Ten a.m., April 5, 1865
Amelia Court House
The wagons came back empty. Almost all of them. And the few that delivered tithes to the Confederacy carried only dry corn, spoiling hay, and, rarely, a treasure of side meat and potatoes. Lee had waited, refusing to give up hope, as one line of wagons after another creaked past, their accompanying officers disconsolate and ashamed. With almost all of the foraging parties returned, there were barely enough provisions to feed a regiment, let alone a hungry army.
His immediate task was to keep up a resolute front. But it was hard. The weight of trusting thousands lay upon him.
Lieutenant Colonel Cole tried to explain: “Sir, the entire county’s been picked over. What little they have, they hide. Richmond commissaries been combing those barns and smokehouses since last summer, folks can hardly feed themselves.” Cole’s left eyebrow always sagged; today it hung lower than ever. “Even those who gave didn’t want the scrip.”
They were right about the certificates, Lee knew. He did not believe the scrip or chits or his government’s currency ever would be redeemed. But formalities had to be honored.
And now there were rumors—not yet reports—of Federal cavalry at Jetersville, worrisomely close to the line of march.
Put that aside for now, he told himself. Perhaps there was nothing to it, merely a scouting party that could be driven off. He did not believe the Federals could move so swiftly, not in force.
Another empty wagon passed. Lee turned from his commissary chief, whose broken spirit felt all too contagious. It was a terrible thing for a man to learn that his best was inadequate.
He offered Cole no sympathy as they parted. It was not a time for softness, for indulgence. The army could not be nourished on excuses, men needed something to put in their mouths and chew. Cole had failed. He needed to bear his failure.
Longstreet appeared, a bear unchained, and together they walked back into the yard that hosted the headquarters tents.
“What shall we do, General?” Lee asked.
Longstreet grunted. “March.”
“I meant the question in a larger sense.”
“March harder.”
Longstreet did not reproach him for the fruitless delay. He would not. He did not need to.
“I tell myself,” Lee said, “that the men remaining to us are the finest. The weak have fallen away.” It went unsaid what both men knew, that hunger weakens the strongest body, the greatest heart.
“They’ll march, all right,” Longstreet told him. “Done it before. Won’t say they’re not disappointed, though.”
A mild way of expressing matters, Lee thought.
Marshall emerged from a tent to greet him.
Lee spoke first: “The army will march at one p.m.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You look doubtful, Colonel.”
“No, sir. It’s only that … General Ewell still hasn’t closed. He doesn’t expect his rear to reach us until late afternoon.”
“The roads will be crowded until then. General Ewell can follow.”
“Change of orders for General Gordon, sir? You said you might—”
“No. General Gordon’s corps will continue to serve as the rear guard. It would only sow confusion to change the order of march. General Longstreet, screened by General Lee’s cavalry, will keep the van. General Mahone will follow. The first increment of trains will move between Mahone and General Anderson. General Ewell’s command will follow Anderson. The remainder of the trains moves in Ewell’s rear, protected by General Gordon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“John Gordon’s going to feel like we’re feeding him to the lions.” Longstreet wore a wry smile, almost invisible in his bearded face.
“I believe,” Lee said, “that more than one lion may break a number of teeth.”
Eleven a.m.
Paineville
Hank Davies beheld the greatest opportunity for mischief he had encountered since being asked to leave Harvard and forced to leave Williams before romping through Columbia with only minor scandals and admonishments. As a lawyer, he’d even played a few courtroom pranks. But the hell a fellow could raise with a general’s stars on his shoulders and a brigade of horse was of a higher order than any mere stunt.
It had surprised his father halfway to apoplexy when the Union army made his reprobate offspring a brigadier and followed that up with a brevet to major general. It had emerged that Henry E. Davies, Esquire, and the cavalry were made for one another.
“God Almighty,” his aide gasped, admiring their discovery.
“Thank the devil, I think.” Davies drew out his field glasses, although they hardly were needed.
Before them, down a long slope still shy of greenery, hundreds of wagons wobbled along a farm road, interspersed with artillery sections either undermanned or not visibly crewed except for the drivers. Infantry details plodded along as escorts, slouching as though they were off to their own executions.
