by Ralph Peters
“The one thing he made perfectly clear,” Couch went on, “is that we are not to attack.”
“And General Sedgwick?”
Couch crossed his arms. On the cot, the army’s commander began to snore.
“Sedgwick will have to fend for himself for a while.”
* * *
The surgeon found Jackson in higher spirits and better condition than he would have predicted. Exhausted himself, he sat on a stool beside his patient’s cot, clothing mottled by the blood of the hundred other men he’d treated that day.
“And the pain in your side? It’s gone?”
“The Lord is kind,” Jackson told him. “I have no pain. Not there. And little elsewhere.”
The surgeon was confounded. Perhaps, he thought, there’s something to all those prayers. Jackson did seem favored.
“Well, rest is the important thing. Long journey tomorrow. You mustn’t strain yourself.”
“Dr. McGuire, I am in the hands of our Lord. But … you do think the journey wise?”
“General Lee thinks it’s necessary.”
On his mound of pillows—gathered from eager donors in the neighborhood—Jackson nodded. “Yes. He fears I might be captured. Union cavalry.”
“That’s right.”
Jackson’s eyes moved elsewhere. “I would not fear it, of course. I have ever treated their wounded well. They would not misuse me.”
“But General Lee doesn’t want to lose you, sir. He’s eager for your return.”
“Yes.”
“And Guiney Station’s the railhead now, in case…”
“Yes. The Chandlers are a Christian family, I know them. They are generous, Fairview will grant me a welcome.” He spoke as if reciting prepared lines.
“But?”
A change passed over Jackson’s face, as if willed. The surgeon reminded himself to have an orderly clean Jackson’s beard.
“Tell me more of the day,” Jackson insisted. “Lieutenant Smith shared what he knew … but I should like to hear more.”
“Well … it was a … I should say a remarkable day, sir. The fighting was difficult at first.”
Jackson nodded. Signaling that he knew as much, that he wished McGuire to move on.
The surgeon understood.
“The Stonewall Brigade … the morning’s fight was savage, but they weathered it. In the final charge, they led the way. ‘Passing brave,’ as they say. They were the heroes of the hour.”
It was an exaggeration, if not quite a lie, but the surgeon believed it justifiable.
“They went into battle shouting, ‘Remember Stonewall!’” McGuire added.
Jackson’s eyes grew moist. “Just like them. Good. Good.”
The general made a queer movement with his torso, one that only a doctor might recognize: an attempt to reach out with an arm gone missing.
Stymied, Jackson eased back into his pillows and said, “You know, Dr. McGuire, the name ‘Stonewall’ belongs to the brigade, not to me. I have no right to it, it’s theirs.” His eyes searched a private distance again. “One day … the time will come when those men will be proud to say to their children, ‘I fought with the Stonewall Brigade.’”
The surgeon feared that Jackson might weep and looked away.
“You must rest, General. It’s the best medicine on offer. Sleep now, try to sleep.”
But Jackson seemed reluctant to let him go.
“How long? Before I can see to my duties again?”
McGuire shook his head. “Impossible to say, it’s much too early. Oh, you’ve come through admirably so far … but I can’t yet judge the length of your recovery. There are numerous factors…” Alarmed by an intuition, the surgeon added, “You mustn’t hurry yourself. That would be … a dereliction, General.” He smiled an official smile. “The Confederacy needs you whole and hale and hearty.”
Jackson smiled, bemused.
“I fear, Dr. McGuire, that I shall never be entirely whole. Unless I can grow a new arm. But my soul … I believe that is complete. And in good hands.”
“Well, rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
As the surgeon turned to leave the tent, Jackson said, “I have never been more at peace. All this … all has been done according to His holy will. My Heavenly Father designed this affliction for my good, Dr. McGuire, all for my good.”
The surgeon heard a tone of doubt and fear.
* * *
Jackson told himself that he wished, above all things, to do his duty, to serve first the Lord then his country. He insisted to himself that he desired nothing more upon this earth than to return to the battlefield.
