The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  “They’re on to us,” Weisiger noted. “Might be able to do something, of course … but there wouldn’t be any surprise now. And there does seem to be a heap of them.”

  Mahone chose not to reply. He had not been so outraged since the day of the mine explosion, when he’d learned the Yankees had sent in their nigger troops. This day, they’d had a chance to destroy the most famous corps in all the Union armies, hardly a week before the North would vote on the fate of the Ape. And they’d thrown it away.

  A Yankee gun sent a ball through the trees, dropping limbs and branches. It made a great commotion, but did little damage.

  “Must be out of explosive shells,” Mahone said. “Empty caissons, almost an invitation…”

  Weisiger said nothing.

  Little Billy Mahone wanted to fight.

  Within the hour, he ordered a withdrawal across Hatcher’s Run.

  Eight thirty p.m.

  White Oak Road

  Hampton sat on his horse in the black rain, calling out elevation adjustments and fuse lengths. The battle was over, had been. But he refused to let the artillerymen stop firing into the night, his resolution renewed at each burst of flame from a bronze muzzle, the man-made lightning.

  He knew where the Yankees were. His son’s killers. He knew exactly where they were. He didn’t have to see. The stench of their vile blood reeked in his nostrils.

  “Number two gun, add one-quarter turn,” he said in a voice stripped of mercy. “Explosive shell, fuse cut to—”

  “General, we’re out of explosive rounds, we’re out of near everything.”

  “Solid shot. Fuse…” He stopped. Preston, with his mother’s eyes rolled back in his head. Fool boy.

  “Number three gun,” he began … but couldn’t finish.

  Matt Butler eased his horse up beside Hampton’s mount. Their riding boots brushed and spurs chinked. Butler reached over and laid a hand on Hampton’s wet sleeve.

  “Sir … General Hampton … it’s time for you to come back now. You’re needed.”

  Hampton almost lashed out at the man, came near to striking him. Instead, he tugged his horse around and nudged it to walk on.

  Behind him, Butler gave the artillerymen orders to withdraw.

  Nine p.m.

  The Tangles

  Black going, black, black. A man couldn’t tell which direction he was headed, once he’d struggled through a thicket or two. Heavy rain punched through treetops, its sting akin to hail. Churchgoing soldiers cursed as they toppled into the mire again or got cat-clawed by briars for the fourth or fifth time. Hadn’t taken a hundred yards for the quick-got-up columns to come apart, men losing what little sight there was of each other, some calling out, others afeared to do so, and then came the rifle shots, their crack especially sharp in the rain and the darkness.

  Sergeant Johnny Sale did what he could to keep his band together, leading them resolutely, although he was far from sure of his direction, just guiding as best he could by the sounds of other little mobs, trying to keep abreast of Southern voices.

  Then there were Yankee voices. Calls for surrender. A volley. Shouts. Deep South voices, Mississippi voices, telling the Yankees they were the sumbitches who needed to surrender. Men killed each other blindly, murdering faceless shadows whose accents were wrong—nervous men judging badly, Sale suspected. And how had Mississippians strayed so far to the right? Or had he led his own soldiers too far left? Where had those Yankees come from?

  He tripped over a root and toppled into a waterlogged stretch. Got wet about all over. His few remaining cartridges, too, and his rifle.

  Never fond of profanity, he made his men laugh with his exclamations on rising.

  Kept hearing Yankees voices. From angles that made no sense.

  The black night just grew blacker, the rain heavier.

  Sale halted. A man bumped into him.

  “Hush,” Sale whispered. “Hold up.”

  Ruckus ahead. But no shooting. And was “ahead” really ahead? He knew how easily men lost their bearings at night, in this kind of undergrowth.

  The sounds trailed off.

  “Hants,” a soldier joked. Not really joking.

  It seemed quieter around them now, although there was plenty of shooting in the distance.

  “We lost, Sergeant Sale?”

  “Reckon we’ll find out.”

  “Yankees probably got themselves lost, too,” another man said. “Evens out, most like.”

  “Just hush up,” Sale told them. “Let’s go. Little Billy’s waiting on us.”

