The Day After Gettysburg

by Robert Conroy

  The first indication Thorne had that something was terribly wrong was when the Rebel cavalry chased in their pickets. The enemy horsemen had been especially aggressive and Thorne had put it down to their trying to protect the carcass of their army. He hadn’t given the Confederates much thought—he was too tired for that. What Lee did was out of his control. Instead, he concentrated on organizing what was left of the Sixth Indiana into something that made sense and doing so while on the march. He decided on two small battalions of about a hundred men each divided into three companies in each. He didn’t have enough officers left to cover that so he gave command of several companies to NCOs. It might not be what their lordships in Washington thought was correct, but they could all go to hell. They weren’t at the front, and the Sixth Indiana was.

  Then they heard it. That screech that made the hair on the back of their necks stand up. The Rebel yell, howling defiance from thousands of throats. The Rebels were attacking.

  Guns weren’t just popping and crackling. Now the sound of fighting became a roar as cannon joined in. A low hill hid what was happening from Thorne. He wanted to put his men somewhere, but he couldn’t form a coherent line. He satisfied himself by placing one of the two small battalions on either side of the dirt path that somebody called a road. He had them dismount and told them to await orders.

  A few moments later, they didn’t have to wait for anything. A host of fear-crazed Union soldiers was running towards them, ignoring their officers and throwing away their equipment. To Thorne’s horror, many were surrendering, just standing awaiting the enemy with their arms in the air. A wave of Rebels crested the hill and headed towards his position. There seemed to be thousands of them. He had but two hundred men.

  “Fall back and maintain your formation,” he ordered, praying silently. A retreat under fire was difficult under any circumstances and his truncated regiment hadn’t yet worked together as a new unit.

  The Rebels were close enough to open fire on them. Bullets began striking his men. The retreating Union soldiers hit his line, running and clawing their way to the rear.

  Then it was over. His men broke and joined the mob. Some got their horses while others ran after them. “Son of a bitch,” Thorne shouted. A terrified young private handed him the reins to his horse and ran away. Thorne mounted and joined the race to the rear. He saw Willis trying to stop some men from fleeing and being knocked to the ground for his troubles. Getting up, Willis saw Thorne, waved, and mounted. Then he too ran away.

  “Do you surrender?”

  Thorne was shocked. A Rebel soldier was only a few yards away and had a musket pointed at him. He was about to say he did surrender when the Rebel’s head disappeared in a cloud of red mist and bone. Someone was still fighting and had just saved him. Before he could move, he felt a bullet whiz by him. He pulled his Colt and fired at the Rebel who’d shot at him. The man screamed and spun, clutching his shoulder.

  Rebel soldiers were all around him. He spurred his horse and drove it mercilessly. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t want to be made prisoner, which would likely result in death if the tales of life in Confederate prisons were even half true. He was only twenty-six years old and had a life ahead of him. All he had to do was survive this damn war, a task which had suddenly gotten very difficult.

  He rode to the top of a hill and, sensing a lack of pressure, paused and looked behind him. Confederate units were advancing in fairly good order while huge groups of Union soldiers were being swept up and captured.

  Incredibly, Archie Willis found him. “I’m headed to New York, how about you?”

  “Where’s the regiment?”

  “What regiment? You and I may be the whole damn thing. At least the Rebels won’t be advancing much farther.”

  Thorne agreed. In the distance, the Rebel advance had just about stopped, possibly from exhaustion. There seemed to be as many prisoners as there were Rebel soldiers, all being sorted and led off in columns.

  “I’ve been in the Army of the Potomac for a year,” Thorne said, “and I’ve never seen it break and run. I’ve known it to be defeated too many times, but nothing like this.”

  Willis grabbed his arm and shook it to get Thorne’s attention. “Unless you want to wait here until Jeb Stuart’s cavalry show up again, I suggest we do our own breaking and running. If you haven’t noticed, we’re just about alone out here.”

  Thorne looked around. Willis was right. The two of them were the rear guard of the Army of the Potomac. They spurred their mounts and rode north through the shocked population of Hagerstown.

  ★ CHAPTER 2 ★

  Abraham Lincoln wanted to hold his head in his hands and weep, but it would not do. The others gathered around his office in the second floor of the President’s House, or, as some people preferred, the White House, might have felt the same way, but they too hid their emotions. Stoicism was all part of the game they played. Of course, neither Secretary of War Edwin Stanton nor Commanding General Henry Halleck bore any responsibility for the disaster that was unfolding: the unravelling of the Union’s great victory at Gettysburg.

  “It is my fault, all my fault,” Lincoln finally said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I ordered General Meade and the army to do something that was beyond them. I should have known. I should have known that Lee would turn and fight like a wildcat. I also should have known that General Meade was not the man to take on Lee in open battle. Meade has proven himself excellent when others are attacking him, but less so when he is doing the attacking. I knew he was reluctant to chase Lee and I should have honored that reluctance.”

  “And who would replace him?” That was Halleck. “Shall we go with Hooker or Burnside again, or perhaps McDowell—if we can get him away from his love of food? Or would you suggest McClellan, the man who would like to replace you as President?”

