The Army of the Tennessee was in camp on a pleasant, verdant plateau stretching about four miles along the River Tennessee, hemmed in on two sides by creeks which emptied into the river. It was on the Confederate side of the Tennessee, Sherman said, but so perfect that it would be almost shameful not to use it.
‘We’ve got a lot of green troops to whip into shape, Sam,’ he told Grant. ‘It’s an ideal place.’
‘Anything you say, Billy,’ Grant said.
They were sitting at a table set up under a tree outside Grant’s headquarters in Savannah. Grant, never the most meticulous of dressers, had his uniform coat open and his shirt collar unbuttoned. He was a short man, with black hair cut close to the head, and his beard was brindled with gray. The omnipresent cigar jutted out of his mouth. The small keen gray eyes squinted against the smoke. He was relaxed, for Grant.
‘You’re not worried there might be an attack, general?’ Andrew said. Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederate Army of the Mississippi lay crouched just thirty miles south of them at Corinth.
‘Hell, no!’ Sherman said, his ruddy face twisting with impatience. He was a tall, gawky man, hot-tempered, excitable. A beautiful piece of machinery with some of the screws loose, Andrew thought. He decided to tell Sherman about Steven Barrow.
Two evenings earlier he had been riding down the East Corinth Road, en route to General Prentiss’ camp, when he heard his name shouted. The shout came from a boy lying on a cot under a tent fly. His gray uniform was stiff with dried blood. He had been shot through the chest and stomach. They’d carried him in and the surgeons had done what they could for him, which was not much. Not much, but better than the treatment many received.
‘You won’t remember me, I shouldn’t wonder,’ the boy said. ‘I’m Steven Barrow. My father is William Barrow. We used to live—’
‘At Orange Court House. I know,’ Andrew said. ‘You moved to Richmond, I remember. Your Daddy bred horses.’
Steven Barrow nodded. His face was ashen and there was scarcely any color in his lips. He made a slight movement with his hand.
‘They tell me I’m going to die,’ he said. ‘I’ll not live to see the battle.’
‘What battle is that, Steven?’
‘Why, surely you must know!’ the boy said weakly. ‘We’ve an army fifty thousand strong on the march from Corinth! They’ll be upon you at any moment!’
‘You’re sure of this?’
‘Of … course,’ Steven said. Andrew frowned at the faint hesitation; it was almost as if, for a second, the life had left the boy and then returned. ‘I was scouting ahead. The attack.’ Steven looked puzzled, as a man would who cannot understand why he cannot remember something simple. And then the light went out of his eyes the way the light dies when someone turns down a lamp, and he was dead.
‘Colonel, I’ve no doubt you’re telling the truth,’ Sherman said offhandedly at the end of Andrew’s story. ‘But I fear your little Rebel was not!’
‘Why should he have lied to me, sir?’ Andrew said. He was pushing his luck, but he felt strongly about this. ‘He was dying.’
‘Damned Rebels!’ Sherman snapped. ‘He probably died happy, thinking he’d bamboozled you!’
Grant frowned and chewed on his cigar. In the silence Sherman shifted impatiently, sticking his hands into his pockets and taking them out again, shuffling his feet, frowning.
‘You think perhaps we should entrench, Billy?’ Grant asked. ‘Throw up some fortifications?’
‘Fortifications?’ Sherman rasped, in that testy, rapid way of talking he had. ‘Fortifications be damned! Work like that makes men timid, Sam, especially green recruits! We don’t want them to think they’re going to fight behind earthworks, do we? No, when they fight Johnny Reb they can stand up and fight him man-fashion, and them’s my feelings on it!’
Grant grinned. He didn’t much care for breast-beating, but he let Billy Sherman get away with more of it than any other officer in his command.
‘We could send out patrols, general,’ Andrew ventured. ‘A few scouts to—’
‘Scouts, spies, patrols!’ Sherman growled. ‘What’s the matter with you, Colonel? You scared Johnny Reb is going to catch you with your nice new pants down? Don’t you worry. When the time comes, we’ll find him!’
If he doesn’t find you first, Andrew thought, but he did not say it. Staff officers were permitted to make the occasional deferential suggestion, but they did not argue when overruled unless invited to. There was no hint of invitation in Sherman’s brusque dismissals, and Grant did not seem inclined to discuss it further either. The Hell with this, Andrew thought. Steven was telling the truth.
‘With the greatest respect, General,’ he said firmly. ‘I would like to get some artillery lined up on the bluff above Dill’s Branch back there.’ Andrew pointed at the bluff overlooking the curving ravine that emptied into the Tennessee near the Landing. Grant stared at him for a long moment, his gray eyes cold, and in that moment Andrew thought he had overstepped the mark.
