Grant Comes East

Chapter Two

Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia, Rockville, MD

July 16,1863

Gen. Jeb Stuart pulled off his poncho, water streaming on to the floor. Mud was clinging to his boots as he stomped them on the entry way rug.

"God, what a mess out there," he sighed. Looking up he saw the disapproving glance of his commander at his choice of words. "Sorry, sir."

Gen. Robert E. Lee motioned for Stuart to come to the table. Gen. James "Pete" Longstreet was by Lee's side, sipping from a cup of coffee; on the other side of Lee stood Gen. John Bell Hood, newly promoted to command of the reorganized Second Corps. The room was dimly lit-half a dozen candles around the table-the small house at the edge of Rockville abandoned at the approach of Confederate forces and now serving as Lee's headquarters. Jed Hotchkiss, chief cartographer for the Army of Northern Virginia, stood behind Lee, his map of the area spread out on the table.

Lee, sighing, rubbed his eyes. He was tired, having been up all day riding slowly, weaving his way through the bogged-down ranks of his exhausted army, which had been slogging for six weary days to mate less than sixty miles. His uniform was soaked clean through, change of clothes lost somewhere back on the road, the headquarters wagon stuck in the mud.

Col. Walter Taylor, Lee's aide, offered Stuart a cup of coffee, which the general took eagerly, blowing on the edge of the tin cup and then sipping.

"Your report, General Stuart," Lee asked, putting his glasses back on to look up at his young cavalier.

"As ordered, sir, I rode a circuit of their outer fortifications and started back here as soon as it got dark. It was a difficult ride, sir. The Yankees have destroyed every bridge, mill dams are blown, one of my men drowned trying to ford a stream. Dozens of horses are crippled-broken legs, mostly-had to destroy them."

"Did you get any prisoners?" Lee asked.

"Yes, sir. Six men. Three from the First Maine Heavy Artillery, two from the First New York, and one officer, a captain, shoulder straps indicate staff, but he's as tight as a clam, won't say a word. The enlisted men were well fed, arrogant, said they hope we attack."

"Their strength?"

"Still not sure, sir. It was impossible to try and develop the situation, to trigger an open skirmish outside their fortifications. No regimental flags were shown."

"Smart on their part," Lee said, "keep us guessing."

"We did pick up a lot of newspapers in a post office at Beltsville, Washington papers mostly, printed this morning, a Harper's Weekly reporting on our victory at Union Mills and a New York Tribune from four days ago. One of the Washington papers said there's nearly thirty thousand Yankees garrisoning the city."

"Sounds about right," Longstreet said quietly.

"It also said that Lincoln's ordering up reinforcements from as far away as Charleston."

He has to, Lee thought to himself. He knows I have to come here, and now all other fronts are secondary.

"The fortifications?" Hotchkiss asked.

Stuart nodded to the army cartographer.

"Your maps are excellent sir. Just as you indicated. They're damn …, excuse me, sir, they are massive. Ditching ten feet deep, abatis, earthen walls twenty feet high in places. The fortresses are all within mutual support of each other, and connected by communication trenches. One of the heavy-artillery prisoners said they've got thirty-pounders, even some eight-inch guns, Columbiads, heavy mortars, and hundred-pound rifled Parrott guns in them. It was hard to see through the rain. Fields of fire are well laid out, each fortress covered on flanks by its neighbors. There are no weaknesses anywhere along that line, sir. They most likely have good interior roads as well and can shift to meet any threat."

As he spoke, Stuart traced out on Hotchkiss's map the perimeter of fortifications guarding the landward approach to Washington.

"Well manned?" Lee asked.

"Again, sir, hard to tell in the rain. I pushed skirmishers forward at three points and they were met with brisk firing, no lack of ammunition; they were firing heavy guns at my skirmish line from half a mile out."

Lee nodded. Of course they would. The stockpile of equipment in the capital would be unaffected by what happened to the Army of the Potomac, and their gunners would be eager to get some shots in, their first chance for real shooting since the war started.

