Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  Morgan cocked an eyebrow: And?

  “It’s not the damned leg, Charlie,” Hancock told him. “That’s all right today.” He shook his head, wishing for still more iced water. “Sometimes I think a man can only take so much of this. Before the killing starts to seem pure murder.” He laughed. “Bugger a monkey, you know I used to think there was glory in it?” He laughed again, the bitterness level rising. “‘Hancock the Superb’! That’s me, you know. Proud as a pissing peacock.” He lifted a heavy arm and gestured southward. “Now I just want to beat them all to death, crush skulls with a rock.”

  Morgan appeared bewildered by the outburst, a display hardly characteristic of their relationship.

  Hancock’s smile faded from bitter to sour. “I know I’m contradicting myself. Man is a contradictory beast, Charlie. Delighted to kill, and repulsed by it. Proud, but ashamed.” He cocked an eyebrow and ran a hand over his roughly shaven chin. “How are we supposed to master our enemies, when we can’t even master ourselves? Or at least be honest about what beasts we are?” He gestured at the wreckage of the parlor, the toppled piano. “You know, this doesn’t even make me angry? Year ago, I would have been in a fury. But I just can’t be self-righteous anymore. Why should we give a shit-pot damn about property, when men are dying by the tens of thousands? What are they worth? Weigh a man against a Chesterfield sofa, and war tips the scales in favor of the furniture. Whole damned war was cried up over property—in the case of our gray-backed brethren, a few million coons. So why should we spare a parlor? If we’re going to take revenge, why not on property? And spare the lives of those poor bastards out there? Christ, if I were in their shoes, I’d be smashing things up myself.” He snorted. “Wife would take a stick to me, though, if she saw a mess like this. She’d know the price of everything in this house.”

  “Sleep all right, sir?”

  “Like a baby just off the tit. It isn’t lack of sleep. Charlie, I feel like a prisoner serving a sentence, not that august general in the newspapers. Not sure I even know that fellow.” He turned up one side of his mouth. “Of course, a prisoner knows how long his sentence will run. Us? We’ll just keep on killing. Until the war just stops like a wind-up toy.” His bitter smile returned. “That day may break Frank Barlow’s heart, but it surely won’t break mine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hancock snorted again. “I suppose I should shut my damned mouth and command my corps. At least pretend I’m still a fervent believer in our glorious cause.” He leaned in toward his chief of staff and his voice grew earnest. “Charlie, what do the captains think these days? What are they saying? Or the privates? Do you have any idea? I used to think I knew my men. But now…”

  “There’s a sentiment in the army,” Morgan said, “that Lee’s really whipped this time. Might be something to it. Look how easily we got across this morning.” A cannon boomed, then another, from the south. The firing had been intermittent since daybreak, annoying but hardly menacing. The chief of staff glanced toward the distant guns. “Not exactly the barrage at Gettysburg. Lee can barely field a proper rear guard.”

  Hancock narrowed his eyes. “You really believe that?”

  “I want to believe it. For now, I’m content with what Birney and Gibbon report. Nothing but skirmishers, a few goddamned sharpshooters, and a rifle pit here and there.”

  In the depths of the house, a soldier began to sing “The Rose of Tralee.” He sounded as though he had found the absent householder’s hidden whiskey.

  “All right,” Hancock said. “That’s enough. Get the provost’s boys to clear them all out and clean up this Irishman’s breakfast. We’ll keep our headquarters here. Until we find out if Bobby Lee’s really bolted.”

  “Anything else, sir?”

  “Message get off to Burnside? About tying in?”

  “Sent it myself.”

  “Good. Otherwise … just keep them all moving forward. But no recklessness. I don’t want things to spin out of hand before I’ve got the whole corps this side of the river.”

  “Barlow’s just waiting for Gibbon to clear his bridge. There’s a second bridge going in down there as well.”

