"They have lost the war," General Thomas Jackson told Major General E. Porter Alexander. "If they cannot realize that on their own, I shall make certain they are reminded of it."
"Yes, sir." Alexander was not a young man, but retained a large measure of boyish enthusiasm. "President Longstreet's tried to make 'em take their medicine. If they won't open their mouth, we'll just have to yank it open and shove the pill down their throats whether they like it or not."
"Well put." Jackson studied the dispositions on the map. "Everything appears to be in readiness."
"Everything on my end is, sir," his chief artillerist answered. "The guns await only your order to begin."
"Tomorrow morning at half past five," Jackson said. "The end of the day, if God grant victory on our arms, should see the removal from our soil of more than half the Yankees now infesting it."
"Here's hoping you're right, sir," General Alexander said. "And if you are, I'm damned if I can see how they'll be able to go on fighting after that."
"Do not speak so lightly of damnation." Jackson put a rumble of reproof in his voice. "To tell the truth, though, I cannot see how they have gone on fighting so long when so little has gone right for them. Much as I hate to say it, they are braver than I reckoned."
"Hasn't done 'em much good, and that's what counts," Alexander answered.
Absently, Jackson nodded. "Courage and the goodness of one's cause, unfortunately, do not always go hand in hand."
"Yes, sir, that's a fact." His artillery chief nodded, too. "If Douglass taught us anything, he taught us that." Alexander's chuckle had a slight nervous edge. "And, looking out of the other side of the mirror, he learned the same thing from us, I reckon."
"Goodness does not depend on the position from which one observes it," Jackson said sternly. "Goodness is." He sounded very certain. He was very certain. Even so, he did his best not to think about Frederick Douglass. He also noticed that E. Porter Alexander didn't reply, which might well have meant Alexander, too, carefully wasn't thinking about the Negro.
He went to bed that night with the rattle and bang of rifle fire from the trenches in Louisville and to the east of the city and the occasional rumble of artillery in his ears. Everything sounded as it had since the U.S. flank attack bogged down. Thus lulled, he fell asleep almost as soon as he finished his prayers. Neither too much noise nor too little would give the Yankees anything out of the ordinary with which to concern themselves.
An orderly shook him awake with the words, "Half past three, sir, like you ordered."
Yawning, Jackson got into his boots and stuck his hat on his head. The orderly gave him a big tin cup full of coffee strong enough to try to climb over the rim. The handle burned his fingers. The coffee burned his mouth when he gulped it down. "Ahh," he said-a gasp of approval. "I'm ready. Now off to meet up with General Alexander."
He reached the artillerist, at batteries east of Louisville that had come to Kentucky gun by gun from all over the CSA, about half an hour before the show was scheduled to begin. "Good to see you, sir," Alexander said, saluting. In the dim gray of early dawn, he seemed as much a ghost as a man. "Everything is ready. We await only the hour."
"As it should be," Jackson said. Every so often, he would hold his watch next to a lantern. Time moved more slowly than it had any business doing. He'd seen that before. It always bemused him. At last, a little after he could see the time without putting the watch up to the light, he said, "The hour is come."
As if his words had been a signal, a great bellow of artillery rose west of him: all the guns that had defended Louisville against the flanking attack now sent their full fury against the line upon which they had halted the U.S. forces. The flashes from their muzzles lit up the horizon, as if the sun were rising from the wrong direction.
E. Porter Alexander beamed. "Isn't it bully, sir?"
In searching for a description, Jackson would sooner have found one in the Book of Revelations. Even so, he did not reprove his gayer subordinate. "It will do, General. It will do."
U.S. artillery, both in the salient east of Louisville and on the far side of the Ohio, was quick to respond. All through the fight for Louisville, the U.S. cannon had given Jackson more worry than anything else. The United States had brought a lot of guns into the fight, and handled them well. Their artillerymen might lack Porter's imagination, but they were solid professionals. Their shells would punish the Confederate entrenchments.