And they were.
The commander of his lead regiment, the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, clopped up beside Davies. At the sight spread before them, the colonel whistled.
“Lorelei, honey, tell me I’m not dreaming.…”
“Going to be a nightmare for those Johnnies,” Davies told him.
As soon as the lead fours of Pennsylvanians crested the low ridge, the Confederates took notice. A lone gun crew’s members leapt to unhitch their piece.
“He who hesitates,” Davies said, “doesn’t have half so much fun. Charge them. Now. As soon as the Twenty-fourth comes up, we’ll join the party.”
“Bless Robert E. Lee for this day’s bounty,” the colonel said.
In half a minute, a bugle sounded the charge. The Pennsylvanians went madcap for the wagon train, unfolding from column to lines as they dashed forward. Davies followed at a trot, letting the 24th New York overtake him. He dispatched a courier with orders for his trailing regiments each to guard a flank.
Confederate infantry scurried about to form firing lines as a double rank of horsemen descended upon them, hooting and howling. Davies noted that some of the Rebs moved much more crisply than others: veterans here, new recruits or invalids over there.
The attack swirled about the central wagons. The Johnnies did not get their fieldpiece into action, but concentrated rifle fire made it hot for a bit. The Pennsylvanians wheeled about and rode back to re-form, bugle sounding one call after another.
“All right,” Davies said, to himself as much as to anyone, “they’ve preserved their damned honor. Now it’s time for the reckoning.” With the 24th New York almost on line, he had his own bugler sound the charge.
The New Yorkers joined the Pennsylvanians in a second attack. It was too much for all but a few small packs of Johnnies. Most threw down their weapons or ran for the brush.
None of the teamsters attempted to bring off their wagons. They stopped, leapt down, and fled.
All of his troopers were veterans. They knew how to rifle a wagon train as swiftly as skilled burglars went through a house.
Not a bad climax for a minor scouting mission, Davies thought. Crook and Sheridan would be delighted.
Reports came in quickly. Dozens of the wagons were filled with rations, while others held headquarters papers, officers’ trunks, medical supplies, and loads of ammunition.
“What do you want us to do with them? Bring any off, sir?”
“Burn them,” Davies said. “Shoot the lead horses and mules. Cull out any that look like they might last the day.”
It didn’t take long for his men, who had mastered such skills in the Shenandoah Valley, to begin torching the canvas tops of the wagons.
As other riders herded prisoners, Davies’ aide rode up, breathless and bewildered.
“General Davies, sir … you’ve got … sir, you’ve got to see this for yourself.” The captain seemed half overtaken by mirth and half fixed by astonishment.
“All right, Captain. Lead on.”
Toward the rear of the long line of flaming wagons—Davies judged the count at more than two hundred—a large group of captives waited in smart new uniforms.
It was Davies’ turn to be startled: The disarmed men in jaunty kepis and gray coats with still-gleaming buttons were Negroes, every one of them.
“They put up a fight,” a major offered. “Just a little one.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Davies told all and none, “the cow jumped over the moon.” He rode closer to the oddest prisoners he’d yet taken in the war and halted his mount in front of one who wore sergeant’s stripes.
He felt unsure of how to address the fellow, so, to the accompaniment of the shouts of cavalrymen playing vandals, he just asked the fellow:
“Are you … all of you … actually Confederate soldiers?”
“Not no more,” the sergeant said.
* * *
Once the smoke began rising, Davies understood he was in for a fight. No wagon train of that size would be moving separately from its army. He had the recall sounded.
They’d take eleven flags, most of them found in the wagons and saved from the flames. He told the regimental commanders to distribute them to the best soldiers they had. Each flag was worth a Medal of Honor if “captured,” plus a ninety-day furlough. Although he now doubted the war would last ninety days.
Take care of the men, and the men took care of you.
They’d gathered in six artillery pieces, too, and a quick count of the prisoners came to six hundred, half of them uniformed Negroes. He started his trophies on the way back to Jetersville, arraying his regiments for a fighting withdrawal.
