by Ralph Peters
“I can’t do this by myself,” Meade told him, reversing their direction and strolling back toward the picket line. “I’m keeping you in command of the army’s left wing. Doubleday can handle your household duties at First Corps, while you apply the switch to Sickles—he’s back, you know—and to our sainted and reverent General Howard.” He grimaced. “The Eleventh Corps’s in a bad way, and we both know it. His Germans hate Howard, and he despises them. And, frankly, I’m not sure I blame the Dutchmen.” Meade’s expression tightened. “It wasn’t just Jackson at Chancellorsville. Or bad luck. Howard hasn’t a jot of imagination when it comes to the things of this earth. He can’t envision anything he can’t see right in front of him—unless it has to do with abolition—and he won’t listen to anyone who doesn’t rank him. The man can only lead if he’s properly led.”
“Well, you stumped me,” Reynolds said. “I thought you’d be more worried about the Third Corps. Sickles is the joker in the deck, George.”
Meade almost smiled, but his mouth was etched with bitterness. “That’s why you’re keeping him, too. His corps is able, if he’s not. Good division commanders. And I can’t very well relieve Abe’s favorite War Democrat and Mrs. Lincoln’s slinking Tammany pet, can I? Sickles is the burden I can’t be rid of, and there’s folly and damnation in the creature.” Meade grunted at his image of the man. “He’ll have his marching orders this afternoon, to close in your direction. You’ll move north to Emmitsburg with the First Corps, keeping the Eleventh on your flank.” Slowing, he turned toward his golden companion. “You wouldn’t have a spare map of Pennsylvania, would you? To call Hooker negligent would be merciful.”
A cloud of green flies rose from a pile of horse droppings. The soldiers called the flies “Berdan’s Sharpshooters.”
“I expected more of Butterfield,” Reynolds reflected. “He hasn’t just been Hooker’s boon companion. Dan always kept one duty officer sober.”
“He can’t even keep up with the orders I pass along. John, I just can’t trust the man. He’s Hooker’s creature. You should’ve heard him this morning, claiming Hooker told him nothing of his plans. I asked Warren to take his place, and Seth Williams, but nobody wants it.”
“You can’t replace him as chief of staff now. With Lee out there.”
“That’s what Warren said.”
“And he was right. Anyway, Warren’s where he needs to be. He’s a splendid engineer.”
“But I can’t depend on Butterfield to be loyal to me. And he and Sickles are thick as thieves.” Meade swept off a veil of flies. “I’ve never hated the army, but I’ve hated army politics since West Point. Even you and I have had our differences. To my regret, John. But now, with these volunteer officers … the whole business stinks like an Irishman’s drawers. I’m not certain whether they’ve given me command of an army, or of a political convention. But I know I can’t trust Butterfield.”
A lone cow looked up from its grazing, as if about to join the conversation. Instead, it just flicked its tail.
“No, you can’t,” Reynolds said. “Not personally. But he’ll be loyal to the army. Butterfield’s a good Union man, if nothing else. As is Sickles, for that matter. I don’t think Butterfield will let you down, as long as we’re on campaign. Not intentionally, anyway. And I’d say the same for Sickles, if no more.”
Meade roused. “Sickles is a murderer and a thief. The man’s a whoremonger.”
“He’ll fight.”
Meade snorted. “But will the man think? He’s leading a corps, not a regiment.”
Reynolds dosed his voice with warmth again. “Well, I’ll watch Dan Sickles for you. And I’ll see that Howard doesn’t pray too extravagantly for his darkies on army time.” He laughed. “Then we’ll see if you can manage Hancock. Old Win’s the wildest savage Philadelphia ever nursed.”
“Win’s not really a Philadelphia man,” Meade said. “Not in the true sense. Humphreys is more the thing.”
Amused, Reynolds shook his head and dropped the matter.
“And perhaps this army should take General Lee into account,” Meade said abruptly, resentment back in full gallop. “Sharpe waves his hands and tells me the Army of Northern Virginia is ‘somewhere west of the mountains.’ He has no blasted idea.”
“Come now, George. You’re being harsh. I’d have Sharpe any day. If he hasn’t yet found the current address of Robert E. Lee’s chamberpot, who do you think would? Without Sharpe, this army might still be in Virginia. You’re damned lucky to have him.”
