by Jeff Shaara
A third man was pulled out, and the doctor leaned in close, then slapped the man’s face, seemed to wait for a reaction, and put a hand on the man’s neck.
“He’s gone. Put him over there.”
The men holding the litter said nothing, carried the man over to a row of bodies lined up under a fat tree. They slid the body off onto the grass, the litter too useful for men who might still be alive. Lucy watched it all in frozen stiffness, the thought of helping any of these men now something horribly ridiculous. But the ambulance was empty now, no flow of red from underneath. The driver climbed back up, jerking the mule back out toward the road, looked at her, and she tried to hide the tears, the rising sickness, angry at herself for not being stronger.
“Hey, miss. You change your mind … nobody’s gonna say nothin’.”
She had no words, nodded, the only thank-you she could manage. The ambulance was out in the road now, joining the others as they moved back eastward, empty, toward the army.
THE COWAN HOUSE—VICKSBURG
MAY 24, 1863
“It’s a sight to behold, sir! Half the town, maybe more! Glorious, indeed. I so admire their spirit.” Waddy was staring out the window, and turned to Pemberton now, a beaming smile. “Reverend Lord delivers a mighty fine sermon, so I’ve been told, sir.”
Pemberton didn’t look at him, held a letter in his hand, his own writing, scanned it for the fourth time.
“That might be all that drew those people, Colonel. I wouldn’t excite yourself so.”
Waddy seemed disappointed, and Memminger appeared now, drawn from the outer room by the obvious enthusiasm in the colonel’s voice.
“Is there something happening here, sir? Do you require my attendance?”
Waddy responded, pointed to the window.
“Robert, have you seen the people? The street is alive with them! They came up here for the Sabbath service, but you can see it in their faces. They are happy, laughing! Certainly, word has spread of our successes. Wonderful sight! The morale of this place is as high as it ever was. The people know of victories, and we have given them one.”
Memminger went to the window, but Waddy kept his stare on Pemberton.
“Sir, surely you must feel it.”
Pemberton tossed the letter to one side and sat back in his chair.
“Morale? Just what is that, Colonel? We have won this war? Our nation is now free of Federal tyranny? The Yankee army has abandoned its quest to crush us under Lincoln’s boot heel? For any of that, I assure you, my morale would be brightened. Those would be successes, Colonel.”
He could see a flash of disappointment on Waddy’s face, felt suddenly guilty, had no reason to drain away anyone’s good spirits.
“Sir, I only mention what I see in the people … out there. I’ve spoken to a good many this very morning, as they came into the town. Their mood was considerably buoyant, sir. It was a delight. They share the army’s good cheer.”
Pemberton kept his attention on the paperwork on his desk, saw another letter, slid it closer, blinked through tired eyes. He read a few lines and stopped.
“The army held the enemy back,” he said. “We inflicted casualties aplenty. Do you believe it is sufficient, Colonel? Do you, Major? Do either of you believe this campaign has suddenly come to an end?”
Both men were looking at him now, their mood driven downward by Pemberton’s gloom. He picked up the letter and held it out.
“You understand what this means?”
Waddy leaned closer, trying to see which of the correspondence he held, but Pemberton ignored that, pulled it back, stared at the bold handwriting.
“I am frustrated beyond all measure. They refuse to understand the urgency. Is there such complication to the proper handling of corn, gentlemen? How can this cause such controversy?”
It was Waddy who had brought him the letter, and the colonel seemed to understand Pemberton’s mood now.
“Sir, they have their ways. It has always been like that with farm people. They’re accustomed to doing things—”
“The army has its ways as well, Colonel. I am weary beyond exhaustion trying to explain to so many civilians that the army must have rations to sustain itself. There is corn in every part of this country, beans and bacon and God knows what else. We could always rely on those farms around the Yazoo for sustenance, but the enemy has severed us from those. So, we go elsewhere and every day the urgency increases. And do the people respond? Well, this is how they respond. It is … outrageous.”
