The Railroad War (25 page)

Dodge, Sherman, and Sam Hawken were spread out in the grass under the shade of a cottonwood tree at the top of the riverbank.
They were not far from the beach where Willy had been playing earlier that morning. Each of the men had carefully laid his
wide-brimmed hat and his service revolver beside him, and on account of the heat and the humidity, Sherman had unbuttoned
the top buttons of his uniform blouse, and he was lying semireclined with his back propped against the tree.

Sam followed Sherman’s lead and loosened his own buttons, even though he saw that General Dodge had kept his collar tightly
fastened. Sam decided that a little bit of comfort wouldn’t offend General Dodge. And even if it did, the general’s disapproval
was easier to endure than the steam-bath heat of Mississippi.

“All right, Sam,” Sherman was saying, “you’ve doubtless figured out a lot of what I’m about to tell you. But anyway, in order
to keep things proper, let me deal a few of the cards, and then I’ll leave the rest to General Dodge.”

“All right, sir,” Sam said with a polite nod. He kept his face calm now, even though he was anything but calm. He was in fact
eager to hear what the generals had to say, and more than eager to carry out their plans.

“Is that all right with you, General?” Sherman asked General Dodge.

“Be my guest, General,” Dodge said.

These two don’t like each other an awful lot, Sam thought to himself, but they do treat each other with respect.

“Anyhow,” Sherman said, “General Grant and
his
superiors, meaning the President and God, are of two minds about what our next campaign should be. One mind is to go south
from here and take Mobile and then swing east. The other is to turn down from eastern Tennessee and march on Atlanta.” Sherman
looked at Dodge. “Over to you, General,” he said.

General Dodge blinked a few times before taking up the line of conversation. “Thus,” he said to Sam without expression, “I’ve
a job for you, Captain. Something that you’d be more than well suited for, if the past is any indication.”

“Yes, sir?” Sam said, waiting. So they want me either to go to Atlanta or to Mobile, he thought. Either was fine with him.

“After your excellent undercover work assessing the situation in Jackson for General Sherman, the idea inescapably presented
itself that you might be useful in a similar role. I want you to go to Atlanta for me, Captain. I need to have an accurate
report I can present to General Grant about the city’s present condition. You’re the best person we know to do that.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said to General Dodge. Then to both men, “I appreciate your confidence.”

“You don’t sound especially eager to go,” Sherman said, noting hesitation in Sam’s voice. Sam thought it would not be appropriate
or seemly for him to appear to leap at another opportunity to become a spy. “You sounded more eager before lunch,” Sherman
went on. “What has changed your mind?”

“Nothing has changed my mind, sir.”

“You are aware, aren’t you, Sam,” Sherman said, “that this is a voluntary mission. You don’t have to go if you don’t choose
to.”

“You are also aware of the risks you will face,” General Dodge added. “But,” he continued in the same breath, “I’m sure you
are also aware of how vitally important it is to us to know exactly what is going on in that place right now. It’s the railroad
hub of the Confederacy. It’s their Chicago. There are ordnance factories there, iron mills, rolling mills, cotton mills, military
hospitals. They could lose Richmond and still function, but they can’t lose Atlanta. That city,” he said, raising his voice,
“is the heart of the South.”

“You’d make an impressive preacher, General,” Sherman said to General Dodge. “I think I’d buy me a ticket to any heaven that
you set yourself to describing.” Then to Sam, “You will do it, Sam, won’t you?”

Dodge was about to say something, but Sherman waved him off.

Sam thought for a time. “Yes, of course I will, sir.”

“Good, Sam,” Sherman said.

“Thank you, Captain,” General Dodge said.

“This is the way it is, Sam,” Sherman said, still waving Dodge off. “The practical problem we’ve got to face is Joe Johnston.
That is, as long as Joe is in command in the west.”

“The thing about Joe, as recent events have demonstrated, is that he’s not a brawler. He picks away at you with a thousand
cuts. He saves his army and takes a slice at us here and a slice at us there, wherever the advantage lies with him.