  “Well, I’m going to sit on my ass for a few minutes. Try to make sense of the things I’m paid to look after.” He glanced at the wanton devastation again. “Help me right that sofa? I wonder, if our noble American public could see us now, just how superb they’d think me? Wouldn’t it be a tickle, if Harper’s published an engraving of something like this? ‘Another Triumph of Our Gallant Troops!’” He smiled, genuinely this time. “I hope my tender sentiments haven’t disconcerted you. Take that end.”

  The chief of staff bent to the labor and they heaved. The sofa landed upright. Someone had taken a blade to the upholstery.

  Not so long before, Hancock would have manhandled the piece of furniture himself. But between his wounds and his waistline, it seemed wiser to ask for help. Didn’t shame him, just stuck in his craw a bit.

  “Well, I won’t subject you to any further reveries,” he promised the chief of staff. “All of that’s just pissing in the wind.”

  “It’s the goddamned iced water,” Morgan told him. “Addles the brain. It’s enough to cause convulsions, in this heat. Next time you want a drink, sir, I’ll have them serve it hot and stir in salts. Give you the shits instead. Lesser of two evils, compared to philosophy.”

  He was a wonderfully hard man, Morgan, a fighting chief of staff.

  “Before you go,” Hancock said, “tell me one thing honestly, Charlie. What in the name of Christ are you going to do when this blissful little war of ours is over?”

  Morgan didn’t hesitate. “Diddle every willing woman in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Then head west.”

  Ten a.m.

  Headquarters, Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia

  “General Hill, why did you let those people cross here?” Lee’s voice carried so much venom it confounded him. But his loss of self-control only angered him further. “Why didn’t you throw your whole force on them? And drive them back? As Jackson would have done?”

  Red-faced and silent, Hill offered no excuses. But he fidgeted. Straining to master a hot temper of his own. Lee understood, and the corps commander’s forbearance kindled his anger again.

  “And your lines, sir!” Lee renewed his tirade. “Generals Anderson and Ewell have followed my orders to the letter. Your entrenchments are slovenly, your guns ill sited! What can I expect of you?”

  Maintaining control of his voice as best he could, Hill said, “You may expect, General Lee, that I will hold this line against any force Meade and Grant can send against me.”

  “Easily said. But you could not hold that ford against a detachment of … of brigands.”

  Hill did not reply, but looked to the side. Lee thought the man’s eyes glistened. Whether from rage contained or humiliation.

  Lee knew with every word he was being unfair. Hill’s lines were every bit as well developed as those of Ewell or Anderson. Better, perhaps. And if Hill had performed disappointingly the day before, had he not told the corps commander to keep his men in camp?

  Reason is the weakest human faculty.

  Bowels in torment, Lee added, “I will not tolerate failure today, sir. You may face two Federal corps, perhaps part of a third. And if you do not hold them, you will not return to this army.”

  After a delay of several seconds, of lengthy seconds, Hill blinked his eyelids fiercely and nodded.

  “I will hold this line, General Lee.”

  A lightning bolt of pain tore through Lee’s abdomen. He flinched, but remained erect.

  “Do not disappoint me,” he said, and turned away.

  Every step back toward the carriage required a struggle. To stay upright, to remain master of his innards, to restrain himself from shouting out his fury at all his misfortunes. He had begun the morning determined that his health was on the mend and had forced himself to breakfast with Ewell and Anderson, then to conduct a
long inspection of their lines. But his progress had been interrupted by the frequent stops required by his debility. Now he felt himself on the verge of collapse, the heat weighing on him like a physical burden.

  Venable walked beside him, ready to assist, should Lee need help.

  “Let us not make a spectacle,” Lee snapped.

  “Yes, sir.” Venable hesitated, then went on. “If you need to use the privy, I know where it is.”

  “Not here. We will drive some distance away.”

  The aide’s doubt was palpable.

  Lee ordered himself not to be sick. Not today. He must not be ill. With a great victory not only possible, but probable. He got himself into the carriage, but felt an appalling wetness when he sat.

  Soldiers watched him, seeing only what they chose to see, needed to see. Robert E. Lee. Their idol, their hero, their father by proxy. A father who sent them to their deaths in myriads.

  Tears crowded Lee’s eyes now. Not at the thought of soldiers lost, or of the losses to come, but because his belly urged him to cast himself down and ball up like an infant. Sweat sheathed him.

