The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  He believed he’d spotted Marshall some distance ahead, herded by men so thin they might have been specters. Cackling the guards all were, showing the teeth of ancients above the beards of the Patriarchs. They had robbed Bartlett of all that he had been unable to thrust in his boot. They robbed everyone.

  “Oughta lock ’em in with their niggers and let them eat each other, they want to eat,” a sag-bosomed, bonneted matron called.

  Another simply asked him, “See what you get?”

  Bartlett would have liked to respond, “I do, indeed,” but thought it wiser to hobble along in silence.

  Three p.m.

  Gee house

  The mood among Lee’s staff and attendants was jubilant.

  “General Mahone did it,” Lee repeated. As if the prospect of victory strained credulity. “Mahone, the Virginians…”

  “Alabamians and Georgians, too,” Colonel Marshall reminded him.

  “And Johnson’s Carolina boys,” Venable added.

  “Yes, yes,” Lee said. “Of course. Them, as well.”

  But they all understood. With Beauregard’s departure, every officer remaining was Virginia born.

  Walter Taylor came back in, mustache weighted with sweat.

  “Well?” Lee asked. His smile, so rare these days, had faded again.

  The colonel stepped closer to Lee and the two other intimates. “I believe the worst of the abuses … has passed.”

  “All the abuses must stop.” Lee’s tone was categorical.

  “Yes, sir. But the men didn’t take things well, the Negro troops…”

  Lee’s eyes grew arctic. “I would not blame the dog that was trained to bite me, Colonel Taylor. I would blame the animal’s master.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re registering their officers, all the ones who led darkies.”

  Lee shook his head. Slowly, arthritically, majestically. “That is not what I meant. My point, gentlemen, is that the dog only does what it is bidden to do. Beyond satisfying its appetites. The problem here is far greater.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shots sounded from the rear. No man present would have been surprised had those bullets slain black prisoners. The orders had been issued to shun atrocity, and military honor had been answered. But each of them knew that orders had their limits.

  Of a sudden, Lee’s face took on an expression of sorrow touched with dread that none of them had seen him wear since he’d learned of Stuart’s fate.

  “Slavery has been a terrible curse,” Lee said.

  Startled that such a thing had been uttered openly, Marshall responded hastily. “But … the African left behind only pagan barbarism, his exposure to Christianity alone would—”

  Lee cut him off.

  “I did not speak of a curse upon the Negro.”

  FIVE

  Ten a.m., July 31, 1864

  Fortress Monroe, Virginia

  The vessel’s cabin was as ornate as its occupant was plain. As he went in, Grant thought: Neither of us has been accused of beauty.

  “Mr. President,” he said. He touched his fingers to his right eyebrow, but didn’t make a show of the salute.

  Lincoln nodded. “General.” He shifted as if to rise but did not. “Sit down, sit down.”

  Grant sat.

  “Coffee?” Lincoln asked. “Afraid I’ve et up the breakfast.”

  “Too much already, thanks.”

  The steamer rocked mildly.

  “Well,” the president said, “I suppose the affairs of the day won’t be put off, then?”

  “No, sir.” The man before him, all arms, legs, and exhaustion, looked a year older every time they met.

  “I understand … that yesterday’s matter encountered difficulties.”

  “We lost,” Grant said. “Badly.”

  Lincoln nodded, briefly closing his eyes.

  “Fine opportunity,” Grant went on. “Threw it away. Miserable affair.”

  “The casualties?”

  “High.”

  “High?”

  “Between three and four thousand, I make it. Final numbers aren’t tallied.”

  Lincoln scratched the side of his head and set loose a flurry of dandruff. “I regret that we haven’t had … haven’t experienced more success. I’ll be frank, General Grant. I covet the sort of success the newspapers crave. I’m a politician, you know.”

  Grant took the plunge. “Burnside has to go, Mr. President. Yesterday was the last straw. Men won’t fight under him, discipline’s gone to the devil.”