  The secretary turned to Halleck. “General, all of those men have lost battles and I can only pray that the President is not considering any one of them. Or perhaps you would like to take the field against General Lee?”

  Halleck flushed at the jibe. He had entered the war with the reputation of a brilliant military scholar, but events had proven him to be a mediocre field commander at best.

  Lincoln stretched his long legs and tried to fight off the headache that was threatening to consume him. Not now, he thought. He could not give in to the feelings of depression that occasionally overwhelmed him and rendered him unable to function properly. “General Meade will remain in command if for no other reason than that we have nobody better to replace him, at least not at this time.”

  “Neither Congress nor the press will like that,” Stanton said.

  “Then let them come up with somebody else,” Lincoln said tersely. He just wanted to sleep. How could it have happened that the glorious victory at Gettysburg had been simply thrown away? Because I asked a man to fly when all he could do was walk.

  “What about Grant?” asked Stanton. Word of Ulysses Grant’s great victory at Vicksburg had only recently arrived. The Confederacy was cut in half and the Union controlled the Mississippi all the way from New Orleans up to its northern headwaters.

  Halleck flushed angrily. “Impossible. He has never held a large command like the Army of the Potomac. And then there is the question of his drinking.”

  “Nor had any of the other worthies we just named,” snapped Stanton. “And I’m damn certain most of them drank as well. God only knows that Hooker did.”

  As the evening wore on, they discussed other possibilities. Rosecrans was at Chattanooga, Buell at Nashville, and they, along with others, inspired no confidence whatsoever. Other names were tossed into the hat, Sedgwick and MacPherson among them. Lincoln recalled having offered command of the Army of the Potomac to John Reynolds, only to have that man refuse because he wanted a free hand, which no one in the room would give him. He’d been killed at Gettysburg. Too bad, thought Lincoln. Now maybe they would have complied with his wishes. They were that desperate.r />
  Lincoln watched Halleck. The commanding general, he concluded, was afraid of Grant. Halleck had tried to have Grant removed from command on the charge that the man drank too much. Maybe he did, but he also fought, which he had told Halleck and others, and the Union needed fighters like Grant, not thinkers like Halleck.

  Lincoln rose. The others did as well. “I am to bed. I do not think that General Lee will do anything this evening or, for that matter, for a number of evenings. We will leave General Meade in command with the instructions that he is to reorganize and reconstitute his army, but that he is not to seek out a battle with Lee’s army.” Lincoln permitted himself a wry smile. “After what has transpired, I don’t think Meade will argue with that directive.”

  The Army of the Potomac was beginning to pull itself together. Once it became clear that the Rebels were not going to chase them any farther, units began finding their men and men began finding their units. The chaos and confusion of the retreat was being put behind them.

  Thorne slept on the ground in a field that night. He and Willis had again become separated in the confusion, but he was far from alone. The number of men lying nearby reminded him of the killing fields he’d left at Gettysburg. Images he simply couldn’t shake: all those corpses, lying amid the stones and the peach trees, that would never move again. Only the men now surrounding him got up at dawn, stretched, farted, and relieved themselves. Thorne saw that he wasn’t the only officer who’d been separated from his men. He was gratified to see his horse standing close by, munching on grass.

  It was well after noon when he rode onto a large field that had once been planted with crops and now grew thousands of men standing around in ankle-deep churned-up mud. Banners and unit flags were waved and voices called for soldiers to come home to their respective regiments. It sounded like a mob of auctioneers and peddlers trying to hawk their wares. Groups of soldiers, along with individual lost soldiers, searched among the pennants for their units, not always finding them. There were tales of whole regiments being swallowed up by the overwhelming Confederate assault. Finally, and somewhat to his surprise, he spotted the pennant of the Sixth Indiana Mounted Infantry and Captain Archie Willis singing out in a loud voice that the lost soldiers should come home.

  The two men embraced, again surprised and pleased that each had survived the unsuspected ordeal. “How many have you found, or have found us?” Thorne asked.

  “At last count, our mighty regiment is up to sixty-one soldiers, many of whom are thoroughly embarrassed at having run like sheep. I’ve assured them that I ran like a scared cat myself, which is only marginally better than running like a sheep. What really matters, I told them, is that they made it and that they’ve come back. I told them everyone was scared.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Thorne, “Not me. No sir. I was damn well terrified.” He then told of his close encounter with the two Rebels. “I’d still like to thank the man who killed the man who wanted to take me prisoner.”

  Willis shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t even an aimed shot. Maybe it was just some damned fluke. There was a lot of sharp and deadly crap flying around that battlefield. Regardless, I’m certainly glad you’re back to take command. By the way, word is that we’ll be marching back towards Gettysburg and setting up a defensive line somewhere.”

  “And then what? Do we sit on our hindquarters and wait for Bobby Lee to decide he’s strong enough to take us on again?”

  “Lord, I hope not, Steve. We just too damn close to getting our rumps whipped at Gettysburg and then we did get whipped at Hagerstown. I don’t want to go through that again.”

  “Well, unless somebody decides to surrender, we might not have a choice.”