"I placed a brigade to cover the Rockville Road, another on the Seventh Street Road, and ordered two more brigades down to cut the Blandenburg Road, the railroad to Baltimore, and anchor our line down to Uniontown. By tomorrow morning the city will be completely cut off."

"Thank you, General Stuart, you've fulfilled your orders handsomely."

"Sir, I must tell you this will be one hard nut to crack. It makes our works around Richmond pale in comparison."

"The difference is," Hood interjected, "it is us doing the attacking, not McClellan. We'll put in the best infantry in the world against third-rate garrison troops."

"Still, sir, when you get a look at those fortifications," Stuart replied, "well, it will be a hard nut, as I said."

"Do you suggest we not attack then?" Hood asked.

Stuart looked at Lee.

Lee took his glasses off again and rubbed his eyes. The hour was late, he was tired. Without asking, Walter put a fresh cup of coffee on the table beside him, and Lee sipped from it meditatively for several minutes.

"Gentlemen, the hour is late," Lee finally said. "We've had another hard day of marching. The rain and mud are exhausting all of us. I think we should get our rest Tomorrow, General Hood, Major Hotchkiss, and I will go forward to survey the lines ourselves. General Stuart, I would like for you to join us. General Longstreet, I ask that you stay here to oversee the movement of the army."

"One final thing, sir," Stuart said, and, fishing into his breast pocket, he pulled out a soggy, folded up newspaper and spread it out on the table.

"A Washington newspaper, sir, this morning." Stuart pointed to a column on the front page.

Adjusting his glasses, Lee leaned over to read it

"Halleck has been removed from all command positions and is retiring; Gen. Ulysses Grant is in command and is reported to already be in Cairo, Illinois, with his troops following."

Lee scanned the rest of the front page for a moment Reports on rioting in northern cities, a rumor that Stanton was to be fired, a report that thirty thousand reinforcements were rushing to the aid of Washington, that four batteries of guns surrounded the Capitol and two more guarded the White House. He sifted through the densely packed columns, some of it hard to read, the ink smeared, and then took his glasses off.

"I don't know this Grant," Lee said, looking around at his staff, "but his reputation is known."

"Sir, I don't think fighting against Pemberton, or even General Johnston, is indicative of his ability against us," Hood interjected.

"Still, I wish I knew more of him."

"It'll be weeks before he can mount anything effective," Longstreet said, leaning over the table to scan the newspaper.

"That is why we must act quickly, decisively, without hesitation," Lee replied.

He drained the rest of his coffee and put the cup down. He did not need to say another word. There was something in his gesture that indicated dismissal, and one by one the three generals bid good night and left, the sound of rain drumming down, echoing in the room as the door swung open. A humid breeze filled the room. As the door closed, the room regained a warm feel as the fireplace drove out the humidity.

Taylor and Hotchkiss hesitated and Lee smiled.

"Walter, I have a comfortable spot right here." Lee nodded to where a blanket had been spread on a sofa. Even though the house had been abandoned by Union sympathizers, he would not take the bed without the express permission of the owner. It bothered him, as well, that outside, most of his army was bedding down in the pouring rain, their dinner cold rations. To sleep in a comfortable bed, under a dry roof, struck him as the wrong example this night, the compromise of a sofa as far as he was willing to go.

Taylor and Hotchkiss saluted, bid Lee good night, and retired to the kitchen, where the rest of his staff were already fast asleep on the floor.

Standing, Lee removed his jacket and unbuttoned his vest. His boots were already off and he stretched, back cracking. He looked down at the map, his gaze following the traces in pencil of the route taken by his army down from Westminster, skirting to the west of Baltimore and now down to here, with Longstreet's men concentrating toward Rockville, and Hood on the road to Claysville and Beltsville.

He looked out the window, a lantern set on the road to mark headquarters barely visible as a sheet of rain lashed down, rattling against the panes.

The miserable weather, which ultimately had played such a crucial role in the entrapment of the Army of the Potomac, now was hampering his own movement. Even the macadamized pikes were becoming difficult to move on, the road surface not designed for the pounding of hundreds of artillery limbers, a thousand supply wagons, over forty thousand men, and ten thousand cavalry. The very rain that had made his decisive victory possible was now making the exploitation of that victory very slow and very exhausting, robbing him of precious time when swift and decisive movement was essential to achieve the final victory.

