Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (62 page)

North or South, rivalries, ambitions, and bouts of selfishness made these figures human and left them, for me, more worthy still when they overcame their flaws. And, of course, a marvelous rogue and natural soldier such as John Brown Gordon is a treat for any writer to engage (Gordon seems the kind of man who captivates everyone at the restaurant table, but never picks up the check).

I hope the reader will learn a bit from this book and from the others in the cycle (the next installment,
The Damned of Petersburg,
returns to eastern Virginia and July 1864). But no reader will learn as much as I have learned and continue to learn by grappling with these men, by trying to grip them with adjectives and clauses, 150 years after their deeds. Though a Yankee from Pennsylvania, I’m ever more deeply awed by the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia (from whence most of Early’s men came) for its skill, resilience, and spirit. I search the annals of history to find other soldiers their equals, but see none. I hope that this novel provides some sense of how tough those Johnnies were, of how much they endured. It’s an easy thing to be faithful and bold in victory, but their determination to fight on as defeats piled atop one another is an indelible testament to the
American
character.

*   *   *

I owe thanks to far more people than I can list, from historians who have shared their research and knowledge to the enlisted men and NCOs in “my” Army, who showed me, as their comrade, how men in uniform actually behave (I hope that by now they have forgiven me for becoming an officer). Everyone beside whom I served taught me something (not all of it enjoyable, I confess), and without those decades in the field, on scouts, and on various staffs, I never could have written with such authenticity. On a basic human level, soldiers have always been soldiers, whether armed with spears, rifled muskets, or assault rifles. Thank you all for teaching me that—and so much more.

To my benefit and the reader’s, George Skoch agreed to create the maps for this novel, too. George is a master of precision and balance, of the art of providing essential information without overwhelming the eye. His contribution is indispensable.

And my thanks to the wonderful team at Forge. It’s almost obligatory for authors to complain about their publisher, but I simply can’t. In a thirty-five-year career of trying to capture life in words, I’ve been lucky, overall, but I’ve never before worked with a team so dedicated to producing a quality “package.” I appreciate the patience and skill of the design and production team, whose artists have created beautiful dust jackets and identified ideal typefaces, while taking extraordinary pains with the internal layout of these novels. Such care and attention to detail gives the reader something extra, even if unrecognized by most.

My editor, Bob Gleason, has been almost bewilderingly supportive; the copy editor for these books, Sona Vogel, has humiliated me wonderfully by discovering errors in manuscripts I thought had been purged of all flaws; Whitney Ross, Bob’s “chief of staff,” has been gracious and effective in treating the madness that infects all authors; and the publicity and marketing team has managed to persuade enough readers to take a chance on these novels to enable me to keep writing (it turns out that readers
didn’t
just want the same five generals and same five battles, after all). Tom Doherty, publisher and strategist, makes it all go.

Writing a novel is a solitary, obsessive endeavor. But getting a handsome book into a reader’s hands takes an “army.”

*   *   *

In
Cain at Gettysburg
and
Hell or Richmond,
I used the author’s notes to recommend additional books to readers hungry to learn more about the people and events I’d tried to revive. I was tempted to skip it this time: Some authors were miffed that their books weren’t featured, while readers versed in the Civil War took me to task for ignoring their favorite works. But these selections aren’t meant to be definitive or exhaustive, or to serve as a bibliography. And I do not mean to slight any fellow authors (as in the military, I prefer mutual support to fratricide). I just want to help readers
begin
to sort through the daunting array of titles now available.

So here we go:

Original sources.
As always, there is no substitute for reading the words of the men who served on those fields—while recognizing that they, too, could be mistaken or bluntly dishonest. The
Official Records
are indispensable, but beyond that great compilation, I love the letter collections and the diaries, the immediacy of their reportage. Next best are the memoirs written after the war, even allowing that many a passage was sharpened to settle a score. For further reading about the battles in this book, seek out the splendid, voluminous, warmhearted letters of Clement Anselm Evans, compiled and edited in
Intrepid Warrior
by Robert Grier Stephens, Jr. This is my favorite letter collection from the entire war.
Make Me a Map of the Valley,
culled from the diaries of Jedediah Hotchkiss by Archie P. McDonald, offers insights from a very well-placed observer, but be forewarned: While Hotchkiss thought like an engineer, he also wrote like an engineer.

