A Chain of Thunder

by Jeff Shaara

  The name jolted him, and Bauer looked at Champlin again, who said, “Well, now. There you go. They make that tough little squirt an officer, and he’s already takin’ over the whole damn army.”

  Bauer said nothing, a wave of confusion still, but the private began to move, beckoning him, and Bauer followed, a quick glance to the sea of faces close by, men calling out, the ones who knew him well offering a confused cheer. Bauer picked up his musket, his bedroll, fought to load himself back to a march. Now he followed the young man into the open field, imagined the scowling face of Willis, smiled. Sammie. Well, I’ll be damned.

  MILLIKEN’S BEND, LOUISIANA, ON BOARD THE VON PHUL

  APRIL 23, 1863

  “You could have chosen an ironclad. I’d feel a hell of a lot safer if my family was behind a sheet of iron. Ellen would give me hell if I stuck her out here where some lucky rebel gunner might disturb her teacups.”

  Grant sniffed, seemed lost for a moment, the cigar smoke rolling up around his face.

  “Fred doesn’t mind. He’s been jumping around here like a grasshopper, keeps borrowing my binoculars so he can catch some glimpse of the guns downriver. I think he’s hoping we get shelled so he can see what kind of adventure this is. I guess … if I was twelve, I’d feel the same way. I don’t.”

  “And Julia?”

  Grant shook his head.

  “She’s not going anywhere near the fight. Not her place, and she knows it. I’ve got more to think about than worrying about my wife … or her teacups. When we reach the river crossing down south, I’ve ordered that none of the senior command haul along their families or their fancy baggage. This isn’t the time for that.”

  “I know. I got the order. I don’t figure I’ll be needing my fanciest dress uniforms while we’re stuffing our guns down rebel throats.”

  Grant gave a hint of a smile.

  “I’m not so worried about you. Not as confident in … well, some of the others.”

  Sherman knew that Grant was thinking of McClernand, that it was still possible McClernand would try to distance himself from Grant’s authority, would make every effort to conduct his part of the campaign his own way. Sherman said nothing, knew it was not the time to chew any fat over McClernand. He set the cigar aside, caught the sudden fragrance of … a woman. She was at the cabin door now, in a hoopless skirt, far more appropriate for the awkward confines of a boat, whether the commanding general’s wife agreed with that lack of decorum or not.

  “Excuse me … oh, General Sherman. How nice of you to visit.”

  There was softness in her greeting, with just a hint of aloofness, Julia’s way, something Sherman was accustomed to. Julia Grant seemed to relish her position as the most “high ranking” of the generals’ wives, a very proper air about her that Grant seemed not to notice. Sherman made a short bow.

  “The pleasure is mine, Mrs. Grant.”

  Grant studied a map more than he acknowledged his wife; he seemed to know why she was there. Julia swept into the room, bathing Sherman in a fog of feminine smells, a radical difference from the smells of the boat itself, and Grant in particular.

  “Ulyss, I don’t mean to interfere in your army business, but Fred has become most difficult. He claims you have given him permission to accompany you, despite my misgivings.”

  Grant let out a long breath, straightened his back, as though bracing for an argument. “He’s correct. I told him he could come, as long as he kept far back of any fighting and was accompanied by one of my aides. I don’t see the harm.”

  Julia glanced at Sherman and put her hands on her hips in obvious disapproval. Grant clearly had been through this before. He put down the cigar, looked at her, a brief silence between them. Julia said nothing; she seemed to understand that Grant would have the last word.

  “My dear wife, Fred is nearly grown. There are drummers in this army younger than he is. He’ll be safe, and this is something he truly wants to do. It will do him good. I do not wish to have him feel … coddled. I see no reason.…”

  “Fine. You are after all the commanding general.”

  She nodded, half-smiling toward Sherman.

  “General. Please visit anytime.”

  She turned, left the cabin without another word to Grant. Grant shook his head, his shoulders slumping again. Sherman tried to hide a smile, thought, Well, he had the last word. But the final words were hers.

