“Get the lads moving, Sergeant,” he ordered. “This neck of the woods is clean of the English for the moment. Let’s see if we can join up with the rest of the division before dark . . .”
A sudden burst of fire sounded down the line. There was shouting and more firing as a picket ran through the trees.
“Sir, redcoats, a fecking mob of them.”
“Over the wall, me boys. Take cover behind these stones and show them how Irishmen can fight.”
The enemy were appearing from among the trees now, more and more of them. Private O’Mahony took aim with his brand new Spencer rifle and put a bullet through the nearest one.
“That’s the way,” Captain Meagher shouted happily, firing again and again. “Come on you English bastards, come and meet your maker.”
An English officer heard the shout and smiled grimly at the Irish accent. Up until this moment it had been a good war for Lieutenant Saxby Athelstane. His attachment to the irregular Canadian cavalry, which he had so loathed, had turned out to be a godsend. His report of the treacherous and deadly night attack by the Americans had gone right to the top of the chain of command, to the Duke of Cambridge; the Commander-in-Chief himself. He had been called back to headquarters and queried for details of the invasion, and had been more than happy to supply them. His gallantry against great odds had been noted, and the general himself had ordered his promotion to captain.
With the promotion came a new regiment, to replace an officer carried away by fever. The 56th West Essex Regiment, which had been transferred from Bermuda to reinforce the invading army. Although nicknamed The Pompadours, they were a tough and seasoned lot and Captain Athelstane found it a pleasure to lead them into battle.
He cupped his hands and shouted back. “I say, is that Fenians that I hear? You should have stayed in the old sod, Paddy, instead of coming to the New World to be killed.”
Dark figures slipped forward as the firing intensified.
It was an unfair and uneven battle with the Irish outnumbered over three to one. But they had their rifles and their spirit—and their hatred. They brought down more than their own number of the enemy as they died. Not one of the Irish tried to escape, not one surrendered. Out of ammunition in the end they fought with bayonets. Meagher laughed with pleasure as an English captain pushed through the struggling soldiers and attacked him with his sword. With practiced skill he stepped forward with his left foot and, with a single thrust under his attacker’s sword, he ran the startled officer through the heart.
Meagher twisted the bayonet as the officer fell, pulled it from his body and turned to the attack. In time to see the muzzle of a musket leveled at him—to flare fire into his face. The flame blackened and burned his skin, the bullet struck his skull, threw him to the ground blinded by blood, unconscious. An English soldier clubbed to death P. J. O’Mahony, who had just killed his sergeant.
Only a handful of Irishmen still remained alive when the gray-clad cavalry swept down the road, firing as they came. The surviving English troops sought safety in the forest.
Captain Meagher groaned as consciousness brought fierce pain to his bruised head. He rubbed the blood away so he could see, sat up and looked around at the carnage, the dead Irish soldiers. Very few had survived. There were no wounded among them—for they had all been killed as they lay. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at the destruction.
“You fought like men and died like men,” he said. “This day will not be forgotten.”
In the ordinary course of events President Lincoln would write his address to Congress, then have one of his secretaries carry it over to the Capitol, where a clerk would read it out for him. He considered this, then realized that this time it must be different. This time he wanted the Congress to understand the depths of his feeling; he wanted to gauge as well the quality of their response. At no time during his short term as President had he felt that a speech of his was of such great importance. He knew that Mill had opened their minds, pointed the way toward a bright future. President Davis was in complete agreement and they had laid their plans accordingly. Now the speech was done.
“Seward has had his say,” the President said, slowly going through the sheets of foolscap one last time. “Even Welles and Stanton have read this. All the lawyers in the cabinet are worried because what I propose to do flies in the face of the Supreme Court decision in the Dredd Scott case. I told them that these little legalistic quibbles would have to wait until after the war. But I have considered and made emendations when they were needed and now the work is complete.”
Lincoln put the speech into his stovepipe hat, clapped it onto his head and stood.
“Come Nicolay, walk with me to the Congress.”
“Sir. Would it not be wiser to go by carriage? Less tiring and, surely, the gravitas of the situation warrants a more formal entry.”
“I always get worried when someone uses one of those foreign words, as though simple old English, as spoken by a simple old rail-splitter, was not good enough. Now what is this gravy-tas I’m supposed to have more of ?”
“I mean, Mr. President, that you are the most important man in Washington City and your deportment should echo that fact.”
Lincoln sighed. “I’ll take your carriage, Nicolay, mainly because I’ve been tired of late. I’ve had little rest.”
