The Day After Gettysburg

by Robert Conroy

  He thought of Mary—her warmth, her softness. She’d been about the best girl he’d ever had, even considering that she was Italian and a little overpadded. A lot more lively than Cassandra Baird, that was for sure. That dried-up old spinster. She’d regret turning her back on him, that much was certain.

  But forget about Baltimore and Washington. That was the past. The future lay up ahead, with the Army of Northern Virginia. He wondered how they would honor him for his attempt on Lincoln. He wouldn’t tell them about it, wouldn’t even mention it—not until he was brought before General Lee. Oh, he’d let them know who he was, of course. Just tell them, “Name’s Dean. I was with Booth.” That would be plenty. That would tell them all they needed to know. Then he would be presented to Robert E. Lee. He could picture Lee rising to his feet, saluting him, that same as he would a soldier . . . No; an officer, that was even better.

  Would there be a medal in it for him? He couldn’t see why not. Maybe they’d send him down to Richmond, to advise Jefferson Davis himself. He could tell them the best way to make another attempt on Lincoln. They might even put him in charge. Who better?

  He walked on, light of step. Apart from a few figures in distant fields, he saw no one. It was late afternoon when at last he caught sight of a group of horsemen coming down the road.

  He could see clearly that the lead riders were in gray. Letting the knapsack drop to his feet, he waved wildly, making no effort to conceal himself.

  The horsemen sped up. Their expressions turned quizzical as they drew closer.

  “What the hell are you?” the lead rider asked as he came to a halt. He was a husky man, broad-faced and with a ginger beard.

  “Well,” Richard began. “I was with Booth . . .”

  “A Yankee,” a smaller, blond-bearded rider said.

  “He done stole that coat,” another man said.

  The husky rider dismounted and approached Richard, never taking his eyes off Dean’s face. He gripped the lapel of the coat. “Yessir—that’s an officer’s coat. Where’d you get that?”

  The blond man was now standing beside Richard. “Stripped it off a dead man, dincha?”

  “No . . . no, he wasn’t dead . . .”

  “He wasn’t what?”

  “You took this coat from a wounded man,” the husky man said. “If that don’t beat all.”

  He yanked the coat open, spotted the pistol in Dean’s belt and pulled it free.

  “That’s an army Colt,” the blond man said.

  “So it is. He stole that too.”

  Richard raised both hands. “No! Listen to me . . .” He tried to draw away from them. Something struck him in the head.

  “Fuckin’ Yankees. By God, I hate them so much . . .”

  “No southron ever do a thing like that.”

  In a moment they had stripped the coat off him and his hands were tied behind his back. “I want to see General Lee!”

  “Oh, you’ll see General Lee, all right,” the husky man said. “You’ll see General Lee, and Julius Caesar, and all the prophets.”

  A rope was lowered around his neck and then tightened. A mass of hands half-lifted, half-pushed him atop a horse.

  “I was with Booth,” he said desperately. “Down in Washington. We ambushed Lincoln . . .”

  The blond man scratched his beard. “Think maybe we got some kind of mooncalf here, Albert.”

  “Too late now,” the husky man said. He glanced up at Richard. “You made your peace there, sonny? Then you’d best be off.”

  He slapped the horse on the rump. “I was with Boottthhh . . .” Richard screamed, as he felt the horse’s flanks slide out from underneath him.

  The riders stood watching Dean’s legs kick at the empty air. A couple of them were fighting over the coat, each insisting that it would fit him better.

  The blond man considered Dean’s quivering form. “I wonder who this Booth might be?”

  The husky man turned away. “How the hell do I know?”

  “He lost over four thousand men in this misbegotten attack.”

  Salmon P. Chase picked up a telegram from the tabletop and waved it at the rest of the Cabinet.

  “Over four thousand. That’s only the dead. The wounded, we have no idea.”

  Lincoln watched him with no expression. Halleck was studying the tabletop. Edward Bates sat aloofly. Gideon Welles was nodding as if in silent agreement.

