Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  Brigadier General John Wharton can manage the feat that has eluded Hardee, Cleburne, McCown, and all the rest: He can reach the Nashville Pike and cut Rosecrans’s lifeline. Could, that is, if he only had the men. But he doesn’t.

  The morning of fighting and hard riding has cost Wharton over a hundred casualties. Several hundred more men have been detailed to guard prisoners and to drive captured wagons toward the rear. With the pike only a short gallop away, he has perhaps thirteen hundred men, enough to get astride it but not enough to hold it against a counterattack by Yankee infantry.

  His other concern is the Yankee cavalry. He has seen nothing of them since the old colonel on the small brown horse spirited the ammunition train from his grasp. Who the hell was he? Not Stanley, who is a man his own age. Not Zahm, whom he’d met a few weeks ago under a flag of truce. But whoever the old colonel is, John Wharton intends to have his revenge, would have it now if he just had the troops for a dash at the pike. That would bring the old bastard out of hiding to learn the penalty for insulting Lone Star honor with devious tricks and ironic salutes.

  Judge John Kennett, the very man who has so nettled the usually sensible John Wharton, is enjoying the best pot of coffee he’s had in months. Not that the actual coffee is better. Christ, it’s as vile as all the sludge served in this army. But he drinks it with a satisfaction he has not known since… . Well, he cannot recall since when. Thruston’s ammunition train is safe behind the Nashville Pike, Zahm has established a straggler line at the extremity of the army’s right flank, and several additional companies of cavalry have re-formed and joined Kennett. It is about time to take another ride to see what the Reb cavalry is up to. Yes, another cup of coffee and he will do that.

  Brigadier General David Stanley has waited all morning for some word from Rosecrans. Assuredly, there is fighting to the east—a good deal of cannon fire, some sparring between the infantry—but he has no sense that it is a pitched battle. Still, he should be at hand if needed, not out here guarding a wagon park.

  He has just about made up his mind to take a detachment and have a look at the extent of the action when Colonel Burke of the infantry guard and his chaplain arrive bearing three tankards of the hot punch from breakfast, freshened with eggs and an additional lacing of brandy. Stanley examines his pocket watch, noting with relief that it is past noon—an acceptable time for bracing body and spirit against the cold and what other rigors may lie ahead.

  Private Wayne Hodges is surprised to find no traffic on the Wilkinson Pike. He had expected to join a stream of refugees that would long since have given notice of the severity of the battle to Stanley. But, incredibly, he is alone by the time he is a mile west of Overall Creek. He trudges on, keeping a wary eye out for Reb or Union cavalry. Both have guns, both may shoot before asking questions.

  He covers the four miles from Overall Creek to Stewart’s Creek by 1:30 P.M. A half mile out, he is challenged by a pair of vedettes. He explains himself and is passed to the officer in charge of the picket line—a spectacularly dim lieutenant who actually asks him to recite the words to John Brown’s Body. This asshole doesn’t know there’s a battle going on, Hodges thinks. He repeats enough of the song to satisfy the lieutenant that he is not a Southern spy and is passed to a captain. The captain is a decent sort, gives him a cup of coffee and a chaw from his plug, and then takes him to a major, who can’t be bothered, and then to a colonel, who is in the sinks with the runs but who listens politely enough before telling the captain to take Hodges to the general.

  General Stanley is drunk. Not terribly drunk—not nearly as drunk as the colonel with him or the chaplain snoring in the corner of the tent—but drunk. Private Wayne Hodges, who as the thief Eli Smith might have laughed at the absurdity of it all, is incensed. He pulls a brogan off a blistered foot, fishes out the folded message written in Garesché’s fine hand, shoves it at Stanley without a word.

  Stanley unfolds it, squints to read, his face going pale. “That will be all, Captain. I’ll deal with this man.” When the officer is gone, he looks at Hodges. “When did you get this?”

  “‘Bout eight.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “There’s a barrel of trouble down there. I was captured twice, lost my horse, had to stick to the woods.”

  “Say ‘sir,’ damn it!”

  Hodges spits tobacco juice out the fly of the tent. “Sir.”

  Stanley reads the message again. “Can I get through on this road?”

  “Well, there’s about fifty thousand Rebs over east, but maybe they wouldn’t mind. Sir.”

