Hell or Richmond (33 page)

The visit surprised Ewell, who greeted Lee bareheaded, tin cup in hand. Had the man expected him to be off in Richmond? And Early, a shadow to his corps commander, surely should have been with his division?

Lee cautioned himself to be civil. When he felt worn, his stomach filled with bile and his temper with acid. Self-control had cost him as much effort as anything in the war, but he prided himself on how seldom he’d been ungentlemanly.

He reminded himself of Ewell’s superb performance the day before. And if Ewell had shown no initiative today, neither had Lee pressed him to renew the battle.

Dismounting, Lee took special care, worried his bowels might betray him. Dignity was essential.

“It’s good to see you, General,” Ewell said. “Coffee?”

Lee shook his head. “Thank you, no.” He looked at Ewell as if really seeing him only now: an eager man, often cranky, balding, swinging about on his wooden leg with the gait of a music hall sailor. Lee’s heart bade him say, “Richard, you and I are too old for this young man’s sport.” But he did not, would not, say such a thing. Nor would he call the man “Richard.” Such intimacies only made command more difficult.

“Hard fight down there,” Ewell said. “Sorry to hear about Longstreet. Terrible thing.”

At Ewell’s shoulder, Early nodded along.

The gathered heat pressed down on Lee. “Might we sit, General Ewell? The day has been long, and not without tribulation.”

“Of course, sir. Come in the shade. Right over here.” The lieutenant general waved a hand at his bevy of aides. It was a nervous gesture, almost feminine.

Men scrambled to accommodate the men who wore the stars.

“General Rodes, General Early, please join us,” Lee said.

“Shall I roust up Johnson?” Ewell asked.

“Let us talk for a moment. Gentlemen, there is nothing more to be done this day on the right.” He looked at Ewell, introducing a measure of coldness to his expression. “Might nothing be done on this flank? To discomfit those people? I am loath to leave them the field.”

Ewell twitched. “Way I see it, General Lee, they’re not any more in command of the field than we are. We can’t go that way, they can’t come this way.” The corps commander inspected Lee’s face for a reaction, but Lee revealed nothing. Ewell decided to talk on and said, “Given the disparity in numbers, I’d say we haven’t done less than fairly, all in all.”

“The men,” Lee said, intoning each word distinctly, “have been splendid.”

“Yes, sir,” Ewell said. He bent to scratch his wooden leg, a gesture that always seemed unsound to Lee. “Yes, sir, that’s true, that’s true. I was thinking … in the night, we could withdraw to the Mine Run line. Better ground. Much better.”

Lee almost admonished the man, tempted to remind Ewell of his orders the previous morning to refuse battle. Certainly, Mine Run was a preferable battleground. But the choice no longer remained to them.

“We will not retreat,” Lee said.

His tone carried a warning, but Ewell was flustered and said, “I wasn’t talking about a retreat.…”

“We cannot leave this field. Grant and Meade must abandon it. We dare not permit them a supposition of victory.”

“No … no, sir,” Ewell responded. “I see that. I was talking through my hat.”

Lee turned his gaze on each of the division commanders, then shifted it back to Ewell. “Is there nothing to be done here, General? Nothing?”

A brave but calculating man, Early leaned forward. He reached the edge of speech, then paused.

“General Early?” Lee said. “Have you something to offer us?”

Early looked at Ewell, then back to Lee.

“Gordon’s been pestering me all day. Insisting Sedgwick’s flank is hanging out, that the Yankees left it dangling. I told him Burnside’s corps was out there, but—”

“General Burnside has been engaged elsewhere,” Lee said sharply. Warning himself against a display of temper. “He is not on this flank.”

“Yes, sir, true enough. But Gordon was just too big for his boots this morning, talking all sorts of nonsense—he can be an impetuous man, General—and we didn’t know where Burnside was for certain. All I had was word from your own staff, and your people had Burnside on the Germanna Road. Later on…” Early waved a hand, shooing a fly. “Well, I figured Gordon was talking hogswallow by then. The Yankees must’ve tucked their flank in proper and fixed things up. Even if Gordon was right first off, they wouldn’t have left it like that.”

“Find out,” Lee said.

Seven p.m.

