The March (38 page)

Stephen thought that was probably right. It was a multitude, this army, and its war was winding down fast in a way that loosened military discipline. The generals, in anticipation, had built themselves a new bureaucracy in hopes of controlling things. The right wing was now the Army of the Tennessee, the left the Army of Georgia, and that new column from the coast was the Army of Ohio. What did it all mean? There were corps, divisions, brigades, detachments, now battle flagged and distinguished from one another for administrative purposes that escaped the ordinary foot soldier plodding along under the sun. Stephen didn’t even know if his old regiment was still the 102nd New York. You could go for miles without seeing an end to the procession of troops and horses and wagons. An eagle aloft in the April winds high over the landscape would only see something iridescently blue and side-winding that looked like the floodplain of a river. Stephen proposed to float on this the Josiah Culp U.S. Photography wagon and hope that as he sat up on the driver’s box his fresh blue uniform would be all the credential needed.

The only problem was Bert.

THEY HAD TAKEN
a place toward the rear of the wagon train, so many miles behind the advance corps that they couldn’t hear the usual sound of skirmishing as the Rebel cavalry pecked away and fell back and pecked away. There was only the April breeze and the creak of the wagons and the steady clopping of the hoofs on the hard dirt road. But Bert the mule did not like walking directly behind one wagon and in front of another. He kept balking and holding things up behind him. He kept trying to get out of the procession and into the cornfields. When cavalry galloped by too close alongside the road, Bert raised his head and showed his teeth and brayed.

This mule of yours, Stephen called back to the wagon tent. He is not enjoying the trip.

That’s Bert for you, Calvin said. He always did have a mind of his own. He is like an old friend to me. You let me talk to him a minute and see what I can do.

That is not a good idea, Stephen said. I think you’d better stay under wraps there.

A while later, they came to a stream where the bridge was blown and the engineers had had to put down their pontoons. The current was swift and the pontoons sashayed a bit, and Bert, not liking the hollow sound of his own hoofs, almost directed himself and the Josiah Culp U.S. Photography contingent into the water.

Stephen got him across but immediately took the wagon out of the line and stood with Bert under a pine tree.

Pearl hopped down from the wagon. What we going to do?

We’ll wait. They’ll have their led horses and mules coming along. We’ll trade this creature for an army mule.

Who would want him?

Then I’ll try to cadge one however I can.

You need to buy it, Pearl said. No one make you a gift of a good army mule.

They looked at each other. Stephen had not gone to collect his pay. It was the sure way to end up back in his regiment.

Pearl took her knotted handkerchief with the double eagle out of her pocket.

No, listen, Stephen said. You gave away the other one.

Don’t matter. Calvin, she called, where you say you live?

Baltimore, came the reply.

We gettin a new mule, Calvin. This one of yours won’t ever see Baltimore.

There was a long silence. O.K., Calvin said.

BOBBY BRASIL, WITH
the advance in the town of Smithfield, found himself under fire from Rebs. Muzzle flashes came from warehouses and second-story windows. One Reb was firing from the bell tower of a church. Brasil turned a corner and down the street saw a barricade and ducked back just in time. A shell burst right where he’d been, and when the smoke cleared the street was cratered. He’d been made a sergeant for having outlived two predecessors. His platoon were upstate farm boys. They crouched down in the shelter of an alley in complete bewilderment. War was supposed to be fought from dirt pits and behind trees, across rivers, and in swamps. Not down streets. Not from building to building. You yokels are lucky, he assured them. Bobby J. Brasil has been a street fighter since the day he first walked. He is a terror of the Five Points, and the scourge of Centre Street. It’s about time this war became civilized.

Leading his men down the alley, he brought them into an area of trash yards and outhouses. They climbed over wood fences, broke open the back door of an empty hardware store, and came out the front door, having turned the barricade. They flung themselves down on the porch and commenced firing. Before the Rebs knew what was happening they were shot down, a good half dozen of them, including the two artillerymen manning the Parrot gun. The barricade taken, Brasil and his men received the salutes of cavalrymen riding past.