And fight they did. It wasn’t twenty minutes before the first Reb cavalry came at them screeching and slashing. As Davies fought from one rearward position to another, still more Rebs descended on his brigade. Some of the fighting was close, with the unforgettable clang of saber on saber marking private combats amid the scrambles. Just in time, Crook and Sheridan sent reinforcements. For a spatter of minutes, it looked as though a proper battle loomed. But the Johnnies quit. Before they even caught a glimpse of the first infantry skirmish line at Jetersville.
General Crook rode out to greet his brigade commander.
“Well, Davies … you’ve had yourself quite a morning. Rebs will never forgive that escapade.”
The well-bred Davies, graduate of Columbia and erstwhile attorney-at-law, said:
“Fuck ’em. They’re falling apart.”
One p.m.
Amelia County
The delay grated on Gordon. If he could get his men back on the march, it would go easier. Better to drive them along than to leave them sitting and scowling and waiting with acid-raw stomachs, sulking because their daddy generals could not make rations appear by daddy magic. Men on the move thought first about their feet and the weight they carried. Men left idle began to think dangerous things. Idleness was blood-kin to defeat.
What was he to do? As they waited for the plodding army to pass? Drill them? Put them to work improving the roads for the Yankees hurrying their way?
Not long ago, he would have given his men rousing speeches, moving from one division to the next, inspiring them with rhetoric maybe half of them half understood, but that sounded fine and pleased Southern-born ears. He recalled the speech he’d given to his brigade that first morn in the Wilderness, just hours before they saved the army’s left wing. Even after he’d climbed to division command, silver words had coated the losses in the Shenandoah. Now he had a corps and words were useless. The time for speeches was over. As was the hour of the Confederacy.
He meant to fight on, though, damned if he didn’t. No hardship would change that. Hardships only tested a man’s character. Those who lasted to the end were those who’d shape the future. He meant to be one of them.
His belly was empty, too. But he was not about to let a soldier see him sneaking so much as a cracker. Not while his men did without.
They couldn’t see his thoughts, though. No man could. His plans and hopes and dreams belonged to him alone, and they were bounteous, even extravagant. The army might be defeated, but John Brown Gordon would not be broken.
Not all of the men were strong, though, and the air had quitting in it. As his corps sat waiting so he and his men could play the rear guard again, the Army of Northern Virginia suffered its death sentence, mile by mile. When soldiers from other commands strayed into his encampments, they were no longer searching for their regiments, but looking for Yankees to whom they might surrender. Mere days before, those men would have been relieved to come upon others in gray coats. Now they were disappointed and too hasty with explanations.
It wasn’t a question anymore of whether the army would die, but whether it would die well.
He thought of his wife and the new infant back in Petersburg. He was certain that Fanny would be treated decently. He had to believe that. If his kind had to lose the war, he did not want to lose his wife. Not that.
God, he loved that woman, though! When they got home, they’d send the children off and shut themselves in the bedroom for a week, let the servants snigger.
Would there still be servants?
There would always be servants. Most men and women were born to serve. Sometimes you just had to change the name of their servitude.
Well, of all the commandments he’d broken or scratched deep, he never did covet his neighbor’s wife. He coveted his own.
What would peace bring them? He meant to astonish his woman, come what might.
Horse left in an orderly’s care, Gordon walked down the lane dividing his regiments. Letting the men see him as he posed a two-legged challenge: “Anyone have harsh words they want to share? Anyone have a complaint? Anybody here?”
Dull-eyed and sour, the soldiers watched him go. Old veterans still called greetings, missing the old banter, the remembered ritual. He did what he could to oblige them, but no man’s heart was in it.
He wished he could feed them. Just that.
His next call was on Kyd Douglas and his staff. As a brigade commander, the major had proved a hellion. All who knew him had hoped to see prompt action on his promotion to brigadier general, but promotions weren’t a priority just now.
“Well, gentlemen,” Gordon said, “care to venture a wager on my thoughts?”
