Stonewall Goes West: A Novel of The Civil War and What Might Have Been (Stonewall Goes West Trilogy)

by Thomas, R. E.

  Serving under Stonewall Jackson was proving to have some rewards, Polk thought. But then again, this prize would have been so much richer if I had plucked it myself, all on my own. And I certainly would have plucked it, had not Jackson stuck his nose into my business.

  Minutes later, the procession arrived at a modest brick house built in the Federal style, the one-time Columbia home of his second cousin, James K. Polk, the 11th President of the Old Union. Another band waited on the lawn, playing “Dixie” as General Polk came to a stop.

  He knew Sarah, James Polk’s widow, was ensconced at the Polk mansion in Nashville. That suited him fine. She was obstinately neutral regarding the current war, and he would just as well not embarrass the dear lady by using this house as his headquarters today, with her unhappy and still in residence.

  “Make this our headquarters for now,” Polk shouted “but do not get to comfortable gentlemen. As soon as the bridge is repaired, we will cross to the north bank of the Duck and continue our pursuit of the foe!”

  As several of his officers dismounted, Polk said “Now, I’m going down to the river, to have a look at this bridge.”

  Several miles away, Frank Cheatham rode among his troops, who were lying down in wait just out of sight of Davis Ford. Although still foggy-headed from his concussion, he was not about to allow men from his division to make a major attack without him.

  He rode hatless among the troops of Maney’s Brigade, displaying his bandaged head. “Boys, two days ago I promised you Nashville. I know you are tired, and I know you are hungry. One more hard push, and we’ll cool our feet in the Cumberland and feast in the Athens of the South!”

  Maney’s men cheered, and after a few more words of encouragement, Cheatham rode up to the top of the low hill where the command party stood. Dismounting clumsily, he joined Cleburne and Forrest, who were quietly chatting. Jackson stood apart, studying the ground through his field glasses. He didn’t like what he saw.

  Davis Ford lay at the end of a peninsula, formed by a sharp bend in the Duck. The elevated north bank dominated the south, and although there was a hill in the center of that peninsula, the tight confines limited how many guns he could put on it to cover the attack. Worst of all, the ford emptied into a little notch. Hasty breastworks completely enclosed that notch, making it into a veritable murder hole.

  Forrest had probed the ford the night before, and found it strongly defended by enemy troopers. Whoever goes in there is going to be massacred, Jackson thought. But we must pursue. The sacrifice must be made. God’s will.

  Jackson nodded to the waiting artillerists. They had worked all night bringing up the guns through the throng of fleeing slaves, Unionists, and draft dodgers who clogged the back roads, and up onto line. Despite the confined space, dawn saw over 20 guns in place. The cannons fired in massed volleys at the Federal breastworks, filling that part of the Duck valley with smoke and producing such thunderous noise that windows shook in Columbia.

  Nathan and Willie were lying down with the rest of their regiment, behind a line of trees in a freshly plowed field near the bellowing line of Confederate cannons. Nathan watched grimly as shot and shell tore up the small area right around the ford.

  The guns stopped and the bugles sounded. Maney’s Brigade rose and advanced at the quick step, General Maney on foot and leading from the front. As fagged out as his men were, quick step and no faster was the most he felt he could ask of them.

  His regiments fanned out, some to each side of the ford, protecting the flanks of the main attack. The 41st Tennessee picked up the pace to a dead run, rapidly splashing across the gravel riverbed and the knee-deep water. Shots cracked out, and Willie felt a ball whiz past his cheek.

  Upon reaching the other side, most of the men threw themselves down onto the sloping ground, behind trees and shrubs. The colonel and the colors kept moving forward though, and Nathan kept going too, passing everyone by. Behind him came Willie, and after getting back on their feet, Corporal Marks and Sergeant Halpern. The rest of the company followed, as if dragged along at the end of a tether, and behind them the regiment.

  Nathan sprinted up the wooded slope, up onto the parapet, and over to the other side. It was only then that he realized he hadn’t been shot at, that the Yankee works were deserted. Panting, he could see Yankees through the trees, mounting on horses and riding away, and couldn’t have cared less. He plopped down just as the others started coming over the low dirt embankment.

