Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 Read online

  I must strike now, it must be one solid blow, every available man must be brought forward. The cost will be horrific, a frontal assault straight in, most likely on Fort Stevens. How many will I lose? Five, perhaps ten thousand, upward of a quarter of my men in half a day. One final, terrible price. With luck the garrison will panic once the outer shell breaks and the city itself can be taken then without the grim prospect of a street-by-street fight.

  Lincoln? Any dream of capturing him was remote. He would remove himself, take ship, and escape. It would not be the act of a coward. It would be a political necessity, though the abandoning of the capital would spell his doom nevertheless.

  He knew that was yet another reason why President Davis was coming north, with the hope of a triumphal march into the White House, there to receive the ambassadors of every European power.

  That would be the deciding moment, when word of the fall of Washington was passed on to Europe. Recognition, at least by France and the Hapsburgs, would be certain and, as it was in the winter of 1777 after the British surrender at Saratoga, so it would be in the late summer of 1863. Military victory would lead to diplomatic recognition and support that would then lead to the final victory.

  England would not join the others. The antislavery movement in England outweighed any economic or balance-of-power considerations.

  He knew that with the perception of victory now so close, any suggestion that the South counter the Emancipation Proclamation with its own announcement of some form of manumission would fall upon deaf ears. But to do so at this moment of victory would strengthen their hand, and perhaps sway England as well. Then it truly would be a final blow.

  This is not my arena, he realized. This is a political, a social question; I must focus on the military—and he pushed the contemplation aside.

  Take Washington, then let Grant come east to that news. With good fortune there would be no fight with him, for the war would already be over.

  Lee blew out die candles, left the table, and knelt on the hard, rough plank floor, lowering his head in silent prayer.

  "Thy Will be done," he finally whispered and, curling up on the sofa, he drifted into exhausted sleep.

  The White House

  July 16 1863

  It was nearly midnight. President Lincoln stood alone, gazing out of the second-floor office window. The grounds of the executive mansion were a garrison this night, artillery pieces positioned at the four corners, a second battery positioned and unlimbered on Pennsylvania Avenue, along with four companies of regular infantry encamped on the lawn facing Lafayette Square. Stanton had actually wanted the troops to dig in, to build barricades, an indignity to the building and to the position. The president had refused.

  Across the street the lights of the Treasury Building were ablaze, couriers riding up with a clatter of hooves, muddy water splashing. Officers came and went, each one with purposeful stride, as if the entire fate of the nation rested upon them this night as indeed it might.

  He looked back over his shoulder. John Hay, his twenty-five-year-old secretary, was asleep, curled up on a sofa. The house was quiet. Mary had insisted, earlier in the evening, that at least Tad should be evacuated, and there had been a row. It had dragged on for nearly an hour, her in tears, saying that he didn't care for the well-being of Taddie and was only thinking of what the newspapers would say.

  She had finally settled down, calling Taddie in to sleep beside her, and now there was peace.

  In part she was right and he knew it, the realization troubling. Every paper would scream a denouncement if he did evacuate his family, ready to point out that while he worried about his own kin, tens of thousands of others had died.

  Evacuation was out of the question, and besides, if it ever did come to capture, he knew that Mary and Tad would be treated with the utmost deference by Lee.

  An outrageous report had just come to him this morning, that Lee's son, taken prisoner last month, was languishing in a dank cell in Fortress Monroe, nearly dead from his wound. He had sent a sharp reprimand to the commandant, and ordered that the prisoner be slated for immediate exchange as a wounded officer. It was not to curry favor. It was simply the civilized thing to do. He knew Lee would do the same without hesitation.

  Strange that the two of us are enemies. I did offer him command of all the Union armies in 1861. A tragedy he turned me down. With his leadership the Union would have been restored quickly and decisively. From the west-facing windows of the White House, he could see Lee's old home, inherited through his wife and now confiscated by the Union, dominating Arlington Heights. Though they were of different backgrounds and social status, he felt an affinity toward the man. He sensed that Lee wished this thing to be ended as well, while across the street there was more than one officer this night who revelled in the power and in the sheer destruction, the opium-like seduction that war could create, the smoke of it seeping into the lungs to control and to poison the mind.

  McClellan was like that, so was Hooker, they loved it, the power, the pageantry, the shrill dreams of glory. Perhaps in another age that illusion might have been real, in the time of Henry V, or of Julius Caesar. At least it seemed that way upon the stage and in paintings. But he remembered Antietam, the first battlefield he had ever walked upon, the air thick with the cloying stench of decay wafting up out of shallow graves, soldiers still burning the carcasses of dead horses, the hospital tents overflowing with wounded and hysterical boys struggling before the final fall into oblivion.

  He had seen it in the eyes of so many women, young girls, vacant-eyed fathers dressed in black. No longer would the gay tunes of a martial band bring a smile to their faces, only the memory of a son, a husband, a boy who had heard that music and marched off... never to return.

  "God, will this ever end?" he whispered.

  "Sir?"