Meade never liked being chastened. He kicked a clod of dirt before realizing that it wasn’t dirt. “I’m trying to drag this army together so we won’t have another disaster on our hands. And I can’t help believing that Lee knows more about us than we do about him. Damn it, we can’t even find Stuart, who’s always ranging about across Lee’s front. It’s as if a curtain’s been drawn.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to let Lee set the rules this time. I swear it. I’m going to fight him on ground I choose, not where he wants to fight. And that means I need to find him before he pounces.”
“Buford’s out in front of me. He’s an old Indian-fighter. If Lee closes on our left, John won’t let him slip by.”
“We’re not fighting Indians this time.”
“No. But I trust Buford. And finding Lee should be a tad simpler than trailing a Comanche war party.”
“Well, keep pushing Buford north. Ignore any sobbing from Pleasanton.”
As the two generals neared the picket line, a young sentry weighed the wisdom of challenging them. He chose to keep his mouth shut and present arms.
Rejoining the commotion of the camp, Meade said, “Thank you for riding over, John. In this heat. I needed to see you, I had to let some of this out. I really must depend on you, you know.”
Reynolds kept silent, but his eyes were good.
“It’s all an odd business,” Meade continued. “I thought I’d be remembered for my method of reading longitude. That, and the better of my lighthouses. Now look where we are.…”
Before they parted, Meade to see that his orders had been dispatched and Reynolds to rejoin his soldiers, the new commanding general of the Army of the Potomac seized the hand of his friend and sometime rival, gripping it hard. As if to draw strength from it.
“I fear,” Meade said in a voice only Reynolds could hear, “that, if we lose the next battle, we’ve lost the war, John.”
“Then we mustn’t lose it.” Reynolds laughed.
Abruptly, inexplicably, wonderfully, Meade found himself able to laugh along. And he did. So vigorously it startled those within hearing distance. Reynolds was right: He had to climb out of himself. He couldn’t do worse than Hooker, after all. Perhaps the army just needed an engineer’s discipline.
Before Meade could gather more confident words, his son dashed madly toward them, bareheaded and struggling to keep his scabbard from tripping him.
Both generals stiffened.
“Father!” young George cried, drawing up before them. Immediately, he corrected himself, “I mean, General Meade, sir.” Eyes young and wild, he turned to Reynolds and touched fingers to an eyebrow in a salute. “General Reynolds, your indulgence, sir.”
“What’s got you all lathered up, George?” Reynolds asked.
Captain Meade turned back to his father. “A message from General Halleck, sir. Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry captured a wagon train at Rockville. Smack in our rear, between us and Washington. They made off with a hundred and fifty wagons.”
In the sliver of quiet that followed, summer’s hum swamped the noises of the camp.
“Well, George,” Reynolds said at last, “it seems you’ve found General Stuart.”
TWO
June 29
“General Stuart will not let us down,” the old man said. “I expect to hear from him at any hour.”
Longstreet grunted. “It wouldn’t hurt him to worry less about getting into the Richmond papers and more about his duty to this army.�
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“General Stuart will not let me down,” Lee repeated.
The two men sat on camp stools under an elm tree, a few steps from Lee’s tent. The air was hot and thick, with dark clouds rolling. Out on the road, an artillery battery passed between lines of infantry, all of them bound for the high hills to the east. The men on foot heckled the mounted gunners, their words unclear in the distance, but their tone unmistakable to anyone who wore a uniform.
Longstreet was sour. He liked Stuart well enough, was even fond of him, but the man had grown too confident. Perhaps they all had. Even the ideal gentleman before him, with his immaculate uniform—worn despite the heat—and his well-groomed beard.
Reading his mind, Lee added, “Stuart’s young. High-spirited. We don’t want to break those spirits.” The old man thought about his own words, then half-sighed. “They’re all so young.”
Yes, the army’s officers were young. And getting younger. Not least after Chancellorsville, that magnificent victory, Jackson’s crimson sepulchre. Jackson had been the noted loss, but there had been so many others, all of their deaths eclipsed by his alone. The army could not afford many more such triumphs. The Union could replace men, the South could not. They had to fashion their battles after Fredericksburg, not Chancellorsville. Make the Federals charge a wall of fire. Bleed them. Raise the cost intolerably.
