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

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Five hundred yards, and the Guards did not move; four hundred yards; three hundred yards, and still the Guards stood like statues. The ranks of the Chasseurs rippled with nervousness. At one hundred yards, the French broke with cries of "Sauve qui peut!" (Save yourselves!) and fled to the safety of the orchards to the rear. Preston sneered to an aide, "Now I'm sure that is the only time on a battlefield when that phrase has NOT been to Her Majesty's advantage." Fifty yards. Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

  A sheet of flame flared from the Guards, and the first rank of horses and men collapsed in a bloody tangle of kicking hooves and mangled bodies. A second sheet of flame brought the next rank to ruin. The press of the rear ranks piled into the dead and dying, unable to get through or come to a complete stop. As the rattle of ramrods came from the second rank, the first had shouldered their muskets and aimed. "Fire!" Another volley struck the milling mass of horses and men. The noise of screaming horses and wounded men being trampled filled the minute between each volley. Custer blessed the Guardsman who shot Kilpatrick out of the saddle to end the folly.

  ON THE ROAD BETWEEN STOTTVILLE AND HUDSON, NEW YORK, 12:20 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Meagher pushed his corps south along the road to Hudson. It was only three miles from Stottville, but it might as well have been as far as Dublin as long as the British 2nd Division was willing to fight it out. The odds had been even, but only the loss of their artillery and the exhaustion of their ammunition had forced the redcoats to withdraw back up the rail line. The rumble of guns to the south drew Meagher on, riding up and down the ranks, imploring his men to keep up the pace. For the men, who should have been exhausted by the desperate fight they had just had, the sound of the guns was a magnet, and they needed little coaxing.

  The column flowed to the crossroads between Hudson and Claverack and immediately intercepted survivors of the British train. Meagher sent one regiment with the prisoners to secure the town, and headed east with the main column, the 2nd New York Cavalry in the lead. They had barely ridden over the Claverack Creek Bridge when they ran into the detritus of Kilpatrick's charge. Custer, now in command of the wrecked cavalry division, met Meagher there.

  "By God, I told that damned fool that we needed infantry. Or we should have dismounted to fight on foot and come through the orchards and woods. He wouldn't listen and had to have his glory. Damn him and his ambition."

  Meagher leaned over to take Custer by the shoulder. "That milk is spilled, General. Get your men together to support me as I go in."23

  THE LONG BRIDGE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:30 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  The Georgians never got beyond the point on the bridge where Gordon and his black went down. The bridge had been wide enough for two regiments, four men abreast. However, the bodies piled up to build a barricade of the dead and wounded as the coffee mill guns chattered away. The four cannons at the barricade fired solid shot through the packed, stationary mass, tearing hideous paths that spewed fountains of blood and body parts. All the while, the riflemen of the 120th fired diagonally from the riverbanks into the side of the column. The Confederates in front could not move back for the press on them from the rear. They just packed tighter as the bullets plunged into them.

  Lincoln leaned over and lowered his head into his hands.

  HOOKER'S HEADQUARTERS, OUTSIDE CLAVERACK, NEW YORK, 12:43 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  Hooker was more than desperate. XII Corps had been fought out and was barely holding on. He could hear the fighting from beyond Claverack and see the smoke, but he had no idea what it meant. Was it Kilpatrick or Meagher or both? His hopes had soared when the noise and smoke had risen in the British rear. Then those hopes had crashed when the noise died out and cheers had rippled up and down the enemy's ranks.

  An aide tugged at his sleeve and pointed to the rear and the head of a small column double-timing down the road. He was startled to recognize the old-fashioned gray swallowtail coats, white trousers, and tall, black shakos that he had not worn since he had been commissioned in the Class of 1837. The sight triggered a flood of memories of his youth in the Corps, a time when the world was new and the future bright. For a moment, it almost seemed that he was a young man waiting in those ranks again.

  An officer walked ahead. He stopped by some of the walking wounded on the road who pointed up to him. Hooker spurred his horse over and recognized Lieutenant Colonel Hardenburgh. The 20th had been part of the Army of the Potomac's provost guard when Hooker had been in command, and for that reason, its officers were much around headquarters. He was glad of a familiar and reliable face. Sharpe had wired Hooker in New York City that the 20th was on the way, but he never thought they would arrive in time. Hardenhurgh reported that the 20th was behind them, slowed by enemy cavalry.

