by Ralph Peters
Stuart smiled mightily. Unlikely that men could see the grin, but he always figured they could feel it, somehow.
“I do believe we’ll go there, this fine morning. Come along, we’ll share your precious discovery with General Heth, give him a purpose.”
Confidence. That was the thing. Morale. Soldiers who believed things would go right made them go right.
Thrice as worn as he’d been after his ride around McClellan, Jeb Stuart began to sing, belting out his own lyrics to the tune of “The Old Gray Mare”:
“Old Joe Hooker, won’t you come out of the Wilderness, come out of the Wilderness, come out of the Wilderness…”
Laughing, staff men and couriers joined in. Stuart regretted leaving behind his banjo picker.
Finding Harry Heth did take some doing. Stuart’s fellow Virginian had rambled into the brush in yet another effort to organize his brigades and regiments. Runners went to fetch him.
Meanwhile, another aide located Stuart.
“Got it, General. Some fool tucked it down at the bottom of your wagon.”
“Now I know the day’s going to be a fine one,” Stuart said. Addressing all, he declared, “You know, boys, my West Point nickname was ‘Beauty,’ and on this glorious day I mean to live up to it. Resplendent, I shall be, as radiant as the sun on the shields of Attica.” He laughed merrily, a laugh he could produce as dependably as a plantation belle summoned unfelt tears, and he turned back to the aide. “Red sash, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I surmise that this spot here will do for a gentleman’s dressing room.”
Jeb Stuart dismounted, patted his horse, and handed it off. His aide unpacked the carefully rolled new uniform.
Couldn’t appreciate the colors yet, it was still too dark, but Stuart knew the new coat, with its country mile of braid, was a touch too blue for a proper CSA uniform. He’d always felt the shade had a dash to it, though. As for the sash, he normally draped his waist in cavalry yellow, but he did think wearing artillery red would be a nice gesture toward that noisiest element of his new command.
As light from beyond the horizon diluted the darkness, Harry Heth thrashed his way back to the scene, cursing like a cheating gambler cheated.
When he made out Stuart among the men and horses, he stopped and stared.
“God almighty,” the infantryman said, “this a battle, or a whorehouse wedding?”
* * *
Stunned, Dan Sickles managed to say, “Joe … don’t do this. I beg you, don’t do it. Retract the order.”
In the broadcloth gray before dawn, Sickles and his wartime carousing companion sat their mounts on the high ground. Batteries on both sides of their party stood to, ready for what the next minutes would bring. Below and behind them, infantry sergeants dressed their lines and checked cartridge pouches while their officers huddled.
“Military necessity,” Hooker said. “We have to tighten the lines, reduce our front.”
“But Joe … this is the finest high ground on the battlefield. Only competition’s that rise toward the Chancellor place.”
“Fairview,” Hooker said. “That one’s called Fairview.”
“Well, whatever it’s called—and whatever this-here bump’s called—”
“Hazel Grove,” Hooker told him.
“Hazel Grove, Molly Grove, Annie Grove, whatever you call it, this is the key position. My artillery…”
Hooker’s smile, indulgent and smug, was already visible in the quitting night. “Dan, I admire your spirit, you’ve studied up on military affairs. But I think I know what I’m doing. After all”—he brushed the almost-morning with his sleeve, as if he might sweep away the lingering darkness—“this has been my profession.”
Dan Sickles was, for the first time, tempted to ask Hooker what his profession had been in California, but he feared an irreparable breach. No, he wasn’t at all sure his friend and drinking companion knew what he was doing. He’d been losing confidence in Joe for two full days. He’d begun to feel the way he often felt about West Point men, that the country had not made the wisest investment with its public funds when it sent the lot of them for a free education.
Sickles tried one last time: “If we give up this position to the Rebs, we’re going to regret it.”
Hooker renewed his smile, although—Sickles believed—with a ghost of doubt. Then the big, bluff voice rang out as usual.