  Grant shook his head and said, “She protects him too much. Not good for the boy.” He looked up at Sherman, who fumbled with a cigar, as though oblivious to anything that had just happened. “She has to get used to this, I’m afraid. My son wants to be a soldier. There will come a time when neither of us will have a say in that. It’s better if he learns what soldiering means.”

  Sherman still studied the cigar, said, “You’re the commanding general. You can do whatever the hell you want, I suppose.”

  “Don’t believe that for one minute, Sherman. No general in this army has more power than the wife who waits for him to come home. You are most certainly aware of that.”

  “Most certainly. That’s why Ellen has been ‘posted’ at Cincinnati. She had expected to visit me before now, but the gracious General Burnside has cautioned her not to make the journey. Told her there are a good many guerrillas in the countryside. I owe him a favor for that one.”

  Grant seemed to react to Burnside’s name, but said nothing. No one had ignored Burnside’s catastrophic failure at Fredericksburg the December before, that general now assigned to some vague post in Kentucky. Now it was Grant who seemed anxious to change the subject. He looked toward the map again, a map Sherman knew Grant had memorized in every detail.

  “McClernand is taking his time. Need to repair that situation, but it will require some diplomatic skills. Not my favorite activity. I would rather focus on the issue at hand without wrestling with … ambitiousness.”

  Sherman could hear the strain in Grant’s voice, felt it himself, a twisting urgency to get this thing started. No matter what kind of criticism had flowed over Grant, Sherman had seen too much of the man’s performance firsthand, the tactics and strategy that no one in Washington seemed to understand. He saw it now, Grant’s focus on one thing, the most important matter at hand, and exactly what would come next.

  Sherman stuffed the cigar back into his mouth, said, “I saw Secretary Dana this morning. Friendly chap. Insists he will stay out of our way.”

  Grant sniffed. “He’ll stay where I tell him to, and then write the War Department that I prevented him from doing his job.” He paused. “No, I’ll allow him to go where he wishes. We accomplish our mission, do our jobs, he’ll have nothing else to put in his reports. I do trust him to be honest about what we accomplish here. In that I have no choice.”

  Charles Dana was the assistant secretary of war, and so was the immediate subordinate to William Stanton, who, alongside Henry Halleck, was truly in command of this war. Grant’s distance from Washington was a blessing, which was not the case for so many of the generals east of the Appalachians, who had struggled to find Union victories far closer to the capital. The campaigns back east had resulted in failures much worse than anything in the West, either costly stalemates or outright defeats throughout Virginia and Maryland. From McClellan’s aborted campaign up the Virginia peninsula, to a second major fight near Bull Run Creek, and then of course Fredericksburg, no Federal commander had shown he had the skills or the fortitude to defeat the outnumbered and outgunned Confederates. Even the vicious fight at Antietam Creek had accomplished little more than halting a rebel invasion of Maryland, at a horrifying cost in casualties to both armies. No matter George McClellan’s noisy claim of a great “victory” over Robert E. Lee, McClellan had allowed Lee to escape back into Virginia. It was all the more infuriating to Sherman that Grant would be so vilified by his critics, while the greater harm to the Union was happening east of the mountains. For the most part, Grant had given this army victories. But still the newspapers sought to embellish f
ailure over success, as though anxious for that one great collapse that would force Abraham Lincoln to remove Grant altogether. So far, Lincoln had resisted any condemnation of Grant, seemed more satisfied with the army’s progress in the West than he was with the parade of ineptitude closer to home. There was no doubt that Charles Dana had made the journey west to cut through the rumors and innuendo, to observe firsthand just how competent a leader Grant was. Officially, Dana was to open an active pipeline of communications with Washington. But if Dana witnessed any failure of leadership, it just might open the door for John McClernand to step through, which of course was McClernand’s expectation.

  Grant rolled up the maps and shoved them into a leather bag. Sherman saw Grant’s faraway look again, knew this meeting had to end, that Grant was deeply concerned about the progress of the army’s march downriver. Sherman took one step toward the exit and stopped. He couldn’t leave without pressing, asking the one question that was digging inside of him.

  “How long you plan on keeping me up here?”

  Grant seemed to expect the question. It wasn’t the first time Sherman had asked it.

  “As long as I need you here.”

