Darkness at Chancellorsville

by Ralph Peters

  The corporal saluted and spurred his horse into the smoke, dodging a wounded man stumbling rearward and clutching his bloodied head.

  Major General Darius Couch decided that there had to be a mistake. He sent his adjutant back to the army’s headquarters at a gallop.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Sykes asked.

  “Prepare to withdraw,” Couch told him. “And hope.”

  Two twenty p.m.

  River Road, Union left

  George Meade read the order. Twice. Then he crumpled it, crushed it. About to hurl it to the ground, he caught himself and thrust it into his pocket. No need to make a gift of it to the Rebs.

  He still heard the sounds of battle, they hadn’t slackened a bit. If anything, the artillery sounded heavier. Had the day, against the odds, turned into a sudden defeat? How on earth …

  Sykes? Had things gone badly? Had his division been beaten?

  What was Hooker thinking?

  Meade had left Griffin to ride with Humphreys and his division for a stretch. A fellow Philadelphian, Humph watched him now, face disciplined against any sign of emotion.

  “Halt your column,” Meade told him. “Then countermarch.”

  In his iron-hard, thirty-years-of-service voice, Humphreys simply asked, “That mud track again?”

  “No. All the way back this time. To where we started.”

  Humphreys was too strict with himself to say it, but gray eyes asked, Are you serious?

  Meade nodded and turned his horse.

  FOUR

  Five p.m., May 1

  Orange Plank Road

  The Yankees just plain quit. Strangest thing. Had no stick-to at all.

  Up in the night before the rain gave out, the Alabama Brigade had slogged along—fellow might say “swam,” just about—with old Stonewall and everybody else with braid on him in half a fit, moving men just as fast as men could go, through black fog along ankle-busting roads. As if the condition of his feet—those recalcitrant and rebellious walking utensils—wasn’t plain bad enough.

  Samuel Pickens could not pretend to be happy.

  Half-contented, though, in a take-what-you-get way, a soldier’s shrug at the world. The march seemed to be over.

  The going had been cruel. That morning, the fog had burned off in the course of an unexplained pause and the day had turned fine as Alabama weather, summoning ripe, rich ghosts of verdant Umbria, of Greensboro under blue heavens. The morning had been that handsome. Uniforms and underthings dried out, if not a man’s shoes.

  The march had resumed, though, with his feet a misery unto him, though he spake not. Complaint was unmanly, unless it was masked in jest. They shuffled toward the rising sounds of battle, certain of their destiny that day, of a red-jawed fight impending.

  Instead, they had only stopped and started and fussed, deploying into nettle-bibbed trees, a place less welcoming than a backwater swamp. Heat rose queerly, hotter in that grim forest than in the sunlight. And once they’d been thoroughly thorn-pierced, they had been summoned back to the road to march a few hundred yards farther along before spreading out into line of battle again, in growth still more forbidding. The ruckus of battle, the life sounds and death sounds, had come closer, but not close enough for stray bullets to sting.

  They never did get into it. Which left men grateful and feeling let down at once. As for himself, he did fine in a fight, but he did dislike the waiting, the anticipation, the minutes and hours when a man’s imagination taunted and tested him. Truth be told, times were he quivered, hoping no man noticed. Until he saw, Gospel clear, that each man trapped in those waitings turned inward and closed, wrestling his own hants and spooks. Even the officers got a jump in their voices whenever they walked a waiting line to show themselves, preaching courage and discipline and whatnot.

  Now here they were, waiting still but at ease. The rattle of rifles and thump of cannon had moved away and—Pickens believed—diminished. The armies were like two boys in the schoolyard who, after puffing themselves up and jabbing timidly, decided they didn’t much want to fight, after all.

  Did hear the occasional Rebel yell. Clear enough to know who was being driven.

  Made him miss his dogs. Whenever a scrap took on the feel of a slowed-down hunt, he missed his dogs mightily. He did hope Nestor had been looking after them. Singular Negro, Nestor, who liked dogs. Most bucks feared them, rightfully.

  Auntie Delsie hated Nestor, the reason ever unclear.