“Dan, if the Rebs drag any guns up here, we’ll blow them all to Hell. Settled and done. Withdraw your men and fortify the new line. We’re wasting time.” Hooker shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “If I don’t withdraw you now, your entire corps could be cut off and trapped.”
Sickles felt the impulse to protest again. He recognized the risk of being severed from the army well enough. But the Rebs already were severed from one another, and he believed his Third Corps could give as good as it got. Slocum’s blackguards could do their part on the flank, too. He didn’t pretend to be a martial genius, but Dan Sickles did believe he recognized a perfect artillery position when he stood on one.
He knew Joe Hooker, though. When Joe truly convinced himself of something, it became impossible to move him. Stubbornness had its place in war, to be sure: The Rebs were stubborn as priests. But he wished Joe would be stiffer with the Rebs and less so with subordinates.
The prospect of giving up the high ground sickened him, almost literally: He felt his stomach churn, as if he were coming down with a dose of the camp trots.
Wasn’t that, though. It was plain, old-fashioned disgust.
What the devil was wrong with Joe?
As a single cannon sounded and the first rifle fire snapped over on the right, Hooker led his retinue toward the next command. Flags snapped and hoofbeats drummed.
It was, Dan Sickles suspected, going to be an interesting morning.
* * *
In faint light, Hooker reached his old division. When the men recognized him, they cheered. They believed in him. Still.
His headache had faded. He sat taller in the saddle.
Hiram Berry, the division’s present commander, was, like Dan, a self-taught soldier, but deadly serious. And he was brave. For a New Englander, Berry was affable, if not much of a tippler or petticoat-lifter, and for a politician he wasn’t flamboyant. Really, there was no color to the man. Likable and capable, he lacked a sense of drama, any flair. Berry would do his duty, but he’d never replace Joe Hooker in soldiers’ hearts.
Hooker had viewed him as the perfect choice to take his division.
“Morning, sir,” Berry called, saluting.
“Hiram.” Hooker touched the rim of his hat. “Ready for ’em?”
“Boys are always ready.”
“Dan’s going to be realigning. He’ll need you to hold fast, give him time to move.”
“We’ll hold.”
Berry wasn’t one for lengthy speeches.
It was essential to secure the right, to give Sickles time to withdraw to the new defensive lines. It was vital to shun mistakes. He’d welcome a victory, of course, and perhaps Sedgwick would appear behind Lee before the Second Coming, but the critical thing was to avoid defeat. That meant limiting risk and fighting defensively, giving Lee no openings, forcing the Johnnies to smash themselves against successive entrenchments. An outright win would be grand, but a battle fought to a draw on Lee’s own ground would count as success, given the past record of the Army of the Potomac.
Lincoln and Stanton would have no cause to relieve him.
“Well, you boys don’t need me,” he announced to Berry and his gathered staff. “Still the best division in the army, give the Rebs the devil!”
As he turned his horse, he spoke to Berry in a quieter voice:
“I’m counting on you, Hiram.”
* * *
“Rosy-fingered dawn,” Doc Cowin announced.
The instant he closed his mouth, a cannon fired.
“Wish everybody with rank on their collars would kee
p their fingers off me. Rosy, or otherwise,” Joe Grigg said, with more edge than usual. “Ain’t right, if they send us back in.”
“We must endure our going hence, even as our coming hither,” Doc Cowin told him.
“Just as soon not go anywhere myself,” Sam Pickens seconded. “Let Hill’s boys take their turn. We did our part.”
He did hope Hill’s men—whoever had charge of them now—would do the trick against the Yankees. Even if they needed help from the poor lot under Colston, that would be fine. Just let Rodes’ division be for once. Particularly the 5th Alabama.
Hoped it wasn’t true about Old Jack. They all did. If a man had to fight, it was preferable to win.
Claimed it was just his arm. Grant it be so. A man could spare one arm, if it came to that.
Hill had gone down with a wound of his own, they said, but his was a scraper.
Couldn’t say who was up and in charge, if anybody.
