by Bob Mayer
I have seen great men plenty of them. Let us see. Gen. Scott. M. Van Buren. Sec. of War and Navy. Washington Irving and lots of other big bugs. If I were to come home now with my uniform on. The way you would laugh at my appearance would be curious. My pants sit as tight to my skin as the bark to a tree and if I do not walk militarily. That is if I bend over quickly or run. They are apt to crack with a report as loud as a pistol. My coat must always be buttoned up tight to the chin. It is made of sheeps grey cloth all covered with big round buttons. It all makes me look very singular. If you were to see me at a distance. The first question you would ask would be: “Is that a Fish or an Animal”? You must give my very best love and respects to all my friends particularly your brothers. Uncle Ross & Sam’l Simpson. You must write me a long, long letter in reply to this and tell me every thing and every body including yourself. If you happen to see my folks just tell them that I am happy, alive, and kicking.
I am truly your cousin
And obediant servant
U. H. Grant
(West Point class of 1843)
(Vicinity Shiloh, TN 23 years later, regarding Grant’s invading Army of the Tennessee)
5 April 1862
To The Soldiers of the Army of the Mississippi:
I have put into motion to offer battle to the invaders of your country. With the resolution and discipline and valor becoming men fighting, as you are, for all worth living or dying for, you can but march to decisive victory over the agrarian mercenaries sent to subjugate and despoil you of your liberties, property and honor. Remember the dependence of your mothers, your wives, your sisters, and your children on the result; remember the fair, broad, abounding land, the happy homes and the ties that would be desolated by your defeat. The eyes and hopes of eight millions of people rest upon you; you are expected to show yourselves worthy of your lineage, worthy of the women of the South, whose noble devotion in this war has never been exceeded in any time. With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat—assured of success.
C.S.A. General Sidney Albert Johnston
(West Point class of 1826)
Chapter One
27 May 1840, West Point, New York
“To, duty, honor, and country,” William Tecumseh Sherman proposed, raising his mug of ale.
He shoved his chair back, along with his classmate who sat at the same table. The mugs were clunked together, whereupon the two turned their backs to each other and imbibed. Done, they turned to the table and reclaimed their seats inside the tavern on the west bank of the Hudson River, just outside of the Military Academy post limits.
“Tell me, Mister Sherman,” a young cadet leaning against the bar asked, “why do you say honor in the center as the linchpin between duty and country, and not loyalty?”
Before Sherman could respond, his classmate, a lean young man with a hatchet face under short, thick black hair, drawled in a low, southern voice. “Why, honor is all a man has, Mister Cord.”
Cord laughed. “Where I come from, we couldn’t afford honor, Mister King.”
The three cadets were the only customers left in the dimly lit tavern, with dawn less than an hour off. A rough wooden plank bar stretched across one side of the room. Behind it, head slumped onto the scarred surface, was the proprietor, Benny Havens. His loud snoring sawed through the room. Clanking noises came through the curtain behind him, where his daughter, Lidia, was cleaning up the remains of the party that had covered most of the night as many members of the class of 1840 had celebrated their pending graduation. Cord was not a member of ’40, but finishing his plebe year, class of ’43.
King shook his head, but didn’t immediately pursue Cord’s observation. “A toast without a fine cigar is practically wasted.” He unbuttoned his dress grey tunic and withdrew a pair of cigars. “Direct from my home in Charleston, where they came straight from Havana.” He extended one to Sherman.
The two Firsties went through the lighting ritual, to add to the lingering cloud from the night’s revelries.
King blew a puff of smoke Cord’s way. “With your grades and conduct record, Mister Cord, one could not expect any different.”
“Here, here.” Sherman slapped a hand on the scarred wooden table. “None of that. It’s not fair.” He had fiery red hair and thick sideburns that tapered toward the point of his chin, not quite meeting.
“Cord is the Immortal in every section, Cump,” King said. “Last in every one! An honorable man would not hold such a record. He should have more pride. He should have the decency to study.”
