Bobbie Jean smiled sweetly. “I’ve a preference for Duncan.”
“And I for Jeremy.”
“Then Jeremy it will be. But what of Colonel Lee?”
“He gets in there, too. Only … you haven’t told me. Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes. Sore, drowsy, but definitely all right now that you are here.” She turned and cuddled her newborn son to her breast. “Jeremy, say hello to your father.”
“Jerry-Bob is two years old nearly,” Bobbie Jean wrote in the letter to Griffin that he read in his quarters on the morning of April twelfth, 1861. “He runs everywhere, never walks, and talks like a magpie.” The images this called to Griff’s mind brought a proud parent’s smug smile to his face. His fingers lightly caressed the paper as though it were Bobbie Jean’s silken skin. How he missed his family. Tensions between North and South had grown so enormously after the incident at Harper’s Ferry that his services to field commanders grew more in demand with each passing day. The nation had become a powder keg and waited only for some zealot on one side or the other to light the fuse.
Thinking of it, Griff sighed and read through the remainder of Bobbie Jean’s letter. Then, as was his custom, he perused it a second time. He set it aside and began to draft a reply when Damien Carmichael entered the tent.
“You’re looking troubled, old chum. Wife write to say she was leaving you for a millinery goods drummer?”
“Clown. Of course not. It’s a whiskey peddler. Enough of that. You know how I hate to write letters. What does one say? It’s not like talking to the person you address. All the questions go unanswered, or you give weeks-old answers to questions asked. In the end, both parties end up receiving news that is stale at best and unresponsive in most instances. What brings you here?”
“Did you hear the rumor?”
“Number one hundred and which?”
“Southern troops have fired on Fort Sumter.”
“No! Why, that’s foolish. Suicidal.”
“Apparently the Carolinians don’t think so.”
“Damien ...” Sorrow filled Griff’s eyes.
The Marylander sighed. “I know. All of the information we have developed indicates that many other Southern states will, if pressed, leave the Union, along with South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and your own home state. Maryland will never do so. Even if they did, I’m an officer of the United States Army. My duty is to it. And you?”
“I … I don’t know. With Georgia a part of this new Confederacy, I feel like a stateless person. Perhaps this is only another false report, like the hundreds we’ve had in the last year. Let’s wait and see.”
An hour before retreat the next afternoon, the trumpeter of the artillery regiment to which Griffin and Damien had been posted sounded Officer’s Call. Puzzled, the two young men closed their portable field desks and locked them against prying eyes, then hurried to the formation that grew in front of the commanding officer’s tent. Murmurs and hostile, suspicious glances met their arrival.
“What’s going on?” Griff asked a captain standing near him.
“You’ll learn soon enough,” came the sour reply.
“Officers … at-ten-tion!”
Colonel Lawton stepped out of his tent. “At ease. Gentlemen, it is my unfortunate and sad duty to inform you of a dastardly and cowardly act. Yesterday morning, at four-thirty, Maj. Robert Anderson’s command at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, came under bombardment by artillery units of the South Carolina militia, calling themselves the Army of the Confederacy. Shortly after noon today, Major Anderson found his situation untenable and was forced to surrender. It can be safely inferred that a state of war will soon exist between the United States and this upstart Confederacy. In anticipation of such a thing, the secretary of war has sent instructions regarding officers who count as their homes those states in the Confederacy. It is ordered, and hereby required, that such officers take again their oath of loyalty to the United States of America. Refusal to do so will result in immediate dismissal from the service. That oath will be administered at officer’s call tomorrow morning. Any gentlemen desiring not to reaffirm their loyalty to the Union, are requested to have their resignations on my desk before that time. I regret having to make this known to you and trust in God that all of you will make the right decision. Mr. Stark, if you would kindly remain, I wish to see you in my quarters.”
The adjutant snapped to attention. “Officers … at-ten-tion! Dis-missed.”
Puzzled, Stark lingered while the others left. Once the field had cleared he went to Colonel Lawton’s tent and rapped on the front support pole.
“Come in, Stark. Take a seat. A little tot of whiskey?”
