The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Brigade front was the order, battle formation.

  Five thousand men came crisply out of the woods. Amidst the shouts of officers and sergeants, they spread their lines across the eastern edge of the cornfield: three brigades, each brigade two ranks deep, each rank numbering near eight hundred men, each man shoulder to shoulder with the next, creating a front of five hundred yards.

  With a wave of his hat, ancient General Sumner cried, “Forward.”

  Stragglers from the cornfield fight were coming toward them now. Some were helping wounded. Some were tending to wounds of their own. Some were running, their eyes fixed on nothing but the safety of the woods. Some simply walked, weaponless, eyes vacant, expressions blank.

  “Pay them no mind,” cried Captain Holmes.

  Someone else shouted, “Fight fiercely, men! Remember your heritage. And if any one of you shows cowardice, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  That was Lieutenant Heywood Wedge, Harvard ’61. His cousin, Douglass Wedge Warren, ’61, was the line closer. The regimental commander, grandfatherly Colonel Lee, MA ’51, rode at the side of his men with Lieutenant Colonel Palfrey, ’51. And there were Harvard brothers, Major Paul Revere, last in the class of ’52, and Edward, the regimental surgeon, and Pen Hallowell, ’61 and his brother Ned, and many more.

  Some soldiers called this a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight, but not the men of the Twentieth, not the Irish and German immigrants, not the fishermen from Nantucket and the woodsmen from the Berkshires. While the officers of the Harvard Regiment could be as class-conscious in camp as in their clubs, they never asked their men to go where they would not go themselves.

  The Twentieth held the far left of the second brigade. Halsey went in the second rank, with his eyes on the back of the man in front of him, who watched the swaying shoulders and glittering bayonets and fluttering flags of the brigade in front of him.

  Swaying, glittering, fluttering … from a distance the advance must have looked like blue fabric waving over the green rolls of farmland. But from ground level, it was the definition of war’s horror, because as the fresh brigades crossed the cornfield, they stepped over all the carnage of the morning.

  There were dead men, dead horses, broken wagons, broken bodies, brains, innards, and blood pooled in puddles, and blood running in rivulets along the blasted cornrows, and the wounded, in blue and butternut, waving weakly to show that they still lived, that to step on them might squash the last bit of life out of them, that to keep going might mean the last of life for those who could still step.

  But the brigades did not stop.

  Once across the cornfield, they would have to scramble over a split rail fence, cross the Hagerstown Turnpike, and head for a line of trees beyond.

  Halsey wiped the sweat from his forehead and wondered why.

  Were they hoping to seize those woods and turn the Confederate left, which had been mauled by the two Federal corps that now lay in ruins amidst the corn rubble? Or were they heading for the Confederate cannon beyond the woods?

  Two things bothered Halsey.

  First, the brigades were too close. It was difficult to maintain lines across a five-hundred-yard front. But they should have been keeping a distance of at least fifty yards, so that one brigade could volley over the one in front of it. These brigades were no more than fifty feet apart.

  And second, an attentive commander would have put flanking columns at either end of the line, so that if the enemy struck from the right or left, the flankers could simply make a quarter turn and fire into them.

  Then a more immediate problem arose:

  Up ahead were the trees, and beyond the trees was a ridge, and on the ridge were Confederate cannon, and above the trees, forming visible arcs in the sky, were the shells and balls that the cannon were now firing at those three long brigades of Federal infantry.

  The game of chance had begun.

  No amount of courage could change the outcome of an artillery barrage. No amount of cowardice would help, either, unless the coward could make it off the field. Once a man went in, whether he went in smartly or as scared as a child, when exploding shot and twelve-pound balls filled the air, it was all a matter of inches and instants.

  Halsey had played the game once before. He could pick out the green troops just by watching them flinch every time a shell exploded or a cannonball plowed up the ground. But flinching just wasted energy. The veterans lowered their heads and pushed forward, as if the storm of iron pouring down were no more than a burst of summer rain.

