The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  His men had pressed the Federals all day. Even now, he kept their southern flank under light fire while probing to their rear back by the swamp. But it was the job of the infantry to storm earthworks, not a task for cavalry, mounted or dismounted.

  What frustrated him the most was the sense he’d developed for the flow of battles, the sort of nose some men had for the whereabouts of game. Now he sensed—every long and broad inch of him—that the Yankees were ready to break for the final time, that his peers in gray just had to show resolve.

  Blood told, of course. His grandfather had fought in the Revolution, part of the war of hatchets in the backwoods. And his father had served in the War of 1812. Perhaps some men were bred to fight, even if it wasn’t their preferred path. Perhaps he had inherited something other men had not, instincts no academy could teach.

  “Time to get this over with,” he said.

  Standing near, his son turned fully toward him. Open-faced, eager.

  “Sir?”

  “Pencil and paper, Lieutenant. I have orders to write. Quick now.”

  If the infantry couldn’t put a bow on this, he knew who would.

  Seven fifteen p.m.

  Mounted again—his horse had risen from the dead like Lazarus—Hancock met his chief of staff by the waiting headquarters wagons.

  “What word, Charlie?”

  “Two Eleventh Corps brigades are moving up. They’ll hold the route open to the Jerusalem Plank Road. Scoop up the runaways, too. But Gregg needs to keep the road open that far back, say a mile and a half.”

  “Shameful. Goddamn it. Shameful.” Even if they held on until dark, they’d have to slip off like fugitives and give up the ground. It broke his heart to think it.

  A few hundred yards to the west, the battle raged on, with Miles working wonders. And the artillery, bless them. He owed Dauchy and every redleg an apology. On bended knee.

  Canting his rump from the saddle, Hancock reached over to Morgan and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Colonel Morgan, I do not care to die. But I pray to God I may never leave this field.”

  Unmoved by his commander’s display of sentiment, Morgan replied, “If we don’t keep that road open, none of us leave.”

  Seven twenty p.m.

  “Here’s what you need to do, Lynch,” Miles said. He glanced again at the odd force the colonel had somehow assembled, a few hundred soldiers gathered up from the ruins of every regiment in the corps. Truly, a forlorn hope. “The guns have cleared them from that stretch ahead. You go right through, get back across the rail bed. Wheel left and hit them on the flank again.”

  The begrimed colonel wore an expression at once resigned to his fate and determined to fight. Nodding once, he turned to his motley force. In less than a minute, he had them on the move, their ranks uneven but willing, the men strangers to one another and led by officers they didn’t recognize. They followed Lynch forward, their spirit a last glimpse of the old Second Corps.

  Miles watched them go, peering through the smoke and filthy air as the little battalion crossed the rail bed and wheeled left as ordered, Lynch at the fore all the while. They halted, fired a volley, and rushed forward with a hurrah. He lost sight of them for a time, his view blocked by the parapet and a heavy drift of smoke.

  When he glimpsed them again, minutes later, Lynch’s informal command was in retreat, their numbers much reduced.

  But they’d bought time. It was all about time now. Miles felt enraged, determined to sacrifice anything, any life—including his own—to assert the position, to hold until the Rebs had to break off. He was not going to fail the first time he had unfettered command of the First Division of the Second Corps, long considered the finest in the Army and now a wreck.

  To his shock, he saw another brigade of Confederates advancing.

  Seven thirty p.m.

  Hampton’s horse artillery fired a signal shot. He hoped the sound was distinct enough.

  It was. In moments, his dismounted soldiers swept forward, some dashing through a cornfield, others breaking their way through tangled brush, and the remainder trotting across an open field. Screaming like devils loosed on a camp meeting.

  “Sir? May I join the attack?”

  Hampton looked at his son. “Lieutenant, your place is on my staff. Right here.” Refusing to smile, refusing to show his pride, he added, “You’ve demonstrated your lack of judgment sufficiently often today.”

  By riding where the fighting was the thickest, stretching his orders into opportunities. A Hampton born, even with those gentle eyes.