  He gestured for Walter Taylor to ride close to the side of the carriage. Not Venable, who understood too much.

  The dust-caked officer edged as close to the buggy’s wheels as his horse dared go.

  Did all of them know how sick he was? Able to control neither bowels nor temper? His head had to remain clear, that was the thing. He had to be able to think. That would be enough.

  The blue sky quivered.

  “Back,” Lee said. “The shortest way.”

  Taylor understood, but still said, “To headquarters, sir?”

  “Where else?” Lee snapped. His tone carried the force of the profanities he never uttered.

  The ride was interminable, with desultory artillery fire and the pop-pop of skirmishing in the distance. Lee closed his eyes and clutched himself, hoping his visage might pass for one deep in thought.

  He prayed. Nakedly, selfishly. To be allowed this day, to be granted a modicum of good health and clarity of mind, until he had completed the task at hand.

  He meant to tell his party to stop, but realized it was too late.

  At last, Venable and Taylor helped him down and kept him upright until he reached his tent. Released by one man but not the other, he staggered and almost fell. The heat in the tent seemed colossal. Yet, it was a private place. A hot, private place. It smelled, stank.

  “Leave me,” he said.

  He caught their doubtful expressions.

  “Leave me.”

  One following the other, his self-appointed guardians went out. Did they believe they were his masters now?

  He felt shame. He had done wrong. What had he done wrong?

  He needed the slops bucket. Undoing himself as best he could, he strained to lower himself and maintain his balance. Needs but half-satisfied, he lost his equilibrium and sat down hard, upsetting the bucket as he collapsed to the ground.

  Eleven a.m.

  Ox Ford

  No good, no good. Why was he always given the nasty work? Look at that, look at that. Cliffs must be two hundred feet tall, if an inch. Cross the river? Here? They’d cut his men down like a scythe. Then what, then what? Even those who got across could not get up that bluff. The guns, the guns. Rebels knew. Of course they knew. How did they know? He couldn’t say. But they always seemed to know. Where he was, what he was to do. As if they had been told it all by his enemies.

  Major General Ambrose Burnside tried not to make enemies. Did a good job, too. Overall, overall. Always exceptions. Beastly Meade. What if the rumors were true? Meade his junior on the Army rolls. Wouldn’t want the job, of course. Thankless, thankless. He had done all he could do at Fredericksburg, and did it help him? No, no. Criticism, mockery. Now this. Get across the river? Not here, not here. Look at those bluffs. Rebs thick as lice on a Chinaman. Up there, up there. Nothing to be done.

  Had to do something. What, what?

  “Really, this is impossible,” he said, lowering his field glasses. “What’s the news, what’s the news?”

  His nearest aide said, “We’re across at Quarles’s Mill. A few men, at least. Detachment from Warren’s already up there.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Dispatch just came in, sir. Didn’t want to disturb you, you looked deep in thought.”

  “Indeed, indeed. Strategy! Think things through. Never act rashly, Major, never rashly. No good ever comes of it.”

  “Hancock wants to know why we haven’t tied in with him,” the major added.

  Burnside felt a quizzical expression overtake his face. “Why haven’t we?”

  “Confederates, sir.”

  “Nonsense. Headquarters says they’re all gone.”

  “Well, sir, there seems to be a plenty of them up there on those bluffs.”

  “Rear guard. Grant himself believes Lee’s fled the field, simply fled.”

  Grant, Grant. Would he really subordinate the Ninth Corps to that impossible grampus Meade? The shame of it. Mustn’t be rash, though. No need to make enemies. Count on Washington. Safe as a babe in the cradle on that flank. How many years was Meade behind him on the Army rolls?

  “Must do something,” he told the small assembly gathered about him. “Inactivity will not be excused. General Grant expects our corps to shine.”

  True? Doubtful, very doubtful. Anyway, he had to show Grant he was a horse that could run. Warren across the river, and Wright. Now Hancock. And here he was, facing a bluff more forbidding than anything he had faced at Fredericksburg. And that had been bad, impossibly bad. Were they making a fool of him? Was it a plot? Why did he always draw the wretched ground?

