On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  What a witless, hopeless, adolescent gesture. He clapped his hat on his head and walked out.

  Long afterward, he reflected that Margaret’s rebuff was the moment, the encounter, that killed the last of his romantic feelings about the war, transforming it to a brutish task that had to be finished quickly, using whatever harsh means were necessary. He could almost hear Sledge laughing and congratulating him on his new sagacity.

  He walked through Washington wrapped in a feverish daze. In the west the black clouds piled up and thunder crumped, like the cannon of Jackson’s army advancing.

  34

  June 1862

  Madness was Fred’s term for Stuart’s plan. Behind their hands, some officers whispered, “Suicide.” Fred preferred madness—divine, heroic, whatever you wanted to call it, but madness.

  It began June 12. After choosing men from the Fourth and Ninth Regiments and the Jeff Davis Legion, Stuart ordered them to saddle and ride at two a.m. They moved north from Richmond in the moonlight, twelve hundred troopers including detachments led by Fitz and Rooney Lee. Lieutenant Breathed of the Horse Artillery commanded a rifle gun and a twelve-pound howitzer. Von Borcke rode with them, and the general’s banjo player, Sam Sweeny, a minstrel man stranded in the capital when war broke out. That damned Mosby was with them.

  Since they were headed toward Louisa Court House, they assumed they would reinforce Jackson in the Valley. They bivouacked for a short time at farm near Taylorsville, close by the South Anna River. Scouts returned before daybreak. Stuart ordered signal rockets fired, but no bugling for reveille. They mounted and rode east, toward Hanover Court House, and then Stuart revealed their real mission: a secret expedition behind enemy lines, ordered by Johnston’s replacement, Bob Lee. Many officers distrusted Lee because of his dismal record of defeat and retreat in western Virginia last year. Lee was a fastidiously moral man; austere, almost unapproachable. You could give Little Joe Johnston a friendly pat on his bald head and he wouldn’t take it amiss. No one tried that with Granny Lee.

  Gone was the convivial jocularity of the pre-dawn hours. They were heading for McClellan’s right flank, to discover where it was; how well protected. They soon found out. No Yankee trenches could be seen along Totopotomy Creek, though they should have been there to protect Porter’s position on the Union right.

  Rooney Lee encountered the enemy first, Stoneman’s cavalry, a hundred strong. Rooney Lee drew his saber and ordered a charge. His men galloped at the enemy shouting the new rebel war cry, an ululating yell that froze the blood of enemies. The Federals broke and scattered. Fred and the rest came up, chased the Yankees for nearly two miles, and collected a few frightened prisoners.

  The Federals regrouped and drew some of Stuart’s men into a sharp fight. Fred fought with his saber in his right hand, a LeMat in his left. He took a sword cut on his cheek. Another Yankee saber nicked Baron’s ear. The gelding didn’t buck or falter; Fred had time to fire into the face of the Yankee captain.

  He saw the scatter-shot shred the captain’s face, saw him sink from his saddle. Though he’d never taken a human life before, he was unmoved. In the smoky confusion, horses neighing, blades clanging, small arms crackling, he marveled at the ease of killing someone if that someone meant to kill you first.

  In the abandoned Federal camp at Old Church they plundered stores they could carry, burned the remainder, and rested while Stuart plotted his next move. Could they cross the rain-swollen Pamunkey? No, they had no pontoons. Could they go back? No, the rear guard reported Federal horse and infantry in pursuit. What, then? Go forward, southeast. Cross the Chickahominy at Forge Bridge, beyond the Union left flank, reach the James at Charles City, and return to Richmond—riding entirely around McClellan! It appealed to Stuart’s bravado and his oft-repeated warrior’s credo: “Die game.”

  With the plan afloat, Fred heard “suicide” whispered for the first time. It really was madness, made all the madder by the season. June was the month children burst out of schoolhouse prisons, young women became brides, farmers dug rough hands in black soil, thanked God for good growing weather but prayed for rain. No such spirit prevailed as they took the road for Enon and Haw’s Shop. After two days and nights in the saddle, little or no sleep, haversacks empty, numbness and fear set in.

  Even the general showed signs of it. The plume on his fancy hat seemed to droop. The red rose pinned to the lapel of his short jacket wilted. Sam Sweeny no longer sang “Camptown Races” or “Kathleen Mavourneen,” nor was he asked. They were beyond McClellan’s right wing, scarcely five miles from his great base at White House. They’d be lucky to get out with their lives. Fred drank furtively from his canteen, a precious sip at a time.