‘Why?’ Grant rasped.
‘Suppose it’s true, General,’ Andrew said. ‘Suppose the Rebs are on the march. If they attacked us now, the way our men are spread all over the place, we’d be rolled back like a carpet. A line of guns—’
‘I see what you mean,’ Grant said. ‘A fallback position.’
‘Exactly, sir.’
‘Nonsense!’ Sherman said. ‘Colonel, you’re making work for work’s sake!’
‘With respect, General,’ Andrew said, not giving ground. ‘I’ll be the one doing it.’
Sherman glared at him, then nodded curtly. ‘Please yourself,’ he rasped.
‘General?’ Andrew asked Grant. Grant pursed his lips and then he too nodded his approval. ‘Hell, Billy, it can’t do any harm,’ he said.
‘Won’t do any damned good, either!’ Sherman huffed.
‘Well,’ Grant grinned. ‘Don’t sulk, Billy.’
‘Balls,’ Sherman said inelegantly.
Like Grant he was newly returned to command. Like Grant he had lost the confidence of ‘Old Brains’ Halleck. Now Grant had come down to Savannah to find his army divided, half of it on the eastern bank of the river, and the rest of it eight miles or so downriver, at Pittsburgh Landing. His first priority was to concentrate all the troops into one area, and the one he chose – thanks to Sherman’s enthusiastic advice – was Pittsburgh Landing. Meanwhile, word was received that General Don Carlos Buell was marching south from Nashville with a further forty thousand veterans, sorely needed to shape up this greenhorn army.
‘As soon as Buell gets here, gentlemen, we will take the offensive,’ Grant told his officers, ‘and put Johnston on the run!’
On April 4 Grant’s horse fell on him and his leg was caught beneath the horse. His ankle was so badly swollen that it was necessary to cut off his boot. He was still hobbling around, using a stout stave for support. He would not use crutches.
‘Don’t want the men thinking they’ve got a cripple for a commander,’ he said with that familiar scowl. ‘And I sure don’t want Old Brains to hear about it, or I’ll be back at Cairo shuffling paper again!’
Andrew had met General Halleck, who had become overall commander of the western theater in March. A fussy, pedantic man who never stopped complaining about his hay fever, Halleck had been described by one mordant wit as ‘a large emptiness surrounded by an education’. With his large staring eyes, his bulbous brow, pursed lips and professorial outlook, he was the antithesis of the uncomplicated, unpretentious, and shabby Grant. Halleck reacted by forever seeking to find fault with the man. Grant took it all philosophically, the way a farmer takes rain.
Every day he inspected the camp at Pittsburgh Landing. As Sherman had claimed it was an ideal campsite. Scarred by ravines, the plateau rose sometimes as much as a hundred feet above the river, with abrupt red clay bluffs falling sharply down to the water. Locust, hickory, sycamore and oak trees were in full spring leaf, their bright green foliage flecked with dogwood and redbud blossoms. The creeks were running high. The old log Methodist meeting house on the hill looked down on peach orchards in blossom.
‘What’s the name of the church?’
‘Shiloh, General,’ someone answered Grant’s question.
‘Biblical name?’
‘I believe so, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘The city of Joshua.’ Grant nodded and cantered on. On Ridge Road, green troops of Prentiss’ division were firing off their newly issued rifles, while sweating non-coms roared the rudiments of the loading drill at them. Down at the landing the gunboats Tyler and Lexington were unloading supplies. A calliope on board one of the ships competed with the sound of regimental bands playing in the encampments. Some of the troops were drilling. Most were just lolling around. There was an almost holiday air about the place.
‘General, this rabble isn’t ready to fight, not yet by a long chalk!’ Grant’s chief of staff, John Rawlins said. A grim, hard-jawed man in his early thirties with black hair, swarthy skin and an abrupt manner, he was a former lawyer whom Grant had got to know and trust during his years in Galena, Illinois. Nine years younger than Grant, he was more than the commander’s friend: he was also his conscience. He took no nonsense from anyone, least of all the general. It was common knowledge that Grant had a drink problem. Rawlins was the one who kept him off it. It wasn’t a job Andrew envied him.
‘I don’t see where they’ll have to, for a while,’ Grant said, looking at the sprawling camp with jaundiced eyes. ‘I don’t figure Johnston for an attack. He’s dug in down there to Corinth, waiting for us.’
‘Begging the general’s pardon, but that’s not what the vedettes are saying,’ Andrew said. Grant gave him that cold, level stare again.
