Down the Sky: Volume Three of the “Strike The Tent” Trilogy

by W. Patrick Lang

  In Frederick, Maryland Early sent for the city fathers. They were slow in coming. There were a lot of bankers among them as well as prosperous farmers who maintained a residence in the city. It was yet another warm July day. Early looked at his visitors and wiped the sweat from his face with a red bandanna. He told the black coated, bearded citizens that he wanted money from the city. They stared at him, shocked and surprised at the sum he demanded.

  Twenty five year old Major General Stephen Ramseur stood next to Early. He laughed with delight at the expression on the faces. This balding, bearded, rather homely young man had been married a few months before. He was not happy to be in this very Yankee Maryland town instead of at home with his bride in North Carolina. He had a letter in his pocket from her. It had caught up with him when his division was at Lexington. It announced that he would be a father.

  “Two hundred thousand U.S. dollars? You want that much? What for?” one of the “elders” asked. He was the mayor.

  “Your army burned the Virginia Military Institute and most of the town of Lexington last month,” Early said after stuffing the bandanna into a pants pocket. “They also robbed the citizenry there of their personal possessions and you are going to pay. You first, and then others later…”

  Laughter spread among the bankers and businessmen.

  “What’s that to us,” the mayor asked? “Are we the army? Am I Lincoln?”

  Bill White was in the circle of rebel men. Joe stood beside him. Bill thought of his cousin, Patrick Devereux, a graduate of VMI. He thought of how much the man had loved the school. He thought of the man’s death on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. He thought of the widow and her grief. His Devereux blood stirred. He began to feel how good it would be to hit one of these haughty burghers.

  Several men turned to walk away through the circle of men in gray and brown who stood watching the scene.

  “Don’t be fools,” Ramseur said to the backs. “Look at the faces around you. Look at them. They are eager for you to refuse General Early’s ‘request.’ They are hoping you will do that. Look at McCausland over there. He’s the big one with the black mustache. He can hardly wait…”

  “Come back,” the mayor told the backs.

  The delegation spoke in whispers while looking over each other’s shoulders at the stony expressions.

  “How do you want the money?” the mayor finally asked.

  “Gold.”

  “It will empty the banks, our businesses and peoples’ homes.”

  John McCausland

  “That is your problem,” Early said.

  “Make no mistake,” Ramseur said. “General Early is not ‘Uncle Robert.’ He will smile benevolently as they destroy your city.”

  They found the money and Early left their town intact.

  “What do you think?” Ramseur asked Colonel McCausland that night.

  “There will be another day,” was the reply.

  CHAPTER TEN

  — The Road Home —

  At dawn on the morning of the 9th of July, Early’s fourteen thousand men moved southeast down the Georgetown Pike towards Washington as well as east toward Baltimore.

  McCausland’s cavalry had been busy in the night in scouting the Union forces.

  As a result, Early had a clear “picture” of where Lew Wallace was and in what strength.

  By this time, Wallace had received reinforcements from Grant and had five thousand men deployed across the National Pike south of Frederick and on the National Road toward Baltimore in the east. Wallace was not altogether sure that Washington was Early’s true objective and divided his men so that he could “cover” both roads. Baltimore was one of the principal cities of the United States and a threatening possible goal for Early’s campaign. Beyond the city was the prisoner of war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. There were many thousands of Southern soldiers there. If Early reached and liberated them, this would be a powerful reinforcement for the desperate Confederate Army.

  Robert Rodes’ Division was sent east on the Baltimore Road. It was expected that with his usual skill Rodes would made short work of the defenders there. He would then wheel to the south to help drive Wallace towards Washington and away from the Baltimore road.

  Early was delighted with this prospect. In his heart he knew that he had no real hope of doing more than frighten and harass the US Government and the local authorities in Maryland with the possibility that he might capture Baltimore, but he was a good hater and the chance to humiliate these Yankees and destroy their property appealed to him.

  With his main force he would march to the defenses of Washington, and then see what opportunity presented. He thought that there was a small chance that he could capture Washington, but only that. The defenses should be too strong for him to breach, but, he would go there to find out… In preparation for an eventual withdrawal into northern Virginia, he directed John Balthazar to take his little battalion and its two guns southwest to White’s Ford on the Potomac and there, “hold the door open” for a crossing back into Virginia near Leesburg.

  Jimmy Fowle expected to follow Early down the Georgetown Pike to the Washington area and then find some byway by which to cross into Washington itself behind Union lines, but the more he thought about that plan, the poorer he thought it. The federal forces’ attention would be concentrated on the area through which he needed to pass. The ambulance wagon had been captured from the Union Army and had no Confederate markings but it was, nevertheless, a military vehicle. The forged identity papers supported the fiction of a party of businessmen traveling from Ohio on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad while nursing a friend injured in a street car accident in Cincinnati. If they were apprehended on a road south of the river, these papers would be dangerous.

  The possibility of following Balthazar’s column to the river was discarded by him for much the same reason.

