privately dubious about the preacher's report. There had been rumors of rebel raiders near Manassas every night for the last two weeks, but none of the rumors had proved true, and the Lieutenant doubted whether a minister of the gospel could tell the difference between rebel soldiers and bushwhackers, especially as even the best-dressed rebels looked little better than cutthroat outlaws. 'But not to worry, sir,' the Lieutenant continued, 'Captain Craig ordered our artillery and cavalry to deploy, and he put all our infantry on alert.' The Lieutenant decided it might be wiser not to add that there were only eight cannon in the defenses, aided by a mere hundred cavalrymen and a single company of infantry. Manassas was supposed to be a safe posting, as safe as garrison duty in Maine or California. 'I don't think our sleep will be disturbed, sir,' the Lieutenant said soothingly.
The Reverend Starbuck was pleasantly surprised to discover that at least one officer seemed to have performed his proper duty this night. 'Captain Craig? Is that his name?' The Reverend Starbuck had taken out his diary and was now penciling a note. 'He's done well, Lieutenant, and I like to report commendable behavior when I encounter it.'
'His name is Captain Samuel Craig, sir, of the 105th Pennsylvania,' the Lieutenant said, wondering just how important this authoritative minister was. 'You report to the government, perhaps, sir?'
'I report to the greatest government that ever ruled on this earth, Lieutenant, or on any other,' the Reverend Starbuck said as he finished writing his note.
'Then maybe you'd like to add my name, sir?' the Lieutenant said eagerly. 'It's Gilray, Lieutenant Ethan Gilray of the Provost Guard. Just the one L, sir, and thank you for asking.' Gilray waited as the minister penciled his name. 'And will you be wanting quarters for the night, sir? There's a Mrs. Moss in Main Street, a most Christian woman who keeps a very clean house. For a Virginian.'
The Reverend Starbuck closed his diary. 'I shall wait in the passenger depot, Lieutenant.' Much as he was tempted by a clean bed, he dared not miss the chance of a northbound train, yet before he returned to the depot he still had one Christian obligation to discharge. 'The Provost Guard is responsible, is it not, for discipline?' the Reverend Starbuck asked. 'Indeed it is, sir.'
'Then I shall have no alternative but to report you for the grossest dereliction of duty, Lieutenant, a duty that is Christian before it is military. There are Negroes in town, Lieutenant Gilray, who have been permitted access to inebriating liquor. Would a loving parent put ardent spirits in the way of his children? Of course he would not! Yet the Negroes came to Manassas on just such a promise of protection, a promise made by our government that you, as that government's representative, have broken by allowing them to fall prey to the temptation of strong drink. It is a disgrace, sir, a shameful disgrace, and I shall make certain that our authorities in Washington are made fully aware of it. Good day to you.' The Reverend Starbuck left the speechless Gilray and went back into the night. He felt better for that discharge of his duty, for he was a fervent believer that each man, every day, should leave the world a better place than he found it.
He walked back through the town, listening to the drunken songs and seeing the scarlet women who lifted their skirts in the stinking alleys. He fended a drunk off with his cane. Somewhere in the dark a dog whined, a child cried, a man vomited, and a woman screamed, and the sad sounds made the Reverend Starbuck reflect on how much sin was souring God's good world. Satan, he thought, was much abroad in these dark days, and he began to plan a sermon that likened the Christian life to a military campaign. Maybe, he thought, there was more than a sermon in that idea, but a whole book, and that pleasant thought kept him company as he strode down the moonlit road toward the depot. Such a book would be timely, he decided, and might even earn him enough to add a new scullery to the house on Walnut Street.
He had already planned his chapter headings and was beginning to anticipate the book's adulatory notices when suddenly, shockingly, the sky ahead of him flashed red as a cannon fired. The sound wave crashed past him just as a second cannon belched flame that briefly illuminated a rolling cloud of gunsmoke; then the Reverend Starbuck heard the chilling and ululating sound that he had mistaken at Cedar Mountain for Aristophanes'
The Legion marched at dawn. They were hungry and tired, but their steps were lightened by rumors that the warehouses at Manassas had been captured and that all the hungry men in the world could be fed from their contents.
