The Sword (46 page)

I
t is difficult to put a finger on the exact moment that a war makes a final turning. Most wars are either brief affairs wherein a huge force overruns a small one, or they are long tedious affairs that go on for years. In these long wars, much is done, but very few turning points in which the whole direction of a war is changed can be specifically cited.

The Civil War, however, presented a clear-cut and definite turning point. The South won many battles during the early part of the war, and this drove Abraham Lincoln and, indeed, all the Northern leaders, nearly to distraction. The source of the strength of the Confederacy was in General Robert E. Lee. He was the South’s greatest military asset, and beside him was Stonewall Jackson, perhaps the second most potent force that kept the Confederacy alive and fighting ferociously.

Lincoln tried general after general, all of them failing to defeat Lee and Jackson. At Bull Run, Lincoln sent General McDowell, which proved to be a sad mistake, for McDowell was sadly defeated. In the Seven Days Battle, which was a short but very bloody affair, General McClellan, who was the idol of the North
and one of the neatest men who ever wore the uniform, proved that he was unable to stand against these two soldiers. In the Battle of Second Manassas in August of 1862, General Pope was Lincoln’s choice. He failed miserably, as had his predecessors. At Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, Lincoln tried McClellan again. McClellan had the battle in his grasp. All he had to do was make one great charge, but he was psychologically and emotionally unable to send men to their deaths. In the Battle of Fredericksburg, Ambrose Burnside threw himself against Lee and Jackson and introduced the Army of the Potomac to a slaughter from which Burnside and the army had to turn and run. Hooker spoke well and was a fine-looking general, but in the Battle of Chancelorsville, he lost his courage.

The South won that battle, but they lost Stonewall Jackson, which was a grievous loss indeed. No one can know if Gettysburg would have been any different, if this giant among men had been there, standing sure and true “like a stone wall.” He was not there, and Robert E. Lee was defeated, though the Army of Northern Virginia was not decimated. Still they fought on.

But then came the turn of the tide, a point in time that fated the South to a full and final defeat. Abraham Lincoln chose Ulysses S. Grant to be commander-in-chief of all the Union armies. This sealed the fate of the Confederate States of America. Unlike most of the commanding generals before him, Grant was very unimpressive to look at and was not much of a one for talking, nor parades. His uniform was usually scruffy, and at times he even wore the uniform of a private, with the general’s stars, denoting his rank, only showing on his collar.

His choice to succeed him as commanding officer of the Military Division of Mississippi, which was the command of all the troops in the Western Theater, was a general named William Tecumseh Sherman. These two men spelled the death of the Confederacy. Grant told Lincoln, “I’m going to go for Lee, and Sherman is going to go for Joe Johnston. That’s the plan.”

The first battle Grant engaged in with Lee was a bloody affair
called the Battle of the Wilderness. As usual, the Northern troops suffered great losses.

Always before when this had happened, the Northern generals had retreated to Washington and built up their forces again. But Grant was different. He and Sherman both were men who believed in total war, with no mercy shown, to bring a quick end to a foe. Grant was determined to wear down the South, and if he had to lose three men for every death the Southern army incurred, so be it. Behind him lay the immense numbers in the North, while the South was already sending sixteen-year-olds and fifty-year-olds into battle. Sherman was a cold-eyed realist, and his most famous statement was, “War is hell.” And he set about to make it so. He set out for Georgia, and the South has never forgotten the cold-blooded and terrible devastation that followed in the wake of Sherman and his men.

With the appointment by Lincoln of Grant and Sherman, it was as if a steel door had suddenly slammed on the South and their army. For after this there really was little hope.

It was October 9, 1863, and Jeb Stuart stood beside the bed where his wife, Flora, lay. He was holding the newest Stuart, a daughter. He looked down at Flora, reached over, and put his hand on her hair. “You choose a name, dear, and I’ll choose one.”

Flora was exhausted from the struggles to bring the child into the world, but she answered, “I’ve always wanted a daughter named Virginia.”

“Excellent! That’s who she’ll be.”

“And what name will you choose?” Flora managed a weak smile.

“Of all the men I’ve known, my gunner Pelham was the most noble. He was indeed the gallant Pelham as everyone called him, and to this day I miss him terribly. I’d like to call this child Virginia Pelham Stuart.”

“A fine name, Jeb.”

Jeb walked the floor, looking into the face of his new daughter,
smiling, taking her tiny hand in his strong one. Finally he gave the child back to Flora and then sat down beside her in a worn walnut rocking chair. As he rocked, he grew strangely quiet.

Flora saw that he was grieved. “What’s the matter, Jeb? You look troubled.”

“I guess I am, my dear Flora.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“It’s hard to say. I feel, Flora, that I let General Lee down at Gettysburg. All the papers say so, and some of my best friends in the army accused me of not being a good soldier.”

Flora shook her head and extended her hand, which he took. She squeezed it and said, “You mustn’t grieve, dear. You did what you thought was best. If you made a mistake, others have made theirs.”