A captain spoke up, in a tone a little too sharp. “Reckon you’re wondering when we’ll get up and march, sir. Or when Ewell’s circus train might finally come up. Does seem to me that we’re waiting on monkeys, not tigers.”
Achilles, too, had sulked, Gordon reminded himself. These men would fight as well as ever, when the next shots were fired.
“No, boys,” Gordon teased, “I was only pondering how pleasant it would be if I were confronted with a fine, big beefsteak. A little crusty at the corners, nice and pink inside. And hot bread, of course. Made with the best white flour. Slathered with so much butter it gets on your fingertips. Tall glass of porter for lubrication … though an abstemious man might take him a lemonade.” He smiled wider. “Reckon you don’t have much appetite, though.”
“General, I always knew you were a hard man. But I never dreamed you were such a cruel man.”
“What about you, Kyd?” Gordon asked. “Big fat beefsteak sound tempting?”
“Settle for half a sausage and a biscuit, sir. Half a biscuit.” His handsome face wore a failed attempt at humor. “And no sausage.”
Miles off, a mighty explosion sounded. Followed by another. And a third.
All of the men looked to Gordon.
He shook his head. “Blowing up the artillery stores at Amelia. Can’t drag them with us.”
Another huge blast shook the distance.
It was not a good sign. They all knew it. No one spoke.
It had been splendid, Gordon told himself, back when speeches counted, when men could be rallied with a word, when he could still envision himself as wise Ulysses tenting before Troy. He—all of them—had believed that war was glorious, even as the evidence mounted that war was a filthy slaughter, one vast corpse.
Now they knew.
As he parted with Douglas and his companions, Gordon turned back through the mass of bleary, hungry men, the best of whom used the time to clean their rifles. Tired and uncertain of the length of their stay, no one had bothered to mark off ground for latrines. A week past, he would have chastised any officer who let discipline falter so fundamentally, but now he figured they’d just leave the Yankees their visiting cards.
He stopped to see Clem Evans, who had been downcast the last time they spoke. Clem, who had believed above them all in the sacred destiny of the Confederacy, believing it with the same conviction he brought to his faith in the Lord and the Methodist Church.
“Going to have to keep the men closed up, once we do start marching,” Gordon told Evans and his pared-down staff. “I expect we’ll be going all night again, doubt we’ll even get moving before dusk. And tired men do foolish things. Keep them closed up, just keep them all together.”
Clem of the thousand hopes and prayers settled his murderer’s eyes on Gordon and spoke with the soothing Georgia voice that would fit him for the pulpit of which he dreamed:
“I reckon the Yankees will keep us closed up, all right. Doubt they’re far off.”
The hint of despair in Clem’s words was the first thing that had truly worried Gordon.
Two p.m.
Burkeville Road
His arm and shoulder bit him with pain at every step of his horse, but Lieutenant General James “Pete” Longstreet would not reveal his discomfort to any man. Bad enough that they had to see him struggle to make his disobedient right hand support his left well enough to do up his drawers.
He rode beside Robert E. Lee, a man who had mastered the art of quarreling without speech. Lee’s silence had the force of an entire brigade of artillery. And Lee was silent now, but quickened, listening to the snap-snap of skirmishing close enough to annoy the best-made plan.
They rode with Field’s Division, behind a cavalry screen led by Rooney Lee. The vanguard of the army was headed for Burkeville—in the face of rumors that Federals had reached Jetersville, smack on their way. Were it so, their presence would be a first-degree inconvenience.
His corps could brush away cavalry, but how long would it take? You could never really tell with Lee, but Longstreet feared they measured the hours differently. Yet he’d known Lee long enough to realize that the old man might be even more worried about their late start than he was. Lee just wouldn’t show it, not until all that pent-up fermentation burst out in an irrelevant remark on an unrelated matter to an officer uninvolved.
Lee could be as private as a time-biding, dark-thinking woman. He would no more succumb to a lapse in rigor, in the artifice of his temperament, than he would choose to reveal the bodily ailments of which all around him knew but dared not speak. Lee might be suffering all the pains of Hell, or feeling as spry as a lamb, and you’d barely catch a faint change of expression. Then he would cut down a man with one icy sentence.
