Looking down at an open grave, Sergeant Major Garland White stiffened and slowly raised his right hand to his brow in salute. He knelt down on one knee, scooped up a handful of mud, and let it drop into the grave before him.
“From dust we come and to dust we shall return. Thus is the will of God. Amen.”
He stood back up and nodded a dismissal. At each grave one of the men knelt down and did the same, scooping up a handful of muddy earth and letting it trickle into the grave before they set to work with shovels. The ceremony—their ceremony—ended, and the men picked up shovels and started to fill in the graves.
Lost in prayerful thought, Garland White started to walk down the line of graves.
“Sergeant Major?”
He looked up. It was the man who had helped Lieutenant Grant carry the body out of the ambulance. The man stood before him, tears mingled with the rain. He tentatively raised his hand and extended it.
“Thank you.”
“Sir?”
He was not sure if this man was military or not. Looking closer at his uniform jacket, he saw no insignia of rank on his shoulders, but from long experience as a man of color, both in and out of the army—and not all that long ago as a slave—he hesitated, not sure of the gesture offered to him. The man took a step forward, open hand still extended.
“Sergeant Major, take my hand and thank you.”
He detected the hint of Ireland in the man’s voice. The gesture of equality was at times offered by abolitionists, but in the bitter world before the war, with men of color competing for work with the millions of impoverished immigrants leaving their famine-afflicted isle to seek refuge in America, there was little love lost between the two.
A bit nervous, he took the man’s hand, the grip solid. Looking into his eyes, Garland saw the emotion.
The handshake after several seconds became one of nervous embarrassment for both. Garland was not sure when to let go, but the man held his hand tight.
“That was my brother you helped to carry. Your prayer was for him.”
“Sir, I am so sorry,” was all Garland could say.
They released their grip. Garland was not sure what to say next, feeling that he should turn away and continue on with watching his men, but the man’s gaze held him.
“My name is James Reilly, and yours, Sergeant?”
“Garland White, sergeant major with the 28th United States Colored Troops, and again, sir, my deepest sympathy.”
James looked back at the grave, and Garland felt as if he should turn the man away. His men, now eager to get the job done and back to their barracks for breakfast, were hurriedly filling the grave in, half shoveling, half scooping the thick, wet mud back into the hole; the clods of earth and muddy water thumping against the body wrapped in cheap linen, covering it over.
James, as if in imitation of Garland, knelt down on one knee, scooped up a handful of mud, let it drop in, made the sign of the cross, and stood back up, nearly slipping as he did so. Garland instinctively reached out to steady him and prevented him from falling in.
“Thank you,” James whispered as he stepped back.
“Patrick was my half brother,” James said, voice flat, almost without emotion. “We were never close, but still, he was all the kin I had left in this world.”
He paused. As a preacher, Garland had presided over many a funeral long before he donned the uniform, and he knew when it was best to just let a man talk.
“My mother died from the famine on the boat coming over from Ireland. Dad brought me here to America. Drunkard he was, though a good man at heart. He met Patrick’s ma on the boat over here. She had no use for me, and I moved on a few years later. That was back in ’46 or so. We were never close, but when I heard he joined the army, I tried to see him whenever I could.”
“You are with the army, sir?” Garland asked after a long silence.
James shook his head.
“Artist. I’m with Harper’s Weekly, covering the war.”
James started to look back again to the grave, and Garland, seeing the way the mud and water were rising around the body, put a hand on James’s arm and turned him away, walking slowly.
“Your brother, then, was a soldier?” he asked.
James nodded.
“Told the lad not to join, but he was all afire to do his part. He was wounded three days ago at Cold Harbor,” his voice began to break again. “Lost his legs, both of them, by the time they got him back here to the hospital. Blood poisoning had him. I didn’t even know he was on the same boat as me until just before we docked, and I heard him call my name. I should have found him earlier. I should have…”
Garland stopped walking, looking back into James’s eyes.
“He is at peace now, sir.”