  Hooker thanked him and rode over to the cadets, who were leaning on their rifles, a bit blown by their run through field, creek, and woods. The captain of the cadets, Garrett L. Lydecker, called them to attention. Tired or not, they snapped with credit to their reputation for smartness in drill, despite being spattered with mud and having sweat running down their faces from under their shakos. Hooker looked them over and said, "West Point, I shall need you today."

  Whether he had anything more to say, the cadets were not to know because Captain McEntee rode up to report a sudden change. He pointed back toward the bridge. Out of the orchard on the other side, the head of another scarlet column emerged as skirmishers ran over the bridge to deploy. "General, they've got to be the Grenadier Guards. I'm convinced Paulet has committed his reserve. The prisoners we have taken say the Guards were in reserve."

  Hooker's face darkened. "If that is the case, Captain, we are in worse trouble than it appears. The firing we heard in their rear behind the town has stopped. That can only mean Kilpatrick failed, or Meagher, or both, otherwise Paulet wouldn't be sending in the Guards." Hooker was right. After the cavalry division had been stopped cold by the Guards and retreated off the field, Paulet had turned the Guards right around to throw them at Hooker's weakened line. He knew this was his last chance to win the fight, and he needed a clear win. With his trains savaged, a draw was as had as a defeat. He would have nowhere to go and no means to sustain himself unless he could make his way back to the river and depart by the boats that brought him.

  Hooker was desperate. He had no reserves except the cadets. Williams's division was barely holding on, and Geary had had his hands full pulling Candy's brigade back together to put it back into the fight. Ireland's men were still fighting it out with the remnants of the enemy's Kingston Brigade and the Scots Fusilier Guards. Neither Hooker nor Paulet could pull a single man from that fight.

  After the Scots Fusilier Guards had knocked Candy's brigade back on its ear, Scarlett had reinforced the survivors of the Kingston Brigade. Wolseley rode to the brave stand of the Borderers' colors and found himself the senior officer present. Not an officer above lieutenant was left standing in the half circle formed by the survivors. Concentric rings of bodies in scarlet showed the positions of the battalion as it had contracted inward from the attacks of Ireland's men. He took command, and no one argued. If he spared a split second's time to think that this was his father's regiment, he was not to remember. It was not much of a command by that point, but had it been only a handful, he would have done no different. There were scarcely four hundred of the original thousand Borderers, and not more than six hundred Canadians left of their three battalions.

  Back on the left, the British artillery had picked up to prepare the way for the Guards. The knot of horsemen with the army and corps flags was an obvious target, and the shells began to burst nearby as the gunners sought the range. And find it they did, bursting a shell right above the cadets, spewing shards of jagged iron among them. Hooker turned to see the disordered ranks and the bodies strewn about, their gray and white uniforms blotched with blood. With a voice that had hardly even broken, a boy was screaming as his entrails spilled onto the ground. Another cadet was cradling him in his arms while others stood ar
ound, stunned and pale. The cadet captain pushed among them, and with a deft touch, hardly raising his voice, got them in order as an ambulance from the nearby field hospital rushed over. Many had fought at Cold Spring, but that had been an ambush. Here they saw their own blood. Better now than when he had to send them in. But right now they needed to get away from the blood and that poor boy. Hooker called out, "Hardenburgh! Take them into that apple orchard." He pointed to the trees two hundred yards back down Claverack Road. "Keep them under cover until I need you." He galloped off with his staff on his heels as shells burst just above where they had been.

  It was clear to him that after the Guards crossed the bridge, they would take the small Pennsylvanian brigade in the flank, and that's all it would take. The Pennsylvanians had given their all to stop the advance of the Rifles and the rest of the 2nd Montreal Brigade cold. To be taken in the flank by almost one thousand Guardsmen would be too much.

