How Few Remain (great war)

by Harry Turtledove

  "Into the stone wall of your defense?" Longstreet interrupted, his voice sly.

  Jackson went on as if the president had not spoken: "-into the positions we have prepared to repel them. One thing this battle has proved once and for all, Your Excellency, is the primacy of the defensive when soldiers in field works are provided with repeating rifles."

  "So we had surmised, based on our own manoeuvres and the recent Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish Wars," Longstreet said. "Encouraging to know our pundits were in this instance correct."

  "Encouraging? I would not say so, Mr. President," Jackson answered. "The advantages accruing to the defensive make a war of manoeuvre far more difficult than it was in our previous conflict with the United States."

  "But, General, we do not seek to invade and conquer the United States. They seek to invade and conquer us," the president of the Confederate States said gently. "I profess myself to be in favor of that which makes their work harder and ours easier."

  "Hmm," Jackson said. "There is some truth in what you say." Longstreet showed a perspective broader than his own. From the viewpoint of the Confederacy as a whole, the ability to conduct a strong, punishing defense was vital. From the viewpoint of a general with the inclination to attack, the ability of the enemy to conduct a strong, punishing defense was constipating.

  "Of course there is." In his own way, Longstreet had a certainty to match Jackson 's. Jackson 's sprang from faith in the Lord, Longstreet's, the general judged, from faith in himself. The Confederate president went on, "Now that I have seen the outline of our position in Louisville, I will sec the position itself."

  He looked as if he expected Jackson to argue with him. He looked as if he expected to enjoy overruling his general-in-chief. Saluting, Jackson replied, "Yes, sir. I look forward to accompanying you."

  "What?" Longstreet emphatically shook his head. "I cannot permit that, General. You are-"

  "Indispensable, Your Excellency?" Jackson presumed to break in on his commander-in-chief. "I think not. The arguments applying to you and Mr. Lamar apply with equal force to me and General Alexander."

  "You arc insubordinate, General," Longstreet snapped. Jackson inclined his head, as at a compliment. Longstreet glowered at him, then started to laugh. "Very well-let it be as you say."

  Jackson put E. Porter Alexander in overall command until he should return, then, Longstreet at his side, rode down into Louisville, toward the sound of the guns. He went toward that sound as toward a lover. His wife knew of and forgave him his infidelity, one of the many reasons he loved her.

  Even well behind the fighting line, shellfire and flames had taken their toll on Louisville 's houses and offices and warehouses and manufactories. Some were burnt-out skeletons of their former selves, while others had had pieces bitten out of them, as if caught in the grip of monstrous jaws. The air smelled of stale smoke and gunpowder, with the sick-sweet fetor of death under them.

  Longstreet drew in a long breath. His mouth tightened. "I have not smelled that smell since the War of Secession, but it never escapes the mind, does it?"

  "No, sir." Jackson had his head cocked to one side, savoring the sounds of battle at close range. For the moment, the artillery was fairly quiet. After some consideration, though, he said, "I do not believe I ever heard such a terrific volume of musketry on any field during the War of Secession. Put that together with the increased power of the guns, and no wonder an attack crumples before it is well begun."

  "Yes," Longstreet said abstractedly. A couple of ambulances rattled past them toward the rear. "I have not heard the cries and groans of wounded men since the War of Secession, either, but those likewise remain in memory yet green."

  Soldiers coming back from the front, even the unwounded, looked like casualties of war: tattered uniforms, filthy faces, their eyes more full of the horror they had seen than of the debris-strewn paths down which they walked. Soldiers going forward, especially those who had been in the line before, advanced steadily, but without the slightest trace of eagerness. They knew what awaited them.

  With every block now, the wreckage of what had been a splendid city grew worse. After a while, a corporal held up a hand. "Nobody on horseback past here," he declared, and then looked foolishly astonished at whom he had presumed to halt.