  Spurring his horse and raising a gloved hand, Hampton gestured for his colors and staff to follow him forward.

  Seven forty p.m.

  Gibbon was stunned. He’d turned the remnants of his division to fight the Johnnies advancing within the earthworks, fresh Reb blood pouring in. Now Hampton’s troopers were coming at him like maniacs, striking the rear of his line, his former front.

  All along the feeble line his officers and sergeants bellowed or pleaded. The best men fought for a time, but Hampton’s dismounted savages swarmed over one section of works after another, firing in close, then swinging their rifles, howling like dervishes, crazed as Mamelukes.

  As a second wave of Hampton’s men—mounted this time—leapt their horses over the earthen walls, Gibbon’s division broke fully and finally.

  Seven forty p.m.

  Lieutenant George Dauchy had managed to bring off three of his four guns, thanks to General Miles. But a fourth lay out there between the sides sparring on in the dying light.

  He’d encountered Colonel Lynch withdrawing a battered force and had asked for help in rescuing the gun. Lynch had halted long enough to weigh the prospects, then told him it was folly. The colonel had orders to form a new line in the rear.

  Dauchy didn’t give up. It had been a dreadful day of shifting fortunes. He’d recovered those three guns and a fair share of his battery’s limbers and caissons—dragging several off by hand—but he’d failed to provide any more support to Miles: The sergeant, a good man, sent to bring up more lanyards had never returned. And his best gunner had gone down, his belly a bloody hash. The fellow had managed to call out to Dauchy, then pass him his watch and $150, begging him to see that it reached his family. Dauchy had helped his men load the gunner atop a caisson headed rearward, but there was no doubt how the journey was going to end.

  He had to give up on the gun, but a detail from the provost guard helped him draw off two last caissons by hand.

  In all his wartime service, he had never felt so useless and so helpless.

  “Best hurry on, Dauchy,” Lieutenant Sweeney of the provost guard cautioned. “Rebs are all around us.”

  Eight p.m.

  Wade Hampton rode along the captured works, shouting for his men to keep killing Yankees.

  Eight p.m.

  “My cavalrymen are willing to try it, sir,” Gregg told Hancock and Gibbon. “One more counterattack, everyone in it this time.”

  The three generals stood amid shredded regiments re-forming as best they could while remnants of others fended off their tormentors. Minutes before, the Rebs had seized what remained of the headquarters site and the telegraph station. Except for Miles’ stand on the northern quadrant, all was a shambles.

  From the side, Charlie Morgan put in, “Miles wants to fight it out.”

  Hancock looked at Gibbon. “John?”

  “My men are blown, sir.” He sent Morgan a bitter look. “I’m not going to indulge in false bravado. My division’s in no condition for a counterattack.”

  Thunder boomed, humbling the last artillery pieces at work.

  His subordinates waited on Hancock. Morgan feared that the corps commander was on the verge of weeping. Hancock’s hands were trembling.

  Instead of losing control of his emotions, the corps commander told them, “That’s it, then. We withdraw at dark.” He paused again, as if disappointed in his own comportment and pondering a retraction of his
words. But he only said, “Charlie, send Conrad or someone to Miles. Don’t go yourself, I need you. Tell him … tell Miles he’s to serve as our rear guard. As soon as the field has been cleared, he’s to march for the Jerusalem Plank Road, we’ll see him there.”

  The clouds above them fired rain and hail.

  Nine fifteen p.m.

  Nelson Miles was the last Union officer to leave Reams Station. He personally led off the final detachment of the rear guard, the remains of Barlow’s old 61st New York, which had convinced all pursuers that further harassment was a poor idea.

  Ten p.m.

  Lieutenant Charles Brown was soaked to the gizzard. But he’d been wet before. He was a canal-man, after all. Living wet was just a part of the calling. No, his dismay, his discouragement, had little to do with the downpour, vicious, even painful, though it was.

  The 50th Pennsylvania had formed its line a few miles to the rear of the day’s fighting. Instead of joining the battle, they’d been deployed across a country road, ordered at first to halt any stragglers, then ordered to let them through.

