The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  Hancock leaned back in his chair.

  “Gentlemen, are there any other questions?”

  He looked to the other three on the board and there was a shaking of heads.

  Winfield stood, in his role as head of the board of inquiry, for the moment at an end, and now rather than addressing a witness, he was again speaking to his commanding officer.

  “General Meade, we thank you for your testimony, sir.”

  As Meade stood, Winfield saluted; Meade returned the salute, put on his hat, and walked out of the stifling room; all within breathed a sigh of relief. With the opening of the door, the heated air within could escape, a somewhat cooler breeze wafting in.

  James looked down at his sketch. Drips of sweat had marred it, so he would have to redo it later. He waited until the others left, and then followed them out. A captain with the provost guard imperiously held out a hand for James to turn over his sketchbook, which the captain thumbed through, nodded, and handed back to him without a word.

  James stood outside the doorway. The building they were in had been thrown up over the last month by the army. It was now part of a long array of clapboard and split-log structures lining the bluffs, which were quarters for staff supervising the rear area of the siege lines. The river was dotted with ships of every description, from tugs and side-wheelers to ironclad monitors and even one deepwater frigate. The quayside was lined with dozens of vessels, where supplies were being offloaded. An inclined rail powered by a steam engine mounted atop the bluff hoisted up the heavier loads.

  The military railroad crews were even now laying out a narrow gauge–track line to run parallel to the siege line. Soon supplies could be raced within a matter of hours twenty miles off to the far western flank, which every day crept farther and farther out, drawing the Rebel forces ever thinner, like a taut bowstring that would eventually snap.

  Hundreds of empty wagons, teams hitched, moved in an endless cycle, coming down one road and pulling into a field just behind the rows of cabins and warehouses to be loaded with rations, ammunition, medical supplies, tentage, boots, uniforms, and barrels of whiskey on consignment for sutlers. There was fine champagne and fresh Chesapeake oysters packed in ice for the officers. Only minutes later the wagons would be sent back up another road to their destinations in front of Petersburg.

  He looked to the west, from which came a continual thumping, the siege guns at work. The horizon was cloaked in dust from the gunfire and bursting shells. And, as always, there was the relentless digging of over two hundred thousand men, men who, when not shooting, were digging trenches, and more trenches … but no more tunnels.

  DAY FIVE: COURT OF INQUIRY INTO THE “INCIDENT” AT THE BATTLE OF THE MINE,

  AUGUST 7, 1864

  “General Burnside, I must return to a most fundamental question, which has disturbed me ever since first hearing of it.”

  James looked up from his sketchpad. It was obvious Colonel Shriver would not let go of this point, and it was indeed the weak link in Burnside’s entire defense.

  Burnside, towering in both bulk and height above all the others in this room, looked almost shrunken in the chair before the board. At least he was not wearing his absurd hat, James thought gratefully. He struggled in his drawings to make Burnside look as dignified as possible, deemphasizing his outlandish whiskers and bristling mustache, making his ill-fitting uniform look trim and proper, the way Hancock always looked, trying to give him a demeanor of dignity rather than, as he now looked, beaten and defensive, like a stock character in a bad melodrama being castigated in the final act.

  Burnside merely nodded.

  “This strange, must I say, outlandish decision of yours to select the lead division for the attack by the drawing of straws. What logic drove you to that decision?”

  Burnside wearily shook his head. It made Reilly think of a cruelty he had seen more than once as a young man: the atrocity of bear baiting—where a chained bear would have a pack of dogs unleashed upon him, while a crowd, sick with bloodlust, circled about, cheering, placing bets as to which dog would finally deliver the fatal bite to the throat, or how many dogs would first be killed. The bear in its final moments often reared back, as if knowing its fate, ready to offer one more burst of defiance before finally collapsing.

  “As I have explained,” Burnside replied, his voice barely above a whisper, “the decision of the commander in the field, General Meade, was not finalized until less than eighteen hours before the assault was scheduled to begin.”

  “That is not the question,” Shriver replied sharply, cutting him off.

  “I know. I know that,” Burnside replied, fixing the inspector general with what could be seen by all as a hateful gaze.

  “But it is relevant to the question you have presented, yet again.”

  Hancock held his hand up in a gesture for silence.

  “Please continue but contain your answer to the question at hand, General Burnside,” Hancock interjected.

  “As I have stated already,” Burnside finally continued, “I sought from one of my three other division commanders a volunteer to lead the assault and none was forthcoming. All knew the unique…”

  His voice trailed off for a moment.

  With a stronger, more determined voice he continued, “They knew the desperate nature of the assault now that the plans had been changed by the general commanding.”

  Shriver slammed an open hand on the table.

  “Please answer the question, sir.”

  “I am answering the question,” Burnside snapped.

  Shriver looked to the stenographer.

  “Since this exchange is not relevant to the issue under investigation, I order you to strike this last exchange from the records.”

  The captain, not raising his head, simply nodded, his pencil moving to cross out the previous lines.

