THERE WAS NO CAVALRY BETWEEN THE GREAT MASSES OF INFANTRY. Wilson’s division had moved too far south, well below Lee’s position, had lost themselves in the vast tangles, and finally had run straight into a heavy fight with Stuart. The sounds were hidden by the dense mass of woods, and so no one at Grant’s headquarters knew that they had no screen at all, that down both roads to the west there was nothing but Lee’s army, moving toward them like two hard spikes, driving straight for the exposed flanks of blue.
Meade had moved away from Grant’s headquarters, the camp wagons loaded early and rolled south near a place called the Lacy house. Grant waited up near the river for the approach of Burnside’s corps, still had no reason to expect Lee to be so close.
* * *
THE COFFEE WAS GONE, THE TABLES BEING CLEARED, AND GRANT moved into the tent. He had heard nothing from Meade, could now hear the low rattle of distant muskets, the occasional sharp thunder of a single cannon. He picked up his coat, the plain dark jacket, did not look at the only bit of color, the shoulder straps that carried his three small gold stars. He reached down through his camp chest, felt for the wooden box, pulled it up, opened it, saw the mass of black cigars, more gifts from the people. He grabbed a handful, stuffed them into his coat, put the box down, then paused, reached down again, grabbed the rest, stuffed them into another pocket, thought, This could be a long day.
He moved back into the sharp daylight, pulled his coat around his shoulders, pulled on his dull cotton gloves, saw the headquarters wagons moving out into the road, waiting for his order to move. Around him staff officers moved in unhurried calm, no one concerned about the sounds of the guns. One man sat at a table, writing on a thick brown pad of paper, and Grant saw it was Horace Porter. He moved that way, and the young man stood, saluted, waited for Grant to speak.
Porter was a tall, thin man, handsome, with a small goatee. He had been with McClellan early in the war, was later sent at his own request to the West, where he served with Rosecrans. When Grant replaced Rosecrans at Chattanooga, Porter had built a reputation for organizing artillery, and was ordered to Washington to sit in an office close to Halleck. But Grant remembered the bright young man with affection. Porter had recognized something in Grant that was profoundly different from the sluggishness of his other commanders, and so when Grant was given command of the army, Porter requested to join Grant’s staff. Now he was the most popular man in camp, a clear contrast to the annoying perfection of Rawlins, who pecked and hovered over the whole staff.
“Colonel, have we heard anything from General Burnside?”
Porter shook his head. “No, sir, not since early this morning. He should be at the river crossings by now.”
Grant looked out toward the river. “Yes, he should be.” Grant pulled out a cigar, lit it.
Porter said, “Sir, should we send someone …?”
Grant stared again toward the river. “Yes, Colonel, send another message. Tell General Burnside we are still waiting for him to arrive.” He turned, the low roar of guns still rolling out of the trees far below. “You hear that, Colonel? The party has begun. We are in the wrong place. I do not intend to spend my day sitting here waiting for General Burnside.” He puffed several times on the cigar. Smoke rolled around him, drifting away in a gray cloud. He gripped the cigar hard in his mouth, said in a low voice to himself, “This is ridiculous.”
Porter leaned forward, said, “Sir?”
Grant looked at him now, said, “I have discovered something, Mr. Porter. The general-in-chief apparently is supposed to sit back and wait for people to tell him what is going on. I don’t know what is going on.”
He looked around, saw his horse, held by a groom, began to move that way, stopped, said to Porter, “Colonel, send word to General Burnside that I expect him to join this army at his earliest opportunity. We … are going to see just what General Meade is up to.”
The staff had moved closer, heard his words, and men began to climb horses. Grant took the leather straps from the groom, climbed up as well, moved the horse into the road. The flags appeared, moved into line behind him, and he turned, saw Rawlins now, scrambling to his horse, and Rawlins seemed annoyed, always seemed annoyed, pulled away from some important task.
Grant said, “Colonel Rawlins, give the order. Advance …”
There were hoofbeats, and down the road a man came up fast. Grant saw a courier, tried to recall the man’s name, thought, Sedgwick’s man … Hyde … Colonel Hyde.
