Hell or Richmond (39 page)

As Sedgwick’s staff related the tale, Meade had come forward for a firsthand look and had told Warren to cooperate with Sedgwick, after the Sixth Corps had become entangled in the Fifth Corps’ mess. And Warren had picked the worst possible time to tell Meade that he was willing to be commanded, or to command, but damned well was
not
going to “cooperate” with anybody. Warren had been worn to the nub, had just seen his men savaged to no good result, and was being pressed to do more. But no excuses counted on a battlefield. G.K. was too high-strung.

“Sir…,” Roebling said in a careful voice, “the men are just used up. General Warren did the best he could. But this constant fighting, marching and fighting, day after day in this heat … then the ceaseless pressure from General Meade…”

“It’s not from George Meade, Roebling. He’s a methodical man, an engineer. Like you or General Warren. Grant’s the one who keeps pushing to smash ’ em up, smash ’em up. Grant, and that menagerie of his.”

Sedgwick decided that he’d said enough. Didn’t do to have such words repeated. Warren would have to take his medicine. But he admired Roebling’s loyalty to his chief. Loyalty was crucial to the officer corps. He made a final effort to be personable:

“I heard about Fred Locke,” he said to Roebling. “Friend of yours, I believe?”

Roebling lowered his gaze.

“Any chance he’ll recover?” Sedgwick asked.

The aide shrugged. Then he looked up, damp-eyed, and shook his head. “His face … dear God, I’ll see his face until the day I die, it was half shot away.…”

Sedgwick had a knack for soothing words. But he didn’t seem to be doing so well this morning.

Warren just needed to calm down and see things through Meade’s eyes. No need to get riled and flit about. Loyalty went downward as well as up the chain, and Meade was loyal in both directions. He’d saved Charlie Griffin from being relieved, and Meade would stand up for Warren, too, if G.K. didn’t paint him into a corner.

It was all so hard and complicated now. Sedgwick had fought the Seminoles, moved the Cherokee, whipped the Mexicans, and chased Comanches, but all of that had been child’s play to this.

“All right, Roebling. Just tell General Warren what I said. And we’ll hope for a quiet day.”

The day before, he’d seen dead-eyed men stagger forward into hopeless assaults. Minutes later, a smaller number of those dead-eyed men staggered back. Some of them had been his boys. Even he had got caught up in the senselessness.

Maybe Grant’s approach of keeping up the pressure on Lee would work. But it seemed to Sedgwick a good way to break their own army.

Soldier on, he told himself. Wouldn’t mind a pan of fried eggs, though.

Before Sedgwick could remount, Charlie Whittier, one of his aides, came on at such a gallop that he nearly collided with a wagon hauling off bodies like a medieval plague cart. Whittier was generally counted a cool one, despite his family ties to some silk-drawers poet, but today he was on the boil.

The major reined in and didn’t take time to dismount, but shouted his tidings:

“Sir, it’s General Neill. He’s withdrawing his division from the line.”

Sedgwick stiffened. “Who ordered that?”

“Nobody. Colonel McMahon checked. Neill’s doing it on his own, he’s gone to pieces, sir.”

Sedgwick leapt to horse. Fifty years old or not, his time in the First Cavalry counted for something.

“Where’s Neill now?”

“Just behind his division. He won’t hear reason, sir.”

“Lead the way.”

Tom Neill, the hero of Salem Church and the man he had chosen to lead George Getty’s division after Getty got himself shot up in the Wilderness. Neill was big and Irish in the best ways, with the grip of a bear, the finest mustache in the army, and an easy way with the men. You just never knew who would break under the strain.

After riding pell-mell along an exposed portion of the line, they found Neill and his worried staff men back in a copse of trees. Neill appeared perfectly fine, nodding as his men marched for the rear.

Sedgwick had a temper, too. He wanted to give Neill what for, and in clear language. Instead, he reined in and said, “Tom, what’s the matter here?”

Neill looked at him as if only now aware that his corps commander had arrived.

“We have to withdraw,” Neill said. His tone was alarmingly calm. “My men … they’re going to be slaughtered. We have to leave.” He smiled. “Look at them, aren’t they fine? You can’t blame me for killing Getty’s men, I’m pulling them back as quickly as I can.”

Neill began to weep.

Frank Wheaton rode up. He looked as baffled as anyone, but his appearance was opportune.

