'Twelve guns with Cabell and Poague's battalions are wrecks, sir, guns dismounted, a couple of hundred horses dead; casualties with those batteries are high. Looks like they had every gun aimed at them first. Should I get them out?’
Pete shook his head.
'I want them to stay,' his words cut short by an airburst exploding nearly straight overhead. 'Sir?'
'I want them to stay.'
Porter looked at him, as if ready to voice an objection.
'All this smoke, they can barely see. Tell the surviving gunners they must keep firing.'
'It will be a slaughter,' Porter objected.
'It will be a slaughter wherever their fire is directed. That's Hunt over there, Porter. He knows counterbattery. You pull out and he'll shift fire to the next target I want you to keep those men at it'
'Yes, sir.'
'Ammunition?'
'More than enough. I have reserve caissons and an ammunition train a mile back. I'll begin to move them up when we need them.'
'Just make sure you have plenty of canister in reserve.'
'We will.'
'Keep at it Porter.'
The gunner wearily stood up and ran back down the line into the middle of the storm.
The fire continued to thunder and roll, reverberating off the hills, the earth beneath Pete shaking and trembling.
9:50 AM, JULY 4,1863
WASHINGTON, D.C. THE WHITE HOUSE
Abraham Lincoln stood alone, looking out the window. The traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue was still this morning. It was, after all, a day of observation
and celebration. Word had just been publicly announced confirming that this day Vicksburg was surrendering to Grant A great salute was planned for this evening, a discharge of a hundred blank rounds of artillery at Lafayette Square.
No one's mind was on that now. A runner from the War Department had just come in bearing a telegram from Baltimore, declaring that heavy gunfire was clearly audible to the northwest toward Westminster.
There was no need for that report Putting his hand on the windowpane, Lincoln could feel the vibration from over sixty miles away.
10.15AM
UNION MILLS
'Hunt is there any sign this is achieving anything?'
Henry, ears ringing, did not know what to say.
Meade stood expectant hands on hips, both instinctively ducking as a round, one with a high-piercing scream, snapped past. Several gunners nearby looking up, exclaiming that it was a Whitworth bolt.
'I cannot say, sir. The smoke. You can't see.'
Henry waved toward the south. The swirling, eddying canopy completely obscured the valley and the slopes of the hill, mingling in with pillars of smoke rising from burning caissons, wagons, and several of the houses in the town hit by the Confederate counterfire.
The gunners moved like men seized with a terrible palsy, convulsively, gesturing wildly, typical of men who had been delivering a sustained barrage for well over a hour, crews manhandling the one-ton pieces back into place after each shot rammers covered in black filth, loaders gasping for air in the thick fumes. A hundred or more dead horses littered the ground behind the pieces, cut down by solid shot shrapnel, splinters from exploding caissons, and shattered field pieces.
Everything around the guns was churned to mud, the recoil from firing each piece eighty times or more having dug the earth up into a sticky mess.
Injuries were mounting, men hit by shell and explosions, caught momentarily unaware and crushed as a gun recoiled, kicked by panic-stricken horses, impaled by splinters bursting from limbers shattered by solid bolts.
Behind the lines, the infantry continued to endure, curled up on the open slope, but staying in place. If anything they were far safer than trying to make, a run for the rear because the shot skimming the ridge was plunging down behind the lines.
'How much longer, Hunt?' Meade shouted.
'Sir, as I said before, I can sustain this for roughly two hours. We must keep a reserve, sir…' and his voice trailed off. He did not want to add the final words,… 'in case we lose.'
'I will not commit my men in until you have suppressed their batteries, Hunt You will tell me when the time is ready.'
'Sir, I can only advise you on that'
A round shot clipped the parapet nearby, moving slow enough that Henry could see it go careening off, cutting into a team of horses, dropping two of them in a bloody heap.
'I can't wait here all day, Hunt'
Henry turned away for a moment. Meade was trying to shift it onto him, to have him make the decision. He started to move toward a gun. It was obviously too high, someone letting the elevation screw at the breech wind down. He stopped. I can't walk off from this.
He looked back at Meade. 'Sir, at this moment I can't see a damn thing. All I know for certain is that they are still firing back.'
A distant thunderclap echoed across the field, most likely a caisson going up on the other side.
'If you can't see, then how the hell will you know?' Meade shouted.
'Let me cease fire for a few minutes,' Henry replied.
'Perhaps this smoke will lift enough so that we can judge the results. I can then redirect fire as needed.' 'Then do it, damn it!' Meade shouted.
10:30 AM, JULY 4,1863
HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA
Lee cocked his head. All around him were silent, looking toward the north, expectant, wondering. yes, the volume of fire was dropping, intervals of half a minute or more between distant peals of thunder.
He looked over at Walter. The young colonel was actually asleep, stretched out on a pew, snoring lightly.
'I'm going up,' Lee announced to no one in particular.
The gathered staff nodded; they were eager to see what was going on; the inactivity of sitting here, half a dozen miles from the action, was chafing on their nerves.
One of them started toward Walter to shake him awake. 'No, no, let him sleep,' Lee said, with an indulgent smile. 'He can act as liaison here. If word comes from Ewell, forward it up to me immediately.'
A groom brought up Traveler, and Lee swung up into the saddle, several men approaching to help him, but a sharp glance made them step back.
He was feeling better; the long night of sleep had been a blessing, some strength returning for all that was needed this day.
He started north toward the fight, the world around him so quiet that he could hear the chirping of birds, the sigh of a gentle breeze in the trees.
10:40 AM, JULY 4,1863
UNION MILLS