  “Burnside…”

  “If you agree, there’ll be a court of inquiry. All done properly. But he has to go.”

  Lincoln leaned back against candy-striped cushions and rested a hand on the gleaming frame of the couch. “Inconvenient. But you’re the judge of his soldiering.”

  “He has to go, Mr. President.”

  Again, Lincoln nodded. “Hold your inquiry. With my imprimatur. But keep me informed.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Now. What do you think of Sherman? His progress?”

  “He’ll take Atlanta.”

  “When?”

  Grant understood. “Before the election. Well before.”

  “You’re confident? Might it not prove as … as much of a challenge as Petersburg?”

  “No, sir. President Davis gave us a gift. Relieving Joe Johnston. Hood just brawls. Scrap at Peachtree Creek? Cost him more than he can afford to pay. Hood can snap, but he can’t bite deep. Sherman’s cut the last rail line and the telegraph. He’ll fix Hood.”

  Lincoln took a fingernail to the side of his nose, making war on an itch. “I see the design. I do see it, you understand.” He crossed his legs and folded his hands over a knee braced high. “But I find myself in the trying position of the farmer who craved a chicken dinner and had everybody crying for eggs with the bird already stewing. Grant, I’ve got to put some eggs on the table soon.”

  He uncrossed his legs, appeared about to push himself to his feet, then stopped again. “My own party wants me to step away from abolition. In the interests of peace.” He nodded faintly to himself. “I won’t.”

  “No, sir. Wouldn’t help now, anyway.”

  Lincoln’s lips twisted anew. “Others think I should step aside for you, General. They believe you’d have a better chance at the polls.”

  “I don’t see it,” Grant said.

  “No. I suppose not.” The president sighed. “We both have our jobs to do. To the end. Which brings us to the Shenandoah business. Grant, I cannot have another Chambersburg, can’t have any more burnings in the north, no more incursions. I need you to stop the raids, put a stop to all of it. Settle things with Early.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “And?”

  “Meade wants the command. But I like him where he is. Suffers like Job, with me looking over his shoulder. But he does good work. Good span, Meade and Humphreys.” Grant longed for a cigar, but would not reach for one without Lincoln’s encouragement. “I was George Meade, I’d light out for the Territories. Just to get shut of me.”

  “I’d hesitate about Meade myself,” Lincoln said. “It might look like a demotion, and ill-timed. There’s the Philadelphia faction to consider.” Lincoln brushed his hand down over his beard. “And if you mean to relieve Burnside, sending Meade to a lesser command as well might signal defeatism. To the gentlemen of the press. Make them think that things aren’t going well.”

  “They’re not. But they’ll go better. Not Meade, then.”

  He knew that Lincoln had been convinced by the Washington generals and politicians that Meade wasn’t aggressive enough for the work. It was a lie. But that was Washington. And why Grant kept his headquarters in the field.

  “And not McClellan, of course.”

  “No, Mr. President. Not McClellan.”

  “There would be an advantage…”

  “He didn’t follow your orders then and wouldn’t follow mine now. Mr. President, the man I’d like to put forward is Genera
l Sheridan.”

  Lincoln’s brows tightened. “Not too young?”

  “Problem isn’t the young generals,” Grant said. “Problem is the old ones, set in their ways. Sheridan could do it, run Early to ground. But, whoever you choose, we have to combine the departments, make a single command responsible for the Valley. Too many behind-the-desk generals have a finger in the pie now. One command, and full authority for the man in the field.”

  The president nodded, but said, “Let me think on Sheridan. I won’t keep you waiting. Just need to count the wolves that are bound to howl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you, General? What will you do next?”

  “Hold fast to Lee. Not let him slip off. Cut his railroads. Force him to come out and fight in the open. Or starve.” Grant really would have liked a good cigar. “Let Sherman finish with Atlanta and see what makes sense for his army after that. End the threat from the Valley. And count on the Navy to tighten the blockade, close their last ports.”

