dispassionately, knowing that a thousand would die by his command to go forward.
And yet, in the using, what had been achieved? He looked at the final manifest that Haupt had submitted to him only yesterday before staggering out of the tent and collapsing facedown on the ground. Rations to feed seventy-five thousand for a month stockpiled, three hundred rounds of rifle ball per man, three hundred and fifty artillery rounds, mixed, solid shot, shell, canister, eight hundred and fifty more wagons coming in, three thousand six hundred mules to pull them, two thousand nine hundred remounts, four hundred tons of oats, pontoon bridges, enough wagons, some of the replacement bridges for the railroad, and, of course, the men, still not enough men.
One more division was starting to come in; already the trains were unloading them, but he would have preferred another entire corps. Couch's militia had proven to be little more than an abysmal waste. They had signed for ninety days, and most of them were making it clear that in three more weeks they were out of the army, but for the moment he still had them.
He wasn't ready to go; his plan had been meticulous, well laid out, and now Sickles had completely destroyed it.
That Sickles would meet Lee, alone, was now a foregone conclusion. The telegraph line from Perryville, up to Philadelphia, New York, and then to Harrisburg had been fully restored and had been buzzing all day with reports from 'The Army of the Potomac before Baltimore.' The first reports boasted of a victorious advance; the last, dated an hour and a half ago from a correspondent with the
He knew what would happen; there was no doubt of it in his mind.
'Ely?'
He turned, and felt embarrassed. Ely was down there with Sickles, most likely to no avail.
His tent was empty. He thought of Elihu, wishing he was present to offer some advice, though Grant was a man who seldom if ever now sought the word of another.
He thought of a drink but that thought only lingered for a second. There was no need of it now. Maybe, just maybe, after the war was over, he would indulge himself, just one more time perhaps. But not now.
He contemplated the odds that Sickles had now given him. Even, at best, but then again maybe a bit better, or, on the other hand, somewhat worse, if Lee pinned and shattered the Army of the Potomac once and for all. The old plans were out and it was time to recast them. That in and of itself did not bother him. Sherman had once said he had ice water in his veins. Now was the time to prove it. Reaching over to his desk, he pulled out a sheet of paper, drew a pencil from his breast pocket, and began to draft his orders to the army.
The train rolled slowly westward, the long rays of the setting sun casting shadows across the Pennsylvania farmland. John Miller stood against the open doorway of the boxcar as it rattled along on its journey, the scent of wood smoke from the locomotive wafting past.
They had left Philadelphia an hour after dawn, the city wild with rumors that Wade Hampton would be into the town before midday. It amused him in a way. Whereas only a week before many of the citizens of that fair city had been openly disdainful of black soldiers, more than one now begged them to stay as they paraded down to the depot to take the train. That disdain, however, had not been shown by the colored of the city, who turned out in droves, proud of their sons, their brothers, and fathers, waving American flags, shouting with joy as the columns of troops marched by.
He was now a company sergeant, and absently he reached up to touch the three stripes on his sleeve. From the little time he had been in service, he knew enough to realize he and his men were not yet ready, but some emergency had called them, and now they were heading west-rumor was, to Harrisburg. It was a bit of a mystery as to why they were pulled from Philadelphia, what with rebel raiders about, but he and his comrades had quickly surmised that the threat could not have been great if an entire division of them had been taken out of the city.
As the trains passed from Philadelphia across New Jersey, then switched westward to Allentown through a mountain pass at Hamburg, and now rolled through a beautiful valley flanked by mountains, he was awed by the size of this nation, its changing nature, the people he saw.
As they passed through northern New Jersey, the land seemed to be one of factories belching smoke, not unlike Baltimore, rail sidings packed with cars loaded with artillery, limber wagons, ambulances, boxes of rations, beef and horses packed into boxcars like the one he was in, all of it seemingly guided by some invisible hand pushing its cargo by force of will to the front lines.
The people who were along the tracks had looked upon him and his comrades with amazement Here was a colored division going to war. Where in the past he had learned to stand detached, head lowered, as if he was not really a man, now he stood looking them in the eye, and many of them waved, some shouting blessings, a woman in a village in western New Jersey passing up a basket of fresh-baked bread.
Perhaps Frederick Douglass was right; perhaps the blue uniform, the cartridge box stamped us, and the rifle in his hand had at last bestowed upon him the rights of citizenship; perhaps he could now claim this land as his as well. And that thought filled him with a swelling of pride, a sense of what he was about, of what he would now do for this land.
The memory of his dead son caught him for a moment. The land would not belong to him, it never would, but for his. daughters, for his grandchildren, perhaps for them, at last the promise would be true. He looked back into the boxcar, to the regimental sergeant major and a young private asleep against the sergeant's shoulder.
They were an interesting pair, with an interesting tale. The sergeant claimed that his father worked in the White House for Abraham Lincoln and he had grown up there. Soldiers were used to tall tales, and though the man was well-spoken, could read, and wrote with a beautiful hand, no one had believed him until only this morning, when a note with THE WHITE HOUSE stamped on the envelope had arrived. The sergeant, half-asleep, still had the letter and envelope clutched in his hands.
Everyone in the boxcars aboard the entire train now knew the content by heart:
Sergeant Miller knew that if this promise would indeed be honored, this was now a cause worth dying for.
It had been a long day. General Lee looked up at Venable and nodded wearily. 'Was it really that bad?' Lee asked. 'Sir, it's hard to say, but I saw what was left of Pickett. The division most likely took fifty per cent casualties, maybe more. I can't speak for McLaws, but I know Robertson was hit hard as well, but we stopped them cold.'
Lee wearily shook his head. Pickett had been ordered to delay, to draw back slowly, not get into a head-on confrontation with an entire corps, two corps actually, from the sound of Venable's report.
Every man lost was one less man available for the real fight, the confrontation with Grant that Lee knew would come next. So far it had, more or less, gone according to plan. Sickles was in the field on his own, the garrison in Washington still immobilized, Grant still in Harrisburg. No news from Wade Hampton, but that was to be expected; in another day or two he would most likely cross the river with details regarding the dispositions of the enemy forces.
He had to defeat Sickles in detail. Not just another defeat and retreat, but to take him out of battle forever. Then turn back on Washington, harass it, and wait for Grant to emerge and come to the relief of the city. He had assumed all along that Grant would do so, but would do it in conjunction with Sickles, a combined force he could not have defeated except with extreme luck. Pickett wasting his division in a stand-up fight… well, he would deal with that later.
'Get some rest, son. Colonel Alexander will find you a comfortable place and a surgeon to look after that