  Nigger business. You just had to let it run. ’Long as it didn’t trouble the order of things.

  Resting in the shade, the men watched as Colonel O’Neal rode past with General Rodes. Both men looked like officers were supposed to look.

  Bill Price asked: “How’s them feet, Sam?”

  “Tolerable,” Pickens lied. “Got me here.”

  “Those hind paws are going to get you before the Yankees do,” Doc Cowin put in. “Told you to see the surgeon. But Man is an unreasonable creature.”

  “After the fight. I’ll see to them.”

  Joe Grigg snorted. “Don’t seem like the Yankees are in a fighting mood.”

  Doc Cowin’s forehead was jeweled with sweat: The added years told, although old Doc was game. “Gentlemen, the majesty of the Union must not be slighted. Those boys didn’t go to all this trouble just to run off again. No, we shall once more unto the breach. Or into those trees yonder.”

  “Can’t say as I like the place,” Bob Price declared. “Give a man the shivers.”

  “Wouldn’t mind filling my canteen,” good Bill Lenier said.

  Price recalled the cool well water at Umbria.

  Weary-eyed and serious, Joe Grigg asked Doc Cowin, “Really think they’ll fight? Maybe they’ve already had enough.”

  “Might be the soldiers have had their fill. Just might be. But it’s all aces their generals haven’t. Can’t just cross back over that river without killing lots of folks. Theirs or ours, hardly makes a difference. Just need bodies heaped up to show they tried.”

  Well, if they had to fight, Samuel Pickens hoped it would be nearby. He didn’t want to march another step. Maybe, he thought, he ought to see the surgeon, after all. He feared taking off what remained of his shoes, afraid he’d scratch himself down to the bone, turn himself into a skeleton below the ankles.

  Another cavalcade trotted by on the forest track, stirring dust where mud had been hours before. Doc Cowin said:

  “Behold bold Hector, favored son of Priam.”

  Bill Price said, “Looks like Jackson to me.”

  Five thirty p.m.

  North bank of the Rappahannock, Fredericksburg

  Uncle John” Sedgwick was at a loss. What the devil did Joe Hooker want him and his corps to do? He hadn’t thought much of Hooker when they were classmates at West Point, and he thought less of him now.

  Wouldn’t say so, though.

  He had more respect for Jube Early, another classmate, who waited on that ridge across the river, if the Reb deserters weren’t telling tall tales.

  Bugger of a thing, the way the war set men at each other. He’d served under Bob Lee, after the Army decided he’d make a better cavalry major than captain of artillery. And though it wasn’t a thing to be said out loud, either, he wasn’t convinced that Joe was that man’s match.

  John Sedgwick would do his duty, though. Always did. He’d grit his teeth and execute, the way he had carried out that affair with the Cherokees. Take a war over that shabby business any day.

  The problem was that he didn’t know which orders he was to follow. He’d received a telegraphic message at four o’clock directing him to shift from his demonstration to an attack, if it seemed propitious. But he’d never gotten the order to begin the demonstration until now, an hour after the attack order. And that was followed in short by another message: Hooker was suspending his advance.

  What the devil did they expect him to do with one corps and scraps when Joe was pulling in his horns with over a hundred thousan
d men at his right hand?

  Bad enough getting shot three times at Antietam—he wasn’t about to get shit on by Joe Hooker.

  He’d sent a message to Butterfield at Falmouth, asking for clarification. Now he wondered if he hadn’t ought to ride over there himself? The telegraph was hardly reliable, with messages sent in the afternoon arriving before orders drawn up in the morning.

  All he knew was that he was not going to sacrifice his soldiers’ lives playing guessing games. He had thirty thousand men across that river, ready to play their role, and more in reserve. They were good men, who trusted him. Given clear orders, he’d obey, but he wasn’t one to make cheap stabs at glory.

  And that “demonstration” nonsense. That was a phony word that just shifted the blame. “Feint” he understood. And he understood “supporting attack.” He even grasped “detain the enemy.” But how many lives was a “demonstration” reckoned at? It sounded like a dress parade with corpses.