Hyde saluted, pulled out a paper, said, “General Grant, General Meade wishes me to report, sir.…” Hyde paused, read from the paper, “The enemy is advancing on the turnpike, and I have ordered General Warren to advance the Fifth Corps and meet him. General Sedgwick has dispatched Getty’s division down to the Plank Road to confront another column of the enemy’s advance. General Hancock is expected to support General Getty.” Hyde stopped, looked at Grant, said, “Sir, we have a fight. The enemy is not at Mine Run as we supposed.”
Grant moved the cigar in his mouth, and there was a silent moment. The musket fire was flowing up toward them now in one steady mass. Grant said, “No, Colonel, it seems General Lee was not content to watch us parade by. But if he wants a fight, then we will give him one.”
HE SAW MEADE, THE WIDE HAT FLOATING ABOVE THE HEADS OF THE staff, men moving in all directions, Meade’s sharp voice blowing across the open yard of the Lacy house.
Grant climbed down from the horse, and Meade saw him, moved quickly, said, “General Grant, it seems certain that despite anything we may have been told, the enemy wishes us to fight on this ground!”
Grant tossed the spent nub of a cigar aside, reached into his pocket, felt for another, thought, We have not been told much of anything. He moved past Meade, looked around the open field, looked to Rawlins, said, “Right here, Colonel. I will make headquarters close to General Meade.”
The staff began to move, the wagons coming forward into the yard. Meade said nothing, stared grimly at Grant as Grant moved by him. Grant moved to a freshly cut tree stump, sat down, lit the cigar. Meade motioned to an aide, and a chair was brought forward. Now a man came forward with a map, and Meade opened it, spread it on the ground, sat heavily in the chair, said, “Sir, we are engaged on two fronts. Up here, the turnpike, Warren has been ordered to press the attack. He is pushing the enemy back to his entrenchments … as best as we can tell.” Grant looked up at Meade, but Meade did not look at him, pointed again at the map. “Down below, the Plank Road, Hancock’s corps is being brought back up to reinforce Getty.…”
Grant said, “Brought back up? From where?”
Meade looked at him now, took a deep breath. “We felt—General Hancock felt—we were led to believe there was a considerable force of the enemy south of our flank. There was some fighting below the Plank Road. It seems … it was only the cavalry. General Hancock has been ordered back up to the Brock Road intersection. We did not believe the enemy was advancing there in force … until Getty was attacked.”
Grant said nothing, thought, The cavalry. That’s what the cavalry is for, to find the enemy, to tell us where he is moving. He felt his hands clench, was beginning to see it now. Lee had waited for him to extend on the roads in the Wilderness, had never intended to wait behind cover. Now they were spread out in a long line, fighting on two fronts. He looked again at the map, at the wide space between the two roads, said in a quiet hiss, “General Meade, how many men do we suppose Lee is sending at us?”
Meade blinked. “I don’t know … we have heard … best guess is about sixty thousand. We have met Ewell’s corps on the turnpike, Hill’s corps on the Plank Road. We had thought Longstreet was further south, down the Brock Road … but he’s not shown himself. Wilson’s cavalry didn’t find anyone but Stuart. It seems … our information may have been wrong about Stuart being at Fredericksburg.”
Grant leaned back, looked across the open ground toward the sound of the fighting, felt the anger growing, thought, Is all our information wrong? Grant looked down
to the map, said, “You haven’t found all of Lee’s army, General. Where’s Longstreet?”
Meade looked down at the map, said quietly, “We … actually don’t know, sir.”
“Then you have not accounted for sixty thousand men. We are not facing an enemy that strong. He has to be spread out pretty thin.”
“There’s no one, as far as we can tell, here.” Meade pointed to the space between the two roads. “We’ve sent some people in there, but the ground is awful. Swamps, gullies, visibility less than fifty yards.”
Grant clamped the cigar tightly in his teeth, said, “If we can’t see through that ground, neither can Lee. We need to punch through there. If he’s on the two roads in strength, we can split his army in two.”
Meade nodded, said, “Well, yes, but I thought … Burnside could move into that gap, protect our flanks. We’re spread pretty thin too.”