  On June 14, Saturday afternoon, they bore down on Tunstall’s Station, a depot on the York River railroad linking White House with the Union front. Stuart called Fred to a conference in the saddle.

  “Take Captain Knight’s squadron along that branch road. Garlick’s Landing isn’t far. Destroy whatever Union stores you find and ride to Tunstall’s Station.” Garlick’s Landing was a hamlet on the river; scouts had reported a small garrison, and two river steamers tied up.

  “Will you stop at Tunstall’s, General?”

  “Long enough to rip up the rails, tear down the telegraph, and see what other mischief we can do. Good luck.” He rode away before Fred could salute properly.

  Fred relieved himself in a pine grove, a useful opportunity to revisit the canteen. Soon he was moving at the head of his column of twos down a lane of great elms and sycamores the sun lit like a green cathedral. Farm families rushed to the roadside to wave and call encouragement. A cry of “Shoot a few bluebirds for us, boys” made Fred laugh.

  When the column emerged from the dense woods, he saw a scattering of rude buildings about a mile ahead. Tiny blue figures scurried among parked wagons. He screwed his telescope to his eye, observed a few civilians as well as soldiers, but no fortifications. He raised his hand.

  “Form column of fours. Draw sabers”—the metallic slither of many swords always sent a chill down his spine—“trot.” The last word was roughly articulated; he’d taken the reins between his teeth.

  He hugged Baron with his knees, pulled his LeMat from its saddle holster with his left hand and rode with saber raised. Hot air fanned his face. Behind the unpainted cottages and storehouses, masts of a small steamer could be seen.

  A Union bluebird spied them and ran to spread the alarm. An iron bell clanged. The rebel horses made a rising thunder on the sunlit road. Men gave voice to the savage yell. Fred called for the charge. They roared into Garlick’s Landing in the face of scattered return fire. Behind him, Fred heard a trooper cry out as he pitched from his mount. The trooper’s horse veered and dragged him away through undergrowth; his boot was still caught in the stirrup.

  A blond sergeant darted from behind a wagon, aiming his rifle at Fred. Fred wheeled Baron past him and cut the Yank’s neck open with a violent downward saber stroke. The man’s eyes opened wide with surprise. His gushing blood splattered Baron’s flank and Fred’s boot. Fred fired into the man’s chest for insurance.

  Outnumbered Yankees were already throwing down their arms. A two-story building with a sagging roof stood at the head of the main pier. Some kind of hostelry, Fred judged from the water troughs and benches and faded signboard. Upper shutters flew open. An old woman in a mobcap waved a white pillowcase. A trooper rode up beside the Union flag hanging over the main door and tore it down. A Yankee ran out of the place and shot the trooper at close range, blowing him backward off his horse.

  Fred spurred ahead, saber sheathed in favor of a second revolver in his right hand. Three more Yankees ran out of the tavern, knelt to fire. Behind him he heard bluebirds chirping for mercy, but the three in front of him wouldn’t give up so easily. He rode at them from the right and put two rounds into the nearest. The man seemed to leap from the ground and fly against the building, dying in the air. Fred galloped past, turned Baron a hundred eig
hty degrees, and without hesitating fired both revolvers.

  The Yankee on the right had already fallen on his face, wounded by someone else. Fred’s left-hand revolver took out the third man, throwing him sideways. At the same moment, a girl of nine or ten wearing a patched dress ran out the door waving a small bright flag bearing the cross of St. Andrew. Fred’s shot from the right hand, intended for the soldier already down, struck her instead. A blood flower bloomed on her flat bosom while she was smiling radiantly to greet the liberators.

  “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  He jumped from the saddle, hat falling off. He ran forward, knelt in the dust. She focused on his face. Her eyes were a lovely cornflower blue. Her hand sought and closed on his. “Grandma? Grandma, it hurts.” Her head rolled sideways, raising a puff of dust.

  The old woman ran from the dark doorway into the sunshine. “Why did you shoot her? We’re loyal to Jeff Davis, she kept his picture under her pillow.”

  “Ma’am, she appeared suddenly, I didn’t mean—”

  “You butcher! You murdering bastard! Oh, damn you, she’s my only grandchild.” She fell onto a bench and tore at her breasts. An elderly man stepped from the tavern to comfort her, saw the child’s corpse, lurched back inside, sick.

