Battle for Atlantis

CHAPTER TWELVE

General lee was surprised and for once, he did little to hide it. “You say the main bulk of the Federal Army is north of the Potomac?”

The spy was covered in mud from a hard night’s ride. His face was haggard from both exhaustion and stress. He had just traversed many miles of enemy territory. It was a hard journey on the nerves because he knew that if he were caught he would be hanged immediately. He nodded at lee’s question. “Yes, General. I saw two corps at least.” The spy went to the map on the field table and pointed. “Stretched from here to here.”

Lee looked at Longstreet. His senior corps commander was the only person in whom he would confide, and he did not need to speak out loud his shock that the Union forces had moved so quickly as he saw it reflected in Longstreet’s face.

“And they got a new commander, general,” the spy continued. “Hooker got sacked by Lincoln. Meade is in command.”

That was one piece of information Lee had already received, although it was not common knowledge throughout the Army of Northern Virginia.

Several of the junior officers gathered in the tent 19hed at the mention of Meade’s name, and one who had served in the prewar army pointed out that Meade was about as mediocre as Hooker. Lee shook his head. silencing the derision. “I, too, served with Meade. He is not audacious but he will commit no blunder on my front. And if I make one, he will make haste to take advantage of it.”

“Then we best make no mistakes,” Longstreet said, but Lee was focused back on the spy. “Did you see anything of Stuart? Of my cavalry?”

“No. sir.”

It was a question Lee had started asking almost hourly, of anyone who wandered too close to him. Lee switched his attention to the map. As near, as he could tell the terrain between him and the place where the spy indicated the Federals were was relatively flat with some hills and ridge but no piece jumped out at him as the place to choose for battle. The streams mostly ran to the Potomac, and while there were many, none seemed particularly out· standing from a military point of view as an obstacle. There were numerous roads crisscrossing the area and an army could move relatively quickly if unopposed.

“What direction were the Federals moving?” Lee asked.

“North.”

Lee frowned. “A blocking force to keep us from Baltimore?”

No one answered the question, as none could know.

“You say two corps,” Lee said to the scout. “What about the rest of the Army of the Potomac?” The larger Union Army had seven corps, which meant Lee still didn’t · know where the bulk of Meade’s force was.

The spy shrugged. “I saw only those, but they were moving. The rest might be following or they might be in Washington or they might still be in Virginia for all I · know, sir.”

Longstreet was now looking at the map. “There are hills to our west.”

“I know there are hills to our west,” Lee snapped, a little more irritably than he intended. He knew Longstreet wanted to find a nice hill and dig in and wait for the Federals. “The problem is we might sit for a very long time waiting for the Federals to come to us. And our supply line is long and could easily be cut. Meade could sit all summer between us and Washington and Baltimore with interior lines. If only I knew his intentions.”

The atmosphere in the command tent was one Longstreet had never experienced before in two years of war. There was an air of uncertainty as Lee stood staring at the map and musing options out loud. Longstreet had never seen the Old Man so indecisive, but he also understood the lack of intelligence due to Stuart’s disappearance was weighing heavily on his commander. They were blundering around in enemy territory.

“All the better reason for us to sit tight for a few days,” Longstreet said. “Stuart will come back.”

“We have the initiative,” Lee disagreed. “We must keep it.” He reached down with his right hand, fore and middle finger extended. They touched the map on two towns. “Cashtown and Gettysburg. Ewell is already in the area. We will move the rest of the army in that direction. Via Middletown.”

“Which town is the primary objective?” Longstreet asked.

Lee kept his fingers on the map. “I’ll decide when I each Middletown.” He looked up and tried a smile. “I ear there are shoes in Gettysburg.”

One of the division commanders heard this. “If there is objection, General Lee, I will take my division in the morning and go to Gettysburg and get those shoes.”

Colonel John Buford had an objection to any Rebels coming to Gettysburg. He was a Kentuckian who had served in the Regular Army before the war. He’d fought Indians on the frontier and was already an experienced combat leader when the Civil War broke out. Since the beginning of hostilities, he had seen more than his share of combat. He commanded two brigades of battle-tested Union cavalry. His reputation was as a hard and energetic leader who pushed himself as hard as he pushed his men. He pushed himself so hard, that less than six months after the battle that was approaching he would be dead. The coroner’s report would state simply that he had died of exposure and exhaustion.

At the moment, he was very much alive, just west of Gettysburg, looking through his binoculars down the Chambersburg Pike. There were fields on either side of the pike, and his military mind saw an axis of advance that was wide and open, other than for a number of easily revolved rail fences splitting the fields. He was standing in the cupola of the Lutheran Seminary that held a commanding ding view of the terrain all around. He turned and looked back toward Gettysburg.

“This is good terrain,” Buford said. His two brigade commanders were next to him in the cupola, waiting for orders. He waved an arm, indicating the road and fields. “Good fields of fire and we have the high ground. I’m sick and tired of charging the Rebels. Let them come to us.”