“Well, while we’re waiting for General Stuart to grace us with his presence,” Longstreet said, “perhaps Imboden’s unwashed slave-catchers could spare some time from chasing niggers to go on a scout?” He made as if to spit, but did not. Spitting was a habit Lee deplored. “The irregulars are worthless, all of them. Worthless and useless. They disgrace this army, sir.”
Longstreet’s outburst left the old man aggrieved. In silence, the two men looked past the cluster of tents and the soldiers at their labors. The road in the middle distance, a tunnel of dust, belonged solely to the infantry now. Men plodded forward.
The commanding general and his favored subordinate had pitched their headquarters near to one another, the way it always went now. Lee’s quartermaster had chosen a picnic spot for the encampment. “Shatter’s Woods,” the locals called it, a name the soldiers soon altered by one vowel.
“There are matters,” the old man said at last, “that trouble us both, I think. But Mr. Davis has his political flanks to guard, as we have our military flanks. The runaway-slave issue excites certain factions in Richmond.”
“Factions conspicuous by their absence on any battlefield.”
Both men chose to let the subject go. But Longstreet had been bitten by a scene he’d witnessed while riding to the artillery trains. Judging his importance by his retinue, a captive darkey, the tiniest man in a rope chain of a dozen, had called to him, “I’m no runaway, Gen’rul, I’m a freeborn man, I’m freeborn!” A cavalryman in a ragged pretense of a uniform had smashed the man across the face with his pistol, knocking him down. To Longstreet’s surprise, the other captives had laughed, one singing out, “You ain’t freeborn no more, boy, no you ain’t.”
Longstreet had ridden on, only to regret it. He would have whipped the man who treated a dog like that. Instead, he had cantered away from the bloody-faced nigger. War hardened the heart.
He had no right to spend his anger on Lee, though. The old man had troubles enough.
Longstreet went to work to improve the mood he had worsened. “Porter Alexander told me a howler this morning, sir. And young Porter’s the man to tell a joke. Happened in Chambersburg. Brigade of Hood’s boys come marching along, the whole wild pack of ’em, and the good citizens are watching this fine parade from their porches and windows, some of them waving Yankee flags, defiant as all get-out, and all of them sour as pickles.… Well, the boys come marching up past this big yellow dog in a front yard, and it’s leaping and barking to beat the band, just growling and snapping away. And this little, bitty girl runs back to her porch, crying, ‘Pappy, Pappy, don’t let Beave bite the army!’”
Lee laughed. It was a soft sound. “Have your men been comporting themselves well, General? We will not behave as those people have done in our own country.”
“They’ve followed your orders. Better than I expected, to tell the truth. Plenty of temptation around here.”
“Hood’s men? The Texans?”
Longstreet grinned through his beard. “I told Hood to keep his men out of the Pennsylvania whiskey. And he told me that wasn’t a problem at all, that the trick was keeping the whiskey out of his men.” With Lee’s spirits revived, Longstreet decided to raise another subject. “Sir, I’d be obliged if someone could take that high-toned Englishman off my hands. The one who turned up yesterday.”
“I thought he and your people were getting on,” Lee said.
“Oh, the boys get a laugh or two out of him. Moxley stands him well enough. But he won’t give me any peace. The man has more questions than a drunken newspaperman at a fire. And he looks at my men like he’s gawking at native troops somewhere in India.”
“I’ll make time for him tomorrow,” Lee said. “Perhaps that will satisfy the man.”
Longstreet waved away a fly. “No, sir. He intends to see a battle.” He laughed. “He’s a proud fellow, the way they are. Tries to be affable, but it feels like a counterfeit bill.” Lofting his beard and remembering, he went on, “Got more than a little put out last night, after he made sure to let us know he’s a lieutenant colonel in their Coldstream Guards at the ripe old age of twenty-seven years. Well, Tom Goree’s all Texas and won’t put up with much, so he mentioned to Fremantle that we have a passel of full colonels younger than that, including that boy-colonel over in Pettigrew’s dancing school. Our English friend was crushed like the belle nobody asked to dance at the cotillion.”