He tossed the letter onto the desk, the paper sliding off to the floor. Memminger was there quickly, retrieved it, read the letter.
“It says … they will not comply with the army’s request to shell the corn.”
Pemberton folded his arms across his chest and sniffed. “That’s what the words say. The message is far more irritating. They are simply too lazy to do what must be done. The army has always received its corn in sacks, shelled and ready for grinding. Even that is far beyond what we normally do. The farmers used to grind it for us, provide us with sacks of meal. It has always been so, at least in my command. We do not have the manpower to handle unshelled ears. We cannot be expected to shell our own peas, or smoke our own bacon. We’re fighting a war, for God’s sake!”
The word seemed to punch Memminger, and Pemberton held up a hand.
“My apologies, Major. I should not use such language on the Sabbath. One acquires bad habits after so many years in the army.”
Memminger didn’t respond, and Waddy said, “Perhaps, sir, we should make allowances to the farmers. Many of them have suffered depredations at the hands of the Yankees. Yet still they make available—”
“Corn on cobs. Absurd. I thought this had been dealt with months ago, long before Grant and his hordes infested this place.”
“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.”
There was resignation in Waddy’s response, and Pemberton tried to push that away, could hear people in the street, conversations, children at play.
“They should return to their sanctuaries. The Yankee artillery has been more scattered this morning than I expected. But that will change at any time. The Yankees do not respect the Sabbath.”
Neither man responded, and Pemberton suddenly realized they might be thinking of him, that he rarely attended church services. He looked again at the first letter, a copy made for his own records.
“This one makes five. Since Wednesday, I have sent five letters to General Johnston beseeching him to advance to our aid. Colonel, you said you had a report on his troop strength?”
“Yes, sir. It is estimated he could have as many as twenty thousand on hand. More are said to be joining him. His headquarters has been reestablished in Jackson.”
Pemberton looked up at Waddy, then Memminger.
“How did you come by that information?”
“Oh, sir, the mail system has been most impressive. We have created an underground link northward, and nearly all our correspondence has made it through without detection. Your own letters to General Johnston were secured in that way, and I have every expectation he will receive them.”
“I should like to know more about that. Underground? Spies and couriers and whatnot?”
Waddy seemed to welcome the change of mood.
“Yes, sir. It’s the same way we anticipate a flow of supplies. They’ve been using the river, the swamps, passing right under the Yankee noses. There’s a … well, let us call him a messenger, who floats downriver at night on something of a crude raft, drifts right by the gunboats. Says he can hear the Yankee sailors eating their dinners.”
Pemberton was impressed, had become too used to the immediacy of the telegraph line, nonexistent now.
Memminger said, “There’s messages coming straight across the river, too, sir. I heard some of the Missouri officers talking about mail coming from home.”
“We have men receiving letters from home … and we have shortages of every kind?” Pemberton looked to his lett
er again, a desperate plea for the one piece of war matériel he knew was in desperately short supply.
“Do you believe we can bring in percussion caps this way? I made mention of our need to General Johnston. It is a serious problem.”
Waddy nodded, his good spirits returning.
“No question, sir. Even if General Johnston cannot help us, others from the west can, certainly. One man riding alone can carry a significant number of caps.”
It was the one irritating supply issue Pemberton had focused on most seriously. The supply depots in Vicksburg held an enormous number of musket cartridges. But without the caps to fire them, the muskets were useless.
“Very good, yes. Send word anywhere you feel it could produce results. I have notified General Johnston, and surely he will help.”
“Sir, would not General Johnston do more than that? I beg your pardon, sir, but knowing the size of the command he is assembling in Jackson, I feel certain he will use that strength to strike at the enemy’s position. It could be precisely the stroke of fortune we require, sir.”
Pemberton rolled Waddy’s words in his mind, thought, There is no “fortune” to anything Johnston does. He will come because it is the right thing to do, and if that does not sway him, he will come because the president will surely order it.