  Sherman knew he wasn’t being held back as any slight to his reputation. It was just a part of the strategy, the plan that Sherman still not did fully believe in. Even before the first of the year, Sherman had objected to the entire notion of coming at Vicksburg from the water, and the engineering failures at slicing through the swamplands west of the river had been infuriating confirmation that Sherman was right. The effort to alter the flow of the Mississippi River seemed utterly ridiculous to Sherman, an enormous waste of manpower and time. Now, with Grant focused more on shifting his army south of Vicksburg, and driving into Mississippi below the town, Sherman was forced to go along with a strategy he still didn’t accept. He continued to believe that the most efficient plan was to withdraw and regroup at Memphis, then drive southward from the Tennessee line into central Mississippi. The result could devastate rebel supply lines eastward, and the Federal army could capture the towns in northern Mississippi to use as bases of supply. Depending on the rebel response, there could be alternatives for Grant to wage a strong campaign toward a variety of valuable targets, Vicksburg among them. Grant knew how Sherman felt, but his tolerance for dissent was limited, something Sherman understood. He might not agree with Grant’s plan, but he had to obey his orders.

  Now two-thirds of Grant’s army, the two corps under McClernand and James McPherson, were on the march downriver. Once well below the strongest rebel shore batteries, they would assemble on the west bank of the river, then cross as rapidly and with as much massed strength as possible, striking hard at any resistance in their way. The rebels had several outposts south of Vicksburg, most of them on the river itself, or just inland, guarding key intersections. But Grant knew enough of the rebel troop strength to understand how thinly they were spread, and even with heavy artillery that made the navy’s job continually dangerous, the rebels simply did not have the manpower to fortify every possible crossing point. Once a massed fist of Federal strength could be established on the east side of the river, Grant was confident every advantage would be his. Just what he would do next, how quickly he would drive up toward Vicksburg, would be determined by what kind of maneuvers the rebels made in response to the landing. Since the rebel commanders in Vicksburg were forced by geography to protect more than twenty miles of riverfront, Grant had to believe that their forces were spread too thin to hold away the Federals’ strength. If everything went exactly as Grant hoped, there was the possibility that the rebels might simply abandon Vicksburg without a fight.

  To Sherman, the northern approaches were still far more practical. Despite the surprise attack at Holly Springs, Sherman still believed that keeping the supply lines open to the north would keep the army strong and mobile. The rebel cavalry’s success at Holly Springs had taught Grant a lesson, and any supply depot would be heavily protected. To Sherman’s frustration, Grant’s plan now seemed to contradict that, the army moving even farther from Memphis and any other key depot where supplies were being stockpiled. One of the largest of those depots was Milliken’s Bend, just upriver and across from Vicksburg, and vulnerable from an attack from the west, from rebel forces in Arkansas or southern Louisiana.

  Their arguments had been brief, as far as Sherman dared to go, though he knew Grant would listen to him with more patience than he would any other general in the army. With the rest of the army marching downriver, Sherman’s corps, accompanied by several of Porter’s gunboats, would remain closer to Milliken’s Bend. But they were not there just to protect transport boats and supply trains. It was one vital piece of Grant’s plan, and Sherman had to swallow it whole, no matter his indigestion. While Grant moved south, Sherman would once again threaten Vicksburg from the north. But that threat was designed to be a feint, a loud and boisterous demonstration to bring rebel infantry out in Sherman’s direction. Sherman had to agree with Grant that the rebels would gleefully accept another opportunity to bloody the Federals, inspired by memories of their victory at Chickasaw Bayou. If the rebels responded by shifting strength northward as Grant hoped, it could greatly weaken their strength south of the town, or their ability to maneuver reinforcements quickly enough to block Grant’s inland push. No matter the soundness of the plan, Sherman knew that the morale among his men would suffer mightily, that they were to stage a counterfeit attack, what would feel like a mocking repeat of their humiliation in December. If there was an opening, if somehow the rebels ignored Sherman, or backed away, the option was open to him to drive on to Vicksburg, and even to attack the town. But Sherman knew better. The rebels were supremely confident in their strongholds and fortifications spread all through the swamps and bayous. They weren’t going anywhere.

