Blood and Daring (23 page)

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JACOB THOMPSON AND THE CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC

I
T WAS THREE O’CLOCK
on that fateful July morning. Robert E. Lee stepped from his cramped quarters into the cool morning mist. From beyond the eastern horizon came streaks of ghostly grey that smudged the stars and offered Cemetery Ridge in silhouette. It was a mile away, up a long gentle rise and topped with a low rock wall. On and behind the ridge were 75,000 men of the Army of the Potomac. Encamped to the north and west of the fish-hook-shaped Union line were 60,000 men of Lee’s Army of North Virginia, as potent a fighting force as the continent had ever seen. They were outnumbered, on inferior ground, far from home, and yet still believed themselves to be invincible.

Lee’s latest northern advance, which had brought them all to this place and this moment, had begun on June 10, 1863. Lee had ordered a march up the west side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Union’s newly appointed General Joseph Hooker did just as Lee had predicted and turned north as well, trying to keep his forces between the Confederates and Washington. Lee’s slow advance was a terrific combination of skill, bluff and luck, with
the Union missing many chances to stop it. Lee’s last communication with President Davis had repeated their belief that the effort would be strategically successful if it encouraged negotiations to end the war.
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There were skirmishes and significant battles as Lee slowly moved north. On June 27, he had stood studying a map of Pennsylvania and pointed at a small town at the hub of an intersection of roads. “Thereabout,” he said to the gathered officers, “we shall probably meet the army and fight a great battle, and if God gives us the victory, the war will be over and we will achieve the recognition of our independence.”
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The next day he learned that Hooker had been replaced by General George Meade, who was at that moment rushing north to catch up with the men had been appointed to lead. Three days later, Lee’s army approached Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

On the afternoon of July 1, Union and Confederate skirmishers met outside and then pushed each other through the small town. Lee was not able to take the Union’s right later that day, and the next day, despite enormous effort and losses, failed to take its left at Little Round Top. Today he would attack its centre.

It was now July 3, 1863. Lee mounted Traveller, the imperturbable grey stallion that had served him so well and for so long, and set out to find General Longstreet. Minutes later the booming of artillery pierced the gathering dawn. It was Lt. General George Ewell, on the Confederate left. Lee had told him to wait for Longstreet’s men, but now guessed that the Union’s cautious but clever Meade had forced his hand. There was nothing he could do but trust Ewell, and so he nudged Traveller forward.

Lee and Longstreet mumbled a respectful good morning, but then Old Pete, as his men called the heavily bearded general, repeated the point he had made the night before—that with the Union entrenched on the high ground, an attack would be foolhardy. He argued that they should disengage and swing south toward Washington, allowing them to fight when and where they chose. Lee disagreed, saying the enemy was there and there he must be confronted.
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After frustrating delays, an artillery barrage began at 1:07 in the afternoon. It shook the earth and belched enough smoke to eclipse the
scorching summer sun. Confederate artillery fired in salvos along their curving two-mile line. Union cannon answered, and for nearly two hours the deadly exchange thundered.

Then there was silence. Confederate major general George Pickett had been busy all morning organizing his Virginians for the attack he had been afforded the honour to lead. The barrage was over but there was still no order to advance and so he rode off to find Longstreet. He found Old Pete sitting on a fence, looking morose and unable to bring himself to issue the order to advance. He finally looked up at Pickett and nodded.

As a warm breeze urged the black smoke away, Union men along the ridge and from the hills on either side witnessed a glorious display. Beneath nineteen fluttering blue flags, Pickett’s 12,500 men stepped smartly into the field’s open expanse. The perfectly formed line was a mile wide. And they walked. They were resplendent in the sunshine and spectacular in their discipline. Then hell was visited upon them.

The full fury of one hundred field artillery pieces opened up. Enfilade fire rained down from Cemetery Hill on their left and Little Round Top on their right. Hot metal tore into flesh and bone, and mutilated men screamed over the cacophonous din. Blinding smoke rolled and rose. And yet the Virginians walked on.

Musket fire announced their coming within range of the rock wall, and more men fell. There was a startled cheer from the Union line when, at about a hundred yards out, the Virginians stopped and reoriented their line with a textbook-perfect left oblique. Further down, with Confederates falling in greater numbers and yet somehow continuing their advance, Union boys were chanting vengefully “Fredericksburg—Fredericksburg.”

A scattered few made it to the wall, to be met by the Union bayonets. There was no serious breach. There was no order to fall back. The battered and bloodied men, with most of their officers wounded, dead or lost, simply sensed it was time and turned around.

