Against All Odds

by Drew McGunn

  “Fire!” Jesse screamed as the survivors stepped up to the trench’s walls and opened fire.

  Seconds passed before an artillery shell detonated over the heads of the charging soldiers, knocking more than a dozen off their feet.

  A few seconds later, dozens more rained down on the charging soldiers, stopping the attack in its tracks. The survivors sheltered in holes dug by artillery or retreated to the relative safety of the trenches near the river.

  ***

  General Jefferson Davis’ eye twitched, and he lowered the binoculars. He ignored the constant pain from an eye disease he’d battled since a bout with malaria many years before. The last enemy position on the riverfront still remained.

  Another officer standing on the wooden platform swore when the last of the explosive shells fell long after the attack failed. “Those damned guns. I thought we’d pushed them back.”

  Davis removed the leather cord and set the binoculars on a nearby camp table. “Not far enough, apparently. Any word from the hospital about General Hardee?”

  The officer handed Davis a note, “He’s lost a lot of blood, but the bullet didn’t hit anything vital. If he can get some rest away from the front, the doctors say he’ll recover.”

  Davis flinched as a wave of nausea washed over him as the pain in his eye increased. “That puts General Blanchard in command of the First Corps. I want his assessment as soon as practicable about our odds of pushing the enemy farther back.”

  Below, along the river, a handful of barges traversed it. Crates of ammunition flowed west, and injured soldiers flowed east, to the field hospitals that overflowed with thousands of wounded.

  Davis’ adjutant said, “We’ve received preliminary reports from Swift’s flanking maneuver.”

  Seeing Davis’ nod, he continued, “Except for a narrow section, almost all the Texans’ left flank fell. General Swift thought you’d want to know that he trounced that devil, John Brown’s old regiment. Even took a few captives.”

  Davis grimaced, recalling how depraved combat had become when Brown’s regiment had tangled with Bedford Forrest’s Alabama cavalry in Northeastern Texas and lower Arkansas. “Send orders that all prisoners be removed to this side of the river. I’ll brook no reprisals.”

  The adjutant held up his hand, “There’s more. We’ve captured a few niggers under arms. They’re part of the Twenty-first Texas Infantry. Also captured some Mexicans with them.”

  The idea William Travis or Sidney Johnston would arm black soldiers was sure to send shockwaves through the Allied government in Montgomery when word eventually reached it. Davis recalled his plantation, Brierfield, where James Pemberton, a slave given to him many years before, had been his overseer, until Pemberton’s untimely death the previous year. He’d shared a camaraderie with his slave uncommon in the South, and he recalled the two of them going hunting when Davis had been in the army. So, the notion of a black man carrying a rifle wasn’t foreign. Still, he knew many of his fellow countrymen didn’t share his views. To be honest, the idea of a Negro aiming a rifle at him didn’t sit well with him, either.

  He returned his adjutant’s gaze and said, “Did you hear me? I said, there’ll be no reprisals. Prepare the order to move all the prisoners.”

  Once the order was signed, and on its way to the other side of the river, his adjutant continued, “General Swift’s preliminary reports are that he’s lost close to three thousand. But he’s got five thousand men from General Deas’ division ready to attack the enemy’s artillery, upon your command. General Withers’ cavalry division is still reorganizing. They took particularly heavy casualties when they ran into those buried torpedoes the Texans used.”

  Davis shook his head. The deviousness of the land torpedoes had been unexpected. And very effective. Reports from the field hospitals of men who lost a foot or a leg had been too common. There had even been reports of men blown apart, leaving only the torso intact.

  Davis bit back a curse, “Airships and torpedoes. Gatling guns and breechloading rifles and cannons. These Texans are far too industrious. Every time we attack, we discover, to our horror, some new weapon of war. Should we manage to capture West Liberty and Trinity Park, we’d be fools to burn them down. Better we harness them for our own use.”

  A bit later, a disheveled officer climbed the tower. He saluted when he saw Davis.

  Davis felt his stomach sink as he saw the commander of the I Corps standing before him. “General Blanchard, I expected a report.”

