A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Von Steinwehr was in a fix. His division had numbered barely twenty-seven hundred men, and he had taken on two enemy brigades, each one equal to his own force. The fact that they were in the middle of this small town was to their advantage as the men instinctively turned each house into a little fort. The sound of smashing glass competed with the gunfire as riflemen broke out windows. There were no regiments marching up against each other in open order, but rushes by companies or platoons through backyards, gardens, and alleyways, or from one house to another. Guns found no fields of fire. Any gun pushed close enough to fire into a house risked its crew to small arms fire. The fighting was now house by house, and here and there the houses began to burn.

  Meagher had been with his 3rd Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Carl Schurz, when his scouts came pounding up the column with the news of the British in Stottville. Schurz was another German immigrant who, unlike von Steinwehr, had no conventional military background but was the most prominent of the "Forty-Eighters"-the German leaders of the Revolution of 1848. A staunch Republican, he had been on the committee that nominated Lincoln at the 1860 convention. He, too, had raised German troops for the Union and, with political favor, had risen to command a division. His experience had been dogged with defeat also. Meagher rushed the division forward, flying ahead to fling himself into the crisis of the battle with his Cold Spring Irish battalion at his heels.

  CLAVERACK, NEW YORK, 11:05 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Ironically, both Lord Paulet and Hooker were expecting reinforcement from the north. Barely minutes apart, each man's attention was called to the pall of smoke from burning Stottville, visible despite the cold, mizzling rain that was settling in.

  Paulet had reacted coolly to Hooker's breaking of his right. Wolseley admitted to himself that there was much to admire in the general's imperturbability and his refusal to let his opponent control the initiative. Paulet had simply pulled the flank back. Hooker had expected him to throw in his reserve, but Paulet was keeping that for his own knockout punch. Instead, Paulet ordered a general advance of his center and left, two large brigades built around the Peacemakers of the 16th Foot and the Rifles, over five thousand men supported by four Armstrong batteries. On the open flank to the north, a half dozen troops of Canadian cavalry were strung out.

  The redcoat battalions swung out toward Claverack Creek in a formation that would have done a parade for the sovereign credit. Over their heads, the Armstrong gunners fired their shells to prepare the way. From the other side, Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams leaned forward in his saddle to say to Hooker, "Prettiest parade I've ever seen. Though, truth to tell, General, the Rebs were grander in their way in their big charge at Gettysburg."

  The men in the ranks were in awe of the sight but were able to give it a cool, professional look. The bright array with the royal and regimental colors floating above each battalion was something they were not used to with their gray and butternut enemies. On those fields, the only colors were those "damned red flags of Rebellion," the square Stars and Bars. Hooker walked his horse quietly behind the ranks of Williams's infantry, listening for the comments.

  "I thought they all wore red," one voice said. "Why are some of them in green?"

  "Getting ready for Christmas, I reckon," answered a wag.

  A young man, his voice not all that sure, said, "I heard it's not enough to kill the British infantry. You gotta knock'em down, too."

  "Damned nice targets, sonny -that's all," one of the older men said, and he punctuated it with a gooey wad of tobacco spat into the stubble. The men within earshot all laughed.

  Hooker smiled and rode on. He stopped at the next regiment, where the men were on hended knee as one of them sang in a clear voice,

  There was something about that calm devotion that cut to Hooker's core. He had never been much for religion and had blasphemed mightily. Many had not forgotten how he had boasted before Chancellorsville that not even God Almighty could save Lee from his power. But the God of Battles had humbled him in his great pride. Then he did something the old Hooker would have laughed at. He prayed, "Lord, abide with me also."17

  He then looked up at the scarlet and green host approaching and remembered another prayer, one Professor Dennis Hart Mahan had taught them at West Point, an army commander's prayer if there ever was one. Sir Jacob Hill had said it at the battle of Edgehill in the English Civil War-"Oh Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day: if I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me. March on, boys!"18

