Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  Garesché smiles to himself, wondering how his old friend Bill Hardee is getting along with Bragg. How much better for Hardee if he had stayed loyal to the Union and served in this army and for this general, who is the opposite of Bragg in almost every regard. Garesché’s general is a soldiers’ general: informal, humorous, and immensely popular with the men. He is an imposing figure, particularly on horseback: tall, muscular, and handsome. The livid fire-scars that disfigure one side of his face seem only to confirm an indestructible constitution to match an indefatigable energy. He has been in the saddle constantly in his two months in command—inspecting, encouraging, cajoling, berating. No harness, no belt buckle is too small a matter for his attention. He preaches that the accomplishment of great plans depends on the execution of the smallest details, and the men believe, take pride. Thus he transforms the Army of the Cumberland into one of the world’s great armies.

  Garesché knows that his general has weaknesses: that the reddish nose indicates too great a fondness for whiskey, that he sleeps too little, talks too much, and can be both excitable and profane. Yet Garesché believes, with the absolute faith that he has in nothing else besides the Trinity and Great Mother Church, that Major General William Starke Rosecrans is the military genius of his age. Moreover, that he is a truly great man—a man destined to command all the Union armies and, when the war is won, to rise to the presidency itself. To these ends, Garesché will serve him, if needs be, to the death.

  Fresh cigar in hand, Rosecrans is again talking of the order of march toward Murfreesboro. When and where Bragg will choose to fight—if he chooses to fight at all—is the unknown, so the army will move in three columns, always close enough for rapid concentration. Major General Thomas Crittenden, who commands the left wing of the army, as McCook does the right, unfolds a map and peers nearsightedly at the route. Garesché steps forward. “If you will permit me, General.” He slides a better map from lower in the pile and positions it before Crittenden, who smiles a quick thanks.

  Garesché likes Crittenden, finds his manner gentle despite the shoulder-length hair and the staring face that lend him a somewhat wild appearance. Son of old Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Crittenden owes his general’s appointment to the Lincoln administration’s desperate efforts to keep the Bluegrass State in the Union. But Thomas Leonidas Crittenden is a man of achievement in his own right: lawyer, businessman, volunteer aide on Taylor’s staff in Mexico, and American consul to Liverpool in the Fillmore administration. True, he lacks military training, but he seems sensible to his staff’s advice. Perhaps he will do well enough, Garesché thinks.

  Like the McCooks, the Crittendens are a fighting clan. Half a dozen brothers and cousins donned uniforms within weeks of Fort Sumter. Brother George, West Point graduate and career soldier, accepted a Confederate major general’s commission, while cousin Thomas Turpin Crittenden became a Union brigadier. To the family’s mortification, both were soon disgraced. George’s small army was crushed by Brigadier General George H. Thomas at Mill Springs, Kentucky, on January 19, 1862. Seven months later, cousin Thomas Turpin and his entire garrison were rousted from bed and captured at Murfreesboro by the Confederate raider Nathan Bedford Forrest in an exploit that won Forrest his first star.

  Forrest’s success was both shocking and dishearteningly familiar. The ability of Confederate cavalry to outride, outfight, outthink, and altogether overmatch their Federal adversaries is a continuing crisis in all the Union armies—threatens to be so in this campaign. As if prompted by Garesché’s recollection, Rosecrans chooses this moment to turn to him. “Garesché, is that damned Forrest still out west giving old Useless fits?” There are chuckles about the table where most agree that anything that will give Major General Ulysses S. Grant difficulty in Mississippi cannot be without humor and benefit to the Army of the Cumberland. Garesché smiles slightly, prays that Rosecrans will forbear in revealing the full extent of his loathing for Grant to these officers still unused to so forthright a commander. “Our reports are that General Forrest is tearing up track and burning bridges north toward Trenton, General.”

  “Tough on old Useless. Drive him right to the popskull, I expect, if the Mississippi swamps and the snakes haven’t already.”

  There is laughter this time and a resounding hoot from McCook. Only George Thomas, commander of the center corps of the army, fails to join in. He opens an eye to gaze balefully at McCook, then shifts in his chair, lacing fingers over belly, prepared to return to his dozing.

