As he rode in front of his line, the colonel of the 25th Foot watched the blue wave veer to the right of his line and head straight for the Canadian 19th Battalion. He was puzzled as their line broke up with groups here and there going to ground wherever the earth wrinkled. The group under cover would fire, and another group rushed forward. There were too many to he light infantry. What was this attack by rushes? He grew alarmed as the enemy's artillery concentrated on his men where they stood on the northern bank of the creek. That was the point. He did not see the Americans slipping through the orchards to get close to his Borderers. He never felt the bullet that went through his brain.
Just as the senior British officer on that side of the field slid lifeless from his horse, Geary seemed to lead a charmed life. For all of his six foot and six inches and 260 pounds, the Union division commander knew how to make the best use of ground to get close to an enemy without getting hurt. Geary's body seemed to attract lead, and his body wore the scars of ten wounds from two wars. They were a cumulative lesson he had taken to heart. A Mexican War veteran but not a regular Army man, he had raised two Pennsylvania regiments and risen by merit to command a good division. His timely reinforcement of Culp's Hill at Gettysburg had saved the position. Now he was using the gently rolling farmland to get his command as close as possible to the enemy without having to cross an unnecessary inch of the beaten zone, that clear and deadly space over which men had to advance while under fire. The average soldier heartily endorsed that approach, and in every theater of the war had responded to the killing power of modern weapons with a strong dose of applied common sense. Instead of attacking in tight ranks, they rushed from cover to cover in small groups while others covered them with fire. It was not a lesson the British had learned in the Crimea or the Mutiny, much less in China.
Geary's regiments were working in pairs. One would rush forward to the next fold while another from the edge of the previous position would fire. To a parade ground soldier, it was hideously disjointed and defied every sense of military order. It was also the voice of experience. The Americans had too much experience of the killing range of their rifled weapons. The British were firing by volleys ineffectually. Their targets had gone to earth before the command to fire could be given. Yet the aimed fire of the Americans from behind whatever shelter they could find was dropping red-coated bodies as they stood in their ranks. Geary had passed on Hooker's instructions to concentrate on the Canadians. He understood at once that these glorified militiamen had not really soldiered as much as marauded through the Hudson Valley. Hooker had said to him, "Give them a full dose of war, Geary. Don't let them learn by little sips. Make them gag on it all at once. Peel them away from the British."12
Col. David Ireland's brigade rose from its latest covered position and with the shout of "Out! Out!" fired a volley and rushed forward. The Canadian 19th Battalion opposite, already shredded by shell fire, staggered back from the shock, almost every third man down. It was too much for men whose battalion had only been formed that March to drill together a scant eight days. They broke. The New Yorkers chased after them, leaping into the creek and up the other bank, bayoneting every man they caught before rounding up a hundred prisoners. Then Ireland swung them around to roll up the Borderers. The commander of the brigade reserve, 10th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Toronto, brought his men up smartly to cover the flank and walked right into Ireland's charge. With better officers and more time together as a battalion, they stood their ground. But Ireland's New York regiments had been worked up into a rage at the burned towns they had marched through. "Out! Out!" They shouted before tearing off a cartridge paper end with their teeth. "Out! Out!" It was the same rage that came from the Saxon shield wall as they shouted, "Out! Out!" to the Norman knights massing below on Hastings Field. But this time the invader would have no lucky arrow to win the battle. In fifteen minutes, half the Toronto men were lying dead or wounded where they had stood, the survivors falling back onto their Imperial battalion's flank, followed by shouts of, "Out! Out!"13
From his vantage point, Hooker was more than pleased at the collapse of the enemy flank. He hoped he would not have to wait long for Paulet to take the bait and commit his reserve, the Guards. As soon as it moved to the flank, he would hit with Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams's 1st Division and collapse the other flank. By then Meagher and his XI Corps should be coming down on their rear. Unfortunately, Meagher would be delayed.
WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:10 Ann, OCTOBER 28, 1863
It took almost an hour for the wind to shift enough to place Lowe's balloon over another British ship. No stouter ship ever flew the Union Jack than HMS Spiteful. The terrifying destruction of Racer had only egged her on. She came right up to the Navy Yard dock, her side wheels foaming, firing directly into the Dahlgren battery. Her gun crews worked with the speed and precision of steam piston arms, though the Dahlgren shells had torn great holes in her and strewn the red-painted decks with splinters and bodies. Her funnel had been shot off, leaving only a stump that spread smoke over the deck instead of into the air above. She slowly got the upper hand as Greyhound drew near to lend her guns to the fight. Powerful as the American guns were, they were practically naked. There had been no time to build proper earthworks to shelter them. Scanty piles of bricks and timbers were no substitute at this range. One Dahlgren was dismounted by a 32-pounder's ball. Another crew was swept away by the deck-mounted carronade. A wagon with powder charges rushing up to the battery exploded from another hit, decimating the rest of the gun crews and hurling bodies like rag dolls in every direction. The blast threw the body of the Yard commander over his guns and into the water only yards from Spiteful. Her gun crews rushed to the ship's sides to raise a cheer.
Lowe and Cushing watched in horror as the battery died. They had only two shells and the boxes of grenades left. Frantically, they tore open the last two boxes. The lieutenant's hands raced over the first shell as he prepared and lit it. In one fluid motion, the lieutenant rose and hung it over the side to center it on the ship. Spiteful was directly below. He let go. The two stared over the basket edge as the shell fell straight down to the ship. The seconds seemed to last forever as it fell. It was a perfect hit on the quarterdeck between the guns. Then it just bounced over the side to sink to the bottom, the river water racing through the mealed powder and overtaking the slow flame.14
The two did not waste time on a "damn" but prepared the last shell. Spiteful was steaming up to the dock now. Seconds mattered or she would no longer be beneath the balloon. Spiteful's captain had seen the shell bounced across his deck and knew he had to get his ship out of the way. His Marines were shooting at the balloon and its crew. In record time, Cushing had the shell suspended over the side of the basket. Lowe held him by the belt as the lieutenant leaned over the side and extended his arms to give him an extra foot. Down it went, sparks flying off its burning fuse. It hit barely on the stern deck and bounced forward amidships in an arc that ended in the funnel's stump. Down it went into the smoking opening.
Lowe and Cushing were peering over the edge of the basket as the shell disappeared. Then the ship shuddered, and red flame shot out of the funnel stump. Inside, the engines had disintegrated when the shell exploded to rupture the boilers, flooding the engineering compartment with scalding steam. Spiteful just drifted on momentum now to crash into the wharf. The funnel stump was a fire spout, and flames licked over the decks. Men jumped over the side onto the wharf to scramble over the scattered piles of bricks and timbers that had defended the battery so poorly. The captain was the last man off as his ship became a torch.15
HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU, LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:30 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863
Sharpe rushed out of his headquarters and had one foot in the stirrup when he saw the president striding across the square, forcing two soldier guards and Wilmoth to run after him. Immediately, Sharpe noticed the drawn pistol in his lieutenant's hand and that Lincoln was wearing a bl
oody bandage instead of his normal stovepipe hat. Sharpe threw the reins to a guard and ran over to greet him. He was shocked to see the caked blood on the president's head and face.
"Mr. President!" he barely had time to say when Lincoln waved him off. There was a hardness to his face, an anger Sharpe had never seen before. "Sir, what has happened?"
"I don't think Mr. Baker will be picking my bodyguards any longer. I think you should pick up that office, General." A few words of explanation left Sharpe shaken.
"Sir, I should never have removed Major Tappen's men. I hold myself responsible."
"Nonsense, Sharpe. The military guard has always been there to protect me from the outside. All the army outside the White House would not have protected me from an enemy inside. But Providence averted the assassin's hand. Providence and this young man." He pulled Wilmoth forward. Sharpe saw the deep gash across his forehead. For the first time, Lincoln's face softened. He smiled and said, "Every time I see this young man, he gets promoted. I thought that Lieutenant Colonel Wilmoth just rolls off the tongue better than Captain Wilmoth. That reminds me-" He paused. "That reminds me that we need action now."