He let the curtain drop and returned to the table, sitting down, half glancing at the newspaper. Opening it up and spreading the single sheet out since it was uncut, he turned the paper around, pausing for a moment to look at the casualty lists for the Washington, D.C., area posted from Union Mills.

Familiar names, old comrades from Mexico, Texas, and East Coast garrisons, cadets from his days as superintendent of West Point, were there in soggy ink.

Three weeks ago they were still alive. How much all has changed, he thought. Dispatches, three days old, had come up this day from Richmond, and there was the Richmond Enquirer heralding Gettysburg and Union Mills as the greatest victory in the annals of war, rival to Waterloo, Yorktown, and Saratoga.

Maybe so, but still it continues, the war still continues. One of the dispatches, in a sealed leather pouch, was from President Davis, congratulating him for a victory unparalleled in the history of the Southern republic, and informing him that he would come north to review the victorious army and to offer, as well, a conference with Lincoln to discuss an ending of hostilities.

The implication behind President Davis's letter was clear enough, Lee mused as he picked up the coffeepot and poured half a cup. The president expects this war to be over within the month, but that means the taking of Washington, the collapse of the Union's will to fight, the draft and anti-war riots in northern cities spreading. Then Lincoln will have no choice but to seek an end to it.

It was obvious now, however, that the near destruction of the Army of the Potomac had not swerved Lincoln from his path. Lincoln had endured the frustrating repulse of McClellan in front of Richmond, the destruction of Pope at Second Manassas, the bloodbath of Union soldiers in front of Fredericksburg, and now the crushing defeat of the Army of the Potomac along the Pipe Creek line between Westminster and Gettysburg.

Somehow Lincoln had this ability to focus on the positive and to endure no matter what pain was inflicted on the Union forces. Now he was clearly pointing to Vicksburg as proof that the Union could win despite the failures in the East. He was a hard man and forcing him to negotiate was going to take extraordinary effort

In the last fight, it was the mind and spirit of General Meade and of his generals that I had to probe, to analyze, to defeat. The opponent is different now. Grant? Not for at least two weeks or more, most likely a month before he will become a factor. No, my opponent now is Abraham Lincoln, it is he I must break.

That meant Washington. If the city fell and Lincoln was forced to abandon the city, where would he go? New York? Out of the question, with that city ripped by anarchy. Philadelphia? Yes, most likely there, a symbolic move to the birthplace of the United States. But according to the paper before him, rioting had broken out in the City of Brotherly Love as in its bigger cousin to the north. A president fleeing to a city that would need to be placed under martial law would be a crippling political blow, one he could not recover from.

He looked at the map but by now there was no need to do so. Every detail was memorized, burned into his mind, every approach, every possible avenue of attack thought out, and thought out yet again.

It was indeed, as Stuart put it, "a hard nut to crack." Yet it had to be done and done swiftly. We must force Lincoln out while the northern cities still burn, while a nation scans its newspapers, reads the tightly packed rows of fine print, recognizes names of the fallen, and asks, "Why?"

He thought of the night of June 28, his epiphany as he realized that the army was not completely under control, under his direct hand, and from that realization, he now knew, had come the victory at Union Mills. He had driven his army beyond the brink of exhaustion, but that driving had taken them to heights undreamed of.

I must do that again, in spite of all, in spite of the weather, in spite of the fortifications and that waiting garrison. This was a test of nerves and the target this time was not the Army of the Potomac, it was the mind of the president of the United States.

He remembered his military history, how after Cannae Hannibal had inexplicably hesitated, giving Rome time to prepare, so that when the Carthaginian army finally did march up to the gates of that city, it could not be taken. Thus the fruits of that great victory were in the end squandered; the war had dragged on for another decade and led to ultimate defeat and finally to the destruction of Carthage.

I must strike now, it must be one solid blow, every available man must be brought forward. The cost will be horrific, a frontal assault straight in, most likely on Fort Stevens. How many will I lose? Five, perhaps ten thousand, upward of a quarter of my men in half a day. One final, terrible price. With luck the garrison will panic once the outer shell breaks and the city itself can be taken then without the grim prospect of a street-by-street fight.