“That’s fine as far as it goes,” Sherman continued. “If he wants to play the game that way, we’ll go along with him for a
while. I’ll let him march all over the Confederacy if he so chooses. But I’ll burn everything I pass by. So after I leave,
he’ll have nothing to come back to. In other words, Joe Johnston won’t make my rules.”

“So, Sam, if we can pin Joe Johnston someplace where he has to stay, and if we can fight him and beat him there, then we will
have done ourselves considerable service.”

“And you think he can’t afford to lose Atlanta.”

“I think that Jeff Davis can’t afford to lose Atlanta. And that means that Atlanta will be the anvil we’ll crush Joe Johnston
on. It’s also the greatest strategic prize in the South right now.

“That’s why we need up-to-date information about what’s going on there. We especially need to know the condition of the railroads:
How useful will they be to the defenders of Atlanta. How much material are they capable of handling? How worn down are they?
Do they have enough transport available to support an army north of the city?”

“You must understand, Captain Hawken,” General Dodge said, “that all the above considerations will operate only if the President
and General Grant decide that our next objective should be Atlanta. There is a large body of thought that maintains that we
would be better off making for Mobile. Or,” he shrugged, “other places.”

“Which may be,” Sherman said with a dismissive hand. “But the reason we want Sam Hawken to go to Atlanta is the strong likelihood
that the rest of our western armies will follow you, Sam.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I estimate,” General Dodge said, getting down to particulars, “that your mission will take no more than a month or so. We
will arrange for you to play a part that will allow you to make safe entry and exit anywhere in the South—and you will play
a part very much like the one you played in Jackson.”

“When would you like me to go?” Sam asked.

“I’d like to see you rest awhile longer,” Sherman said. Then he laughed wickedly. “How about three days from now?”

“I’ll be ready, sir,” Sam said.

Atlanta! he thought as the two generals rose to leave. He would plunge into Atlanta the way Willy Sherman plunged into the
Big Black River.

And then he recalled that there were Kemble lands near Atlanta, a fact that he might find use for.

Whatever happened to Miranda Kemble? he wondered.

Meridian, Mississippi, was one of the many new towns the railroads had created. Incorporated in 1860, it lay at the junction
of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, which ran north and south along the Mississippi side of the Mississippi-Alabama border, and
the Vicksburg and Montgomery. When the Civil War began, Meridian had a population of about one hundred. But because of its
strategic location at the crossing of these two major railroads, it was made into a Confederate military camp and division
headquarters. Troops were stationed here and arsenals and cantonments were built. And after he evacuated Jackson, General
Joe Johnston made it one of his temporary headquarters.

To the west, the land had been purged and pillaged. Much of Jackson was now a charred ruin. Its business section was wasted,
as were the majority of its private homes. And, so far as the soldiers of General Sherman could determine, they’d left standing
no gins, mills, factories, warehouses, tanneries, blacksmith shops, office buildings, railway tracks, machine shops, depots,
or roundhouses for thirty miles around Jackson. Whatever trestles or bridges they found, they put to the torch. Miles of rails
were burned and bent so out of shape that they could never be used again. Many more miles of rail were torn up.

Sherman’s foragers, meanwhile, had stripped the countryside of corn, hogs, sheep, poultry, cattle, horses, mules. They’d taken
every buggy, carriage, and wagon that they could seize, as well as all the stores they could find: flour, grains, salt, sugar,
candles, boots, shoes, bacon.

What they didn’t take, they put to the torch—corn cribs, immense stores of wheat, furniture, books, clothing.

The wreckage and devastation were so severe that the citizens who remained in and near Jackson were in danger of starving.
Even producing a subsistence crop seemed hopeless.

When Sherman withdrew his army from Jackson at the end of July to take up summer quarters on the Big Black River, he left
behind a wasteland, a town of dead, swollen horses, and a smell of brick dust and rotten, stagnant water in ditches.

His men called Jackson “Chimneyville” now.

