Balthazar listened, trying to know how much of this talk was humor and nothing more. The man was dressed with studied neglect. After looking at him for a bit, one could see that he was older than he first appeared.
Several of the battalion’s officers gathered beside the command post tent to listen in the twilight.
Captain Harris stood nearby smoking his long churchwarden pipe. The gun section lines were a few yards away. Soldiers from Rafe Harris’ two 12 pounder Napoleon crews sat all over the limbers and wagons watching and listening.
Tom Randall, the “C Company” commander had been studying the front of the ruined house. “Why is it built like that,” the Tennessean asked in his soft voice.
The verandah of the two story building was flanked by two three story towers with crenellated battlements at the place where the roofs had been. The walls were black halfway up the stone towers.
“You know, I never really thought about it,” the stranger said to no one in particular.
“The Engineer Corps,” Harris finally said. He had waited for someone else to answer. He answered far too many questions, far too many.
“Ah,” Balthazar responded. “This castle shape is their badge, yes?”
“That’s right sir. This was supposed to be an engineering school. Several army posts in this country have buildings like that if there are engineers in the garrison.” Enough, he thought to himself. That’s enough. They already hold it against me that I was at West Point. Enough.
“And who are you?” Balthazar asked the stranger.
The sandy haired man looked at him with dead, old, new eyes. “I, sir, am Adam Gallagher, late of the faculty at this now abandoned and noble institution…”
“And what did you teach?”
“French composition and infantry tactics.”
“Vraiment? Mais, vous n’êtes pas Français?”
“Non, mon colonel, mais je suis un ancien élève du Collège Trinité à Dublin.”
“Ah, you are Irish.”
“Yes, by way of Vermont. I taught school in Burlington. I came down here in the ‘40s.”
“And you are an infantry officer? Something tells me that you are.”
“Mexican War in the Virginia Volunteer Regiment and after that with Jimmy Walker in Nicaragua…”
“A filibuster,” Tom Randall said.
“At your service, sir,” Gallagher replied. “I loved Nicaragua. I found a wife there. She died here a few years ago.”
Balthazar looked at the ground. His first wife died in 1860. The wound was still there. “And why are you here standing in the midst of these ruins?” Balthazar asked.
“I knew you would come,” Gallagher responded, “you or someone like you. I have waited. I want to join your battalion.”
“As what?” Balthazar asked.
“As whatever you think fit.”
“What do you want?” The Frenchman asked.
“Revenge, that is what I want,” Gallagher said. “They destroyed our lives here. I want revenge. They had no reason to burn the library and our scientific apparatus.”
“A good Irish sentiment,” Balthazar replied. “That is acceptable. I want revenge as well. I want it for my new family.” He looked at the two White brothers and Jake Devereux standing together near the horse lines. Jake nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Where are the cadets?” Rafe Harris asked. “Where are they?”
“Gone to Richmond. I waited for you…”
Balthazar looked around.
They were all looking at Gallagher.
“Would you join us for dinner?” the battalion commander asked. “We do not have much…”
Gallagher crossed the grass to offer his hand.
Two days later Balthazar offered the Irishman command of “D Company,” the doctor’s company. No one objected although Harris, the adjutant did mention that they would have to obtain the War Department’s agreement, eventually…
“Yes, write the papers. Say he is a former officer. I will speak to General Early.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
— Early Moves North —
The cavalry came back from the Allegheny Mountains the next day to report that Hunter’s men were now far away to the west climbing the mountains to get across the height of land and down into the valley of the Kanawha River. The horsemen had taken prisoners from among the stragglers. They were questioned in the presence of the local people whenever that was possible. Those who did not seem to have farmers’ blood on their hands were brought back with the column. The others were left in the ditch. The cavalry’s information spoke of Hunter’s intention to go all the way to the Ohio River where his men could be put on trains and steamers for shipment to more profitable areas of endeavor.
Balthazar was summoned the next morning to a meeting in front of Jubal Early’s tent.
“My orders foresaw this possibility,” Early said. He was standing at a crude map table made of planks laid across various pieces of furniture from the burned buildings of the school.
The weather was fine, a beautiful summer day in the Shenandoah Valley. Birds sang in the trees around the parade ground.
Early was not interested in how his men dressed. Officers stood around the table smoking in their shirt sleeves. Only the grey trousers marked them as further up the ladder of army life than the butternut clad soldiers who waited at respectful distances in the hope of hearing something, anything…
“We are going to Washington City,” the bearded, middle aged man said. “General Lee has sent me a message that if Hunter won’t fight us here, then we are to go north to pull part of Grant’s forces away from the Richmond area. He reckons that the Yankee politicians will howl in fear like they did in ’62 when Jackson scared’em so bad.”
Early’s Shenandoah Offensive
“What about Lincoln?” The question was asked by a tall, thin, black haired man with a curly beard. His name was Gabriel Wharton. He was a brand new brigade commander. He was a graduate of the burned school. Gallagher had been one of his teachers. He was a mining engineer in Arizona before the war, but came back to fight the invaders.
