5
Jamie began pushing his men hard. What he had to do was knock all sense of fair play out of them and then start from the ground up retraining them in guerrilla warfare. To a man they knew that Jamie MacCallister had been raised by Shawnee Indians, and was a master at what was called dirty fighting. To Jamie’s mind, that was nonsense; there was no such thing as a fair fight. There was a winner and there was a loser, and that was all. In war, you killed the enemy, and that was that. You did it as humanely as possible, but a soldier kills. Period.
His two companies were chosen, and he had personally handpicked fifty men to stand in reserve, for only a fool did not expect casualties.
Jamie adopted little of the established cavalry tactics. Other people could fight gentleman’s wars. Despite all the talk of how he was to disrupt supply lines and create confusion among the enemy, Jamie knew he and his men had really but one function: to kill as many of the enemy as possible.
Jamie had no way of knowing how many men had left the twin valleys back home to join up with either the Blue or the Gray, but he suspected many of the young men had made up their minds and were now in training with their chosen side.
Jamie had written Kate, telling her that he was now a major in the Confederate army, but not telling her exactly what he was doing. His guerrillas were to remain a secret for as long as possible. He knew that would not be for very long, for once his men began raiding in full operation, the cat would soon be out of the bag.
Jamie had put aside his buckskins and now dressed like his men, in civilian clothing that he had to have made for him. But he still wore his moccasins and high leggin’s. The horse he had chosen for himself was a monster. A mean-eyed, dark, sand-colored brute whose owner had been threatening to shoot when Jamie arrived at the farm.
“Sell him?” the man almost shouted the words. “Hell, yes, I’ll sell him. I can’t ride him. Nobody can ride the bastard. You can’t keep him in a stall; he kicks it all to pieces. He’ll sneak up on you and bite the crap out of you. I got him in a trade and it was a sorry day that I did. My mares are scared to death of him. He ain’t good for nothin’.”
The man looked at Jamie. “Say, you’d be Jamie MacCallister! Major MacCallister! Take him, Major. He’s yours. God bless you, sir.”
“What’s his name?” Jamie asked.
“That’s a horse straight out of hell, Major. Man I got him from named him Satan!”
Captain Jim Sparks took one look at Satan and asked, “You got a death wish, Major?”
Within a week, Satan was eating out of Jamie’s hand and following him around like a trained dog.
In the first real test of armies, the Rebels soundly defeated the Federals at a place called Big Bethel in early June. President Lincoln became exasperated and ordered General Scott to launch a campaign against the Confederate forces in Northern Virginia. Scott and McDowell worked out a plan, and the date of the assault was to be July 8. Confederate spies learned of this and got the information to Johnston and Lee. Lee sent an aide to Jamie with this terse message: Ride. Attack. God speed.
Within the hour, Jamie and his Marauders were riding toward the north. Jamie broke his command up into small groups so as not to arouse suspicion among the Federal spies who seemed to be everywhere, just as Confederate spies were all over Washington and near any Federal troop encampment.
Jamie’s aide was a young Virginia lad not yet out of his teen years. Private Benjamin Pardee. He had picked Ben for several reasons: Ben was small and light in weight, and could ride like the wind. And the young man’s parents were dead, his only close relative a sister living down near the Virginia/Tennessee border. Jamie had a suspicion that before this war was over, there would be damn few original members of the Marauders left. He had thought at first to select only single men, but as it turned out, about half of his men were married.
Jamie’s Marauders began gathering in four places just south of the Potomac River. Across the river, clearly visible to the naked eye, were the camp fires of the Federals. Although President Davis and General Lee had forbid General P. G. T. Beauregard from taking any type of offensive action against the Yankees, that order did not apply to MacCallister’s Marauders; they were militarily designated as guerrillas and therefore could attack any Federal position they chose.
On this night, the Marauders would not attack in force. Jamie had other plans. Captain Sparks was an experienced Indian fighter with years of fighting Comanches and Apaches behind him, and so was Lieutenant Casten. Jamie chose nine other men with experience fighting Indians, and at full dark, they left their horses on the south side of the river and rowed across the river, using boats that had been hidden in the brush the day before. Jamie and his men were armed only with pistols and knifes and packets of explosives.
