Never Call Retreat - Civil War 03

by Newt Gingrich; William R Forstchen

  Upon awaking, his first temptation was to reverse his decision and keep the army in place for the day, to see if Grant just might counterattack.

  But the realization that his rear was now threatened had settled the question. Jeb had come to him shortly after one in the morning with a report that Yankee cavalry was astride the Baltimore and Ohio, nearly cutting Armistead off. Behind the cavalry it was believed additional Yankee infantry was moving, possibly only the militia that had fooled them a week ago into thinking Grant was coming due south, but fresh troops, nevertheless.

  Lee could sense that a vise was beginning to close. If I wait, Grant will indeed wait in response until I'm hit from the rear.

  His hand forced by events, he and his men, the veterans of Hood's and Beauregard's Corps, had set out before dawn. Hood had indeed lost his arm and was out of the fight. Beauregard was now complaining that he was sick and could not move.

  Ahead, skirmishing began to flare, Jenkins's cavalry, probing down the road to Hauling Ferry.

  The men marching on the road, as he gazed over at them, filled his his heart with anguish. They were what was left of Beauregard's two divisions in the attack. Their ranks were painfully thin, around more than one regimental flag barely fifty men now marched. They were numbed, shocked, shuffling through the mud, heads bent low. He thought of but two weeks before, the march north from Washington, toward Gunpowder River. Though the heat was terrible they were at a floodtide of youth, of enthusiasm, of belief in victory, heads held high as they marched forward.

  And now this.

  One more fight, that is all I need out of them this day. One more fight. Surely they will rally to that if I lead them. Secure the crossing, Longstreet comes down tonight slipping out of the trap, and we are across the river. From there all things again become possible. Though Grant was not driven from the field, Lee still believed he had beaten him. If I have lost my offensive power, so has he. He came on arrogantly, but if allowed to stay in command, he will never do so again.

  The Yankees will have to reorganize, recruit, and how can they recruit after three such stunning blows delivered against them in less than two months? Surely Lincoln will collapse now or at worst they will stop on the banks of the Potomac and wait till spring. Time enough for the wounded to heal, the ranks to be replenished, perhaps France still to come in and break the blockade.

  We can still win this, he whispered to himself, even as he rode toward the distant rattle of gunfire coming from the Potomac crossing.

  The Road to Hauling Ferry, near Buckeystown Ford 10:00 A.M.

  When the column stopped again, Cruickshank rode wearily forward. The road was getting muddy and one of the huge wagons had skidded off to one side, a wheel sinking into a culvert. The dozen mules hooked to the wagon were clawing at the ground and braying as the driver, swearing furiously, lashed at them.

  "Stop it," Cruickshank said, his voice barely above a whisper, having long since shouted himself hoarse.

  "Goddamn stupid bastards," the driver shouted. "Hate goddamn mules."

  "Lashing them won't change it," Cruickshank replied. He felt little pity for the beasts; years out west before the war had burned mat sentiment out of him, but still, the poor animals in the traces now were straining, the wagon not moving. Behind them twenty more wagons with their load of pontoon bridging were backed up for almost a half mile.

  It had taken nearly an entire day to round up the animals needed to haul the wagons, half the teams having been commandeered from an artillery battalion on direct orders from Longstreet. The gunners had been less than happy with thus being rendered immobile and had tried to pawn off the worst of their nags. It had taken several hours of screaming and threats to get the necessary teams, lead them back to the track, off-load the wagons, and hook them up.

  A column of infantry, men bent double, hats pulled low against the rain, staggered by on either side of the road. In another time a mere request would have sent an entire regiment to his aid. He spotted an officer and rode up to him. The man at first actually averted his gaze at Cruickshank's approach. "Colonel, I need your help," Cruickshank said. "Sir?" .

  "Your help," and pointed back to the wagon, tilting over, pontoon boat atop it leaning precariously.

  "My boys are just beat," the colonel said. "Besides, we've got orders to move as fast as possible to the ferry."

  "If we don't get these boats down to that ferry to make the damn bridge, you ain't going nowhere," Cruickshank replied.