  His own artillery had opened up, and sudden black puffs of smoke told where a shell had burst in the red ranks, sending bodies flying or spinning to the earth. The ranks closed with fluid ease. And it just wasn't the Imperial battalions. The Canadian battalions were their oldest and best trained, and it showed. In the 1st Montreal Brigade marched the 1st Battalion, Prince of Wales Regiment, the 2nd Battalion, Queen's Own Rifles of Toronto, and the Montreal Scots of the 5th Battalion, Royal Light Infantry of Montreal, with their flank companies in plaid trews keeping up smartly with their Imperial battalion, the 1/Rifles. To their left, in the 2nd Montreal Brigade, the 3rd Battalion, Victoria Volunteer Rifles of Montreal; the 4th Battalion, Chasseurs Canadiens; and the 6th Battalion Hochelaga Light Infantry kept up the pace set by the Peacemakers of the 1/16 Foot. It was a magnificent fight-Imperial and colonial power and pride, advancing across the creek, drums beating, lines clean and steady. Little knots of scarlet and green-clad bodies marked their trail.

  Lord Paulet rode along their front with his staff, his hat raised in salute as he passed.

  WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:10 Ann, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Lowe and Cushing had spent the last two hours as silent observers of the ongoing struggle for Washington. Smoke from the burning Arsenal floated downriver and over to the Maryland shore. Both their shells and reachable targets were exhausted. The remaining British sloop, Greyhound, kept well out from the balloon's shadow, which did not keep her Marines from taking an occasional potshot. The bullets had passed with little effect through the wickerwork basket, but had holed the balloon in a number of places. Miraculously, neither of them had been hit, though Lowe had lost a boot heel to a bullet. The loss of lift was slow, but it was inexorably carrying them lower and lower. The largest weight they had aboard were the boxes of hand grenades. He could have tossed them over the side to counter the loss of gas, but something stayed his hand.

  In the meantime, their attention was drawn to the fighting to the south as the Royal Marine battalion made its way through the streets to the Navy Yard. The American Marines and armed sailors were outnumbered more than three to one but fought a stubborn retreat house by house. But a retreat it still was as the British pressed them closer and closer to the Yard. It appeared that what the ships of the Royal Navy could not achieve from the river, her Marines would do by land. Already several of the largest buildings in the Yard were ablaze. The huge wooden dry dock sent a massive pillar of fire and smoke into the sky to add to the many churning up from the stricken Arsenal and the general pall from the burning city. The roof of one of the great brick foundry buildings was also burning, dropping flaming timbers and shingles several stories to the floor of the interior. In the water near the dock, the remains of Spiteful burned as well. The smoke swirled up thick around the balloon. At times it hid the chaos on the ground.'

  The battle pushed down M Street past the Yard's brick walls to its turreted entrance gate, littering its way with blue- and red-clad bodies. The Americans made their stand around the gate. Lowe lost sight of them by that time; the descending balloon no longer gave him the height to see over the walls at the fighting on the other side, though the red of the enemy was evident in some of the surrounding buildings. Lowe had decided to signal his ground crew to haul them down-at least they could join the fight on the ground-when he felt the breeze pick up and begin to shift. It pulled the balloon slowly south from over the water to drift over the Yard as it swung on its four heavy cables. With the wind strong to the s
outh, the balloon crossed the Yard wall to hover over M Street. Lowe scribbled a note, put it in a weighted metal message cylinder, tied it to a colored streamer, and threw it inside the gate. It struck the ground directly in front of a sailor who was standing ready with a rifle should the gate be forced. The man looked up to see Lowe leaning over the side of the basket waving frantically. He picked the case up, opened it, and read. Suddenly, he ran to an officer and handed it to him. Here was a great advantage over the British. The vast majority of men in the American services could read. The officer handed it back to the sailor, who dashed off down the street in the direction of where Lowe's ground crew worked the great windlasses that controlled the four cables holding the balloon fast.