“Some peace. They couldn’t even give him a proper grave to himself.”
“I’ll make this pledge to you, sir. Later today I’ll bring some of the boys down, we’ll dig a grave, good and proper, lift him out of where he is now, rebury him, and make sure his cross is properly marked. Can you write his name down for me?”
“You would do that?”
“I would do that for any man,” Garland replied forcefully.
James started to make the gesture of reaching to his pocket for his wallet, but a look, almost of anger from Garland, stopped him.
“I will do that for a comrade, sir,” he said quietly but forcefully.
Embarrassed, James let his hand drop to his side.
“Thank you,” James whispered.
“No, sir, it is I who thank you.”
There was another awkward silence.
James looked past him to the long line of graves; the men filling them in.
“I’ll give you his name,” James said, and opening his haversack, he pulled out a battered sketchpad. Opening it, Garland could not help but see the man’s work. Some of it was incomprehensible: a scattering of quickly drawn lines, vague outlines of men, a flag, numbers around them, but as he turned the pages, several made him draw in his breath. A man clutching his abdomen and, merciful God, entrails spilling out; the face of a boy, dirt smeared, but the eyes hollow, empty as if he was gazing off to some distant place thousands of yards away; a man holding another, whose face was contorted, crying; a fence row, bodies draped over the rails, a note in the corner, “memory of Antietam”; men crouched against a trench, and on the back of each was a white square of paper with a name on it; a priest, kneeling in a trench, surrounded by dead, hand held up as if in benediction or anguished lament.
James flipped through the pages, Garland stood gazing at the images.
“My God,” he whispered. “Is that what it is really like?”
James looked up at him, eyes steady, and finally he just nodded, saying nothing.
He reached a blank page, took a pencil out of the haversack, and wrote down a name. He hesitated as he did so, his hands beginning to tremble.
“Are you all right, sir?”
James nodded, trying to force a smile.
“Just reminded me of something. I’m fine,” but his voice betrayed the truth. With shaking hand he wrote down Patrick’s name, age, and regiment. He tore off the corner of the sheet and handed it to Garland, who carefully took the piece of paper, folded it over, and put it into his breast pocket.
“I promise I shall see it done.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Major.”
There was another awkward silence as James looked down at the sketchpad, which was now splattered with raindrops.
“It seems like sacrilege, what I’m thinking.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“James, just James, please.”
Garland nodded.
“What do you think is sacrilege?”
“To sketch what I am seeing now.”
Garland looked back at his men.
“I think you should, sir. You have the gift of the artist. Things like this should be remembered. A history of it, you might say.”
“What?”
“Something I’ve thought about much,” Garland replied. “I hope that someday an historian will remember this sacrifice in blood.”
He hesitated, looking into James’s eyes.
“I think your brother would want you to draw it.”
James smiled.
“Thank you,” he hesitated, “Garland.”
“Men of the 28th!”
Garland turned and saw that Colonel Russell, surrounded by the other officers, was stepping out from under the tarp. Something was afoot, some of the officers were actually grinning, though more than a few were tight-lipped. The mixed reaction was hard to read.
Garland turned away from James and back to his men.
“Battalion, attention!”
The men laboring on, quickly filling the graves, looked up, falling silent.
Russell stepped closer, holding up a sheet of paper.
“Men of the 28th United States Colored Troops. We have received orders! We have been officially assigned to the First Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Ninth Corps. Men, we ship out tonight to join the Army of the Potomac! We are going to war!”
All stood as if struck dumb.
“Sergeant Major White. See that this detail is completed. March the men back to the barracks. All uniforms to be cleaned, all equipment packed, and ready to march to the docks at Alexandria by four this afternoon!”
“Three cheers for the Union lads!” one of the officers shouted. The cry was picked up—men holding up shovels, cheering, slapping each other on the back, laughing—some in their excitement all but dancing.
“Battalion!” Garland roared. “See to your work, men. See to your work!”