  Two years ahead of Garesché and Rosecrans at West Point, Thomas seems somehow much older, beard grown gray and mouth gone hard. He is “Pap” to his men, “Old Slow Trot” to his brother officers from the Old Army. Both his nerve under fire and his deliberateness in all things are legendary. “What of Morgan?” Thomas rumbles, eyes still closed.

  “Yes, what is the latest of our friend Morgan?” Rosecrans asks. “Didn’t you tell me that he’s abandoned his nuptial couch for the rigors of a different saddle?” There is more laughter.

  Garesché tries not to wince, though Rosecrans’s raw humor is one of the few things he does not admire about his general. “Yes, General. We have reports that Colonel Morgan has left his bride and gone raiding in Kentucky, which will put him well out of our way for the present.”

  Rosecrans looks the length of the table to where his cavalry chief, Brigadier General David Stanley, has turned to say something to an aide. “Well, Stanley, that will make your task easier. Keep young Wheeler off our trains until we find and beat Bragg. After that, Wheeler, Forrest, and Morgan put together won’t matter a damn.”

  Stanley, who has little head for hot punch, has to speak carefully to avoid slurring. “Yes, General. My men will do their part.”

  Let us hope so, Garesché thinks. I give us a week to make this movement before the Reb cavalry are on our trains like wolves. If we haven’t destroyed Bragg by then, we won’t manage the job at all. The War Department is already out of patience with us. If we don’t provide a victory soon, we will pay for it with our careers.

  He pictures the unholy trinity bent over the telegraph, waiting for word that the Army of the Cumberland is on the march: Lincoln, gaunt, saturnine, apish, president by a fluke; Stanton, the ferocious little lawyer trying to run the biggest army in the world; and elbow-scratching, pop-eyed General Henry Halleck, more chief clerk than general in chief. That men such as these should threaten a man such as Rosecrans is almost beyond bearing!

  Garesché is surprised at the choler of his thoughts. I am tired, he thinks. Already tired and the march not even begun. I must remember Charity, even for those who plague us. He senses a subtle change in the atmosphere of the room. Rosecrans is staring into a far corner, mouth set, quiet for once as the talk goes on around him. It is up to him, now, Garesché thinks. We have gathered the supplies, reorganized the army, brought the men to a fighting edge, laid out the movement, and issued the orders. Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck have given us all the time they are going to. Now he must take this army and use it.

  Rosecrans slaps a large, fire-scarred hand on the table. “Gentlemen, to our duty! We move tomorrow. We shall begin to skirmish as soon as we pass the outposts. Press them hard! Drive them out of their nests! Make them fight or run! Strike hard and fast! Give them no rest! Fight them! Fight them! Fight, I say!”

  There is a brief silence as Rosecrans sweeps a blazing glance around the room, then men are cheering. Garesché is surprised to hear his own voice among them. Like a cadet, he thinks. My God, I do not believe that I have given a shout for anything in twenty years. He feels George Thomas watching him and blushes. Thomas rises, alone silent among all the others, nods for his aides to follow, and leaves the room where now McCook is proposing a toast: “To Victory and the Army of the Cumberland. And God damn Braxton Bragg and Jeff Davis!”

  Typically, Rosecrans does not sleep. He scans through a stack of reports, orders, and requisitions arranged on his desk by Garesché, signs most, setting aside tw
o or three to read closely. He rises. “I’m going to have a stroll about camp before turning in. Care to join me, Julius?”

  “It would be pleasant, General, but I have work I should attend to.”

  Rosecrans accepts his cape from Magee, the ubiquitous headquarters orderly, takes his sword from a corner, and steps into the night, trailed by a lieutenant who will record all that the commanding general finds amiss around camp. Garesché parses the stack of paperwork that Rosecrans has signed and hands the items that will not wait to his deputy, Major Charlie Goddard. “Get these on their way, Major, and then get some rest.”

  Like Garesché, Goddard has been up most of the last few nights, preparing the army to move, and his face is haggard with fatigue. “Thank you, Colonel. You should sleep, too.”