“Bear with him a while longer,” the old man said. “Tolerate him a little yet. If we win the coming battle and do so on Federal soil … England may come in for us at last.”
Longstreet didn’t believe that, but kept his opinion to himself. He judged that, had Britain meant to back the Confederacy, it would have done it the year before. But a great defeat, a Fredericksburg writ large, might be enough to bring the Union to ask for a peace without English interference.
Longstreet did not trust his own hope. But there it was. All men hoped for something.
Above the line of high hills, thunder boomed.
The old man’s thoughts had moved along to the battlefield that would be. “I’ll beat General Hooker again,” he confided. His tone expressed uncharacteristic disdain. “And if God is with us, this time it may be less costly.” The ghost of Jackson passed between them. “I have a sense of Hooker now. He’ll worry about having his flank turned again. And he has to cover Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. So he’ll spread out his corps and weaken himself. He’ll weaken his center to brace his flanks.” Lee punched a fist into his open palm, entranced by what he foresaw. “And then we’ll have him. We’ll pick his apples one at a time, instead of shaking the entire tree at once.”
“We didn’t know Hooker had his army in Maryland until Harrison showed up. We need Stuart.”
At the mention of the spy, Lee had lifted his nose, but Longstreet drove on. “You heard what he had to say about the rumors that Reynolds may replace Hooker. John Reynolds is a different proposition.”
Lee shook his head. “Those people won’t do that. The campaign’s too far along.” He gave Longstreet a sideward look. “I trust General Halleck to make a bounteous share of poor decisions, but nothing so madcap as that. No, we’ll fight Hooker again. And whip him again.” Lee reached out and patted Longstreet’s forearm. “My old warhorse,” he said, voice as warm as ever it could grow. “It’ll be Hooker. And our victory again. And then we’ll see if their president chooses peace.”
Longstreet almost brought up Vicksburg, which was likely to fall by summer’s end, if not sooner. But he chose not to spoil the old man’s better mood. The thought of Vicksburg brought Grant to mind, though. Longstreet lov
ed Grant. As deeply as he could love any man. And he feared the degree to which Virginia’s cavaliers underestimated him. Sam had needed only a war to bloom.
Overhead, dark clouds thickened. Thunder neared. But the heat refused to weaken.
Longstreet recalled the last time he and Grant had been together. In St. Louis, before the war, at the Planters’ Hotel. Out of the army, Grant had fallen low, reduced to selling firewood in the streets. But people kept in touch with him, and mutual friends called him in as a fourth at cards. The evening had gone well enough, but with no time for private talk or displays of sentiment. Grant was threadbare, but unashamed, and pleased as could be to see Longstreet. When Grant returned to the hotel the next morning and thrust a five-dollar gold piece into his hand, Longstreet had tried to decline it. “No,” his ragged friend had told him, “you take it, Pete. I’ve owed you that for years, and it’s gnawed me.”
Now Grant was far away, on the Mississippi, a conqueror making a fool of Joe Johnston, a fine general, and cornering Pemberton like a cat backs up a mouse. Even a victory on Pennsylvania’s soil might not end the war so soon as the old man hoped.
And whether they faced Hooker or Reynolds, it was bound to be a tougher fight than the old man would admit. Jackson was gone, along with so many other capable men. Now a third of the army fell under Dick Ewell, with his peg leg and thinned bravado, and another third had gone to Hill, who was meant to command a division, not a corps. Hill was a fighter, that was true enough. But only when he wasn’t laid up by the aftereffects of a loathsome disease no gentleman would mention. And the last third of the army fell to him, Pete Longstreet, Old Dutch. Before the reorganization in the wake of Chancellorsville, he had commanded half of the Army of Northern Virginia. Now his command was reduced to three divisions. But the old man still clung to him.
“I believe we will have three days yet,” Lee said out of the blue. “Perhaps a fourth. That will be enough. Ewell starts south, and Hill will be there to greet him. You, General, will have time to lead your corps across the mountains. Then we shall pay a call on General Hooker.” The old man’s brows tightened. “How far back is Pickett?”