Next to him stood another of those who had studied under Gallagher in the burned buildings. This was John McCausland, the commander of Early’s cavalry in this expedition. McCausland seemed angry that morning, but then, he always seemed angry. His dark, deep set eyes never smiled. “What about him, general?” McCausland asked. “Will he be frightened as well?”
“Is that what you want?”
“No, I want him to be right there in Washington City where we can find him after we arrive.”
A murmur of approval circled the meeting. Around the table stood a dozen men who were alumni of the destroyed school. In addition to Wharton and McCausland, Major General Robert Rodes, and Colonel George Patton were among those listening for Early’s response.
“I expect he will be there…” Early said, shaking his head at the thought of that possible meeting at the White House.
Early marched north on the Valley Pike at dawn the next day.
The twenty thousand men knew that they were their country’s last, somewhat forlorn, hope for independence. They would march to the Potomac, and then cross the river in a looping curve first to the northwest and then southeast to Washington itself. The faster they moved, the more likely it was that the reaction among the Northern political class would be dramatic. If they could take the enemy capital there might be a chance that a “reasonable man” might replace Lincoln in November. Perhaps there was still a chance, perhaps.
In the misty half-light of the false dawn the troops formed in their thousands on the road that ran north through Lexington. At the head of the column were McCausland’s cavalry. They were followed by Gordon’s remnant of the once mighty Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Half of the men of the corps had been killed or captured at Spotsylvania. In spite of this disaster, nine thousand of the Shenandoah Valley’s own soldiers were in Gordon’s ranks.
Finally, the trains, the seemingly endless procession of wagons, horses and mules carrying the impedimenta of the Army of the Valley extended the column until it disappeared from view in the distance.
Early wanted Balthazar’s four hundred men and two 12 pounder Napoleons near the front of the column with him and his staff and for that reason Rafe Harris fell the men in near the general while Robert Rodes was arranging the ”high privates” of his division close by.
The iron tires of guns, limbers and wagons rang on the bricks. Balthazar’s animals were in better conditions than the rest. Sergeant Major Roarke, the New Orleans Irishman who watched over the battalion was a strict overseer for the farrier sergeants. Balthazar had carried him out of the combat at Rappahannock Station the previous year with a bad wound from a Yankee bayonet in his side. The Frenchman and the “first soldier” of the battalion were inseparable.
At last the long brown column moved in a rippling snake of men and beasts. They were happy to leave the ghostly wreckage of the town behind them.
A handful of townspeople came out to see them off.
In Balthazar’s column, Smoot’s ambulance rolled along with Bill White as driver and Jim Fowle seated next to him to watch over the wounded man.
Smoot hovered between recuperation and death. His fever varied from day to day. He improved during the few days in Lexington but the long march north might yet kill him.
Surgeon Smith would do his best to keep Smoot alive, but the end was uncertain.
Smoot raved in his fever.
Joe White often sat beside him with Balthazar. Smoot’s delirious talk of Hope Devereux was something they came to accept even as they dreaded what the end might be.
They crossed the Potomac River on the 5th of July. To do that they marched thirty miles a day in the June heat. Except for scattered patrols, the Yankee army had disappeared from the Shenandoah Valley. There were a few patrols left behind but McCausland’s horsemen chased the Union cavalry north. In the absence of opposition, Early’s force moved as fast as their legs and those of their beasts would carry them.
The townspeople in the little towns came to the road to greet them. Their stories of the harshness of Hunter’s blue soldiers angered the men in the ranks. In Staunton, Harrisonburg, Tom’s Brook, Strasburg, and Winchester, Early listened to community leaders and elders. They begged him not to withdraw from the northern Shenandoah again. They feared that if the Union Army came into the Valley again, it would take vengeance on the citizens for their obvious loyalty to the South.
When he reached Winchester, Early turned northeast and drove straight at Harper’s Ferry in the new state of West Virginia. He had the idea that by occupying the town he could confuse the enemy.
Franz Sigel, the German revolutionary immigrant who had been defeated at New Market in May, commanded in the town of Harper’s Ferry. Sigel knew Early was coming. Unwilling to face him and Stonewall Jackson’s old corps, he fled across the Potomac leaving the town to the Confederates. From the top of Maryland Heights across the stream, Sigel watched Early’s infantry empty shops, taking with them the town’s food supply. To his surprise, they disappeared within an hour, going back down the roads that they came in on.
After a time, Sigel’s men crossed the river and found a few drunken stragglers from whom they learned next to nothing because these men knew nothing of where Jubal had gone.
What they did not know was that Early was circling around to the northwest, back to the Potomac River near the old Sharpsburg battlefield along Antietam Creek. When he reached that place, he let the army rest for a day while those of his “boys” who wished might forage in the Maryland villages near the river crossings.
Jubal himself, restless at the necessary delay, conducted a “staff ride” tutorial for his senior officers on the Sharpsburg battlefield.
Balthazar found that fascinating. For all his admiration of his American comrades, he did not find them to be colleagues. Those officers who had not served before the war had little in the way of military education. The West Point and VMI graduates among them had little more. These were engineering schools with instruction conducted in a military environment. They created soldierly temperament, but did not teach the art of command. The French soldier was pleased and a little taken aback that Early would take the time in the midst of an active and desperate expedition to school his officers. Together they rode up and down the old line of battle while those who had been present in September, 1862 explained what had happened and questioned the decisions made at that time.