  “I will as soon as the general gets back.” When Goddard is gone, Garesché rubs his eyes and begins sorting the next stack of reports from farther down the staff chain. Tomorrow morning this will change, he thinks. Tomorrow morning we will all have less time for reports and more for action.

  The night is still, the air sweet with the smell of mist and autumn leaves. Rosecrans selects a direction and sets off along an avenue lined with Sibley tents. After tonight, these big tents with their stoves and straw bedding will seem an incredible luxury, as all but the most senior officers will sleep in two-man shelter tents or lie exposed to the elements.

  For a week now, Rosecrans has occupied the plain house on the edge of camp rather than his comfortable quarters in the Cunningham house on High Street. But he wants to be close to the soldiers as the army limbers its muscles for the march south. He knows that rumors are flying and that some of them have made their way to Bragg in Murfreesboro. But this does not worry him. Let Bragg worry, doubt, lose sleep. The Army of the Cumberland will move when and how Rosecrans wills it. The worries of Bragg, Halleck, Stanton, and Lincoln concern Rosy Rosecrans not in the least.

  Near a battery of artillery, a sentry braces, presents arms, manages a quavering “Good evening, General.”

  “Good evening, son. Where are you from?”

  “Findlay, Ohio, General.”

  “Your battery?”

  “Battery E, First Ohio, General.”

  “That would be Captain Edgarton, would it not?”

  The sentry stands a little straighter, though he is already braced almost to the breaking point. “Yes, sir!”

  “Well, I hear you’re good men. I’ll look forward to seeing you on the march.” He smiles. “Good night, son.”

  He continues down the avenue, knowing that Battery E, 1st Ohio, is now his to the man. In the morning, every man will swell with pride at the news that the commanding general has heard of them, even knows their captain by name. They will write home, bragging, proud in turn of their general. The remembering of a few names is a trick so easy for Rosecrans that it amazes him that others find it impressive. He has always been able to memorize lists, tables, and charts on a single reading. Scanning the daily transfer reports, his mind subtracts and adds units and names without effort while poor Garesché must squint at his lists, laboriously scratching out old entries and writing in new ones. Rosecrans accepts his brilliance casually. It amuses him to do several things at once. He will read and sign reports while alternately dictating different letters to a pair of scribbling clerks. It is rather like juggling balls in a parlor for the entertainment of children. He knows Garesché finds the practice distressing, but fond as he is of his old classmate, he cannot resist showing off.

  He spots a dim light glowing through canvas. He strides to the tent, unsheathes his sword, and swings the flat of the blade smartly against the taut canvas. The effect is an ear-splitting crack something like that made by a sail snapping to catch the wind on a fresh tack. There are cries of consternation and a chorus of curses from the cardplayers inside. Rosecrans steps to the front of the tent, hides his smile, and sweeps back the flap with the tip of his sword. This produces an even more marvelous effect as the soldiers leap to their feet, scattering cards, spilling mugs, and overturning boxes and stools.

  “I hope,” Rosecrans says, “that you don’t similarly curse the provost marshal or any of the others I have duly appointed over you.” This is, of course, an impossible question to answer with either an affirmative or a negative. The men stand to attention without speaking. Rosecrans lets himself smile. “Stand easy, soldiers.” They do so with exhalations of relief. “What regiment are you?” Rosecrans asks.

  “Forty-ninth Ohio, General,” a sergeant replies in a brogue thick with the old country.

  “Ah, Colonel Gibson’s regiment. I have heard good things about you. Now, men, we will shortly be fighting the Rebels. For that, I need soldiers who have rested and gained strength in their time in camp. I set the curfew for your benefit and for the benefit of this army’s success. Please keep that in mind the next time you hear tattoo, no matter how absorbing you find your game of cards.”

  There are murmurs of assent. The Irish sergeant says, “We’ll remember, General. We’re proud to serve under you.”

  “And I am glad that I have so many Buckeyes with me. It will make the task ahead easier.”

  He bids them good night and steps again into the chill darkness. Fortyninth Ohio is his as well, although Colonel Gibson will not escape a sharp note in the morning about the lax curfew in his regiment, for it is always Rosecrans’s policy to hold his officers responsible for the derelictions of their men, no matter how trivial.

