Oh, this is beautiful, just beautiful,' Henry Hunt exclaimed as he paced behind the new line he had just set up, facing south. He ignored the enfilading artillery fire coming from across the river, which had already dismounted or struck down two of his guns.
It was the target before him that counted.
The last of Ord's broken men had streamed past his position, and now, four hundred yards out, an entire division of rebel infantry was coming straight at him. He had over sixty guns lined up. Not as many as Malvern Hill, but more than Gettysburg.
He had full faith in his gunners. They had proven themselves yesterday in the bombardment of the McCausland Farm. And now they had infantry before them, a beautiful wide target spread out over a half mile. Three brigades in the lead, two more a hundred yards behind. And behind them another division four hundred yards farther back, struggling to reform after their initial clash earlier in the morning.
'Fire!'
This was not a single salvo. He had ordered his battery commanders to carefully check aim and elevation and make every shot count.
The guns directly in front of him went off. Seconds later more opened up, the last firing maybe thirty seconds later. Commands were being shouted, 'Case shot, two-second fuse!' 'Roll 'em up, boys.' 'Sergeant, check that elevation screw. Raise it half a turn!'
Field glasses were useless in the smoke. He squatted down, trying to see under the billowing clouds created by the guns just fired, and was delighted. Shells were bursting right in front of the advancing line, puffs of dirt geysering from the shells with percussion fuses, some of the shots going high, but some of the high ones hitting the second line.
Excellent shooting.
He knew when to fall silent, to step back, which he now did. And his men went to work. ll: OOA.M.
'I want my divisions back in!' Beauregard shouted. Robertson's and McLaw's divisions had taken the lead in the assault, passing through and beyond his own two divisions, which had delivered a savage beating to the Yankees but in turn had been torn apart.
He regretted now, more than ever, not waiting for them to come up, to have sent all four in at once. They could have gone through like a battering ram, but then again, the delay might have allowed the Yankees to do what they were now doing, shifting guns about, bringing up more men.
Johnston had not listened to him at Shiloh about his deployment before the attack, packing the men in too close so that all command and control had been lost, and he had been saddled with the blame.
Now Lee would blame him for the loss of momentum. Damn it, well, let Lee try to maneuver twenty-five thousand men on one narrow road, then go into a fight.
To his right the Yankees were digging in along the railroad track. Already the position reminded him of the infamous Hornets Nest of Shiloh.
Turn on it, wipe it out completely, or push toward Frederick and leave Robertson behind, or order Robertson to echelon to the left and avoid it as well?
But battle was already joined. Robertson was sending his men straight in. He would have to leave him behind.
Beauregard pointed up the road toward Frederick, shouting for his own men to form and get back into the attack.
'Come on, boys, come on! We can still take them! Come on, move it!'
His two divisions started forward, not with the beautiful formation and elan of dawn. They had marched over six miles since they began and fought one pitched battle already, but nevertheless they went forward, heading toward the sound of the guns.
Relay Station
Ten Miles West of Baltimore
11:15 A.M.
Gen. George Sykes leaned out of the railroad car that served as his headquarters. On the parallel track an engine inched forward, railroad workers jumping off the flatcars they had been riding on, a team handing down several rails, eight men shouldering the rail and running forward. 'Two more breaks in the line, General, sir.' The yard boss, some Irishman by his brogue, gave a bit of an impertinent salute and ran forward with his men.
George stepped down from the car and walked forward. Behind him another train was easing to a stop, in front of the engine was a massive flatcar converted into a rolling fortress, an armored car they called it, the barrel of a thirty-pounder protruding from the iron-plated front.
A similar car was at the front of his own train and the one on the parallel track.
Ahead there was the rattle of skirmishing, some rebs visible on the track perhaps six hundred yards away, a marine detachment pushing them back.
Strange, all this, George thought as he leaned against the armored car to watch the laborers at work.
After surviving the debacle at Gunpowder River, he had assumed the few battered survivors of the Army of the Potomac would be disbanded and sent to other units, the name 1 of that famed command stricken from the records forever. Then had come the hand-delivered dispatch from the War Office, countersigned by Grant, specifically laying out a detailed plan that had stunned him.
He was to reorganize the survivors into a single corps, out of deference to him, the Fifth Corps. Units were to be banded together by the states they came from. The men would be resupplied, which they were, then told to rest and wait, which they did for five days.
And then word had come to prepare to move. The men had marched up to the Northeast River, ten miles back from the Susquehanna, to Charlestown. That night a flotilla of transport ships arrived, and the next morning they had steamed out, racing south.
Off the mouth of the Patapsco River at the entrance to Baltimore they had joined a second flotilla, this one actually commanded by Farragut himself, many of the ships having come up from the siege of Charleston. There were deepwater ships: transports crammed with marines and sailors converted to infantry, ironclads, and long flat barges carrying the trains he and some of his command now rode in.
Baltimore, contrary to expectations, had fallen with barely a shot being fired, except by the garrison at McHenry.
There had been some rioting, which the sailors were assigned to put down while he and his valiant few, his Army of the Potomac, reinforced by the marines, set off.
His first concern was that the rebs might blow up the huge stone viaduct at Relay Station. Thus once the armored cars and their locomotives were rolled off the trains at the dockyard and switched onto the Baltimore and Ohio's main line, he had set off. The charge by rail worked. Their arrival at dark sent the rebs scurrying back across the bridge, and dawn revealed that their commander, who he now learned was Lo Armistead, had indeed been trying to find enough powder to stuff up under one of the arches of the bridge to bring it down. Armistead had failed, and so they had been able to continue pushing west.
Today, though, had been frustratingly slow work. The rebs kept tearing up the track ahead, smashing switches. An armored car would be raced forward, firing its massive gun, and they'd scatter, pull back, and then resume their desperate work.
And yet they were moving forward, mile by mile. He knew his nickname, whispered behind his back, 'Tardy George.'
The hell with them. His tardiness, as some called it, was being methodical and, by God, he certainly was not tardy at Taneytown. If only Sickles had listened to him at Gunpowder River and gone a bit more slowly, this whole operation would be different now.
The yard boss stood up, waved his hand, indicating the rail was fixed. The engine vented steam and George walked back to the command car behind the locomotive, climbing aboard. During their stop a telegrapher had hooked into the line and handed George the latest news.
'Heavy fighting all along the line at Frederick. Grant.'
There was no need to be told that. Whenever the train stopped all could hear the rumble in the