  “Well, surely I come quickly!” a routine blasphemer said.

  But they stayed quiet then. As quiet as their humanity allowed.

  When next they heard a fuss, the voices were Upper South, Virginia and North Carolina. Bickering.

  Sale led his little party toward the argument. And found that somehow, miraculously, he’d brought his men to the dam they’d crossed on their way into the battle, its berm the route to safety.

  The Virginians and Carolinians were squabbling over ownership of a cow.

  Ten p.m.

  Burgess farm

  Message delivered, George Meade’s son asked, “Mind if I ride along with you, sir?”

  Hancock did mind. He was not in a companionable mood. But he said, “Come along, if you want to, Captain. Though a sensible man would get out of this rain. Especially one who’s been ill.”

  Let this captain get a taste for the aftermath of battle, let him smell and hear what he couldn’t see, the acrid air resisting the wash of rain and the gut-stink of disemboweled battery teams, the cries for attention from wounded men afraid they would be overlooked by the litter bearers, their voices, North and South, united in misery.

  “I haven’t been ill, sir,” the captain said in a tone of mystification.

  “I thought … your father said you were gravely ill. Quite recently.”

  The captain saw the error. “That’s my brother, sir. Very ill, indeed.” After a pause of a few hoofbeats, he added, “We fear for him.”

  Hancock didn’t know what to say to that. The truth was that he felt little sympathy. He couldn’t. There had been so much death in this plague year of war, they’d be finding bones in Virginia’s fields for decades. He couldn’t feel much for a boy he didn’t know. Sorry for George Meade, though.

  Christ, what a wretched day. After such a fine start. He smiled grimly, tasting the rain on his lips. He’d wanted to end his field service with a victory and finished it with this purposeless butchery. Well, it was over, he was done. His leg wouldn’t let him take the field any longer, he just couldn’t do it.

  But such a muddled end, the feebleness of it …

  First, he’d been ordered to hold the ground and withdraw his corps in the morning. Bad enough. Then Meade belatedly offered him the choice of staying to renew his attack on the morrow, promising support from Warren. He’d left the decision to Hancock alone, so any order to retreat would be his.

  As furious as he was weary, Hancock had rebelled for all of ten minutes, cursing to make Charlie Morgan wince, swearing he’d stay and fight to show them all. But when he’d queried his division commanders, he’d found the artillery was out of ammunition and the infantry was almost as badly off. Gregg’s horsemen, too, had shot up the rounds for their Spencers. Far from being able to attack, he lacked the means to defend if the Rebs struck first.

  Struggling in front of his fevered chief of staff, he’d tried to think of a way to hold on, but couldn’t. Thanks to Humphreys’ plan for a swift attack, they’d advanced with only the cartridges the soldiers carried, and the ammunition trains remained far to the rear. Even had they been closer, it would have been impossible to distribute ammunition in this blackness and rain, with regiments intermingled and officers dead. But the coldest fact of all was that the Dabney Mill Road, his lifeline, could only handle movement in one direction. He either called up the ammunition and hoped the wagons made it through the mud, or he pulled out. />
  He seethed but resigned himself. He’d given the order to start the corps’ withdrawal promptly at ten, leaving behind a few ambulances and a rear guard under de Trobriand, who knew how to put up a bluff. Now, as he rode north with George Meade’s son and a weary escort, reluctant to leave his last battlefield, his worn-out soldiers began their southward trudge.

  The men were too weary to curse or complain, too drained even to be sullen.

  They’d come a long way together, he and the old veterans still in the ranks. He wished he could offer them more than this as he left.

  Hancock pulled up his horse by the side of the Plank Road, watching the dark blur of the passing column.

  “Take a good look, Captain,” he told Meade’s son. “I won’t claim much, but it’s as orderly a retreat as you’re apt to witness. They’re good men, they deserve better.”

  The captain said, “But you won, sir. You held the field. After the Johnnies retreated. That means you won.”

  “Nobody won,” Hancock told him.

