Lincoln spent most of the day laughing and waving to them.
Halsey spent most of the day anticipating a reunion with the Twentieth … with men like Sergeant Thomas Moran, who had pulled him out of the mud and thrown him into a rowboat at Ball’s Bluff, and with officer friends like the Revere brothers or Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had also been wounded at Ball’s Bluff but had returned to service while Halsey languished at a desk, filling forms and passing information to War Department detectives. Halsey envied Holmes. He envied them all.
* * *
Around five o’clock, word ran along the decks that they were getting close.
Halsey was glad that the heat had abated some, and it was for certain that Lincoln was glad, too, as he put on his black coat and stovepipe.
Up ahead, Halsey could see something gray and metallic sitting in the water. It looked like a huge cheesebox on a raft: the famed ironclad Monitor.
As the Ariel passed the ugly little warcraft and rounded the bend, the captain fired three quick blasts on his whistle. And the air was crushed by a booming explosion, then another and another—twenty-one in all—delivered by the broadside guns of the big-bellied ironclad Galena.
And once the smoke from the salute had cleared, Halsey Hutchinson was filled with awe, with a sense, for the first time in his life, of war as the most manly of spectacles, of war as the greatest endeavor of human organization …
… because before him spread the military might of the Union, a vision of power such as few men had ever seen before.
For a distance of five miles along the bank and three miles inland, the Army of the Potomac covered the earth within an impregnable semicircle of high ground. Half a dozen warships armed with Dahlgren cannon and hundred-pound Parrott rifles defended the flanks, while transports of every size steamed back and forth, delivering supplies and taking off the wounded. No man could fail to be impressed, especially when a band began to play, “Hail to the Chief.”
Harrison’s Landing was named for Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and builder of a plantation house that floated now in a sea of Yankee blue and white canvas tents. It was the oldest brick mansion in Virginia and the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States. And no one who had occupied it could ever have imagined what had come to pass on that ground.
As the Ariel tied up, Lincoln walked to the bow and waved his hat at the cheering troops, while General McClellan and his staff paraded down the dock to meet him.
At least the Young Napoléon looked like a general, thought Halsey. He had a pouter-pigeon chest puffed up with a double row of brass buttons. He strutted when he walked, as if riding a proud mount that was doing the strutting for him. And when he stopped at the edge of the dock to wait for the gangplank, he stood with perfectly erect posture, one foot slightly ahead of the other, like a Michelangelo statue.
Halsey watched them exchange greetings—a salute from McClellan, a doffing of the hat from Lincoln—and he wondered what the president was thinking.
He suspected that Lincoln had pegged McClellan long before the June 28 telegram and had repented of ever choosing him. But what a fine pedigree McClellan had presented: second in his class at West Point, honorable service in the Mexican War, a meteoric rise from field engineer to president of the Illinois Central Railroad, then the early victories in western Virginia, which brought him riding to the rescue after Bull Run. And none could say that he had failed to mold the Army of the Potomac into a disciplined, well-organized fighting force.
But like a man who had fashioned a beautiful silver hammer, McClellan seemed afraid to drive nails with it for fear of scratching it. Instead, he had offered hesitance, petulance, and bald condescension toward his civilian superiors.
Lincoln seemed able to put all that behind him for the good of the country. But when he and McClellan shook hands, Halsey felt a blast of cold winter right there in July. Then, as drums beat and bands played and troops paraded into positions on the trampled wheat fields, president and general retreated to the afterdeck to sit, face-to-face, knee-to-knee, and confer on the predicament of the great army arrayed before them.
From a lower deck, Halsey watched, as if he were in a theater observing a pantomime.
The men talked for a time. Then McClellan reached into his pocket and produced a letter.
Lincoln looked at it quizzically.
McClellan gestured for him to open it.
The president put on his spectacles and read. Then he gave McClellan a polite nod, folded the letter, and put it into his pocket.