  As for an attack against that bloodstained ridge across the river, he was not about to repeat poor Burnside’s folly. Let Joe draw off more of Lee’s men and he’d give it a try, if issued a clear order. But he couldn’t advance without some hope of advantage.

  He wasn’t going to wreck his corps and become another scapegoat, if Joe failed.

  Seven p.m.

  Falmouth, rear headquarters of the Army of the Potomac

  Cushing, the telegraph has to be dependable. Do you understand me?” Dan Butterfield wasn’t a shouting general, but he had to struggle to contain himself. He had issued an order that any soldier caught tampering with the telegraph lines would be shot, but it hadn’t helped. “If we can’t coordinate the wings of this army, the movements and actions…”

  He stopped. Glancing about. He did not want the headquarters reinfected with defeatism. The Army of the Potomac had had enough of that.

  Voice lowered to a conversational tone, he continued: “Just see to it, Captain. Make the telegraph work.”

  The Signal officer stood before him as if he expected the whipping to continue.

  “Go and see to it,” Butterfield repeated.

  The captain turned to leave, caught himself, turned back, and saluted.

  Butterfield ignored him. He’d had enough of the fellow’s excuses. And quite enough of military inanities.

  He saw now that they should have stuck with the Morse operators, the tried-and-true. He’d ordered them into action at last, and the first link was clicking away, but that was only a start, and far too many messages disappeared or made no sense.

  Was the plan just too good, too complicated? He’d begun to fear it and had to bolster himself.

  All had been going splendidly, but now the first stitches were popping at the seams. Nothing terribly wrong, not yet. But Butterfield had grown uneasy. Why had Joe stopped cold that afternoon? It didn’t seem he’d really given battle, not if the reports that got through were accurate.

  Was Joe all right? When he’d read Joe’s message to the troops the night before, the swagger had left him uneasy. Every man had his faults, and Joe’s—one of Joe’s—was the brag he put on at times. Yes, the crossings had summed to a magnificent feat, full credit for that. Joe had leapt rivers and come down atop Lee’s army, it had been a splendid coup.

  But Lee wasn’t beaten, not yet.

  Butterfield crossed the room and bent over a map of operations.

  “Bring another lamp over here,” he snapped. “A man can’t see a damned thing.”

  That was untrue. He could see a great deal. But he needed to see more.

  They’d been a finely matched team, Joe as the commander and he as his deputy. But Joe did need shoring up at times, good counsel. They wanted a better connection than that blasted telegraph.

  They needed to react more quickly than Lee, that was the crux of it.

  What was Lee thinking?

  Butterfield studied the map, hunting revelations and secrets. Sharpe’s reports and the balloon observers alike insisted that Lee had been shifting forces westward. That had to be the bulk of Jackson’s corps, since Sharpe was convinced that Longstreet had not arrived, that reports of his presence were lies planted by false deserters. That movement might portend a significant clash, or—quite possibly—Lee was retreating on Gordonsville, as foreseen. If the latter were true, a rear guard would, of course, have moved to block Joe. That could explain the day’s encounter, Lee struggling for breathing room, for a safe route out of Joe’s grasp.

  But wouldn’t it have been wiser, then, for Joe to redouble his efforts? To send in more divisions, not withdraw? Even if Lee did “ingloriously fly,” Joe would have to fight him eventually. And a retreating Lee would enjoy ever shorter interior lines, if he recalled the military term. Didn’t it make more sense to fight him now, when Lee had been caught off guard?

  Well, Dan Butterfield told himself, I’m not one of those blasted West Pointers, am I? Joe has to know what’s best, he’s the man on the scene, the professional soldier.

  He just wished he could sit down and talk to Joe, to get things straight.

  The map was no comfort at all.

  Twilight

  The Plank Road at the Catherine Furnace Road

  We must attack them tomorrow,” Lee said.

  Jackson sat on the log beside him. Waiting.

  “He wants us to attack him,” Lee continued. “And we shall oblige him.”

  “Lost his nerve today,” Jackson commented.

  Lee nodded. “Should that be true, we must take advantage of it.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me to find him back across the river come morning.”