Among the many memoirs of this campaign, my favorite is John Brown Gordon’s
Reminiscences of the Civil War
—despite Gordon’s calculated efforts to win over readers North as well as South. Gordon was a master of airbrushing history long before the airbrush was invented. (Yet compared with Jubal Early, he was a paragon of integrity. These things, too, are relative.) Then there’s the wonderful
A Soldier’s Story of His Regiment (61st Georgia),
by “Private G. W. Nichols.” This little book provides a great, soldier’s-eye view of events, from murderous hospital wards to the battlefield’s front lines. Accurate overall, the memoir, written long after the war, also illumines how memory betrays us. Nichols recalls General Evans as present at Third Winchester, while Evans’ carefully dated letters home show that, returning from his convalescence, he had not passed north of Staunton by the time Fisher’s Hill was lost. This adds to the confusion created by the Confederate habit of calling brigades after their commanders—even when under the temporary command of another officer. But let us be generous: Nichols made honest errors, while higher-ranking contemporaries doctored history until they killed the patient.

The Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan,
for example, must be taken with several quarries’ worth of salt. By the time he wrote, Sheridan had changed from the often generous commander he had been to what later generations would call a “glory hog.” He was a great soldier, but not a great man. Still, there’s no avoiding the book—you have to read it.
An Autobiography,
by Lew Wallace, is rich in detail and honest overall, but written in a florid late-Victorian style that makes it difficult going for modern readers. For those who want easier marching,
The Sword & the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace,
by Ray E. Boomhower, provides a brief but first-rate overview of this neglected hero’s life. If any Civil War figure and nineteenth-century American deserves a full-length, scholarly biography, it’s Lew Wallace (my nominee for patron saint of soldier-authors).

I also recommend
With the Old Confeds,
by Captain Samuel D. Buck;
Under Custer’s Command: The Civil War Journal of James Henry Avery,
compiled by Karla Jean Husby and edited by Eric J. Wittenberg; and the unique eyewitness account, buttressed by research, of Monocacy,
Fighting for Time,
by Glenn H. Worthington, who experienced the battle swirling around him when he and his family were trapped in his childhood home.

Biographies.
Sometimes you fall in love with both a book and its subject. For me, that was the case with
Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President,
a magnificent biography by Ari Hoogenboom. It’s worth reading not only for the detailed, fair-minded, and inspiring portrait of Hayes as soldier and president, but for the panorama it provides of our country in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. As for William McKinley, he’s due for a fresh, full-scale biography. Meanwhile,
Major McKinley: William McKinley & the Civil War,
by William H. Armstrong, provides a solid overview of McKinley’s military service.

I must interject: During my research, I found that a few historians quibbled about the extent of Hayes’ heroism at Third Winchester and whether he made a difference. One suspects they might feel differently had they been a brigade commander trapped in a swamp under enemy fire with the responsibility not only for his dying men, but for his army’s flank amid a battle not going as planned. As a soldier, I admire Hayes enormously—a great
and
a good man who made the right decision when others wavered.

Jubal: The Life and Times of General Jubal A. Early, CSA,
by Charles C. Osborne, will remain the definitive biography of this uncompromising, brave, difficult, hard to admire, yet somehow admirable man. Just as Early did the best he could with what he had, his biographer has done the best with what
he
had. I found Early the most challenging character to capture in this novel: Even when he behaved awfully, I kept rooting for him, remembering the wretched odds he faced. I fear I have not done him justice.
John Brown Gordon: Soldier, Southerner, American,
by Ralph Lowell Eckert, is a well-executed, balanced account of the life of this unique, magnetic, thoroughly American character.
Terrible Swift Sword,
by Joseph Wheelan, is a much more trustworthy account of Sheridan’s life than the man’s own memoir; it’s handsomely written, too. Not least,
Fighting with Jeb Stuart: Major James Breathed and the Confederate Horse Artillery,
by David P. Bridges, got—and kept—my attention.