Pickens stood a few steps apart from his comrades as the grove brightened. He’d been teased enough. When he’d finally dared take off his shoes, or the remnants thereof, to put on those new Yankee stockings, the stench had sickened even him. Normally pleasant as peaches, Bill Lenier had commented, “Lord, Sam, you’re the first living man I’ve smelt who stunk worse than a corpse left in the sun. Them feet.”
“Send him into battle barefoot, Yankees would run off like driven hogs,” Jim Arrington, usually quiet, added. “Wouldn’t even need to swim that river on their way home, they’d jump right over it.”
Sam had not answered. He had drawn on those stockings—an act that gave him five seconds of comfort—to avoid the monstrous temptation to scratch himself down to the bone.
Now he stood, alone, and listened.
Volleys shattered the calm and Rebel yells rose.
* * *
The North Carolinians of Jim Lane’s brigade went forward with a ferocity that burned the air around them. Preceded by a heavy line of skirmishers, they howled as if they would eat their enemy’s flesh. Shoving their way through the underbrush, pausing at nothing, men felt a power almost supernatural course through them.
Lane rode with them, calling encouragement. Some men barked, “Remember Jackson!” but Lane chose other words. He did not want to remember. He wanted to forget.
And he never would. No man among them would.
His horse balked at a thorn patch and Lane punished the gelding with his spurs. It would have been more practical to go forward on foot, but Jackson had been shot on horseback and Lane would not dismount and seem a coward.
“Forward!”
He couldn’t yet see the enemy, but his skirmishers were at them. He could hear that much.
An aide rode up, an earnest boy.
“Sir, we’re losing contact with General McGowan.”
“His responsibility, Captain. We’re the guide brigade, road on our left. South Carolina will have to cling to North Carolina today.”
“He’s going awful wide, sir.”
“And we’re going straight ahead.”
Hard enough to control his own brigade. Sam McGowan would have to see to his.
The firing was close now, but he still could not see. The undergrowth was a second enemy.
His men bullied their way forward.
Another wave of Rebel yells, raised in triumph this time, not in anger. Lane spurred his horse ahead of his seething ranks.
Great Jesus, his skirmishers, unsupported, had swept over the first Yankee entrenchments, a defensive work of stacked logs, formidable. They should have been shot down before they’d gotten within twenty yards.
Had the Yankees lost heart?
The main body of his troops rushed ahead, raising a cry that might have been heard in Wilmington. They clambered over the entrenchments like pirates seizing a ship.
Lane looked for, and found, a low section of the barricade where he could jump his horse. The spot was close to his ill-fated 18th.
He had done his best to invigorate the men, to cajole them past their shame, but he needed to watch the men of the 18th North Carolina closely. Couldn’t say whether they’d fight all the harder because of what they’d done, or just go quits. Purdie would have to keep a tight grip on his regiment.
Waving their swords, his officers bellowed at the men to re-form in a hurry. The usual, almost nauseating, confusion required sorting. Lane rode along his misshapen lines, calling:
“Dress ranks, men, dress ranks. We have work to do.”
“By damn, we’ll do it, too!” a hill-folk voice responded.
Those hills, those mountains. Where loyalties had diverged, with families sundered and cousins ambushed on back trails.
Not all of the Yankees had disappeared. Skirmishers and sharpshooters began to take a toll. Back to the enemy as he reordered his ranks, a captain barked a last command before his face exploded, hurling blood and teeth at his gathering soldiers.
They moved forward again. A line of Yankees seemed to rise from the earth, a double line.
A massed volley cut into Lane’s ranks, scything. His horse bled from the neck, but seemed unaware of it.
“Don’t stop, men! They won’t stand!” he shouted. “Tar Heels, at the double-quick…” He waited for his command to echo then roared, “March!”
He was wrong about the Yankees. They stood their ground. At seventy yards, his brigade stopped of its own, the veterans sensing the work that was required. Slower to react than the men, officers hastened to give the orders that would authorize volleys.
Lane’s senior flag-bearer fell. Another man seized the staff.
