A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (31 page)

Here again Lee was most helpful. His intelligence indicated that
only the Rodmans had been emplaced. He suggested that if he were able
to take Alexandria and Battery Rogers, Washington would be defenseless from attack up the river.

First they had to overcome one other major obstacle before getting
to Washington, and it was just up the river from where Cooke's Brigade
was loading. It was the massive masonry fortification of Fort Washington on the Maryland side of the river. It commanded the channel sixteen
miles below Washington and would be difficult to pass. It stood high
on a hill with its guns pointing directly at any hostile ship coming up
the river. Just below the fort, the main ship channel took a turn directly
toward it to pass right under its walls. Its many guns would be firing
down to strike through the decks. Ships' guns, in turn, could not be elevated sufficiently to strike that high. Sink two or three ships in the channel, and they could block it for the rest.

But again, Lee was helpful. He said that as much as it pained him
to associate the name Washington with failure, the fort had an ignominious history. In 1814, when Admiral Cochrane's ships had come up the
river, the fort's commander had lost his nerve, spiked his guns, and fled,
giving free passage to the Royal Navy. Lee suggested the fort might be
better addressed from the landward side. After all, he had heard that the
Royal Marines had seized Fort Gorges in Portland Harbor by just such a
bold move. He offered to assist by providing men whose accents would
not be thought amiss at night by the guards. Lee added, "You might
learn from our own misfortune at Vicksburg, when the Union Navy ran
the forts at night with scarcely a loss."

Milne came away from his conference with Lee confident. He had
always favored this plan, but now its odds had gone up considerably.
He was sure that by striking both by land and river at the same time, the
chances of actually taking the city rose to the realm of the possible. And
that would surely end the war at a single stroke. 6

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, 2:00 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

The cigar fell out of Grant's mouth. He had lit it after his aide woke
him to say Thomas and his intelligence officer were insistent to see him. Colonel Rawlins had not been far behind. "You're serious?" Grant asked,
incredulity written over his face.

The captain almost smirked. "Absolutely, sir. The information
comes from interrogations of deserters from every corps in the Army of
Tennessee, from intercepts of Confederate signals, and from one of the
headquarters staff body servants."

Rawlins just burst out laughing and slapped his thigh with his hat.
"I'll be damned! Just shot him, you said?"

"Yes, sir. It seems that Forrest warned Bragg right after Chickamauga. Barged right into his tent, fury on his face, at Bragg's refusal to let
him pursue Rosecrans. He cornered Bragg in the back of his tent, and
said, 'I ought to slap your face and make you resent it. Don't you ever
give me another order!"'

Bragg's problem had not been limited to Forrest's outrage. He had
completely lost the confidence of his corps commanders, who had been
alienated by his acid tongue, ornery disposition, and hesitation in battle.
He had especially angered Longstreet, who had won the battle for him.
All four corps commanders had begged Bragg to pursue Rosecrans as
the Army of the Cumberland had disintegrated and fled the field, save
for the obdurate Thomas and his command. They even produced a private who had been captured early in the battle and had escaped in the
confusion of the rout to describe the chaos. Bragg had sneered at him
and asked, "What qualifies you to identify a retreat?"

The private had shot back, "Because I've campaigned with you all
summer."

After serving with Lee, Longstreet could have only contempt for
Bragg. He had then done the unthinkable for a general. He persuaded
the other corps commanders to join him in an official request to Jefferson Davis that he relieve Bragg. Davis had been so alarmed that he had
rushed to Tennessee to mediate the fate of his friend and confidant from
their Army days. The evidence damned Bragg, but no general would put
himself forward to seek command, unwilling to be tainted with ambition's stab in the back. Davis took the easiest course and the one he had
wished to take; he confirmed Bragg in command. Davis had to give a sop
to Longstreet, who refused to serve under Bragg. He gave permission
for him to take his corps on an independent operation to take Lexington,
Kentucky.