  Even Grant understood that Sherman’s maneuvering would be misinterpreted by the newspapers as another failed assault. The reporters seemed to dislike Sherman as much as he despised them, and would certainly taunt him for anything that hinted of failure. The newspapers could not be told of the actual plan, of course, and so the planned “retreat” would be seen as yet another humiliation, no matter that it was exactly what Sherman was ordered to do. Sherman had tried his best to ignore the reporters, not to read anything in the papers at all. But his men would, good men who had done nothing to bring shame on themselves. He knew he had to go along with Grant’s overall plans, but ordering his officers to begin the maneuver was like chewing a mouthful of sand.

  Below Vicksburg, Admiral Porter had insisted that any rebels coming from the west could be kept at bay, and that their various batteries and forts along the eastern shore of the river could be passed at will with minimal loss, allowing the boats to keep a supply line open to Grant after the crossing. After the stunning success of the passing on April 16, Porter had emphasized that very point a few nights later, by doing it again. There were far fewer boats this time, a half-dozen supply vessels, and there had been losses, but the majority of the barges and transports had escaped major damage. One of Sherman’s greatest arguments against Grant’s plan was that as Grant moved farther into Mississippi, his supply lines would be increasingly vulnerable, threatened certainly by rebel cavalry. Considerable troop strength would be needed all along the supply lines, and since Sherman’s corps, once they made their own march southward, would be the final link in the chain, it was obvious who the guardians of the supply routes would be. That would be one more blow to the morale of his men.

  Sherman crossed his arms, fought the urge to spit all of this out into words he would regret. There was commotion outside, men on the march, and he glanced out toward the shore, gritting his teeth, unable to hide his anger at what was already in motion. The words came out slowly, an agonizing effort to control his frustration.

  “This is a dangerous enterprise, Grant.” He paused. “Once you give the order, we’ll march south to link up with the rest of the army as quickly as possible. I would hope
that this feint is a rapid affair.”

  “You still going to bellyache about this? I thought it was settled. It’s a little late for arguments. Can’t do that, Sherman.”

  Sherman had not intended any argument at all, but if he was to abandon his own best ideas, and march downriver with the rest of the army, being last in line was still a thorn he couldn’t ignore.

  “I’ve always been concerned about the lines of supply. That’s all. The campaign … well, we tried it my way, and the rebels busted our noses. It’s your plan, and you know they’ll hang you with it if it doesn’t work.”

  Grant looked at the cigar, turned it slowly, Sherman noticing the elongated ash that hung off its tip. Grant tapped it on the ashtray beside him and said, “You spent the Mexican War in California. You missed out on one of the greatest military campaigns ever fought.”

  Sherman didn’t expect this, had heard too much annoying chatter about Mexico, the army now populated with generals who had earned their lieutenant’s bars under Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott. Grant seemed to sense he had jabbed Sherman in a tender place.

  “I’m talking about General Scott, that’s all. Don’t go reading anything more into it. Back then, I was nothing more than a green assistant quartermaster, hauling blankets and tents, counting spare bedrolls. After General Scott busted up the walls at Vera Cruz, he gathers up the whole blessed army and hauls us off on a long march across hundreds of miles of pure wilderness. The enemy was retreating back to Mexico City, so we chased after them. Scott cuts us off from every kind of contact we had with the Gulf Coast, with the navy, and especially with Washington. No way to supply us, or even communicate with us. There were generals then who thought it was the most foolhardy strategy ever conceived. Some thought our little ten-thousand-man army was marching to our doom, that Santa Anna would just gobble us up, and no one in Washington would hear another word out of any of us. Tried it, too, all along the way, and we whipped them in every fight. We followed them right to the walls of Mexico City, and gathered up what we could, and Scott shoved us right through. We won that damned war because of a plan that none of his commanders believed in. And you know why it worked? He counted on three things going our way. He believed we were a far better army than the Mexicans and would whip them in a fight, no matter if we were outnumbered. We did. He believed the enemy would be completely surprised by our making such a march with speed. He was. And he believed we could live off the land while we were doing it. We did. I believe … that will work now.”