  This storm took out scores of men with every thundering burst and flash. But the officers cajoled and exhorted and the line closers pushed and pulled. And once each brigade had crossed the cornfield and scrambled over the fence and quick-stepped across the pasture into the West Woods, the artillery fire slackened.

  They were now moving through open woodland with tall trees and little underbrush. Exploding shot in the green canopy above could create havoc. So why had the artillery stopped? Was something else brewing? Halsey wondered what would happen if they were attacked from the rock outcroppings and underbrush on the left.

  As the first brigade passed through the woods and out into the field on the far side, Confederate skirmishers opened up from behind the rock walls that divided the field, and the artillery on the heights lay down carpets of canister on the exposed Yankees.

  But the second brigade could not come into action, because they were too close to the first. So they stayed at the edge of the woods, took fire in the dappled shade, watched men fall around them, and waited. Halsey leaned on his musket. A sergeant nearby pulled out his pipe and began to smoke.

  Old General Sumner was out in the sunshine, out where the fight was. He had balls for certain, thought Halsey, but fewer brains because all at once, he seemed to realize something that he should have seen before he ordered the attack, something very bad coming at his flank.

  He wheeled his horse toward the trees and shouted, “Back, boys! Back! For God’s sake, move back, you’re in a bad fix!”

  But before the troops could respond, Vesuvius erupted. That’s what Halsey thought. He had been to Pompeii. He had read about the pyroclastic flow that burst from the volcano and engulfed the ancient city in an explosion of superheated gas that propelled rocks like bullets before it. That was the rebel fire: hot gas and thousands of fifty-eight-caliber lead rocks exploding from the outcroppings on the left.

  The colors of the Twentieth went down. But in an instant they were up again.

  Officers began to shout. Men turned toward the fire. Others turned away.

  The colors went down again. But in an instant they were up again.

  Halsey dropped to one knee, turned to the rear and fired. One shot, then another, then a third. Handle cartridge, tear cartridge, charge cartridge, ram home, raise, prime, fire. And all while bullets screamed around his head and men fell everywhere.

  He knew that he was firing into the third brigade, which was collapsing back there in the battle smoke and sunlight. But he was hitting rebels, too. So he reached for another cartridge.

  And Holmes was on him, slapping him with the flat of his saber, “Dammit, wait for orders. You’re firing into your own men.”

  “Bejesus, sir!” cried Halsey, who had grown so used to Irish expressions that they came as second nature, even then. “But the enemy is behind us.”

  “Behind us? But—”

  And someone else shouted it, then someone else.

  The enemy was behind them … and beside them … and in front, too. The rebels had gotten them in a big bag and the only way out was to the north, to the right.

  Already, all around, troops were breaking and running.

  But the officers and men of the Twentieth tried to maintain discipline.

  Colonel Lee shouted, “Column right, ordinary step!”

  Some men heard him. Some did not.

  Those who did formed columns of four, muskets shouldered.

  Halsey wanted to ru
n, but he tried to remind himself that this was what he had yearned for, the purity of combat, the simplicity of battle. And yet nothing was simple in the close-packed confusion. Bullets screamed from every direction. Confederates appeared and disappeared like spirits in the smoke. Federals kept firing into their own formations.

  Holmes started to run to the head of the column now pulling itself together for a retreat. He looked as if he was running away, but he was waving his sword above his head so that the men in his company could see him.

  Some rebel saw him, too, because a bullet struck him in the back of the neck and sent him pitching forward.

  A sergeant cried for the company to move out with the rest of the regiment.

  Colonel Lee shouted, “Don’t stop! Leave the wounded. Even the officers.”

  But if an Irish sergeant could break ranks to help Lieutenant Wedge, Halsey would break ranks to help his friend.