But his thoughts betrayed him, fleeing to his esposa. He wished to feel her hand upon his forehead, to sink into her comfort, to feel her warmth and her light breath upon him. He had agreed to the transfer to Guiney Station not only because Lee wished it but because once Hooker had been driven off, his wife might be able to reach him there.
He needed her. He had to keep up the appearance of strength for the others. But he needed her.
His traitorous desires even lured him to dream of weeks at home in Lexington, perhaps a full month with his wife and child.
Such wishes were undutiful, he knew, but he could not help himself.
There were times when he felt so alone he feared he would die of it.
* * *
He missed Doc Cowin. Poor Doc. Would’ve liked to hear what high words and poesy he’d apply to this Babylonian Captivity.
Their guards—not quick-witted sorts—ordered them to the side of the road again. More wagons passed, high-springed in the gloaming, emptied of treasures. The blue-bellies did have a wealth of everything.
Then they were put back to marching again, and Pickens’ feet were a downright atrocity committed by the body against itself. He had half a mind to return to the university after the war—to take the doings seriously this time—and study up on medicine. So he could always fix himself, if he ever had to go through this again.
Wouldn’t his mother be proud, at last, if he took a degree in anything?
Well, he’d been young, after all.
Auntie Delsie had been the only one who had not chided him outright, just hum-humming over her stove and—maybe—pleased to have him home again.
When would he be home again? Not soon. Even if promptly exchanged, the men with gold fuss on their collars were not about to send him to Alabama to take his ease.
Might get a few days in Richmond, though, while the clerks sorted things out. Other fellows had.
Where would the Yankees put him up in the meantime?
Hadn’t been bad keepers so far, the blue-bellies. Some cursing, sure, but not set to wound, not deeply. One guard asked about Stonewall Jackson—a prisoner had told him that Jackson was wounded or dead. Pickens, who didn’t know much and was inclined to say even less, just answered:
“Seen old Stonewall myself, healthy as a bear, not fifteen minutes before y’all laid hands on me.”
Wasn’t it odd, though, what a pleasure it was to lie sometimes? Made him think that women must be happier than they let on, since they didn’t do much but tell lies all day long.
Once he and his parade of fellow prisoners had plodded over the Yankee pontoon bridge, they’d even been given two crackers each and a chance to fill their canteens. Pickens had tested his teeth on the hard goods while watching a battery pass—it seemed to him to be going the wrong way. Like Doc always said: The ways of the Yankees were unknowable.
Crying shame about Doc, it truly was. It would have been a heathen delight to hear what he had to say about all this.
TWELVE
May 4
Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville
Chewing remained a trial for John Brown Gordon, with the left side of his face reluctant to heal, more than seven months after Antietam. He could not commend getting shot in the jaw, with the ball exiting the opposite cheek in the company of four teeth. His jaw was no longer wired shut, but the nat
ural act of mastication remained an infernal ordeal, an argument for soups and meat ground fine.
But John Brown Gordon could talk. He could speak with volume and clarity, his enunciation perfect, in a cadenced voice aped from his reverend father, a man whose accounts with the Lord were not untroubled and whose accounts with his fellow man were in chronic arrears. And Gordon loved to speak to multitudes; the very act of opening his mouth evoked Ulysses, his ideal, and Achilles, bronze-helmed on the plains of Troy, his idols both, worshipped in classrooms until his father’s self-wrought tribulations cut short the son’s university career, necessitating a hasty retreat to northwestern Georgia, where Alabama impinged and Tennessee loomed—all of that prelude to this Virginia morning, with his men already sweated from a quick march meant to outrace the division’s other brigades.
Richmond had been recalcitrant in awarding him a brigadier generalship, leaving Gordon a colonel, although commanding a brigade, so he had chosen to interpret his orders from Early to advantage, stepping out ahead of his peers to accomplish the morning’s mission on his own. Gordon reckoned success would be worth a star. And he did not contemplate failure.
