Darkness at Chancellorsville

by Ralph Peters

  But he had come home, to his country and, resolutely, to his faith. And the Army had sent him to Florida, where ruined Seminoles hid in the swamps. He found himself at a remote post, where there was little to do, serving under a commander he grew convinced was a flagrant adulterer. Jackson had pursued the matter relentlessly, unable to comprehend the disinterest of the chain of command. How could such things be winked at? Such a disgrace to the uniform, sinfulness all but lauded? The authorities barely feigned an investigation. They had seemed to think him unreasonable, even mad.…

  An opening on the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute had been his earthly salvation, allowing him to resign his Army commission. He was not a natural teacher, as he soon learned, but teaching was his charge and he did his duty. He memorized the lessons he had to impart, reciting them to himself in the lonely evenings, facing a blank wall as he mouthed the words, inscribing page and paragraph numbers from textbooks onto his brain.

  He knew the nicknames his cadets applied to him over the years. The insinuations cut, but he never showed it. As a Christian, he would not let anger be his master. The VMI cadets were young and did not understand that devotion and perseverance, not quick facility, made a man. He insisted on discipline, though.

  Major Jackson only came to life on the Institute’s drill field, teaching the proper use of field artillery.

  Meanwhile, he prospered privately, rewarded by Great Jehovah, and earned a respectable place in local society. He made a fine marriage to Ellie, found happiness, and met tragedy. Maggie had been his comfort as he mourned a wife and lost child and she mourned a sister, but the church’s strictures were clear: A widower could not marry his dead wife’s sister. The Lord had shown him grace for his obedience, though, sending him an even greater happiness. The Lord was bountiful and good, and the fruits of the earth were lavished upon His servants.

  The impending war, the war he did not want, against which he had warned and prayed, had darkened the last months in Lexington. But when war came, he pledged his troth to Virginia. He could not do otherwise. Slavery was a hideous institution, even if men could point to biblical sanctions. Twice, he had purchased slaves, at their request, to save them from being sold south, where treatment was not as mild as in Virginia. But he could not allow godless Northerners, atheists and Unitarians, to invade his home and dictate terms to his people. If the South wished to go its own way, it was tyranny to employ force to prevent it. And tyranny was an abomination, clothed in the mantle of Herod, of Caesar.

  He had wept for what he knew must come, the blood, the loss, the heartbreak. He had believed—a part of him still did—that the only humane approach was to do all to force the war to a swift conclusion. He had recommended raising the black flag and granting no quarter, killing each Northern soldier without mercy, drawing his lessons of war from the book of Joshua: None could be spared until they bowed down to Israel.

  He had been derided, his vision declared infamous. There had been talk of removing him from command. Again, there were whispers of madness.

  Then they came to Manassas.

  Nine a.m.

  Chancellorsville

  Damn it,” Hooker responded. The morning already had brought enough frustrations. “All right then, Dickinson,” he told the colonel, “reschedule the forward movement for ten thirty. But not one minute after. No more delays, make that clear.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s … the roads are … they’re hardly roads at all. The men moving up are crowding, intermingling. And that fog earlier…”

  “Don’t give me excuses. Give me results.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The vegetation had surprised him, though. A serpent couldn’t squirm through it. But that was all the more reason to hasten forward, to adhere to the timetable he and Dan had designed.

  He’d slept badly. At some unholy hour, after he’d finally won his standoff with slumber, he’d awakened abruptly, sweat-soaked in terror over something vital and forgotten. Of course, it was only a dream. He could not even recall the object supposedly neglected. But the nightmare had shaken him.

  Maneuvering through the staff hubbub, a sergeant brought coffee in a china cup. A delicate thing, with a hairline crack, the cup had been drafted into Union service. Generally, Hooker disapproved of looting—a mark of indiscipline—but the household’s women, young and old, had been so crass and intransigent that Dickinson had confined them to one room—where they’d spent half the night screeching Rebel songs and cackling. And when he’d retired at last to the bedroom selected by his staff, Hooker had found the shit pot full and stinking.