“I’ve told myself that many times,” Jeb said in a subdued tone. “I don’t know what made me act as I did. At the time it seemed as if I was following orders, doing exactly what General Lee had asked me to do. But now, looking back, I can see that I made a terrible mistake and should have come back to him days earlier.”

“Jeb, you are a man of God, and you put your trust in Him,” Flora said steadily. “Don’t look back with useless regrets. As you said, you were doing your best, your utmost to perform your duty. That is all a man can do, even the great General Jeb Stuart. Now, let’s talk about something else, something cheerful. What are we going to do when this awful war is finally over, do you think?”

Stuart looked up at her with surprise. It was as if he had never given a thought to that time. “Why, I suppose I’ll stay in the army. Get a nice, comfortable command. I can sit behind a desk, and then every night I will come home to you and the children. Maybe we can have two or three more.”

Flora smiled and said, “Right now I just want to hold Virginia Pelham Stuart. She is precious.”

“Yes, she is. I think she’s going to look like you, Flora, and I hope she does. And I hope she is loving and kind like you. You’ve been the best wife a man ever had.”

Tears came to Flora’s eyes, for Jeb was often jocular and paid her many light, sometimes silly compliments, but this, she knew, came from his heart. “Thank you, Jeb. You can’t know how much that means to me.”

“It’s true, Flora. I thank God for you every day. With His help and your love, I know I can fight on.”

Clay and Corporal Tyron dismounted, took off their hats and gauntlets, and wearily threw themselves down to lean against a big spreading oak tree. The tree was on a small rise, and because of its deep shade, it had minimal undergrowth. It stood like a sentinel, its branches sketching a graceful silhouette against a shroud-gray sky. The two men were silent for a while, taking sips from their canteens, savoring even the tepid, gritty water.

Idly Clay said, “You know, Corporal, I had some funny ideas about battle before I saw one.”

“And what is that, sir?”

“Well, I’d seen pictures in books, you know, of armies out on open fields all neatly lined up with their rifles all held in the same position. Not a man was out of step, and they squared off facing each other, and then they marched right toward each other.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s not like that. It’s nothing like that.”

Corporal Tyron said, “That may have happened in Europe, but when those lobsters came over here fighting for old King George, they found out that that nonsense won’t do over here. We’re not strutting fools. We’re soldiers, and we fight hard. We fight any way we can, anyplace we can.”

“It’s especially true here in the South,” Clay observed. “Too many trees, too many forests, too many rivers. It’s hard to find a place to have a review, much less to put two huge armies together.” He looked out over the desolate landscape.

The sky was a death-gray caul, and a layer of stinking gray smoke hovered over the ground. They had just fought for two days in what was to be called simply the Battle of the Wilderness.

Ulysses Grant had begun his relentless push toward Richmond as soon as he had taken command of the Army of the Potomac. He came straight on, 122,000 strong, crossing the Rapidan and heading due south.

Lee, with his army of 66,000, chose to meet him in the middle of nowhere, miles of empty fields and dense woods just south of Fredericksburg. He counted on the bewildering trackless forest of stunted pine, scrub oak, and sweet gum, with their impenetrable thickets of wild honeysuckle vines and briars, to keep the Yankees from bringing artillery to bear. It worked.

But still the woods caught fire from the hot shot of thousands of muskets.

Tyron said, “I have to say, Lieutenant, that I have seen some bloody Indian massacres, but this was much, much worse. No such thing as a battle line. It was just men by themselves hiding behind trees and under rocks, and the bluebellies were the same. And then”—he sighed—“the woods caught fire.”

Looking out over the scorched earth, Clay remembered horrific scenes from the last two days. “Men just burned to death,” he murmured painfully. “They were wounded and too weak to crawl away.”

Clay and certainly Max Tyron were, by now, battle-hardened veterans. But on this dark day they were both literally exhausted. Their uniforms were filthy, as were their faces and indeed their entire bodies.

The battle had been a nightmare. After the first volley, the black powder had thrown a cloud of smoke over the thick woods, and a man could not see five feet away. He did not know at times whether he was firing at his fellow soldiers or an enemy.

Jeb’s cavalry had tried to front the infantry, but scouting was impossible. In the woods, even when they could find a trail, it was merely a path, with undergrowth so thick on either side a whole division of Yankees could have been five feet away and they never would have seen them. Finally they had dismounted and joined in the killing field.

Clay started out in good formation with his company, but in the massive tangle of men in the wilderness, he and Tyron had gotten completely separated from any recognizable command, and that morning they had found themselves alone, so they had ridden to the live oak for some welcome shelter.

Clay had thought that he might never sleep again; the scenes in his mind were so fresh and vivid that he hated to close his eyes. But then he woke up with a start and realized that both he and Tyron had fallen asleep sitting straight up. “Corporal,” he said, shaking Tyron’s shoulder. “Wake up.”