The green troops of General McDowell were about to experience the terror of sneak attack by men who had learned it firsthand from the greatest guerrilla fighters the world has ever known: the Indians.
Sparks and Casten marveled at the ability of Jamie to blend in with his surroundings and move as silently as a ghost, in spite of the man’s large size. Many times during night training Jamie had slipped up to experienced men and tapped them on the shoulder. Startled one man so badly he soiled his underwear—it would be a long time before he lived that down.
Jamie took Casten and three enlisted men and circled the camp to his left, while Sparks took the remainder and went to his right. Sparks knew what to do, for this had been researched several times, using information supplied to Jamie from Confederate spies.
Jamie placed his black powder charges gently, choosing his spots with care. One smaller charge went between two senior officers’ tents. Another huge charge was planted behind the rough-built powder house. The men with Jamie and Sparks planted small charges around artillery pieces; when that was done, they backed off just inside good pistol range and waited for Jamie’s signal.
Jamie could have killed several of the sentries, but elected to spare them . . . for this night. Once the war began in earnest, he would not be so generous.
Neither Jamie, Sparks, nor any of the other men could cut the fuses for the charges until they were actually on the site. So all breathed a silent prayer to the gods of war that they were allowing themselves plenty of time to get clear before the charges blew.
Mostly it was the skill of the men with Jamie, but some of their success had to be placed on the shoulders of the green troops guarding the encampment. The Marauders did their work, lit the fuses, and slipped away to lie belly down in good pistol range of the camp without being detected.
When the several hundred pounds of explosives blew, it must have sounded like the end of the world to those green troops in the camp. Four senior officers were killed instantly by the charge that Jamie had planted between the tents, and several more were badly wounded. When the block house went up it leveled everything within a five-hundred-foot radius. The charges under the artillery pieces went off, and for some inexplicable reason known only to God and the inexperienced artillery crews, the cannons were fully charged and ready to fire. Sparks from the exploding charges ignited the powder in the fire holes, and the cannons began going off. Since many had the wheels blown off them, the balls went ripping off at ground level, doing terrible damage to tents, wagons, and people.
The men of MacCallister’s Marauders all let out fearsome screams in the violence-shattered night and let their pistols bang into the running, milling, confused mass of Federal troops.
When their pistols were empty, they headed for the river and the boats. They did not attempt to row, just lay flat on the bottom and let the current move them along downriver until the gloom of the cloudy night had swallowed them.
They left behind them several hundred dead and wounded, a camp in shambles and confusion, and morale considerably lowered. Jamie and his Marauders made it back to their horses on the south side of the river and were quickly gone into the night.
* * *
Many Northern newspapers put out special editions with huge headlines, denouncing the assault as a COWARDLY ACT, a VICIOUS SNEAK ATTACK, and THUGS ATTACK SLEEPING UNION CAMP.
“Somebody forgot to tell those editors that war is hell,” Jamie said, although the credit for that remark would be attributed to someone else.
Then strategists in the Confederate camp decided it would be a good thing to let just a bit of news leak out about MacCallister’s Marauders and the actual number of men who had attacked the Union encampment.
It was said that General Winfield Scott went into a rage upon hearing that only ten or so men were responsible for the terrible damage that was wreaked upon McDowell’s camp along the Potomac. Most Northern newspapers called the number false. Several Union generals loudly proclaimed that no ten ’hound dog Southerners’ could inflict that much damage on a Northern church choir, much less upon an armed camp. One of those generals was Thomas Thornbury, a pompous, lard-butt loudmouth who commanded a Pennsylvania home guard. Thornbury, who came from a very wealthy Philadelphia family, had commanded his small militia for years, and his rank was self-imposed. He had never experienced actual combat, but he did make good copy for the newspapers because he always had something outrageous to say. This time, Thornbury was quoted as saying, “If those yellow-bellied Southern riffraff ever come to Pennsylvania, I’ll personally kick their ignorant butts back across the Mason-Dixon line.”