  "Corporal, you are doing your duty," Jackson said. He and Long-street dismounted and went forward on foot, soon moving from one trench to another along zigzags dug into the ground to minimize the damage from any one shellburst and to keep any advancing Yankees who gained one end of a trench from laying down a deadly fire along its entire length. Some of the trench wall was shored up with bricks and timbers from shattered buildings.

  Slaves in coarse cotton laboured to strengthen the defenses further. Jackson made a point of looking at them, of speaking with them, of urging them on. Longstreet made a point of taking no notice of Jackson.

  Up above the trench, on bare ground, a sharpshooter with a long brass telescope mounted on his Tredegar crouched in the military equivalent of a hunter's blind: rubbish cunningly arranged to conceal him from view from the front and sides while he searched for targets behind the U.S. line. Jackson wondered how many snipers he'd passed without noticing them. He also wondered how many similar sharpshooters in Yankee blue were peering south, looking for unwary Confederates.

  In the front-line trenches, the soldiers started to raise a cheer for their general-in-chief and president. Officers in butternut frantically shushed them, lest the damnyankees, getting wind of the arrivals, send a torrent of shells down on Jackson and Longstreet.

  The president walked along, examining the trench and pausing now and then to chat with the soldiers defending it. Jackson followed. After a couple of hundred yards, Longstreet turned to him and asked, "Is it possible that the U.S. Army of the Ohio may bring in enough in the way of guns and men to drive us out of Louisville?"

  "Yes, Mr. President, much as it pains me to say so, that is possible," Jackson answered. "They would pay a fearsome price, but it is possible."

  "Having taken Louisville at such a price, could they then rapidly overrun the rest of Kentucky?" Longstreet inquired. Jackson laughed out loud, which made the president smile. But he had another question: "Are the Yankees as aware of these facts as we are ourselves?"

  "I hardly see how it could be otherwise," Jackson said. "Why do you ask?"

  "To see if your conclusions march with mine," Longstreet said, which, to the general's annoyance, was not an answer at all.

  Chapter 10

  Colonel George Custer rode back toward Salt Lake City in high good humor. He had not succeeded in running the elusive John Taylor to earth, but he was bringing back to U.S. justice George Q. Cannon, another eminent leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Cannon, his hands manacled and his feet tied together under his horse, glumly rode along behind Custer and his brother.

  In splendid spirits himself, Custer said to Tom, "Did you hear about the Mormon bishop who passed away leaving behind nine widows?"

  "Why, no, Autie, I can't say as I did," Tom Custer answered. "Why don't you tell me about the poor fellow?" By his expression, he suspected a joke of lurking in there somewhere. Since he couldn't see where, he willingly played straight man.

  "It was very sad," Custer said with a sigh. "As the preacher put it by the graveside, 'In the midst of wives we are in death.'"

  Both Custer brothers laughed. So did the other soldiers in earshot. Tom Custer looked over his shoulder at their prisoner and asked, "How many wives are you in the midst of, Cannon?"

  "One," the Mormon answered tightly. He was a round-faced little man, his hair cut close to his head, cheeks and upper lip clean-shaven, with a short, curly tangle of graying beard under his chin.

  "Why lie?" Custer said with something approaching real curiosity. "We know better. You must know we know better."

  "First, I am not lying." Cannon had a precise, fussy way of speaking, more like a lawyer than a revolutionary. "Se
cond, and now speaking purely in a hypothetical sense, if the penalty for polygamy be harsher than the penalty for perjury, would it not profit one in such a predicament to lie?"

  "It might, if those were the only charges you were up against," Custer answered. "Next to treason, though, they're both small potatoes."

  "I am not a traitor," George Cannon said, as he'd been saying since Custer's troopers caught him in a hayloft near Farmington. "I want nothing more for my people than the rights guaranteed them under the Constitution of the United States."

  "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of wives?" Custer suggested, which drew another guffaw from his brother and made the captured Mormon fugitive set his jaw and say no more.

  John Pope had established his headquarters at Fort Douglas, north and east of the center of Salt Lake City. The fort sat on a bench of land higher than the town. From it, the artillery Pope had brought with him-and the guns that had come in since government forces reoccupied Utah Territory-could direct a devastating fire on any insurrection that broke out.