The sun rushed to meet the horizon; minutes had grown more valuable than gold. At last, Gordon had the order to attack. All day, he had been as Tantalus, yearning for grapes of victory but a short grasp away. Then, cruelly late, Early galloped up, impatient for Gordon to do what he had begged to do since morning.

To add weight to the charge, his superior gave him Johnston’s Brigade as well. Early even said Pegram’s Brigade might follow,
if
Gordon delivered success. The division commander’s tone was urgent and peevish, suggesting a story waiting to be told. Gordon ignored the rudeness and leapt to his task.

He ordered his own men to leave behind anything that might rattle or creak and give them away as they approached the Yankees. Johnston’s Brigade would be a help, but it was a hindrance, too. Bob Johnston turned thickheaded when Gordon explained his plan. More time was consumed as Johnston passed his own instructions to his subordinate officers. One frustration had piled atop another as the bright evening softened toward dusk.

There was no time for rousing speeches or even a flourish of prayer.

But they were ready at last, three thousand men sneaking through the woodlands, Johnston on the left and ordered to drive into the Union rear. Gordon’s own men would strike the Yankee flank directly and roll it up. And if Early did send in Pegram’s Brigade, much could still be accomplished.

Gordon’s vision of a complete rout had faded, though. The attack should have been made by two divisions in the morning, not two brigades at nightfall. Despite that, he refused to be pessimistic. He had gotten his chance, however flawed, and he meant to make the most of it. He remained confident the he and his men could deliver a blow their opponents would never forget.

It seemed impossible—downright amazing—that the Yankees hadn’t detected their advance. The light had weakened, further limiting vision through the woodlands, but strive for quiet as they might, thousands of men made a certain amount of noise. And Gordon and a number of other officers rode their horses, contributing snorts and whinnies.

Still the men in blue suspected nothing, derelict even in the duty of posting pickets at a proper distance. The gray brigades covered the final stretch, the last fateful yards where they might have been challenged.

Gordon saw Yankees cooking their supper, carefree as if having a race-day picnic.

He looked down the shadowed ranks of his men, all of them champing like thoroughbreds, and glanced through the mesh of treetops to the heavens: There was no time to waste on straightening lines or etiquette.

He drew his sword.

“Georgia! Charge!”

His men swept forward with a wild yell, flying from the undergrowth like demons. Gordon rode among them, calling encouragement, sword flashing back the light of cooking fires. At first, the Yankees did nothing, utterly stunned. By the time the first bluecoats leapt to their feet or lunged for their rifles, Gordon’s men were already behind their worthless entrenchments, firing point-blank at men fool enough to resist and grabbing dumbfounded prisoners by their blouses.

“Push on! Drive on!” Gordon shouted. The dusk was already deepening into the gloaming that heralded night. If only … if only the order had come at breakfast, not supper.…

The enthusiasm and delight of his men made his heart swell. The advance was nearly bloodless. The soldiers simply trotted along, collecting befuddled Yankees and telling them, “Walk on back thataway, Billy Yank, you git along now.” And the prisoners obeyed.

Other Federals just ran. The better-handled Yankee units struggled to get up a defense, but had no time. Regiment after regiment collapsed, as Gordon had promised all day.

He couldn’t see as far as Johnston’s men and could only hope their success had been as great. Certainly, there was no sign of firm resistance.

Looting was a temptation: The boys had little enough to adorn their lives. Yet, all but a few kept chasing the Yankee hares.

The light was dying.

“‘Dying, Egypt, dying…,’” Gordon recited.

“We got us a general! We got us a general here!” a pack of soldiers cried.

Captive generals were always welcome, but the attack’s very success was breaking up what remained of Gordon’s ranks. He ordered Clem Evans of the 31st Georgia to get his boys back into a semblance of order. Clem saluted, but Gordon was not sure how much could be done. He rode along his advancing, dissolving regiments, telling the men to rally to their flags.

There was more fighting now. They had gone a good half mile, he estimated, and some of the Yankees had started to figure things out. It grew dark enough for muzzle flashes to capture the eye and blot a man’s vision. Shadows wrestled in front of cooking fires, and a human torch ran off into the night.

“Tom,” he told the commander of the 60th Georgia, “keep ’em in what order you can, but don’t stop pushing. Make this a night the Yankees will never forget.”

