Shattered Nation

by Jeffrey Brooks

  *****

  September 19, Night

  The light of the campfires and the sounds of the singing faded into nothingness with every step McFadden took away from the campground of the 15th Illinois. He doubted if anyone had seen him slip away. If they had, they would only have assumed that he was going to relieve himself. Hopefully, they would not notice that he had not returned. McFadden doubted he would be missed in any case, as no one in the regiment had spoken to him all that much, with the single exception of Archie O’Connor.

  Somewhere off to his left, he thought he heard the flowing of the Chattahoochee River. The sky was cloudless and through the treetops he could see the waning moon and innumerable stars dancing overhead. Using a simple skill his father had taught him, McFadden quickly used the Big Dipper to pick out Polaris, thereby determining which direction was north. That established, he began walking southwest, toward what he assumed was the encampment of the Army of the Ohio. Every step he took brought him closer to Cheeky Joe.

  He walked slowly but steadily. The light of the moon and the stars provided sufficient illumination to allow him to avoid the low-hanging branches of the innumerable trees. Fireflies blinked all around him and, aside from his own steps, the only sound he could hear was the chattering of cicadas and the distant, almost ghostly laughter of encamped Northern troops. Occasionally he could see flickers of campfires through the sea of trees.

  McFadden wanted to avoid any unnecessary contact with Union troops, as they might want to know who he was and where he was going, so he kept his distance from the encampments and continued steadily southwest. The task of staying on course became monotonous, requiring only occasional glances at Polaris to know he was still heading in the right direction.

  As the minutes turned into hours, McFadden’s mind began to wander. He started wondering what he would do after he had killed Cheeky Joe. Would it make any sense to try to get back to Confederate lines? Even if he was able to evade capture and return to his regiment, he would most likely be brought before a court martial on a charge of desertion. His superiors would be justified in hauling him before a firing squad, for he had indeed deserted his post. It had been his responsibility to lead his men and he had abdicated his duty in order to pursue a personal vendetta.

  Perhaps he might simply vanish into the wilderness of northern Georgia and wait for the war to end. The pine forests were as vast and endless as the sea, after all. It would probably be a simple matter to find a quiet place, hunt and fish for food, and survive for a few months until the fighting came to an end. And what then? He wouldn’t be able to remain in the South, not after having deserted the army. Might he journey north to one of the great industrial cities and find work? What kind of life would that lead to for a man like him? And having fought against them for two-and-a-half years, could he ever be comfortable living amongst the Yankees?

  He could, of course, attempt the arduous journey across the Mississippi River to get back to Texas. As far as he understood, he still legally owned the farm that had belonged to his father. But other returning veterans would pick him out as a deserter. No, he could not possibly return to Texas now.

  The thought saddened him, but what saddened him even more was what Annie must now think of him. She had probably read his letter in despair, her stomach tightening as she went through each word. As unworthy as McFadden felt himself to be, he knew that Annie had begun to fall in love with him. Perhaps their relationship had begun to awaken in her some of the hope and faith that it had awakened in him. Had she stayed awake at night, dreaming of a happy life together after the war, as he had often done?

  It didn’t matter now, of course. Whatever his relationship with Annie was or might have been, it now lay in ruins. His quest for revenge had destroyed his last chance at happiness.

  McFadden’s thoughts suddenly turned to Patrick Cleburne, which he found rather odd. Somewhere, many miles away, Cleburne was sitting in his headquarters tent wondering whether the Confederate government was about to cast him to the winds for having made his emancipation proposal. The men of the division loved Cleburne as though he were their father. McFadden didn’t feel quite the same way, but he certainly respected Cleburne for his military brilliance and for how carefully he cared for his soldiers.

  Cleburne had seen fit to promote McFadden to lieutenant after the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Although he had been ambivalent at first, McFadden now knew how much he appreciated this gesture of confidence. And how had he returned the favor? By deserting his post. It was shameful. Both Annie Turnbow and Patrick Cleburne had put their faith in McFadden, but he had been weighed in the scales and found wanting.

  McFadden continued on, trying to navigate a pass between the yellow orbs on either side of him that suggested Yankee campfires. But the task became increasingly difficult after another half hour, which probably meant that he was approaching the general encampment of an enemy division. He moved very carefully, trying not to make a sound. But it turned out not to be good enough.

  “Halt!” a voice demanded.

  McFadden turned toward the sentry, who had been standing so still that he had mistaken him for a tall tree stump. In the darkness, it had been impossible to tell the difference.

  “Friend!” McFadden said quickly.

  “Identify yourself!”

  He struggled to remember his façade. “Private Sam Stephens! 15th Illinois!”

  “The hell you say! Drop your musket!”

  McFadden dropped his rifle and raised his hands. The man moved forward a few steps to get a better look at him.

  “Come back to the camp with me, if you please.”

  The sentry’s tone had shifted to one slightly more polite. It was natural to be tense and alert in the dark, but the man probably knew that no Confederate units were thought to be nearby and that his regiment was camped in the midst of an immense Union army. The possibility of an enemy attack was exceedingly remote.