  EPILOGUE

  October 31, 1864

  Ninth Corps, Army of the Potomac

  Acting Second Lieutenant Charles Brown marched Company C to the Ninth Corps headquarters. He’d been warned to have his soldiers looking their best that morning, and the polishing of weapons and leathers, along with futile efforts to smarten their uniforms, had given the soldiers another cause for grumbling. The march to the rear was welcome, though, a respite from Ft. McGilvery: Days on the siege line were dreary, dirty, and dangerous.

  Working on buckles and belts the evening before, the men had speculated wildly on what awaited them, from easy guard duty in the rear to a spell in New York City to discourage Irish rioting on Election Day.

  Comfortably before the appointed hour, Brown formed his men in two ranks in front of the headquarters, left them standing at ease, and approached the first staff officer he could find to report for duty.

  “And who the devil are you?” the colonel snapped.

  “Lieutenant Brown, sir. Company C, Fiftieth Pennsylvania.”

  “Ah, Brown! Sorry. Really, I’m terribly sorry.” The officer seemed embarrassed. “So many concerns … I’ll let them know, of course.…” The colonel bolted into the cluster of tents in the farmhouse yard.

  Waiting, Brown took things in. More generals and colonels had gathered than Brown had seen in one spot since the Crater fight. He imagined Levi saying, “Well, that’s where all those braided shirkers got to.”

  Guided by the colonel, General Hartranft himself came out to greet Brown.

  “I hope you don’t mind surprises, Lieutenant. Always liked them myself. The good ones, anyway.”

  Ten minutes later, Brown stood at attention, facing Generals Parke, Willcox, and Hartranft. An adjutant read the citation for the Medal of Honor, awarded to Brevet Lieutenant Charles E. Brown, 50th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry, for capturing the flag of the 47th Virginia Infantry on the Weldon Railroad.

  General Parke pinned the medal on Brown’s uniform. Brown was uncertain what he should do next. Salute? Thank the general?

  “Just stand there,” Hartranft whispered. “We’re not finished with you.” All three generals smiled.

  Better than an execution, Brown figured.

  The adjutant next read out an order appointing Brown a first lieutenant, with an effective date of rank of November 2.

  “Couldn’t see holding two ceremonies for one man,” the corps commander said. “Brave as that one man may be.”

  Brown knew what he wanted to say: that he was grateful, mightily so, but Henry Hill was the one who deserved the medal, for what he did that bad day in the Wilderness. Henry … and others, too, for what they’d done on so many battlefields. Even Eli. And the promotion was a fine thing, but he knew he’d only gotten it because the better choices were dead, he wanted to tell them that. But he didn’t. He just stood there.

  The generals didn’t ask him to say anything. They went through a flurry of salutes and told him to stand down his company, that there’d be a ration of whiskey for every one of his soldiers in his honor.

  True to form, Eli had a comment ready for Brown.

  “Bet the whiskey ain’t the quality officers drink,” he said. “You’re not that important, Brownie.”

  “That’s ‘First Lieutenant Brown,’” the first sergeant told him.

  “Not for two more days,” Eli said, grinning.

  They congratulated Brown with canal-man thumps.

  While the whiskey issue was under way, General Hartranft returned and waved him over. The general held out his hand.

  Brown took it.

  “A good day for old Pennsylvania,” Hartranft said. “But don’t get too enamored of your new rank. You’ve already been recommended for a captaincy and General Parke endorsed it.”

  He clapped Brown on the shoulder, smiled, and left him.

  It was a good day, that was sure. And winter was coming on, there’d be less fighting. He’d worry about what next year might bring when next year came along.

  The promotion meant more money he could save up for his marriage, that was the best of it. He did wish Frances could have seen the ceremony, though. She would have been proud of him. And he wanted her to be proud of him.

  And had she been there, he could have asked her, quietly, what “enamored” meant.

  Ten thirty p.m., November 8

  City Point

  Grant and his staff sat by a fire on the bluff above the docks, their chairs, acquired here and there, as disparate as their ranks. There’d been drizzle all day, but now it was done, leaving the air fresh and warm for so late in the season. A few hardy flies even scouted the lantern on the general’s field table.