Men loved him.
The queer thing was that Lee reminded Longstreet of Grant in that narrow respect: You just never knew what Sam was thinking behind that agreeable front-porch expression of his. Different in almost every other way, Sam and Lee were as alike as two Chinamen in that regard. Just couldn’t figure them. Even when you thought you knew them as well as any man could.
Hadn’t they misread Grant, though? Longstreet had tried, within the conventions of Southern overconfidence, to warn his fellow generals not to dismiss Sam Grant. Yet even he, perhaps Grant’s closest friend in better days, had not foreseen the heights to which happenstance and a steady, bulldog genius would lift Sam. All he had known for certain was that no man possessed more exasperating integrity or greater reserves of stoicism—not even Robert E. Lee. He saw his old friend so clearly in his memory, in the hard years after Grant resigned his commission, when Sam had been reduced to peddling cords of wood on the streets of St. Louis, dragging a laden sled down snow-covered streets, accepting a workingman’s poverty as his lot. And still he had pressed that five-dollar gold piece on Longstreet to settle a debt. Longstreet had not wanted to take it from his comedown friend, but knew Grant well enough to understand that his pride hinged not on worldly success, but on a stubborn view of right and wrong. Ulysses S. Grant had been the least ambitious man that Longstreet had ever encountered. Now he led vast armies subduing a continent.
Longstreet tried to imagine Robert E. Lee in rags, hawking wood in the street. He could not do it.
“General Longstreet,” Lee said in that savagely polite tone Virginians were born to, “if you have discovered a subject of mirth, do share it with me.”
A schoolmaster chiding a schoolboy.
“Just reminiscing, sir.”
“Oh? About what?”
“This and that. You know.”
Did Lee know? Did Robert E. Lee ever daydream? Surely …
“I believe, General,” Lee concluded, “that the matters at hand demand our full attention.”
There were times when Pete Longstreet was tempted to drop a great, loud fart in Lee’s presence.
And yet … Lee had worked miracles. Again and again. Whatever devils drove him, Lee had mastered them well enough to prolong the war at least into this year, checking Grant’s every move. Longstreet knew of no other general, himself included, who could have done half so well against such numbers, against such remorselessness on the part of an enemy.
Grant was still there, though. And getting ever closer. None of them could quite understand how he’d done it, losing clash after clash, yet winning campaigns. Members of Lee’s staff joked that he’d defeated Grant all the way from the Rappahannock to Hatcher’s Run, just whipped him so badly that the Army of Northern Virginia had backed up a hundred miles.
They never told that joke in Lee’s presence, of course. And now Hatcher’s Run was behind them, too.
He’d warned them that the reports of Sam’s drinking were heavily embellished, that if he’d gone to seed in the Oregon Territory, it was hard to find a sober officer out there. And then there was George Pickett with his squaw. Grant hadn’t longed for the bottle, he’d longed for his wife. Maybe Sam should’ve taken a squaw of his own?
No, he wouldn’t.
He recalled standing up for Grant, along with Cadmus Wilcox, at Grant’s wedding. Sam had been the happiest man in the world. That day, at least.
Again and again, Virginia’s nobility had brushed off Longstreet’s warnings: gay and invincible, all of them, until there was suddenly no more cause for gaiety and “that drunkard Grant” taught them that they weren’t invincible, after all.
Longstreet wasn’t about to give in, though. If Sam could be stubborn, so could he. Just have to see who was tougher, who lasted best.
The skirmishing in the middle distance intensified. A horseman galloped ahead of a pack of riders, coming back down the road from the cavalry screen and kicking up sufficient dust to draw stupendous curses from the infantry.
No man would curse in Robert E. Lee’s presence, of course.
The rider was Lee’s son Rooney. The old man always treated his sons with such severe formality that Longstreet had to wonder about their boyhoods. Had they undergone formal inspections, morning and night?
Grant loved children, he rolled around on the floor with them crawling all over him. But, then, maybe Lee did, too. When no one could see. Perhaps there was a heart within that armor.