Memminger returned to the window.
“Most of the carriages have cleared the street, sir. Only a few still there. I see Reverend Lord. I admire his courage, calling the people to services on the Sabbath. Surely the Almighty has placed a hand of protection over such piety.”
The shriek of the shell whistled past the house, and Memminger backed away from the window in a surprised lurch.
Pemberton kept to the chair, looked again at the letters, the correspondence from irate farmers, other letters from townspeople with complaints about their safety, some offering Pemberton their wordy advice about how to deal with General Grant.
Waddy knew the look, that Pemberton would absorb himself in the papers, nothing else for the staff to do at the moment. Another shell blew past the house, a thunderous blast somewhere below the street.
Waddy said, “The enemy is back at his work, sir. We should return to our own.”
“Yes, of course.”
They slipped quickly out of the office, and Pemberton looked toward a small narrow bed against one wall, had a sudden need for sleep. He leaned forward on the desk, pushed himself upward, stood, still leaning against the desk. He heard a fresh chorus of shelling, some far in the distance, most of it coming from across the river. Their infantry will not attack our good defenses again, he thought. Even Grant is not a complete fool. He paid a terrible price for his arrogance, believing we would not fight, that our fortifications were inadequate to the task. No, he will have learned that lesson, and so he will keep his people back in their protection, as I keep my men in ours. He will give us the gift of time because he has no other alternative except the slaughter of his army. But such a stalemate, a siege of this town, will be of no benefit to us at all. If we are to defeat him, drive him away, we must have help from outside. Johnston … twenty thousand troops? Surely he will come. Now … that will be good for morale.
NEAR STOCKADE REDAN, NORTHEAST OF VICKSBURG
MAY 25, 1863
The civilians seemed to rise up out of the ground, drawn by the small parade of horsemen, the color bearer showing them all just who this was. They gathered in small groups, some calling to him, waves and salutes that Pemberton acknowledged with a brief wave of his own. As he rode farther into the hilly countryside, he was impressed by their ingenuity, some of the dwellings seeming far more elaborate than mere holes in the ground. Some had carefully framed entrances, thick brush drawn into hedges, whether someone’s notion of landscaping or a bit of protection against spent shrapnel. Between clusters of caves were dug-out fire pits and cooking areas, certainly created for communal use, neighbors providing for neighbors. Some of the caves were revealed only by the stub of pipe that poked up through the hillside, makeshift chimneys, some of those made plain by the wisps of smoke that flowed out, whether for cooking or warmth. But the people did not linger long in the open, and as he moved by them, he watched as they disappeared again, back down into whatever protection they had. There was no mystery to that. All along the ride from his headquarters, the sounds had been there, a slow, steady scattering of artillery fire, mortars and long guns, solid shot thumping into the hillsides, the occasional fiery blasts from fused shells. There seemed to be no aim, no careful design to any of that, the randomness digging into his artilleryman’s sense of order. The color bearer kept just behind him, good decorum, the rest of the staff strung out far behind, good spacing between them. It was routine that they not cluster together, that any one of the enemy’s projectiles could do serious harm to the army’s command structure. For that reason as well, he had left Waddy behind, the young man capably handling the army’s business in the town. There was shelling there as well, most of that coming from the Federal navy, or the guns set west of the river. Like the artillery to the east, there was no sense to it, no design beyond random terror, as though the Yankees were only tossing up their shot and shell for the purpose of scaring people.
Out front, his aide pointed, and he saw the small flag in a deep ravine, a cut in the earth well back of the massive fortification. The aide kept to one side, allowed Pemberton to ride in first, and quickly the reception was forming, staff officers and couriers in motion, a show of respectful formality he appreciated. General Smith emerged now, the man standing tall, the familiar sternness Pemberton had come to expect.