  Bill White remembered that Patrick Devereux’s body had been brought back from Gettysburg by wagon the year before. He recalled that Claude and Fred Kennedy had driven to Baltimore from Pennsylvania. The trip lasted three days in the heat of July, three days driving with a dead man in the back of the wagon. They kept his body covered a foot deep in chipped ice.

  It was fifty miles to Baltimore from Frederick. If they reached Baltimore it would be another fifty miles to Alexandria, but that would be by train. They could find a doctor in Baltimore. The Confederates had friends in Baltimore.

  Jimmy Fowle knew some of them. He decided. It would be Baltimore.

  Surgeon Smith worried about Smoot. The wounded man seemed to grow a little stronger during the two day halt in Frederick, but Smith was concerned about the fifty miles to the railroad in Baltimore. Fortunately the National Road to Baltimore was well surfaced.

  Balthazar left before dawn to take up his position near the Potomac River. Jake Devereux, Joseph White and the battalion marched away. Balthazar stood by the ambulance with Doctor Smith and Smoot’s guardians and watched them go.

  “Please remember me to Victoria,” Balthazar asked them. “My thoughts are with her. I would ask you to return Patrick’s mare to her.” He gave the reins to Bill. The beautiful animal turned its head to look at him.

  “Of course,” Bill replied. “Please take care of my brother.”

  Balthazar bowed, mounted his ugly new horse and rode to join his command.

  The march was not as difficult as they expected. Jim Fowle and Bill White drove the wagon behind General Rodes’ line of advance on the road to Baltimore. There was a lot of firing in front of them as Rodes pushed the Federals away to the east and then relative quiet as Rodes’ line moved away toward the Georgetown Pike in the south.

  Robert E. Rodes

  Bill flicked his reins over the team and drove straight ahead.

  An officer in grey waited on the road to make sure they got cleanly away. He nodded as they passed. “God speed,” he said and then rode toward the sound of the guns.

  Now, they were completely on their own.
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  Fifteen miles east of Frederick they met a line of Maryland militia troops. A captain of the “Westminster Guards,” asked who they might be. He looked like a small town lawyer rather than a soldier and that is what he was in civil life.

  Fowle explained that the rebel obstruction of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad near Frederick had caused the party to buy a wagon to try to transport their wounded friend to Baltimore.

  The militia officer looked at the words “US Army” painted on the canvas but said nothing while he meditated on the situation.

  A “work train” of the B&O Railroad waited a few hundred feet down the track for a chance to pass through to repair damage done by the Rebels at Frederick or beyond.

  The militia officer asked a lot of questions until Fowle took his arm and walked down the right of way with him to chat about “business.” The captain listened carefully to talk of fictional interests in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. They exchanged calling cards. Jimmy’s card was entirely false. It described a man named Dunlap who owned a company in Chicago that he said would need legal representation in order to expand into the Baltimore marketplace.

  The militiaman then ordered the train to take Jimmy’s group to Baltimore in order to find medical help for “Dunlap’s” injured partner. The track repairs could wait while the engine and cars made the seventy mile round trip.

  Perhaps the damned rebels will leave Frederick while the repair crew is gone the militia officer thought.

  The troops helped load the team and wagon on a flatcar. Victoria’s pretty mare caused raised eyebrows until “Dunlap” explained that she was a gift for the mayor of Baltimore. She was such a lovely beast, that this was plausible.

  It was clear that Smoot could not be moved. He would ride in the wagon while still in his sick bed. He seemed stronger and actually laughed with Bill as he watched Fowle make a fool of the hopeful lawyer-soldier.

  The engine and three cars backed away down the track. The captain stood waving and smiling by the track. Fowle and White waved from the flat car.

  Jimmy climbed over the open cars to reach the conductor in the caboose. He thanked the man profusely and put money in his hand as they exchanged greetings.

  After looking at the hundred dollars in gold, the conductor said he would leave two of the cars at a siding a few miles away and put the engine in front. He looked down at the money again. “We could back down the track as far as Baltimore, sir,” he said, “but I want to put the engine in front.”

  Fowle looked appreciative of this wisdom. “And where is the first station with telegraph?” he asked, speaking loudly to be heard above the noise of the train. “I need to send a message to the governor in Annapolis…”

  The conductor thought that over. “Right there at the siding, sir. There is a station right there. I saw you give the captain a card, sir. Might I have your card as well?”

  “Dunlap’s” card changed hands once again.

  “Chicago, eh?” the conductor mumbled.

  Fowle leaned close to hear. He did not like that. The man’s breath was bad from the appalling teeth that were visible in his mouth.

  The caboose swayed and rocked. There was hot coffee on the stove.

  “Yes, Chicago, are you from there?” Fowle felt secure in the intimate knowledge of the city that his courier trips had provided.

  “No, my sister, she lives there. I visited.”

  “May we have some coffee?” Jimmy asked.

  “Oh, for sure, I’ll find some mugs, and we’ll take a trip on the B&O.” He plainly thought that a great joke.