‘You’re determined to make me think there’ll be an attack, aren’t you, Colonel?’ he said. ‘Don’t you trust my judgment?’
‘General, you put me in difficulty,’ Andrew said. ‘All I can tell you is that the vedettes report seeing a lot of Reb cavalry.’
‘Skirmishing,’ Grant said. ‘Nothing more to it.’
‘Very well, sir,’ Andrew agreed. He had done all he could. If he pushed this anymore, Grant would erupt. It was easy to see that his anger had been aroused. In spite of his victories, he was still insecure, and criticism, real or implied, was a sure way to invite a chewing out.
‘All right,’ Grant said abruptly. ‘Rawlins, let’s get back to the damned paperwork.’
‘No escaping that,’ Rawlins grinned. ‘Nor your dinner this evening, sir.’
‘Dinner? What dinner is that?’
‘You’re dining aboard ship with Senator McCabe of Oregon, general,’ Rawlins said. ‘He’s brought along his daughter too.’
‘Daughter, eh?’ Grant said. ‘What’s she like?’
‘You may remember her as the lady who wrote to the War Department instructing them how to conduct the war,’ Rawlins said. ‘You remember that letter?’
‘Damned right I do,’ Grant said. ‘Old harridan, I’ll be bound!’
‘No, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘She’s very beautiful.’
Grant fixed him with a stare. ‘You know her?’
‘We met in Washington, general, I know the senator as well. ‘
‘Hmm,’ Grant said. ‘You’d better join us, then.’
‘Thank you, general,’ Andrew said. By the time he finished supervising the movement of the cannon to the bluff, it was going to be a damned close run thing to make it to dinner in full-dress uniform, but he knew he was going to do it or break a leg trying.
Jessica McCabe, he thought. After that final meeting in Washington, he had heard nothing more of her. He had not written; neither had she. But he had thought of her, often. He wondered whether she had thought of him. I’ll find out tonight, he promised himself.
Senator McCabe’s party consisted of himself, Jessica, two Congressmen named Cutler Moore and Isaiah Harness and their frowsy, puddeny wives. None the less, it was a jolly enough affair. Grant could sparkle when he wanted to and his staff officers did their best to entertain their visitors well.
‘Well, sir,’ McCabe said to Grant. ‘What news have you of the enemy?’
Grant smiled his unwilling smile and shook his head. ‘General Halleck has instructed me to entrench, senator,’ he said. ‘I am to avoid battle rather than to fight.’
‘Why on earth would he do that?’ Harness asked. He was a tall, stooped man with a great beak of a nose that almost met his chin, and gave him the appearance of an aged Punchinello.
‘Reckon he wants all the damned glory himself,’ growled John Rawlins. Grant gave him a sharp look of reprimand but turned the moment with a light phrase.
‘No, John,’ he said. ‘We’ll get our glory, never fear.’
‘Where is General Johnston’s army?’ Cutler Moore’s wife asked. ‘Is it near here?’
‘At Corinth, madam!’ her husband replied, pointing a dramatic hand to the west. ‘Thirty miles away!’
‘Corinth is to the south, Mr. Moore,’ Grant said. ‘That way.’ He pointed south.
‘Wherever he is, if I were Johnston I would be getting ready to attack you, General,’ Jessica said. ‘Before General Buell arrives to reinforce you.’
Grant favored her with that contemplative stare of his for a moment. ‘Would you, Miss McCabe?’ he said. ‘We’re all of the opinion here that’s what he won’t do.’
Andrew watched Jessica struggle with her desire to argue the point. She stared at the tablecloth, two tiny red spots of anger on her high cheekbones. She was wearing a dress of soft blue silk and a black neckband of velvet. Her abundant auburn hair was piled high on her head, and laced with strings of pearls. Long white gloves covered her soft arms. She made the other two women look like dummies in a store window.
‘Mind you,’ Grant said with a mischievous smile. ‘We have one officer in the command who agrees with you, Miss McCabe. Colonel Strong also feels that Johnston will attack.’
‘Well, maybe you should listen to him, General,’ Senator McCabe said. ‘I have a high opinion of this young man’s abilities.’
‘As have I, Senator,’ Grant smiled. ‘Colonel Strong is our logistics wizard. The strength or weakness of an army is in its logistics, you know. If I order up guns, I want them in place at the appointed time, not ten minutes too soon when they may be unable to fire, nor ten minutes too late when their effect may be worthless. If I order up more troops and those troops do not arrive, the pattern of the battle can change, a flank can be turned, a front rolled back. In warfare, logistics is everything, and that is why we are fortunate in having Colonel Strong. Why, just this evening …
He stopped as the wives of the two Congressmen rose as one and announced that they would withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their cigars. If looks could have killed, Andrew thought, the one that Jessica McCabe directed at them would have stretched them out stone dead on the holystoned deck of the ship faster than you could say their names. However, she had no choice but to leave with them, while Grant resumed his monologue on the subject of logistics.