  A handful of their soldiers rode in and sheepishly said they were reporting for duty. That they had kept their mounts was a bonus. Both officers made them as welcome as possible and told them not to let their comrades ride them too hard since most of them had run as well. Thorne was confident that it would all work out, but there would be some interesting discussions and recriminations before it was over.

  “Is Meade still in charge?” Thorne asked.

  “Last I heard, yes. But nobody’s talking much to me about grand strategy. By the way, I heard that a levy of fifty recruits was coming down from Indiana to join us.”

  Thorne whistled. “That would be a big help, but why wouldn’t they be sent to help form a new regiment?”

  Policy to date had regiments that had been reduced to almost nothing kept on the rolls while new recruits were used to form new regiments, which led to a lot of confusion regarding which regiments had enough men to actually be functional. Thorne didn’t want to be in command of a regiment that was merely squad sized.

  “I guess it helped that our badly wounded colonel is a relative of Governor Morton’s,” Thorne said. “I wonder if he knows that the good colonel is totally out of the war.”

  The last time Thorne had seen Colonel Josiah Baird, the man was dazed and looking for his left leg, which had been blown off below the knee. “Let’s not tell him. He might want his men back.”

  “Even better, the ranking man is a militia captain who is junior to you. You’re going to be brevetted to the rank of major. Congratulations on surviving long enough to become a field-grade officer.”

  That comment was made without rancor. In wartime, promotions often came because men senior to you were killed or wounded. If Baird was still in a hospital and was within reach, he would pay his respects.

  That said, he had another truly vexing problem that needed solving. “Archie, I am cold, wet, filthy, and would kill for a beer. However, that is not all that important right now. But does anybody around here have anything to eat?”

  The train ride from Indianapolis had been long, slow, and arduous. Cassandra Baird and her mother Rachel were travelling in the comfort of their own railroad car, which made life a little more bearable and was one of the benefits of being major investors in the railroad. But the weather was hot and sticky and the temperature inside the car almost unbearable. Opening windows only brought in humid air along with black smoke and ashes from the engine. Still, privacy was one of the privileges of wealth. They could sweat and suffer by themselves without having to share their misery with the scores of unwashed people jammed into other cars. The Bairds were not snobs, far from it, but it made no sense not to use at least some of their money on themselves at this painful time.

  They were headed to Washington to see their father and husband, Colonel Josiah Baird. The telegram they’d received only said that he’d been badly wounded in the leg but had survived. Unsaid was for how long would he be surviving. They wished they could somehow make the train go faster, but that would not happen. Not only were speeding trains dangerous to all concerned, as the high number of crashes attested, but there were numerous stoppages and delays to allow higher-priority military trains go past them.

  Ultimately, their ride ended and, along with their half-Negro servant, Mariah, they left the train. They sent Mariah and their luggage on ahead to the Hay-Adams Hotel while they took a cab to the Cosgrove Hospital, a private facility only a few blocks from the President’s House.

  The Cosgrove was well appointed and reserved for more senior officers. Like a good hotel, it was currently fully booked. Each officer had a private room and there appeared to be more than enough nurses and attendants. Cassie wondered if some of the medical personnel could be better utilized at a hospital where there were more wounded. Still, she didn’t think she was greedy by wanting her father to have the best of care.

  They were mildly surprised to find that Colonel Baird was the senior ranking wounded officer currently being treated. A stern-faced doctor prepared them for what they would see, but it didn’t totally help. They couldn’t stifle gasps when they saw him lying on his back, covered by a sheet that clearly showed that his left leg was missing below the knee.

  The colonel glared at them. “If you cry, I will ship you both back home. I don’t want tears; I wan
t to get the hell out of this bed. The doctors say I can start to walk with crutches, and after that I want the best artificial leg our money can buy.”

  “You’ll have it, my dear,” said Rachel as she kissed him on the forehead.

  “And, my dear, I want to get you in bed as soon as possible to prove to both of us that I’m still a man.”

  “Josiah!” said Rachel, as Cassandra turned away to hide her embarrassment and her smile. She envied them their married life. It seemed so warm and intimate, and sometimes even rowdy. She wished she could find that kind of life for herself. However, she was twenty-three, plain, thin, and by everyone’s definition, a spinster. All she had going for her was her father’s money and she’d been approached by a number of sharks who wanted nothing more than to marry her to get it.

  She thought she’d found happiness with one young man named Richard Dean, but he’d heeded his country’s call and gotten killed charging up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg. She’d even allowed him a few physical privileges before he left for the army. Since then, she’d considered herself in mourning, in large part because she’d shamed and coerced the shy young man into enlisting. And now he was dead.

  “How long are you going to stay here in Washington?” the colonel asked hopefully.

  “We could all go home almost immediately,” Rachel said. “I rather think we can get you on the train and, with a nurse or a doctor along, take you back home.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “For one thing, they have a fine supply of artificial limbs in this town. Can’t imagine why—you’d think there was a war on. Also, I want to remain here close to my political cronies. I want them to stay firm. The damned battle that we just lost might cause them to weaken their resolve and I cannot have that. There’s too much Copperhead activity in Indiana, along with people who simply want the war to end at all costs. We must win. We must keep the country united and we must free the slaves!”