  Blanchard swept his battered hat from his head and ran powder-stained fingers through graying hair. “I thought it best to come in person. The First Corps has sustained upwards of five thousand casualties, sir.”

  Davis tried to keep a frown from his face, “That still leaves you with more than ten thousand men. Can you carry the attack forward? General Swift says he can take the enemy’s grand battery.”

  Blanchard shook his head, “Then Albert is a fool, and would throw his men’s lives away for nothing. My men are spread all over creation. I’ve got men from Georgia regiments mixed in with men from Missouri regiments. I need time to get my boys reorganized. Give me the rest of the day to consolidate our gains and get my boys back with their assigned units, I think we can carry the battle forward tomorrow.”

  Davis closed his eyes, eight thousand casualties today. How many more tomorrow?

  His adjutant said, “General, if you’d like, I can lose that order from Montgomery ordering the First Corps back east, at least until we can knock Johnston’s army out of the fight.”

  Those infernal machines that Texas kept throwing at his army had nearly wrecked it. Blanchard’s disheveled look didn’t give Davis the confidence he needed. He looked at the Corps commander, “Can you carry the day tomorrow, if you’re given the rest of today to prepare?”

  General Blanchard’s response was too long coming. “Yes, sir. If you can give us enough of a barrage with the artillery, I think victory may be attainable.”

  Sickened by the lack of conviction in his general’s voice, Davis asked, “How many men did Johnston lose today?”

  His adjutant said, “Apart from a small section of the line, we’ve pushed Johnston’s entire army back, almost a mile. I believe he had less than twenty thousand men opposing us when we attacked. We’ve probably destroyed a quarter of his army, maybe more. The brigade protecting his flank was so badly mauled, it’s not likely even an effective force anymore. Had our victory not disorganized us so badly, we could push through the Texans now, were it not for their artillery.”

  “And that’s the rub, gentlemen,” Davis said, feeling hope slip away. “General Swift would rely upon a miracle to take those enemy guns. While I still have an army to command, I must act to preserve the army and act to follow Montgomery’s orders.”

  He pointed to the desk, and his adjutant hastily sat as he grabbed a pencil. “General Swift is to hold and consolidate his position.”

  He nodded toward General Blanchard. “You’ll detach your Texas Orphan Brigade. It’ll stay here with the Second Corps. Tonight, under cover of darkness, the First Corps will begin the march back to the Sabine.”

  ***

  27 April 1853

  Like a fingernail clicking on a surface, drops of rain slapped the window next to Will’s desk. April showers, he thought. He refused to look at the sterile sheet of paper from the telegraph office as if that would soften the blow of the news.

  Sidney Johnston was dead. Will felt hollow inside. The former Tennessean had been far more than just a competent general. He’d been a friend. Will leaned back in the cushioned chair and closed his eyes. He let his mind take him back to that moment when he’d first met Johnston in the months following the victory over Santa Anna at the Nueces River in 1836.

  Johnston showed up in San Antonio and joined the 1st Infantry. When Will saw his name of the battalion’s muster, the name clicked, and he recalled Johnston had been one of the most promising generals in the Confederate army before dyin
g on the battlefield of Shiloh in 1862. Of course, that was in another world. As a student of history, Will knew Johnston was a graduate of West Point. He pulled Johnston from the enlisted ranks and promoted him to second-in-command.

  Johnston’s familiarity with early nineteenth-century military structure had melded well with Will’s twenty-first-century combat experience in Iraq. Together the two had created an army Will knew could go toe-to-toe with any equal-sized force in the world.

  Will felt moisture in his eyes. “Equal-sized, sure,” his voice dripped with pain. The South had been able to wear his army down. The irony wasn’t lost on him that the nine Southern states constituting the Southern Alliance outnumbered Texas five or six to one.

  Where was the army of the United States? Seward had promised he would open a second front against the seceding states once he had secured the loyalty of the five remaining slave states.

  Wiping his eyes, Will lowered his head into his hands as he prayed for his friend.