  He hesitates a moment, and the aide says, “General?”

  “It’s nothing. For a moment I could not remember Colonel Gibson’s middle name. Unlike me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the aide says, awed as always.

  Although Rosecrans has a brilliant mind, it is not a reflective one, and he rarely analyzes the personal and serendipitous circumstances that have brought him, at the age of forty-three, to the command of one of the Union’s three great armies. He is the eldest son of one Crandall Rosecrans, a dour Dutchman and former army captain who owns a general store and tavern in Homer, Ohio. As a boy, William attended only four terms of formal schooling, but his father taught him bookkeeping and mathematics, and his gentle mother exposed him to literature and taught him a fair hand. But he was not content with stocking shelves and waiting tables in his free hours. He wheedled the overnight loan of books and newspapers from travelers staying in the rooms over the tavern. At breakfast, the guests would find the boy bleary-eyed but exploding with questions, suppositions, and theories on all that he’d read while the rest of the village slept.

  With no other way to afford college, William badgered the district congressman into an appointment to West Point. He excelled at the Academy, consistently ranking fifth or sixth in his class. As a second-year man and a corporal, he met Grant for the first time. The slender, almost diminutive plebe was standing at a relaxed parade rest beside a hand pump in a rear courtyard when Rosecrans made his final inspection of the grounds as officer of the day.

  “What are you doing here, Plebe?”

  Grant drew himself up, taking just a shade longer than necessary. “Sir, I’m standing guard over the pump, sir. I have been told to do so until after the next call when I shall be duly relieved.”

  Rosecrans shook his head. Plebes. “Look, somebody’s having you on. It’s after tattoo. Go turn in.”

  Grant’s slow eyes studied him. “How am I to know that it is not you who are having me on? That in leaving this post I will not be abandoning my duty?”

  “Sir.” Rosecrans added, not unkindly.

  “Sir.”

  “See my chevrons? I’m officer of the day. You can believe me.”

  Grant considered and then saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

  Rosecrans returned the salute. “You’re welcome, Plebe.” He extended a hand. “I’m Rosecrans. People call me Will sometimes. Mostly William. Never Bill.”

  “Sam Grant.”

  They shook and that should have been the start of a friendship.
But somehow it wasn’t and the two never warmed to each other during the three years they were at West Point together. Like Grant, most of the cadets were ambivalent in their feelings about Rosecrans. He was respected for his brilliance and his easy mastery of the military life. But in a group of cocksure young men, Rosecrans was just a little too sure of himself. At least in his own mind, he was never mistaken.

  Rosecrans graduated fifth in the class of 1842, forty-nine places ahead of his roommate Pete Longstreet. He joined the elite Army Engineer Corps. Very able, he was soon back at West Point as an assistant professor. He was passionately in love with his young wife and likewise devoted to his new faith as a member of the Holy Roman Catholic Church—a conversion made after a long talk with his former classmate Julius Garesché. When the country went to war with Mexico in 1846, Rosecrans made little effort to obtain a transfer to the field. This uncharacteristic lapse of the Rosecrans ambition proved to be a terrible mistake. While his contemporaries won brevet promotions by the bushelful, he remained a lowly first lieutenant. He was posted to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1847 and spent the next six years overhauling the naval facilities at Newport and Washington. His performance was consistently brilliant, but he remained a first lieutenant.

  Entering their second decade of service, Rosecrans’s contemporaries began receiving regular appointments to the brevet ranks they’d won in Mexico. Even Sam Grant, lonely and drunk in far-off California, received his promotion to captain. But in his drive to solve engineering problems, Rosecrans had suffered few fools among the numerous members of that species in the higher ranks of both army and navy. Unlike the quarrelsome Braxton Bragg, Rosecrans had no war record to compensate for his tactlessness. Frustrated beyond endurance, he resigned his commission in the spring of 1853. In eleven years of service, he had never heard a shot fired in anger, having missed all the army’s confrontations with Seminoles, Mexicans, Plains Indians, and Mormons.