Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 (50 page)

And if ever he had confidence in his boys, it was now. They had tasted the most bitter of defeats. The cowards, the shirkers, had all deserted, and though many a valiant lad and many a good senior officer had fallen in the last campaign, the core that was left was as tough as steel, wanting nothing more than revenge, to restore their honored name.

With that victory his own place would be assured. Grant would be forced to treat him as a co-commander, and that upstart so unfamiliar with the finer nuances of politics, would soon be left in the dust and it would become clear to the public that he, Sickles, had won this war.

He savored that thought
.
The chance to prove his own mettle was here at last. The life of a ward heeler, of a mere congressman, of the snickers behind his back over that ridiculous Key affair, would be finished forever. Most important the 1864 campaign for president loomed ahead.

There was, as well, within his soul, a still loftier ambition. His love of his country could not be questioned by any who truly knew him, though his vision of what that country was, and should be, might differ greatly from those of the ones born to wealth and position. He had clawed his way up, and he knew that nowhere else in this world could one such as he have reached the heights he now occupied. This country had to be saved, its brawling energy, its factories and urban power, and all that derived from that power, expanded to encompass the Western world. Too many good comrades had died for that end. He wanted their deaths to be worth something.

As he contemplated his brandy, tears came to his eyes, for despite his public bluster and bravado, he was at heart a sentimentalist, so typical of his age. The sight of the flag, shot, torn, fluttering in the wind, could still move him to tears. For his army, his Army of the Potomac, he felt a love deeper than any he had ever known. They were his boys, his men. He loved them with a passion, and they knew it, returning his love. They knew him first as a brigade commander, then division, corps, and now finally army, never afraid to stand on the volley line, a fighting general who had all but begged across two years to be unleashed and bring victory.

Victory,
in
a
week
I
could
bring
victory.

He drained the rest of his goblet and poured out the remainder of the bottle.

Faces drifted before him, so many comrades gone, men of the old Excelsior Brigade, his first command, bled out in the Peninsula, at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Union Mills. Without hesitation they had gone forward on every field, always following the colors, the flag, always the flag going forward, God bless them.

He remembered a flag bearer from the city, the scum of the gutter before the war, ennobled by it in the end. It was at Chancellorsville, that ghastly, obscene debacle that he could have so easily reversed into a Union victory of historic proportions. They were retreating, and a flag bearer staggered to his side, looked up, and gasped, "Sir, I just want you to know, the flag never touched the ground."

The man collapsed, dying, and yet still he struggled to plant the staff in the ground, to keep the colors aloft.

A dozen of the dying man's comrades gathered around him, taking the colors from his cold hands, holding them aloft, weeping, begging to be ordered back in to restore their honor.

"My God," he whispered, "with such men, how can we fail."

He looked back down at his drink. No more, and he tossed the goblet to the ground, crushing it under his heel.

I
must
be
clear
tomorrow,
the
boys
expect
it
of
me.
If
we are
to
win,
if
we
are
to
save
our
country,
I
must
be
clear.

At this moment he knew there was but one man who could achieve that victory, and the thought humbled him.

I
must
risk
all
now,
act
swiftly,
firmly,
and
without
hesitation.

The plan for movement was already in place, carefully devised, in secret, with his staff. Before dawn the steam-powered ferries of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and
Baltic
more railroad, capable of hauling an entire train across the river in ten minutes, would swing into action, joined by the small flotilla of barges, canal boats, tugs, and ferries that had been quietly gathered on the north bank of the river over the last four weeks. By mid
-
afternoon he'd have a full corps across, his old glorious Third, followed then by the Fifth later in the day and the Sixth during the night. Once across, the Third would undertake a forced march on Baltimore via the main road through Abington and Gunpowder Falls, the Fifth along the road through Bel Air, the Sixth to follow as reserve. In two days they should be into Baltimore and victory. And several hours before starting the crossing, he would, as well, cut all telegraph lines to the north. Let Grant and the reporters both wait in ignorance until he could announce the victory of the Army of the Potomac.

His own ambitions were overwhelmed for the moment, and in his dreams transcended his personal desires.
We
can end
the
war
here
and
now.
He knew enough of Lee to realize that perhaps he was walking onto a field of Lee's design.

Then so be it, for once engaged he wo
uld drive forward with a determ
ination the likes of which the Army of Northern Virginia had never before witnessed.

And the men driving forward would be his chosen band of brothers, his comrades of the Army of the Potomac. In forty-eight hours it would be decided; he would be on the path to the presidency or he would be dead, of that he was convinced. With the Army of the Potomac by his side, he could not conceive of the latter. Victory was just ahead, a vision before him, just on the other side of the river.

Near
Reamstown,
Pennsylvania

August
18,1863 6:00
am.

W
ade Hampton reined in his mount, raising his field glasses to scan the dust swirling up from the west, several riders coming fast.

A troop of cavalry, some of his North Carolina boys, many of them on fine, sleek horses freshly requisitioned from Pennsylvania farmers, trotted past, heading northeast, pushing toward Reading. This was a wonderful country for horses. The remounts taken in the last campaign had been vastly superior to what they had been riding only two months ago, but here, in this untouched land, could be found horses of true breeding, strength, and endurance. His brigade was for once overloaded with horses, some of the troopers leading a couple of remounts as they rode.