  The LeMat in Fred’s left hand was heavy and hot. Blinking, he gained his feet, confronted Captain Knight on horseback.

  “It happened accidentally. She ran out. I didn’t see her in time.”

  The captain cocked his head toward pillars of smoke rising south of them. “Looks like the general’s taking care of Tunstall’s.”

  Fred fairly screamed, “Goddammit, Captain, I didn’t do this on purpose. Do you think I’d shoot a child?”

  “No, sir. Not intentionally.” Knight’s eyes flickered with pity or contempt. “We’ve taken about twenty-five prisoners, sir. What shall we burn?”

  With the white iron of guilt searing his gut, Fred gave orders he couldn’t remember afterward. They set fire to covered wagons laden with sacks of grain and coffee. Soon Garlick’s Landing smelled strongly of roasting beans. Sentries on the two Yankee steamers gave up quickly. The rebs swarmed aboard, torching supply wagons waiting to be off-loaded.

  Fred’s detachment had lost two men in the skirmish; a third suffered a thigh wound. They rounded up the Yankees, mounted them on mules from a pole corral. The prisoners caused no trouble. Fred moved like one of those mechanical wonders you saw at dime museums, lifelike figures that nodded and played cards and imitated living creatures. Hiding behind Baron, he swallowed whiskey, emptying the canteen. He threw it on the ground in a burst of rage.

  Leaping flames and floating sparks greeted them in the twilight as they approached Tunstall’s. The little depot was a pile of black rubble. Telegraph poles had been axed and thrown across the rails. Fred reported to General Stuart, who commended him and Captain Knight.

  “There was an accident, sir. A little girl rushed out of a building some Yankees were defending. My ball hit her instead of them.” The words were like gall. “I killed her.”

  Jeb Stuart’s blue eyes had a curious glacial quality. He no longer looked spruce, but bedraggled, mud on his boots, dirt streaking the back of his red-lined cape.

  “It’s unfortunate, Captain. In wartime such things happen. I’m sorry. We must press on to the Chickahominy before the men collapse entirely.” Stuart rode off, a black figure against the flames of burning wagons.

  At Tallysville they came upon a Federal field hospital. Stuart ordered the patients and surgeons left alone. Some abandoned sutlers’ wagons yielded beef tongue, pickles, layer cakes, ketchup, and other edibles, along with champagne and wine. The starved cavalrymen ate and drank everything. Fred sampled the champagne and then put away a half bottle of claret.

  They found the Chickahominy in flood. Rooney Lee nearly drowned when he dove in to test the river’s depth. Stuart’s ordnance officer scouted downstream to Forge Bridge. The bridge itself was washed away, but stone abutments remained, as well as an abandoned warehouse stocked with lumber. Troopers crossed the river on an improvised plank bridge, leading their horses in the water below them. After the two fieldpieces crossed, and the prisoners and the captured animals, a rear guard torched the makeshift bridge.

  On the morning of June 15, Brigadier General Jeb Stuart rode into Richmond well ahead of his troops. He could report to Lee that McClellan’s right wing hung in the air, without significant protection. Tumultuous mobs cheered the return of the exhausted riders straggling in from the Charles City road. They arrived with 165 captured Yankees and nearly twice as many horses and mules. Fred Dasher arrived with a wound that would never heal.

  Stuart recommended a number of men for promotion, among them John Mosby. One more reason Fred sought a tavern and drank himself into a stupor.

  35

  July–August 1862

  The clouds of glory that trailed George Brinton McClellan for months blew away in a storm of fighting at the gates of Richmond. The storm lasted seven days. It saved the city, ended the Peninsula campaign, and blotted McClellan’s reputation, for which he blamed others.

  After engagements at Oak Grove and Mechanicsville, a major battle at Gaines’ Mill on June 27 produced a costly Confederate victory. News walkers, soldiers who roamed the camps like living newspapers, told what little they knew as night came down. Artillery boomed fitfully in the distance. Near midnight, Allan Pinkerton called his anxious operatives together over the mess tables at White House. Lon saw an eerie resemblance to John Brown as Pinkerton addressed them.