“Mister Cord studies,” Sherman said. He turned to Cord with a grin. “You do, don’t you?”
Benny Havens lifted his head off the bar and blearily gazed about, like an old hound dog sensing trouble at a distance.
Cord was of average size and tightly built. His face was pleasant, made more so by a wide mouth that was most amendable to a cheerful expression. His nose had a slight crook to it, broken long ago in some waterside tavern and set as well as a drunken ship’s doctor could manage on a drunker patient. He had pale blue eyes and pale blonde hair from his family’s Nordic ancestry.
His dress grey tunic, unlike the others, had the top three buttons unfastened, and was lacking the starched white collar the other two wore.
“No need for you to step in, Mister Sherman, and defend my lack of schooling. I could study every minute and I believe I’d still be the Immortal in every section. So why fight such a futile battle?”
“It’s your duty,” King said. “All of us share the same duty as cadets.” He turned to Sherman. “Perhaps, Mister Cord is just dull in the wits. And it’s more than academics being indicative of lack of character, there are the demerits, his inattention to duty and his shabby appearance. And his presence at a gathering of firsties when he is just a plebe.”
“Well, none of us really are allowed to be here.” Sherman held up his mug in a token of peace. “I say we take another draft, then make our way back to our rockbound highland home and get some rest before First Call.”
He and King stood once more, raised their mugs, no toast this time, turned their backs to each other, and drank. The turning of the backs had both a logical and traditional purpose. It was illegal for cadets to drink alcohol. They were also bound by the honor code to report another cadet they saw breaking regulations. So the practice had begun years ago at Benny Havens to turn backs to each other when drinking in order to be able to truthfully say, if questioned, that one had not seen the other drink. They turned to the table and thumped the mugs down, King with a bit extra force.
Sherman grabbed his cadet hat. “Time to be off.”
“Perhaps I am just sorta stupid,” Cord said as he peeked at the curtain, hoping for one last glance at Lidia before departing. “To the barracks and--”
“I believe,” King said, his low voice cutting Cord off, “that an honorable man is one who judges himself accurately.”
Cord smiled. “Why thank you, Mister King. That’s the nicest way anyone’s ever agreed when I said I was stupid. Kind of. Sort of.”
King’s eyes narrowed. He placed both fists on the tabletop, as much for balance as emphasis. “Are you saying I don’t know the judge of a man?”
“I say no such thing, Mister King,” Cord said, brightening as Lidia came out from behind the curtain.
Lidia had curly red hair, fair skin and sparkling green eyes. An enticing allure, like the dark blue water of a small harbor in the Bahamas that Cord had sailed by as a younger man. A harbor with such sublime depth and surrounded by perfect sand and palms, it wanted to draw you in, but the ship’s master had warned Cord that such apparent havens often held hidden reefs and shoals that could cause the vessel to founder and be trapped forever.
“You spoke out of turn, plebe,” King said. “As we say in South Carolina, if the dog is slapped, it barks.”
Sherman sighed. He once more grabbed his mug, trying to douse
the growing tension with more alcohol. “One last toast, George. To country at least. We can all agree on that.”
“I might not be the best judge of every trait in a man,” King continued, ignoring Sherman, “but I know honor and I can clearly see lack of honor.”
Cord’s grin disappeared. “Because you believe you’re honorable, you question it in others?”
“You question my honor?” King demanded, face flushed.
“Honor,” Cord said, “is a mirror in front of you and loyalty is a pane of glass that must be carefully nurtured and kept clean.”
King’s eyes narrowed. “What the devil does that mean?”
“It means you don’t quite see me,” Cord said. “You only see me as reflected by you.”
“So you do say I am not honorable?” King pressed.
“No. You’ve had too much to drink, sir,” Cord said, “as have I. We can continue this conversation some other time.”
“Gentlemen,” Sherman interjected, “we must be off. We’ve all had too much to imbibe.”
King slapped the table. “I demand clarification!”
“Hey now!” Benny Havens called out from the bar. “Enough of that.”