After five minutes, Andrew excused himself, ignoring Grant’s glower, and went out on to the deck. It was a balmy evening; a soft breeze came off the river, carrying with it the faint tang of wood smoke from the campfires that flickered up on the bluffs. Fish jumped with a faint plosh. Once in a while a picket sang out his cadences.
He found her in the bow of the ship, staring upriver. She turned as he drew near, her eyes dark, unreadable pools in the shadows.
‘Remember me?’ he said.
‘You’ve changed,’ she told him. ‘You seem ... surer.’
‘Let me look at you.’ He took both her hands and held them.
‘Well?’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘Do I pass inspection?’ The dimples, he thought. I’d forgotten those.
‘You’re lovelier than I remember.’
Jessica tipped back her head and looked at the stars.
‘You told me once … about a girl,’ she said.
‘It seems a long time ago,’ Andrew said. ‘But yes. I remember. ‘
‘She meant a very great deal to you.’ He nodded abruptly.
‘And … she died?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Not quite a year ago. And yet it seems as if it was so long ago, in a distant past life.’
‘You still think of her?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That door is closed. Forever.’
‘Forever is a long time,’ she said softly. She turned slowly and walked across to the rail and looked down at the dark water purling past the steel walls of the ship. She spoke without looking at him.
‘I told you I would forget you,’ she said quietly. ‘And I have done.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe you.’
He went across and took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not respond. After a few moments more he released her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why did you?’
‘I wanted ... to convince you. That the past is dead.’
‘The past is never dead, Andrew,’ she said. ‘Not for you. Not for me.’
It came to him then and he cursed himself for a fool. ‘How stupid!’ he said. ‘I should have known. There was someone in your life. Someone … special.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. She lifted her chin and looked away from him. He laid a hand softly on hers and spoke her name.
‘I’m sorry, Jess.’
She nodded and turned, putting her head against his shoulder and letting the tears come. There were not many; she took a deep breath and straightened her back; in a moment she had regained her composure.
‘I told you once,’ she said. ‘That there had been … more than a few men.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was not hard to believe.’
‘I told you none of them meant anything to me,’ she said.
‘You said they had all lied to you.’
‘That was not true,’ she answered quietly. ‘It was I who lied to them, I let them think that – if they really tried – they might perhaps win my affection. Even my love. But I knew in my heart there was never any chance of that.’
‘What was his name?’
‘John,’ she said. ‘John Hardisty. We grew up together in Chicago. We were going to be married. When I lost John, I knew I would never want any other man. Oh, I pretended. As you once told me, Andrew. I could make every man in a room think that he was the only one for me. And not give a snap of the fingers for any of them.’
‘And me?’ Andrew said. ‘What about me, Jess?’
‘I couldn’t do that to you,’ she said. ‘You were too … honest. So I’ve told you the truth. That’s more than any man’s ever had from me.’
‘It could be a beginning,’ he said.
‘No, dear Andrew,’ she said. ‘It cannot be.’
He walked her back to the cabin door. The general and his staff were saying their good nights. To stay away longer would not only be impolite but unwise. Andrew knew he would have to get back.
‘When do you leave?’ he asked her.
‘Tomorrow, early,’ she said. ‘We have to be back in Cairo by the seventh of April.’
‘I wish I could come and see you off.’
‘I think I’m glad you can’t.’
‘When will we meet again do you think?’
‘I don’t know. One day, perhaps. Or never.’
‘I won’t believe never.’
‘You don’t make it easy to say good-bye.’
‘Dammit, Jess,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Another time, Andrew,’ she whispered. ‘Another place. Maybe it’s in our stars, maybe not. But this is not the time. ‘
‘All right,’ he said, kissing her hand. ‘Good night, sweet Jessica.’
‘Good-bye, dear Andrew.’
They left while he was working on the gun emplacements on Saturday morning. He heard the hoot of the steamer and thought that he saw her on deck, looking back at the encampment.
As the bright dawn of the following day, Sunday April 7, 1862, lit the woods and meadows around Shiloh church, forty thousand Confederate soldiers, formed in four parallel lines with a front of three miles and a depth of over a mile, moved silently towards the sleeping Federal camps and fell upon them.
The bloody battle of Shiloh had begun.