The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  He seethed and sat down as white provost men drove his brethren back to their ranks, prodding them with bayonets and gloat words, all of it unneeded but satisfying to those white men in blue who had not even fought.

  Smearing away tears with the back of a paw, Offer’s captain came over to him, squatted down, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “You did your best, Sergeant Offer.”

  Offer would have liked to strangle the boy, to mash his skull. Instead, he answered:

  “Do better next time, Cap’n.”

  Nine forty-five a.m.

  The Crater

  A first mortar round arced and dropped amid the disorder. Shreds of carcass flew. The wounded shrieked, the untouched howled. The Rebs had not reached the pit itself, but they’d launched a second attack, determined to close the wound gouged in their line. More and more soldiers were pressed back into the twin holes, where it was all but impossible to move. White additions had grown as unwelcome as black.

  “An inordinate disgrace,” General Bartlett declared.

  “Any disgrace in particular in mind?” Colonel Marshall asked him. “I see a bushel of ’em.”

  Bartlett snorted. “Rather a few, I should think. Ledlie. Burnside. Myself, not least. And the way those blackamoors bolted.” His blue-blooded smirk returned. “Abolition’s a splendid topic for lectures, but Phillips and Garrison seem to be absent today.…”

  Marshall had witnessed the wretched spectacle, too. The mad flight of the Colored Troops to the rear had given hundreds of other men all the excuse they needed to run for their lives. But not all the Negroes had run, and credit was due. A portion had fought as well as the white men that morning.

  Bartlett was an odd duck, though. Marshall wondered what the Apaches he’d trailed would have made of him. And those God-ridden Mormons would have eaten him whole.

  Another mortar round plummeted into the mob. A body flew up like a boy tossed on a blanket.

  “Don’t know what you’re waiting for,” Bartlett told Marshall. “Best get out. I told Hartranft the same thing.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Doubt there’ll be time later. You know how fast these things go, once they start going.”

  “I still have men in here. And wounded.”

  “Won’t do them one spot of good, you lingering. I’ll be trophy enough for our noble antagonists.” He shook his head. “Never saw such a godforsaken mess. You’d think it was masterminded by a Yale man.”

  Up on the crust of the pit, the best soldiers had burrowed in to pick off the Rebs. With unsettling regularity, men sprawled backward, shot in the head. Yet, another man always took the casualty’s place and resumed the duel. If some men just milled like cattle, others would not quit until they were killed: A contingent of Indians from the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters had strayed in from Willcox’s bunch. They manned a stretch of the rim with handsome tenacity and chanted dirges over fallen comrades.

  Such men deserved far better than they’d gotten, Marshall knew. And the fault was his as well. He should have demanded better, clearer orders. They all should have done so. But every brigade commander in the division had shrugged it off, tired men accustomed to working things out despite their superior. This day, their negligence had cost other men dearly.

  “I’d best see to the flanks again,” Marshall rasped, trying to be heard above the din. “What flanks we have left.”

  Throat all dust and burrs, he yearned for nothing so much as a drink of water. But none was to be had. The wounded that hadn’t been trampled thirsted terribly.

  “You take the right. I’ll see to the left,” Bartlett told him.

  Marshall nodded and turned to push his way through the roiling herd. More men would have fled, he knew, but the slope between the lines had become too deadly. Now they wouldn’t fight and wouldn’t leave. And he was alone, his staff depleted, its members all sent off on useless missions, first in search of Ledlie, then directly to Burnside. None had returned, nor had he received one reply.

  Still, he hoped to maintain defensible lines, to just hold on.

  Until when? Dark? That would take a damned miracle. And for what? The pit was worthless in itself, its possession as unsustainable as it was pointless.

  A sergeant caught up with him, breathless.

  “Colonel Marshall, Colonel, sir…”

  “What is it, man?”