McClellan seemed to wait, expecting something more from the president. Instead Lincoln stood, put on his stovepipe, and said in a loud voice, “Let us review the troops, General.”
McClellan’s face reddened. His saber rattled as he rose. He seemed displeased.
* * *
For the next two hours, as the bloodred sun set and a big yellow moon came up, the riverbank shook with the roar of men and drums and bursts of music.
McClellan led. Lincoln rode at his right. The general appeared masterful, as well postured on horseback as on foot. The president looked like a very tall man whose legs were as long as his horse’s and whose trousers were too short for his legs.
Halsey suspected that McClellan had planned it that way. Later, he heard that McClellan claimed to have ordered the troops to cheer. But Halsey saw with his own eyes how much those men loved the president.
As Lincoln rode up and down the columns, in and out of the regiments, the cheers of each unit burst forth like a rolling barrage. And each time a new band struck up a new tune, Lincoln’s horse reared and shied, and the president had all he could do to stay in the saddle, clutching the reins in one hand while trying to wave his stovepipe with the other. But the more he struggled with horse and hat, the more those men cheered.
Morale, anyone would have to conclude, was far better than expected.
Meanwhile, Halsey was delivering new codes to the telegraph office in an outbuilding near the mansion. No one seemed impressed that an officer from the War Department had come to visit. So he had an operator sign for the materials. Then he went up to the main house to find an adjutant who might direct him to the Twentieth.
Instead, he found another military hospital.
That gracious old mansion had become a charnel house. Those not lucky enough, or sick enough, or well enough to have been shipped out or died filled every room and poured the last of themselves out onto the Turkish carpets that once had been beautiful but now were covered in a red-mud mix of Virginia dirt and Yankee blood.
Halsey glanced into the room on his right, the dining room. All the lanterns on the oil chandelier were glowing, yellow and greasy in the gathering dusk.
Over in a corner, by the china cabinet, two men in bloody aprons were leaning over a body. One of them got up and carried a bowl of red muslin bandages toward the door. He looked at Halsey and said, “Help out or step out, Lieutenant.”
Then Halsey heard a weak voice. “Lieutenant? Lieutenant Hutchinson?” The voice came from the other corner, by the pantry.
“Sergeant Moran.” Halsey picked his way over to a cot and a familiar face.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” said the sergeant with a thick brogue.
“How are you?” Halsey knelt.
“Takin’ a long time to die.” Moran’s face was waxy, as if he were dead already.
Halsey took his hand. “Maybe you won’t … die.”
The sergeant managed a laugh. “I’m gut shot. I’ll die. They already told me. Got it at Glendale. Your friend Jimmy Lowell, too. Died like a … like an officer should.”
“So I heard.”
“I have to say ye look the same, Lieutenant, darlin’, but ye don’t sound the same. That charmin’ voice of yours, it’s … it’s—”
“I lost it,” said Halsey.
“We’ve lost a lot, sir. Good voices … good men … and for what?”
“For Union,” said Halsey, even though it sounded rather hollow just then.
The sergeant’s eyes seemed to search the ceiling for something. Then he said, “I come from Spiddal, you know.”
Halsey patted his hand. “Yes. Spiddal in County Galway.”
“A fine fishin’ village it is, filled with fine men, fine men.”
“I know,” said Halsey. “You told me many a tale of Spiddal.”
“But I never told you what I thought when I joined the regiment.”
“What was that?”
“I never thought you Harvard officers could equal Spiddal men for courage. I thought you was all toffs and nancy-boys, tin soldiers and nothin’ more. But … but, I have to say, ye done good, the lot of ye’s.” He struggled through a wave of pain. Then he whispered something else that Halsey could not hear. Then his grip let go.
Was he dead? Halsey could not tell. He stood and looked down dumbly.
One of the surgeons came over. “A tough old Mick. Shot right through the liver. Just bleedin’ out slow and steady. Nothin’ to do for him. Friend of yours?”