Emboldened by this backhanded statement of support, Bragg attempted to relieve Forrest, the most feared cavalry commander in the
Confederate Army. Of course, he had not so lost his wits as to try to
relieve Forrest in person. He had sent an aide with the order and then
promptly found a reason to inspect the siegeworks farthest from Forrest's command. Finding Bragg was no problem for the legendary Yankee hunter. Mounted on his black stallion, he overtook Bragg and his
staff on a forest road.

One blow of Forrest's gauntlets across Bragg's face nearly unseated
him from his horse. Forrest grabbed him by the golden stars on his collar and threw him to the ground. His own bodyguard had immediately
drawn down on Bragg's stunned staff. "I told you, you miserable cur,
never to give me another order." He dismounted with the fluid grace
of a predator and took the dazed Bragg by the collar again and dragged
him down the road. Then he walked back twenty paces and turned. "I
have slapped your face, Bragg. Now you have the opportunity to reply
like a man." Bragg just shook, his terror-wide eyes owling above his
gray-streaked bearded face. "Draw your pistol, sir, or I will shoot you
down in the road."

The two groups of horsemen broke their mesmerized attention
to rush their mounts into the woods. No one wanted to be on the road
when shots were fired.

Forrest drew his pistol, raised and cocked it. Bragg soiled himself.
His hand trembled as he drew his own sidearm. Forrest said to his aide,
"Kindly count to three." Then to Bragg, "You know the rules. Defend
yourself at three."

"ONE ... TWO ... THREE!"

In one fluid motion, Forrest's arm extended and he fired. Bragg
screamed and fell onto the road holding his boot. Forrest had purposely
shot him in the foot.

He turned his back as his orderly brought up his horse. As he
mounted, he said to on one in particular, "That creature needs some attention," and off he galloped.

Grant just shook his head as he relit his cigar. "Thought I'd heard
everything," but he was already thinking of Longstreet, Bragg 's successor. Grant grew thoughtful and gave a long pull on the cigar. "Too had I
had counted on General Bragg to keep on helping us." Longstreet, who had been best man at his wedding, would take a lot of beating. If any
man was to go down bristle end first, it would be him. Grant wouldn't
put it past his old friend to actually win.

HUDSON, NEW YORK, 3:00 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

In the morning darkness, British troops arrived in the burned-out shell
of Port Hudson. Paulet had cause to regret the torching of the town; it
now served as a poor base upon which to anchor his campaign against
Hooker. Amid the blackened walls there was scarcely a single whole roof
to cover a hospital or headquarters, much less the supplies and munitions that would need care from the elements. There were still enough
people living among the ruins to act as guides to show the way to the top
of Academy or Prospect Hill just south of town. It was the dominant terrain and would give an observer a view for miles inland as well as to the
north over the rolling farmland and wooded hills.

Once motivated, Lord Paulet was all speed. He immediately set in
motion his small army, "The Albany Field Force," to deploy thirty miles
south of Albany to Hudson. He began shuttling them quickly by boat
and railroad, faster and easier than a hard march overland. By the end of
the next day, he would have almost twenty-two thousand men there. He
was determined to block and defeat Hooker on this spot. It was clear that
had he waited for Hooker in Albany, the American would simply swing
east and cut the railroad that connected him to Montreal. He would be
trapped. If he then were to hold Albany, he had to do it from a point
much farther south. He would anchor himself on the river. Maybe ten
miles or less to the east of Hudson, the gentle, rolling countryside rose
suddenly in steep, wooded hills to meet Berkshire County in neighboring Massachusetts. But just south of Hudson, the terrain narrowed to
three miles between the hills south of the port and the rising ground to
the east. Even that narrow avenue of approach was conveniently bisected by a large body of water, Bell Pond, at Linlithgo Mills.