  The colonel sighed, turned, and called for a sergeant.

  "Robinson."

  The sergeant major came up without comment. The colonel pointed to the wagon and Robinson sighed. "Yes, sir."

  It took several minutes for him to gather up thirty men. Some of them, once stopped, simply went to the side of the road and collapsed into a nearly instant, exhausted sleep. Cruickshank directed them around the wagon, and a couple of ropes were run out for the men to grab hold of.

  Meanwhile, behind them the convoy of wagons was stalled; order of march was breaking up as troops stopped, men just going to the side of the road to lie down.

  Finally, with a lot of whip cracking, cursing of men, and tragically one man having his foot broken when a wheel ran over him, the wagon was back on the road.

  The infantry walked away without comment, the sergeant major shaking men awake, shaking hands with the injured soldier left behind, and the column starting back up again, rain coming down, mist rising from the creek, mules braying, an elderly captain sitting by the side of the road crying, head bowed, no one stopping to ask why.

  "General Cruickshank, sir!"

  He turned and looked back.

  God damn! Another wagon had just stalled in the same place as the first one. He wearily turned and rode back.

  Monocacy Creek 10:45 A.M.

  The sharpshooting back and forth was constant, but Sergeant Hazner could sense it was a halfhearted effort by the other side, as much as it was halfhearted by his. Here and there a few men, the type that took a perverse delight in such things, banged away as ordered. But most of his surviving men were sitting in the bottom of the mud-filled trench, soaking wet, miserable, exhausted.

  "Think I got one," a sharpshooter announced. The men to either side of him said nothing, a few looking at him with disgust.

  "Ain't you had enough killing?" Hazner asked. The sharpshooter looked over at him and grinned while reloading.

  The man stood up and a second later pitched over backwards, slumping down into the trench, dead, shot clean through the forehead. No one spoke for a moment. They just stared at his body.

  "Someone wave a white handkerchief," Hazner said.

  One of the men pulled out a dirty piece of cloth, held it up over the lip of the trench, and waved it back and forth for a minute.

  "OK, push the dumb son of a bitch out," Hazner said.

  Several men grabbed the body, hoisted it up, and rolled it over the rear of the trench. As they did so, Hazner risked a quick look.

  The landscape below him and on the other side of the creek was blasted, like a painting of hell. The ruined bridges, the raw slashes of earth from trenches, and bodies everywhere, one of them hanging inverted from a tree that had been split in half by a shell.

  The area around the Hornets Nest was a nightmare of bodies lying in the rain, heaped up around the sides of the railroad cuts. A party carrying a white flag, and followed by several ambulances, was at work, pulling wounded out of the tangle.

  A minie ball zipped high overhead, and he sensed it was nothing more than a warning shot, that the Yankees on the other side of the creek had allowed the little truce for them to get rid of the dead sharpshooter but now it was back to business. He waved and slid down to the bottom of the trench, and squatting in the mud he fell asleep.

  Three Miles East of Monocacy Creek on the Baltimore and Ohio Line Noon

  ‘I want the ammunition off of these trains now!" Pete Longstreet shouted. He thought they had been off-loaded durin
g the night. Three million rounds of rifle ammunition and ten thousand rounds of artillery, enough to sustain the army through another pitched battle if need be.

  Organization was breaking down, that was becoming obvious. Some of the boxes of rifle ammunition were stacked up beside the track, out in the rain. Eventually the water would soak through the wood siding and ruin it. A few wagons and ambulances had been pressed into the service, men loading up, but there was no real effort here, no efficiency. Some batteries had sent their limber wagons back, others, especially the new batteries made up primarily of infantry volunteers, had yet to show up. They were short of horses as it was. They had organized for this battle to fight mainly in place, and now they just didn't have the transport to get their supplies up to the righting men.

  Lee should have stayed here, he thought. In one day the general of the army had gone from near victory to field commander of a battered, makeshift corps in retreat. He should have stayed here to organize and he sent me instead.