And little food, his secretary thought. Plagued by constipation the President took more of his blue mass medicine than he did of vittles. Sometimes he had only a single egg for dinner that he just pushed around and around the plate. His dark skin was sallow now, and his always-rumpled suit even more rumpled as it hung from his skeletal frame. Nicolay went ahead to get the carriage.
The platoon of cavalry accompanied them so it was indeed an arrival at the Congress that was appropriately impressive. The doorway of the building was charred and reeked of smoke where the British had attempted to fire it before their retreat. Lincoln walked among the Congressmen, having a few words with old friends, even stopping for a talk with bitter enemies. Walls must be mended; he must have the firm and committed backing of Congress. And the people.
He spread the notes before him and, in a high voice, began to speak. As he talked his voice steadied and lowered and became convincing in its integrity.
“As I speak to you now Americans are fighting and dying to preserve the freedom of this country. A foreign power has invaded our sovereign shores and the goal we must seek, through force of arms, is to repel that invader. To do this the two warring sides have agreed on an armistice in the war between the states. I now ask you to aid in formalizing that armistice, and to go beyond it, to seek a way to avoid any continuance of the terrible intercine warfare that we have passed through. To do this we must consider that aspect of our history, the existence of slavery, that was somehow the cause of this war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Yet both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that men should ask God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces. But—let us judge not lest we be judged.
“It is time now for us to remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and that our greatest ambition must be to dwell together under the bonds of fraternal feeling. We cannot escape history. We of this Congress and of this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. We know how to save the Union. The world knows that we do know how to save it. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom for the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of Earth. Therefore I urge the Congress to adopt a joint resolution declaring that the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to each state pecuniary aid, to be used
by such state in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences public and private, produced by such a change of system. Furthermore it shall be held that any state that agrees to this will be deemed a State of this Union and thusly eligible to send representatives to this Congress.
“Each and all of the States will be left in complete control of their own affairs respectively, and at perfect liberty to choose and employ, their own means of protecting property, and preserving peace and order as they have been under any administration.
“In addition there will be no increase in the number of slaves in this country. No more slaves will be imported from abroad. And no more slaves will be born here. From this date forward any children born of slaves will be free. Within one generation slavery shall be banished from our land.
“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish work we are engaged in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to do all that we may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and then with all nations.
“I am loath to close. I mind you of the more than twenty thousand American dead at the Battle of Shiloh. American must not kill American ever again. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies any more. The mystic chords of memories, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
“The Union must again be one.”
As the President concluded the hushed silence with which the Congressmen had listened to him was broken by a mighty roar of approval. Even the most ardent abolitionists, long seeking punishment of the slave-masters and the rebellious, were carried away by the spirit of the audience.
The motion to prepare a bill was carried unanimously.
DEFEAT—AND A NEW FUTURE
The Battle of the Hudson Valley was drawing to a close. And there was disaster in the making for the exhausted British troops. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish soldiers were mixed together now. They had cohesion of a sort, they obeyed their officers because they knew they were all determined on one thing. Escape. But this was not an easy thing to do because the American forces were growing as theirs were reduced in number. With the armies of Grant and Lee pushing close behind them, the British had no choice but to flee north. But there was still no escape. The American cavalry harassed their flanks and cut up their supply trains. By the time they had reached Glens Falls their numbers had been halved by wounds, death and surrender. The last became the only option for the ordinary soldier when all the officers and non-commissioned officers were dead, all the ammunition used up. There was no dishonor for an exhausted man to drop his weapon and raise his hands to the sky. Rest, surely, food and water possibly. Road’s end, definitely.
Some of the reinforcements fought on. The 62nd Foot had come late to this war, had actually returned from India to be refitted and sent across another ocean to do battle. They were tough, professional soldiers, who had fought in Afghanistan and other embattled countries at the extreme edges of the British Empire. They were accustomed to attacks by irregular horsemen so stood up well to cavalry harassment. They fought in retreat as they did in advance. Since they had never contacted the main bodies of the pursuing armies they were relatively unscathed.
Their commanding officer, Colonel Oliver Phipps-Hornby, was proud of his men and wished he had done better by them. Lake Champlain had promised succor. The boats that had brought them here from Canada would return them the same way. But the scouting patrol he had sent ahead returned with the most depressing news possible.
“Gone, sir,” Lieutenant Harding reported. “Not a boat in sight at the landings or along the shore.”
CERTAIN DEATH—OR SURRENDER
“You are sure?”
“Positive, Colonel. There were some wounded at the landing, with a surgeon, they had been evacuated to the rear some days ago. One of the wounded, a sergeant, told me that the boats had been there, waiting for us, but they were driven away by enemy artillery. They must have approached under cover of darkness because he said that the firing began at dawn. Some of the boats were sunk, all the rest fled north. The sergeant said that the enemy artillery then limbered up and went north after the boats. There was also some infantry with them, maybe just a regiment.”
