Trouble in the Wind

by Chris Kennedy

  A more feckless response was impossible to imagine. First he’d infuriated the South by denying the legality of the right to secede it had championed for so long. And then he’d infuriated the North by asserting that the South had a moral right to do just that…whatever the law might say.

  Looking into the future’s hollow-skull eyes with bleak honesty, Sherman saw no way any successor—and certainly not one like Lincoln, elected by a simple plurality in a race where no candidate had won a majority of the vote—could recover from the position Buchanan had left him. No way anyone could avert the looming wreck. And that meant that, like all those other men, he, William Sherman, had to decide where his sword belonged.

  He had decided. Not without an agonizing internal struggle, but he’d decided. That was why he’d resigned as the Seminary’s superintendent last month when the state government demanded the muskets stored in the school’s armory. Those muskets were the lawful property of the United States government, which had provided them to the school. He’d had no authority to hand them over to the state. And as he’d said to George Graham in his letter of resignation, “I accepted such position when Louisiana was a state in the Union, and when the motto of this Seminary was inserted in marble over the main door: ‘By the liberality of the general government of the United States. The Union—esto perptua.’”

  Graham had understood. So had Marie. Just as she’d understood why he’d felt compelled to seek an Army commission once more rather than simply stand upon the sidelines. But his efforts had been rejected in a chilly, formal letter “regretting” that “the Department can find no employment for your services at this time.”

  Now he knew why. His foster father, Thomas Ewing’s political allies, even his own brother, had thrown their influence into denying the man they blamed for Ellen Ewing Sherman’s death a commission. And there was clearly no hope of changing their minds.

  “Billy?”

  He looked down as Marie lifted her head from his chest.

  “Yes?”

  “Billy, what will you decide now?” she asked him softly. “I know you’ve done what you believed you had to do, and whether or not it’s the choice I would prefer you make, I respect you for it. I came with you to Cincinnati, and whither you go, I will go, too, even if that’s to Washington City itself. But, Billy, these people…” She shook her head. “These people are not worthy of what you’ve tried to give them. Of the oath you swore or the service of your sword. They aren’t worthy of you. Perhaps, someday, they will be again. Perhaps someday they’ll understand what they’ve thrown away. But not today, Billy. Not today. So come home. Come home, where people do love you, and let your heart heal.”

  “Marie, I can’t just turn my back—” he began, but she shook her head again.

  “I haven’t asked you to,” she said simply. “I will never ask you to take up arms in any cause which is not your own. I will respect your decision, whether it is to remain in Louisiana or to leave her. To serve her if it comes to war, or to give your sword to neither side. Or even to return here and once again seek to give that sword to those people in Washington City and fight against Louisiana, should that be what your heart demands. Whatever decision you make, I know it will be one of honor. I will be content with that, whatever it is, and wherever you may go, I will be proud to stand beside you. But don’t break your heart beating it against the bars while the people who ought to love you lock the door against you. Give them some time to heal, to realize the truth, as well.”

  He gazed down at her, the sounds of the street coming through the window behind them, and realized she was right in at least one sense. He’d come here, whether he had known it or not, on a fool’s errand. There was no commission for him here, no opportunity to serve. And neither was there any way to support his wife and his children when those children’s grandfather would use all of his influence to ensure he couldn’t.

  “Very well, my love,” he said finally. “Perhaps you’re right. Clearly, any more time here would be wasted. And perhaps some peaceful resolution can be found after all. But if it can’t—”

  “Hush, Billy.” She reached up, placed her fingers across his lips. “I said I’ll respect your decision, and I will. Now take me home while you make it.”

  * * *

  “A courier, General.”

  General William Sherman looked up, then drew rein as the dust-caked courier cantered closer under the hot September sun. The youthful lieutenant reached him and saluted sharply.

  “Lieutenant Stevens.” Sherman returned the salute with a wry smile. “I almost didn’t recognize you under all that dust. I presume you bear word from General Hampton?”

  “I do, Sir.” The lieutenant opened his dispatch case to extract a sealed message. “This is his formal dispatch, but I was instructed to verbally inform you that Jeffries’ Brigade was attacked by enemy cavalry this morning. The attack appears to have been made by local militia and it was repulsed with only light casualties and several prisoners were taken. General Hampton wishes me to assure you that his column’s rate of advance will not be retarded.”

  “I see.”

  Sherman called up a mental map of his columns’ lines of march and nodded to himself. McPherson’s defeat at Madison had smashed the last organized army in his path almost two months ago. There’d been a fair amount of skirmishing since then, more of it in Hampton’s front than anywhere else, but like this affair, all of it had been fleabite bickering organized out of whatever volunteers might be to hand. Resistance might stiffen if the enemy found a way to free the troop strength to replace McPherson’s shattered Army of the West, but with the intensity of the fighting in Virginia…

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” He passed the dispatch to his chief of staff. “Please return to General Hampton and inform him that I would have expected no other outcome.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  The lieutenant saluted again, wheeled his horse, and went dashing back the way he’d come.