Grant stared at Meade, felt the man’s hesitation, the caution flowing across him like a disease. “General, I would suggest you press the enemy’s position. Advance your men on both roads. Order Warren to extend southward, Hancock to extend northward, until they link up in the center. Even without Burnside, we have twice the enemy’s strength. If that means we are spread thin, then he is in much more serious trouble than we are. Is that not plain to you, sir?”
Meade looked at the map, stood suddenly, moved away quickly. Grant watched him, heard the sharp bite in Meade’s voice, orders going out, aides writing furiously, horses beginning to move.
Grant looked down at the map again, pushed it aside with his foot, saw a fat chunk of wood, picked it up, rolled it over in his hand. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pocketknife, began to slice slowly at the wood, small shavings curling away, floating to the ground around his feet. He stared hard at the wood, felt his anger flowing out through his hands, thought, Why can they not understand? Is it that we are too big, there is too much of this army? Are we so cumbersome that it is not possible to move effectively? He was beginning to see the flaw in the army’s organization, that Meade was hesitant to act with his commander so close, and the hesitation was magnified when the enemy was watching you, waiting for it. He thought of chess, a game he had played a few times. But he was impatient, did not enjoy the game, waiting for an opponent to make a move. It was a game he could not control, could not use enough energy, could not press an attack to any advantage. He had thought, Maybe I just don’t understand it. He had a mind for mathematics, but there was more to chess than simply solving a problem, and the frustration of that was too much. Now he had the feeling of being back at the board, facing an opponent who understood the game better than he did, and if the opponent did not have as many pieces, if he was missing, say, his knights, or his queen, then this should be easy. We have the pieces, he thought, with more in reserve. All we have to do is press him, confront him. Is this not, after all, a question of power? His hands worked the knife, the block of wood slowly getting smaller, and he thought of playing that game, of how the game should be played, the extra pieces you could add.…
Porter stood to one side, watched him quietly, saw Grant working the pocketknife furiously, saw the knife now shredding the fingers of Grant’s glove, the dull yellow thread falling around Grant’s feet, his eyes focused far away, staring at an imaginary chessboard.
ACROSS THE THICK MASS OF GREEN AND BROWN, OVER THE DEEP ravines and sloping hillsides, through the dense mass of trees and brush and muddy swamps, the sounds of the growing battle swelled and poured up toward the Lacy house. Along the roads that led west, the commanders sent their men into a fight against an enemy they could not see, the troops feeling their way along the rugged ground, the big guns behind them silent and useless. If the flanks were unprotected, if no coordination could be possible in the thick wood, it did not seem to give either side an advantage.
Throughout the afternoon both sides clawed carefully at each other, blasts of musket fire ripping through small trees. The men who stood and peered out, frustrated by blindness, aiming for some glimpse, for anything that moved, were the first ones cut down, never seeing their enemy. As the lines of battle fell into confusion, the men who survived the deadly whisper of the musket ball were the ones who lay flat, patient and still while leaves and small limbs rained down on their heads, clipped and sliced from the growth above them. If their officers tried to move them, prod them forward, screaming and cursing through the horrible din of the firing, it was the officers who became the best targets, their shiny gold buttons the only part of a man the enemy might see.
All day the two sides had pressed forward and pulled away, men scampering across small rises and down through sharp gullies, only to race back to where they had begun. By late in the afternoon even the officers understood that no one would win this day, that no lines would be carried, no enemy overrun. When the darkness spread over the field, both sides still lay flat, sometimes only yards apart, still firing at small sounds, at the flashes from the men firing back.
Now, between the lines, the wounded began to call out, the screams and the praying echoed through the darkness. The horror of the sounds grew in each man because there could be no help, no one could move forward. Those who could not accept that, who tried to crawl, to reach the voices, if only to take a canteen or pull a man back to the safety of a rock, found a deadly response, that someone was watching, waiting. There would come the brief terrible flash of the musket, the sharp whine of the ball, the smack of lead against tree, against rock, against bone. In the growing darkness each man began to feel that the enemy was all around him, not just the man waiting with the musket, as blind as you, but this horrible ground, the small black spaces around each man, and each man wondered why those men back there—with the fine horses and the hot food, polished brass and white tents—why they would send their soldiers into this terrible place.