Lincoln? Any dream of capturing him was remote. He would remove himself, take ship, and escape. It would not be the act of a coward. It would be a political necessity, though the abandoning of the capital would spell his doom nevertheless.

He knew that was yet another reason why President Davis was coming north, with the hope of a triumphal march into the White House, there to receive the ambassadors of every European power.

That would be the deciding moment, when word of the fall of Washington was passed on to Europe. Recognition, at least by France and the Hapsburgs, would be certain and, as it was in the winter of 1777 after the British surrender at Saratoga, so it would be in the late summer of 1863. Military victory would lead to diplomatic recognition and support that would then lead to the final victory.

England would not join the others. The antislavery movement in England outweighed any economic or balance-of-power considerations.

He knew that with the perception of victory now so close, any suggestion that the South counter the Emancipation Proclamation with its own announcement of some form of manumission would fall upon deaf ears. But to do so at this moment of victory would strengthen their hand, and perhaps sway England as well. Then it truly would be a final blow.

This is not my arena, he realized. This is a political, a social question; I must focus on the military-and he pushed the contemplation aside.

Take Washington, then let Grant come east to that news. With good fortune there would be no fight with him, for the war would already be over.

Lee blew out die candles, left the table, and knelt on the hard, rough plank floor, lowering his head in silent prayer.

"Thy Will be done," he finally whispered and, curling up on the sofa, he drifted into exhausted sleep.

The White House

July 16 1863

It was nearly midnight. President Lincoln stood alone, gazing out of the second-floor office window. The grounds of the executive mansion were a garrison this night, artillery pieces positioned at the four corners, a second battery positioned and unlimbered on Pennsylvania Avenue, along with four companies of regular infantry encamped on the lawn facing Lafayette Square. Stanton had actually wanted the troops to dig in, to build barricades, an indignity to the building and to the position. The president had refused.

Across the street the lights of the Treasury Building were ablaze, couriers riding up with a clatter of hooves, muddy water splashing. Officers came and went, each one with purposeful stride, as if the entire fate of the nation rested upon them this night as indeed it might.

He looked back over his shoulder. John Hay, his twenty-five-year-old secretary, was asleep, curled up on a sofa. The house was quiet. Mary had insisted, earlier in the evening, that at least Tad should be evacuated, and there had been a row. It had dragged on for nearly an hour, her in tears, saying that he didn't care for the well-being of Taddie and was only thinking of what the newspapers would say.

She had finally settled down, calling Taddie in to sleep beside her, and now there was peace.

In part she was right and he knew it, the realization troubling. Every paper would scream a denouncement if he did evacuate his family, ready to point out that while he worried about his own kin, tens of thousands of others had died.

Evacuation was out of the question, and besides, if it ever did come to capture, he knew that Mary and Tad would be treated with the utmost deference by Lee.

An outrageous report had just come to him this morning, that Lee's son, taken prisoner last month, was languishing in a dank cell in Fortress Monroe, nearly dead from his wound. He had sent a sharp reprimand to the commandant, and ordered that the prisoner be slated for immediate exchange as a wounded officer. It was not to curry favor. It was simply the civilized thing to do. He knew Lee would do the same without hesitation.

Strange that the two of us are enemies. I did offer him command of all the Union armies in 1861. A tragedy he turned me down. With his leadership the Union would have been restored quickly and decisively. From the west-facing windows of the White House, he could see Lee's old home, inherited through his wife and now confiscated by the Union, dominating Arlington Heights. Though they were of different backgrounds and social status, he felt an affinity toward the man. He sensed that Lee wished this thing to be ended as well, while across the street there was more than one officer this night who revelled in the power and in the sheer destruction, the opium-like seduction that war could create, the smoke of it seeping into the lungs to control and to poison the mind.