  Corporal Marks dropped his musket and bent over, huffing and puffing as he propped himself up, hands above his knees. Willie plopped down on the embankment. Halpern pulled his hat off, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The four men looked at each other, and started laughing.

  On the other side of the Duck, Jackson watched with satisfaction. If the Yankee cavalry had held this ground, they could have delayed the pursuit all morning. Pulling out was a mistake. The hand of Providence was in it.

  Now his plan could proceed. Cheatham and Forrest would cross here. Cleburne’s Division, now under Lucius Polk’s command, would cross by means of the western fords. Stewart’s Corps was somewhere to the east, probably about halfway to Lewisburg by now. The enemy was further north, but Stewart had a clear road, and had fed his men on captured supplies. God willing, Stewart would overtake the enemy today.

  Jackson mounted his horse, pulling himself up with his good, increasingly strong right arm. He knew he should return to Columbia, to see those bridges for himself. Instead, he rode down to Huey’s Mill, down by the ford.

  He went inside the empty mill house, and once inside, knelt in prayer, offering thanks for their progress so far, and the easy river crossing. Jackson did not mention catching the enemy in his prayers, for that was already written. A good Christian thanked his God often, but asked for little, or best still, nothing at all.

  9:00 a.m.

  Buford’s Cavalry Division, Army of Tennessee, CSA

  Franklin, Tennessee

  Buford’s two remaining cavalry brigades departed Lewisburg for Franklin before dawn, riding down the Lewisburg Pike. As the approached the Duck River that morning, the troopers could hear the muffled thunder of artillery firing to the west, from Columbia, and that distant rumbling lent the tired horsemen a spurt of energy. They rode on, reaching Hurt’s Crossroads around 9 o’clock, where Buford sent scouts probing out to the north and west while he rested his men.

  Before 11 that morning, Buford knew that McPherson’s main body was passing through Spring Hill by way of the Columbia Pike, en route to Franklin. Forrest was dogging McPherson’s heels, but Stewart and his infantry were still about 10 miles behind.

  Unknowingly following the example of his cousin, the northern cavalry general John Buford, Abe Buford elected to get in front of McPherson’s column. He took up a blocking position south of Franklin on the Columbia Pike, astride Winstead Hill and Breezy Hill. As some Billies were already present inside the old fortifications of Franklin, Buford also posted a screening force in his rear, on Privet Knob and facing the town.

  There he stayed for two hours, stalling McPherson and repulsing repeated, mounting assaults on his position until the garrison in Franklin finally stirred, moving against his rear. Buford withdrew before he could be trapped between the blue pincers, falling back to the Lewisburg Pike and on south for five miles, to Goose Creek. It was there that he finally made contact with Stewart, riding ahead of his column with a strong escort.

  Stewart’s blood was up, so he dispensed with pleasantries. “General Buford, your report, sir?”

  As Stewart listened to Buford relate the details of his stand on the Columbia Pike, he regretted that Buford had not sent back for further instructions. He would have directed Buford to abandon any blocking effort in favor of seizing Hughes’s Ford, a crossing of the Harpeth River only a few miles east of Franklin. Keeping McPherson out of Franklin wasn’t half as important at this stage as securing a good river crossing and getting in front of him. Stewart knew if he could do that,
he could bottle McPherson up in Franklin, and make his destruction inevitable.

  So Stewart stopped Buford before he could finish his report. “Get your command turned around, General Buford, and go to Hughes’s Ford. It’s three miles right down this very pike. My infantry isn’t far behind, and you’ll have some support before nightfall.”

  “What if the Yankees have the ford, sir?”

  Stewart spoke sharply. “Attack them. We must have that crossing.”

  Buford drove his exhausted men and horses as hard as they could bear, but arrived at Hughes’s Ford to find the Saber Brigade already there, still in the midst of deploying. Buford dismounted his men and led a charge, which was quickly and bloodily repulsed by a hail of bullets, Buford himself coming away wounded in his sword hand. Just before dark, the first of Stewart’s infantry brigades arrived, threw itself into one last charge, and that too was thrown back. During the night a truce was quietly arranged, allowing the southerners to drag their dead and wounded out of the shallow waters and off the banks of the Harpeth.