  Lincoln’s face looked woeful even when he smiled. And he was not smiling.

  “How long?” the president asked abruptly, voice uncharacteristically petulant. “How long before this ends, Grant?”

  The upcoming election fouled the air.

  “Can’t say,” Grant admitted. “But we’ll end it.”

  Then Lincoln, ever admirable to Grant, allowed him a glimpse of broken teeth.

  “Well, then,” the president said. “I surmise it’s time to let the others come in and convince us to do the things we’ve just decided on doing. Live long enough, I might get the hang of government.”

  Eleven a.m., July 31

  Somerville, New Jersey

  The mourners annoyed Barlow. Funerals had always seemed travesties to him, opportunities for vulgar display and for paeans better delivered while the deceased remained with the living. And Belle had been intolerant of platitudes.

  Belle.

  The day was growing hot, though it hardly compared to Virginia’s miasmas. Men and women, dutifully somber, sweated through black dresses and coats better suited to winter. Black-gloved hands held up black satin parasols, funereal fripperies. Barlow even found his own black armband an affectation.

  “Ashes to ashes…”

  He wanted them all to leave. So that he might stand by the grave side without the need to concentrate on keeping the smirk off his lips, that bitter, bemused smile so sharpened by war. And his guts churned terribly. He had starved himself since noon of the day before, trying to empty his belly so that his sickness would not embarrass him—and Arabella’s memory—by soiling his uniform trousers before a throng.

  Dress trousers not worn for months, drilled through by a moth behind the knee. His war had not been one of splendid uniforms, but the military representatives from the New Jersey governor’s office stood there garbed to perfection, the stuff of portraiture, not the field of battle.

  He despised them all. And his feet itched.

  Belle! Belle, Belle, Belle! The rite concluded, men and women took his hand and lavished condolences on him. His brothers, who knew him better, said nothing at all, just grasped his paw. His mother hung back.

  Belle’s family mourned truly, he understood that much. But he wanted them to go, too.

  Really, it all was spectacle enough. Half the town had turned out for the burial, and he knew they had come to gawk at him more than they felt bereaved of Arabella. Strange children were encouraged to shake his hand.

  He had not seen her face a final time. The iron coffin had been sealed, out of fear of contagion. The cruelty of that, of thinking of such a vivid woman so used, made him want to scream at a delinquent God and the empty heavens.

  A challenging woman, Belle had been, but smooth of mind with him. They had belonged together.

  He caught himself: The smirk, that bitter smile, had crept onto his face.

  The night before, when he had arrived at the inn, sick and impossibly filthy, his mother had embraced him with her usual mix of love and theatricality. She ordered up a bath “at once,” in her most imperious voice.

  Before leaving him to his soak, she had admonished him: “Francis, you must dispense with that smile of yours, it’s grotesquely Unitarian. You can’t be seen smirking through your own wife’s funeral.” An actress born with the world her stage, she rolled her eyes and declared, “I know it’s just your way, of course. But those who don’t know you well won’t understand. Do promise me you won’t smile like that tomorrow.”

  His mother. A splendid woman still, with more than a trace remaining of her beauty, even if she was more substantial in form than she had been in those airy Brook Farm days.

  Barlow said: “You know, Mother … this is rather a turnabout. When I told you I meant to marry, you claimed I never smiled.”

  His mother took a moment to recollect. Then she donned a superior smirk of her own.

  “Really, Francis. I never said you don’t smile. I said you never laugh.”

  She was correct. He had been wrong. Again.

  Leaving him to his bath, she added, “I simply cannot bear that look of yours. It reminds me of your father.”

  Their sorrow expressed, the mourners drifted off. The merely curious sauntered away as well. His mother shooed his brothers along and measured off a respectful distance herself, leaving him by the grave side, leaving him briefly to his grief, with the only other two-legged creatures present a laborer of medieval aspect and the young woman who, surprisingly, had accompanied his mother this morning, a handsome creature Barlow couldn’t quite place. Another of his mother’s mysteries: Why on earth bring along a stranger—or near stranger—to this supremely intimate affair?