  Burnside shook his head, again looking to James like a weary bear.

  “None of my three other division commanders having volunteered, I felt that in all fairness, the only choice left was to leave it to fate, and thus my decision that they should draw straws.”

  “So you therefore failed to make a command decision?” Shriver asked, his voice tinged with sarcasm.

  “I offered a fair chance,” Burnside retorted.

  “After General Ledlie drew the short straw, did you personally see to him, ensuring that proper orders as to what was expected of him and his command were conveyed, proper equipment issued, proper orders conveyed to his brigade and regimental commanders?”

  “The plan, sir, had been a month in the making and in the training, and then the general in command, with only eighteen hours to go, changed everything. How, sir, was I to compensate for that in the time allotted?”

  “That is enough, sir, answer the question, and refrain from answering a question with a question.”

  “I am answering the question, damn you,” Burnside, snapped, as if rallying for one final act of defiance. “If he had ordered the change two days or, better yet, a week in advance, much would have been done differently.”

  “That is not my question.”

  “But it is my question!” Burnside shouted.

  “Strike this from the record.”

  “Go ahead and strike it, but you all know it to be true.”

  Burnside, who was half standing as he exploded with rage, fell back into his chair.

  Hancock leaned forward, looking at the stenographer.

  “Please strike that last exchange.”

  “And cover it over,” Burnside whispered.

  “Sir?” For one of the few times in the inquiry so far, Hancock showed anger.

  “I am in command of this hearing, sir,” Hancock said, his voice pitched low and menacing.

  Burnside glared at him but did not reply.

  The stare down continued for a long moment, until Burnside finally lowered his gaze.

  “Now, answer the question as presented by the inspector general as to whether you conveyed
proper orders to General Ledlie in regard to the change in plans and what was expected of his command.”

  “Sir,” Burnside sighed, “I placed my trust that General Ledlie would see to such details…” and again his voice trailed off.

  “Why did you not accompany him and personally supervise the briefings of his brigade and regimental commanders as many of those here have done?” Shriver paused, looking pointedly at Hancock. “It would follow as a normal part of your duties.”

  “I had not slept in two days, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Just that. What with the change of…” he paused, looking over at the stenographer. “With all the duties to attend to prior to such a complex action, I had not slept in two days. For the sake of my ability to lead the action before dawn the following morning, I thought it important to at least try and get some rest.”

  James contained his sadness and frustration. He cared deeply for this man, who had shown such openness in how he had greeted the Fourth Division into his ranks, but here, indeed, he had utterly failed. An hour or two of work, of calling in the gallant Bartlett and his other brigade commanders to insure that the transfer of footbridges and axes from the men leading the two columns had been seen to, would perhaps have made all the difference.

  “And when did you learn that such information and necessary equipment had not been conveyed?” Shriver pressed.

  “Not until after the assault began.”

  “Did you not think it your duty to go forward and check prior to darkness and deployment of his division?”

  “I trusted that General Ledlie would see to such issues. Beyond the extensive training given to the men of my Fourth Division, the other three division commanders had been briefed on their roles once the attack began.”

  “But those orders had been changed. Should you not have ensured your new orders were properly followed by those under you?”

  “I trusted my division commanders,” Burnside replied woodenly, and James sighed inwardly at the response.

  “And when did you finally learn that General Ledlie had utterly failed to convey any information whatsoever to his brigade commanders; that they were tasked with seizing the Jerusalem Plank Road and the Blandford Church Cemetery, rather than simply charging into the crater left by the mine and hiding there? When did you learn that, in fact, General Ledlie was hiding drunk in a bunker behind the lines?”

  Hancock cleared his throat and leaned forward.

  “Strike that question please,” he said softly, looking over at the stenographer, and he fixed Shriver with his gaze.

  “Whether General Ledlie acted properly as an officer in command of a division or was in dereliction of duty has yet to be established, sir,” Hancock announced. “Such a line of questioning of his character must wait until he himself is called before this board.”

  “My apologies, sir,” Shriver replied but, as with any lawyer overruled, it was obvious he knew his point had been made.

  Burnside blew out noisily, reaching into his breast pocket for another cigar, his eighth of the day, lit it, and leaned forward.

  “As to the first part of your question: only after the assault had begun and I saw the men of the First Division go into the crater and not proceed on.”

  “Why did you not react, then?” Shriver pressed.

  “I was at my headquarters and felt my responsibility was to be in communication with General Meade via telegraph at his headquarters, which were removed from my position by a distance of eight hundred yards.”

  No one spoke for a moment and finally it was Hancock who broke the silence.

  “Sir, you and I have held the same position in the field as corps commander. Did the thought ever occur to ride forward and take direct command of the action and set things straight?”

  James looked up from his pad. The question that zeroed in on the key point had at last been asked. Only Hancock, known as one of the bravest fighting commanders in the army, could ask it of another corps commander.