  “It must be nice to be so full of energy,” his chief of staff observed, and Sherman snorted.

  “What you mean, James,” he said, “is that it must be nice to be so young.”

  “I’d hardly call forty-four ‘ancient,’ General,” Colonel Adcock replied in a dry tone.

  “Then you should try experiencing it from my side.” Sherman shifted in the saddle, and Adcock chuckled.

  Sherman lifted his canteen and sipped from it as he watched the long, dusty column march past. Other columns—columns of smoke, not men and horses and guns—rose in the distance. Most came from burning fields or barns, but some streamed up from the fires heating railroad rails before his troops twisted them into “Sherman’s neckties” around handy tree trunks to prevent repair crews from simply spiking them back into place. He watched that smoke and his jaw tightened as he remembered his letter to Governor Norton when he’d severed his logistics from the river and set out across Norton’s state, foraging his way in a fifty-mile wide swath of destruction through the heart of its cornfields and wheat fields, its pastures and orchards, to sustain his advance.

  “War is cruelty,” he’d written when Norton had furiously denounced his troops’ “looting” and the “savage outrages” along his scorched-earth march. “There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

  That had never meant he enjoyed destruction. He hated it. But so long as these people continued to support the armies in the field, they were just as much the enemy as those armies were. And those armies could not survive without the fodder they produced, the horses and mules they raised for the Army, the beeves and hogs they sent forward to feed its soldiers. The enemy’s field strength had begun to dwindle as defeat followed defeat, and desertion and draft riots had become an ever-growing problem for him as war weariness cut ever deeper. Yet these rich farms continued to feed and bolster those beleaguered armies and keep them stubbornly fighting. It was time the people of those farms learned the price of supporting a war
that dragged on and on, killing men—their own fathers and brothers and sons, as well as their enemies—by the thousand, day after day. He would spare their lives, but he would also teach that lesson to them, however harshly he must. And the instant they were willing to make peace, to end the killing, he would extend a helping hand once more. He knew they would go on hating him until the day he died, whatever he did, but that mattered less than nothing beside duty and the need to end this before the entire continent was littered with battlefield graves.

  He recapped the canteen and urged his horse back into motion.

  “How much longer do you reckon this can go on, Sir?” Adcock asked, as if he’d heard his commander’s thoughts, and Sherman turned to cock an eyebrow at him as they rode side-by-side. “It’s just that it seems it’s already gone on forever,” the colonel continued, quietly enough no one else could hear, “and the armies are still deadlocked in Virginia.”

  “They are,” Sherman replied after a moment, “and they’ll stay that way. But these people have run out of armies to stop us, because they have no one to pull away from the Washington-Richmond fighting. The truth is that the war’s already been won in the West, whatever happens in the East. These people may not have realized that yet, and with Washington and Richmond only a hundred miles apart, it’s inevitable that all eyes are on the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. But I expect it’s starting to dawn on them that when they lost control of the Mississippi and the Missouri and the Tennessee, that was the beginning of the end. I knew that when we threw them out of Chattanooga. And England and France both declared their recognition of the truth when they established their embassies in New Orleans.”

  “Perhaps so, Sir.” Adcock nodded, but his tone was doubtful. “It’s just that they don’t seem to realize that.”

  “Oh, I expect some of them did realize it even then.” Sherman shook his head. “It’s not something a fellow finds easy to admit, though, and there are stubborn men on both sides of this war. That’s the reason we’re out here burning farms and confiscating livestock, Colonel.” His expression turned grim. “They won’t admit it until they’re so thoroughly whupped they have no choice. And then, perhaps, we can get back to rebuilding everything we’ve had to destroy.”

  He tapped his temple with one forefinger.

  “Inside here, James. Inside here. That’s where we have to convince them to cave in…or they have to convince us. And unless I’m mistaken, we’ll know in about two months which side is going to do just that.”

  “The election.” Adcock grimaced. “You really think that will decide things?”

  “I think it almost has to, after four years.” Sherman’s jaw tightened. “Giving in—or not giving in—always happens in the mind. And unless I miss my guess, General McClellan’s already given in.”

  “Who do you think will win, Sir?

  “Everything indicates the vote will be a near run thing, but it’s trending against the Administration, I think,” Sherman replied. “And if McClellan wins—”

  He shrugged, and Adcock nodded as they neared another mile marker.

  “I expect all this—” the colonel waved a hand at the marching men, the columns of smoke, the creaking supply wagons of a massive army headed east “— will have a certain influence in the final vote, Sir.”

  “That’s why we’re here, James.” Sherman’s eyes were bleak and dark with regret, but they were also unyielding, and his nostrils flared as he gazed at the signpost. “I never wanted to come home this way, and I’d sooner never see another farm or another town in flames. But that’s why we’re here. And it’s why I’ve been pushing so hard ever since we left the river. I want this done now, while there’s time for the lesson to sink in. If we can show these people—and ours—that we can take even their largest cities, we may just give those voters another reason to think hard about who’s caving in to whom, come election day. So I suppose we’d best be about it.”