By the time they had advanced to the town square, bluecoats were pouring in from all directions. Smithfield was taken. The men gave a cheer, and after twenty minutes of milling about they fell in again to continue the march.

AT THE WEST
end of town the Rebs had burned the bridge across the Neuse River. The march was halted, and the men sat down on the hillside. The upstate yokels smoked their pipes, and Brasil lay with his hands behind his head and stared at the sky while the engineers brought up their pontoons. Brasil was beginning to enjoy his command even if it was this hapless bunch of nine Dutchmen as he suffered now. This truth might have embarrassed him even a month ago, but he had to acknowledge that he had become a good soldier. From nowhere, it seemed, he had developed a sense of responsibility. His idea of army life was no longer entirely personal, no longer just a matter of looking out for himself in any and all situations. He chuckled, thinking what his da’ would say or his uncles, the Brasils being a family of pure spitting copperheads. But an army was an interesting thing and he was beginning to take pride in it, as if it in some way belonged to him, or he to it. He thought he could do well enough running a company or even a regiment. He knew that only West Pointers became generals, but there was a lot more to an army than its generals.

When the bridge was across, the marchers continued down the road to Raleigh. They passed burned-out farmhouses, crops that had been trampled. Children barefoot and half dressed, with their thumbs in their mouths, stared at the soldiers from porch shacks. In the fields well back from the road was the occasional plantation, shuttered and with no sign of life. All along the march, black people came down to the road to walk along with the troops and dance and shout and praise God.

Brasil realized that he was happy. He felt accomplished—never before in life had his rebellious nature rewarded him with that feeling.

An early camp was made in the meadows about ten miles east of Raleigh. The rifles were stacked, the tents pegged, and cook fires started. Some of the men went down to the river to cool their feet. Brasil was sitting before his pup tent thinking he might do the same when he heard a noise that he couldn’t identify. It definitely wasn’t gunfire, it was a harsh but smallish sound, like wind blowing through a window that was opened a crack. But then he did hear muskets going off, and he grabbed his rifle and stood up because it was louder now, and he could hear voices shouting, and some of the sound was almost in distinct shrieks, and it was getting closer, coming from the east back toward Smithfield where most of the army still sat. All the troops in his company were on their feet. Some came running up from the river, and everyone was asking everyone else what in hell was going on. And then they heard horns blowing, the regimental band tubas humphing and the trumpets pealing, and it was nothing like music, everything was going crazy, those were tin cups beating against tin plates, and it seemed everyone in the army knew what had happened except Bobby Brasil, until a cavalry officer came riding through, waving his hat, rearing his horse, circling, and yelling Hazoo! like a maniac, and then a couple more just like him, completely lacking in the dignity of their rank, Brasil thought, until he heard the actual words, or put them together from all the yelps and hats flying into the air, and idiot soldiers dancing with one another, and it was now become like a great hoarse male chorus echoing over the hills, with muskets shooting into the sky like firecrackers and the whole Army of the West in voice sounding the ground up through his feet like a cathedral organ in deep basso tones as if it was even God joining in celebrating the surrender. Because that’s what it was: Lee had surrendered, and it was over, the damn war was over! The roar was enough to scare the birds out of the trees, it was enough to scare the rabbits into their holes, the foxes into their dens, and the Rebs into their cups. Brasil sank to the ground in the cross-legged Indian fashion and put his hands over his ears so he could hear himself thanking God for letting him survive. I thank you, God, for allowing this city lad to survive, he prayed, and, yes, he was joyful, of course, and someone came along and picked him up off the ground and soon he was yelping and dancing around with the rest of them, and joining his company commander, who was serving drinks out of his tent, and he lifted his tin cup to Father Abraham and again to Uncle Billy Sherman and again to the Grand Army of the Republic, while thinking under his grin that it was just his luck for the war to end when he had finally found something for himself that he could believe in.