  Better day today. The weather was clearing. Professor Lowe could get his balloons aloft and check on the rumors that Longstreet had come north.

  As he watched Dickinson scurry from one staff drone to the next, Hooker wished Dan Butterfield were with him. He could trust Dan, count on him. Dickinson was all right, but he lacked Butterfield’s gift for anticipating his thoughts, his inspirations.

  Dan was needed back in Falmouth, though, to hold things together and coordinate Sedgwick’s moves on the Fredericksburg front.

  Where in the hallows of Hell was the cavalry, though? Except for a small affair beyond his flank the night before—an action that apparently had gone badly—the bulk of his cavalry seemed to have disappeared. He had sent Stoneman off with firm orders to swing deep behind Lee, cut the railroad to Richmond, and block the Confederate retreat. He had to assume that Stoneman was in action, but he needed reports: All the pieces had to fit together.

  Part of the problem was that damnable telegraph. It still wasn’t working properly. He recalled some sort of squabble Dan had mentioned a few weeks earlier, a quarrel between the Morse operators of the U.S. Military Telegraph and the Army Signal officers. The Signal men had fielded some new device claimed to be superior. Well, progress was fine. But the buggering thing had to work.

  “Dickinson!” he called.

  After the colonel, eyes weary, had shouldered his way through the riot of clerks and messengers, Hooker told him, “If the march orders are out, see to the telegraph. Get my order off to Sedgwick for a demonstration. And confirm that it’s gone. Or the Signal officer at the ford will find himself in the infantry this evening. At a rank greatly reduced.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Still no word from Stoneman, the cavalry?”

  “No, sir. Nothing from the expedition. But Averell—”

  “I’m not interested in Averell, at the moment.”

  “He’s asking for orders, he’s still north of the river.”

  “Later. And I want to see Warren as soon as he’s back from his scout.” Hooker grimaced and spit. “Did somebody piss in this coffee?”

  “I’ll speak to the mess officer, General.”

  Hooker splashed the contents of the cup on the Turkey carpet, speckling the toes of his boots.

  “Meade still bitching? I thought he’d be happy I let him lead the advance.”

  “He’s concerned about splitting his corps, sir. Along divergent routes.”

  “They only diverge initially.”

  “It’s the lack of lateral communications in this … tangle. The lines of advance aren’t mutually reinforcing.”

  “We’ve all read our Jomini, Dickinson. Meade just needs to obey the orders as issued. Plenty of reinforcements on hand. In the unlikely event they’re needed.” Wretched coffee be damned, Hooker almost smiled. “If Lee hasn’t run off already, he’ll have to fight me on ground that I choose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Slocum?”

  “He’ll step off at ten thirty, there was just some early confusion. Everything’s in order now. Meade on the River Road and Turnpike. Slocum takes the Plank Road. Simultaneous advances.”

  Darius Couch came in, wearing what passed for a smile. The latest corps commander to arrive, he was also next in seniority. Hooker sent Dickinson back to his endless labors.

  “Joe, I thought we’d be on our way by now.” Couch s
eemed in high spirits, though. With two of his Second Corps divisions present and Gibbon well-employed at Fredericksburg. It was indeed a mighty force, this army that he, Joseph Hooker, had rebuilt from near ruination.

  “Ten thirty step-off, had to delay,” Hooker told him. “Order stands, though. I expect to reach Fredericksburg this afternoon.”

  General Couch drew out his pocket watch. “Assuming there’s no resistance … that’s still quite a march.”

  “This army has to learn to respect a timetable,” Hooker said. “And follow orders to the last detail.”

  Couch shrugged in what passed for agreement. He said:

  “George is still unhappy, you know.”

  Hooker waved off the concern. “Meade’s always unhappy. He’s either glum or grouchy, take your pick.”

  “He … does have something of a point, Joe. You could have let him allocate his own corps as he saw fit. That’s normally the privilege of—”

  “No. I want Sykes on the Turnpike with the Regulars. I want them to be first into Fredericksburg. In good marching order, make a proper show of it.”