  He ran over to Holmes and knelt. Blood was gushing from two holes in Holmes’s neck. He was shot through and through. A dead man, for certain. But his eyes opened wide and searched back and forth as if looking for something in the sky above.

  And Halsey decided to stay with him, even though the Twentieth was retreating now into the curtains of smoke and sunshine.

  All around, the woods were emptying of blue jackets. But one was coming toward them: the chaplain. He knelt and looked at Holmes. “You’re a Christian, aren’t you?”

  Holmes tried to speak, but all he could do was flutter his eyes.

  “Well, that’s all right,” said the chaplain. Then his eyes widened at a new sound.

  Above the roar of battle came the yip-yip-yip of the rebel yell.

  The Confederates were giving chase to the retreating remnants of Sedgwick’s Division.

  The chaplain jumped to his feet and ran off.

  But Halsey turned to the onslaught, a hundred Confederates, a thousand, more, leaping from the rocks, exploding from the brush, charging through the trees.

  If this was the end, he resolved to go down with his best weapon. So he reached under his jacket and pulled his Adams from his belt.

  He told himself that they were paper targets, not men, targets in a range. Stay calm. Make your last moments count. Victory might still follow …

  … and expiation.

  A young Confederate in a checkered shirt stopped to fire at him. Halsey put a bullet right under the brim of his gray kepi. Another charged from the right with bayonet raised. Halsey stopped him dead with a shot in the chest; then he hit a third in the neck, an officer, and sent him spinning. He fired a fourth at a big bearded fellow charging in bare feet. He missed. His next shot hit the man in the belly, but the man kept coming.

  The barefoot rebel had enough momentum to drive himself forward, smash Halsey in the face with his musket, and fall on him.

  When Halsey came to, a dead body lay on top of him, stinking of sweat and tobacco, of campfire smoke and bacon grease. Halsey pushed him off and looked around.

  The Confederate wave had rolled on. The roar of battle resounded now to the northeast, the direction of the retreat. Federal artillery was hammering the blue September sky and, Halsey hoped, the Confederates, too.

  Then he heard someone say, “I don’t have time to be spending on dead men.”

  “I know this man,” said someone else. “He’s a valuable officer. I command you to do what you can for him.”

  Halsey saw a doctor kneel beside Holmes and force a swallow of brandy into his mouth. Miraculously, Holmes gagged, coughed, and woke.

  The other man, a captain, said, “Wendell, can you speak?”

  “I think so,” croaked Holmes.

  “Can you walk?”

  Holmes rolled onto his side and tried to stand.

  “You need to get up. Those rebs’ll be fallin’ back soon. Most of ’em’ll take the road, but some might come back through the woods, so we need to get you out. There’s a farmhouse to the north, a field hospital.”

  Halsey stood, wobbled a bit from the blow on his head, felt over himself for a wound, but the blood on his coat belonged to the dead rebel.

  The captain said, “Help me, Private. Help me get Captain Holmes to his feet.”

  Halsey said, “Yes, sir,” without thinking of his brogue.

  Holmes uttered, “Thanks, Halz. I … I…”

  “Halz?” said the other captain. “Is that your name, Private?”

  “Ah, no. He must be off his head.” Halsey found his brogue and hoped that Holmes remembered, too. “You look just grand there, Captain, darlin’. Never seen a man before could take a ball through the neck and stand up not half an hour later.”

  “I watched you with that pistol, Private,” said the other captain. “You did well, but privates aren’t supposed to carry pistols.”

  “I see it as a little somethin’ extra, sir.” Halsey gave the officer a wink.

  “Well, we won’t tell anyone.”

  And with Holmes between them, they walked north, through the carnage. It looked as if half of Sedgwick’s Division was down and dead in those woods. The dead rebels clustered around the place where Halsey had made his stand. It did not make him proud.

  * * *

  The armies fought all day, moving from north to south across a five-mile front. And no one needed to wait for the troop returns to know that this was the bloodiest day of the war, which made it the bloodiest American day since the Pilgrims signed their compact.