Now, with his men approaching the ridge that demanded retaking—the pivotal heights behind Fredericksburg—he halted his brigade in a fallow field, drawing the regiments into a compact mass.
Well aware of the splendid figure he cut, with eyes set deep beneath an aggressive brow, his forehead high, and the family nose sculpted by Scotland’s gales—Fanny was fond of that nose—he rose in his stirrups in the brilliant light and stiffened his never-less-than-immaculate posture.
“Men of Georgia!” he began. “Heroes of Georgia! The hour is dire, the need is terrible. Will you … the glorious sons of our peerless state … take back the crucial ground Mississippi lost? Will you go forward, no matter the cost, and plant your banners where now invaders transgress? Will you show them stalwart hearts and bayonets? Will you save your country?”
He waited for the soldiers to realize they should cheer. And cheer him they did.
“Noble sons of Georgia,” he resumed, “inheritors of freedoms dearly purchased … Myrmidons of the Confederacy … I ask you to go no step beyond the ground my own boots tread. The fight may be grim, the price of victory dear, but what man among us doubts that Georgia’s sons will pay it gladly?”
He waited for, and received, another cheer.
“I want to see every man who’s with me raise his hat. Come on, men!”
Thousands of hats in a hundred styles rose skyward.
“Forward, then, let us go forward, but go in silence, as guardians of this new domain of freedom. Let not a cry escape your lips as you cross the deadly fields and scale the heights. But when you near the crest, when the Yankees already dread annihilation … it’s then that I want you to howl to be heard in Augusta, in Macon, Savannah, Atlanta … are you with me, men?”
The cheering seemed fuel enough to propel the brigade to wondrous deeds.
Gordon drew his saber, letting the early sun gild polished steel. Before calling out the orders to deploy into line and advance, he bellowed:
“Georgia does not follow. Georgia leads!”
Alone against what was surely a deadly foe, the brigade went forward, with sergeants brusque and muscled correcting the lines. Red banners, torn by battle, lofted in rhythm with their bearers’ steps. Fortunate soldiers tramped along the road, while others labored through fields and over fences, their formations parting to flow around houses and barns, faces growing more earnest with every yard, all the world suffused with the brushing of trouser legs through infant crops, with the slosh of canteens still full and the useless admonitions of nervous officers.
He had deployed the brigade into line too early and the men had to exert themselves marching cross-lots, but that speech to a command he had not yet led in battle had been essential.
Georgia was going to hear from him. As was his Fanny, the most delicious woman ever produced by a sprawling continent, sugar candy that left a taste of pepper.
John Brown Gordon was ambitious. And he had realized at a blink that the men who made reputations in the war would lead the people afterward, brushing aside the politicians, the parlor champions, who chose to stay at home and pass resolutions. The future would belong to the war’s survivors.
He did wish Fanny could see him this fine morning. Sweep that woman right up across his saddle and ride off to someplace private.
He saw the rump of the hill and the sprawling ridge now, elevations high enough to invite a proper slaughter. He didn’t really care to be shot again, given his druthers, but life was about taking chances when others faltered.
Now and again, a soldier tried to raise a Rebel yell, conditioned to it, but he was soon hushed.
Every man had his eyes set on those heights.
The Yankees had made good use of their day of possession, digging in, hiding their guns with exasperating skill. Even their flags were concealed. They knew full well how essential that terrain was to both sides, key to control of Fredericksburg and its crossings. He had still been abed back in December, but he’d heard that the carnage on the ridge’s far side had been gruesome.
He waited for the Union guns to speak.
But the Yankees waited, allowing him to come on. Daring him. Luring him. He felt their eyes upon him, their numbers legion. Sharpshooters were surely taking aim.
He corrected his perfect posture again and pointed the way with his sword. Well-bred, his dapple gray pranced.
He hoped they wouldn’t shoot the goddamned horse. The beast had cost him plenty.