  He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and ran it over his face before he picked up more of the correspondence. Wounded from the battle were pouring into hospitals all the way back to Houston. Estimates were the army had lost at least four thousand wounded, killed, or captured. The army had been forced out of its trenches, but it had refused to retreat away from Beaumont’s ruins. Colonel Bill Sherman had formed most of the army’s artillery into a single grand battery and had beaten back several attacks.

  Despite the heavy casualties, despite Sidney Johnston’s death, the army had held. Will ran through the names of the army’s general officers. The army needed a strong commander, someone who could solidify their position and stop the enemy’s attack. Colonel Sherman’s name kept coming to mind. Appointing him might wound the pride of several other officers more senior than the artillery colonel, but Sherman was the army’s highest-ranking artillery officer. In theory, he commanded nearly two hundred batteries across the republic. In the theater of operation, practice and theory had little in common. Sherman could draw on less than one hundred field pieces, of which half were the new model breechloaders.

  Will stood and walked over to the window. He looked down upon Congress Avenue. Townspeople dodged the puddles left by the earlier shower. The more he thought about Sherman, the more he liked the idea of putting him in charge of the army. A decade earlier, when he’d first asked John Wharton to recruit active duty United States Army officers in the run-up to the war with Mexico, Will had been elated to discover one of Wharton’s recruits was none other than William Tecumseh Sherman.

  Chapter 23

  29 April 1853

  The portable writing desk thumped Horace Greeley’s side as his army-issued horse followed behind General Scott’s staff. How one was supposed to tell the difference between North and South Carolina was beyond him.

  When he mentioned this, his companion, Lieutenant Jeremiah Jones said, “Yesterday, I’d have told you it was when the Sesesh,” he used a popular name for the seceded Allied states, “started tearing up their railroads, but damned if they haven’t had some help here in North Carolina.”

  According to the army’s maps, they were near the border with South Carolina. They had just marched through the tiny hamlet of Fair Bluff. The steely stares of the women who’d watched them from their front porches told him that parts of North Carolina hadn’t supported Raleigh’s decision to remain in the union. The only men he saw were too old or too young to soldier, apart from the poor slaves who solemnly watched the army march by. To Greeley’s practiced eye, they seemed to know the army marching through North Carolina wasn’t bringing the abolitionists’ promised jubilee.

  When he thought of the Faustian bargain President Seward made with the Upper South, Greeley’s blood boiled. Worse, his own newspaper supported Seward’s efforts to mollify the state governments of Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Maryland. Already, nine of the twenty-one loyal states had passed what was sure to become the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The notion of enshrining slavery offended every fiber of his being. It was, in his opinion, too high a price for five slave states’ loyalty.

  Politics, he’d long ago decided, was an ugly thing. For the sake of unity and victory over the nine Southern Allied states, he had dirtied his own soul and authorized the Tribune to urge Whig unity and back the hateful amendment.

  Lieutenant Jones interrupted his thoughts, “Sir, you wanted to know when we cross into South Carolina,” he pointed to a wooden sign on the side of the dust-choked road. Stenciled on it were the words, “Welcome to South Carolina.”

  He added, “I don’t know about you, Mr. Greeley, but I’m not feeling particularly welcome.”

  “At least they’re not greeting us with guns a-blazing.” Greeley quipped.

  In the distance, gunfire erupted.

  Lieutenant Jones unfastened the holster flap at his hip and cast a frown at Greeley, “You were saying?”

  General Scott and his staff moved from the road into a nearby field, allowing the 2nd United States Dragoons to ride by. Greeley rode over and pulled out a notepad and pencil.

  Scott barked orders, “Get the Second Dragoons forward. I want a report about what’s up ahead. I want General Lee’s brigade to deploy to the right of the road. General Buell’s brigade will deploy to the left of the road.”

  Greeley noted Scott’s calm demeanor. He’d read reports of Scott’s attack at the Battle of Chippawa nearly forty years before. Despite the years and girth, Winfield Scott was still the same man. As Greeley’s pencil scratched over the page, he was forced, like Scott’s staff, to wait for news to arrive.