  A courier came up the line from the east, riding fast, and

  Longstreet saw the man, who had just about ridden past without stopping. He stepped out into the middle of the track and waved him down.

  The courier reined in.

  "General Longstreet?"

  "Yes, that's me."

  "Sir, a report from General Armistead, sir." "Go on."

  "Sir, he reports he must abandon his movement along the railroad track. At least a brigade of Yankee cavalry has flanked him; in fact, sir, they almost got me right after I started out. They are linking up with General Sykes, whose men are advancing along the National Road. General Armistead reports, sir, that he will continue his withdrawal marching to the southwest toward Urbana and attempt to link back up with the army that way."

  "Where is he now?"

  "Sir, about ten miles back from here, at Marysville." "Do the Yankees have trains?"

  "Yes, sir, damnedest things. Big heavy guns mounted in front of the locomotives. We were breaking up the tracks and slowing them down good yesterday, but when their cavalry started coming in, that pushed us off the tracks."

  They could be here in a couple of hours, Pete realized and looked over at the ammunition trains.

  "Did you see any of Stuart's men?"

  "A few patrols, sir, along the track. I warned them as I rode past."

  "Fine. Get back to Armistead, tell him to push hard to link up with us."

  He didn't say anything else about the army evacuating. The courier turned about and rode off, angling southeast, away from the rail line.

  I have to get this ammunition off the train and up to the line, Pete realized. Behind him, back toward the front line, he had passed dozens of locomotives, hundreds of cars, all frozen in place, the boilers having gone out The three ammunition trains were the last to get out, all the stalled trains now a barrier that wagons had to squeeze around to get through for a load.

  There was the equivalent of a hundred and fifty wagonloads of ammunition on these trains, and so far he had moved less than fifty of them. That and a hundred double-caisson loads for the artillery.

  At the rate it was going, he sensed they'd never get it all off in time.

  He turned to his staff.

  "One of you get back to headquarters. Tell Walter Taylor I need more wagons sent back here now, anything, ambulances^ anything. Another of you track down Alexander. Tell him we have enough ammunition to resupply one hundred guns..."

  He hesitated.

  "And tell him to prepare to abandon any of his pieces that cannot get together full teams by nightfall."

  The two couriers galloped oft, and Pete stood alone in the rain, looking east, wondering if at any minute he might see an armored train coming down the track.

  A major was supervising the off-loading, and he called him over.

  "Major, post some sentries down the track a few miles. The Yankees are coming in on us from that way. The moment you see them, blow the rest of this up."

  "Sir?"

  "You heard me, blow these trains up. Then as you pull back, set fire to every train on these tracks."

  "Hard to do sir, nearly all the locomotives are cold, their fires out."

  "Be ingenious, son," Pete said, trying to smile. "I'm giving you the chance to put the damned B and O out of business for a long time; you can claim to be the biggest train wrecker in history."

  The major smiled back.

  "We'll find a way, sir."

  Pete mounted and rode off, weaving his way around the long strings of boxcars, flatcars, hoppers, and locomotives.

  He passed the spot where Lee had almost been killed, wreckage still strewn across the track, and to the empty flat-cars where Cruickshank had finally managed to get the damn pontoon bridges unloaded and moving.

  Ahead there was a distant thumping, occasional muffled rattling of rifle fire, just when he had assumed there was nothing serious going on. Grant was just waiting them out now.

  Headquarters, Army of the Susquehanna 12:15 P.M.

  The reassuring click of the telegraph sounded behind him, the replacement crew sending out the first test signal a half hour ago, and now forwarding a full report of the battle and a coded signal by Grant, indicating his belief that Lee was moving his forces toward Hauling Ferry.

  Treasury Office Washington, D.C.

  12:40 PM.

  The cost, merciful God," Lincoln sighed as he sat down, holding the tear sheet just handed over by the telegrapher. "The cost."

  Elihu was by his side, reading over his shoulder. "Grant held, though," Elihu said. "He held." There was a touch of exuberance in Elihu's voice, but for the moment Lincoln could not react.