  Stanley glares at him. “Go get a horse. You’re going to lead us back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hodges drawls. He goes to look for the captain who lent him the tobacco—the one fucking officer in the brigade who seems to know what he’s doing.

  Captain James H. Stokes suspects that he is the oldest captain in the Army of the Cumberland. He is certainly the oldest Academy graduate below the rank of brigadier general. Probably major general. He could wear stars if he chose, may even let the War Department make him a general one of these days. But, for the moment, he values his battery more than rank.

  The Chicago Board of Trade Battery is Stokes’s creation, a hard-muscled representative of the brawling city that Jim Stokes has helped build in the twenty years since his resignation from the regular army. In the fevered summer of 1861, he’d raised a generous subscription from his friends on the Board of Trade to buy the best guns, mounts, and equipment available. Hundreds of young men clamored to join. He took the best, frequently passing over the sons of the rich to sign a mechanic or a carpenter who understood the working of machines or had an eye for line and angle. Through long hours of drill, he has made them splendid artillerymen.

  The guns are good, though not quite matching the men. Stokes wanted to equip the battery with the best, but not even the Board of Trade’s money could secure three-inch Ordnance rifles or twelve-pounder Napoleons in that summer. He could buy the new ten-pounder Parrott rifles, but distrusted the strength of the wrought-iron barrels. He settled on fourteen-pounder James rifles for their bronze tubes and heavier projectiles, though their design is not particularly to his liking.

  The polished bronze guns shine even in the rain and smoke as the Chicago Board of Trade Battery waits on a rise near army headquarters between the Nashville Pike and the railroad. The wait is irksome for Stokes, but the commanding general himself positioned him on the rise not long after McCook’s wing broke.

  Rosecrans’s normally red face had been mottled with pale splotches and streaming with perspiration as he’d leaned down from his horse to speak confidentially. “It’s not going well, Jim. Someone’s got to hold the flank until I can shift some of Crittenden’s corps. So I’m leaving the best: your battery and Morton’s Pioneers. I’m expecting you two to do the job.”

  Stokes had been flattered. “We’ll do our best, General.”

  “It’s not my practice to order men to hold to the last extremity. Any plan requiring such measures is innately flawed. But this battle must be won, Jim. If we lose here, I fear for the country. Burnside and Grant have put us in a position where we absolutely must win. Otherwise, I think the cause may be lost.”

  “I understand, General. We’ll die here before we give way.”

  Rosecrans had nodded, set spurs to Boney’s flanks.

  Stokes and his cannoneers wait through the rest of the morning. They have perhaps the best view of the battlefield of anyone except the Rebels holding Wayne’s Hill on the east side of the river. For hours, Hardee’s juggernaut appears unstoppable as it grinds up one Union brigade after another. But, if nothing else, Rosecrans is a brilliant engineer. If the machine fails in one configuration, he will rebuild it in another. He shifts Rousseau’s division to Sheridan’s right, pulls the brigades of Sam Beatty, Fyffe, and Harker from Crittenden’s corps, sends them out beyond Rousseau. No longer alone on the flank, the Pioneers and Stokes’s battery are left unengage
d and seemingly forgotten in rear of this new line.

  Captain James St. Clair Morton joins Stokes behind the guns to watch Rousseau’s batteries beat back Rains’s assault on the pike. Morton fidgets. He is a restless man, content only in motion. When Rosecrans had decided to form the Pioneer Brigade, he’d chosen the brilliant West Point engineer to put the innovation into practice. But the brigade is unpopular with the many officers who begrudge the loss of their best craftsmen and mechanics. The infantrymen have an even lower opinion of the Pioneers, viewing them as slackers avoiding the dangers of combat.

  Stokes is one of the few who does not agree with the criticisms. He has seen Morton’s Pioneers accomplish prodigies of work, and expects that all the Union armies will soon field pioneer brigades. He has grown fond of Morton, who for all his intelligence seems to doubt his own judgment and needs it frequently validated by the older man. He pats Morton on the shoulder. “Don’t fidget, James. We’ll have our chance soon enough.”

  Morton brushes back his shoulder-length hair, a nervous gesture repeated a dozen times an hour. “I just hope my men haven’t forgotten how to fight. We’ve concentrated on quite other things lately. They’re a good deal more familiar with axes and shovels than rifle-muskets these days.”

