matador. I think Lee will be more dangerous to us than at anytime in this campaign.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fort Stephens was one of two score forts that ringed the city of Washington. It consisted of thick, low earthen walls that were pierced by gun ports housing the largest cannon available. As they were not intended to be moved, the guns could be the largest built by the foundries of the North.
The fort was a squat and malevolent scar on what had been an otherwise pleasant land. The trees that had stood before it had been chopped down to provide a clear field of fire for Stephens's defenders. The same was true for all the other fortifications that protected Washington. Trees that had stood for decades had been reduced to kindling.
Between the forts were lines of trenches, rifle pits, and emplacements for individual guns. Fields of fire overlapped each other, and the trenches were wide enough to handle two ranks of massed infantry. The effect was to reinforce the notion that Washington was the most heavily fortified city on the face of the earth. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, was deemed a close second.
Washington was also the largest prison.
Abraham Lincoln stood behind one of the giant cannon and looked north into Maryland. In the distance, he imagined that he could see Pennsylvania. Once these had been friendly lands, but now they were occupied by Lee's Confederates. Only temporarily, he had been assured, but the fact remained that they were held by the enemy. The president of the United States was a prisoner in Washington.
Oh, he could flee to Baltimore or Philadelphia like so many members of Congress had, but he felt it was his duty to remain in his nation’s capital. He had been castigated for skulking into Washington prior to his inauguration, and had vowed never to take part in a similar travesty. No, his duty was in Washington.
Lincoln climbed onto the earthen parapet and looked around. Like lemmings, several of his entourage accompanied him, along with a handful of grinning soldiers from the garrison. As always, Lincoln wore a dark suit and a top hat that made him look seven feet tall instead of six foot four.
“He looks worried,” Nathan said to John Hay. They had declined to climb onto the parapet.
“Wouldn't you be?” Hay replied wryly. “He is surrounded by his enemies, both figuratively and nearly literally.”
Access to Washington from the rest of the Union was only by one Baltimore amp; Ohio rail line and a bad dirt road, the Bladensburg Pike. Both ran from Baltimore and it was feared they could be cut at any time. Nathan recalled travelling the Bladensburg road so many months before.
Two of Mr. Lowe's three observation balloons soared thousands of feet into the air, where observers confirmed the obvious-no Confederate army was in the vicinity. To further confirm this and to assist the balloons on those days when weather kept them grounded, numerous patrols were undertaken by the army.
At President Lincoln's insistence, his small entourage had taken carriages to Fort Stephens just so the president could see the defenses. He had done it before, and appeared to enjoy the opportunity to interact with the soldiers who manned the guns. He also liked to get away from the pressure of his office, both literally and figuratively. Washington might be a prison, but his office on the second floor of the White House was his cell and the place in which he was held in solitary confinement.
The previous day he had cleared his schedule and announced that he would be “inspecting” Fort Stephens the next day. This courtesy gave the commander of Stephens an opportunity to make sure the place looked good, and gave an opportunity for those who didn't want to accompany him to come up with a reasonable excuse. Lincoln was rarely alone on these tours, as many of his staff also liked the chance to get away from it all.
Nathan heard a distant pop. It sounded like a bubble bursting. “What the hell?” he said, and then recognized the sound. “Gunfire?”
A couple more pops followed and then the sound of a scream. A body toppled back behind the earthen wall. A soldier standing near Lincoln had been hit in the face and lay twitching on the ground. To Nathan's horror, Abraham Lincoln was still exposed on the parapet, although the others were scattering rapidly. Nathan jumped up beside the president. Lincoln looked stunned.
“Why did they shoot that boy?” he asked in confused disbelief.
More gunfire was heard and Nathan saw clouds of gun-smoke from about two hundred yards out. He grabbed the president and unceremoniously shoved him off the embankment and down to safety. As he landed behind Lincoln, he heard the thwack of bullets smacking the earth where they had just stood.
“Sir,” Nathan gasped, “they weren't shooting at that boy. They were shooting at you.”
Lincoln had regained control of himself. He realized that he must have made a splendid target in a top hat and standing exposed on the wall of a fort. He was about to say something when the great guns of Fort Stephens opened up on the place where smoke from the sniper's guns still hung in the air. Nathan didn't think any enemy sharpshooters would be hit because they were a small target and probably hidden in the fold of the ground, but their lives would be damned miserable until they were able to slink away under the cover of nightfall. He hoped Meade would send a patrol out quickly to find them.
Then he began to wonder if the shooting was a coincidence or not. It seemed rather unlikely that a rebel patrol would be hanging around Fort Stephens just at the time Mr. Lincoln decided to take a stroll on its walls.
The soldier struck by the first bullet was dead. Looking at the wound that had blown his face away, it seemed that he had died virtually instantly and that any motion observed earlier had been nothing more than involuntary spasms.
“I thought this place was safe,'^: said John Hay. He, too, was visibly shaken. People who work in the White House do not ordinarily see violent death close up even though they frequently cause it.
“The observation balloons and the patrols can find armies,” Nathan said, “but a handful of men bent on murder can generally slink in like what just happened.”
The cannon had ceased and Nathan saw with relief that a large unit of soldiers had clambered out and was headed towards the place where the gunfire had been observed. He noticed that they were having a great deal of difficulty moving through their own defenses. At least that much works right, he thought. General Heintzelman commanded the forts and their garrisons under the overall command of Meade. Heintzelman had been near Lincoln on the parapet and was in telegraphic communication with neighboring Fort De Russey, which had also sent out a patrol.
President Lincoln had just about made it to his carriage when there was another brief burst of gunfire. One of the patrols had stumbled onto the Confederates' hiding place. A distant shout informed them that at least one prisoner had been taken. Now they might find out just how and why a Confederate patrol just happened to be at that place and at that time.
Nathan glanced towards the president, who smiled quizzically. “Do you believe in coincidences, Mr. Hunter?”
“Not really, sir.”
“Nor do I. Mr. Hunter. Coincidences belong in novels.”
Abigail Watson had hung back in the hallway while General Wade Hampton was carried into his room by men who awkwardly handled his stretcher up stairs and around corners. She had not been noticed by his accompanying officers and doctors as they finally managed to carry his stretcher into the Haskills' largest bedroom. She was just a darky slave and nothing more important to them than a piece of furniture.
It had not been the first time that a wounded or ill Confederate officer had been brought there instead of to one of the numerous military hospitals that ringed Richmond. The city's hospitals were overwhelmed, overworked, staffed by unqualified personnel, and hideously unsanitary, even by the lax standards of the time. People stayed in hospitals to die, not to get better. The powerful, important, and those who could afford it found their own doctors and medicines.
General Hampton had stayed at Haskill's Hotel on a couple of previous occasions, so his presence was taken pretty much in stride. The only difference was that he had taken a Union bullet in the shoulder and now required both care and continuous observation lest the wound reopen and cause him to bleed to death.