Martin Luther Smith was another of those few Northerners who had placed their allegiance with the Confederacy. Smith was also a West Pointer, a veteran of Mexico, and throughout his service had earned an excellent reputation as an engineer. When the war broke out, Smith, a New Yorker by birth, had surprised many by proclaiming his support for the Confederate cause. Unlike Pemberton, Smith was much more a field commander than an administrator, and in an army hungry for experienced leadership, he had risen quickly to the rank of major general. The December before, it was Smith who had bloodied Sherman at Chickasaw Bayou. In April and early May, when Pemberton led much of the army through his unfortunate confrontations with Grant, he had assigned Smith’s division to remain in Vicksburg, confident that Smith, along with John Forney, would maintain a vigilant defense. Now Smith held the crucial left flank of the army’s fortifications, and his own skills at engineering were a fine supplement to Major Lockett’s designs. Whether or not Smith might be as effective in the field as John Bowen, Pemberton had been drawn to the man for one obvious similarity in their backgrounds. Pemberton had to assume that Smith had suffered the same indignity Pemberton had, all that anonymous talk about the Northerner’s potential for subversive disloyalty.
Smith was clean-shaven, seemed always to wear a hard frown, a seriousness that commanded obedience. He bore a slight resemblance to Jefferson Davis, a trait that Pemberton assumed only increased Smith’s acceptance from his troops. But unlike the president, Smith didn’t demonstrate any kind of warmth toward Pemberton at all, went about his job with a cold dedication, which Pemberton found disappointing. Though Pemberton was never quick to make friends, he had hoped their shared backgrounds might make Smith a trusted comrade. But friend or not, Pemberton had no complaints about Smith’s performance. In the two Federal assaults on May 19 and May 22, it was Smith’s men who had inflicted the greatest damage on Sherman’s troops, an irony that even Sherman would understand.
Pemberton began to dismount, was suddenly struck by the smell. It drilled through him, bringing up a thick wave of nausea, but Smith seemed oblivious, offered a salute.
“General, welcome to my headquarters.” Pemberton returned the salute with a twist on his face, and he heard groans from the aides behind him. “Ah, yes, very sorry about the odor, sir. I have offered the Yankees some assistance with their dead and have thus far been rebuked. It could be that Gene
ral Sherman doesn’t trust me.”
Pemberton felt his skin crawling, heard one man behind him retching, wouldn’t see that. He dismounted, one hand over his mouth.
“My God, what is this? Have they not sought their dead at all?”
Smith kept his same dour expression.
“No, sir. Very strange, if you ask me. Never knew the Yankees to be so disrespectful of their own casualties. But … well, there you have it. If you wish, we can ride forward to the redan. You can see it for yourself. Every night, we labor to repair any damage their artillery does our earthworks, and I fully expected them to use the darkness to send litter bearers into the field. I can’t say the sharpshooters wouldn’t have taken a few of those fellows down, but I did expect them to take the chance.”
Pemberton saw the Stockade Redan a quarter mile away, could see movement, the scattering of musket fire.
“They’re just … right where they fell?”
“It’s a nasty affair, sir. My men are pretty upset, to say the least. They’ve tossed some pretty profane epithets out that way, but no bluecoats have responded.”
Pemberton was surprised to see Lockett now, the engineer riding hard toward him. Lockett dismounted, gave a brief show of attention to both generals, and said, “Sir! I didn’t know you would be coming out this way. My apologies for not being informed. I was supervising the deepening of the artillery pits. It’s aggravating in the extreme, sir. None of the guns can fire without drawing a half-dozen replies, and the enemy has been effective at destroying many of our forward pieces. The artillerymen have shown reluctance to engage, and frankly, sir, I can’t really blame them.”
Smith said, “There’s another reason for that. We don’t have sufficient ammunition to duel the Federal guns. They’re bringing their artillery up much closer than I would have thought wise. Should make for prime targets, but we try to take advantage … well, I learned pretty quick that when you’re outnumbered six to one, not much point in picking a fight.”