Campaign and battle histories.
On Monocacy, it’s worth tracking down Edwin Bearss’s reprinted monograph
The Battle of Monocacy,
which not only contains excellent maps, but was instrumental in saving the battlefield (just one more of Ed’s innumerable contributions to preserving and exploring our Civil War history). For full-blown accounts of the battle, two books run neck and neck:
Desperate Engagement,
by Marc Leepson, and
Last Chance for Victory,
by Brett W. Spaulding. These two worthy books disagree on a number of points. My approach when authors or eyewitnesses quarrel is always the same: I ask myself what would have made military sense, or how a soldier would have responded. I find it noteworthy how often first-rate historians are at odds with one another—but, then, a dozen participants can take away a dozen different perceptions of what happened on the same battlefield.

For an overview of the autumn of 1864 campaign in the Valley, it’s impossible to do better than Jeffry D. Wert’s superb
From Winchester to Cedar Creek
. Yet I’m still fond of
Sheridan in the Shenandoah,
by Edward J. Stackpole, which is highly readable, if a bit dated. Specifically for Third Winchester (Opequon Creek),
The Last Battle of Winchester,
by Scott C. Patchan, is one of the best, most-detailed battle studies I’ve encountered. I found myself turning to it with embarrassing frequency (although I differed on a very few conclusions).

Fisher’s Hill is often treated as a sideshow (while Tom’s Brook goes ignored), so it’s good to have
The Battle of Fisher’s Hill,
by Jonathan A. Noyalas, in print. It’s a short book about a battle that cast a long shadow. I recommend it.

For cavalry operations, there are a number of good titles, but I’ll just list
Custer Victorious,
by Gregory J. W. Urwin, which is well researched and very readable, and
Sheridan’s Lieutenants,
by David Coffey, an excellent summary study.

Last in this too-short list comes
The Guns of Cedar Creek,
by Thomas A. Lewis, another extremely impressive battle study. It provides a well-balanced, enthralling account of this unique and tragic fight, cutting through the myths to reach the men.

*   *   *

In closing, let me beg readers who’ve been drawn in by this novel to visit the battlefields I’ve struggled to describe. Monocacy, Third Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek all have been bayoneted by interstate highways—because so many Civil War battles were fought along major roads, and the same routes, slightly offset, remain in use. Nonetheless, each battlefield has a great deal to offer.

Except for that highway cut—near where McCausland first blundered into Ricketts—Monocacy is remarkably well preserved. To the sorrow of those of us who regard these battlefields as sacred, much of the terrain on which Third Winchester was fought has been encrusted with housing developments, shopping malls, gas stations, a school, and vast expanses of macadam. Even so, a late but determined effort saved as much land as possible, and we can still walk the fields where Breathed’s artillery went into action and Rud Hayes led his men through a deadly creek bottom. The walking trails are well signposted and thoughtfully laid out.

Fisher’s Hill, by contrast, is almost perfectly preserved. Except for that highway cut and a few new homes on the opposing ridge, this is the field on which those armies contended much as it was. Additional preservation efforts are under way, but we all can do more, and must.

Tom’s Brook, the Confederate cavalry’s worst rout of the war, was fought in two parts. Wesley Merritt’s battlefield by the town has suffered development, but Custer’s action along Back Road took place on land still largely unchanged. Its preservation, though, has been incidental, and it isn’t even marked by a roadside sign.

Then there is Cedar Creek, where a coalition of organizations has been doing worthy work to preserve as much of the battlefield as possible—and a remarkable portion of it remains intact, despite the nearby junction of two interstates. This great, decisive battle not only deserves to be better known to Americans, but would benefit from a network of walking trails. Let’s hope that happens.