  “It’s General Bartlett, sir. The general’s killed. A mortar…”

  Oh, Christ. Appalled, plain sickened by all of it, Marshall followed the fellow back through the press and push and stench, rough-shouldering any man who got in the way.

  He found Bartlett propped against the clay, waving off would-be helpers.

  “Leg blown off…,” the shocked sergeant explained. “I saw him fall … I thought…”

  Bartlett spotted Marshall and grinned ruefully.

  When Marshall had come sufficiently close for Bartlett to be heard, the general said, “Absolutely destroyed my new cork leg. Have you any idea what a proper one costs, the number of fittings?” He slapped away another helping hand. “Well, I suppose I’m well and truly stuck.”

  Fresh Rebel yells cut the morning.

  FOUR

  Ten a.m., July 30, 1864

  Dunn house

  Grant came in dirty and sweat-glossed, trailed by Horace Porter, a tattletale aide Meade considered less than a gentleman.

  Any other creature would have been glad to get out of the sun, but Grant made a tiny gesture and told Meade, “Talk. In private.” He led the way back outdoors.

  In the distance, fighting thrashed. The sun burdened Meade’s shoulders. Distasteful Virginia.

  “Hot, all right,” Grant said. He stopped in a patch of shade by tethered horses, their smells rich. Rarely one to raise his voice or let others read his face, Grant showed plain disgust around his mouth.

  “Burnside,” Meade began, “has been—”

  “He’s finished,” Grant said. “Attack’s a bust.”

  “He insists he can still make progress.”

  “Believe that?”

  “No.”

  “I told him to end it, pull back.”

  “He’s desperate, Sam. He knows what this will mean.”

  Grant’s ginger beard shone with sweat.

  “He’s been impossible all morning,” Meade continued. “His reporting has been … dishonest, to be frank. And consistently late. I only learned how bad things were when a message meant for him came to me instead.”

  Grant stroked a horse’s neck, then drew a burr from its mane. Meade often suspected that Grant preferred horses to men.

  Turning abruptly back to Meade, the general in chief let his anger flash. His voice remained low, but his tone grew fierce:

  “I have never seen … never saw such an opportunity to carry a fortified line. Right there for the taking. And I never expect to see such a chance again.” He petted the horse. “A lieutenant could have carried that position.”

  Meade let the words fade against the racket of war.

  Grant wasn’t finished. “The mine worked. That’s the bitter nut.” He shook his head, a great display of emotion by his measure. “Had I been a division commander, I would’ve led my men up there myself.” Brown eyes hardened, he added, “Couldn’t find a one of them. Went beyond the parapets myself. And I could not find one division commander forward. Just a peck of colonels and brigadiers wondering what to do next.” He half smiled. “Young Porter had him a fit. Convinced the Rebs were going to scoop me up.”

  “Glad they didn’t.”

  Grant wiped wet from his cheek and beard. “Fine opportunity wasted. Unforgivable. Just unforgivable.” He fixed his eyes on Meade. “Court of inquiry’s called for, I think.”

  “He’s given adequate cause.” Meade hesitated. “But the politics…”

  “Seeing Lincoln tomorrow. At Fortress Monroe. I’ll tend to it.”

  Artillery boomed. Both men glanced toward it.

  “Unfo
rgivable waste,” Grant repeated. He stepped off toward the house. “Any water hereabouts fit to drink?”

  With the mood suddenly eased, Meade said, “I can’t vouch for the taste.”

  “Going back to City Point. Settle things up, George. Nothing I can do here but get angry. And that never helped.”

  Teddy Lyman, who was a gentleman, stepped from the house to meet them. He was followed by Porter the sneak, Grant’s crawling spy.

  “General Meade,” Lyman said with that Boston reed in his voice, “I thought you might care to know, sir. Telegraph message. General Burnside’s riding back here to see you. With General Ord.”

  “Christ,” Meade snapped. “The fellow won’t give up.”

  Waving his aide toward their mounts, Grant said, “He gave up all that mattered.”

  Ten thirty a.m.