  The situation was just as clear to Paulet, who had crossed the bridge with his staff behind the Guards. Like Hooker he would place himself at the crisis of the battle. And like Hooker he knew how desperate the situation was. His right had nearly collapsed, center and left had been fought to a standstill, his small force of cavalry was wiped out, his trains had been savaged, and his 2nd Division had disappeared. It would have been a comfort to each had they known the other's plight. Hooker's appraisal would have been that his right and center had been fought out, his left repulsed, his cavalry defeated, his other corps missing, and reserves exhausted except for the few hundred cadets hiding in an apple orchard.

  Those boys scrambled in among the trees only to find it full with a field hospital that groaned and shrieked with its work, artillery limbers, field kitchens, and a prison pen with a few dozen men in scarlet sitting dejected amid the discarded apples of the season's picking, whose ferment filled the orchard with its sweet, sour tang. The cadets had barely time to catch their breath and watch from among the trees as one of the great sights on any battlefield unfolded, the attack of the Grenadier Guards. For cadets who prided themselves on drill, watching the evolutions of the Guards as they formed for the attack on the Pennsylvanian brigade filled them with awe. The Guards were magnificent, keeping perfect alignment on their colors and seeming to shrug off the shells that spilled men from their ranks as the nearest American artillery battery concentrated on them. The ranks of big men effortlessly closed up and kept moving forward. In the rear of the battalion, its drummers banged out, under the stern eye of the drum major, a virtuoso performance of their regimental quick march, "The British Grenadiers," clearly audible to the cadets in the trees. So well known was the song that many Americans knew the words that had accompanied the building of the empire upon which the sun never set:

  Behind the Guards, the brigade's attached Armstrong battery raced across the bridge to deploy its guns in support. And the Grenadiers began to wheel from companies in column to a battalion front. And the drummers played:

  The fighting nearest them seemed to come to a stop as first the Rifles, the Queen's Own Rifles, and the Scots of the 5th Royal Light Infantry of Montreal began to cheer. And the drummers played on:

  The Pennsylvanian brigade in its thinned ranks stared in dread silence to their left at the approaching spectacle. And the drummers played on:

  An observer could not be faulted for thinking that the very weight of history itself was being raised to strike the American left. For on the royal colors of this regiment were names such as Tangier, Namur, Gibraltar, Blenheim, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Dettington, Linselles, Egmont-op-Zee, Corunna, Barrossa, Nive, Peninusla, Waterloo. Yes, Waterloo, where they broke the Grenadiers of the French Old Guard and were renamed Grenadiers themselves, their cap badge a flaming bomb. And the drummers played on:

  Fluttering above the center of the Guards were their colors -the scarlet silk royal colors with the crown embroidered in gold in its center, and the regimental colors, based on the Great Union flag, the marriage of the crosses of St. George of England and St. Andrew of Scotland. In the center vertical bar were the embroidered crown and unicorn, and on the horizontal bar on either side were the crowded names of all the fields upon which the Guards had fought -and won.

  The mesmerized gaze of the cadets was broken as Hooker's white horse carried the general through the trees among them. He looked down at Hardenhurgh and returned the salute of the cadet captain. He spurred his horse out of the orchard to look for a moment, then turned his horse halfway to them. Standing in his stirrups, he pointed to the enemy. "West Point, seize those colors!"

  Hardenburgh's practiced eye counted barely a few hundred yards to those colors. There was no time to lose. He turned to see the boys had instinctively formed their ranks. Hardenhurgh stepped out of the trees and drew his sword, Cadet Captain Lydecker behind him.

  Across the field, Paulet was directly behind the Guards with Brigadier General Lindsay, watching the men swing left toward the Pennsylvanians' flank. An aide said, "My Lord, look there at the orchard. The enemy has emerged."

  Paulet stopped to see the small band march forward in their oldfashioned uniforms and good order. He scanned their front with his glasses. "A waste. The Guards will march right over them. If Hooker thinks their fire will delay the Guards-" Then he leaned forward and squinted his eyes to focus them better. The enemy had gone from the march to the double-quick, then his bayonets at the level to a run. "Look, they are charging the Guards!"