At the sunken farm road where he had been badly wounded, Major General John Gordon described the action. “We stood down in there,” he said while looking down into the ditch, a strangely immobile expression on his handsome face. Perhaps he thought of his many wounds. He had stood in this ditch watching the blue infantry come on until he collapsed face down in the mud, his face in the crown of his broad brimmed hat. Only a bullet hole in the crown had kept him from drowning in his own blood. “General Benning’s brigade was to our right,” he said. “The ground rises about thirty yards out there…” He waved offhandedly at the ground in front of the old Confederate line. “Beyond that there is a deep dip, and yet farther out, the ground rises even higher with another hollow beyond. We shot them up severely as they came over the farther rise. Then they disappeared into the dip. Their artillery came up on that far ridge and engaged our guns. Our guns were behind us here on the high ground between us and the village.”
He turned to point back towards Sharpsburg. Church steeples could be seen over the convex rise of ground. The distance was about half a mile.
“The shells and solid shot went over us and took our artillery out of action. Then the infantry came over the near rise. All I could see were screaming red faces and the green flags.” He paused for a moment, and then went on. “It was those damned Irishmen from New York or Boston or… somewhere. We stopped them, somehow. I was unconscious at the end.” He clearly did not want to say more.
Balthazar coughed discreetly.
Early’s young chief of staff, Major Sandy Pendleton whispered something to the “boss.”
“Yes, John?” Early asked.
Balthazar smiled at the way Pendleton could do that. In many armies, there would have been too much fear of the general for that to occur, but in these men’s minds, Early was still the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Franklin County and Pendleton was still the son of a prominent Episcopal clergyman.
Balthazar looked at Gordon, a man for whom he had the highest regard. “This is a reverse slope defense, General Gordon,” he said. “Who taught you to do this? Many senior officers would not have attempted such a thing with minimally trained troops. To stand steadily looking up at the crest of high ground waiting for the enemy to appear over the top requires very steady men…”
The crowd of officers stirred noticeably. Balthazar saw that this had not been a wise thing to say. “I meant at that time… Two years ago,” he continued.
They looked more comfortable.
Early seemed amused at his gaffe.
Gordon looked thoughtful, as he always did. “Several people have told me since then that that is the proper term… I don’t know. It just seemed the right thing to do…”
The weather was glorious. High clouds drifted across the sky. There were birds in the trees. The farmers had been cutting an early hay crop because of the wet spring. The new mown grass smelled delicious. In the background, a half mile away, the Second Corps was on the road going northwest up the Hagerstown Pike.
Gordon began to look. His command was marching away from him.
John C. Breckinridge was with the marching army, but, who knew what he was, really… How much of
a soldier was he? Was he up to the standards that they had come to believe were theirs?
Breckinridge
Balthazar spoke again. “Do I understand from what has been said that the bridge to the south beyond Sharpsburg was not there the day of the battle? There was no bridge across the Potomac in the army’s rear?”
“There was not,” Rodes answered from nearby.
“This was not wise,” Balthazar said, apparently to himself. “You had less than half the enemy’s numbers? What would you have done if forced to withdraw?”
Early cackled, coughed and spat tobacco juice on the grass. “The only roads out of here were through the enemy’s lines in front of us or north or south on this side of the Potomac,” he said. “We understood that General Lee would not withdraw, and that we would hold these ridges or die here on this side of the Potomac.” He laughed. “Are you sorry you joined us, John?”
Balthazar’s back straightened, “But, no, my general, it is my privilege to serve with such divine madmen.” He bowed slightly to the gathering.
CHAPTER NINE
— Frederick —
On that day Grant decided that he must yield to the logic of Lee’s “forcing move” north of Washington and send troops from the Richmond area. The howls of fear radiating from Congress and the Washington press made it impossible to avoid this action.
At first he thought to send one division from the Sixth Army Corps. That would have been three thousand men. On the day he made that decision a telegram arrived from Major General Lew Wallace, the federal commander in the part of Maryland that Early was entering.
“He may soon come to Baltimore or incredibly to Washington,” Wallace wrote. “I have 2,500 not very reliable troops, militia, veterans, etc. If I am to hold Early at bay, I will need reinforcement. I think he has 30,000 men. His cavalry is incredibly aggressive. Wallace.”
Wallace was wrong in his estimation of Early’s numbers. At that moment Jube had less than 15, 000 effectives, but on the basis of Wallace’s telegram, Grant decided to send all of Sixth U.S. Army Corps. Major General Horatio Wright began to load his men onto steamers at City Point near Petersburg, Virginia for the long trip. Wright had taken command in June when John Sedgwick was killed by a sharpshooter at Spotsylvania. “Uncle John” Sedgwick had been well liked by the men of the corps. Wright had yet to earn that reward as their leader. This weighed on his mind as he watched the men go aboard the ships.
Down the Sky: Volume Three of the “Strike The Tent” Trilogy Page 6