In spite of that countcrfire, the C.S. soldiers in those entrenchments opened up on the Yankees in front of them with their Trede-gars: a hailstone-on-tin-roof accompaniment to the big guns' thunder. Jackson was sure Rebel yells rang out all along the line as the Confederates there went over to the attack, but the roar of the guns drowned them.
"I pity those poor fellows," Alexander said. "They can't possibly break through, and they'll pay a stiff price for trying."
"It is the price of victory," Jackson said in a voice like iron. His chief artillerist grimaced, but finally nodded.
The sun rose. Jackson waited, still as a statue, while messengers brought word of the fighting to the west. As General Alexander had predicted, the U.S. position facing Louisville was more than strong enough to keep the attacking Confederates from doing much past getting into the first couple of lines of trenches. Jackson had hoped for more, but he had not really expected it.
An hour passed. Turning to Alexander, he asked, "Do you think they are fully engaged, reserves coming up, all their eyes turned on the fight right in front of them?"
"Sir, if they're not, they never will be," Alexander replied. With a faint hint of scorn, he added, "They have so much trouble seeing what's right in front of their noses, they sure as the devil aren't going to look any further."
Jackson considered. From the outset, he had held this moment in his hands and his hands alone. He stared eastward. His nostrils flared, like a wolf's when it takes a scent. He nodded, a sharp, almost involuntary motion. "Let it begin," he said.
E. Porter Alexander shouted an order. All the guns within the sound of his voice let loose. That roar signaled the eruption of all the guns the Confederates had assembled along the southern flank of the Yankees' salient. Up till now, nothing much had happened along that flank. Jackson had kept it strong enough to discourage U.S. forces from trying to shift direction and move against it, which hadn't been hard: the enemy's aim remained focused on Louisville alone. Along with guns, he'd been quietly bringing men forward over the past few days. Now, as they burst from their trenches and dashed toward those of the Yankees, he did hear Rebel yells through the gunfire, a great catamount chorus of them.
"The men must go forward at all hazard, so long as any hope of success presents itself," he said aloud, as he had in the orders he'd sent to the brigade commanders south of the U.S. salient. "If we are to roll up the Yankees' strong fortified west-facing line, we can only do so by an unexpected assault from the flank and rear."
"Pour it on, boys!" Porter Alexander was yelling. "Pour it on!" Jackson tried to inspire his men to the same clear, cold despisal of the foe and certainty God was on their side as he felt himself. Alexander was warmer and earthier at the same time. "Give 'em a good boot in the ass!" he shouted. "Come on, you mangy bastards, work those guns!"
He got louder and coarser from there. Jackson started to rebuke him, then noticed how splendidly the sweating, smoke-stained artillerymen were handling their cannon. He held his peace. After the battle was over, perhaps he would reprove Alexander for some of his more blasphemous suggestions and ask that he refrain from using them in the future. Meanwhile, the artillery commander was getting results. That counted for more.
Streams of Yankee prisoners began shambling past what had for so long been the dividing point between their army and that of the CSA. One of them, a man old enough to have fought in the War of Secession, recognized Jackson. "God damn you, Stonewall, you sneaky son of a bitch!" he shouted. Jackson tipped his hat-to him, that was praise. The Confederates guard
ing the U.S. soldiers laughed. So did a few of the Yankees.
Some of the U.S. guns north of the Ohio shifted their fire to oppose the Confederate breakthrough. Jackson used a telescope to watch shells bursting among his advancing soldiers. But, for once, the U.S. artillerymen were slower than they should have been in responding to changing conditions on the field. As an old artillerist, Jackson also realized the smoke and dust his own bombardment was kicking up hampered the foe in his choice of targets.
More prisoners came back, some of them carried on makeshift litters by their comrades. Messengers came back, too. One young man, his voice cracking with excitement, exclaimed, "General Jackson, sir, them damn-yankees is unraveling faster'n the sleeve off a two-bit shirt. They would run, only they ain't got nowheres to run to."
"God having delivered them into our hands, let us make certain we do not fail to achieve His great purpose by permitting them to slip through our fingers," Jackson said, and ordered more reinforcements forward.