  “Today the rebs whipped us at an unknown cost of many thousands. We lose battles because our force is too small. General McClellan places responsibility squarely on the President and his clique, and will so inform Mr. Lincoln by letter. Starting tomorrow, this base will be abandoned. We move down to Harrison’s Landing on the James. The general will forgo the assault on Richmond to save his Army, and when he does save it, as he will, it will be no thanks to anyone in Washington. Only the cabal, not the Confederacy, can defeat the nation’s finest soldier.”

  Men hardly dared look up, so wild and terrible was the accusation. Pinkerton’s burning eye swept the tent as if to discover anyone who would dispute him. The most skeptical face was Zach’s. He stood behind Lon, arms folded, luckily in shadow where the lantern’s dim glow didn’t reach.

  When Pinkerton walked out, there was a communal sigh. Next morning the first long wagon train moved south over rain-rutted roads, followed by a lowing herd of Army beef.

  With Savage Station, Frayser’s Farm, and Malvern Hill on the first of July, the seven days ended. Richmond was redeemed, though casualty estimates pouring across the Pinkerton desks suggested that Lee had won the city’s reprieve at a cost of something like a quarter of his Army.

  The Army of the Potomac celebrated Independence Day behind secure fortifications at Harrison’s Landing. Bands played, artillery saluted the holiday, and McClellan issued another proclamation, commending the Army for performing nobly. There was no mention of victory. Even so, the troops were heartened. Sledge was in fine spirits next day, when he found Lon washing socks and drawers in a tub of grimy water already used by a dozen others. Both men gamely tried to ignore the screams and the grind of saws amputating limbs in nearby hospital tents.

  “I hear Lincoln’s coming down tomorrow,” Sledge began.

  “I’m sure it isn’t to see me.”

  The unexpected sourness made Sledge frown. He wore what he’d worn for weeks, a loose white shirt with a patched elbow Lon had mended for him, but he’d spruced up by tying his black string tie in a bow and combing his hair with water. Lon commented on his neatness.

  “Just saw the boss. He said Richmond will stand a while longer, so we’re starting over.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He’s sending me in to spy on fortifications.”

  Lon’s reaction was disappointment, and envy. “Dangerous duty, Sledge.”

  “Sure, but we’ve s
at on our bums long enough.”

  Lon twisted his underwear to wring water into the tub. Sledge chewed his gold-plated toothpick. “He wants to send two men. I asked for you.”

  Lon laid the wet garment aside and wiped his bare chest with his palm. It got rid of some sweat but didn’t cool him. The summer heat was fierce, the sky unclouded, the sun pitiless. Steam rose from the muddy ground. Lon’s nose and shoulders were red and ready to blister.

  “What did the boss say to that?”

  “He said all right. Can’t say he was kicking up his heels, though. What did you do, spit in his face?”

  “I imagine he thinks so. I questioned the figures we developed for the general these past months. I didn’t believe them.”

  “Guess old Stanton didn’t either. Not my burden,” Sledge said with one of those shrugs that amounted to the entire Greenglass philosophy.

  “When do we go?”

  “After things settle down. A week or two. Are you game?”

  “Of course.” After months of dull duty relieved only by the excitement of the balloon flight, Lon couldn’t wait.

  “What about Zach?”

  “I expect he should go back to Willard’s. He won’t be happy.”

  “Who the hell’s really happy in this camp? We failed, bub. Davis and Lee sit in Richmond thumbing their noses, Little Mac’s in the shit house, and if the boss can’t hang on, he’ll sink with him. We’re better off behind enemy lines.”

  Given the risks, Lon doubted it, but he didn’t argue. Sledge went off whistling. Lon picked up his laundry and trudged toward his tent, wincing as another victim of the saws screamed.

  He was depressed at the thought of McClellan dragging Pinkerton down. The boss had failings, as they all did, but Lon still admired him, not only for his hatred of slavery, but because he stood by his men. For months he’d fought the War Department over the issue of pay. Stanton’s bureaucrats claimed they couldn’t honor Pinkerton’s payroll vouchers because each consisted of a total sum due, with no explanation. The department wanted a list of operatives. Pinkerton consistently refused on grounds that it could endanger his agents, should some clerk with reb sympathies get hold of such a list. During Lon’s time in Washington he’d met a captain who had witnessed an argument between Pinkerton and a loud-mouthed European at the War Department, a man named Siegel. The boss was so exercised and vehement, the captain expected him to attack Siegel or have a seizure.