“Thank you, sir. But, I wonder. What is it that the colonel wishes?”
“Drop the formality, Griffin. For now, I’m Jim and you are Griff. Is that all right?”
“Yes, sir. If you say so … Jim.”
“Good. Now, take the whiskey.” The colonel poured and Griff accepted a tin cup of smooth, Kentucky bourbon. “I greatly admire the competent intelligence work you and young Damien Carmichael have been doing, Griff.”
“Thank you, sir, ah, Jim. I’ve often had doubts about its value and its purpose.”
“Like what to do now, considering the probable imminence of war between North and South?” Griff’s gaze dropped to the dirt floor of the tent. “I … well, Jim, I am a Georgian.”
“You are also an officer in the United States Army, a graduate of West Point. Surely you can see the need of your newly developed field in any coming conflict.”
“Yes, sir, I can. But, Jim … I—”
“Don’t make it hard on me, or on yourself. Trust to your conscience in this. Confidentially, the last thing I would ever want to do is meet you on the other side of a battle line. However, that decision is up to you. If you stay with the Union, you are up for a captaincy. I needn’t emphasize that with your experience and training you’ll likely get it. Even so, your birthplace puts you among what the secretary politely labeled as ‘officers of questionable loyalty.’ Even if you take the oath, with your intelligence experience, you’ll either be mistrusted by your fellow officers or hated by family and friends … most likely, both.”
An affectionate warmth spread out through Griffin Stark’s body. He trusted and admired Colonel Lawton, looked on him almost as a second father. “If I join with the Confederate forces, then what?”
“Say you do. You are among your own kind, your own class. If you do not tell them about your intelligence work—though I recommend you do, Griff, because if you remain silent about it and it comes to light later, you could be shot as a Northern spy—you have a chance to start fresh as a cavalry officer, or in the infantry, even as an engineer, given your West Point background. You are young, ambitious and highly competent. The question you must ask yourself, and let your conscience and your heart decide, is who will most need such qualities in the event of war?”
Astonished at such frank fairness, Griff sat in silence, emotion preventing any reply. Both men sipped at their whiskey, saying nothing. The colonel replenished each cup and remained quiet, respecting Griff’s mood. At last the final drop rolled into Griff’s mouth. His blunt-fingered right hand had repeatedly massaged his firm, square jaw and his eyes darkened in color. Colonel Lawton appeared to be gazing at a scene far removed from a Sibley tent on the Illinois plains. Abruptly Griff stood, placed the tin cup on Lawton’s folding field desk and saluted with grave formality.
“With your permission, sir. I wish to thank the colonel for his excellent whiskey and his sound advice. Do you happen to know, sir, of one of the other officers who might be in need of a set of spare uniforms? I’ll not be needing them, sir, since I’ll be traveling south.”
“And may God go with you, son.” With equal gravity, Colonel Lawton returned the salute. “For better or worse, you made the right decision, Griff.”
“Thank you, sir, ah, Jim.”
The
hard part came in telling Damien. “Knew that’d be your decision all the time, old chum,” the Marylander said in reply.
Relief inundated Griff. “Y-you did? Why, even I didn’t know until I had that talk with the colonel.”
“Even so, you’re a true son of the South and you would have been miserable and guilt-ridden forever after if you had not chosen the right side. For my own part, I will remain with the army. For better or worse, I’m a soldier and I love the Union.”
“You’ll think well of me regardless?”
“We’re friends. Not even a war can change that. Be careful, Griff, and come see me when this little unpleasantness is over. You know the place … the finest plantation in Maryland. Or some dismal military outpost far out in the West. Either way, you’ll have a warm welcome.”
Fort Sumter escalated into a broad-front shooting war. Brother faced brother across the sights of rifles and the gleaming blades of bayonets. Father forsook son, sons poured artillery shot and shell on fathers from Manassas, which the Union called Bull Run, to Murfreesboro. Almost without notice the years passed one into another. Griffin Stark received a commission as a captain in the Confederate service. Following Colonel Lawton’s advice, he made no effort to conceal his intelligence background. To his regret it put him on a staff in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. He wanted a command and preferably a cavalry unit in the Army of Tennessee, charged with guarding the western reaches of the newborn Confederate States of America, and Georgia in particular. That was not to be.