  Brown could not recall seeing any men so thoroughly defeated. Even now, in the rain-swept, leaden dark, he could read their passing forms, their hunched-over shadows. They were mere ghosts of the soldiers they had been. Some seemed ashamed, some angry. Others just stalked rearward, glad to be shut of things. A fair number still had their weapons, while others went empty-handed. The officers hardly bothered to give commands.

  At first, Brown’s men had joked a bit too loudly, sneering at the condition of the ever-praised Second Corps, darling of the newspapers and weeklies, while the Ninth Corps was the butt of every report. But as the hours passed, the men grew sober. Wet and sober. Even the thickest of Dutchmen began to see that a terrible thing had occurred, that this shattering reached into their lives, too, that something incalculable had been lost this day.

  Earlier, the mocking soldiers had spoken of the retreating men as “them.” But Brown knew that a heart-gripping change had come over the last of his charges when Levi Eckert said plaintively, “Looks like the Johnnies really whipped us good.”

  TWELVE

  Eight fifty p.m., September 4, 1864

  City Point

  Grant looked up from the telegraph message.

  “Atlanta,” he said.

  Work ceased. Every staff man present turned toward him.

  A grin stretched Grant’s mouth.

  The officers and men erupted in cheers. Papers flew. Porter and Babcock began a preposterous jig. All around Grant, war-hardened men howled with the glee of children.

  When the tumult began to ease, Grant said, “Isn’t Sherman the fellow? Three cheers for General Sherman.”

  They hurrahed Cump three times and three times more, their cries so loud he must have heard it in Georgia.

  Every officer wanted to shake Grant’s hand.

  The newspaper fellow, Cadwallader—a vain, sly, useful man—declared that Champagne wine would arrive momentarily, compliments of the New York Herald. The journalist kept a stock of liquor and treats of seductive bounty.

  Won’t get any more work done tonight, Grant decided, feeling for a cigar. He’d been sitting in front of his tent, smoking quietly and already missing Julia and the children, who’d just ended their visit. And the sergeant from the telegraph station had run up big-hipped, a bear in a hurry, hastily saluting with a paw and thrusting out his message.

  And there it was: Atlanta. Since early morning of the day before, rumors had crossed the lines and a tantalizing pair of telegrams had hinted that Sherman’s troops had entered the city. Then nothing—the line running back to Nashville had been cut.

  But here it was, confirmed, the splendid news that changed so many things. He wished John Rawlins present, missing his friend. Coughing blood, Rawlins had gone on leave at Grant’s insistence, with Grant thinking on his own brother dead of consumption. John should have heard this news with the rest of the staff. Meade, as well. Meade was on a thankless leave, back in Washington for a few bad days, sorting out the endless accusations lodged against him by rivals who’d failed at war.

  Thoughts of Washington, even fleeting, left Grant more convinced than ever that his wisest decision of the year had been to locate his command in the field, not in the poisoned halls of the War Department.

  Hard on George Meade, though.

  The Champagne wine arrived as promised, with Cadwallader taking over as master of ceremonies and Grant content to let him play the role.

  He could not have felt prouder of Cump, or happier for Lincoln. Stanton and Halleck would have read the message, of course, and they would have rushed off to the President’s House, presenting the news as though they, not Sherman, had taken the city.

  That was all right. What mattered was that the splendid news would lift the president’s spirits: Lincoln appeared more careworn each time Grant saw him. The president was up on firmer ground now, thanks to Sherman’s success. And the Democrats had gotten a timely comeuppance, smack after their convention, leaving George McClellan in a bind.

  Now Sheridan had to do his part and whip Early out in the Valley. If Phil didn’t make a move in the next week or so, Grant intended to travel north and prod him. A man’s first independent command was a heavy weight, he knew it well. Then Wilmington, they’d have to close the port for good, the Confederacy’s last lifeline to the world. More could be done in Alabama, too. And, of course, there was the matter of where Sherman should aim next.

  The fall of Atlanta had all but won the war, Grant was convinced. The question was how many months and how much more blood it would take for the Rebs to accept it.