Robert E. Lee was a great man. But there were times when Longstreet wasn’t convinced that he was a good one. Virtue carried to an extreme.…
Rooney drew up, panting. His horse shook foam from its mouth, spattering the father’s trouser.
Lee declined to notice.
“Sir,” Rooney panted, saluting, “Yankee cavalry. Confirmed. In strength. On the high ground below Jetersville. Digging in. Been digging in for a while.”
“Infantry?” Lee demanded.
“One report. I sent out scouts to confirm it.”
Lee appeared to shudder. For one instant. Then the armor closed around him again.
Rooney had spoken loudly and hurriedly. The soldiers stumping along must have overheard. He’d be lucky if the old man didn’t chide him for it. Longstreet sympathized with the boy, ever so earnestly seeking to please his father, to gain one word of praise, a good general burdened by a greater name. Longstreet felt a kinship with him: the brotherhood of loss. Rooney’s wife had died in the course of the war, her infants lost before her, while scarlet fever had taken Longstreet’s children. Thousands dead on the battlefield had not forced tears from his eyes, but he had not been able to leave the house to attend his children’s funeral. He, James Longstreet, had sat in the shrouded parlor with his wife until it was done. And Rooney Lee had worshipped his young wife.
To that, Longstreet believed, the cold, old man would have said, “We are not to worship earthly things.”
Lee let the men worship him, though. He basked in it.
Don’t be bitter, Longstreet cautioned himself. Don’t be small. You’ve had the honor of serving a very great man. Be grateful. Be wise.
Turning to Longstreet, Lee said, “General, shall we ride forward and see for ourselves?”
* * *
Not just cavalry, but infantry, too. In force. Lee had not believed that those people could march so swiftly. On such poor roads.
They scented blood. His blood.
“I could turn my lead divisions,” Longstreet said. “Push them back, keep the road clear.”
Lee shook his head. Meaning only: Wait. He pressured Traveller with his knees. The horse ambled forward. Lee touched the reins lightly and Traveller stopped.
He raised his field glasses. Perhaps … perhaps Longstreet’s corps could fight through them. But what would follow? If one Union corps had arrived, others might be close behind. And if they had reached Jetersville, the odds were strong that they were already at Burkeville.
He didn’t want a battle now, not with the army exhausted, hungry, and stretched for a dozen miles. He wished to choose his own ground, if the time came to give battle.
He would have to hasten a courier to the nearest telegraph stop still in operation, to warn the railroad not to forward those rations on to Burkeville.
Had it been a grave error to try to feed his men?
The army would have to march for Farmville now and turn south there. Lee saw no choice. It was not time to fight, not without more certainty of the Federal dispositions, not before his men were fed and rested. Rations could be held at Farmville for them.
A bad day. Another bad day. First, those empty wagons. Then word that Federal raiders had burned one of the army’s wagon trains, a large one. Part of his own headquarters trains had gotten mixed in with Ewell’s wagons, guarded by soldiers given the task by Custis. Those people had burned every vehicle, including the only wagons left to the army that carried rations, precious wagons shepherded forward by Ewell, enough to feed the Richmond men for a day or two, even if the rest of the army hungered.
That had been a small disaster. It must not be prelude to a greater one.
He turned his horse back to Longstreet and Rooney. He felt terribly proud of his son, very close to him now, but dared not show it.
The boy’s wife had been lovely, a scented flower. But the flower had been cut down. He had wept for her. And for his son, as well. He had tried, too, to put his feelings into a letter to Rooney, but words were ever inadequate in such matters.
Why had he thought of her now?
“General Longstreet, you must reverse your march. We must seek a more northerly route, we must aim for Farmville.” He turned to his son and his voice almost cracked, still another betrayal of flesh and spirit. “Have you local men to guide General Longstreet? Among your scouts, perhaps?”
“Yes, sir. I can have men ride back and clear the route, as well.”