General Johnston’s new headquarters in eastern Mississippi represented something of a military innovation: a rolling command
post improvised in a hastily transformed railroad passenger car. The bench seats were ripped out and replaced by a long conference
table and, for the officers, light upholstered chairs and settees. For everyone else, there were hard-backed chairs. At one
end he’d placed a heavy mahogany bed for himself. This could be screened from the rest of the car by means of heavy, deep
scarlet brocade curtains.

The rolling command post turned out to be something more than a general’s whim. Johnston was able to use it to move around
his command with greater facility and comfort than horses provided. The general was so thrilled with his innovation that he
spent very little time in Meridian.

Though Noah Ballard had many important matters to discuss with the general, Noah did not meet with him until Friday, the thirty-first
of July, and in this meeting Noah was only one of several participants.

It was midmorning, and Johnston was sitting at the head of the long headquarters conference table. Seated at his left were
Walter Goodman, the president of the Mobile & Ohio, Griffin Butterworth, the president of the Mississippi Central, and Anson
Floyd, the superintendent of the Mississippi & Tennessee. All three men appeared decidedly ill at ease. Although there was
no immediate legal significance to this meeting, Johnston was in a prosecutorial mood, and the railroad men had much to answer
for.

On Johnston’s right were Noah Ballard and William Hottel. Off to the side a clerk took minutes.

In front of the general was a copy of the report that Noah Ballard and William Hottel had jointly penned, detailing the whereabouts
of various pieces of railway equipment that had been, as the report diplomatically stated, mislaid here and there in northern
Mississippi.

Johnston had had more than a day to digest the report. Even amid the overwhelming crush of his many concerns, it had startled
him.

After the greetings and introductions were made and the several military and civilian gentlemen were seated, General Johnston
picked up his copy of the paper and held it out in front of him the way Hamlet might have held Yorick’s skull.

“I trust,” he said with a thin smile, “that all of you good gentlemen have had the opportunity to read this paper that Major
Ballard and Captain Hottel have presented to me.” There were nods and bows of assent from the men at Johnston’s left.

“I wonder what you gentlemen make of it,” the general continued. “I must admit that I myself was left with something more
than curiosity after I had finished reading it.” With a theatrical gesture, he let the report drop to the table.

“It appears to have been a well-researched and thoroughgoing piece of work,” Walter Goodman said, all innocence. He was a
short, roundish man in his early fifties, and he, it was soon evident, had taken upon himself the responsibility of speaking
for all the railroad men. “I think we should all congratulate the major and the captain for their fine and careful work.”

“You don’t find yourselves,” Johnston went on slowly and precisely, “with any quarrels as to the accuracy of the…ah…allegations?
The locomotives and other equipment, Walter, Griffin, Anson”—he stared at each man in turn, using their Christian names, for
Johnston and the railroad men were well acquainted—“are as represented? The numbers and condition and so on?”

“I would presume so,” Walter Goodman said with a resigned shrug, “insofar as their information is certainly more up to date
than ours.”

Johnston’s face suddenly turned hard. “Then how the hell do you explain it, Walter?”

“Explain it?” Goodman said, still innocent.

“Yes, sir, exactly so,” Johnston said through drum-tight lips. He paged through the report until he found the list of numbers
he wanted. “Here it says that Captain Hottel has uncovered twenty-six locomotives that he indicates were somehow ‘lost’ somewhere
along your line.” He glared at Goodman.
“Lost,
Walter?”

Goodman shrugged again, more impressively than before. “It’s wartime, General. You know how it is. Confusion. Mayhem. The
right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The report states things pretty much the way I know them. Certain pieces
of equipment were mislaid. They, as it were, fell through the cracks.”

“Twenty-six locomotives?”

“I don’t find that impossible to conceive, General,” Goodman said evenly.

“And neither do you other gentlemen, I take it, find it impossible to believe that forty-one other locomotives have fallen
through the cracks in your jurisdictions?”

“No, General, not at all,” said the chorus to the left of Johnston.

Goodman was growing increasingly animated, to lend greater force, Noah was convinced, to his attempts to explain away acts
that were hard to justify. Floyd and Butterworth had poker faces. They would leave the hard work to Goodman.