  May 8

  Army of Tennessee, CSA

  Franklin, Tennessee

  At daybreak, Jackson found McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee heavily dug in on the outskirts of Franklin. Weary Billies had worked through the night, extending and improving the town’s existing fortifications. Now all of Logan’s XV Corps was behind thick, log-reinforced embankments, fronted by a series of four-foot wide, three-foot deep ditches and rows of sharpened stakes.

  To make matters worse, Jackson readily saw that any attacking force approaching the northern half of this fortress, by way of Carter’s Creek Pike, had to cross more than a mile of nearly open ground. An attack on the southern half could come up from behind the woods to within half a mile, but that end was further protected by dense hedges of thorny orange-osange, and covered by the rifled cannon jutting out of from the embrasures of Fort Granger, located on the north side of the Harpeth River and beyond his reach.

  Jackson quickly concluded that any frontal assault on Franklin would be bloody and futile. Wherever it was made, the infantry would have to cross at least several hundred yards of open country under fire, go through or around two or three separate layers of barriers, and then storm the fortifications. Nor could he flank Franklin’s fortifications directly, since they were anchored snugly into a bend of the Harpeth.

  Anticipating this eventuality the night before, Jackson had already dispatched Forrest and all his cavalry to find a crossing of the Harpeth, secure it, and gain the Federal rear. Forrest found that Minty had already posted his worn troopers at the nearer fords, and through the morning McPherson replaced these with detachments of infantry from Sweeney’s Division. Forrest did not find a suitable, unguarded crossing of the Harpeth until early afternoon, almost 15 road miles east of Franklin.

  As soon as he received Forrest’s message about the discovery of an open ford on the Harpeth, Jackson put Stewart’s and Hood’s Corps, the latter now under Cleburne, into motion. Hungry and footsore, the Johnnies arrived at the ford only well after dark, and then spent all night trudging across the Harpeth.

  McPherson used that day to rest his men, and to rebuild and improve Franklin’s standing railroad bridge and its demolished wagon bridge, all the while hoping that Jackson would be foolish enough to attack him. After dark, while Stewart and Cleburne were crossing the Harpeth downriver, McPherson quietly moved the XV Corps across the repaired bridges, ordered the bridges fired behind them, and marched for Nashville.

  May 9

  4:00 am

  Headquarters, Army of the Tennessee, CSA

  Harrison House off the Columbia Pike

  Franklin

  Jackson slept fitfully, propped up against a tree. He was exhausted, but both painfully hungry and terribly restless, and waiting anxiously for the arrival of dawn’s first light. Sleep neither came or stayed easily, and upon waking one time too many, he checked his watch and decided to get up.

  The headquarters was quiet as Jackson went looking for the duty officer. They stared at each other for a minute, minds thickened with sleepy weariness, unable to fully recognize each other. The duty officer’s memory sparked first, and he snapped into attention and gave a salute. Jackson saluted back, and only then remembered who the man was: Captain Quintard, one of the newer aides, recruited from the Army of Tennessee, and not one of his Virginia men.

  “Saddle my horse and muster an escort,” Jackson said quietly. “I want to have a look around.”

  “Yessir,” Quintard whispered back. “Shall I wake Colonel Pendleton, sir?”

  “Sandie?” Jackson shook his head, looking at Harrison house, where his senior staff slept on the floors. “No, let him sleep.” He needs the rest, Jackson thought, and would cluck like some fretful hen over the idea of my going on reconnaissance anyway.

  The thought of a worrying Sandie gave him pause, for here he was intending to go forward, beyond his own lines, bending if not breaking his word. But Jackson couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. He had to do something, to go and see for himself. So, he rationalized his choice away by saying either the Yankees would be in their works or they would not, and if they were he certainly would not do anything so foolish as to ride right up to them.

