Yankees had continued throwing shells into the center of town, which was making it more difficult to move troops from one location to another. The fire now sounded like it was being concentrated on the southern defenses, near where his own division was posted. He felt a tingling of fear. If the Union forces launched a determined attack on that sector, his men might be too worn down to beat it back.

  The men of his own division and that of the late General Bate were exhausted and many of them had suffered minor wounds. The men under the command of Walker and Maney had not experienced serious fighting as yet, having been called on only to repel probing attacks from the Army of the Cumberland. He quickly wrote out a dispatch to General Walker.

  General Walker,

  You are directed to pull a brigade out of the line and send it at once to General Granbury. His section is weak. Extend the lines of your remaining units to cover any gap thus created. The choice of which brigade to send is left to you.

  General Cleburne

  Cleburne had two copies of the order made, then sent off two couriers to take them to Walker, instructing them to take different routes. With so much confusion in the streets of the city, and with Union artillery shells continuing to fall randomly throughout Atlanta, he did not want to risk one courier becoming lost or incapacitated.

  His thoughts turned to Hardee, lying unconscious in a hospital that had been set up in the Second Baptist Church, just across the street. His leg had been amputated sometime during the morning and he had survived the operation. Now the waiting game began. Cleburne had asked the hospital staff to periodically update him about Hardee’s condition, but he could not recall hearing anything for the past two hours or so. In any event, he had far too much on his mind to be distracted, even if it was regarding the life of his closest friend.

  Over an hour passed. Cleburne and the corps staff officers frantically tried to do the work that would have taxed three times as many men. He was busy sending a message to Mayor Calhoun, responding in the affirmative to a request that he issue some of the army rations to hungry civilians, when one of the couriers he had sent to Walker returned, a dismayed look on his face. Without a word, the man handed him Walker’s reply. It chilled Cleburne’s heart to read it.

  General Cleburne,

  I have received your message and respectfully decline to dispatch the brigade. Please be advised that I shall not respond to any further such messages, as I do not consider myself under your command.

  General Walker

  *****

  September 26, Evening

  McFadden galloped up to the sound of the firing and rapidly dismounted, a shell exploding scarcely fifteen yards to the left of him as he did so. Not wanting to bother with the horse any longer, he smacked its flank, causing it to canter away on its own.

  Granbury ran up when he saw him.

  “About time,” the general said with a grin. “Enjoy the time with your lady friend?” He instantly became more serious, however, when he saw the vengeful expression on McFadden’s face. Almost timidly, Granbury pointed to a part of the line. “There are the survivors of the 7th Texas. Twenty five men, all told. We haven’t seen either Major Collett or Lieutenant Russell since yesterday, so they’re all yours.”

  McFadden gave a single, sharp nod and jogged over to his men. A quick glance revealed that Pearson and Montgomery were there, but he didn’t see any other men from the Lone Star Rifles. Some of them waved or nodded when they saw him, but he did not acknowledge their greetings.

  The men were firing from under the head-log at a group of attacking Union troops. The Yankees were a bit more than a hundred yards away and in great numbers, but their attack was not being pressed. The bluecoats had halted their approach and were now simply blazing away at the Confederate defenses with musketry. It happened many times in combat; men could not gird themselves to push forward yet could not bring themselves to retreat. The Southerners were delighted, pouring fire into the ra
nks of their enemies with only a minimal chance of being hit in return.

  McFadden spent less than a minute looking around at the remnants of the once proud 7th Texas. He didn’t give any orders or say anything. Then, he pulled his pistol out of its holster and without any preamble simply clambered up over the head-log and stood tall on top of the parapet. He quickly fired the gun six times in the general direction of the enemy formation, but they were so far away as to be out of effective range. Bullets zipped past his head and smacked into the parapet near his feet. Once he fired off his sixth round, he started to reload.

  “Get down, Lieutenant!” Montgomery yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  McFadden ignored him. The rest of his men, confused looks on their faces, called for him to find cover, but he paid no attention to them, either. Completing his reload, he again fired off his shots. Even at the great distance, he saw a Union soldier fall from what he was reasonably sure was his shot. Dark elation filled him. As he fired his weapon, he let forth a scream of primal rage. All that was animal in him had been unleashed.

  He could see Union officers gesturing at him, yelling for their men to shoot him down. A demonic smile crossed his face, for that was exactly what he wanted them to do. The incinerated corpses he had found inside the Turnbow house had seen to that.

  He was out of bullets, so he threw his pistol back behind the parapet and drew his sword. He was just about to charge off the parapet toward the Yankees when he felt an arm wrap itself around his upper chest. It yanked him roughly backwards before he could react. He was pulled down onto the parapet, landing with a crash that sent up a cloud of dirty dust. He then felt himself being dragged over the head-log and back down into the space behind the parapet.