“My staff will see to that. Such is not your province.” He tried to recall the details of the inadequate maps his engineers had made. As an old engineer himself, he’d been angered that his engineer officers had not used the winter lull to better effect. Armies needed maps. He did not know this poor side of Virginia. There were possibilities, though, of that he was certain. If the army could not move one way, it would move another.
“We dare not lose any time,” he added. “We must steal a march again.”
Longstreet nodded. He had returned from his convalescence more given to brooding than ever. But he was stout of heart. When other hearts failed.
No man would ever know it, but there were moments when Lee’s heart failed him, too.
Seven p.m.
Petersburg
“Yankees done come again, bring by more food. It for you, Miss Fanny, how they say. Come from some high general. Us can’t eat it up, it be so much.”
“Front door or back?” Mrs. Frances Gordon asked the servant.
“They comes round back this time.”
Enlisted men on a detail, then. Not officers for once. Respectful, all of them. As if they had set out to prove that Northerners could out-gentleman the squires of the South. Nor had they been so indelicate as to expect her to receive them in her condition.
The servants and even the owners of the house had told all, of course. The Federal officers knew she’d been indisposed and had not intruded. But the plate in the hall had filled with visiting cards and notes bidding good wishes in handsome penmanship. Not a few of the writers praised John effusively.
What cared she, though, that chivalry wasn’t dead? She just wanted John alive.
From all she could gather, the Yankees were in high spirits, the chase was on. They seemed to believe it would all be over soon.
Would it? She craved firm news. It would be fine by her if it ended now. As long as her marvelous John remained alive. Throughout the war, she had refused to contemplate life without him. She would not do so now.
The Sharpsburg wound had been the low point for her. But she had grown almost fond of the scar on his cheek. She could bear any scars on his body, as long as warm blood still flowed through its veins.
The servant saw to the bedcovers and left. Fanny Gordon picked up her newborn son, a child of war, who thus far had proven the best-tempered of her infants. She jogged the tiny man gently in her arms.
Perhaps she’d receive the next officers who called. She was well enough now to go down to the parlor. Well-placed visitors might have news of John.
Oh, it was all such a … a travesty. This war, all of it. She had given her heart to the Cause because it was John’s cause. She had believed because he believed. She had scorned the North because it was his enemy. She had celebrated victories, especially when they were his. And she had believed that the South must triumph because she knew John would triumph.
But all of it had been such a waste, so needless. From the start she had seen the war for what it was, an epidemic of boyhood in grown men, a vast and gruesome repetition of fistfights behind the schoolhouse, the ultimate stupidity of the male.
A dozen women, North and South, could have resolved the war’s causes in one afternoon, with time out for coffee and cake. But the men had wanted to fight. And when they died, the women they left behind were supposed to shut themselves off from life and mourn them eternally—never mind feeding a swoggle of children and paying the note at the bank. The dead were to be cherished.
Fanny Gordon wanted to cherish her living, breathing husband.
With the infant growing restless in her arms, she walked over to a window and stared through the twilight.
“He’s out there, you hear?” she told her son. “Your daddy’s out there, causing them all a fuss.”
Nine thirty p.m.
Amelia County
Led by one of Sheridan’s scouts, the party of horsemen cantered through the darkness, leaving the roads behind and risking the countryside, bold to the point of folly to trim the distance. Now and again they glimpsed campfires that had to belong to the Rebs, but their luck had held thus far and they’d never been challenged.
As they neared their destination, the danger was bound to increase by leaps and bounds, but no rider dared suggest a safer route.
Ulysses S. Grant was enjoying himself immensely.
The several hours required to ride from Nottoway Court House to Jetersville already had provided the longest stretch of pleasure he’d known since Julia went to New Jersey to see to the children.
He loved to ride, and Sheridan had delivered a grand excuse. Grant had been settling into the staff’s evening review when Phil’s unprepossessing scout—got up like the lowest Reb—had appeared with a note wrapped in foil concealed in a chaw. Among other things, Phil had written that he wished Grant were present at Jetersville, suggesting great possibilities with Lee’s whole army before him.