  It was Hay, stirring, looking up at him, ready to return to his desk to write down another memo, another order.

  Lincoln shook his head and made a soothing gesture with long, bony hands, motioning for his loyal secretary to go back to sleep.

  He went back over to his desk and sat down, absently sifting through the pile of papers, documents, and newspapers awaiting his attention. The flow was far heavier than usual, a pile awaiting him every morning, and no matter how fast he attempted to clear it, yet more came in throughout the day and night He pushed the papers back, tilted his chair, and rested his long legs up on the desk.

  The entreaties from members of Congress, those few still in the city and the rest from around the country, would have to be answered, but that could wait The majority were simply doing the usual posturing for the home press, so they could thump their chests and announce how they had advised the president most carefully on this latest crisis.

  The implied threat in more than one letter from Congress was clear. Some were already seeking a way to disenthrall themselves from support of the war, so they could claim all along that they knew the effort to save the Union would be a failure. Others were thundering about who was responsible for the disaster at Union Mills. Several members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War had announced that hearings would be held.

  There was even the issue of who was now in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was dead; Dan Butterfield had just made it back through the lines this morning, Hancock barely surviving. In his own mind he wondered if that army even still existed or should be quietly disbanded, survivors shifted into other commands. Troops were scattered from Harrisburg to the Chesapeake; the only thing protecting that broken remnant and the cities of the North from Lee was the flooded Susquehanna. Nominally, Couch, who commanded the twenty thousand militia hastily gathered at Harrisburg, controlled the district, but the job was far beyond the capability of a general who had asked to be relieved of field command only two months ago.

  Secretary of State Seward was reporting requests from a dozen ambassadors for interviews. Already dispatches were winging to the courts of Europe, with lurid detail
s of the collapse of the Army of the Potomac, and tomorrow more would go out, announcing that the capital was under siege.

  How long?

  Stanton, puffing and wheezing, had arrived earlier in the evening, announcing that Stuart had been spotted in front of Fort Stevens, and then predicting that rain or not, Lee would strike tomorrow.

  He looked back out the window. The steady patter of rain had eased, a damp fog was beginning to roll in from the flooded marshland just below the White House.

  If he attacks, will Heintzelman be able to hold?

  The general was confident, but then again, nearly all of them showed confidence until the shock of battle hit Still, the positions were strong, the men within them dry, well fed, rested, ammunition in abundance. Though they were inexperienced compared to the battle-hardened men of the old Army of the Potomac, his sense of them was that they would fight. They had endured two years of jibes and, when they came into the city on furlough, even brawls with the men of the field army, who denounced the heavy-artillery units as garrison soldiers afraid of a fight.

  Dug in as they were, they'd fight, but there would be precious few reserves, with every fort on a perimeter of thirty miles having to be manned.

  He stood and walked back to the window.

  He wondered how President Madison had felt, standing here, watching as the couriers came riding in, announcing the disaster at Blandensburg, the fact that the British would be in the city by nightfall.

  And yet the republic had survived that. There was never a question of surrender then, nor with George Washington after the fall of Philadelphia, when Congress moved to the frontier outpost of York.

  For Washington in 1777 and Madison in 1814 it had been a question of will. It was the same challenge for him this night

  Tonight, he knew that in a fair part of those states still loyal, will was evaporating, burning away under the heat of this war. As the horrific tally from Union Mills was tapped out to distant telegraph stations across the land, the victory at Vicksburg would be washed away in a sea of mourning and recriminations.

  He was almost grateful that the city was now cut off. The chattering of most of the voices of condemnation or outright surrender would gratefully be silent in this office.

  I could end this tomorrow, he thought. End it and send those boys home. A month, a year from now they would still be alive, for chances are, if this continues, they will die, if not tomorrow or the day after, they will perish nevertheless in the battles still to be fought.

  He thought again of Antietam, the washed-out graves, rotting corpses half out of the ground. He remembered one in particular, obviously a boy of not more than sixteen, face visible in the clay, wisps of blond hair, decaying lips drawn back in a death grimace, silent, granite-like eyes gazing up at him as he rode past Somewhere—in Maine, Ohio, or Indiana— there was a family, sitting in a parlor, who read of that boy, the name in small print, the only sound the tick-tock whisper of the clock marking out the passage of their lives, and in their hearts was the question of why did their boy die? And they were asking that again tonight with more news of defeat Why did my boy die for a cause that seems lost?

  Perhaps they hoped that there was some meaning, some cause, a dream beyond that of any individual, that their son had been drawn into that storm and disappeared forever, and yet there would be ultimate purpose, a deeper grief, that in the end would be replaced by a knowledge that through him, others now lived, that from the rich earth of his grave, something now was given back to all... forever.

  What would they think this night? A logic he had always held in contempt was that the sacrifice to Mars must, at times, be sustained by yet more blood sacrifices to assuage those already dead. To give in was to render meaningless the sacrifice of all those who had already died.

  And yet, this night, he did see truth in it If the war could still be won, then to surrender now would be to render meaningless all the sacrifice gone before, even that sacrifice upon the bloody slopes of Gettysburg and Union Mills.