Unseen by her father, Lidia placed a hand on Cord’s forearm and shook her head.
“We are speaking of honor,” King said, dismissing Havens as uninvited to the argument.
“You can have whatever honor you want to claim for yourself, sir,” Cord said with a shrug.
“I claim that which I have earned,” King said, “which is more than can be said of you. You are no gentleman, sir.”
“Now, now!” Benny Havens came from around the bar and his daughter quickly pulled her hand back. He was a florid-faced, full-bodied rock of a man. He sported close-cropped salt and pepper hair atop a craggy face. His apron was dirty from a night of serving food and drink to cadets. He pointed at a large flagon on the end of the bar, trying to defuse the situation. “How about I rustle the three of you up a hot flip?” The concoction of rum, beaten eggs, sugar and spices, heated by a red hot poker shoved into it, was his specialty, especially for cadets trying to beat the inevitable hangover.
King folded his arms across his chest. “I will have an apology or satisfaction.”
“There isn’t going to be any duel,” Sherman said. “And the insults are the result of spirits, not bad intention.”
“You southerners,” Cord said. “You take things that aint important, awfully serious, but I apologize.”
King opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Havens’ wife, Letitia, came through the curtain. Tears stained her cheeks. She walked up to Benny and held out her hands. Stretched across her palms was a limp white cadet collar.
“Where did you find it?” Havens demanded.
Letitia responded by turning to her daughter. “On her bed.”
Benny Havens staggered back as if he’d been punched in the chest.
Sherman hurried forward to the tavern keep. “Mister Havens, I understand your anger at the trespass into your daughter’s quarters by Cadet Cord. Let me take him back to the barracks for now and we’ll deal with the matter later, when cooler heads might prevail.”
The old man was slowly shaking his head, as if to dislodge the last few moments. He ignored Sherman and looked at his daughter. “Lidia, did you lay with Mister Cord this night?”
Lidia closed her eyes for a moment, and then met her father’s gaze. “I did not lie with him tonight, father.” She swallowed. “I wished to speak with him. He took the collar off to be more comfortable in the heat.”
Letitia spoke: “What could you have to speak to him about that it needed to be in the sanctity of your room?”
Lidia looked at her mother, then her father, and finally the young cadet. “It’s a private matter, but I couldn’t bring the subject up with him. I couldn’t bring it up with anyone.” Tears began to flow as did the pent up words. “I made a mistake. Three months ago. And now—” she began sobbing and Letitia hurried to her daughter and wrapped her arms around her.
It took a moment for the implications to sink in to Benny Havens’ brain. When it landed, he howled with rage.
“Sir!” King was at Havens’ side. “Allow me the privilege of defending your daughter.” Before the old man could respond, King stepped forward and slapped Cord across the face. Hard. “You truly have no honor, defiling a young woman’s reputation. In thirty minutes, on the river field, with pistols, which I will fetch from town.” He stormed out of the tavern, brushing off Sherman’s attempt to stop him.
Havens glared at Cord. “I’m going to let Mister King shoot you like the dog you are. And if you run, I’m sending my man for the Superintendent right now. One way or the other, I’ll have you, Mister Cord!”
Cord was blinking, trying to sort the rapid series of events through his drunken haze.
“Mister Havens!” Sherman exclaimed. “Dueling is illegal and if the Superintendent comes, that’ll at the least cost Mister Cord his cadetship, if not entail a court-martial. And if they duel, both Mister King and Mister Cord will be dismissed immediately from the Corps.”
“So be it.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, as if to punctuate Havens’ resolve.
“Sir, let the Vigilance Committee take care of the matter,” Sherman suggested. “At least for Mister King’s sake. His anger and the alcohol have gotten the better of him.”
“It’s beyond the Vigilance Committee’s scope,” Havens said. “It happened here, in my house. To my daughter.”