  Colonel Preston was just as surprised to see this small band racing toward his battalion. They were lucky to be one-third his number. He halted the battalion when the cadets were barely a hundred yards away. If the steady fire of the Guards could break a cavalry division's charge, it would wipe out these few. "Fire!" A volley sent the cadets' first ranks tumbling into the newly turned earth of the field. Hands reached down to pick up their colors before they struck the ground as the rest jumped over the bodies and swept on, converging on the British colors in the center of the line. Hardenhurgh fell wounded among his boys, staring into the open gray eyes of the one who lay only inches from him. 24

  Cadet Lydecker was still on his feet, his athletic body glory in motion as the cadets followed him. At twenty yards, the second rank of the Guards fired. The first rank had loaded and was readying to fire again when out of the smoke the handful of survivors still led by their captain closed the last few feet. They met a fence of steel. British bayonet work was the terror of battlefields. But even the Guards could not kill them all, and their very momentum crashed through the two-man rank to the British colors. Lydecker parried with his sword the bayonet of the firstrank man and shot the second-rank man before he could be stabbed from the side. He was through with a handful of his cadets, the colors almost within reach. The color guards on either side moved in front of the color bearers. He shot one and lunged through the hole as the cadet behind him killed another. He could see the lines in the bearded face of the color bearer. The man's eyes had narrowed, and he did not flinch. The scarlet and gold silken folds of the colors were within reach. Lydecker brought up his sword, and the world went black.25

  ALONG CLAVERACK CREEK, NEW YORK, 12.45 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

  The subaltern of the Scots Fusilier Guards brought his horse to stop north of the creek. His jaw dropped as he saw the blue regiments coming down from the direction of Hudson with their colors whipping in the wind on a mile front. It was excusable if he completely forgot Lord Paulet's instructions to his colonel. He turned his horse and galloped back to where the Scots and the remnants of the Borderers and Canadians were fighting off Geary's renewed attack. He found Scarlett on the ground, surrounded by his staff as his life ebbed out through a gaping hole in his breast. It was suicide to he sitting on a horse as a well-aimed American bullet had just proved. The subaltern leaped off his own just before the animal screamed at the impact of a half dozen rounds. The close-range fire splintered the apple trees, their branches falling amid the dead and wounded. Groups of Americans rushed the line in a swirl
of steel and clubbed rifles only to be driven back by the bayonet work of the Fusiliers.

  Frantic to relay his warning to someone in authority, the subaltern stumbled into a one-eyed staff lieutenant colonel who was giving encouragement up and down the firing line. Bullets whizzed around the oblivious man. The line seemed to stiffen and its fire redoubled as he passed. The subaltern took him by the arm and shouted into his ear his warning - that and the fact that he was now senior officer on the field.

  To disengage from an aggressive, able enemy is one of the most perilous of all maneuvers in war. Only the steadiest troops in the hands of the coolest commander can pull it off. But Wolseley was thinking several steps ahead of even this. He calculated that the enemy approaching from the direction of Hudson was Hooker's missing corps, and if the subaltern had judged the distance correctly, they would close on the rear of the army in short order. New York would consume its second British army in eighty-six years.26 Wolseley was in no mood to tolerate any panic. When a French Canadian seeing the Fusilier Guards falling back by companies rushed by shouting, "La Garde recule!" (The Guard retreats!), Wolseley shot him dead on the spot.27

  Colonel Ireland's tired New York regiments were the first to detect a lessening of fire on their front. What they could not see immediately was the retreat28 by companies of the surviving Borderers and Canadians behind the shield of the Scots Fusilier Guards, who themselves were pulling back by alternate companies through the orchards. The Borderers and Canadians were filtering through the shattered and abandoned trains, filling their ammunition pouches and haversacks. Some were driving away wagons of ammunition. The Americans had come and gone so quickly through the trains that many of the wagons were still left with their unharmed teams in harness. The artillery was driving by section at a time, filling their limbers where they could. Wolseley had thought ahead of this as well. If men ever made haste, it was these men, exhausted as they were, for plainly visible in the shortening distance to the north were Meagher's men, fresh from their victory at Stottville. The Royal Artillery batteries supporting the fighting south of Claverack had also been warned by now and were turning their guns north.