  Burnside sat silent and then, with a gesture that James sensed was one of inner agony, answered the question that he had replayed in his soul a thousand times since that fight.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I should have.”

  Shriver leaned forward as if to press a point home, but a gesture from Hancock, a rapping of his knuckles on the table, silenced him.

  With those few words, Major General Ambrose Burnside had just professionally ruined himself. No matter his admiration for the man, James knew that without doubt he was now doomed. As Napoleon should have gone forward to join his Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and McClellan should have crossed Antietam Creek to press the final attack that could have ended the war nearly two years ago, Burnside’s failure to act would haunt him to his dying day. He was not a coward, but he had become paralyzed. Tied to a telegraph, tied by a misplaced sense of loyalty to division commanders of either little competence or outright cowardice, he should have gone forward, the telegraph to Meade be damned.

  Had Burnside ridden before the men of the Fourth Division, sword raised, calling upon them to stand up and follow him to glory, this tragic moment would never have occurred. There would have been either victory or a death befitting a corps commander, placing his memory alongside those of men like Reynolds at Gettysburg, Sedgwick at Spotsylvania, and even Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. He would then have been forever spared the humiliation he was now going through.

  Ambrose Burnside would be damned with the greatest burden that any man could ever carry, any man at least with a sense of duty, a sense of responsibility for the lives of others … He had failed the men who had entrusted their lives to him and now must live with that forever, because so many of them had died uselessly as a result of his personal failure.

  Burnside lowered his head, unable to meet Hancock’s gaze. The broader issue of Meade’s obvious interference, and as James believed, his outright derailment of the battle plan from either jealousy or incompetence on his own part, had become moot.

  The legend already building that, as the newspaper put it, the “darkies had panicked and ran,” was now combined, as a means of shifting blame, with the failure of Burnside to ensure that proper orders had been given and followed. And if they had not been properly followed, his failure to have gone forward personally and, if need be, to die setting matters straight.

  Burnside was doomed.

  “It is the most unorthodox process of command decision I have encountered in this war,” General Ayres sighed, shaking his head.

  Burnside did not reply.

  “Is there anything else before we conclude General Burnside’s testimony?” Hancock asked.

  He looked back and forth down the length of the table. No one spoke. It was evident that Shriver wished to press for more, but a cold glance from Hancock stilled his pursuit.

  “General Burnside, you are excused and this inquiry is closed for the day.”

  Again the ritual of salutes, and the group left the room. James’s sketches were again checked for notes before he was allowed to depart. The meeting had been convened late, this day, in a vain attempt to avoid the worst of the midday heat, so that the first stars of evening and a new moon shone overhead.

  “Mr. Reilly?”

  He turned; it was Captain Vincent, one of Burnside’s staff. He went over to the man’s side.

  “How did it go in there?” Vincent asked, looking around conspiratorially.

  “You must know I am pledged to silence. Ask General Burnside, instead of me.”

  Vincent put his hand on James’s shoulder and led him a few dozen paces away from the others, who were calling for their mounts, and away from the usual press of correspondents hoping to get some indication of what was transpiring within.

  “Can we take a walk for a few minutes?”

  “Certainly.”

  Vincent made a point of offering a flask and then a cigar, both of which James gladly took.

  “You are an unusual man, Reilly,�
�� Vincent said.

  “How so?”

  “You seem to have an uncanny knack for being at a crucial place at precisely the right time.”

  “It’s my job,” James replied cautiously. “Stay at the front long enough and you develop an instinct as to where things might get hot. If I’m to do my job, I have to be there.”

  “A lot of others though, Nast, for example, and most of the print correspondents, find it easy enough to sit back at some headquarters and report from there.”

  James did not reply, puffing on his cigar, stopping to look up at the emerging stars, breathing in the first hint of cool evening air.

  “It is just that a few eyebrows were raised at the sudden order to allow you into the court of inquiry.”

  James blew out the cigar smoke, actually succeeding in making a ring, watching it float up.

  “My editor with Harper’s knows a few strings to pull.”

  “Spying works both ways, Reilly.”

  “Sir?”

  “You spied on Colonel Pleasants, didn’t you, when he was in Washington last month? Followed him to that instrument-maker’s store.”

  “Just curious. Rumors were already flying that something was afoot with that regiment.”

  “Why were you in Washington that day?”

  “To turn in my latest sketches to an assistant editor there. I don’t trust them to the packets and couriers.”

  “Mind if I have my flask back?” Vincent asked, and James, realizing he had been hanging on to it, passed it over.

  Vincent took a long gulp and handed it back.

  “That’s good single malt Scotch; I have a supplier in Washington, actually my brother, who takes care of me.”

  “It is good stuff,” James replied, glad for another sip.

  “As I was saying, Mr. Reilly, spying works both ways.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You were seen going to the White House a bit later that day, and you spent over an hour and a half there.”

  “What is this?” James snapped, stopping to look straight at Vincent.

  “Yes, sir, exactly what is this?” Vincent replied.

  There was a moment of silence.