  Fowle got off the train at Parr’s Ridge, near Mt. Airy. The train was still rolling into the double ended siding as he stepped onto the wooden porch. He opened the glass topped door and entered the station. It had one room as a public space. There was a bench for waiting passengers, and a window for ticket sales. An office was visible through an open door behind the ticket “cage.”

  The telegrapher was also station master. He was surprised to have a visitor and asked why the train had come back so soon. “Are the rebels coming?” he asked, his face red at the thought. At the office window he peered down the track to the west, expecting to see Jubal Early approaching. He wiped the dirty window with an almost equally dirty handkerchief to see through it better.

  “No, they left Frederick yesterday. On their way back to Virginia I guess… My partner and I are from Illinois. He was hurt bad in a railroad accident in Ohio. He lost a hand, run over by a B&O train. We are on our way to a meeting in Baltimore about railroad legal responsibility in this. The Rebels broke the track around Frederick and we had to buy this wagon to get through. I need to send a telegram to my lawyer in Baltimore… Can you do that for me as a personal favor?”

  The station master calculated the risk in doing something not in the railroad’s interest and decided to refuse. Then he saw the glint of gold in Fowle’s hand.

  The telegram was addressed to a man who did not exist at an address which had no residents. It was a grocery store. Fowle had arranged this address with the shopkeeper six months before. The money he left with the shopkeeper ensured that the delivery boy who worked there delivered any telegrams or letters in sealed envelopes as US mail to a Baltimore post office box held in a false name.

  The box holder checked for mail every day. He was the Confederate secret service representative in Baltimore. He kept busy checking various mail addresses. This was a burden. He was a corporate officer of a major bank, but his wife helped with the furtive task. On this day, the lady opened the box with his key, read the telegram and hurried to his office.

  Fowle sat in the caboose with the conductor. The man produced a bottle of cheap rye whiskey. They took turns drinking from the bottle. Fowle despised the man, and thought him an ignorant fool. He did not despise him as much as Claude Devereux would have but he despised him enough to feel ashamed of his own pride.

  The wooded Maryland country passed in green solemnity.

  In the flatcar Bill fed the horses from the fodder strapped to the tailgate of the wagon and then climbed inside to sit with Smoot. “How are you now?’

  “Better, I think. When will we be home?”

  “Duke Street?” Bill asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose that is likely,” Bill replied while looking out over the tailgate of the wagon. “That is probably not going to happen, but she, they, will take good care of you… You will most likely go back to the old house on Fairfax Street where we live. What about your wife and children in Fauquier?”

  “I thought you were my friend.” Smoot said holding up his stump. “I don’t know what I am going to do about her.”

  They both knew that he meant his unfortunate wife. “The children are mine, of course.”

  White took the wrapping off the arm. It was crusty but it had stopped draining and did not look inflamed.

  “I think you are going to live,” Bill said after sniffing the amputation. “It’s not gangrenous. Who’s going to be in charge, you or Jimmy?”

  “He is.”

  “Why? You are a major. He is a civilian, or maybe a sergeant. Who knows with such people?”

  “I have been too busy with my pain to think of that…”

  “Busy with your pain and thinking of her.”

  “Isn’t General Devereux in charge?”

  “I think you mean Major Devereux.”

  “Ah, yes, I had forgotten his true rank… We are equals.”

  “Yes, but here he is a general.”

  Smoot looked at the stump. “Are you going to wrap this up again?”

  “I don’t know, maybe not. What do you think?”

  “Don’t. Let’s see what happens.”

  When the train backed into a station barn in the city of Baltimore, Jimmy Fowle’s friends were waiting. The ambulance was unloaded and a doctor climbed into the bed to examine Smoot. He was an old man, long retired but a friend of the South.

  When he finished, the
physician sat quietly for a moment. “You came how far like this?” he asked the mutilated man. “And when was it taken off?”

  “It came off at Spotsylvania, amputated on the field. They dragged me up here from Lynchburg, Virginia in this damned wagon. I could hardly get out some days to relieve myself.”

  The doctor was annoyed. “Don’t they know about chamber pots? “

  “They do, but it’s not to my taste.”

  “You could easily have died any time on the way, my friend. You know that do you not?”

  “Yes. Should we bandage this?”

  The bald man shook his head and wiped his glasses with a white handkerchief in a gesture of momentary indecision. He finally decided. “At this point I think a sling is enough. I’ll make one that is deep enough so that the public won’t be staring at you…”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  Fowle and another man, younger and in rough clothes, looked in over the tailgate. “The train will be along in an hour,” Fowle said. “We have a compartment and Bill will ride with the horses in a freight car. I wanted to dispose of the team here but Bill insists that we do not. He says that they have served us well and he will not abandon them. I think he would kick my ass if I tried to do so.” He laughed at that. “What we will do with them in Alexandria, I do not know.”

  “Fred Kennedy,” White said invisibly from the driver’s seat in front.

  “He is in the livery business,” Smoot murmured. His arm was starting to itch. He wanted to scratch but knew the doctor, who was watching him, would disapprove.