  Custer rode into the fort like a conquering hero. "Another Mormon villain captured!" he cried in a great voice. The soldiers manning the gates and up on the stockade raised a cheer. Custer took off his hat and waved it about. That drew another cheer.

  Hearing the commotion, Brigadier General John Pope came out of his office to see what was going on. "Ah, Colonel Custer!" he said, and then looked past Custer to the prisoner. "So this is the famous George Cannon of whom you telegraphed me, is it? He doesn't look so much like a wild-eyed fanatic as some of the ones we snared before."

  "No, sir," Custer agreed: close enough for his superiors to hear him, he made a point of agreeing with them. "But without their coldhearted, cool-headed comrades egging them on, the wild-eyed fanatics could not do so much damage."

  "That, as we have seen here, is nothing less than the truth," Pope said heavily. "Well done, Colonel. Get him down from his high horse"-the military governor laughed at his own wit, and so, of course, did Custer-"and take him to the stockade. In due course, we shall try him, and, in due course, I have no doubt we shall hang him by the neck until he is dead."

  Politely, Cannon said, "I presume you shall be the judge at these proceedings? Good to know you come into them unbiased."

  "You Mormons have corrupted courts in Utah Territory too long," Pope replied. "You shall not have the opportunity to do so any more."

  Dismounting, Custer walked over to George Cannon's horse and cut the ropes that bound his feet. He helped the manacled prisoner get down from the animal, then started to lead him to the row of cells that had been intended for drunk soldiers who got into brawls but now held as many Mormon leaders as the U.S. Army had been able to track down.

  After a couple of steps across the parade ground, Custer stopped dead. Since he had his arm hooked to Cannon's, the Mormon bigwig perforce stopped, too. Custer, for the moment, entirely forgot the prisoner he'd been so proud of capturing. Pointing across the grounds, he growled, "What in blazes is he doing here?"

  John Pope's gaze swung toward the tall figure walking along at a loose-jointed amble. In something approaching a purr, the military governor answered, "Honest Abe? He's under arrest for consorting with John Taylor, and for refusing to tell us the miserable rebel's whereabouts."

  "Is that a fact, sir?" Custer's eyes glowed. "Can you hang him, too? Heaven knows he's deserved it, these past twenty years. If it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have had to fight the War of Secession-and, if it hadn't been for him, I think we should have won it." By putting it that way, he managed to blame Lincoln for his treatment of both McClellan and Pope.

  "I am forbidden to hang him," Pope said unhappily. "I am even forbidden formally to keep him under lock and key, though President Blaine in his generosity does permit me to retain him in custody here at the fort." He muttered something into his beard. Aloud, he added, " Blaine is a Republican, too."

  "Republicans," Custer made the word a venomous oath. "They get us into wars, and then they fight them every wrong way they can find. If half-if a quarter-of what the wires are saying about the fighting in Louisville is true-" He kicked up a small cloud of dust, then rubbed his boot clean on the back of his other trouser leg.

  "Orlando Willcox always was better at praying than he was at fighting," Pope said. "That impressed the redskins when he was out here in the West. He's not fighting the redskins any more. He's fighting Stonewall Jackson."

  "We both know about that," Custer said with a grimace. He abruptly seemed to remember he still had hold of George Q. Cannon. "Come along, you." He jerked the Mormon prisoner forward.

  Once he had raced through the formalities of turning Cannon over to the warder, he hurried out to the parade ground once more. He needed only a moment to spot Lincoln, who was strolling along with as little apparent concern as if in a hotel garden. Custer trotted over to him. "How dare you?" he demanded.

  Lincoln looked down at him: a long way down because, even though beginning to be shrunken by age, the former president was still the taller of them by half a foot or more. "How dare I what?" he asked now, his voice mild. "Take a walk here? I didn't know it was private property, and I'm not stepping on the grass to any great degree."