SHERMAN’S SPECIAL FIELD
Order announcing that General Lee had surrendered his entire army to General Grant on the 9th instant, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, did not mean that there wasn’t still work to be done. It remained to be seen if Joe Johnston would scatter his forces and bring on a protracted campaign—an endless march, as it were, to make this of Georgia and the Carolinas a mere prelude, with more and more of the country to be ravaged and left desolate. Glory to God and our country, Sherman had said in his message to the troops, and all honor to our comrades in arms. But he ordered Kilpatrick’s cavalry to advance on Raleigh, and planned a southerly course for his infantry corps to prevent Johnston’s run in that direction. While still in Smithfield, he received a trepidatious civilian delegation entrained from Raleigh to ask for the protection of their city. They were four shaken city fathers who had had to endure the brute obstructionism of Kilpatrick before he let them through. It was left to Sherman to comfort them and assure them that, as the war was all but over, the occupation of their city would be peaceful and the civil government would continue to discharge its duties. What the deuce is the matter with Kilpatrick? Sherman said afterward to his adjutant, Major Dayton. You’d think Kil doesn’t want the war to end. But he laughed and rubbed his hands. And if the city fathers come out under a white flag, can Joe Johnston be far behind?

ON APRIL 13TH,
Sherman entered Raleigh and, moving into the Governor’s Mansion, wrote orders for column movements toward Asheville via Salisbury and Charlotte. Then he sat back and waited. Sure enough, the next day he received via Kilpatrick, encamped twenty-five miles to the west, a letter from General Johnston delivered under a flag of truce. Johnston wanted to discuss a cessation of hostilities. Sherman asked Moses Brown for a schooner of brandy, lit a cigar, and dictated a reply to Major Dayton that gave him what he later said was the most pleasurable letter-writing experience of his life.

The agreement was to suspend all military movements, the armies to remain in place, while the two generals met on the road between the Union advance at Durham and the Confederate rear at Hillsboro. Sherman undertook to spiff up for the occasion, brushing himself off and allowing Moses Brown to polish his boots and supply him with a fresh shirt. On April 17th, at eight o’clock in the morning, as he was about to board his private train to Durham, the telegraph operator ran down from his office above the depot with a wire from Secretary Stanton, in Washington. It was still nothing but dots and dashes, but if the General held the train for a few minutes he could have it in English.

Sherman paced back and forth in the waiting room, his elation waning with every passing moment. He hadn’t liked the look on the operator’s face. By the time the telegram was handed to him, his mood had darkened into a presentiment. I somehow knew, he later wrote his wife. Stanton was always the bearer of bad tidings.

President Lincoln had been murdered. An assassin had come up behind him in his box at the theater and fired a pistol ball into his brain. Secretary of State Seward had been badly injured in a separate attack. The conspirators were of unknown number, and presumably General Grant and himself were also designated for assassination. I beseech you, Stanton wrote, to be more heedful than Mr. Lincoln of such knowledge.

Sherman folded the pages and slipped them into his pocket. Too late, Stanton, he thought. They’ve already made their attempt on me. They missed. Better if they hadn’t. Better if they had missed the President and gotten Sherman.

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
was still standing there. Sherman said, Has anyone seen this besides yourself? No, sir, the man said. On no account, said Sherman, are you to speak of this or allude to it or even look as if you knew of its contents—to anyone, do you understand? I do, yes, the operator said. You are a resident of this city, are you not? If the word gets out before I get back, if the army learns of it, the consequences to this city are not to be imagined. I understand, General, the operator said. You don’t have to draw a picture.

At Durham Station Sherman was met by Kilpatrick, given a horse, and with a platoon of cavalry in escort, and following a single rider with a white flag, he proceeded down the road toward Hillsboro. It had rained the night before and the fields were fresh-smelling and the roadside grass was dappled with raindrops that shone and sparkled in the sun. Lilacs were in bloom, and the scent of pine trees proposed a land cleansed of blood and war. Sherman saw approaching down the road a mirror image of his own party, the two white flags bobbing toward each other. And there was Joe Johnston, lifting his hat, and so I will as well.

The two generals sat alone in a small farmhouse while their officers remained outside and the owner retreated to his barn, assuring his anxious wife and their four small children that someday their house would be a museum and tourists would flock in to see where the end of the war was negotiated.