  The balloon continued to leak, bringing them downward so gradually that there seemed to be no danger. At the normal height of one thousand feet, men assumed the size of ants. At five hundred feet, they were only miniature humans. The fighting was clearly desperate. The Americans had been forced back to the main gate and were fighting from an arc around it. As much as the gate looked like a castle, it was all for appearance and had no fighting battlements. The gate had to be defended from the front. Bodies were piling up as the ring of defenders shrank back while the enemy drew closer, concentrating their fire on a smaller and smaller group.

  Suddenly the balloon began to move down the street as the windlasses let out more of their cable. In minutes, the two were hovering over the gate itself, now unmistakable to the enemy below. Bullets whizzed up at the dying balloon like a swarm of angry bees, holing it in dozens of places. Lowe felt the sting of a bullet and sagged to the basket floor, the blood gushing down his leg. Cushing tore a strip from his coat and made a tourniquet with a board from the broken ammunition box. They were now at three hundred feet.

  Lowe leaned on the basket wall, willing himself to fight off the shock trying to creep over him. His hand grasped the grenade box and felt the cool, oblong body of one of the 5-pound Ketchums. Instinctively, his fingers closed on it. Cushing looked at him. "We're too far away to drop them. Wait."

  The lieutenant spun around and fell to his knees clutching his left forearm. Blood trickled down his sleeve to soak his white shirt cuff. He looked at Lowe and smiled. "Well, Colonel, we've had quite a run."

  They heard the shrill commands of officers below. "What is it?" asked Lowe. The lieutenant peered over the basket. "Looks like they're going to charge." Lowe held up a grenade by the rod that connected the bomb to the fins. He pulled the safety off and handed it to Cushing. The lieutenant pulled himself up to his feet, nursing his wounded forearm. The enemy was rushing the gate below with bayonets while others fired in support from buildings across the street.

  Cushing pulled back his right arm and threw the grenade straight out to give it the maximum reach. It arced out and then curved down and fell in front of the officer leading the attack. Its contact fuse struck the brick pavement and exploded. The officer and two men went down. The rest surged past. Cushing felt Lowe strike his leg with another grenade. He threw it, and then a third, and more as fast as Lowe could strip the safeties and hand them up. They sailed out and down every five to eight seconds, thinning the Royal Marines' numbers but not their determination. A score closed on the gate with the bayonet to meet the last of the U.S. Marines standing over their dead and wounded. The bayonets flicked out and hack like viper tongues, both sides were experts in the deadly drill with cold steel. More of the British ran from their firing support positions to reinforce the attack on the gate. The Americans were wedged back in the narrow opening, barely a half dozen on their feet stabbing and parrying, leaving the red-coated bodies to lie among the blue. The Royal Marines would not be stopped, and they had the numbers.

  "More grenades!" Cushing shouted as he threw them down as fast as he could into the red mass pushing through the gate. A few exploded, but most just struck the packed Royal Marines, and their bodies were not resistant enough to detonate the fuses. The impact of a 5-pound metal object from two hundred feet was dangerous enough but only as much as so many rocks. Another bullet tore through his shoulder. He swayed on his feet before sinking to his knees, pressing his head against the wicker basket.

  From below came the cries of "Board 'em! Board 'em!" and then a volley of pistol shots. Cushing turned to Lowe, "Hear that? Did you hear that?" Lowe just looked bewildered until Cushing shouted, "The Navy's here!"2

  What Lowe and Cushing couldn't see from the basket floor was the rush of the blue jackets of the Navy armed with cutlasses and revolvers to reinforce the gate. They pushed past the exhausted Marines to fire their pistols into the packed British almost through the gate. With six shots at point blank range, the Navy Colts were great killers. Lowe and Cushing sank bleeding to the basket floor as the balloon was giving up the ghost, its descent accelerating as the weight of its fabric overpowered the remaining gas. At fifty feet, it collapsed and fell over the basket; both plummeted directly over the gate. The basket impaled itself on a turret's point to sag to one side, pulled down by the weight of the fabric spilling to the ground. Blood dripped through the torn wicker onto the turret's gray slate tiles 3