They fell back to their labor with enthusiasm, racing each other now to fill in their grave first.
“Merciful God.”
It was James.
Garland looked back at him, sketchpad in hand, a few lines already drawn, numbers and symbols dotting the rain soaked paper.
Garland gazed down at the pad as if to comment on the horrors it contained of the world they were now marching toward, and then just shook his head, saying nothing.
Again James could only nod.
Garland looked back to the grave of James’s brother, where all sense of ceremony had been forgotten. Men were eagerly pushing the earth in, mounding it over, tamping it down; one of them already hammering a single cross into the ground with the back of his shovel.
“I promise you before we leave, I’ll bring some men down here and make sure he is given his own grave. I promise.”
“I doubt if you will have time,” James sighed. “I know you mean it. Perhaps someday, someday after this war is over, we’ll do it together.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHITE HOUSE
JUNE 6, 1864
8 P.M.
Clutching a long scroll of flimsy telegraphy notepaper, President Abraham Lincoln stood by the open window of his office, head bowed, sheets of paper turned to catch the last light of the sun setting behind Arlington.
It was the latest dispatches from the fronts—all of them bad. In crises of the past, there had always been some glimmer of hope, except perhaps after Fredericksburg. A hope that a sharp riposte, an aggressive turn, could reverse fortune or news from one front counterbalance the bad news from another. He now had in place two of the most aggressive, tough, intensely willful generals of this war—Grant and Sherman—and they were stalled. A month into the campaign, started with such high hopes, the daily casualty lists were appalling—and there was no end in sight. Grant was just outside of Richmond, Sherman only halfway to Atlanta, and yet they were checkmated. Their armies were stalled in squalid trenches; the nation stunned by casualty rates averaging two thousand men a day.
He hoped the military telegraph line into the Treasury building was truly secure, for today’s dispatches portended far worse than usual—perhaps upward of ten thousand men lost in one futile charge, no more than twenty minutes in duration. At Fredericksburg it had taken eight hours to pile up such a casualty list; now it could be done in a matter of minutes.
He did not need to ask what the nation would say to this. Grant had ordered censorship from the front lines, arguing that revealing the casualty rate would provide useful intelligence to the enemy.
The argument was, of course, as hollow as a dried-out gourd. The enemy could count the bodies easily enough. And so could the reporters who were slipping back to their publishers with the truth. It was devastating news that could not be contained much longer.
At the cabinet meeting this morning, with rumors already swirling in the streets outside this very building, he could sense the mood. Stanton was melancholy. There was animosity between Stanton and Grant, the man who now commanded all Union armies in the field. The asthmatic lawyer was biding his time, waiting for the public outcry to reach a thunderous roar. Then he would make his move against Grant. If by some miracle Grant did take Richmond, Edwin would, of course, be the first to lay claim to that victory.
And then there was the little Napoleon, George McClellan. Even while leading the army to defeat—on nearly the identical battlefield two years ago—the press had hailed him, blaming the administration. McClellan’s agents and supporters launched a whisper campaign that a sure victory had been thrown away by the President, an amateur at war, who had interfered with the carefully laid out battle plans and thus triggered a disaster—a disaster that was now bleeding the nation to death two years later.
In two months McClellan would, without a doubt, clinch his party’s nomination. Though McClellan claimed he would support the war’s continuation after winning the election, the party platform—which was being written at that moment by Copperhead Clement Vallandigham of Ohio—demanded an end to the conflict; a conflict led, the Peace Democrats claimed, by the abolitionists and “King Lincoln, the Butcher.”
His personal secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, tried to conceal the worst of it from him; however, all he needed to do was walk down Pennsylvania Ave., to the corner by the Willard Hotel, and chat with “Ole Moses,” a black man who ran the corner newsstand. There he could get the latest papers from New York and Chicago and learn the truth about public opinion. As he opened the papers, Moses would stand silent, head lowered, perhaps whispering, “Never you mind that, Mr. President, it ain’t nothing to fret about, we are with you.”