  Can it be won?

  He thought of two conversations of the last week, both of them so clear in intent, not the self-serving maneuverings of the political circles about him, rather the simple statements of two soldiers who had been there. Henry Hunt, who had witnessed all of it, and in tears had asked that leaders be chosen that were worthy of the men who served beneath them. He and General Haupt, who so coolly and without emotion had said that if the men could be found, he, Haupt, could marshal the supplies and equipment to support them within a matter of weeks.

  That now focused him.

  Grant, more than any other, had proven his worth, and he knew without doubt that here was the general he had sought for two long years. A general who understood what he as the president of a free republic expected to be done by the army of that republic. He knew that Grant fully understood the relationship between a civilian government and its general in the field... that upon accepting command to scrupulously follow the orders of the president, which were simple, at least in concept... relentlessly move forward, unleash the full power of the North, and implement a coordinated military plan to bring about a speedy victory.

  Ultimately though, that decision—the decision to refocus the industrial might of the nation, to place that might into the hands of those few men still willing to volunteer, and to let the frightful dying continue—now rests with me. Do I have the will to see it through?

  He looked down again at the soldiers on the lawn. Several were gathered around a lantern, playing cards, another crowd leaning against a lamppost, trying to read the latest newspaper.

  They will die by my orders, if I have the will to give that next order.

  If I don't, then all meaning to what has gone before is lost. Our continent will fracture apart—and with a sudden clarity he could see all that would follow. Two nations would quickly break into three, for Texas would go its own way again, followed by four, perhaps five nations, as western states broke away. Then there would be war in Mexico and Cuba, for surely the South would turn that way, and war on the West Coast as those states sought to drive out the British north of them. And at some point war yet again, for vengeance, for control of the Mississippi, or over servile revolt and abolitionists who would not give up their cause.

  Yet hundreds of thousands more dead in the century to come. And what of Europe? France would try to stage a return, would goad Spain in as well. The "last best hope of mankind" would become simply like the rest of the world, warring states drenched in centuries of blood, rather than a power that might one day step forward to transform, perhaps even to save, the world.

  And it all rests with me tonight.

  Though the burden was almost beyond a man's ability to tolerate, especially as he gazed down upon those who, tomorrow perhaps, would pay that price, he knew with a startling clarity what he had to do, what history now charged him with doing. With that clear, there was no longer room for doubt.

  "Thy Will be done," he whispered.

  Sitting down on the sofa opposite from Hay he slipped off his shoes, wrapped a shawl around his painfully thin, hunched shoulders, and, lying down, drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  New York City

  July 17 1863

  The ride up from the Jersey City Ferry had been a sobering experience for Gen. Dan Sickles. On the west side of the Hudson River it looked as if all of Lower Manhattan was an inferno. Even from across the river he could hear the rattle of musketry, a sound to be expected on the battlefields of Virginia and Maryland, but here, in his home city?

  Coming up West Fourteenth Street he was confronted by chaos, a torrent of refugees, dragging trunks, pushing wheelbarrows, clutching children, pouring down the thoroughfare, trying to get off the island.

  Stores lining the street had been looted, bolts of cloth from a millinery were draped over lamp-posts, taverns had been completely cleaned out, shattered glass crunched underfoot as the column advanced, while to either side a dozen or
more buildings were burning.

  His lead regiment, the Fifty-seventh Pennsylvania, had pushed ahead an hour ago while he waited for the other trains to disembark. He now marched in surrounded by his boys from the Sixty-third Pennsylvania, the other regiments disembarking behind them. Two companies from Berdan's old command of sharpshooters were along, as well as two batteries of artillery. He had originally planned to use his old Excelsior Brigade but then wisely thought better of it; to bring in New York boys to shoot down their neighbors might cause a backlash. His boys from the old Keystone State, having just fought a losing battle on their native soil, would be in a fierce mood to deal with traitors in their backyard. Also, since there were few Irish in these regiments, that would not become an issue as well.

  As they marched, the Pennsylvania boys, most of them from farms and small villages, looked around wide-eyed at the towering four- and five-story buildings that lined the street, block after block. He could sense they were nervous. It was dark, except for the glare of the fires; panic was in the air, this was not like hunting rebs in the forest or standing on the volley line.

  The column finally turned on to old familiar territory for Sickles—Union Square, Delmonico's at one corner. The Fifty-seventh Pennsylvania was already deployed out into company lines, the men standing at ease, looking about in wonder.

  From every direction civilians were swarming toward them, frightened, crying, asking for shelter. Beleaguered policemen and a few state militia were trying to keep order, telling people to head for the ferries, to get out of the city.

  Up around what he took to be Twentieth Street it sounded like a pitched battle was being fought, flashes of gunfire, buildings burning, a window shattering above him from a bullet.

  His regiments continued to file into the square, the heavy tramp of their hobnailed boots echoing from the cobblestones, a reassuring sound to Dan, a sound of order, of discipline, of his army.