"If we are not too late, Mr. President. Lowe's balloon reports that the enemy landed at the 6th and 7th Street wharves, dashed up to the Long Bridge, seized it, then marched across to the Virginia side. I expect they're going to attack Fort Runyon from the rear. If they succeed, you will see Lee riding up to your house within an hour or two. I was about to join my regiment."
"Well, Sharpe, I see you have another horse here. Let's go."
Sharpe mounted up. This was a man you did not argue with.
Before the two men left, Mrs. Keckley came running up to Lincoln and handed him his stovepipe hat. "Mrs. Lincoln said you would need this, Mr. President." And off she went.
They found the 120th and the Horse Marines under the shelter of the trees at the south end of the Presidential Park. As they rode up, Tappen called the regiment to attention and presented arms. As three hundred rifles snapped to present honors, Lincoln lifted his hat in acknowledgment. There were gasps at the sight of his bloody bandage.
Sharpe sent the Horse Marines out first to scout the approaches to the Long Bridge. As soon as the cavalry galloped off, he ordered Tappen to move out after them. The column marched out of the Presidential Gardens and onto 14th Street with its dozen coffee mill guns. Word spread of the attempted assassination and Lincoln's killing of the assassin. The men were extraordinarily impressed.
The few refugees still in the city made way for them. Here and there a house burned, flames spreading to the others on either side with no one left to put out the fires. The rumble of guns echoed up from the fighting at the Navy Yard, but the noise of battle from across the river drowned out that fight the nearer they got. The column crossed the fetid Tiber Creek canal over one of its arched iron bridges and marched across the base of the Mall with the Washington Monument on their right, closed off by the wooden slaughter-pen walls. All they could see from the tree-lined street was the observation balloon floating high behind Fort Runyon. Rising sharply above the rumble of cannon across the river not too far ahead was the crackle of small arms.
Two of Sharpe's cavalrymen came dashing down the street toward them. They pulled up sharply. A lieutenant gasped out, "General, the bridge is held by a regiment with four guns. We're engaging from the few nearby houses."
A man in the ranks cried out, "Look, my God, look!" All eyes went forward. The balloon above Fort Runyon had flared in an intense yelloworange flame. The burning remnant of the balloon and its basket plummeted downward, throwing the four men aboard out to twist and writhe on fire as they plunged to their deaths.16
On the Virginia side, a Confederate sniper stood up in awe at what he had done with the handful of explosive bullets he had been issued. His friends whooped and pounded his back in exaltation.
They had more to celebrate. Cooke's column had rushed through Fort Jackson, defending the Virginia end of the Long Bridge. Its garrison had been taken totally unaware. Cooke's regiments had rushed the next half mile and blown their way through Fort Runyon's rear gate while the garrison's attention had been fixed to its front and flanks. The fort fell quickly. Lee wasted no time sending a fresh brigade straight for the Long Bridge. In twenty minutes, the first double-timing ranks reached the edge of the mile-long bridge and thundered onto its planks.
At the head of the column, the gallant figure of Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon led his six Georgia regiments. Gordon had laughed as he spurred his black charger onto the bridge and under the sign that said, "Walk Your Horses." Lee had recommended Gordon for this role, for no man in the two years of war had proven more able to ride speed and audacity to success than the handsome Georgian. At the rear of the brigade, his division commander, Major General Early, hurried on the regiments of his other brigades. Lee rode over to sit Traveller next to Early. When he appeared, the columns cheered wildly, waving their hats. They could taste sweet victory as they were driving into the heart of the hated Union, a living dagger. All they had to do was cross that one wooden mile.
At that moment, the Tar Heels of the 15th on the Washington end of the bridge were huddled behind their barricades trying to return the rapid repeater fire from enemies hidden in the nearby houses. Twenty men already had been picked off. Their colonel, William McCrae, looked nervously at his watch, repeating to himself Cooke's last words, "Hold until relieved. Hold until relieved."