  “That’s George’s weakest division, though. And with his other divisions on that mule track to the north…”

  “If Sykes needs help, you can send him Hancock’s brawlers.”

  “To that point … I thought I’d stay around headquarters for a bit. In case you do have orders for me.”

  “Glad of the company.”

  A sergeant delivered fresh coffee. Hooker told him to fetch a cup for Couch. And he drank, burning his lips.

  The taste was as wretched as it had been before.

  Hooker was about to hurl the cup against the wall, when he realized why the taste was so peculiar: There was no whiskey in it.

  Couch looked at him oddly then said:

  “Joe, your hand is shaking.”

  Eleven a.m.

  The Lewis house, on the Turnpike

  Cap’n, best come up here,” the old woman called from the head of the stairs. “Take yourself a look.”

  Charlie Wickersham, 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, leapt the steps two at a time.

  “In here, in here.” The woman led him into an attic bedroom that forced him to crouch low.

  It was the strangest stretch of Virginia that Wickersham had encountered, where one household held to the Union, while the next was as Confederate as Jeff Davis, and everyone was blood-kin.

  He bent to the low window. And yes, there they were: a broad scattering of skirmishers, a dozen of them mounted, a larger number afoot and loping forward, not a mile distant. Three ranks of infantry followed, several hundred yards to the skirmishers’ rear. It looked to be a single regiment, but Wickersham knew there would be more behind them, past the farthest ridge.

  The Rebs coming on were out for a scrap, not just having a look-see. He could feel the difference in the morning air.

  Trying not to tumble over his spurs, he sidestepped down the stairs and hollered, “McCallum … Captain McCallum!” He burst onto the front porch and leapt to the yard. “McCallum!”

  Only two companies, K and H, had been detailed as pickets, leaving Wickersham the senior man.

  “Bricks—” McCallum rushed around the corner of the house, buckling on his sword belt and his revolver.

  “Jeez, Charlie … a man can’t even—”

  “Get your men ready. But stay right here. Rebs are coming, I’m off to the forward post.” He rushed for his nickering mount, held by his orderly.

  “You,” Wickersham told the man, “follow me.” He turned. “First Sergeant, report to Captain McCallum until I get back.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  He slapped into his saddle and jabbed his spurs, gaining the speed to leap a brush fence and ride hard. On lower ground, his forward pickets couldn’t see the skirmishers, not yet, but he couldn’t have risked them at a more distant position. He could see and support them where they were, but their own line of sight was limited.

  They’d be a surprise to the Rebs, though.

  The terrain rolled from one smoothed-off ridge down to a sopping bottom and back up, over and over. A farmhouse and ramshackle outbuildings crowned each significant crest. Even here, free of that ugly tangle of briars around Chancellorsville, only the fields along the Turnpike offered room for maneuver. On both flanks, forest walled off the tilled ground.

  Excited, his horse overshot the outpost and he yanked it about.

  “Sergeant Keller? Where’s Sergeant Keller?”

  “In the brush, sir. Thought the Rebs might be up to something.”

  “You’re Burton, right? Schuylkill County man?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to—”

  The sergeant emerged from the bushes at a trot. Paunchy, he was more impressive on a horse than afoot. Tough, though, with fists that threatened immediate discipline.

  “Sorry, sir. Thought they might be sneaking by us. Had to have a gander.”

  “They’re coming straight on. Look.”

  Concealed until then, the first Reb skirmishers, the mounted dozen, loomed over a crest.

  “Well, howdy-do,” the sergeant said.

  “More behind them,” Wickersham told him. “Infantry. Slow them as long as you can, but don’t overstay your welcome. When it gets too hot, mount up and come back to the house. We’ll make a stand there.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll give them a greeting fit to start the day.”

  The Reb skirmishers on horseback hesitated then responded to a signal to dismount, drawing their rifles after them. The men afoot caught up and aligned with the dismounts, making the odds perhaps sixty against a dozen.