In March of 1862, prospects brightened when Robert E. Lee was made commander in chief of the armies of the Confederacy. Griffin Stark applied and was accepted on Lee’s staff. When Lee shifted his headquarters to take over direct command of the Army of Northern Virginia, Griffin Stark went with him. He worked with Captain Thomas Jordan, who had created the first Confederate spy net in Washington City, and with Jordan’s protegee, Mrs. Greenhow. Even after the breakup of this first network, Mrs. Greenhow continued to render service to the Confederate cause, efficiently and with improved security. Many of her reports crossed Griff’s desk. All the while, though, he longed for a field posting and a command of his own. With Thomas Jordan on General P. G. T. Beauregard’s staff and Mrs. Greenhow, the “Rebel Rose,” well in charge in Washington, Griff felt his job could be done by a clerk. Eventually, in the dark days of 1863, Lee agreed.
Griffin Stark found himself promoted to major and posted to command of a cavalry squadron under J. E. B. Stuart, now a general at the age of thirty-three. This assignment kept him away from the tragedy at Gettysburg. Though upon the arrival of the squadron on that blood-soaked ground, which had absorbed the flower of Southern manhood, Griffin had, like so many of his brother officers, wept open at the appalling catastrophe.
More setbacks were in the making after Griff learned that on October twenty-third of that year—Jeremy Stark’s birthday—Lincoln replaced the utterly incompetent General Rosecrans with Ulysses Simpson Grant. Already Vicksburg, on the Mississippi had fallen to Grant on July Fourth. Now came Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. Worse news came to Griff’s notice when Grant was given command of the Army of the Potomac. On every front now, the Confederate armies went on the defensive. Superior resupply of manpower and material began to take their toll as never before.
The year ended in an atmosphere of despair.
Eighteen sixty-four brought no respite. Although most major battles continued to be won by the Southern forces, Grant’s thrust into the heart of the Confederacy, toward Richmond, gained momentum. Rolled back time after time, Grant pressed on to Spotsylvania Courthouse. There he issued a communique to Lincoln with the ultimatum: “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer.”
With the relentless surge of the sea, the battle front shifted to east and west, north and south. Twice before raging armies had marched through Maryland. Now they came again. Griff, in the vanguard of the Confederate cavalry, thought of his old friend, Damien Carmichael, and wondered about his family and their plantation, Oaklawn. General Jubal A. Early brought new hope to the South in this campaign, when his army, under expert cavalry screen, drove up the Maryland shore to within five miles of Washington. If Lincoln and his advisors could be captured, the Confederacy had a chance.
Brilliant, dashing, Philip H. Sheridan demolished these hopes with his Army of the Shenandoah in two engagements in September. Then, once again, Sheridan rallied his forces at Winchester in October after Early had routed them there and at Cedar Creek. It put the final touches to Early’s bid to smash the enemy. Then shattering news spread through the Army of Northern Virginia.
William Tecumseh Sherman had begun his march through Georgia, decimating the western armies thrown against him and burning Atlanta. After the conflagration died out, Sherman turned Atlanta into a strong point to resupply his swiftly moving columns and, on November 15, 1864, was ready to move out, his goal, Savannah, and ultimately, Charleston. Fall brought a fading of hopes for the Confederacy. Boys of fourteen and fifteen were donning uniforms in a futile attempt to swell the ranks decimated by three years of warfare. On every front there was only news of battles won and campaigns lost. The toll mounted.
On a frosty September evening, Griffin Stark gripped a stub of pencil in his strong fingers and smoothed out a yellowed sheet of paper taken from his saddlebags. He paused over his task, uncertain of what, and how much, to tell his wife. Yankees swarmed over Georgia. Would she even receive the letter? He had no way of knowing. All communication had been cut, west to east, with the advent of Sherman’s murderous dash through Griffin’s home state. He could only try. He began.