  Cadwallader approached him, extending a glass. Grant was more impressed by the gleaming crystal than by the beverage.

  “Surely,” the journalist said, “on so glorious an occasion…”

  Grant held up a hand: No. “Rawlins left me under orders.”

  Denied a tale to add to his gossip portfolio, Cadwallader smiled nonetheless. Really, it was magnificent, wonderful news to every man present.

  Grant realized that the ague and aches that had plagued him for weeks were gone.

  Surrounded by the headquarters revelry, he followed the spread of the news by the rolling cheers. Impossibly swiftly, the outburst of joy had leapt beyond the depot and onto the river. Steamboats, tugs, and ironclads blew horns and whistles.

  Leaving his officers to their merriment, Grant sat down at a deserted desk, took up a pencil, and wrote to one of the few men who had believed in him in the dark days:

  I have just received your dispatch announcing the capture of Atlanta. In honor of your great victory I have ordered a salute to be fired with shotted guns from every battery bearing upon the enemy. The salute will be fired within an hour, amid great rejoicing.

  He waved over an enlisted orderly, a fellow who’d known that the fancy drink wasn’t for him.

  “Take this to the telegraph tent. It’s to have priority over all other messages.”

  Adam Badeau, his military secretary, came up. Empty glass in hand.

  “You’ll pardon me, sir, for saying I told you so. I knew the rumors were true, they had to be. We all had faith in General Sherman. As you did.”

  Now they had faith. But scant years past they’d all called Cump a madman for stating that the war would last years and require an army in the hundreds of thousands.

  “Couldn’t let word go out,” Grant said. “Not till we knew for certain. Too many premature declarations of victory.”

  Like the newspaper fellow who, at the close of that first grim day at Shiloh, had rushed to report a catastrophe beyond redemption. Or just last week, when a scribbler had raced from Reams Station late in the afternoon to report a handsome victory over the Rebs. Now Win Hancock had to endure the ribbing—all too often jealous and ill-natured—about his “victory” over A. P. Hill.

  Well, Hancock would survive it. Wasn’t as rough as Shiloh, and expectations were different, sobered up. Th
e news from Atlanta would sweep Hancock’s embarrassment aside. And the plain fact was that for all his kicking, Lee had not recovered the Weldon Railroad. Warren sat on the line like a hawk on its nest.

  So much more to do after this news. But, for now, it would have to be done elsewhere. Hancock’s reverse had convinced him that Meade was right, that the Army needed to rest … say, until late September. Then hit Lee again before the election. See if he couldn’t take the Boydton Plank Road and cut the South Side Rail Road, force Lee out of Petersburg, and run him down before the vote.

  Before Badeau could turn away, Grant said, “If you haven’t already had too much of that swill, go over to the telegraph tent and send a message to Humphreys, Parke, and Butler. I want every battery in the Armies of the Potomac and the James to open up on the Rebs at the same instant, with explosive shells. Right at midnight.” He smiled to recall his own burst of excitement. “I told Sherman we’d do it within the hour, but I suspect he’ll forgive me. A midnight reveille’s better suited, I think.” He considered the younger man: capable, loyal, and smug. “Understand?”

  Badeau smiled.

  Twelve twenty a.m., September 5

  Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia,

  Violet Bank camp

  There would be no attack, of course. The cannonade that had roused Lee from sleep had ended, followed not by the manly shouts of attackers, but by a cacophony of brass bands and delighted hurrahs over in the Federal lines.

  He realized that he had not done up the last buttons on his coat. Nor had he brushed his hair. Night revealed men’s weaknesses.

  “It’s true, then,” he said at last, addressing his staff confidants, none of whom had dared speak before Lee. “Those people have taken Atlanta. One had hoped the reports…”

  “It could be something else, sir,” Venable said. It was a child’s well-intentioned suggestion.

  “We must,” Lee said, “accept the disappointments the Creator visits upon us. We must bear our trials with grace. Never despair, gentlemen. Never despair.” A meager smile cracked his face. “Now I believe we had best return to our beds. There will be work in the morning.”