  The mood was glum. Grant wore a mournful expression as he summarized each telegraph message in turn. The firelight melted the hopes on the officers’ faces.

  “Massachusetts … for McClellan.…

  “Connecticut … McClellan.”

  And, later: “New Jersey, heavy for McClellan. Same for Delaware.”

  Explaining that he would have no disorder, no matter the vote’s result, Grant had insisted that every election message the telegraphers received must be carried to him, immediately and exclusively, and not released to any of his subordinates.

  “Indiana … for McClellan.” Grant bit off the end of another cigar.

  As midnight neared, the officers drifted away, until only Grant’s inner circle of staff men remained. The sentiment around the fire declined from dour to doomed, until no one but Grant bothered speaking, each man studying the fire as if calculating the precise moment when he should hurl himself into the flames.

  At ten minutes after twelve, the duty sergeant delivered another message. Grant tossed the stub of his latest cigar in the fire and bent to the lantern.

  Shaking his head, Grant said woefully, “Ohio … overwhelmingly for McClellan.”

  That shocked the handful of officers back to wakefulness. Some cursed, others groaned.

  But Orville Babcock captured Grant’s attention. The lieutenant colonel’s eyes had narrowed and he wore a look of temper, almost of outrage.

  “By God, General,” Babcock cried, rising to his feet, “you’ve been pulling our legs all night. It’s Lincoln, isn’t it?”

  Grant laughed.

  November 27, 1864

  Abbeville, Alabama

  Sammy Coleman, a Jew fellow, helped Oates down from the coach. Oates remained apt to lose his balance in the course of such doings. Angered him every time. He was grateful for Coleman, an unaccountably good man and former sutler to the 15th Alabama. Coleman had made his way, unasked, to Richmond to accompany Oates on his journey home, an act of kindness Oates vowed he’d never forget.

  Good thing Coleman had been with him, too. Hadn’t made it a step farther than Kingsville, South Carolina, when Oates had found himself too weak to go on, his mad heart confined in a beaten-down carcass. A doctor named Oates—no relation, near as either
of them could tell—had cared for him over a few days, and most folks had been kind, in Kingsville and beyond. But it had been a hard trip, with the trains infrequent and slow, the nourishment dear and slight, and northwest Georgia ravaged by blue-bellied Ostrogoths.

  On his bad days, the South seemed a broken thing; on his good days, just threadbare. And as his journey, by train, wagon, foot, and finally stage, had taken him deeper into his Confederacy, the repulsion he felt at what he saw grew all but unbearable. Everywhere, folks lived in fear, and not just of Yankees. Gangs of deserters, marauders in gray with a leavening of bluecoats, terrorized farm folk and spooked off the home guards, the “buttermilk rangers,” motley collections of pimple-faced boys, stay-at-home cowards, and dark-of-night score settlers. Thrice, he and Coleman had seen runaway slaves strung up by a crossing, and, once, a young soldier, stripped of his tunic, had dangled from an oak, with a sign hung around his neck that read “Deserter.”

  Oates had gotten hot, just set ablaze, by the thought of rich-men’s hide-at-home sons and verifiable cowards who had never touched war even gingerly hanging that boy as proof of their valor and rectitude.

  He had more sympathy by far for those who’d served and finally had enough, now that the war was lost, though no man would say it, more sympathy and understanding for those who finally walked off to see to starving kinfolk than for the yellow-livered men who’d gotten themselves put under orders to stay home and “protect the citizenry” against some frightened coons out in the canebrake.

  It had almost brought him to violence in his own state, his Alabama, just short of Eufaula, when a detachment of home guards surrounded him and Coleman on the platform at a water stop. The “captain” of the patrollers demanded his papers, all but accusing Oates of the crime of desertion. Oates seethed. Frail though he was, he was set to reach out from the folds of his cloak with the one big fist left to him and strike the man. He was unwilling even to flick back his cape and reveal himself as one-armed, an obvious invalid. No, he wouldn’t do that. Instead, he’d break the sonofabitch’s jaw.…

  Coleman gripped his remaining arm.