Grant had understood immediately. Meade had caught up to Phil, and the two of them were at it again, with Meade determined to do things right and Phil determined to do things now. They would have been polite to each other’s faces, saving their bile for when they returned to their corners. And Meade was sick. So it fell to Grant’s lot to referee the match. He didn’t mind much. And he relished the chance to leave his pony behind and swing up onto the back of Cincinnati, by far the finest horse he’d ever owned.
Wouldn’t it be a marvelous life if a man could just ride a good horse for a living? Beat being a general.
The night was brisk and black, but the riders were cloaked and the scout had a feel for the ground. He was one of those uncanny men with a compass in his breast and a sense of the enemy just this side of eerie. Phil had a knack for matching men to purposes.
Grant had brushed off his staff’s concerns, the worry that he might be killed or captured. Only John Rawlins had not bothered to protest—he knew Grant too well. And Grant had chosen the four best riders from among his officers and told the commander of his headquarters guard to select a dozen men with hardy mounts.
There had almost been an addition to the party. The recollection amused Grant. Frank Barlow, Meade’s young fellow, had all but begged on his knees to come along. Just caught up from Petersburg, eager and impatient, Barlow had sensed that a fight was on the way. And a fight meant opportunity for a major general who wanted another division worse than any child ever wanted a pony.
Grant sympathized, but he didn’t know Barlow’s level of horsemanship, or whether he even had a decent mount, and Grant didn’t mean to slow his pace for anyone. He’d told the fellow that he could come up first thing in the morning, riding along with the rest of the headquarters squadron. Barlow, a renowned savage, had been crushed.
The night air was brilliant, better than the finest Habana cigar. Grant longed to give his horse free rein, to gallop headlong, jump whatever obstacles got in the way, and drain every ounce of pleasure from his precious hours of freedom. He’d seldom been happier than he’d been at West Point setting jumping records that were said to stand to this day.
It wouldn’t do to get ahead of the scout, though. Getting picked up by the Rebs would be a touch awkward.
Meade and Sheridan, Sheridan and Meade. He did have that to look forward to, no matter how late the hour of his arrival. His heart leaned to Phil, who always wanted to fight, but he respected Meade’s greater understanding. Phil would not have considered the damage even a slight reverse might do just now: Even the smallest Reb victory would give Lee’s army new life. For his part, Meade would want to have every corps up and ready to do things right, to leave Lee no chance of pulling off one of his tricks.
But neither Sheridan nor Meade would see things go as desired, Grant was certain. Lee would be a fool to hold still until morning. And Lee wasn’t a fool. No, Robert E. Lee, the perfect officer, darling hero of the War with Mexico, would be slipping off to the west, veiled by the darkness.
Catch him tomorrow afternoon, Grant reckoned.
Midnight
Amelia Springs
“Yankee cavalry!” someone screamed.
Jolted by shouts and stampeding hoofs, defrocked artillerymen dragged from the Richmond defenses—inexperienced soldiers with bleeding feet—struggled to cap their rifles. First shots pierced the night: quick, startling flames. More shots followed. Men fired toward the noise, in what they took for the enemy’s direction, and then they reloaded, groping for ramrods and cartridges in the blackness, spilling the ammunition from their pouches. Grown men shrieked. Others, attempting to flee, slammed into each other. Muzzle blasts filled the night with giant fireflies.
“Cease fire! Cease firing! Just stop shooting, goddamnit!”
It took another few minutes to quell the panic.
When all was over and the column re-formed, a staff officer reported to Custis Lee that a horse had broken its tether and galloped along the line. There had been no Yankee cavalry, but several companies had fired on each other in the confusion. A major had been wounded, perhaps mortally.
Custis Lee’s first thought was to hope that his father wouldn’t hear about the incident. His second was to wonder how these weary, untested men would hold up in the face of veteran Yankees when run to ground. He had regiments of heavy artillerymen reduced to serve as infantry, a swiftly organized Navy battalion of sailors, marines, and officer cadets washed up on land, and various strays slapped together to form a division. It was his first true field command, the first time he had not been chained to an office or bound to fixed fortifications, and he knew it would be his last. The war was ending, any fool could see it.
He longed to make his father proud just once.