What would Moses’ papers say tomorrow? Surely this news could not be kept hidden forever.
He looked back out to the river. Steam tugs were busy marshalling ships in and out of the docks at Alexandria.
Stanton had mentioned at the meeting this morning that a convoy of troop ships, actually empty hospital ships, would leave this evening. More troops were being stripped out of the garrison of Washington, over his personal objection, to be sent up as replacements, to feed the voracious appetite of war. In this case, however, Stanton was not very upset, because it was nine regiments of USCT who had filed into the city over the previous month.
“Mr. President?”
He turned. It was his secretary, John Nicolay, the door half open.
“Your guest is here, sir.”
Lincoln nodded, returning to his desk, dropping the dispatches.
“Show our friend in, John.”
Even Nicolay, trusted as he was, did not know the reason this visitor had appeared at a side entrance to the White House, presenting a note in the President’s hand stating: ADMIT THIS BEARER WHENEVER HE SHOULD CALL AND BRING HIM TO ME AT ONCE REGARDLESS OF THE HOUR.
Nicolay opened the door wider and stood curious for a moment. The man entering wore a battered officer’s jacket. It had been brushed clean, but it bore the well-worn look of a man who had been up on the front lines for some time.
“Thank you, John, and please close the door,” Lincoln said with a smile.
Nicolay, obviously filled with curiosity at this strange visit, hesitated for a second, but a sharp look from his President caused him to lower his head with a nod
and carefully close the door, which latched shut.
“James,” Lincoln announced, coming around from behind his desk, right hand extended. “I am so glad you could finally come. Please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss.”
Despite their being old friends, James Reilly stiffened slightly, almost coming to attention, and took Lincoln’s hand. The President’s grasp was warm and firm as Lincoln let his left hand go to James’s shoulder, squeezing him tightly.
“I am sorry I did not report at once, sir. I hope you understand.”
“James, sit down, I received your note. There is no need for apology.”
He could detect the faint scent of whiskey on the man’s breath. The curse of the Irish, some called it, but under these circumstances he could forgive it. He guided his friend over to a chair by the window, where they could sit and catch a hint of the cooling breeze wafting in after a hot day of humid rain and mists.
James settled into the chair with a sigh; Lincoln motioned to an ashtray by the side of the chair, and said, “It’s fine with me if you smoke.”
James nodded his thanks, pulled out a half-smoked cigar from his breast pocket, and struck a match on the side of his boot. Lincoln could see the man had made an attempt to clean up, albeit with little result, and waited patiently as James puffed the cigar to life.
He had known James for over fifteen years. A half-starved lad of eighteen or so, he had appeared at his office one day, looking for work, willing to trade a day of labor cleaning the dusty clutter of his office in exchange for a meal, a place to sleep on the floor, and after tough negotiations, twenty cents for his pocket. Illinois had been flooded with such men at that time. Bedraggled Irish by the thousands had come, streaming westward, looking for any kind of work. It had saddened him to turn so many of them away, but on that particular day the building’s regular janitor had disappeared yet again, and he had just won a case with a handsome retainer. But despite that, there was something about the lad that caught his attention.
James had ensconced himself in the office, as if it had become his territory to defend with life and limb, rendering it spotless during the day. At night Lincoln would find him buried in a book from his library. He encouraged him to consider the law, but James showed another talent. One day he found the young man asleep on the floor and scattered around him were half-a-dozen sketches that made him sit down and burst out laughing, awaking James with a frightened start. They were the most remarkable, entertaining caricatures of himself, long limbed, sitting in his chair, leaning back, hugely oversized feet plopped on his desk, pantlegs halfway up to his knees revealing socks that had snapped their garters and were sagging into his shoes. Another sketch showed him laughing, oversized head thrown back, and another—one he still had in his possession—was a serious study of him, looking out a window, as if gazing off to some distant land.
The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (George Washington Series) Page 4