  Confederate lines

  Billy Mahone watched another string of frightened Negroes in blue stumbling to the rear. By the time he had gotten into the trenches himself, the slaughter had grown cruel enough to ruin good soldiers. The traverses retaken by the Virginia brigade were carpeted with corpses, most of them niggers extravagantly mutilated. His men had outrun restraint, beyond Mahone’s fit of temper and taste for revenge. He had put a stop to the worst of it, more or less, ordering regimental commanders to accept attempts to surrender from white men or black.

  Still, he smoldered to ponder the Yankee viciousness. Creating Nat Turners by the tens of thousands. He did not regret his initial “no quarter” command. But enough was enough. Matter of discipline.

  When a soldier whumped a black man with a rifle butt, Mahone accepted that as a flash of temper. And a Negro shot for sassing his white captor deserved what he got. But now that his outrage had been tamped down to method, Mahone chose not to condone a further massacre. Didn’t want Otelia reading in the papers that he was a butcher.

  Still, he didn’t expect all the Negro captives to make it to Petersburg. Nor was he minded to look into matters too deeply. Just had to keep things within a certain tolerance.

  Had enough on his hands, anyway, without fixing on the coons. Matt Hall and his Georgians hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory. Mahone had sent them forward to build upon the gains made by the Virginians, but the Yankees still in the pit had organized themselves well enough to sting. Ordered to attack and extend the right flank of the Virginians, the Georgians had started off well enough, only to break under successive volleys and stray left, piling in atop some unhappy Virginians.

  And the fighting had settled into a grim back-and-forth, with Mahone awaiting the arrival of his Alabama Brigade, his last punch left to throw.

  Nor had that gone smoothly. Perplexing and riling Mahone, A. P. Hill had approved the dispatch of the Alabamians, but had sent the order back to Mahone, instead of straight down the line to Johnny Sanders. For all the haste impressed upon his courier, he didn’t believe he could expect the Alabamians to get started on their march before eleven.

  Bushrod Johnson appeared out of the hollow, guided by McMaster.

  About time, Mahone reckoned.

  “Nice piece of work, I hear,” his fellow general said by way of greeting.

  “Not nice enough,” Mahone told him. “Yankees are still in there. Stubborn as mules.”

  Another herd of bloodied-up Negroes came by, shoved on by gaunt captors. Bushrod Johnson spit in the column’s direction. “Big Mandingo there would’ve brought twelve hundred before the war.”

  Mahone asked, “What can I do for you, General?” He could not quell the image of Johnson gobbling his breakfast in the rear. When the man should have been forward with his troops.

  “Well,” Johnson said, “I reckon it’s more a matter of what I can do for you. Or what we can do together. Beauregard says we’re to ‘cooperate.’ Push ’em all at once, lance this carbuncle.”

  Mahone felt the urge to say, “Well, hallelujah! Glad you can join the hymn-sing at long last.” Instead, he told his fellow division commander, “Makes sense to me.”

  “How soon you think we should go?”

  “Not till my Alabamians come up. I’d say one o’clock.”

  “I do believe Beauregard had something sooner in mind.”

  Mahone held back his temper.

  McMaster had seen enough of Mahone to take warning. Intervening, the colonel said, “Heat’ll be hard on your men coming up, sir. But they surely will be welcome.”

  Perhaps Johnson sensed something, too. He said, “Well, one o’clock will suit, I suppose. Take me time to get to my right flank, anyway. Damned Yankees hit the middle of my division.”

  “If you,” Mahone said, “can close the trap, my boys will deal with the pit.”

  “I can work down from the left,” McMaster told them.

  “Right shouldn’t be no problem,” Johnson added. “Not once I get there, tie things back together.”

  “Good,” Mahone told them. “Come one o’clock, we hit those sonsofbitches from three sides. Meantime, I suggest shifting the artillery.”

  He suspected, though, that bayonets would decide things.