  William Denniston, the new secretary of war, said nothing. He had been in office only for a matter of days and was still finding his feet. They were awaiting the final word on Stanton, but there wasn’t much hope. He had caught pneumonia in Seminary Hospital, and had been sinking for over a week. Lincoln had visited him there yesterday and had been appalled at how poorly he looked. He was not even certain that Edward had known he was there, though at one point he had gripped Lincoln’s hand and grimaced in what might have been a smile.

  That was likely the last Lincoln would ever see of him. The doctors had given him only a matter of hours.

  “. . . and then to top it off, he broke down and wept like an old woman when it was all over.”

  “At least we kept that out of the press,” Halleck said.

  “Small mercies.”

  “Drunk as a lord, no doubt,” Bates said in a low voice.

  “Either that, or mad as a hatter.”

  None of them were looking at Lincoln. None of them wanted to go as far as a direct challenge. But they were more than happy to make their opinions known . . . as long as everyone else was doing it.

  “It’s the same as ever,” Chase went on. “We’ve seen this before. Remember Fredericksburg? No difference at all. Now, we will retreat until Grant is good and ready to try it again, which, this being autumn, means not until April or May, while General Lee lords it over the free state of Pennsylvania as if over his own personal domain.”

  Lincoln glanced from one of them to the next. “Is this then the consensus?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he picked up a sheet lying before him. “While you were examining telegrams, you might have taken a look at this one. It reads, ‘Heading north on the Harrisburg Pike. Flanking Lee’s forces. I mean to continue on this course if it takes me into next Spring.’”

  He set down the sheet. “Signed, General U.S. Grant.”

  “What . . .”

  “You mean, he’s advancing . . . ?’

  “After a defeat such as that?”

  Lincoln nodded. “I’m not at all certain that General Grant views the encounter at York as any sort of defeat.”

  Several of the cabinet turned toward General Halleck. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  “Nor do I,” Lincoln said. “And that is the very point. None of us have any idea. You see, gentlemen, this is a new kind of war. This is not a war being fought to seize land, or to establish a dynasty, or for plunder, as in ancient days. It’s something else, it’s a kind of war possibly never before encountered in history, certainly not on our continent.

  “It’s a war of ideas, of concepts, of notions as to what the world is, and how we should live in it. That’s what we’re fighting here. Not our southern neighbors. Not General Lee and his army. But an idea—the notion, ghastly to us, as it would be to all free men, that some men were born wearing saddles and others with spurs and whips to ride them.

  “How do we fight such a thing? How do we kill an idea? Is it impossible to accomplish that without killing every last man who holds the idea in his head? That may be. General Grant told me that one of his officers believes that is the key. That we are fighting a would-be aristocracy and that every last member of that aristocracy must be killed before peace, and the Union, are restored.

  “I don’t know if that’s true. I hope and pray that it is not. But I do believe this:

  “I believe that General Grant has some inkling as to how it can be done. How an idea must be slain. That he has a clue as to how this war must be fought. That he is working his way towa
rd a strategy, a method of doing this. But he is like a Columbus or a Magellan, facing a vast unmapped and unknown territory. He has to make his way blindly, and in doing that there will be mistakes, and there will be losses. These losses may be such as to beggar the imagination of a Khan or a Napoleon. The 4,000 at York may only be a down payment.

  “Grant understands this. I don’t think anyone else does.”

  Lincoln fell silent, taken by a sudden vision of a vast portal swinging wide. What would be revealed could well be a horror past bearing, in light of which all previous horrors faded into nothingness. But he knew without a shadow of doubt that the portal had been opened.

  He became aware of his Cabinet staring at him, Chase with his mouth hanging slightly open, the others with widened eyes. Only Seward regarded him with equanimity, and yes, perhaps a touch of sympathy as well.

  The secretary of state leaned forward. “If I were burdened with such an understanding, I too would weep.”