“He saved my life at Ball’s Bluff.”
Halsey suddenly felt an overwhelming burst of emotion. And before his façade cracked, he hurried from the house, out to the veranda that overlooked the river and the glorious scene still unfolding on its banks.
A band was now playing “Yankee Doodle” for the president.
Halsey took off his kepi and put it over his face.
So much, he thought, for the manly spectacle of war.
Then a voice came from behind, low and soft. “I’m told you’re one of our men.”
Halsey composed himself, put his kepi back on, and turned to another bearded civilian. This one wore a loose linen duster over a checkered shirt.
“Who are you?”
“I’m known as Major Allan to most. But to you, I’m Pinkerton, Chief of the Secret Service, Army of the Potomac. McNealy says you work for us.”
“I work for the president,” answered Halsey.
“You work for us till we say otherwise.” Pinkerton spoke with a slight Scots burr. “Now, General McClellan just gave the president a letter.”
“Yes,” said Halsey. “I saw it.”
“It’s a frank letter,” said Pinkerton. “If the president acts upon it, the country will be saved. The general wants to know what’s said about it in the War Department, so that he can fight this war the way it should be fought.”
Halsey gave Pinkerton a long look, as if to show that he would not be intimidated. “The way it should be fought is by fighting to win.”
“Military advice from lieutenants.” Pinkerton made a noise, as if he were clearing his throat, though it was meant to be a laugh. “As bad as military advice from presidents.”
Down below, Lincoln was climbing onto a split rail fence to give a speech. He began by shouting, “All is well.”
Halsey wished it were so.
Pinkerton said, “Report what you hear to McNealy.”
“I thought McNealy worked for Colonel Baker. Isn’t Baker your rival?”
“Baker works for Stanton. I work for McClellan. McNealy works for me.”
“And we all work for the president,” said Halsey.
“We all work for the Union, and you work for us.” Pinkerton turned and headed toward the command tent. “If you doubt that, remember the evidence.”
“Evidence? What evidence?”
Pinkerton did not answer. He simply kept walking.
Down below, Lincoln was saying, “You have acted like heroes and endured and conquered.” And even if it wasn’t so, the men were cheering.
Lincoln could tell small lies in the name of high spirit, thought Halsey. Small lies could be told to men who had endured hard fighting, because fighting washed the lies away. Fighting was clean and simple. This game he was caught in was not.
* * *
As he stepped off the porch, he spied a familiar figure coming toward him: tall, gangling Oliver Wendell Holmes, newly minted captain.
Halsey put himself directly into Holmes’s path.
Holmes looked up, looked surprised, then said, “Why, Lieutenant, you’re rather pasty after four months behind a desk.”
And both men burst out laughing.
Holmes said that he was visiting his favorite old Irish sergeant before the regiment marched out for picket duty.
“Then there’ll be no chance to eat with the officers tonight?” asked Halsey.
“I’m afraid not, but—” Holmes pulled a sausage and some cheese from his knapsack. “—mail call today. Boston sends victuals. I’ve brought a bit for Sergeant Moran. Perhaps there’ll be some left for us.”
“Moran’s asleep,” said Halsey. “At least I think it’s just sleep.”
“In that case”—Holmes pointed to a nearby tree—“dine with me before I rejoin my men.”
And while the president’s voice echoed up to them and the western sky burned red, Halsey enjoyed the camaraderie he had hoped for.
Holmes cut pieces of sausage and cheese for each of them. Then he gave Halsey a sip from the canteen he was carrying.
Halsey coughed back the taste of powerful liquor.
Holmes laughed. “The Irish boys call it poteen. They make it themselves. They wanted Moran to have a last taste. I promised I’d deliver it.”
Then Holmes took the canteen and raised it in toast to their departed comrades.
For a few minutes, they passed canteen, sausage, and cheese—a sip and a bite, a bite and a sip, a sip and a sip—like comrades out of Homer. And they talked … about the bravery of the men, about their sweethearts, about their homes in cool, sweet New England.