  He touched his horse with a heel, urging it to greater speed, and it sprang into a trot as they passed the signpost.

  “CINCINNATI—20 MILES,” it said.

  * * * * *

  Historical Note

  The only non-historical character in this short story is Marie, Sherman’s second wife, and even she actually existed. She died in infancy, however, so I felt free to appropriate her for the story.

  William T. Sherman was a much more complex and “modern” man then I think most people realize. He was deeply opposed to secession and a division of the Union (mostly for reasons I address in the story), but he liked and admired Southerners, and despite the abolitionists in his own family and foster family, he was not utterly opposed to slavery. Few people realize that not only was he the first superintendent of what ultimately became LSU, but that he was also offered a commission in the state militia of Louisiana. He declined the commission, resigned his post, and returned to Ohio, where his foster father (who was also his father-in-law) helped him get the commission he had originally been denied.

  One of the ways in which he was a “modern” man was in his approach to warfare. Under the rules of war of the 19th century, his tactics when marching through Georgia were fully justified on the basis that Georgia was a “rebellious province,” but it was never his intention simply to punish evil people or inflict unnecessary cruelty. Rather, he felt that the cruelty he was practicing was necessary. That it was actually the greater mercy, because it would cripple the South’s ability to support its remaining armies and thus end the war—and the killing—and restore the Union in the shortest possible time.

  He was a man who believed deeply in personal responsibility, personal honor, and duty to country. He was also a very personally motivated and driven man, however, and I have deliberately placed him in a position where those factors governed his final decision as to where his military skills actually belonged.

  Someday, I intend to write the novel of which this short story forms a tiny portion. I suspect that many of my Southern friends will come hunting for me when I do, given how universally beloved Sherman is in the South.

  I would point out, however, that he did not burn Atlanta. John Bell Hood did that. Just saying.

  * * *

  David Weber Bio

  David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. Weber and his wife Sharon live in Greenville, South Carolina with their three children and “a passel of dogs.”

  Previously the owner of a small advertising and public relations agency, Weber now writes science fiction full time.

  # # # # #

  To the Rescue by S.M. Stirling

  “I can see why December isn’t prime tourist season in France,” Colonel Theodore Roosevelt—junior, and usually known as Ted to his friends—said.

  “Yeah, I was expecting beaches and bathing beauties and casinos, sir,” McGregor said in his Missouri rasp from the gunner’s position below and behind the commander’s cupola.

  He could see out too, though more narrowly through the telescopic sight of the cannon.

  There certainly weren’t many girls not over-encumbered with clothing and morals visible on December fifth in this year of not-much-grace nineteen sixteen. Not in this up-country north-central part of France near Nevers, at least. It had been snowing off and on for days, and the temperature was in the twenties in this early morning hour. Surprisingly, that was low enough to be a little chilly even in the usually stuffy engine-heated interior of an armored fighting vehicle, with its stinks of exhaust, hot lubricating oil, sweat and nitro powder. Weather and politics were synchronized this year all over the northern hemisphere, as a wretched autumn that had ruined crops from Kansas to China shaded into record cold, so that the countless refugees trudging the roads and sleeping in ditches could freeze as well as starve.

  “And I think there are people here who don’t like us, sir,” McGregor added.

  Roosevelt grinned to himself as something clanged off the tu
rret of his Lobo Mk. I. It was probably shrapnel or a shell fragment, but might be a rock the shelling had kicked up. He pitied the infantry out there. Anything on a battlefield could kill them. There were only a few weapons that could kill a tank, and there weren’t very many of them at any one spot. That was the whole point.

  The vision blocks of the tank were an improvement on the ones in the Lynx Mk. V armored car he’d been using until recently—tanks were a novelty this year, whereas he’d ridden across the border into Mexico in one of the first experimental armored cars with Pershing in ‘13—but the view was still limited. Right now, it mostly involved the rest of the 2nd Cavalry (mechanized) HQ company’s vehicles spread out over the white-and-black winter fields, and the night-colored poplar-shapes of dirt thrown up by German whizbangs—shells from 77mm field guns.

  Each had a bright momentary red spark at its heart, like a malignant evil eye winking at you as the slab-sided mass of riveted armor lurched forward at about twice walking pace. He bared his teeth as one close round made the tank rock as it crested a slight ridge. That jarred his left arm, currently in a sling due to a round even closer than that; the medics had tried to make him head for the rear right away, but there was work to do first.

  Time for morphine and convalescence later. That’s a keep-their-heads-down barrage. German doctrine tells their infantry to hug the bombardment. They’re coming.

  The 27th Division had gone into line against the Germans right off the boats and trains; it was an illustration of the difference between even well-equipped and trained green troops and real combat veterans, though they were learning fast—the survivors were, at least, right now how to do a fighting retreat. Time to knock the pursuers back on their heels…