  The Cabinet glanced among themselves, but said nothing.

  Lincoln forced a smile. “Well, gentlemen, let’s move on.”

  Secretary of War Denniston cleared his throat. “General Grant . . .” His eyes flicked toward Lincoln for a moment. “Has evidently taken possession of twenty of something called . . . ‘coffee-mill’ guns at a thousand dollars apiece . . .”

  “No, that was me,” Lincoln said.

  Denniston eyed him a moment. “I see,” he said at last.

  Blandon paused just below the crest of the hilltop. There were sounds coming from the other side, the distant voices of men along with an odd creaking noise he couldn’t place.

  He glanced back at his men. They gazed dumbly at him, saying nothing. There were only nine of them now. The others had drifted off in the days since that business in the farm village. He was no longer surprised to see another one missing when he awoke in the morning.

  “Let me take a look,” he told them. He got off the horse and headed toward the crest.

  They were being careful, particularly after running into that patrol the other day. On spotting the riders and assuring himself that they were wearing gray, Blandon had waved his hat and shouted a greeting. But instead of approaching, the lead rider pulled his horse to a halt and conferred with the others.

  “Howdy,” Blandon said as he drew near. He saw that the other rider was a captain and gave him a quick salute.

  “How are you, Sergeant?”

  “Could be better. Tell you the truth, we’re lost. We’re with the Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.” No point in lying about that. “We were on patrol and got ourselves turned around somehow. You wouldn’t know where the Volunteers are at, would you?”

  “I’m afraid not.” The captain chewed the end of his mustache. “Your name wouldn’t be Blandon, would it?”

  Blandon’s spine prickled. He glanced back at Giddens and the others. “Can’t say it is, Captain.”

  The captain bent over his horse’s neck. “Well, that’s a good thing.”

  “How’s that?”

  “This Blandon raped and killed a fourteen-year-old girl. The rest of his unit worked over some older women. We were told to keep an eye open.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Indeed it is . . . what you say your name was, Sergeant?”

  The officer had that educated tone that Blandon didn’t like. “Johnston. Hiram Johnston.”

  “You haven’t come across this Blandon, have you?”

  “Sorry to say I haven’t, sir. But I will keep it in mind.”

  The other horsemen were gazing at Blandon with no expression at all. The captain flicked his eyes across Blandon’s men. There were ten of them, and he had four. He looked back at Blandon. “The locals did not approve. They’re all riled up now. Nothing but ambuscades and bushwhacking for the last three days.”

  “We’ll watch out for that too.”

  The captain nodded. “Well, we’re bivouacked just a few miles from here. You’d be more than welcome to drop by for a meal.”

  “Thank you kindly, but I think we’ll go on looking for our unit.”

  “Up to you.” The captain touched his hat and spurred his horse. “Best of luck.”

  The riders didn’t take their eyes off Blandon’s men until they were well down the road. As soon as they were out of sight, Blandon led his men across the countryside. They didn’t pause for several hours.

  He halted at the crest. He had decided it was time to head south. Get back to Virginia and then he’d figure things out. Volunteer for another unit, maybe, or even head west, to Arkansas or Texas. Make a whole new start—that might be best. But first they had to get across the river.

  He stepped to the bushes and pulled them apart. Downhill lay the Potomac, little more than a lazy, meandering stream this far west. Shallow and easily forded, as Bobby Lee had demonstrated to the Yankees time after time.

  This was one of the fords, a nice, shallow spot that would enable them to cross while scarcely getting their britches wet.

  But there was a problem, an obstacle the like of which he hadn’t encountered before. Below him he saw a goodly number of Yankees on the river. They were winching a large boat over a shallow spot. On the bank lay a scattering of items they’d taken off the boat, apparently to lighten it. A number of heavy chains, some items he couldn’t identify, and two large-caliber cannons.

  Blandon recognized that vessel. He seen similar on the James a year and a half ago, during the Seven Days battles before Richmond. It was a Yankee gunboat. This was a later model, and it was fully ironclad, but the basic setup was familiar. The shaded conning tower, the two turrets that held the cannons.