“Frank!” Sedgwick called. “Take command of this division. Stop this nonsense right now. Get these men turned around.”

Wheaton looked relieved and instantly confident. He saluted and yanked his horse around, shouting orders to his own small retinue.

Christ, if one of Lee’s bunch saw them vacating the line, the Confederates would be on top of them in a blink.

“Charlie,” Sedgwick said to Major Whittier, “find Bidwell and Lew Grant. Tell them they’re to reoccupy their former positions at the double-quick. Or stay in them, if they haven’t left already.
Go!
”

“I won’t let the men be slaughtered … killed like sheep … might as well cut their throats…” With tears leaving myriad tracks down his cheeks, Brigadier General Neill looked at his superior. “I did all I could, sir.”

Sedgwick leaned from his saddle and gripped Neill’s forearm. “You did your best, Tom. But you need some rest now. You just go back and get a little sleep, go on back to the trains.”

“My men … Getty…”

“You go on back now. Get some sleep. I’m here to see to things.” He turned to one of Neill’s men, a trusted captain who had been a favorite of Getty’s. “Take General Neill to the rear.” His voice was not as gentle with the captain.

They got things straightened out before the Rebels became aware of the confusion. Sedgwick figured the sorry buggers up on the ridge were at least as worn as his own men. Still, it was a relief worthy of the ages when the last of the division’s troops were back in their trenches.

His chief of staff, Marty McMahon, found him.

“General Morris has been shot, sir.”

Oh, Christ. After Bill Morris had done so well in the Wilderness. Sedgwick had marked him down for a division.

“What happened? Is he alive?”

McMahon pawed sweat from his face. The morning was already torrid. His horse foamed green at the mouth, dripping on the ground.

“He’s alive, but it’s bad.”

“Sharpshooter?”

McMahon nodded. “We ought to execute every one of those bastards we catch.”

And then they execute our men, and we kill more of them, and it never stops, Sedgwick thought. All his life he’d been a soldier, but he wouldn’t mind when this war came to an end.

“We’re not Comanches,” he said. “All right, let’s have a look at Ricketts’ lines.”

McMahon looked doubtful. “Sir, it might be a good time for you to stay at headquarters.”

“Nonsense.” But Sedgwick smiled. He liked McMahon and regarded him as something between a son and a younger brother. “Who commands this corps, Marty? You or me?”

“Sometimes I do wonder about that myself.”

Sedgwick laughed.

“Just promise me,” McMahon went on, “that you won’t expose yourself needlessly today. We’re running a tad short of generals, sir.”

“Tell you what,” Sedgwick said. “We’ll move the headquarters closer to the entrenchments, and you and I can call it a draw. Then I want an officers’ call with the division commanders.” He thought for a moment. “No new orders from Meade?”

“No, sir, nothing new. The corps is to remain in position, distribute ammunition, and bring up rations. Gather in the stragglers. And let the men rest.” McMahon grimaced. “Although they’ll have to work on the entrenchments, they’re unsatisfactory. That’s one thing the Johnnies do better than us.”

“They have more reason,” Sedgwick said. He gee-upped his horse.

Bill Morris down, too, after Getty’s wounding and the loss to the corps of so many other officers. The casualties on both sides were appalling. As he rode among his men, Sedgwick’s thoughts roamed across the lines to Jeb Stuart, a lovely young man. Despite the difference in their ages, they had grown close before the war. Sedgwick hoped the reckless cavalier would survive so they might meet as friends again.

The war had torn the country apart, but also severed many a worthy friendship. Thinking about Stuart left Sedgwick wistful. What was that two-dollar word that Whittier liked? “Elegiac.” He supposed that captured something of how he felt, although he wasn’t sure of the definition.

It was still only eight o’clock when Grant came up. He rode a sinewy pony, not the big bay horse all admired. Sedgwick sighed and mustered a dutiful smile.

“Welcome to the Sixth Corps, sir!” he said. They were just far enough out of range to permit salutes.

“How do, John?” Grant said, dismounting. He waved a hand at the surrounding hubbub. “Change from the old Army, ain’t it?”

They shook hands.

“Had the same thought myself this very morning,” Sedgwick said.

“I heard about Bill Morris,” Grant continued. “Sorry to hear it.”

Since Grant hadn’t mentioned Tom Neill right off, it meant he didn’t know about that problem. Sedgwick hoped to keep it that way. Neill was a good officer. A rest might fix him up.