  The sergeant, who knew his men, said, “Richards, if you pull that trigger before I say to pull it, I’ll rip off your treasures and feed them to my horse.” He glanced about. “The rest of you, take time to aim, don’t waste ammunition. And touch that trigger like it’s your sweetie’s quim.”

  Wickersham left the sergeant to his business.

  Bullets sought his back as he rode away.

  At least they had fair weather for it. For three days they’d pestered the Johnnies, who’d pestered them in turn, in slovenly collisions in the rain.

  Back at the old woman’s house, he waved up McCallum and called for both first sergeants, all of them grown into hard, no-nonsense soldiers.

  Wickersham pointed at the brush fence. In the distance, his outpost and the Johnnies popped away at each other, with the Rebs slowing down as they reckoned things.

  “Company K to the left of the Turnpike, behind the fence. H has the road itself and the right. Just enough men in the woods on both flanks to warn us, if they get clever.”

  “They try to come through that undergrowth, they won’t come fast.”

  “Slow is just as deadly, if they surprise us. And bugger the rules on horse-holders. No more than five men allotted from each company, have them herd the mounts against the tree lines. I want the maximum number of carbines on line.” He met each pair of eyes in turn. “Go to it.”

  Restraining his own first sergeant for a moment, Wickersham added, “Pick a man who can’t shoot worth a damn. I need him to carry a note to Major Keenan.”

  McCallum and his first sergeant strode along, bellowing orders. The men were alert and ready. Everyone sensed that this day’s fight would be serious: No more fooling Rebs into surrendering, no more backcountry cat-and-mouse.

  Wickersham steadied his notebook on a fence post and tongued his pencil. Writing in block letters for clarity’s sake, he estimated the force before him and said he’d delay their advance as long as possible. But it would take the full regiment to hold them. With artillery.

  As the first sergeant and his noncommissioned officers placed the men, Wickersham watched the fighting develop down on the lower crest. His men were making good use of their carbines, but the Johnnies kept pressing forward while curling around the flanks.

  It was up to Keller now. The sergeant had to decide when the momen
t had come to mount up and dig in the spurs.

  Wickersham checked the cylinders of his Colt.

  Eleven thirty a.m.

  The Turnpike

  The Yankees were stubborn as mules in a temper. Same horse soldiers who’d been an affliction for days. Almost old friends, except you meant to kill them. Day before, they’d taken a passel of men from the 12th Virginia prisoner, though some had slipped off again. And that was atop the men taken back at the ford. Now, Corporal Smith reckoned, the tables were turned.

  Not exactly upside down, though, those tables. The blue-bellies kept up a hellish fire with their cheater’s carbines. It had taken Captain Banks and the skirmish company far too long to deal with a little outpost.

  “Let’s go, boys, let’s go! Advance! They’re ready to run.”

  “Hell they are,” the soldier next to Smith grumbled.

  Hadn’t been the best stretch of days. It still downright tormented him that he’d built that bridge for the Yankees. Then the rest of the circus had followed, one fool move after another. Little Billy was hopping mad and none too pleased with the regiment.

  Meant to show him, though. Just needed a fair fight on decent ground.

  Almost slipped in the bottom mud. It took a few yards of climbing before his shoe leather—what there was of it—gripped again.

  Yankee bullets buzzed past.

  Smith’s line caught up with the skirmishers and the baker’s dozen of cavalrymen who’d come along. Setting up to be a real fight, it was. Smith didn’t understand why Mahone didn’t send up the rest of the brigade. As if he were punishing the 12th, making them pay a blood price.

  If it weren’t for those carbines …

  Fool business. That brush fence ahead wasn’t any kind of protection for the blue-bellies. Shoot right through it, and it didn’t take a pioneer to see it. But men didn’t think clearly in a fight. They only saw that they couldn’t see the Yankees, while the Yankees could see them. And shoot downhill at them, even if they shot high.

  Men just lined up on their own, shoulder to shoulder, not ready to renew the advance, just loading and firing up at the Yankees, hoping to hit something.