  McFadden strolled with him toward the nearest cluster of campfires. It turned out to be the encampment of the 5th Tennessee, made up of Union loyalists from the eastern part of the state. Such men were despised as traitors throughout the Confederate army, much in the same manner as was George Thomas. For just a moment, he wondered what had become of the man he had captured that memorable day at Peachtree Creek, but quickly dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

  A few minutes later, he was brought before a Union major, who turned out to be the second-in-command of the regiment.

  “15th Illinois?” he asked. There was whiskey on his breath.

  “That’s right, sir,” McFadden answered. “I was supposed to deliver a message to a neighboring regiment, but got lost in the darkness.” It seemed as good an explanation as any.

  The major smiled in amusement. “Lost, indeed. Hell, boy, you wandered completely out of your army. The 15th Illinois is in the Army of the Tennessee. You’ve stumbled into the Army of the Ohio!”

  He laughed heartily and was joined by many of the men who were cooking around their campfires. McFadden maintained a confused expression on his face, hoping his act of playing dumb would work. He felt a sense of accomplishment, though. Accidentally or not, he was at least getting closer to Cheeky Joe.

  “You’d better find a way to get back to your regiment as soon as you can, son,” the major was saying. “Word is that the Army of the Tennessee is turning around and marching back northeast first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” McFadden asked, genuinely confused. “Why would it do that?”

  “Do I look like General Grant to you, boy? I don’t know why the armies do what they do. Hell, sometimes I don’t even know what my own regiment is doing! All I know is that orders came down this afternoon for us to keep marching southwest and telling us that the other army is heading back northeast.”

  McFadden’s mind automatically began to weigh the information, initially just as an exercise in curiosity but then with increasing concern. Why on earth would the Army of the Ohio be
continuing to the southwest while the Army of the Tennessee was turning around to go back the way it had come? For that matter, why had most of the Union force left the area of Atlanta and marched southwest in the first place?

  He knew he was a simple soldier. By rights, he felt that he probably shouldn’t even be an officer. He knew nothing of high strategy, but he could visualize a map as well as anyone. He did not recall there being anything important to the southwest of Atlanta for a hundred miles or more. Could Grant’s entire force be moving far out to the west in order to cross the river away from the main Confederate force and then move on Atlanta? Or was something else afoot?

  The major had said that the Army of the Ohio was continuing to the southwest. They were already sixty or so miles away from the main Union encampment across from Atlanta. If they continued marching in that direction, their final objective could only be central Alabama. But if they were heading toward Alabama, it made absolutely no sense for the Army of the Tennessee to come halfway and then turn around.

  An unpleasant memory intruded upon McFadden’s mind. In May of 1863, the 7th Texas had been attached to the Confederate army defending the fortress of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. Grant, having been stymied in half a dozen earlier attempts to capture the town, had engaged in an elaborate deception to throw the Southern forces into confusion, causing them to think that the main threat was to the north of the city even as Grant marched south and crossed the river below Vicksburg. It was in the midst of this mayhem that the 7th Texas had found itself embroiled in the Battle of Raymond, during which the regiment had nearly been destroyed.

  McFadden also recalled something he had read in the newspapers months earlier, about how Grant had successfully deceived Lee in Virginia by swinging his army toward Petersburg and crossing the James River without being detected. If Grant had done something like that twice before, he could certainly be trying to do it again.

  In an instant, everything became clear to McFadden. Grant was moving two of his three armies southwest, but only as a feint to draw Johnston away from Atlanta. Having apparently succeeded, he was now ordering the Army of the Tennessee back in the direction of Atlanta to reinforce the attack on the city, while the Army of the Ohio continued on to maintain the deception. McFadden had the sinking feeling that neither Johnston nor any other general in the Confederate army knew what Grant was up to.

  But McFadden knew.

  He was now within the encampment of the Army of the Ohio. Very likely, Cheeky Joe was within a few miles of the ground on which he was standing. The men of the 5th Tennessee had no idea that he was a Confederate soldier. If his disguise had worked here, it could work elsewhere. All he had to do now was press on just a little further. He could find the man who had tortured and killed his brother and send him to the Hell he deserved.

  But something else tugged on McFadden. The call of duty began to struggle with his desire for revenge. A trick of fate had brought him into possession of critically important information which had to be brought to his superiors without delay. If Grant’s deception had succeeded in fooling Johnston, the Confederate commander had probably moved the Army of Tennessee into a disadvantageous position, leaving Atlanta weakly defended. If his superiors remained in the dark about what the Union army was doing, the city might be taken before Grant’s subterfuge was revealed, along with however many troops had been left behind to defend it. Even a simple soldier like him could tell that a defeat of such magnitude might well prove fatal to the Confederacy.

  The Unionist Tennessee soldiers had resumed singing around the campfire, while the major who had earlier questioned him had begun taking more swigs from his bottle of whiskey. No one was paying the least attention to him. Without saying another word to anyone, McFadden quietly slipped back into the darkness of the woods, this time walking directly northeast.

  Chapter Fifteen

  September 20, Noon

  “Welcome to Alabama, General Johnston!” Stewart said, saluting.