  LONG BRIDGE HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:10 Ann, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Sharpe bounded up the stairs, jumping over the debris strewn by the cannonballs from the guns that were now in Rebel hands defending the approach to the Long Bridge. The hotel was only a hundred yards from the Confederate barricades. Sharpe was led into a room at the top of the stairs by one of his Horse Marines who had a dripping wad of tobacco in his cheek. Sharpe saw several more men shooting out through windows. One of them suddenly threw his arms up and fell backward, a clean red hole in his forehead. Sharpe crawled over to one of the splintered holes in the wall. He peered though at an angle so as not present a straight shot to any Rebel Daniel Boone.

  The hotel groaned as another cannonball smashed through. The Tar Heels were behind the barricades effectively adding their rifle fire to that of the guns. A dozen of the Rebels were strewn in the street after an attempt to charge the houses had left them as testaments to the volume and accuracy of the repeater's fire. But the rest were snug behind their barricade, returning a volume of fire equal to the few Hoosiers in the house windows. They had only to hold until relieved.

  Sharpe scrambled out of the room and climbed the ladder to the attic, and from there out a window onto the reverse roof. He crawled up and over the shingles to poke his head over the roof peak near the chimney and laid his glasses on the edge. He could see right down the Long Bridge to the Virginia shore. A bullet splintered a shingle just below his glasses. Another sung overhead. His presence was known, but he needed to see what was happening. In quick succession, the Stars and Stripes fell from the fort's flagpole. The Stars and Bars rose quickly in its place. A mass of men closed on the bridge, their red battle flags clustered over them. That was enough, especially when another bullet blew splinters into his face. He slid down the roof and climbed back into the house to fly down the stairs.

  Tappen was waiting, kneeling behind the next house. As soon as he saw Sharpe dash out the door, he ran over to meet him. Every eye in the regiment turned to follow the two men. The 120th was strung out, hiding behind the flimsy wooden buildings on 15th Street, one street over from that leading directly to the bridge. Lincoln, too, came over to the two, hemmed in by four guards, human shields. Sharpe had come to terms with the man's insistence to come along, but he had put the fear of God into the guard detail that if anything happened to Lincoln, it better be because they were all dead. 4

  Lincoln was too late to hear Sharpe's orders as Tappen ran past him, and Sharpe was not inclined to take the time to explain. Lincoln could only watch, and he had the good sense not to slow down with questions men about to go into battle. Instead, all he had to do was observe as Tappen's brief commands were translated into a burst of action. The crew of a coffee mill gun pulled their piece toward the back of the hotel and quickly manhandled it through the door. Lincoln peered in after th
em and saw the grunting men begin to drag it from step to step up the stairs. The gun captain kicked wreckage off the treads to clear the way. Once on the landing, he looked into the first bedroom where the two cavalrymen were firing from the windows. He waved to them, but they only glanced his way. He was turning to help pull the gun in when the room exploded. Splinters, pieces of lathe, and plaster flew through the door. He threw himself to the floor. The dust had not even begun to settle when he looked in again. "Mother of God," he muttered and crossed himself. The cavalrymen were bloody bundles of rags slumped against the opposite wall where the bursting shell had thrown them. Another large hole gaped in the wall.

  "Bring it in, boys," the gun captain said, pointing to the new hole in the wall. He moved to look out the hole when a bullet came through to nick his ear. He clapped his hand to it and felt the blood ooze through his fingers. Now it was personal. Waving his fist through the hole, he shouted, "Shoot at me, will you!" Then turning to the crew, he said, "Push her up right here!" The gun slid through the debris and poked its barrel out the hole. The gunner depressed its elevation to sight on the cannon crews behind the barricade.