  He also had no intention of putting Sandie, Smith, or any of the others needlessly into harm’s way. While he lost an arm that night at Chancellorsville, several of his aides were killed in the same accident. He would go with a minimal escort, nothing more.

  Jackson studied the house while he waited for his horse, a fine brick mansion with a beautiful, two-story colonnaded porch. Just north of the Tennessee River, the country had the feel of his childhood home deep in the Virginia mountains, a place of villages and crude log cabins. This place reminded him more of the place he had chosen to settle in and raise a family in the Shenandoah, a place of prosperous people, well-settled with good homes made of brick.

  The South was like that, he thought. As many places just clawed back from the frontier as were genteel and showed refinement.

  A small escort was mounted, and as soon as Jackson had pulled himself up into his saddle one-armed, they set out down the Columbia Pike in the early morning gloom. Once they were out of sight, Quintard hurried off to wake Sandie Pendleton. The Colonel had left strict orders with the staff that he was to be woken whenever Jackson was up, and Quintard was not about to cross the army’s chief of staff, no matter what the commanding general said.

  Riding over the hills, Jackson could see little in the dim light of the early morning. He hushed his escort and advanced slowly up the road, listening for any signs of Yankee pickets. There were none. As the sun crept over the horizon, they came before the ramparts of Franklin. As he had expected, there wasn’t a Yankee in sight.

  “Send word of this back to headquarters,” Jackson said flatly, to no one in particular. “Order up the engineers, and have them meet me at the Harpeth bridges.” As one of the escorts turned his horse around and galloped back to the Confederate camp, Jackson struggled to maneuver his mount through the series of earthworks protecting the opening that admitted the Columbia Pike into town, ignoring how much easier the passage was for his escort party. His horsemanship had always been subpar, much to his embarrassment.

  Jackson soon found himself looking upon the smoking ruins of Franklin’s railroad and wagon bridges. He knew McPherson had been thought one of West Point’s most promising young engineering officers before the war, and that promise showed here. Not only were the bridge decks and superstructures burnt away to nothing, but the piers had been badly damaged by demolition charges.

  The stone piers of the railroad bridge were repairable, Jackson thought, given time. The wooden wagon bridge was a complete loss. My pontoon train was behind the supply wagons, at the end of a slow column that should be in Columbia now, 25 miles away. No one would cross the Harpeth from here until tomorrow morning, at the earliest.

  He scowled, despite himself. McPherson had escaped him
. Even though Stewart’s Corps should be on the road by now, and Forrest had advance cavalry as far as Nolensville, McPherson would reach Nashville. He was as certain of this as he was of the reasons why it had happened.

  The prideful Yankees had been deceived, and he had succeeded in bringing a larger army into Tennessee than the one sent to meet him. Providence laid the prospect of a great victory before the South, a victory that would have opened the road to winning the war, to winning independence. If he had destroyed McPherson at Lawrenceburg, Sherman would have had no choice but to quit Georgia, leave a garrison in Chattanooga, and march the bulk of his army to defend Nashville.

  Instead, it was all undone by wicked and worthless men within his own army. The treachery of Loring, the sloth and stupidity of Featherston, the weakness among so many of the common soldiers. The last part was especially painful. If they had caught up to McPherson yesterday, if only for a little while, Stewart would have arrived in time to smash the Federal flank. His soldiers had their orders, but they couldn’t keep up, and all for a few biscuits. A third of his army was straggled back 60 miles, all the way to Lawrenceburg. Many of his men had made a valiant effort, had done their duty, but many others had not.

  Bullets thwacked against the house behind him, confirming the enemy’s presence on the opposite bank. Just as at Columbia, he thought, cavalry would no doubt continue to secure the crossings for much of the morning. Jackson grunted and withdrew to greater safety behind the house, a concession to his promises regarding reckless exposure, where he was met soon after by the engineers.

  Leaning against a brick wall, Jackson ordered “Inspect the railroad bridge piers and begin repairs. Also, send a courier to Generals Stewart and Forrest. Halt the pursuit, withdraw to the south banks of the Harpeth, and await further direction.”