Behind him pillars of smoke filled the morning sky. Following the tracks of the railroad that led toward Reading, the boys had been having a grand time of it, burning bridges, destroying supplies they could not bring along, knocking over water towers, and smashing switches. The evening before they had staged a grand spectacle as a parting show in Lancaster. Two trains, one hauling tank cars filled with coal oil, had been deployed a mile apart, their engines stoked up, brakes released, and throttles set to full. The amateur engineers then jumped off, and with hundreds of troopers whooping and hollering like small boys bent on devilish mischief, they watched as the trains built up speed and collided head-on, the tank cars loaded with thousands of gallons of coal oil bursting into flames. Even the civilians had watched the show with awe, children running about excitedly, laughing and clapping at this orgy of destruction.

Th
e local farmers, many of them of the strange Amish and Mennonite sects, had proven to be a dour lot, but so far there had been no problems. His boys had acted, as always, as proper sons of the South, respectful of women, especially the young ladies and the elderly. And more than one had actually coaxed a smile with his charming drawl and courtly manners, even as they handed out vouchers left and right for horses and food. They had noticed, as well, just how many healthy young men were standing about as if there were no war being fought but fifty miles away, or now galloping past their own farms. It was troubling. He could understand these strange Amish who had taken a vow of peace, like the Quakers, but many were not of the religious dissenters. There was barely a town in South Carolina where a healthy man between sixteen and forty-five could be found. There were enough here in just this one county to raise an entire brigade.

His men had ridden out of Lancaster in high spirits. The farms of the Amish and Mennonites had proven to be a virtual bonanza of food—slabs of hickory-smoked ham, tubs of something they called scrapple, links of fat sausages, beefsteaks, chickens, geese hung from nearly every saddle. To get fresh, roasting ears of corn or apples all one had to do was turn off the road for a moment and lean over a fence to gather in all he might desire. Loaves of fresh bread stuck out of haversacks, and a ruckus ensued when a trooper just ahead of him rode past one of his comrades and slapped the man's hat, which he had been cradling in his lap. A couple of dozen eggs were ruptured and a gooey fight broke out as broken eggs were thrown back and forth, the boys laughing.

Long before dawn, just north of Lancaster, the brigade had split up, two regiments tu
rning to the northwest to probe
toward Harrisburg, one regiment east, along the track of the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad toward Downington and West Chester, the rest of his command in the middle, moving toward Reading. The regiment going east, the Jeff Davis Regiment, was at this point nothing more than a light raid and probe with the intent of spreading panic in Philadelphia and engaging in some bridge-burning and train-wrecking.

But now, as he watched the courier's approach, he felt a tightening in his stomach. Something was up. The three of them came on fast, at the gallop, and reined in, saluting.

"Sir, we got Yankee cavalry, ten miles off."

Wade forced a smile. He had hoped they'd have another day of it before the Yankees finally reacted in their typical slow and leisurely fashion.

"Well, it's about time. We've been here a day and a half without a sight of one of them."

One of the couriers shook his head.

"Sir. It's not just a patrol. Looks to be damn near a brigade. Colonel Baker says he's going to have to pull back before them."

"How far?"

"When we were told to find you, it was about ten miles to the west of here. We were moving toward Harrisburg, as ordered. The civilians were damn closed-mouthed, wouldn't give us a word of information, though one old codger just grinned and said we were gonna wind up like rabbits in a snare, that the whole area is crawling with Yankees. The main road we were on, you could see where one hell of a lot of troopers had been marching a day or two earlier, a couple of orchards just stripped of apples, one big hay field trampled down. The farmer that owned the orchard and field was boiling mad, said that ten thousand or more Yankees had marched through two days ago from Harrisburg, then turned around and marched back, cleaning him out"

He took that in. Why? That was before he crossed the river. Drilling perhaps? Keeping the men in shape?

"Just around sunup we seen them coming," the messenger continued. "The country "was open, Colonel Baker had a good vantage point, you could just make out the church spires of what we figure might be Harrisburg, and then they just came storming out on to the fields a couple miles away, filling every lane. A couple thousand at least."

Wade opened up his map case and pulled out the sketches of the region that Jed Hotchkiss had prepared for him. His forces were spread thin, and now he wondered. There had been absolutely no resistance so far. To spread out was routine at this point cast the net wide until they hit something.

If he drew an oblong box set on one point, he was in the middle. The bottom point was their river crossing twenty-five miles away, the left point Harrisburg, the north point Reading, the east point toward West Chester.

"Any identification? Who are they?"

"Sir, we picked up a couple of deserters from the Nineteenth Corps; they were hiding in a barn not five miles from here. Said they were fed up and going home. Seems like they were the ones out on that march and these two snuck off."

"Nineteenth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did they say where they came from?"

"Harrisburg."

Damn.

So he had one piece of the puzzle that Lee had sent him for, if the deserters were to be believed. "Did you take them prisoner?" "No sir, we let them go." "Why?"

"One was so damn sick, sir, he was near dead; the other was just a scared boy, the sick man's young brother. We took their parole and left them. Colonel Baker, though, felt we should believe them."

Then the Nineteenth was in Harrisburg. And that spoke volumes.

"Anything else?"