Starbuck had last seen the Manassas depot wreathed in smoke when the Confederates had destroyed the junction. The Legion, indeed, had been the very last rebel infantry regiment to abandon Manassas, leaving the warehouses nothing but ashes, yet as the depot came into view, Starbuck saw that the great spread of buildings was now more extensive than ever. The Northern government had not just replaced the burned warehouses but had added new ones and built fresh rail spurs for the hundreds of freight wagons that waited to be hauled south, but even those new facilities were not enough to hold all the Northern supplies, and so thousands of tons of food and materiel had to be stored in hooded wagons parked wheel-to-wheel in the fields beyond the warehouses.
A staff officer spurred back down the marching column. 'Go get your rations, boys! It's all yours. A present from Uncle Abe. All yours!'
The men, invigorated by the thought of plunder, quickened their pace. 'Slow down!' Starbuck shouted as the leading companies began to break away from the rest. 'Major Medlicott!'
The commander of A Company turned in his saddle and offered Starbuck a lugubrious expression.
'We'll take the end warehouse!' Starbuck pointed to the easternmost part of the depot, which was still clear of rebel troops. He feared the chaos that would result if his regiment was scattered among a score of warehouses and mixed with revelers from a dozen other brigades. 'Captain Truslow!' he shouted toward the rear of the column. 'I'm relying on you to find ammunition! Lieutenant Howes! I want pickets around the warehouse! Keep our men inside! Coffman? I want you to find some local people and discover where the Galloway farm is.'
Yet for the moment there was no time to consider revenge on Galloway's Horse, only to plunge into the stacks of boxes and barrels and crates that were piled in the vast, dim warehouse and inside the adjacent boxcars and wagons. It was a hoard that the hard-pressed Confederate army could only dream of possessing. There were uniforms, rifles, ammunition, haversacks, belts, blankets, tents, saddles, boots, bridles, percussion caps, gum rubber groundsheets, picket pins, telegraph wire, signal flags, and lucifer matches. There were candles, lanterns, camp furniture, drums, sheet music, Bibles, buckets, oilcloth capes, jars of quinine, bottles of camphor, folding flagpoles, bugles, replacement pay books, friction fuses, and artillery shells. There were spades, axes, augurs, saws, bayonets, cooking pots, sabers, swords, and canteens.
Then there was food. Not just army-issue hardtack in boxes and desiccated soup in canvas bags, but luxuries from the wagons of the Northern army's sutlers, who made their money by selling delicacies to the troops. There were barrels of dried oysters and casks of pickles, cakes of white sugar, boxes of loose tea, slabs of salt beef, sacks of rice, cans of fruit, sides of bacon, jars of peaches, combs of honey, bottles of catsup, and flasks of powdered lemon. Best of all there was coffee, real coffee; ready-sweetened coffee, baked, ground, mixed with sugar and packed into sacks. There were also bottles of liquor: rum and brandy, champagne and wine, cases and cases of wine and spirits packed in sawdust and all disappearing fast into thirsty men's haversacks. A few conscientious officers fired revolvers into the cases of liquor in an effort to keep their men from drunkenness, but there were simply too many bottles for the precaution to be of any effect.
'Lobster salad, sir!' Private Hunt, his dirty face smeared from ear to ear with a pink confection, offered Starbuck a knife blade loaded with the delicacy from a newly opened can. 'Came from a sutler's wagon.'
'You'll make yourself sick, Hunt,' Starbuck said.
'I hope so, sir,' Hunt said. Starbuck tried the proffered salad and found it delicious.
Starbuck wandered in a daze from one store bay to the next. The supplies seemed to have been stacked without any system, but just crammed into the warehouse in whatever order they had arrived from the North. There were cartridges from Britain, tinned food from France, and salt cod from Portugal. There was lamp oil from