  “Must do something,” he repeated.

  “Sir, we might begin crossing at Quarles’s Mill, upstream. Now that we’re tied in with Warren. We could get a division over, maybe turn the Rebs out of their position.” The aide gestured toward the forbidding heights.

  “What division? Whose division?”

  “Ledlie’s well positioned.”

  “Ledlie? Oh, Ledlie. At Quarles’s Mill?”

  “Or a division could follow Hancock. Down the Telegraph Road. Turn the Rebs from the left.”

  Follow Hancock? Why was he always behind Hancock? Or behind somebody, anybody? Were they all conspiring against him? Well, he could conspire, too. They wouldn’t dare relieve him. Not until the election, that much was clear.

  But reassigned? How would that look? He had expected better of Grant, elementary courtesy, a modicum of respect for a man of experience. Grant, a sullied upstart with a wastrel past. Lincoln had made the grubby fellow a king, a veritable emperor of the armies. Letting him lord it over upright men, men of position, sensible men.

  Was subordinating the Ninth Corps to the Army of the Potomac to be the start of his humiliation, his degradation? Ghastly to think the rumor might be true. And what about Ledlie? Dubious creature, new to division command. Man of connections, though. Powerful backing from his political faction. Risk it, should he risk it?

  “Do something,” he said.

  “Sir … there’s an island down in that creek. Just below the bluffs. We might outpost it. See how the Johnnies react.”

  Excellent idea! He had not seen the island. No matter, no matter. Outpost it! Show them all that Ambrose Burnside would not be cowed by a few obstinate Confederates.

  More than a few of them up on that high ground, though.

  No matter, no matter.

  “In your best judgment,” Burnside asked his foremost engineer, “how many men will this isle accommodate?”

  The engineer shrugged. “Haven’t seen it myself. Suppose I ought to go down there.”

  The officer who had raised the matter said, “Start with a regiment. See what happens.”

  Indeed, indeed. They couldn’t claim he was sitting idle then.

  “Who’s closest? I want a regiment on that island.”

  N
oon Headquarters, Army of the Potomac and the general in chief, Carmel Church

  Meade exploded. In front of dozens of staff men and hangers-on, he spoke directly to Grant: “Sir, I consider that dispatch an insult to the army I command, and to me personally. General Sherman knows nothing of this army or its accomplishments.” He stepped toward the general in chief as if to do him violence, but brought himself up short. He did not lower his voice or soften its tone, though. “The Army of the Potomac does not require General Grant’s inspiration—or anybody else’s inspiration—to make it fight. General Sherman’s armed rabble might suffice for Georgia, but the man has never faced Robert E. Lee.”

  When the raw concussion of the outburst had faded, leaving an enormous silence, Grant found his way to a dubious smile and said, “Sherman does have a knack for pulling the trigger before he’s measured his target. It’s just his way, General Meade. Lets go a volley, then regrets it later.” His smile deepened. “Like your General Griffin.”

  Meade straightened his back and lifted his chin. “Sir, that is an official dispatch. It will enter the department’s records.” He turned to face the man who had read it aloud. Dana wasn’t sorry one bit: He looked like a gloating undertaker. “And it was dispiriting that it should be read publicly.”

  “Well, now,” Grant said, “I can’t rightly speak for Mr. Dana there. But as the assistant secretary of war, I reckon he outranks us and can do about as he pleases. Probably didn’t even know what was in that dispatch before he got started. Did you, Charlie?”

  Dana’s grin tightened into a smirk.

  “I demand an apology,” Meade said. “A formal apology. From Sherman, at the very least. This army has performed with … with sacrificial bravery. And has suffered unprecedented casualties as a result.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see.” And just like that, Grant dismissed the matter, turning to the just arrived Captain Wadsworth to ask, with clear delight, “How soon did you say Sheridan would get here?”

  Meade left the church, exchanging its dead heat for the vivid sun. He tried to march off nobly, but felt he must look like a skulker.