Nature had made a fine bottleneck for the British, and Paulet had
determined to cork it. Hooker would have this relatively narrow route
to cross if he wanted to attack Albany or cut British communications
with Canada. This was the best place for Paulet to meet and defeat him.
If Hooker wanted to play a game of maneuver on this restricted stage of
hill and dale, Paulet could play that, too. Five miles southeast of Hudson lay the village of Claverack with a creek of the same name curling south
of it and turning north as it reached the high ground south of Hudson.
Four miles south was Linlithgo Mills. Claverack would make a good
forward headquarters. If he had time, he would throw his army into
building in miniature the Lines of Torres Vedras, the strings of forts and
trenches that Wellington built in Portugal to stall an invading French
army in 1809. He would then let Hooker mark time until the winter
snows shut down operations for the year. He rather liked the idea of
copying the Iron Duke. He would be sure to hint at the comparison.

Paulet took comfort in the fact that his men were fresh and had suffered few casualties, other than in the affair at Cold Spring. His Imperial
and Canadian battalions were at almost full strength, unlike their American counterparts whose units had been shrunk from battle and disease to
small remnants of their original number. A veteran American regiment
was lucky to have four hundred men. The Imperial battalions numbered
just under a thousand men, about the size of many war-shrunken Union
brigades. They had had been reinforced by drafts from their depots to
full strength. Proper camp hygiene and good medical care had kept the
wastage low, and there had been only a handful of deserters. The Canadian battalions numbered about five hundred men at full strength, which
most of them were. Paulet had been surprised when Wolseley told him
that the Americans had no real system for the replenishment of their
regiments. General McClellan, that great organizer, had set one up, but
Secretary of War Stanton had discontinued it in 1862, thinking that the
war would be over quickly and that the troops on hand would suffice to
win the war.

As Wolseley had explained, the Americans could not bring themselves to plan for a long war. Thereafter, instead of recruiting replacements, the various state governors simply raised new regiments, an
enormous source of patronage. As the old regiments melted away from
casualties and disease, their combat experience disappeared with them.
New and inexperienced regiments took their place. The new men, unable to learn from veterans at their elbows, made all the same mistakes
over again-at great cost. The Confederates had stopped raising new
regiments when they had instituted a draconian conscription in 1862
and sent the conscripts and volunteers to the old, established formations.
That helped explain their unusually high combat effectiveness.

The only exception to the state policy of raising new regiments was
Wisconsin. Luckily, he would face none of them; they were all in the
West.' Instead, he would face a large number of Germans whose sad
propensity to being routed when their flanks were turned he looked forward to repeating.

Paulet was a creature of Army politics and a member of the Guards
clique; his regiment was the Coldstream Guards, a battalion of which he
had recently commanded. Despite this, he was not the sort who thought
a good turnout weighed far more than brains. He knew his way around
a battlefield better than most Guardsmen, who seldom deployed on active campaigning. He had served throughout the Crimean War and had
had a horse shot out of him at the Battle of Alma. He also knew Hooker's
reputation as a fighting general who had failed in independent campaign
when his opponent had seized the moral ascendancy. Wolseley had
been the source of this intelligence of the enemy -a useful man, useful,
indeed.8

CLAVERACK, NEW YORK, 3:10 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

The Wolverines, as the men of Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer's
Michigan Cavalry Brigade liked to call themselves, rode into the sleepy
crossroads town. Only the brigade scouts had preceded their twentythree-year-old, yellow-haired general. Aggressive beyond a fault, a
natural leader with a gift for seizing the main chance, Custer had been
jumped from lieutenant to brevet brigadier by Meade just before Gettysburg. Anxious to put pugnacious young men in command of cavalry, the
normally cautious Meade had taken full advantage of the authority to
promote talent, given to him by a terrified Washington. Meade had never regretted the decision. In repeated charges, Custer had blunted Stuart's courageous cavalry maneuver against the Union rear on the third
day of Gettysburg. Meade did regret, however, that the cavalry division
with Custer and his Wolverines had been sent to reinforce Hooker.

More scouts went out in the direction of Hudson as well as north.
Hooker's orders were to find the British. His last reports put Paulet still
in Albany, which was just too good to be true. One does not normally ascribe folly to an enemy, and Hooker would have been delighted for Paulet to stay in Albany to he stranded when his communications were cut, but he did not think his enemy would be so obliging. Custer's job was to
throw light on this quandary.