  "Estimate our losses at twenty-five thousand or more." He kept rereading that one line.

  The signal had been sent directly from Grant, to Hagerstown, from there to Harrisburg, then repeated down to Port Deposit. With the recapture of Baltimore, a victory heralded on the front pages of all newspapers across the country, the telegraph line had been restored directly back to Washington.

  That number, twenty-five thousand, was now public knowledge. He could picture by this evening hundreds of thousands gathering at telegraphy stations across the nation, anxious parents, wives, children, all waiting for the first casualty reports to come through, names, more names, and yet more names, each one tearing a tragic hole into a family that would never heal.

  "Sir?"

  It was Elihu, lightly touching him on the shoulder.

  Lincoln stirred from his thoughts and looked up.

  "Sir, Grant held at Frederick. In fact he reports Lee is retreating, trying to flee Maryland and get across the Potomac to Virginia. That is the coded part which just came through. We have Lee on the run."

  Lincoln could only shake his head and sigh.

  "Yes, I know, Elihu. As we did last year after Antietam. He slipped the net then and the war continued."

  Lost in gloom, Lincoln stood up and walked out of the room. A moment later Elihu heard a clamor out in the street as a cavalry detachment pushed the waiting crowd back, reporters shouting questions, as Lincoln slowly walked across Lafayette Park to return to the White House.

  Elihu watched him disappear into the rain, his heart breaking at the sight of the man, who appeared, like Atlas, to be carrying an impossible burden upon his shoulders.

  Elihu turned back to the telegrapher.

  "A message to Hancock, coded. Inform him to expect a full attack by Lee before the day is out."

  Hauling Ferry 2:45pm

  Mr. Bartlett?"

  Jim was asleep, heading resting on the table. He stirred. It was a white officer.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "General Hancock wishes to see you, Mr. Bartlett." "Of course."

  Jim stood up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, taking a few seconds to wipe his spectacles with a dirty handkerchief. Like so many who fall asleep at midday he was surprised by the bustle of activity around him even as he had dozed. Men were setting up awnings to protect
boxes of ammunition being off-loaded from a canal barge, a company of a hundred men, shovels and picks on their shoulders, were coming off the line to eat their noonday meal. They were all covered in mud, soaked to the skin, but their spirits were still high, a team of a hundred moving from the kitchen area back up to replace them, gibes about the food awaiting the returning crew being exchanged.

  Jim followed the officer out from under the awning, glad when one of his assistants came up and offered him an army poncho and an army slouch cap to cover himself. The immaculate clothes he wore as a butler at the White House, black coat, trousers, boiled shirt, black cravat, were now filthy, most likely beyond any hope of repair.

  He mounted his old swaybacked nag and fell in with the officer by his side.

  "Your men, Mr. Bartlett. I never seen such workers," the officer said. "They just don't stop."

  Jim smiled at the compliment.

  "Thank you, sir. These boys have a reason to be here. Mr. Lincoln gave them that, Mr. Lincoln and you soldiers. We'll dig till we hit China if that is what you need."

  The officer chuckled and shook his head.

  "Maybe get a few million of them to help us, is that it?"

  "I heard say those working out in California on the railroad are mighty fine workers."

  "How the country is changing," the officer said.

  "How is that, sir?"

  He reddened slightly and shook his head. "Oh, nothing." "You mean us colored, the Chinese, and such?" "No offense, Mr. Bartlett."

  "None taken, young sir. Yes, the country is changing."

  They crested the top of the slope and Jim smiled with satisfaction. Little more than a day ago this had been open fields, woodlots, and just the beginnings of a trench. The entire landscape had been transformed by the terrible needs of war and he smiled because he had had a hand in achieving what needed to be done.

  A rectangular bastion was before him, a hundred feet long and about fifty feet broad. The earthen ramparts were eight to ten feet high, all sides around it dug out into a moat. On a raised platform in the center was one of the huge cannons, what the officers were calling a Parrott gun. Four other smaller guns were inside the bastion as well. The entryway was a rough-hewn bridge made of logs split in half.