Sherman gave a slight bow, both in actuality and to Havens’ resolve. “With all due respect, sir, then I’ll make my way back to the Academy as I’m not involved and I have a busy day ahead. Perhaps I’ll come back when things are peaceful.”
Havens vaguely nodded. “You’d best be on your way then.”
Sherman ran outside and jumped on his horse, galloping off, not in retreat, but in search of reinforcements.
**************
Fifty miles up the Hudson River from New York City, the river narrows and makes a sharp bend to the west. The craggy highland on the left bank is called West Point and was first fortified to keep the American colonies united during the Revolutionary War. The placement of a military outpost at West Point was dictated by both strategy and terrain. The strategy insisted that the fledgling colonies stay connected and the British had seen the obvious: control the Hudson River and they could sever the particularly troublesome New England colonies from the Confederation of rebelling states to the west and south.
The terrain was the dictate of geography on military tactics. At West Point, the narrow twist in the Hudson causes any sailing vessel to tack and slow to a crawl. Add a massive chain floated across the river on rafts, covered by heavy artillery lining the bluffs above, and the small American garrison at West Point kept the colonies united throughout the Revolution.
After the Revolutionary War, the founding of the Military Academy at West Point had been dictated by necessity. The country’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, detested the idea of a standing army, but accepted the reality that the country had to have such a beast. So Jefferson determined to place a leash on the animal. To keep the officer corps from becoming filled with sycophants who would support a particular party or person over the country, in 1802 he ordered the establishment of an Academy to train a professional cadre of officers that would draw its cadets from across the country and across the strata of society. As West Point was a chokepoint in the geography of the new country, the Academy located there was to be a chokepoint to the power of the military that had to sustain a democracy. Cadets would swear an oath—the very first law the First Congress enacted, an indication of its importance to the young country—to defend the Constitution, not any party or individual.
Thirty-eight years after the founding, two of these cadets, one from Ohio and the other from Mississippi, were in the Academy stable, preparing horses for a ride on a rare day exempt from duties and training.
“You can surrender now, sir, or you can fight me and suffer inevitable defeat,” the young Mississippian, clad in West Point dress gray, declared. “This is going to happen, one way or the other.”
Standing with arms folded across his broad chest, the boy-man considered his opponent. The massive horse had refused to be bridled for ten minutes and Lucius Kosciusko Rumble was beginning to take it personally. Rumble desired to be the first to ride York, but the magnificent beast wasn’t being agreeable. He’d tossed a coin with his friend, Sam Grant, for first try at York, and gotten what he’d thought was a lucky break. Grant had dawdled saddling the horse in the next stall, giving Rumble some leeway to have his chance with the Hell Beast.
This early morning, in the midst of the summer of 1840, was not the best to go for a ride. To the northwest a dark halo of clouds gathered round Storm King Mountain’s forested slopes. Flashes of lightning preceded the thunder from summer squalls scattered across the Hudson Highlands with dawn yet twenty minutes off.
Rumble was a solidly built young man, filling out the dress gray coat as if his body had been tailored for it. Broad shoulders cut in to a tapered waist. His dark hair matched his dark eyes. For all his strength and intensity, he had met his match. York was a bay stallion, at least a hand taller than any other horse in the stable, well muscled and newly arrived. It had already achieved a reputation as intractable and unridable, thus the Hell Beast. There was a gleam in the horse’s eye that indicated more resistance would be forthcoming.
Rumble cautiously took a step into the stall, bit in hand. As he reached for the horse’s mouth, thunder reverberated through the stables and York reared, lashing out with a massive hoof, narrowly missing Rumble’s head and splintering wood. Rumble beat a hasty retreat, bumping into the young Ohioan who’d finished equipping the other horse.
“You can’t force him,” Ulysses S. Grant said in a level tone. “You have to lead him.”
While Rumble filled out his uniform coat, Grant was lost in his. He was slender to the point of emaciation, his frame slightly stooped, and the dress gray tunic hung loosely from his shoulders as if they were a thin hanger. He was several inches shorter than Rumble’s six feet and dwarfed by York.