“I don’t understand—how could this happen? The enemy is south of us, flanking us as well. How could they also be to our rear?” The colonel was baffled, wiping at his long mustachios as he tried to digest this dire news. The lieutenant opened a folded and dusty map and pointed.
“Here, sir. I think that this is what happened. You must remember that this is a large country with very few decent metaled roads, unlike Britain. What really connects the different states is the railway network. Look here, see how dispersed and widespread it is. A line here and here, another here. Now, if you will look at Plattsburgh, where we fought through last week. You see this railroad track that begins there and goes south and west through New York State and on to Pennsylvania. It is just possible that the American troops and field batteries could have been sent by train to go around our flank.”
“But our troops still occupy Plattsburgh.”
“Doesn’t matter. The enemy could detrain anywhere near here and move south behind us, and they could have reached Lake Champlain here. Once in position they opened fire to drive off our boats. Then they followed them back along the lake to keep them from returning.”
“These trains, a bloody nuisance. Though I must admit that these colonials make very good military use of them.”
“Your orders, Colonel?”
The quiet words brought Phipps-Hornby back to the present. The intensified firing to the south meant that an attack in some strength was in progress. As politely as possible Lieutenant Harding had pointed out that the regiment was still in danger.
“Outlying parties, fire and retire. We’ll pull back to the last defensive position on that ridge. Issue the command.”
Fire and retire the bugles sounded. With practiced skill the men of the 62nd disengaged from the enemy and pulled back through the other defenders. Line after line of them until they were all in the prepared positions.
Lake Champlain was behind them and, apparently, the entire American army was across their front. Soldiers in Blue and Gray were taking up positions in the fields that they had just crossed. More and more units moving around to their flanks. While file after file of British prisoners could be seen marching off dejectedly toward the enemy’s rear.
On a hillock behind the enemy lines the colonel could see a gathering of mounted officers. Under two flags still, but united in every other way. Not for the first time did he wonder how all of this could have happened. What should have been the simple invasion of a weakened and warring country, appeared to be ending in this debacle.
A bullet tore through the shoulder of his jacket, ripping the epaulet away, and he dropped instantly to the ground. Too many officers had paid with their lives by exposing themselves to the enemy marksmen. At a thousand yards they still exacted a bloody toll.
General Sherman had his glasses on the enemy, sweeping along their defenses. He saw that an officer there was doing the same thing, when he dropped suddenly from sight. The United States Sharpshooting Corps had wreaked havoc among the enemy leaders and was still doing its deadly work. They stayed behind the first line of troops and advanced with them. Whenever the enemy went to ground and the line became static they went forward to practice their murderous skill.
Behind the entrenched enemy could be seen a blue patch of Lake Champlain, the goal of the retreating troops, the end of the battle surely. Sherman knew that what he had caused to be done had to be done. The enemy had to be defeated—and now it was. Suddenly he was very tired of the killing. He lowered his glasses and turned to his commanding generals, joined together now for the
first time since the battle had begun.
“Gentlemen, war is hell and I for one have had enough of it for the time being. Their wounded are scattered all along the lake shore and that regiment on the ridge appears to be the only sound unit left. Get a flag of truce over to their commander and see if we can arrange a surrender, before more of our good boys are killed. I care not for the enemy lives, but would grieve at any more loss of American ones right now. The men deserve some reward for the magnificent battle that they have fought.”
“I am in agreement to that,” General Lee said.
“And I,” said Grant. “And I also would like to have a good talk to that commanding officer. I have not seen one of them over the rank of lieutenant alive since our attack began.”
Lincoln was looking through the newspapers, shaking his head with sadness.
“There is a shadow over this land, Nicolay. In the midst of happiness at our victories there is this note of great sadness. A New York company wiped out almost to a man. Apparently because they were Irish. Can this be possible?”
“Not only possible—but highly probable, Mr. President. Certainly the Irish in New York City think that is what happened, and they should know. Almost all of them were born in the old country. If there could possibly be a good side to this massacre, it means the end of draft riots there. Not only have they stopped rioting but the Irish are volunteering in large numbers, fit and angry men . . .”
“He’s done it!” Hay cried out as he threw the door open, waving the sheet of paper. “Sherman has wiped out the invaders, seized thousands of prisoners. The battle is over, the invasion ended.”
“That is wonderful news indeed,” Lincoln said, letting the newspapers drop to the floor as he seized the telegram. “This is most important and timely. Send it on to Jeff Davis at once. He will be as overjoyed as we are, and badly in need of any support.”
Stars & Stripes Forever Page 28