McClellan was like that, so was Hooker, they loved it, the power, the pageantry, the shrill dreams of glory. Perhaps in another age that illusion might have been real, in the time of Henry V, or of Julius Caesar. At least it seemed that way upon the stage and in paintings. But he remembered Antietam, the first battlefield he had ever walked upon, the air thick with the cloying stench of decay wafting up out of shallow graves, soldiers still burning the carcasses of dead horses, the hospital tents overflowing with wounded and hysterical boys struggling before the final fall into oblivion.

He had seen it in the eyes of so many women, young girls, vacant-eyed fathers dressed in black. No longer would the gay tunes of a martial band bring a smile to their faces, only the memory of a son, a husband, a boy who had heard that music and marched off… never to return.

"God, will this ever end?" he whispered.

"Sir?"

It was Hay, stirring, looking up at him, ready to return to his desk to write down another memo, another order.

Lincoln shook his head and made a soothing gesture with long, bony hands, motioning for his loyal secretary to go back to sleep.

He went back over to his desk and sat down, absently sifting through the pile of papers, documents, and newspapers awaiting his attention. The flow was far heavier than usual, a pile awaiting him every morning, and no matter how fast he attempted to clear it, yet more came in throughout the day and night He pushed the papers back, tilted his chair, and rested his long legs up on the desk.

The entreaties from members of Congress, those few still in the city and the rest from around the country, would have to be answered, but that could wait The majority were simply doing the usual posturing for the home press, so they could thump their chests and announce how they had advised the president most carefully on this latest crisis.

The implied threat in more than one letter from Congress was clear. Some were already seeking a way to disenthrall themselves from support of the war, so they could claim all along that they knew the effort to save the Union would be a failure. Others were thundering about who was responsible for the disaster at Union Mills. Several members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War had announced that hearings would be held.

There was even the issue of who was now in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was dead; Dan Butterfield had just made it back through the lines this morning, Hancock barely surviving. In his own mind he wondered if that army even still existed or should be quietly disbanded, survivors shifted into other commands. Troops were scattered from Harrisburg to the Chesapeake; the only thing protecting that broken remnant and the cities of the North from Lee was the flooded Susquehanna. Nominally, Couch, who commanded the twenty thousand militia hastily gathered at Harrisburg, controlled the district, but the job was far beyond the capability of a general who had asked to be relieved of field command only two months ago.

Secretary of State Seward was reporting requests from a dozen ambassadors for interviews. Already dispatches were winging to the courts of Europe, with lurid details of the collapse of the Army of the Potomac, and tomorrow more would go out, announcing that the capital was under siege.

How long?

Stanton, puffing and wheezing, had arrived earlier in the evening, announcing that Stuart had been spotted in front of Fort Stevens, and then predicting that rain or not, Lee would strike tomorrow.

He looked back out the window. The steady patter of rain had eased, a damp fog was beginning to roll in from the flooded marshland just below the White House.

If he attacks, will Heintzelman be able to hold?

The general was confident, but then again, nearly all of them showed confidence until the shock of battle hit Still, the positions were strong, the men within them dry, well fed, rested, ammunition in abundance. Though they were inexperienced compared to the battle-hardened men of the old Army of the Potomac, his sense of them was that they would fight. They had endured two years of jibes and, when they came into the city on furlough, even brawls with the men of the field army, who denounced the heavy-artillery units as garrison soldiers afraid of a fight.

Dug in as they were, they'd fight, but there would be precious few reserves, with every fort on a perimeter of thirty miles having to be manned.

He stood and walked back to the window.

He wondered how President Madison had felt, standing here, watching as the couriers came riding in, announcing the disaster at Blandensburg, the fact that the British would be in the city by nightfall.

And yet the republic had survived that. There was never a question of surrender then, nor with George Washington after the fall of Philadelphia, when Congress moved to the frontier outpost of York.

For Washington in 1777 and Madison in 1814 it had been a question of will. It was the same challenge for him this night

Tonight, he knew that in a fair part of those states still loyal, will was evaporating, burning away under the heat of this war. As the horrific tally from Union Mills was tapped out to distant telegraph stations across the land, the victory at Vicksburg would be washed away in a sea of mourning and recriminations.

He was almost grateful that the city was now cut off. The chattering of most of the voices of condemnation or outright surrender would gratefully be silent in this office.

