Montgomery County, Maryland
February 1864
John Burgoyne sat on a stool in his tent, alone. He could hear other officers talking, too loudly, around the campfire outside his tent. Burgoyne knew well the importance of being seen, of talking to his officers and men, but he was tired and preferred to be alone.
He had followed McClellan’s army south through New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, and was now encamped in Maryland, not fifteen miles from the Federals’ capital. McClellan’s retreat, for such it was, had run like a clock, covering twenty to twenty-five miles a day, a relentless pace for a defeated army. Burgoyne had maintained a half-day’s march between the two armies, confident that McClellan had no intention of offering to fight.
Now that McClellan had re-occupied the city, Lincoln and his cabinet had returned as well from their exile, arriving by boat to avoid Burgoyne’s army. The Northern newspapers ran bold headlines predicting an epic clash to decide, again, the fate of the capital and perhaps of the entire war. Burgoyne laughed to himself. What had they said about McClellan on the Virginia peninsula? Something about being bottled up. Now the Union’s commander was stuck in Washington City, preparing for an attack that, God willing, would never come.
This is their fight, not ours, he thought. Let Mr. Davis and General Longstreet fight Grant, who will come after them soon enough. We’ve done our part and keeping McClellan busy up here is as much as they can ask.
Each day Burgoyne would send artillery to various locations outside the city to lob a few shells in, and each day he would send dragoons to harass one of the sixty-eight forts that defended Washington. Let them know we’re here, make them think that we’re planning a major assault. He laughed to himself again.
For the truth was, the weight of his father’s humiliation at Saratoga no longer hung over him like a shadow. The word Saratoga no longer stuck in his throat. Those ghosts, if they ever existed, had been banished, and Burgoyne felt as though his time as a soldier, sixty years, was ending. A life of service, of duty. But in the solitude of this Maryland winter evening, he realized that he cared not a jot for Southern independence. And more, he didn’t care that he didn’t care.
“Thomas?” Pakenham stuck his head in through the tent flap.
“Sir?”
“It has been some time since you’ve visited your friends in Richmond. Have you a mind to pay a call?”
Packenham’s face was aglow in the dim lantern light, a smile stretching ear to ear. “Indeed I do, sir. I long for southern climes.”
“Just so. See to a very good horse and provisions, and one of your ridiculous civilian disguises. I should like you to deliver a message to President Davis.”