From the left, hidden Federal guns raked his flank. A round shot tore through a gray rank just behind Lane, sending men and body parts flying, streaking the air crimson.
They had to be firing from the road. Lane had been so concerned about the 18th he’d neglected his left. He turned his horse and spurred it, riding just behind his busied ranks, the men loading and firing at the enemy to the front.
“Shoot down the crewmen,” he shouted in anticipation, long before he gained his flank. But the men on his left already knew what to do.
He saw the Federal battery now, two of its guns turned toward them. He watched as bullets ripped into the gun crews, while maddened horses warred against their harnesses. Federal artillerymen crumpled as if gone boneless, limp as dollies.
His men swept forward, only to be halted—slaughtered—by canister.
More men took their places.
“Shoot the damned officers,” a man shouted.
Smoke clotted the air. The morning had already been poisoned by powder.
Confident that his men would finish up with the battery, Lane rode back toward his center. Only to find himself amid the hottest fires he had ever experienced.
A courier afoot reported, “Colonel Purdie’s dead, sir. Shot him right through the head.”
“Lieutenant Colonel George took over command?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right.”
But it wasn’t all right. Damn fool, Purdie. Had he been trying to get himself killed? Wash off the shame of shooting down Jackson, wash it off with his blood? Well, he’d succeeded in the first part, the damned idiot.
With a cold shock, Lane realized that he’d fairly described himself. Sitting atop a horse in this antechamber of Hell. Atop a bleeding horse. Was he trying to get himself killed?
No, he was trying to kill Yankees. The Yankees who were still standing there, beyond the veil of smoke, standing their ground even if half their number lay motionless or crawled rearward, unaided by comrades intent on fighting.
Lane’s own dead and wounded lay about in shocking numbers.
He cantered from regiment to regiment, telling their colonels or whoever stood in command to prepare to charge. When he reached the 18th again, Forney George had been carried off with a wound and Major Barry had taken command.
Barry, the man who had given the order that would cost Jackson an arm. The major’s
eyes were crazed, his mouth aquiver.
“Barry, when you charge, you don’t stop. You go right through them. Don’t even stop for prisoners.” He rose from his saddle and raised his voice. “Eighteenth North Carolina, when you go forward, I want you to rip the shit-packed guts right out of those nigger-lovers, hear?”
The soldiers, yearning for absolution, roared.
And Lane’s Brigade charged forward. Even then, not all of the Yankees broke. A startling number had to be clubbed to the ground with rifle butts or shot point-blank. Already drenched in blood, a blue-coated sergeant came at them with his fists. Muzzles rammed into his torso just as soldiers pulled their triggers. The Yankee’s life ended in quick jerks and he lay sprawled, the front of his uniform smoldering.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop!”
Lane’s horse gave way under him. He had just time enough to throw himself free. Hard earth shook his bones and his sword flew.
Men helped him up, returning the blade. Artillery found their range.
“Keep going forward! Forward, men!” His voice came weaker, the wind had been knocked from his lungs. And his knee hurt. He pressed on afoot, fighting a limp, separated from the last members of his staff.
The remnants of his brigade plunged ahead, obedient and ferocious. They tore through another belt of brush and slopped through a stretch of moor. Lane judged they had covered a half mile since stepping off.
Another line of Yankee entrenchments loomed. Muzzles blazed from raw battlements. Artillery tore through the brambles and swept the open stretches.
His soldiers didn’t pause. Reason had no purchase. Blood-drunk, they sensed the end of the hunt. They didn’t yell, they screamed. Turned to animals.
Massive sounds of battle surrounded them.
Lane seemed to see more of his men fall than remained on their feet. But those still up on two legs led the way, officers an irrelevance.
Astonishing Lane, his soldiers hurled themselves over the Yankee barricades and dropped into the trenches behind them, swinging their rifles like war clubs.
They took the second defensive line. Just like that.
Again, officers rushed to reassemble companies and regiments. Almost simultaneously, couriers from both flanks warned that the brigade had outdistanced the rest of the attack, there was no one out there, left or right, but Yankees.