  Ten thirty a.m.

  Dunn house

  Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman, Harvard class of 1855 and student of nature, felt sorry for Ambrose Burnside. But not sufficiently so to defend the fellow.

  If Burnside had committed one military blunder after another, his behavior toward Meade had been sheer folly. The Ninth Corps commander had even paused in midbattle to pen a note to Meade all but demanding satisfaction on the field of honor. Not least, he had accused Meade of falling short of the standards of a gentleman, a charge that was guaranteed to raise Meade’s ire. Old Philadelphia was harsher about some matters than Boston, although Lyman rather supposed Pennsylvanians had to try harder.

  Atop all the rest, Burnside had absented himself from the front to plead a case he lacked the wit to make. He had not even paused for privacy, but launched into justifications in front of dozens of officers and men, including two beribboned Frenchmen who had attached themselves to the Army as observers—although Lyman had begun to suspect that free victuals attracted them as much as did any martial revelations.

  Now Burnside was pleading in front of everyone, a sorry business.

  “George, really … the battle’s not lost, it’s not. If Warren supported me, if Hancock—”

  “The order stands. Withdraw as soon as practicable.” Meade’s voice gave Lyman a chill, but at least the Army commander kept his temper better than often had been the case.

  Burnside turned to his companion. “Ord, tell him, tell him! It’s not lost yet. One more division…”

  Meade turned his raptor’s stare on Ord, who simply shook his head.

  “One more push,” Burnside pleaded.

  Meade exploded. It had been bound to come.

  “Where? For the love of God, man? Where? Where would this magical ‘push’ be delivered? Into the pit? Where, as nearly as I can ascertain, you’ve squandered four divisions?” Except for the gray bags under his eyes, Meade’s face was raw-meat red. “Including your damned minstrel show.” He turned away. “I never should have permitted that, never should have let you send them in.”

  “But—”

  “Do you even know where your subordinates are? Do you?”

  “George, I—”

  “Hadn’t you better be back with them?”

  “We could reach Petersburg, I swear to you, I swear it.…”

  Meade opened his mouth as if to shout the man down. But he only turned his back on Ambrose Burnside. A few steps short of a battered door, he paused to repeat, “Withdraw. As soon as practicable. That’s an order. Not only from me—from Grant.”

  When Meade had gone, Humphreys approached the broken corps commander.

  “Burnside,” he said, “can you withdraw? No nonsense now.”

  Damp-eyed and sweating, the corps commander said, “I think it would be best done after dark.”

  Noon

  The Crater


  Raw of crotch and weaving through spells of dizziness, Marshall had managed to contract and connect the defenses to the right of the pit. As a consequence, the Rebs could no more inch forward than could his own men. But the casualties grew ever worse, mostly men shot through the head when they rose to fire, or men made delirious by the heat, shivering out their lives at a temperature that must have passed one hundred degrees in the hole.

  He remembered feeling downcast at West Point, convinced that, having missed the Mexican War, he would never witness such great events himself.

  Now this hell. A far cry from the plods of the Utah War or chasing Navajo renegades in Arizona. He’d gotten his war, all right.

  Would he ever see his wife and daughter again?

  The Johnnies had brought up more guns on the flanks, sweeping the hillside between the lines and making it impossible to send back any more wounded. A few brave officers and sergeants made trips for more ammunition, with many falling, but the Reb sharpshooters had their best sport shooting down every man laden with canteens.

  Back in the pit itself, the men had divided themselves into those who meant to fight and those who only wanted to survive. Of the latter, the white soldiers had gathered densely in the larger side of the pit, with blacks in the shallower depression to the north and the wounded everywhere. Marshall judged that as many as two thousand men were stranded in a space that would have been tight for a quarter their number.

  When a staff man brought forward the order to hold out until dark and then withdraw, Marshall read it as a sentence of death.

  Twelve fifty-five p.m.

  Confederate lines, Mahone’s Division, Alabama brigade