General Alexander was also sending some of his guns forward so they could bear on the retreating U.S. soldiers. "You know something, sir?" he said. "This business is a lot more fun when you're moving ahead than when you're falling back."
"I believe I may have made a similar observation myself, at one time or another in my career," Jackson said.
"Yankees aren't having much fun right now," Alexander said. Jackson smiled. It was the sort of smile that made blue-tuniced prisoners shiver as they stumbled into captivity.
A messenger ran up. "Sir," he panted, "we-uns just ran over the biggest damn Yankee supply dump you ever did see."
"Put guards around it," Jackson ordered. "Let no one go into it. Arrest any who try. If they resist even in the least, shoot them. Do you understand me, Private?"
"Y-Y-Yes, sir," the messenger stammered, and fled.
To E. Porter Alexander, Jackson said, "During the War of Secession, we lived off Yankee plunder because we had so few goods of our own. Sometimes we foraged when we should have been fighting. Now, with a sufficiency of our own supplies, fighting shall come first, as it should."
"Telling soldiers not to plunder is like telling roosters not to tread hens," Alexander said.
"Sooner or later, the philandering rooster ends up in a stew," Jackson replied. "The plundering soldier is also likely to end up stewing, especially if he pauses to plunder when he should advance."
Before long, disarmed Confederates started coming past him: only a trickle compared to the number of Yankee prisoners, but too many to suit Jackson. Some of them called out to him in appeal. He turned his back, the better to remind them they had jeopardized his victory with their greed.
Messengers also kept coming back. They were far more welcome, since almost all the news they brought was good. Here and there, by squads and companies, the Yankees kept fighting grimly. More often, though, they gave way to the alarm that could jolt through even experienced troops when flanked, and tumbled back toward the Ohio in headlong retreat.
Slyly, Porter Alexander asked, "What do we do if we go and catch Frederick Douglass again?"
"Dear God in heaven!" Jackson clapped a hand to his forehead. "I forgot to issue any orders about him. We give him back to the United States, exactly as we did before. President Longstreet, I must say, convinced me of the urgent necessity for following that course and no other."
He shouted for runners and sent orders for the good treatment of any captured elderly Negro agitator up to the front along with orders for continued advances. No news of any such prisoner's being taken got back to him. No news of any such Negro's being conveniently found dead on the field got back to him, either. But then, such news wouldn't. If Douglass had been killed by bullet or shell or hasty noose, his body either lay unnoticed where it had fallen or had been flung into a ditch to make sure it stayed unnoticed.
"Maybe he was back in U.S. territory when the attack began," Jackson said hopefully. "For our sake, I pray he was. For his sake, I pray he was, too."
"You say that about Frederick Douglass, sir?" E. Porter Alexander gave him a quizzical look.
"I do," Jackson answered. "He has, I would say, already done as much damage to our cause as he is likely to do." He did not mention President Longstreet's plan for manumitting Negroes in the CSA after the close of the war. General Alexander did not need to know about that, not yet. Jackson wished he didn't need to know about it, either.
Over the months since Longstreet had broached his intentions to him, he'd reluctantly decided the president knew what he was doing. Longstreet, as far as Jackson was concerned, made a better politician than a soldier; he was full of the deviousness politics required. If he said manumitting the Negro would redound to the advantage of the Confederate States, odds were he knew whereof he spoke.
"Sir!" A messenger shattered Jackson 's reverie. "Sir, we have men on the Ohio!"
"Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow," Jackson murmured.
"We won't keep 'em there," Alexander predicted. "The damnyankees can send too many shells down on 'em from across the river."
"You're likely right," Jackson said. "But that they are there spells the ruin of this salient, and all done in the space of a couple of hours."
"Uh, sir, look to the sky," Alexander said. "The sun'll be going down in an hour or so."
Jackson looked, and blinked in astonishment. Where had the time gone? "Very well, General: in the space of a day. I hope you are satisfied." He used words that seldom passed his lips: "I certainly am."
"Brother Sam," Vernon Perkins said severely over breakfast, "I must tell you that I am most vexed at the way your dog gobbles everything in his bowl and then steals from the portion allotted to Rover."