STOTTVILLE, NEW YORK, 10:45 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863
When two enemies unexpectedly find each other on the same road, it is called a meeting engagement. And that is just what Maj. Gen. Adolph von Steinwehr realized when his 2nd Division entered Stottville from the east and ran straight into an enemy brigade that had just entered the town from the west. Von Steinwehr's was the lead division of Meagher's XI Corps. Early that morning, Meagher had led his two divisions in a long march to the east in order to swing west above Hudson and then descend on the British from the rear. Hooker's plan was to hold the British with XII Corps while XI Corps encircled them. It was a good plan, but the enemy had a plan, too, as Hooker had discovered at Chancellorsville. In this case, though, the British arrived because of an interrupted plan. When Custer's Wolverines had cut the railroad from Albany, Paulet's last two brigades detrained where the track was broken, joined up with the survivors of the brigade from the wrecked train, and struck out on the most direct road to Hudson. That took them into the small town of Stottville.
Von Steinwehr was a good soldier. Born in Brunswick, Germany, he had earned a commission in the Prussian Army and served six years before resigning to immigrate to America. He got into the war by raising a regiment of German Americans and rose through ability to command a division. It was his division that had the worst luck in American military history to hold the right flank at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. He had played both had hands well, and his reputation had not suffered. His superiors continued to think of him as "cool, collected, and judicious." He was uniformly admired as intelligent and agreeable.
It was his coolness that mattered now. For in a meeting engagement, the commander who strikes first and hardest seizes the moral and physical ascendancy. Luckily, he had a lead regiment willing to take the bit in its teeth, the 154th New York-the Hardtack Regiment-recruited from all over the state. The corps scouts had come racing back to the head of the column as it entered Stottville from the east, spreading the word that the road through the town heading south was full of marching redcoats. Von Steinwehr rode to the head of the regiment and pointed with his sword. "Die Fienden sind da! Vorwaerts!" No translation was necessary.
They emerged from a side street straight onto marching Canadians who were too surprised to do anything. The 154th fired point blank at the length of a rifle, and the Canadian column came apart. The New Yorkers charged with the bayonet onto the street among the startled enemy. Other of von Steinwehr's regiments came down the few parallel streets of the small town and broke the enem
y column again and again. Hundreds of prisoners were taken at the first rush as the rest of the Canadian battalions streamed in panic up the opposite side streets. At the end of the column, a British Armstrong battery blocked the narrow street for the fugitives who piled up against it and pinned it in place, unable to turn about or deploy. Von Steinwehr's regiments fired into the helpless mass from the side streets. The gunners were desperate to save their guns but could not move them for the mass of panicked Canadians. Their horses fell one by one in their traces and the gunners by their guns.
Victory had its price; von Steinwehr's lead brigade was scattered all over the town, rounding up prisoners and chasing the running Canadian militia. He had struck the three Canadian battalions brigaded with the 15th Foot, known as the Snappers, and its attached battery. The British were at the head of the column and escaped the attack, but true to their nickname, they snapped back to attack into the town. They drove the scattered Americans back down the main street, freeing many of their prisoners and taking many of their own. The Snappers pushed past the guns, dead horses, and gunners to drive von Steinwehr's men back into the small town square. The 33rd New Jersey were in their way. These men had only been mustered in as a new regiment six weeks before and came apart when the Snappers came at them with the bayonet. Half surrendered on the spot, and the rest fled down the street. The fleeing men ran through the 27th Pennsylvania. Originally one of the German regiments, its losses had been so large that it had just received a draft of 170 conscripts. The new men bolted, and the rest followed.
The tables had been turned on von Steinwehr. His 1st Brigade was disintegrating, being driven like cattle by British bayonets. He committed his reserve regiment, the 134th New York, to block them as he organized the rest of the men, who had been forced back into the square, to cover each of the exits. The 134th had been raised mostly in Schenectady County just to the north of Albany. Their towns and villages had not escaped the enemy's torch, and they knew it. This fight was close to home, and they were not about to run away. They gaffed off the fleeing New Jersey men and stopped the Snappers' advance with a steady volley. At the other end of the square, von Steinwehr was just in time with the Germans of the 73rd Pennsylvania to hold off an attack by the second enemy brigade built around the 47th Foot. His second brigade arrived in time to fight back another attack. The British commander was a bruiser.
A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History Page 25