Holmes also talked of the Negroes they had liberated as the army marched. “What poor dumb beasts they appear. For generations they’ve been whipped and cowed, and now this great cataclysm swirls around them, and they come to us crying, ‘We’s free! We’s free!’ Free to what? I wonder. What awaits them?”
“Whatever it is, it will be better than two centuries of bondage.”
Holmes cocked an eyebrow. “Why, Halz, are you becoming an Abolitionist?”
“No, but right is right. And to uphold the right, I’d rejoin the regiment tonight.”
“You’re at the center of everything, Halz. Stay there. You see what we can only speculate on. And think of the book you’ll be able to write when this is over.”
If you only knew, Halsey thought.
“Besides, you can serve honorably but still sleep in a bed and eat decent food.”
Halsey answered with a few bromides about standing up to enemy fire rather than sitting at a desk. Then he agreed that soft beds and steak had their benefits.
Then they went back into the big house and put a bit of poteen on the lips of the dying sergeant. They were glad when he opened his eyes briefly and ran his tongue around his mouth. It looked as if he smiled.
* * *
Early the next morning, the Ariel left Harrison’s Landing. She stopped for the afternoon at Fortress Monroe, where Lincoln conferred with General Burnside. Then she turned up the Potomac for the night run to Washington.
And Halsey found that he could not sleep. His consternation over the encounter with Pinkerton had started to prey on him. Evidence? What evidence? And the living sound of that big side-wheel steamer—the slow and steady dip and thump, dip and thump, dip and thump—could not soothe him as the company of Holmes had. So he found himself wandering the deck and in the wandering found a fellow wanderer:
Lincoln was standing in shirtsleeves near the port bow, staring off into the night.
“A fine trip, sir,” said Halsey. “I think you raised the men’s morale.”
“They raised mine.”
“I’m sure General McClellan appreciated it.”
“I was not there to inspire McClellan. I wanted information. I now know the status of every division.”
“Was that what he wrote in the letter he gave you
?”
“No. I interviewed his generals and wrote down their comments.” Lincoln patted a paper in his pocket. “You could say I deposed them.”
Halsey liked it when Lincoln spoke to him as an equal, lawyer to lawyer.
“McClellan’s letter,” Lincoln continued, “advised me on how to conduct the war, but not just militarily. Politically, too.”
Halsey hesitated before asking the next question, unsure that he wanted the burden of an answer with McNealy—and now Pinkerton—expecting him to surrender whatever he gathered. But he had to ask: “Was it good advice?”
“Political advice from a general?” Lincoln chuckled. “It reminds me of the man whose horse kicked up and stuck his foot through the stirrup. The man said to the horse, ‘If you are going to get on, I’d just as soon get off.’”
“Do you think McClellan is trying to ‘get on,’ as you say, sir?”
“He warned me that this cannot be a war against populations or property. He’s for fighting a limited war, army against army, and he’s dead against a war to free the Negro.”
“But it isn’t, is it?”
“It did not begin that way, but before we’re done…” Lincoln’s voice trailed off.
The wheels dipped and thumped, dipped and thumped, dipped and thumped.
And Lincoln said, “The general wrote, ‘A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly deteriorate our present armies.’ Sounds like a threat to me.”
“I don’t think it’s true, sir.”
“I hope not. Senator Sumner and the Abolitionists believe not. They want to enlist coloreds. Might not be a bad idea if my call for three hundred thousand more men falls short. But the Democrats fear arming the Negroes as much as the slaveholders do.” Lincoln stared for a time into the night. “I have to say, Halsey, it tears a man.”
“It tears the whole country, sir.”
Dip and thump. Dip and thump. Dip and thump.
“I do wish the border states would accept my plan for compensated emancipation.” Lincoln drew a deep sigh. “Then you and I would not have lived in vain.”
The Lincoln Letter Page 16