Jamie read with interest the remarks of General Thornbury. Then he sat in his tent for a time, deep in thought, a smile occasionally playing around his mouth. Without telling anyone what he had planned, Jamie met with Captains Sparks and Dupree, and in twos and threes, Marauders began quietly saddling up and riding out. Jamie took scissors and cut his long hair short, dyed what remained black, and laid out his good dark suit.
When Lee was asked by one of his aides what MacCallister was up to, Lee was reported to have replied, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”
Jamie left Satan and rode out of camp on a horse that had been deemed unfit as a cavalry mount—he would turn it loose once he got past enemy lines and to a train depot—and headed north. His handpicked men were already well on their way, posing as drummers, wandering itinerant laborers, and so forth. Jamie figured if he could successfully pull this off, he and his men would really tweak the noses of the Yankees.
Safely past Yankee lines, Jamie turned his horse loose and bought a train ticket for Philadelphia. There were several of his own men on the same train, but they did not speak to one another and managed to find seats in different cars.
Having initially ridden the steam cars much of the way to Washington to meet with Abe Lincoln, Jamie had gotten used to the railroads, but it still bothered him somewhat to be speeding along this fast. When the locomotive hit the flats, the driver really sped along. Jamie didn’t have any idea how fast they were going, but to his way of thinking, it was just too damn fast. It was unnatural. Progress was, of course, a good thing, but this was ridiculous. Next thing a fellow knew, a man would invent some sort of machine to fly through the air like a bird.
Jamie smiled at that silly thought. He made himself as comfortable as possible in the seat and took a nap.
* * *
Jamie got himself a room in a rundown boardinghouse on the seedy side of the city; the rest of his men found equally dismal lodgings. Jamie bought a horse and arranged for other horses at various stables and liveries around the city. But for now, he used a rented horse to get around.
Thomas Thornbury lived a few miles outside the city, in a large home on several hundred acres of land. He had never married, and rumor had it that he enjoyed the company of whores several nights a month. Usually three or more of the soiled doves . . . at a time.
“Fellow must really be a ladies’ man,” Sparks remarked.
“Either that or he is a little bit on the strange side,” Jamie replied.
Sparks gave him an odd look but said no more about it.
Jamie wasn’t really sure what he was going to do to Thornbury, but for certain he was going to teach the blowhard a lesson about shooting off his mouth.
But before he did anything, Jamie had to sit down and figure out an escape route. If they hit Thornbury’s house at ten or so in the evening, and did whatever they intended to do, they might have six hours at the most before Thornbury and the whores worked themselves loose and sounded the alarm. So the escape route had to be as foolproof as possible. And Jamie did not want to hurt Thornbury and certainly not the women. He just wanted to show the Yankees that they were not as safe in their homes far north of the war as they might think.
Far in the back of his mind, Jamie was thinking long range, thinking of another operation that was perfect for the Marauders. But that one was months or even years down the road. For now, it was best to dwell in the present and let the future play itself out.
In the few days that he had been in the city, Jamie had made friends with several working prostitutes, and being very careful how he approached the subject, only after buying the ladies several bottles and getting them drunk, had learned a great deal about Thornbury and his home guard.
Thornbury was a man who liked his food and especially his strong drink. And as more than one of the ladies had told Jamie with a wink, Thomas Thornbury was a bit peculiar when he entertained the ladies. Each morning, when it wasn’t raining, Thornbury hoisted the American flag on a pole outside his mansion. On the evening of the attack, there certainly was going to be a flag raised, but it damn sure wasn’t going to be the Stars and Stripes that would be fluttering proudly in the morning’s breeze come sunup—for Jamie and his men had brought with them a dozen Confederate battle flags, and come the dawning, the Stars and Bars would be flying in certain spots all over the city.
Sparks had carefully reconnoitered the home guards’ armory and was busy working out a plan to blow that up in order to create a diversion just as the Marauders slipped out of the city.
When the deed was done, the Marauders were going to scatter in all directions.
“If we can possibly do it, I don’t want anybody hurt or killed,” Jamie told his men. “What I do want is to kick some of the high and mighty arrogance out of these people and show them they are vulnerable.”
“When do we do the deed, Major?”
“Tomorrow night.”