  “I wouldn’t fear. They have pride in their brigade. That’s what men fight for. All the rest is forgotten in battle.”

  The smoke drifts away from Rousseau’s line. Morton lifts his field glasses. “I wish we weren’t in reserve again; it makes the waiting worse.” He stiffens. “That brigade to our front is gone. No, wait. There it is over to the right in that cedar brake. But they’ve left a hole.”

  Stokes studies the scene through his field glasses. “I guess you’ve got your wish; we’re no longer the second line.” He turns, finds he is talking to no one, sees Morton hurrying to his small staff to give orders. Stokes runs fingers through his rich, gray beard, lifts his field glasses to study the wide cottonfield beyond the pike. Below the hill, Battery B, Pennsylvania Light Artillery clatters off the turnpike and up the rise to unlimber to his left. Good, he thinks. We’re not the only ones to notice that the devil is about to demand his wages.

  The approaching Confederate line is made up of the 10th, 11th, 14th, and 15th Texas, unmounted cavalry regiments fighting as an infantry brigade under Brigadier General Matthew Ector. Their lack of horses has been an extreme irritant to the Texans. Ah, if they only had horses. Then they could make a proper charge, cross the fields with all the grandeur, glory, and poetry befitting the Texas character, which is not—goddamn it—a foot-slogging, toe-blistered, earth-bound spirit but a horse-mounted, hoof-thundering, come-heaven-or-hell spirit!

  But they don’t have horses, and the Texans have barely cleared the trees when two Yankee batteries open on them from a rise on the far side of the pike. Case shot howls overhead, exploding in white puffs and a rain of lead balls and iron fragments. The Texans hunch their shoulders, stride ahead.

  In the absence of instructions from McCown, Ector has repeated Rains’s mistake, ordering his assault before Harper’s brigade can move up on the right and Cleburne’s division can deploy on his left. At an oblique angle to the Texans’ advance, Brigadier General Sam Beatty’s Union brigade lies hidden in the grove of cedars surveyed a few moments before by Morton and Stokes. Beatty is related by neither blood nor temperament to the erudite, accomplished Colonel John Beatty. Sam Beatty is an Ohio farmer and county sheriff: phlegmatic, unpretentious, and quietly commanding. So far, he is concentrating on receiving the brigade he is sure will follow to Ector’s left. When it does not come, he frowns, shifts his chaw to the other cheek, and says to his adjutant: “Push out skirmishers. Tell them to whittle on the left of that advancing Reb line.”

  Five minutes later, a sharp volley from Beatty’s skirmishers hits the flank of Colonel Julius A. Andrews’s 15th Texas Cavalry on the left end of Ector’s line. Ector responds by wheeling the 15th and the 14th Texas toward Beatty, while the 10th and 11th Texas continue toward the pike. The 15th and 14th drive in Beatty’s skirmishers, pursuing them three hundred yards toward the trees, where Beatty’s main line waits. For years after, Beatty’s adjutant will shiver any time he hears a door latch click, recalling the sound made by twelve hundred musket hammers drawn back in the instant before the command Present! is given on Beatty’s line. Some of the men of the 15th and 14th Texas also hear the sibilance of the hammers cocking, but few can identify it before a sheet of flame, smoke, and lead lashes from the trees ahead.

  The volley stops the Texans in their tracks, but they are solid if unwilling infantry, do not break but stand and return fire. Colonel Andrews knows his men cannot hold for long in the open with a full Yankee brigade to their front and two Yankee batteries on their flank. He gallops down the line to find his brigade commander. Ector is behind the 14th Texas, encouraging the men in a duel with the 19th Ohio. “General, where’s the rest of the brigade?” Andrews shouts.

  Ector stares at him. “Well, I’m not quite sure, Colonel.”

  “We need support! We can’t carry that line with two regiments against a full brigade.”

  Ector considers this, the bullets whicking by him. “I suppose you’re right, Colonel. Take your men back. I’ll bring these.”

  Morton need not have worried about his Pioneers’ readiness for a fight. When Ector’s 10th and 11th Texas reach killing range, the Pioneers give a shout and pour a volley into the Rebel ranks. It is all Morton can do to keep his men from charging with the bayonet, but he holds them. When the Rebels begin giving way, he takes the Pioneers across the pike. The Texans are falling back in haste and Morton is tempted to pursue. But he stifles the notion, recalls Professor Mahan and his preachments that discretion, more than valor, determines the success of a commander. The line along the pike must hold, and this is no time for gambles by mere captains.