  As he watched, the boat suddenly jerked forward and floated free into deeper water. The workmen around it cheered.

  “What the devil?”

  Giddens was peering through the brush beside him. “That’s a Yankee gunboat.”

  “So it is.”

  McCutcheon came up behind Giddens. “Jonah, there’s another one over there,” Giddens said.

  Blandon squinted in that direction. There it was, about a quarter mile upstream, shaded by overhanging trees. The nearer gunboat swung close to the bank and let down a ramp. The workmen began to wrestle the cannon and other materials back on board.

  Blandon straightened up. “Well, we’ll have to find another ford. There’s one about three miles west of here, ain’t there . . . .”

  “Holy shit.”

  Blandon looked to where McCutcheon was pointing. A squadron of bluebelly horsemen had appeared from behind a clump of trees. They were riding hell for leather, and aimed straight for the hill on which Blandon stood.

  “Come on, y’all,” Blandon said. “Let’s get movin’.”

  “How’d they know we was here?” Giddens asked as they loped toward the horses.

  “Somebody seen us,” Blandon told him.

  They were halfway down the hill when they spotted another Yankee patrol headed in their direction from the northeast. They sped up to a gallop when they caught sight of the butternut horsemen. Blandon led his men to the west. They managed to shake off the federals easily enough, but had gone no more than five miles when they came across a roadblock that sent yet another group of cavalry after them. They went cross-country once again, ending up in a marshy area, keeping the horses quiet as they listened to the Yankees hallooing to each other in the distance.

  They didn’t emerge until nearly sundown to slowly make their way north away from the river. Encountering a farm boy returning from a day’s work in the fields, Blandon asked him if he’d seen a lot of cavalry hereabouts.

  Yessir, the kid had answered, they were out and about by the hundreds, all up and down the river from Seneca to Brunswick. They weren’t letting anybody at all within a mile of the Potomac.

  “. . . and they’ll catch your Reb asses too,” he assured Blandon before abruptly vanishing into the brush beside the road.

  Blandon gazed after him, a curse on his breath, and then contin
ued north.

  Later that evening, he thought his way through it as he sat beside a fire carefully placed in a copse between two hills so it wouldn’t be seen from a distance.

  They wouldn’t be heading south anytime soon. The Yankees were crawling all over this whole area. Of course, they could go farther west, thirty, forty miles to where the river was too shallow to float a gunboat, but then he might well run into his own people and he didn’t want to do that either. Not with this rape story floating around.

  But what were the Yankees up to? Where there were two gunboats, it was likely you’d find more. Blandon could think of several ways they could be used this far upriver, none of them to the benefit of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  So did the army know about it? He had reason to doubt that. That captain had said nothing. They hadn’t heard a thing while riding around south central Pennsylvania. Blandon would be willing to bet silver money that Bobby Lee and all his staff had no idea the Yankees were moving heavily armed gunboats into his rear. They would no doubt be quite pleased with the man who appeared with that information.

  So—he’d return to division . . . or rather, go straight to headquarters, to Bobby Lee himself, and let them know what the Yankees were about. He felt a sense of excitement. It was just like his warning before Hanover, only better. That would make up for a lot in the way of mistakes. How could they punish a man who had warned them about a threat like this? Particularly if all his men swore they’d been nowhere near that peapatch of a farming village. He wasn’t sure what the bluecoats were up to, but it couldn’t be anything good.

  He lay back on the blanket, hands behind his head. That would work out just fine.

  Wade sat in the barn they had commandeered on the northeast side of Harrisburg. He had a board balanced on his knees and was writing his mother. Around him the men were relaxing—smoking, playing cards, shaving, and seeing to their uniforms. Several were at the creek out back washing up. He planned to join them shortly, as soon as he was finished writing the letter. It had been a few days since they’d had any time to themselves.