“There is no report of Confederates in the area,” one of the brigade commanders noted. “Some of the townspeople said some passed through a few days ago, but then withdrew. If anything, all we’ll most likely see is a patrol in the morning. We should be able to hold that off with no trouble.”

Buford shook his head. “They’re going to come, and · they’ll be coming in force. Skirmishers across those fields, three deep. We’ll have to fight like the devil tomorrow. I can feel it.” He shook his head. “Strange thing is we’ll be coming from the South and the Rebels will be corning from the North.”

He called out for a rider. “Go find General Reynolds. Tell him to come fast at first light. Things are going to get · hot in the morning.”

Then he spoke to his two brigade commanders. “We will hold here, gentlemen, until Reynolds comes forward. I want a line from there” — he pointed toward a streambed on the right — “up to this ridge, and along the ridge four hundred yards past the pike. Have your men start digging in.”

President Lincoln was also looking at a map, almost a duplicate of what was on lee’s field table. Reports from Meade were sketchy at best, but at least the Army of the Potomac was on the move and mostly north of the river after which it was named. The private door opened and Mary came in. She walked to his side without a word.

Lincoln’s large hands moved over the paper, taking in le states, from Maine to Florida then westward, all the way to the territories and the Pacific Ocean.

“There is so much potential,” Lincoln whispered, “from such a vast land. The world has never seen such a great land, one united in democracy. Who knows what such could do?”

Sometimes Lincoln felt the issue of slavery obscured other, as-Important issues. For him, the Union was the most critical thing. He had never allowed recognition of the Confederacy as an independent nation. He wanted them to remain to all in the North, and to the rest of the world, as criminal states in illegal rebellion.

He felt it went beyond just the Union though. The United States was a young country, a grand experiment the likes of which had never been seen on the face of the planet. It was a symbol of hope to those around the world who believed in democracy, in an age where kings and despots ruled almost everywhere else. Lincoln saw the war as a test whether those who ruled via election could also suppress a rebellion.

Lincoln had only those three months of militia time in his youth and thus had little military experience. But as the war dragged on, he began to realize that common sense mattered as much as a West Point education. The first large battle of the war had taken place in July 1861, when the first commander of the Army of the Potomac hat Lincoln had appointed, McDowell, suffered defeat at le first Bull Run.

That was when people began to realize that ninety days wasn’t going to bring about the end of the war. Two years later, the war still raged.

“It’s coming very soon:’ Mary finally said.

“Are you sure?” Lincoln asked her.

“Yes.” She looked at the map and placed a finger on a small dot. “Gettysburg. The storm is gathering.”

After four days of road improvement, Chelmsford decided it was time to move forward a bit farther. He sent out a patrol of mounted troops who found no sign of Zulus. It was · as if the land had been scoured clean not only of people but of animal life as well. Some of the more observant men noticed there weren’t even any birds in the sky, a most ominous token. It was as if the animals and birds knew something they didn’t. There was also a feel about the land that none could quite describe but that left an uneasy feeling among many of the men.

Chelmsford had the army move forward to Isipezi Hill, where he set up an intermediate camp. He had the wagons off-loaded so they could be sent back to Rorke’s Drift for more supplies. He decided this would be his jump-off point to the next significant piece of terrain, a large bluff called Isandlwana about four miles farther on. While Chelmsford could see Isandlwana, there was much he could not see, as the terrain was full of wide ditches, known as dongas, which criss-crossed the land.

Farther to the north was a large escarpment — the Nqutu Plateau — beyond which one could not see. Several officers expressed concern that a patrol should be sent to the escarpment. But Chelmsford decided against it. if the Zulus came, he felt they would see them in plenty of time to be prepared.

Nor did Chelmsford follow through on standing orders to fortify any campsite. The ground was rocky, making digging difficult and the supplies that had been offloaded from the wagons needed to be sorted, something that he felt was a higher priority at the moment.

At Rorke’s Drift, a single company of infantry was charged with holding the small outpost and keeping the ford across the river open. Their commander, Lieutenant Bromhead of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, unlike Chelmsford, believed in rules. From the moment they entered the small compound, he’d had ms men building walls and fortifying the position.

Rorke’s Drift was a Swedish mission station consisting of two single-story thatched buildings. One was the missionary’s house, which had been converted into a hospital. The other was a church, which Bromhead had also appropriated and made into a storehouse for the supplies that were to be forwarded to the column when the wagons came back.

When the wagons did arrive, they were accompanied by an engineer officer, Lieutenant Chard, with orders to improve the ford on the nearby Buffalo River. Chard and Bromhead were rather old for their rather junior rank and both had undistinguished military careers that so far appeared to be heading nowhere.

That was going to change shortly.

Chamberlain came awake to Captain Eddings looming over him. “What is it?”

“There is a message from the Oracles.”

“A message?” Chamberlain got to his feet. “What is it?”

“‘Be ready.’”