“I believe we already have, sir.”

Herds of Yankee prisoners passed to the rear like sheep, with hardly a guard in evidence. There had to be hundreds of them.

A lieutenant approached Gordon, calling for his attention. “We got us
two
Yankee generals, sir. One’s Shaler. And somebody else.”

Shaler commanded a brigade, Gordon believed. Or
had
commanded one.

“Fine, son, that’s fine. You get on back to your men now.”

Ahead: Ripples of fire announced a Union line standing its ground. His own men howled and, amid the confident, angry, exuberant shrieks, Gordon heard the bull call of Private Spivey.

What, besides a glorious love, filled the heart as fully as triumph in war? Homer knew, he
knew.…

That afternoon, of all times, a letter from a creditor back in Georgia had caught up with him, threatening to sue over promises broken, all to do with the family mining concern. Well, let the man try to drag him into court. No one was going to fare well against a hero.

He wished Fanny could see him.

“You’re driving them, boys,” he called, waving his saber again. “You just keep on, don’t let ’em form up.”

But as the night robbed his ranks of their last coherence, the Yankees did form up. His men moved in packs now, like wolves. Martial order was a bygone thing.

Unexpectedly—and unhappily—he heard a great commotion on his right flank, heavy firing where none should have been. He spurred his horse through the wreckage of Yankee encampments to see to the matter.

Clem Evans met him.

“Christ almighty, the damned fools have been firing into our flank.”

“Who?”

“Our own men. Back in our lines. Nobody told ’em about our attack, I guess.” He caught Gordon’s bridle. “Eddie’s seeing to it, don’t get yourself shot. We’re a damned mess, anyway. Can’t tell our men from the Yankees, for all the smoke and the dark.”

Yes. Darkness. What did Milton speak of? “Darkness visible.”

Up ahead, the fighting had grown fierce, with volley fire resounding. And that would not be coming from his men. His boys were still screaming to wake the dead, though, never ones to lack spirit.

Darkness visible. Hail, brazen arms of Chaos!

Heart sinking, Gordon realized there was little more he could do.

Early and Ewell had both acted like damned fools. Had he only been allowed to strike sooner, even by an hour …

He had hurt the Yankees severely. He attempted to console himself with that. But a brace of shattered brigades was not the destruction of a corps or an army.

Gordon refused to give up hope. His brigade had done all it could, but he might ride back and persuade Pegram’s men to make one more attack, to see if they couldn’t tip the Yankees end over end, after all.

If Jack Pegram hadn’t been wounded in the earlier fighting, he would have agreed to extend the attack at once.

If, if, if …

At the edge of his advance, the firing declined. When he heard Union troops hurrahing, it struck like a fist.

Searching for Pegram’s men, he encountered two soldiers who’d called it quits after fighting for nearly a mile. They were picking through abandoned Yankee treasures. When they spotted Gordon, they ceased rifling knapsacks and stood up straight, caught out.

By the light of an abandoned campfire, their faces shone with perspiration and powder. They were of the sharecropper class, earnest and lean; Gordon knew them by sight. Their expressions were doubtful now, expecting chastisement. They were men who had done what could be done and knew, perhaps better than he or the other generals, what could not be done.

As he reached the firelight himself, astonishment froze the expressions of the two soldiers.

Gordon realized his face was covered with tears.

Eight p.m.
Headquarters, Army of the Potomac

As the lieutenant colonel ranted on, Meade folded his arms and tucked in his chin.

“You’ve got to flee,” the man pleaded. “The Sixth Corps is all broken, the Rebs are in behind us. All the generals have been captured, Shaler, Neill, Sedgwick…” Eyes burning fever-bright, he seemed about to grasp Meade by the coat and drag him away.

“Nonsense,” Meade said. “General Sedgwick was just here.”

The lieutenant colonel, a Sixth Corps man named Kent, paid no attention and raved on: “It’s a total collapse … you must save General Grant.…”

The noise of battle to the north was already fading. Meade spoke calmly, if cynically: “And those brigades Sedgwick told me he could spare? Are they doing nothing? How about Upton?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“So … I may expect no more fighting from the Sixth Corps in this campaign?”