12. LEE
LATE EVENING, MAY 5, 1864
IT HAD BEEN TWO GREAT FIGHTS, THE MOMENTUM SHIFTING BACK and forth between the turnpike and the Plank Road. Ewell’s men had absorbed the first major push, but held their ground, the men digging in quickly in the thick woods, a crude line of cut trees, mounds of dirt piled as fast as bayonets or tin cups could dig. The Federals had hit them hard, but could not move Ewell away. Soon the Federal forces on the turnpike were scattered and groping with the confusion of men who have lost their officers, all sense of direction swallowed by the woods around them.
Then the great roar of the fight had shifted down to the Plank Road, where Hill’s advance eastward toward the intersection of the Brock Road suddenly and completely reversed, a hard thrust by the Federal Second Corps. Hancock’s troops had reached the key point first, with far greater strength, and pushed out hard against the only enemy that came close to him, Harry Heth’s division. With Hancock’s forces outnumbering Heth by nearly five-to-one, it did not take long for Heth to find himself in serious trouble, his men clinging to whatever cover they could find. By late in the day Heth had been reinforced by Hill’s other division, under Cadmus Wilcox, and Hancock’s great strength had been neutralized by the ground, as all of Grant’s numbers had been. The assault, which had outflanked Heth on both sides, now ground down, and as to the north, Hancock’s men found themselves in utter confusion, the momentum of their attack blunted and turned away by the thickets and the steady response of Heth’s muskets.
Late in the afternoon, Ewell had pushed out again, striking at the jumbled mass of blue troops in front of him, but the order had to come from Lee. Ewell was still tightly behind his makeshift wall, but Lee could not allow the fight to swing southward with all the power Grant could bring, and so he prodded Ewell to do … something, create some opportunity. Grant had shown no willingness to move away, to leave the Wilderness, and the long lines of march were now tightened into thick lines of battle. The dangerous gap between Lee’s two corps had already invited Grant to push through, and it was only the ground itself that kept the blue troops from splitting Lee’s forces in half.
&n
bsp; If Lee were to turn the tide in his favor, he would have to take every chance to strike at confusion, at disorganized regiments, at the chaos that the attacking troops had stumbled into. But Ewell had hesitated, and asked for clarification, the couriers moving back and forth between the two parts of the army in a mad rush, often passing each other on the rugged trails. Lee was seeing it more clearly than ever, that if Ewell were to do anything at all, make any decision that would show the old spirit, the orders would have to come from him. But even then Ewell pressed forward only as far as his own men could make a coordinated attack, and soon the coordination collapsed in the dense woods. Finally Ewell pulled his men back to their entrenchments, content to let the night darken the bloody ground where so many had fallen.
THERE HAD BEEN NO PAUSE, NO BREAK FOR FOOD OR REST. LEE HAD been on Traveller for most of the day, and he could feel the wet hide of the tired animal, his pants soaked by thick foam. He had kept close to the steady fight in front of Hill’s men, but there would be nothing to see, no sign of the enemy’s strength except for the sounds of their muskets, and there had been many muskets. Lee counted seven separate assaults, each one a vast wave rolling toward them from the east, and each time there were more blue troops, new units, the prisoners coming now from every division, every brigade of Hancock’s enormous corps. Lee had watched Hill carefully, saw clearly that if Hill had never shown the talent for commanding an entire corps, he was still the best man the army had at leading a division. In this place, where there was no coordination and no way to even know where a corps would begin and end, where the placement of a single regiment could turn the tide of the attack, Hill had been brilliant. Lee tried to stay with him, but in the chaos, Hill had never stopped moving, guiding the smaller units back and forth through the brush, down the small trails, shifting the troops into place against the blind heavy punches of Hancock’s great numbers. With Wilcox’s help, Heth had held his ground, and as the light began to fade, the darkness filling the small spaces in the gloomy woods, Hancock finally pulled away, his men now flowing back behind his own fortifications, thrown up quickly along the Brock Road.
The Civil War Trilogy: Gods and Generals / the Killer Angels / the Last Full Measure Page 106