I could end this tomorrow, he thought. End it and send those boys home. A month, a year from now they would still be alive, for chances are, if this continues, they will die, if not tomorrow or the day after, they will perish nevertheless in the battles still to be fought.

He thought again of Antietam, the washed-out graves, rotting corpses half out of the ground. He remembered one in particular, obviously a boy of not more than sixteen, face visible in the clay, wisps of blond hair, decaying lips drawn back in a death grimace, silent, granite-like eyes gazing up at him as he rode past Somewhere-in Maine, Ohio, or Indiana- there was a family, sitting in a parlor, who read of that boy, the name in small print, the only sound the tick-tock whisper of the clock marking out the passage of their lives, and in their hearts was the question of why did their boy die? And they were asking that again tonight with more news of defeat Why did my boy die for a cause that seems lost?

Perhaps they hoped that there was some meaning, some cause, a dream beyond that of any individual, that their son had been drawn into that storm and disappeared forever, and yet there would be ultimate purpose, a deeper grief, that in the end would be replaced by a knowledge that through him, others now lived, that from the rich earth of his grave, something now was given back to all… forever.

What would they think this night? A logic he had always held in contempt was that the sacrifice to Mars must, at times, be sustained by yet more blood sacrifices to assuage those already dead. To give in was to render meaningless the sacrifice of all those who had already died.

And yet, this night, he did see truth in it If the war could still be won, then to surrender now would be to render meaningless all the sacrifice gone before, even that sacrifice upon the bloody slopes of Gettysburg and Union Mills.

Can it be won?

He thought of two conversations of the last week, both of them so clear in intent, not the self-serving maneuverings of the political circles about him, rather the simple statements of two soldiers who had been there. Henry Hunt, who had witnessed all of it, and in tears had asked that leaders be chosen that were worthy of the men who served beneath them. He and General Haupt, who so coolly and without emotion had said that if the men could be found, he, Haupt, could marshal the supplies and equipment to support them within a matter of weeks.

That now focused him.

Grant, more than any other, had proven his worth, and he knew without doubt that here was the general he had sought for two long years. A general who understood what he as the president of a free republic expected to be done by the army of that republic. He knew that Grant fully understood the relationship between a civilian government and its general in the field… that upon accepting command to scrupulously follow the orders of the president, which were simple, at least in concept… relentlessly move forward, unleash the full power of the North, and implement a coordinated military plan to bring about a speedy victory.

Ultimately though, that decision-the decision to refocus the industrial might of the nation, to place that might into the hands of those few men still willing to volunteer, and to let the frightful dying continue-now rests with me. Do I have the will to see it through?

He looked down again at the soldiers on the lawn. Several were gathered around a lantern, playing cards, another crowd leaning against a lamppost, trying to read the latest newspaper.

They will die by my orders, if I have the will to give that next order.

If I don't, then all meaning to what has gone before is lost. Our continent will fracture apart-and with a sudden clarity he could see all that would follow. Two nations would quickly break into three, for Texas would go its own way again, followed by four, perhaps five nations, as western states broke away. Then there would be war in Mexico and Cuba, for surely the South would turn that way, and war on the West Coast as those states sought to drive out the British north of them. And at some point war yet again, for vengeance, for control of the Mississippi, or over servile revolt and abolitionists who would not give up their cause.

Yet hundreds of thousands more dead in the century to come. And what of Europe? France would try to stage a return, would goad Spain in as well. The "last best hope of mankind" would become simply like the rest of the world, warring states drenched in centuries of blood, rather than a power that might one day step forward to transform, perhaps even to save, the world.

And it all rests with me tonight.

Though the burden was almost beyond a man's ability to tolerate, especially as he gazed down upon those who, tomorrow perhaps, would pay that price, he knew with a startling clarity what he had to do, what history now charged him with doing. With that clear, there was no longer room for doubt.

"Thy Will be done," he whispered.

Sitting down on the sofa opposite from Hay he slipped off his shoes, wrapped a shawl around his painfully thin, hunched shoulders, and, lying down, drifted off to sleep.