  A frustrated suitor had labeled his mother “the piece that passeth all understanding.” And Barlow had fought a boy who repeated the quip, even though neither of them had grasped its import.

  “Belle,” he whispered.

  He could have fallen to his knees and wept. He might have wept beyond all reason, insanely. He could have let go of everything, his pride, his discipline, his dignity, his surly bowels. Instead, he stood slump-shouldered at the grave side.

  “Belle,” he repeated.

  Then he said, “Arabella. Bella. Belle.”

  He found it intolerable, if predictable, that his mother stood there watching him, “respectful distance” or not. Did she imagine he’d blow out his brains from grief? When it was his duty to live and clutch her memory? Not for the first time, he felt that his mother consumed more earth and air than was her due.

  But she loved him. He knew that. And she’d made her peculiar sacrifices to keep a genteel face on what, too often, had been true poverty. Their rooms had always had books, but not always bread.

  On the verge of pity, he caught himself. It was beastly of her, the way she managed to make herself the center of his attention even now. Instead of leaving him to thoughts of Arabella, she intruded. At least the young woman she’d dragged along had the sense of decency to turn in another direction.

  Belle.

  Phrases he’d mocked with youthful wisdom assailed him, taking revenge: How could he live without her? She had no equal, and she never would.

  Damn the war. Did it need to kill her, too? Hadn’t he delivered slaughter enough to that altar? Was Death such a glutton?

  Furious at the wide world—at the wartime wealth of the town and at himself—he wiped a renegade tear from the edge of an eye. He wanted to stay right there, to take root in the soil, in that raw earth under which Belle lay imprisoned, bound in iron.

  How could it be that he’d never see her again? Never hear her slightly too-loud laugh? Or merely sense her warmth beside him at dusk?

  She had nursed him back to life and he’d led her to death.

  Mourning. Bereavement. Despair. The words did not begin to express the catastrophe of her loss.

  Abruptly, Barlow turned from the grave. A cramp had warned him to hasten back to the inn. The dizzies were sneaking up, too. Rud
e needs had taken command, the ruffian flesh with its treacheries.

  He straightened himself, replaced his hat, and prepared to run the gauntlet of his mother and her companion. He needed to consult proper doctors in New York during his leave, even if doing so scraped against mourning’s etiquette. Belle would forgive him that. Meanwhile, he just needed to escape.

  “Mother,” he said.

  “Oh, Francis, dear.”

  The honey-haired young woman remained a few steps off, the only sign of her unease a slight twirl of her parasol. She was very simply and very expensively dressed in well-cut mourning.

  His mother took his arm and led him toward her.

  The girl’s expression was duly somber, but her eyes were pert. And arrestingly blue.

  “Francis, you must remember Ellen Shaw? Nellie? Poor Robert’s sister?”

  His features tightened. “You’re the little girl,” he said. “You always sat on the stairs.”

  The young woman raised an eyebrow. “I was a very serious woman of twelve, I’ll have you know.” Then she remembered herself. “General Barlow … I’m sorry. Truly. The loss must be devastating.”

  Devastating? As good a word as any, he supposed.

  His guts warned him again of a betrayal.

  “And I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Shaw,” he said, speaking too rapidly. “Bob was a splendid young man.”

  “You didn’t seem to think so when you tutored him.” But she smiled.

  She was right, of course. He’d thought Bob Shaw a dullard—dreadful at maths, impossible at languages—and a mama’s boy. Poor Bob. He’d made it through Harvard, barely, only to die with his darkies at Battery Wagner. When Bob had been killed the summer before, Barlow had been struggling back from his Gettysburg wound.

  “I regret missing his memorial service.”

  His mother intruded. “Nellie’s been simply splendid, Francis. I don’t know what I would have done without her. She’s been so gracious, coming along to sustain me.”