Out of range and back in the relative protection of the trees, wide-eyed and bloodied survivors staggered past Lee, who sat tall upon the stoic Traveller. To a few torn-up men who met his eye, he said that it was
all his fault. Pickett, covered in soot and dirt and blood, stood gazing up at Lee in shock and exhaustion. Lee ordered him to prepare his division for a possible counter-attack. Pickett shook his head and muttered, “General Lee, I have no division now.”
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The next day, a pounding torrential rain masked the sound of Lee’s army leaving, with only a skeleton force left behind to cover its retreat. A wagon train heaving with wounded and dying stretched for eleven miles as the once indomitable army began its long, slow and sad slog home.

On that same day, the fourth of July, hundreds of miles west, the Union’s General Ulysses S. Grant received a message. For several months, he had been concentrating his efforts on capturing Vicksburg. The city rested on a hairpin turn on the Mississippi River, halfway between Memphis and New Orleans. It was a formidable fortress, glaring down at the river from high bluffs and protected by miles of impenetrable bayous, malarial bottom land, and crisscrossing rivers and streams. To win the city was to gain control of the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in half; so, since November, Grant had been trying one thing after another to take it. His determination, daring and unorthodox ideas brought failure after failure, but Lincoln stood by him, despite mounting calls for his dismissal. Confederate forces eventually withdrew to the city, initiating a long and tortuous siege. By the summer of 1863, Vicksburg’s defenders had dug themselves into defensive trenches and its citizens retreated into caves to survive the near constant artillery bombardment. Finally, with food running out and options gone, the Confederate commander surrendered the city and his thirty thousand troops.

The silence at Vicksburg and Gettysburg announced a turning point in the war. The Confederacy was severed and there would be no more major invasions of the North. Talk of recognition from Britain that had been revived with Southern victories in early 1862 had already faded, and Gettysburg and Vicksburg ended any further serious consideration. From that point forward, despite the fortitude of the Southern people, the courage of its soldiers and the brilliance of many of its generals, the end of the Confederacy had begun.

Jefferson Davis had spent much of the summer of 1863 seriously ill. On July 5, he was conducting official business from his bed, amid swirling
rumours that he was dying.
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While waiting for word from Pennsylvania, he was told that Vicksburg had fallen. On July 9, reports from Gettysburg finally arrived. Lee offered his resignation. It was refused.

Davis somehow rallied himself and set about managing the arguments over who was to blame for the two major defeats and, soon afterwards, for the loss of Arkansas and his home state of Mississippi. Davis suffered the indignity of his home being taken and ransacked by a marauding Northern regiment. With the Union forces doing little to capitalize on their victory in the east but still pushing hard in the west, Davis stuck with generals who were being viciously criticized. He reorganized the Army of Tennessee and moved troops and respected commanders to shore up that threatened sector. A tour of western cities and camps helped calm complaints and boost morale; but it would not last.

Southern cities continued to fall. By December, Tennessee was gone. Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction that offered pardons to Southerners who would swear allegiance to the United States. Although only a few stepped up, the proclamation was yet another signal that the war was entering a new phase. Dwindling numbers of Southern recruits were unable to fill the gaps left by death, injury, illness, imprisonment and desertion. Soldiers were going hungry, as were the growing number of refugees. The army’s uniforms and shoes were falling apart, and too many ammunition cases were empty. The value of Confederate dollars was continuing to plummet in the face of falling bond sales and rising inflation. Rampant counterfeiting made the situation worse. Despite England’s neutrality proclamation that prohibited such activities, ships for some time had been built in England and smuggled out for the Confederate navy, but it looked as if future construction would be delayed and more ships might never be delivered.

Davis’s cabinet was squabbling. The Confederate Congress reconvened in early January 1864, with speakers competing to see who could be most critical of the administration’s handling of the war. Good news had become a stranger in Richmond. As options were weighed and desperate actions taken, two events and one man suggested that part of what might save the South would perhaps be to look north.
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Davis’s new idea would be based on something Canadians already knew—there were Confederates fighting their war from Canada. In early November 1863, Canadian governor general Monck was told by an official at the British consul in Baltimore that Confederates in Montreal were attempting to purchase two ships and use them to attack the Union prison on Johnson’s Island and liberate Confederate comrades. Johnson’s Island lay in Lake Erie, less than half a mile from Sandusky, Ohio, and housed about two thousand prisoners. It was poorly designed, with bad drainage and barracks that were fiery hot in summer and icy cold in winter. Prisoners often ate rats to survive.
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The island prison was protected only by a few soldiers, Erie’s waters and the fourteen-gun, iron-clad steamer
Michigan
. The
Michigan
had plied the Great Lakes since 1822, serving as a recruiting vessel and a training ship for naval artillery personnel. In 1855, 1857 and again in 1861, British authorities had complained that it violated the letter and spirit of the 1817 Rush-Bagot Agreement, which limited the number and size of ships on the lakes and the power of the armaments they could carry. The protests were ignored.
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