“Morris will be a loss to the army,” Sedgwick told the general in chief. “Coffee?”

“Not unless it’s a sight better than the spew I get at headquarters.”

“It’s likely worse.”

They both smiled.

Grant said: “Got this great big army, more generals than Napoleon, locomotives, telegraphs … and we still can’t cook up a proper can of coffee.”

“That’s a fact.”

“Now, Porter there, he’ll drink any coffee you got. Man would drink pitch or tar, if you served it lukewarm.” Grant turned. “Horace, go test the coffee while General Sedgwick and I do our little war dance.”

Sedgwick waited. Grant stepped closer.

“How are the men?” the general in chief asked. His tone required honesty.

“They’ll be all right. Once they’re rested. It’s been something of a shock, coming right out of winter quarters and into all this. They’re not used to the pace.”

“Lee’s men are tired, too. Another good push or so and they’re going to break.”

“Lee’s a stubborn man.”

“He’ll break. Every man has his breaking point.”

Sedgwick thought of Tom Neill, of the bright Irish eyes gone mad.

He gestured toward the front line. “Trying to get up that slope head-on … yesterday was Injun-massacre ugly, and they weren’t half dug in.” He shook his head. “Remember when the Richmond papers mocked Lee, calling him the ‘King of Spades’?”

“Never heard that.”

“Back during the Peninsula business, after Joe Johnston caught one. They all made fun of Lee’s taste for the shovel and ax. Nobody’s laughing now.”

“I mean to flank him. One way, or the other.”

“Better than sending men back up that ridge.”

“Might have to do that, too,” Grant said. “Hit him on all sides. So he can’t rob Peter to pay Paul.”

“He’s got interior lines.”

“All the more reason to hit him from every side.”

Sedgwick looked at Grant. And saw a slump-shouldered, nothing-special man, the sort you passed on the street without a thought until, one day, you paused and really looked at him and he scared the devil out of you. His eyes warned of premeditated murder. Grant had not had much of a reputation in the old Army, but Sedgwick figured he just hadn’t found a war big enough, not even in Mexico, for his killing ways.

“Your troops are all right, though?” Grant asked again.

“They will be.”

“By tomorrow?”

Sedgwick fought down another sigh. “If need be. Although I’d—”

“Have them ready tomorrow,” Grant said. “You’ll hear from George Meade.” He turned his head. “Horace? Had enough of that swill?”

Mounted again, Grant said, “Hot day coming on,” and rode off with his staff men and his guards.

Sedgwick sat down in the shade of a tent fly and let his body sag. One of his staff men, Hyde, brought a cup of iced water.

“Found an ice cellar back a ways, sir. Thought you might like a drink.”

“Wouldn’t mind a drink of something stronger,” Sedgwick said. “But she’ll do. Hyde, sit down a minute, tell me about that ride of yours.” As the boy sat, Sedgwick reached out and tugged one of his ears, as he might have done with a child. “I hear you gave the Johnnies some target practice.”

“Just as soon not repeat the experience, sir.”

Activity out on the road drew Sedgwick’s attention. “Redlegs are swapping out guns. Who’s that coming up?” He drank. The water tasted clean. The local wells would not stay that way long.

“Looks like McCartney’s battery, sir.”

“Well, McCartney can shoot.” He drained the cup. “Guess I’d better go up for another look at things. Before Sam Grant finds something doesn’t suit him.”

He summoned McMahon and Whittier. They went on foot. Up on the line, all horses did was draw fire and kill men for nothing.

As usual, there was a problem. War was the oddest business, reducing intelligent men to fools every third day. The New Jersey Brigade’s rifle pits had been dug so close to the Rebel lines that a man couldn’t return fire, leaving them useless. Otherwise, things looked tolerably professional. Even the amateur officers were learning the arts of war. And the soldiers on the line learned even faster.

A man did what he could. The trick of leading men was to ask a great deal, but not more than they could deliver. Some of his fellow officers thought him too soft on his soldiers, but it was always the officers, not the men, who disappointed him.

As they came up to the corps’ flank along the Brock Road, he found a regiment poorly positioned and blocking the fires of the battery to their rear.

“Now that’s just wrong,” he said. “Marty, come with me.”

“General, I could handle this myself.”

“Men need to see their generals. So they know we’re not some fairy tale.”