The ground began to rise. Ever so slightly. Hinting at the steeper slope to come.
Gordon felt every man in his lines go tense. Waiting for the eruption of death and butchery, each man selfish now, hoping that those to either side would fall and not him—yet selfless, too, willing to die for those same men, for a country hardly formed.
What were the Yankees waiting for?
Lying low. The bastards. Waiting. Merciless.
They reached the foot of the hill near the run of the ridge.
No sense in waiting: The dammed-up spunk would burst free on its own.
“Now! Now, boys! Charge!”
The brigade sent up a howl to shiver Lucifer. Men dashed up the leg-searing slope, determined to kill Yankees.
Gordon spurred his horse.
Still, the Yankees held their fire, waiting for Gordon’s men to reach point-blank range.
“Charge!” Gordon cried again. Beyond that, he was at a loss for words. Panting.
As his mount neared the crest, he raised his saber, ready to slash it down on threatening Yankees. He spurred the horse again, viciously now. The animal leapt to the top.
The Georgia Brigade faced a dozen astonished women who had come out to search for yesterday’s overlooked wounded.
The Yankees were gone.
Farther along, a pair of gray-clad cavalry scouts took their leisure.
“Why, good morning, ladies!” Gordon exclaimed, removing his hat and smiling.
* * *
Hooker felt almost entirely recovered. Best he’d felt in a week, in fact. A surgeon’s reexamination had found one pupil dilated, and he did have a ghost in one eye, but the frightful headaches he’d endured for days had disappeared, leaving only fleeting spells of uncertainty.
If taking a blow to the noggin was the price of ridding himself of those monstrous headaches, it was worth it.
He didn’t even feel a craving for drink.
The fresh air pleased as he rode along his lines on his morning inspection. The field fortifications his men had erected were masterful, complete with firing apertures and head-logs. Nor were the engineers and soldiers finished: Successive lines were being developed in depth, with interlocking fields of fire and carefully calculated artillery fans. If Lee succumbed to his pride and attacked him today, the result would be a massacre of all the wailing tribes of the Confederacy.
As he passed into the Fifth Corps lines, the density of soldiers and their evident readiness continued to lift his spirits. Had to admit that Meade kept his corps in good order. There was no malingering, and even the stench of men packed tight seemed milder.
The lines teemed with soldiers ready to fight, even as thousands more labored. When they recognized Hooker’s party, they gave him a cheer.
The men still believed in him. As they always had.
Mounted and alert, Meade saluted as Hooker rode up to his headquarters. Hooker seemed to remember a tiff with Meade the previous day, but the memory was unclear. Anyway, Meade appeared cordial. If hard words had passed between them, Meade was contrite.
“My kind of morning,” Hooker said by way of greeting. “Couldn’t ask for better Reb-killing weather, the sonsofbitches.”
“I’m all in favor of killing Rebs,” Meade told him, adding, “How are you feeling, Joe?”
“Ready to eat raw meat and chaw the bones. Just needed a little sleep.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You always claimed I was hardheaded, George. It’s not without its advantages, it seems.”
“Virtues of our vices,” Meade observed.
Hooker wasn’t certain how to take that. He nodded and forged on. “Just let Lee attack. Let the old devil try it.”
Before they could turn to inspect Meade’s lines together, Otis Howard appeared along an artillery trail, followed by two riders and no flags.
“Oh, Christ,” Hooker said to Meade. “I’ve already had my fill of Howard this morning.”
Meade said nothing.
Howard reined in his mount, his pinned sleeve flapping. “Morning, George,” he said, getting the greeting out of the way before swinging to Hooker.
“Joe … I’ve been thinking…”
Hooker looked at Meade. “Here’s trouble: Otis is thinking again.” He did find it hard to forgive Howard’s negligence, his outright neglect of orders. And he did not intend to pamper the man: Let him eat his shame cold. But he could not afford a political enemy, either.
He did his best to contain a surge of temper.