"You have to remember, Vern," Sam Clemens answered, "Sutro is named for a politician, so it's in his nature to steal whatever he can grab."
"And stop calling me Vern!" His brother-in-law's voice went shrill. " Vernon is a perfectly good name, and the one by which I prefer to be known."
"All right…" Sam was on the point of calling him Vern again, as if absentmindedly, but Alexandra's warning glance persuaded him that wouldn't be a good idea. He ate the rest of his insipid, lumpy oatmeal, grabbed his hat, and fled the regimented boredom of his brother-in-law's house for the genial, congenial chaos prevailing at the San Francisco Morning Call.
Wrecking crews were still tearing down buildings the British bombardment and invasion had ruined. Already, on some sites that had been cleared, new construction was going up: pine frames of a yellow bright enough to hurt the eye. On lots still empty, signs promised resurrection almost as fervently as did the Bible, THE OTTO V. JONES INSTITUTE OF PHRENOLOGY SHALL REOCCUPY THESE PREMISES, One declared.
"Too bad," Sam said, and walked on.
Half a block farther south, another sign in the middle of a vacant stretch of ground said, WHEN COHAN'S OPENS UP AGAIN, WE'LL HAVE A BETTER FREE LUNCH TABLE THAN EVER. Always a man to prefer five-cent beer and free lunch to phrenology, Clemens beamed at that. Two lots farther on again, yet another sign
offered a simple promise: WE'LL BE BACK.
Once Sam got down to the Morning Call offices on Market Street, he forgot about signs. "What's the story on Kentucky?" he called, walking in the door.
" U.S. troops still in the city of Louisville," Clay Herndon said. "General Willcox says he pulled back from the salient east of town to consolidate for another push somewhere else. New York quotes Berlin quoting London quoting Richmond quoting Stonewall Jackson saying we pulled back on account of he licked the stuffing out of us."
"That sounds about right, even if it did go through more hands than a streetwalker when the fleet sails into port," Clemens said. "And what's the latest out of Philadelphia, or don't I want to know?"
Herndon spoke in a monotonous drone: "President Blaine is reported to be studying the situation and will comment further when more is known." He went back to his normal voice: "He's probably hiding under the bed, waiting for the Rebs to walk in and cart
him off."
"Why would they want to cart him off?" Sam asked with a bitter snort. "He does them more good right where he is. I don't suppose he's said anything more about Longstreet's call for peace since yesterday?"
"Nary a word," Herndon answered.
Clemens snorted again. "Well, I don't reckon we ought to be surprised. Since the last time Longstreet said he could have peace if he wanted it, we've been licked up and down both coasts, in New Mexico, and on the Great Lakes. If that wasn't enough to give the man a clue, why the devil should he take any notice of throwing away half of what's supposed to be the best army we've got?"
"Damned if I know." Herndon paused to light a cigar, then added, "You forgot about Montana."
"Oh? Have we been licked there, too?" Sam asked. "You didn't say anything about that."
"Don't know if we have or we haven't," his friend replied. "Not enough telegraph lines up where the soldiers are for anyone to know anything. Word goes from Louisville to Richmond to London to Berlin to New York to here a hell of a lot faster than it leaks out of a place like that."
"They've kicked us around everywhere else," Sam said, "they being whoever's gone up against us. No reason to expect anything different out in the middle of nowhere, is there?"
"Can't think of any," Herndon said. "Wish I could."
"Don't we both?" Sam walked over to his desk and sat down. All unbidden, he saw in his mind the grimy face of the Royal Marine who could have killed him out in front of the newspaper offices. Even though he was sitting, his knees quivered. "We were at their mercy," he muttered, more than half to himself. "They could do anything they wanted with us-and they did."
The telegraph clicker started delivering a new message. "Let's see what's gone wrong now," Herndon said. Out came the message, a word at a time. " London by way of Berlin by way of New York City — the British and Canadians are saying they've reached the line in Maine that was the British claim line before the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, and they'll stop there and annex it to Canada."
How Few Remain (great war) Page 56