  Brigadier General Sam Beatty reaches the opposite conclusion and drives hard after the 14th and 15th Texas. As a sheriff, he knows two invariable rules for winning a brawl: sobriety is a far better weapon than whiskey; and never let a stumbling opponent regain his balance. Beatty’s brigade pursues the fleeing Texans back across the field and into the woods.

  Beatty is about to pull back when Major General Lovell Rousseau comes dashing from the rear. “Well done, General! Keep pushing them.” Beatty hesitates, for his brigade is from Van Cleve’s division, not Rousseau’s. “It’s all right, General!” Rousseau shouts. “Old Rosy’s coming with the rest!”

  Exactly who the hell the rest are is lost on Beatty, but he has what seems to be an order. He passes his first-line regiments to the rear, advances his second line to the front, and continues the pursuit.

  The referent dropped by Rousseau in his excitement incorporates the brigades of colonels James Fyffe and Charlie Harker. Rosecrans leads them out into the field to Beatty’s right. For the first time since daybreak, the Army of the Cumberland is launching a significant counterattack. Rosecrans is ecstatic. He sweeps sweat-limp hair from his forehead, gestures excitedly, gives commands almost too fast to follow. It falls to Garesché to translate when the general’s agitation overcomes his syntax and he begins to stutter.

  Garesché is likewise excited almost to the point of mania, and it takes all his self-discipline to appear calm. Please, God, he prays, don’t let this day end without seeing us triumphant. Deliver up the Rebels to us as you did the Amorites to the children of Israel when Joshua called on the sun to stand still upon Gideon.

  Major General George Thomas frowns at the sight of Rosecrans leading Fyffe and Harker’s brigades into the cottonfield. This is too early, he thinks. If the Rebel attack has spent its fury at this end of the field, good. But a counterattack should come only when the fight is going our way at all points. Then, when we have our feet under us, hit them hard.

  But Rosecrans is commander, and it is too late to advise him to hold position. Thomas rides at his customary slow trot up the pike, checking the batteries and their infantry
supports. He pauses at the rise to the left of the pike where Stokes has positioned the Chicago Board of Trade Battery with Morton’s Pioneers protecting to either side. Stokes salutes. “General.”

  Thomas smiles. “How are you, Jim?”

  “Exceedingly well. And you, George?”

  “Passable. What do you think of this advance?”

  Stokes stares across the field, runs a hand absently through his beard. “It would seem that the general is risking a great deal.”

  “Yes, a great deal. Be ready to support him if he loses the bet.”

  In most senses, Rosecrans has done a brilliant job in constructing the new line along the Nashville Pike. But in his rush to get brigades into line, he has seriously jumbled the chain of command, rendering Crittenden, McCook, and several division commanders supernumerary. Brigadier General Horatio Van Cleve, commanding Third Division, Crittenden’s wing, knows less about the counterattack than Sam Beatty or James Fyffe, whose brigades ostensibly belong to his division. Nor can he depend on Crittenden to inform him. Riding at the rear of Rosecrans’s staff, Van Cleve watches with disapproval as Crittenden takes another surreptitious nip from a flask. The man shouldn’t be here, he thinks. Utterly incompetent, and a sot besides.

  I shouldn’t be here either, he reminds himself. I’m an old Michigan farmer who graduated from the Academy when most of these generals and colonels were children. My God, McCook, Sheridan, and that lad Harker are young enough to be my sons. And Sill, poor boy. Van Cleve shakes his head, drops behind, signals his own small staff to follow him. Enough of this tagtailing. He will go with Beatty and Fyffe, see if he can be of any assistance.

  Van Cleve is surprised to find Beatty, Fyffe, and Harker nearly to the trees on the far side of the field. Good God, Rosecrans can’t mean to push beyond the cover of the artillery, can he? Not with so much undecided elsewhere. Surely we shouldn’t risk another crisis here. Van Cleve sets spurs to his horse, gallops forward to stop the advance. He will send back to Rosecrans for instructions, take it on his own head if he errs on the side of caution now.