  The sun reached its zenith before a rider raced back into the field on a winded horse. “General Scott, we’ve found Longstreet’s army, sir. They’ve fortified the other side of Lumber River, two miles ahead.”

  Scott snapped, “Get this man a fresh horse.” He turned back to the rider, “Tell Colonel Harney I want to know how many men we’re facing, the fords nearby and how far the enemy’s line stretches.”

  After the rider galloped away, Greeley finished his notes and listened to the officers. Most, like Lieutenant Jones, were eager to attack. Scott, on the other hand, seemed indifferent.

  Artillery joined the smattering of gunfire as the noon-hour faded into the afternoon. Jones said, “Like as not, that’s the Sesech guns firing on our scouts.”

  When the rider didn’t return after an hour, Scott left most of his staff to set up the army’s headquarters and rode ahead. Greeley nudged his mount forward, following the army’s commander toward the sound of the guns.

  They passed by several gun batteries set up in a field. Green cotton stalks were trampled under hundreds of feet as the gunners wheeled their field pieces into place.

  Farther along the road, they came upon a unit of infantry, deployed in line. In the distance, Greeley saw puffs of smoke. Seconds elapsed before he heard the boom of the guns.

  An officer ran up, bareheaded, and grabbed at General Scott’s bridle. “Sir, they’ve got snipers over there. They’re targeting officers.”

  Greeley felt naked as he realized the officer holding Scott’s mount was the Virginian, General Lee. Blood ran down his face, dying his mustache red.

  Scott glared at the brigadier and then scanned the enemy position on the other side of the languid river. “I sent a rider forward for information on the enemy position. He hasn’t returned.”

  Lee released the bridle and gestured across the river. “The Second Dragoons are still skirmishing along the banks. They’ve taken some casualties. If we’re to offer battle here, might I suggest we set up one of our mobile hospital units behind our lines?”

  Scott swung down from his mount and gruffly nodded, “Of course. What have you found out?”

  Lee dabbed at an injury on his scalp as he led Scott to shelter under the boughs of a tree. “I believe we’re facing General Longstreet’s Army of the Carolinas. I’ve seen the South Carolina banner as well as those from Georgia. Mo
st of their regiments seem to fly the old West Florida flag.”

  Scott pulled a pair of binoculars from his saddlebag and scanned the enemy line, “They’ve taken to calling it their bonnie blue flag. It’s what you’d expect from a passel of Scotch-Irish hillbillies.”

  Greeley thought nothing of the term. He traced his own roots in America to the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay colony, more than two hundred years earlier. The descendants of the Ulster Scots who settled South Carolina and Georgia were a backward lot, as far as he was concerned, deserving General Scott’s contempt.

  As Scott scanned the enemy line, Lee said, “We’ve identified four regiments opposite my brigade. General Buell’s confirmed another five regiments are opposing his brigade.”

  Scott grunted, “I doubt a division is all we’ll face. Before I order an attack, I want to know. The newspapers from Columbia and Charleston brag Longstreet has more than thirty regiments.”

  Lee pointed toward a rider, “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The rider slipped from his mount and sketched a salute, “The Allied position extends for another two miles south from here. All the ferries have been pulled to the other side of the river. There are no good fords hereabout.”

  “We’ll need to bring up pontoon bridges from Raleigh,” Scott said.

  Lee raised his hand, “What about flanking the enemy? If we split the army, Buell and most of the volunteers could stay here while pontoon boats arrive. I could take a division and swing wide, striking their flank.”

  Scott swung into the saddle, “I’ll consider—”

  His head snapped back. His substantial bulk tumbled off the back of his horse. The back of the general’s head was gone, where a sniper’s bullet had exited.

  Greeley knelt next to Scott’s body as two of his staff rushed over. Lee grabbed the general’s skittish horse, and as the beast pawed the ground, Greeley heard the Virginian’s soft drawl as he calmed the animal.

  One of Scott’s aides, shock etched on his face, took a handkerchief, and lay it over the general’s face. The young officer turned to General Lee, “Sir, what do we do?”