  “Perhaps,” Lee said. “But we must assume he will stay. And he must pay a great price for his presumption.”

  Jackson poked the dirt with a stick. They had no fire: A Yankee sharpshooter had been active earlier. Still, the nearby crossroads bustled with recalled detachments, shifting batteries, couriers, commissaries, and laggards trailing their regiments. In the distance, hundreds of Yankee axes felled trees to form abatis. Occasionally, a fieldpiece probed a target. But the day’s fighting was done.

  “How can we get at those people?” Lee asked.

  “One flank, or the other,” Jackson said. “They’re entrenching. Ground between us is poor. No place for a frontal attack.”

  “No. But a limited attack might fix their attention. A supporting attack, no more. While we move on a flank.”

  “Right flank? Cut him off from the river? Bag them?”

  Lee shook his head. His neck was stiff. And his hindquarters were sore. He was not as supple as he once had been. “I rode out there myself. The roads are few, and constricted. An attacker could not deploy, not under fire.”

  “Has to be the left, then.” Jackson dropped his stick and took off his kepi, revealing thinning hair pasted by sweat.

  “I have called for General Stuart,” Lee told him. “To see what he might tell us.”

  Jackson fussed with the brim of the cap. Lee understood the man: Now that an attack had been agreed upon, Jackson was impatient to begin. But many, many details needed to be settled, before a plan could be devised and orders issued for the morrow. They had to be daring, while leaving little to chance. It was a difficult balance at the best of times. And these times were not the best.

  The details of a flank attack, if one proved practicable, would demand their attention for most of the night. There were so many questions, so many unknowns. Lee wanted sleep but knew he would get little.

  “I wish,” he said, “that I knew how many men General Hooker has on the field. Here, in front of us. We know of three corps, but it could be as many as five. Or more. I still do not have an answer.”

  “Have to hit him, anyway. And hard.”

  “But where he is weakest, General, where he is least observant…”

  Lee interrupted the exchange to wave up his waiting adjutant, Major Taylor. Even here, there were papers to sign. Jackson signaled to his young man, Pendleton, that he, too,
might now see to anything pressing.

  Matters always pressed.

  Lee struggled with the documents in the faint light. He trusted Taylor and his staff but still preferred to know what he was signing. He was too vain, though, to ask for explanations.

  Amid these skirmishes of paper and ink, Stuart rode in, his advent ever something of an uproar. After dismounting grandly, he approached the other generals in his high boots, sweeping off his hat and grinning as though he’d just done something marvelous. Lee thought, again, of how different these two men were, Jackson and Stuart, one solemn and fierce, the other jovial and, yes, a bit lax at times. Yet, in one more of the Lord’s miracles, Jackson displayed a fond indulgence of the younger man and even—sometimes—laughed at his jokes with a noise approaching a bray.

  Substituting a bow for a salute, Stuart declared, “Yankee cavalry seem to have gone into hiding. Unwilling to give my men the least pleasure today.”

  There had been reports from elsewhere of Union cavalry ranging widely. Confusing reports, from various points to the rear. But what mattered was the field before them. All else had to wait.

  “General Stuart … what can you tell us about the left?” Lee asked.

  As quick as ever, Stuart reported: “Hooker has his Eleventh Corps out there, looking lonesome. Their right runs beyond our left. Good ways past. Fitz had a brush with some of them, didn’t amount to much. Scouts took a few beeves and a passel of unhappy Germans who’d lost their way.”

  Jackson quickened. Lee caught the sudden tension through the shadows. If those people were calling up beeves to be slaughtered, it meant they expected to remain on this side of the river, whether immobile or renewing their march.

  They would not retire. They would have to be defeated.

  “Have you uncovered where their line ends?” Lee asked. “Precisely? How far it’s refused, how heavily?”

  Stuart shrugged. “I can find out, sir. Tell you right now, it doesn’t reach back to the river. They’re strung out along the Turnpike, by the Plank Road run-in and beyond. Flank does seem to be in the air, but I’ll make certain.” He slapped his hat back on his head.