My dearest wife,
The nights are cold here and winter nips at our heels. We are encamped only a few miles from the Maryland border. Yankees harass our flanks and press our front daily. My men wear rags, as do I. We forage for food when we can and eat spoiled potatoes and wormy rice when we can find nothing else. Frostbite is a constant and deadly enemy, worse even than the Yankee soldiers. There is little medicine and hardly any ammunition. I miss you and pray nightly that God may yet grant me the good fortune to see you again before I die. Although our cause was just, this war should never have been fought. The wounds, of body and soul, will, I fear, never be healed. Mr. Lincoln said that a nation divided can never stand. He was right. Now all I, and nearly everyone else, seeks is a just and honorable peace. I leave you now, in the hands of angels. My God watch over you.
Your loving husband
Chapter Five
WE CAME HERE once to fish, Major Griffin Stark thought as he dipped his hand into the frigid, crimson water of a tributary creek that fed the Potomac. It was about this same time in October, he reflected. The russet color came from an enormous quantity of blood that had flowed into the stream. How it had changed, he mused bitterly. He wondered where Damien Carmichael might be, what the darkly handsome young man did for the Union Army. Little chance of finding out, he concluded. Red water. Bloody water. He let the last drops fall from his fingertips and rose. Slowly, with the bowed posture of a man thirty years beyond his age of twenty-seven, he walked back to the small clearing and the ragged tents.
The Company First Sergeant started to call the men to attention, but a curt gesture from Griff cut off his words. The first soldier no longer wore the three downward pointed chevrons and diamond of his rank. They had long ago gone, along with his gray tunic. His linsey-woolsey shirt was in tatters, like those of the other three dozen men gathered around the fire. The yellow cavalry stripe on his trousers had faded, unlike the single gold star of Griff’s rank on the collar tab of his uniform. Major Stark took in the gaunt-faced, sunken-eyed assemblage, all that remained of one company. Only the sturdy grays, those gallant, powerful war horses that had begun the conflict with these men, remained little changed. They were more heavily muscled perhaps, with no spare flesh and a few scars here and there but actually in better shape than when the war commenced. The soldiers
went hungry in order to feed these animals on more than one occasion. Somehow, contemplation of this saddened Griff more than the hopeless situation they would face in the morning.
“Men, I’m not going to deliver a fiery speech to you extolling the virtue of fortitude in battle or how the South is watching your every mood.” Griff paused and accepted a cup of willow bark and chicory “coffee.” He sipped, made a face and continued. “Captain Cunningham is afflicted with dysentery and his leg wound is turning gangrenous. Your other officers are dead. As a result, I will personally lead you into battle tomorrow morning. All of you have a reason for being here. It’s not simply the fear of disgrace or punishment for desertion. What I’d like to know is why you chose to stay against overwhelming odds. I’ll tell you my reasons, and then I would like to hear yours.” Once again Griff paused and took a long swallow of the ersatz coffee, cooled by the early spring air. His voice, when he continued, came low, rumbling with sincerity.
“I have a wife and a five-year-old son. Bobbie Jean and Jerry-Bob mean everything to me. Yet, because of Butcher Sherman, I no longer know if they are even alive. Many of you have no families. Some of you are mountain folk, or sharecroppers. Others, like myself, have plantations to return to, if the Yankees have left them unmolested. These are the things I am fighting for. To be able to return to something. Each of us has that. I have seen my family, my home, only twice since this war began. Some of you haven’t even had that privilege. They are a burning image that I carry before me into every fight.
“Think a moment about a certain regiment in the Army of Tennessee. Like all of us, they are volunteers. Right now, the Confederate gray that they wear is an automatic death warrant. That’s right. The Yankee General, Sherman, has issued an order that any Negro caught in Confederate uniform is to be killed on sight, without trial and without any right to defend himself. Yet free darkies continue to offer their services to the Cause, as do many slaves. It contradicts the propaganda of the North and disturbs their soldiers. So any loyal darkie must die. We have colored troops fighting with the Army of Northern Virginia, too. Why?
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