  After leaving Holmes in that field hospital, Halsey found his way back to the regiment, which had regrouped in woods north of the cornfield. He reported on Holmes and the others he had seen: Lieutenant Norwood Hallowell and the Wedge cousins wounded in the farmhouse, Dr. Revere dead on the field, near the body of a man he had been stitching back together.

  Late that afternoon, Halsey watched as a woman in a long blue dress lead two stretcher-bearers onto the field to tend a man hidden by a dip in the earth.

  Someone said her name was Clara Barton, and she had driven a wagon filled with medical supplies all the way up from Washington.

  As she leaned over the man to tourniquet his arm, a shot popped somewhere, and a burst of blood exploded at the man’s head. Clara Barton jumped back in surprise, then looked for a moment at the fresh blood on her hands. She wiped them on her apron and gestured for the stretcher-bearers to follow her to another man.

  By God, thought Halsey, but there was courage everywhere on that field.

  He only hoped that McClellan did not waste it.

  The next morning, they waited for orders to renew the attack. But the orders never came. Soldiers in the line speculated, but the dour Irishman with the black beard said nothing. Private Murphy spoke only when spoken to, and briefly at that. He was known in the regiment as the anti-Mick, since most of the Irish boys were such big talkers.

  Halsey suspected that McClellan, with two fresh corps that he had not used, was still overestimating the rebel force, especially if Pinkerton was anywhere nearby. So the armies looked at each other all day, Lee from defensive positions around Sharpsburg, McClellan from the lawn of a beautiful farmhouse above Antietam Creek.

  And that night, Lee retreated. He had not left the enemy in command of the field, but he had left. So the battle was a tactical draw, but the Union could claim a victory.

  Four days later, as men moaned in makeshift hospitals, as burial details dumped bloated corpses into mass graves, as thousands of dead horses burned in huge, stinking pyres, Second Corps was ordered south to Bolivar Heights, just above Harper’s Ferry.

  It had been the Confederate seizure of Harper’s Ferry that had given Lee the confidence to turn and face McClellan. Now the Confederates had abandoned the indefensible little town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac and had retreated deep into the safety of Virginia. The war might have ended at Antietam if McClellan had pressed his advantage. But it would go on.

  * * *

  Cool breezes ruffled the grass on the plateau where the Twentiet
h camped. The tents looked clean and bright in the September sun. The quartermaster constructed a huge brick oven so that the regiment could have soft bread. Its aroma wafted like the scent of home through the camp. They even had a mail call.

  And when the men gathered to collect their letters on September 24, Captain Macy appeared before them. He was in charge because Colonel Palfrey had been struck in the shoulder by a cannonball, and Colonel Lee was “indisposed.” The old man had snapped after the horror in the West Woods. He had left his command and ridden off, only to be found three days later, drunk and diarrhea-stained in a Maryland barn.

  Halsey sympathized. He could have used a good drunk himself after the battle.

  But whenever one of the other soldiers offered him a bit of home-brewed popskull, Halsey declined for fear that he might drink too much and drop his accent. This made him an even stranger breed of Irishman, one who didn’t talk much and didn’t drink at all.

  Captain Macy stepped up onto a table, held up a piece of paper, and said to the regiment, “I have something from Washington. It’s been sent to all the troops. But I want to read it to you myself. I want you to know what you are fighting for.”

  Halsey held his breath.

  Macy read, “By the President of the United States, a Proclamation…”

  Halsey looked around at the other soldiers and wondered if they had any idea of what was coming.

  A series of “that” clauses got it started: “That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress…” was about compensated emancipation. “That the effort to colonize persons of African descent…” was a return to an oft-criticized plan.

  The soldiers were looking at one another, wondering why they had been brought together to hear old news. And then came something entirely new, in the third clause:

  “That on the first day of January, the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free—”

  And the dour Irishman with the black beard let out a hoot.