  The parade ground being bare dirt, there was no grass on which to step. Custer scowled at Lincoln, who bore the glower with the air of a man who had borne a lot of glowers. "How dare you treat with the Mormons without leave?" he snapped.

  "I hoped I might persuade Mr. Taylor to yield in such a way as to make this occupation do as little damage to the Constitution as possible," Lincoln answered. "In this, I fear, I was unsuccessful, Mormons possessing the same aversion to having their necks stretched as any other segment of the populace."

  "Force is the only lesson the Mormons understand," Custer said.

  "He who sows the wind will one day reap the whirlwind," Lincoln returned. "The store of hatred the U.S. Army builds for itself will come back to haunt it."

  "As the Confederate States ought now to be reaping the whirlwind whose wind you sowed," Custer said. That got through to Lincoln; Custer smiled to watch him grimace. He went on, "How dare you presume to hide from us John Taylor's whereabouts?"

  To his surprise, Lincoln laughed at that. "My dear Colonel, do you mean to tell me you believe Taylor will still be where he was?"

  Custer felt foolish. He covered that with bluster. "Now, of course not. Had you come to the U.S. military authorities directly you returned from this illicit meeting, we might have been able to capture the traitor, as he would have had only a short head start on our men."

  "There you may possibly be correct, Colonel Custer," Lincoln answered. "But, in his seeking to use me as an intermediary, I judged-and judge still-that Mr. Taylor in effect made me his client, and I would be violating my responsibility to him in revealing where we met."

  "If you are going to hide behind every jot and tittle of the law to save a criminal and a traitor from his just deserts, then in my view you deserve to go up on the gallows with him when we do seize him," Custer said. "I have no patience with legalistic folderol and humbug."

  "If we do not live by law, what shall we live by?" Lincoln asked.

  "When the law fails us, as it has plainly done in Utah Territory, shall we live by it no matter how dear that may cost us?" Custer returned.

  Lincoln sighed. "There, Colonel, you pose a serious question, whether that be your intention or not. Much of the history of the law in the United States — and, indeed, in the world, or what I know of itsprings from the dialectical struggle between your observation and mine."

  "The what kind of struggle?" Custer asked.

  "Never mind," Lincoln said. "I would not expect you to be a student of either Hegel or Marx. Their works have come late to this side of the Atlantic, and are not yet appreciated as they should be."

  Custer had not heard of either of them. That made him feel smugly superior, not ignorant. "We've got no need for a pack of damned foreign liars. We've got
enough homegrown liars, seems to me." He glared fiercely up at the former president. "And if you didn't have a president of your own miserable party to protect you from the consequences of your treason, we would see if we could build a gallows tall enough to stretch you on it."

  "My legs have always been long enough to reach the ground," Lincoln said. "I should prefer that they continue to do so."

  "I shouldn't," Custer said, and turned his back on the man he blamed for so many of the country's misfortunes of the previous generation. He strode off. Although he thought he heard Lincoln sigh again behind him, he didn't turn around to make certain.

  Instead, he sought out General Pope, who was glad enough to see him after his capture of George Cannon. "One by one, Colonel, they fall into our hands," Pope said, "and one by one we shall dispose of them."

  "Yes, sir," Custer replied. "It is truly a pity we can't dispose of Lincoln in the same way, or perhaps have him meet with an accident while attempting escape."

  "I have been specifically cautioned against letting any such accident befall him, though he does not know that," Pope said. "It's too bad, isn't it?"

  "Hiding behind the law to break the law," Custer muttered. Lincoln could put whatever fancy name on it he wanted. In Custer's eyes, that was what it was.

  "Just so. Well, we've both known lo these many years the man is a scoundrel, so why should one more proof of it surprise us?" Pope started to say something else, then caught himself. "I remember what I wanted to tell you, Colonel. The War Department is letting us have another half-dozen Gatling guns. As you've had experience with the weapons, I'm assigning them to your regiment."

  "Yes, sir," Custer said. "Lord only knows what I'll do with eight of the contraptions, but I will say I can't think of anything handier than one of them for making a pack of rioters wish they'd never been born."