  The commander of the Army of Tennessee returned the salute as he stepped off the passenger train and glanced around. Stewart was technically incorrect, for the town of West Point was actually just inside Georgia on the Alabama border. It was little more than a tiny hamlet. Aside from the train station itself, there seemed to be nothing of any importance. It certainly bore no resemblance to the beautiful town on the Hudson River in New York, where Johnston and so many of his fellow officers had been educated. The name of the town only indicated that it marked the final western point on the railroad from Atlanta. Farther west, the Montgomery and West Point Railroad ran towards the center of Alabama.

  Johnston looked up and down the environs of the train station. Everywhere, infantry companies were disembarking from livestock cars, forming up for a quick inspection before being marched off to their assembly points. Johnston could also see artillery being carefully unloaded from flatbeds. Everywhere there was shouting and swearing by hard-working men. As far as he could see, all was going smoothly.

  “Any sign of the enemy?” Johnston asked. Stewart had arrived two days before and would be the best informed person.

  “Rumors of Yankee cavalry north of here, but nothing confirmed.”

  “What sort of rumors?”

  “Chatter from the locals, mostly.”

  Johnston nodded. “Looks like we beat Grant to the Alabama border.”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “You hear that, Mackall? We won the race!”

  Mackall, stepping off the train himself, smiled and nodded.

  Johnston turned back to Stewart. “You’ve deployed your men?”

  “Yes, sir. As each division has arrived, they have assembled outside the station and marched northwest to the town of Lafayette. General Loring informs me that there is good ground in that vicinity. They have begun entrenching there, in a defensive position facing to the northeast.”

  “Good. Very good. When Grant arrives, he will encounter an unpleasant shock. Rather than marching into Alabama against no resistance, he will bump into two entrenched corps of the Army of Tennessee, ready and eager for battle. And he will have to deal with us before he can move on either Montgomery or Selma. A good strategic situation, I think.”

  A staff officer handed Mackall a handful of telegrams. The chief-of-staff began reading through them quickly.

  “Anything interesting?” Johnston asked.

  “The last brigade of Cheatham’s corps is departing from Palmetto. The transfer appears to be running with exceptional smoothness.”

  “I am happy to hear it. Any word from Hardee in Atlanta?”

  “Not that I can see. I would imagine that no news is good news, since he would have reported anything unexpected or out of the ordinary.”

  “True. Atlanta is in good hands with Hardee. We now need to focus on our interception of Grant.”

  “Hmm,” Mackall said, reading through another telegram.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s from the War Department. Secretary Seddon wishes to know why we have decided to move such large forces into Alabama without first receiving permission from Richmond. He also wishes to know if we have coordinated our movement with General Taylor, as we have crossed into the territory of his department.”

  Johnston grunted.

  Mackall’s eyebrows went up. “How do you want me to respond, sir?”

  “I don’t want you to, William. We are in the middle of a highly complicated logistical undertaking here. I have neither the time nor the inclination to flatter the vanity of mindless government officials who are hundreds of miles away and have no knowledge of the situation here.”

  Mackall tilted his head. “Very well, sir.”

  “For God’s sake, William! Don’t the idiots in Richmond know that we’re trying to win a war here? I hope that history will faithfully record how much the operations of our army have been hamstrung by meddling officials in Richmond, especially Jefferson Davis himself.”

  “If historians ha
ve the archives of the Confederate Army and the government to look at, the story will tell itself.”

  Johnston thought about that for a moment. “Would it be too much trouble to begin preparing copies of the more important documents? Telegrams, orders, that sort of thing?”

  Mackall considered this. “All our staff officers have their hands full coordinating this movement, but I could see what I can do.”

  “Do it, then. If, God forbid, this movement fails and we are defeated, I will want the people to know the truth about where the blame lies.”

  For just a moment, Johnston again found himself haunted by the thought of what the people of the South would think of him if they lost the war. As early as the fall of 1861, there had been grumblings in certain quarters that he should have pushed on to capture Washington after he had won the First Battle of Manassas. Davis and others blamed him for the loss of Vicksburg, a defeat which cut the Confederacy in two. If he failed against Grant now, his great victory at Peachtree Creek would be forgotten and he would go down in history as the man who had brought the South to defeat.

  But if future historians had his own records to pour over, they would no doubt conclude that General Joseph Johnston had acted honorably and appropriately at all times.

  *****

  September 21, Morning

  The five hundred men of the 8th Michigan Cavalry Regiment slowed from a canter to a trot as they approached the north bank of the Chattahoochee River, then from a trot to a walk, and finally came to a halt on the riverbank itself. For several minutes, they gazed southward across the river, keenly observing the tiny hamlet of Campbellton.

  A week before, two corps of the Army of Tennessee had been camped around Campbellton. Now, however, there were no Southern troops to be seen anywhere.

  The water at this point in the river was fairly shallow and it wasn’t long before the Michigan troopers found a spot where their horses were able to walk across without too much difficulty. Slowly and cautiously, the first few squads crossed to the south bank and began to fan out throughout the town. As they did so, more cavalry arrived on the north bank and began to cross over as well. In the distance, as the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon, long snake-like columns of infantry were coming into view. The steady crunching sound these columns produced was the rhythmic footsteps of thousands of marching men.