Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 (34 page)

We
have
to retrieve something out of this, he thought. There has to be something saved out of
t
hese ashes. I must still
set
the
example
and
lead
if
we
are
to
restore
what
we have
lost.

July 23 1963 8.00am

T
he constant stream of engines pulling the long convoy of trains coming down through the gap above Marysville, Pennsylvania, filled the Susquehanna Valley with smoke. The shriek of train whistles echoed and reechoed. The mood all along the trackside was jubilant, civilians out to watch the spectacle, boys waving and racing alongside the long strings of flatcars and open-sided boxcars packed with troops.

The veterans of McPherson's corps, riding east to save the Union, seemed to be delighted by the spectacle as well. Regimental flags were unfurled, hoisted up, the staffs tied securely in place, each train thus festooned with battle-torn standards from Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, emblazoned on them in gold letters the names of campaigns that to the Easterners were a mystery, except for the freshly lettered, triumphant
vi
cksburg.

Rumbling down out of the mountain gap toward the broad, open plain of the Susquehanna Valley just ahead, the veterans looked about with approval at the rich farmlands, the open vista, the cool air of the mountains wafting down around them. It was indeed a far cry from the heat, swamps, ague, and snake-infested landscape of the lower Mississippi. These farms looked much more like the neat, well-kept farms of their Midwest.

They were, as well, coming now as saviors and heroes, and they basked in the glory of it. At crossroads and whistle-stop stations young women waved, sang patriotic airs, and passed up baskets of fresh-baked bread, biscuits, pitchers of

cool water and buttermilk, and older men, with a glimmer in their eye and a wink, would hand off bottles of stronger stuff. The reception across the Midwest had been a warm one, especially when a regiment was passing through its home state, but here at the edge of the front lines the outpouring of enthusiasm was bordering on the ecstatic. These were the men who were going to save central Pennsylvania from the Confederate army, and the local citizens were thrilled by their arrival.

The trains passed over the massive viaduct that spanned the Susquehanna a dozen miles north of the city. Earthworks and freshly built blockhouses guarded the approach to the bridge on the western shore. Fortunately, this bridge had not

been dropped, the furthest advance of the Confederates stopping down at the gap just above the city.

Along the narrow road just south of the bridge more fortifications were in place, two batteries of rifled pieces guarding this precious crossing in case any rebel raiders should now try to attack.

The river beneath the bridge was still swollen and turbulent from the torrential rains of the previous three weeks, the water dark, littered with debris that tossed on the waves. As the lead train shifted through a switch and on to the bridge, they passed out of the morning light on the west bank of the river into the shade on the steep slopes of the eastern side, the air cool and refreshing.

Spirits were up. The word had passed that their journey of almost a thousand miles was at an end. Fifers picked up songs. Here and there men joined in, some of the tunes patriotic, more than one off-colored, with loud coughs and throat-clearing at every sight of girls lining the track. A group of young women from a nearby female academy, dressed in patriotic red-white-and-blue dresses, triggered an absolute frenzy of coughing, cheers, and more than one friendly, ribald comment that set the girls to blushing but also giggling in response.

The train thundered out of the pass into the broad, open panorama of the Susquehanna Valley, directly ahead the dome of the state capitol, church spires, and factory smokestacks of Harrisburg. All could see the flame-scorched piers of the destroyed covered bridge dropped during the Gettysburg campaign, and the approaches to the pontoon bridge that had been swept away in the flood. Several artillery batteries lined the bank of the river, the guns well dug in, the crews lounging about, waving as the first train passed, the veterans replying politely but holding themselves a bit aloof. For, after all, they were fresh from victory, and the ones waving were not. The armies of the West were now here to teach them how to do it right

Interestingly, a small knot of horsemen was stationed on the far bank, sitting in a clearing partway up the slope of the mountain
...
advanced rebel scouts, signal flags fluttering. The Confederate outpost had been dislodged several times by small raiding forces coming over from Harrisburg, but as quickly as the Yankees withdrew, the rebs came back to continue their observations of the goings-on inside the state capital.

At the sight of the rebs, the men stood on the flatcars, taunting and waving, shouting that Grant's boys were now here to set things right. Several of the rebel cavalry waved back.

The lead train began to slow, the engineer merrily playing his whistle with a skilled hand, trying to squeeze out the opening bar to "Rally Round the Flag." The tune didn't carry too well, but the rhythm was plain, and some of the men picked up the song, though this was an army that didn't hold much with such patriotic mush. And anyway, in their minds that had been a marching song of the Army of the Potomac and not of the armies of the West.

The crowds along the siding were increasing, people rushing down side streets, cheering, waving, Union infantry joining in, their greeters dressed in bright, new, unstained uniforms.

In contrast, these boys of McPherson's corps were a hard, grizzled lot. Uniforms had long ago faded in the harsh Mississippi sun, the color all but bleaching out to a light, tattered blue. Pant legs were frayed; many had patches sewn on thighs and knees and had backsides stained darkly from countless nights of sitting around campfires. Headgear was non
-
distinct; few wore kepis, most favoring broad-brimmed hats of brown, black, or gray, which were just as faded and holed as the uniforms.

Hardly a backpack was to be found, the men having long ago adopted a simple horseshoe collar roll of vulcanized ground cloth, with a shelter half, one blanket, and a few changes of socks and a shirt rolled inside. Haversacks were stuffed with some rations; extra food—such as a heavy slice of smoked ham, or a chicken waiting to be plucked—was tied to the strap of the haversack. Of course cartridge boxes were crammed with forty rounds, ten or twenty extra cartridges stuffed into pockets. Maybe a Bible was in the breast pocket of their four-button wool jackets, sometimes riding alongside a deck of cards, a flask of good corn liquor, or some of the new picture cards from Paris. Given the largesse of civilians along the way, most canteens were filled with a mixture of water and whiskey, rum, applejack, or, from the hills of western Pennsylvania, a good solid load of clear, white mountain lightning.

They were veterans, easy in their self-confidence, inured to hardship, long ago disabused of any vague dreams of glory. They had seen what glory led to. They knew their job and would see it through to the end, but they would do so with a quiet, no-nonsense determination. They had signed on for three years, back in the heady days of 1861. Shiloh, Corinth, Fort Donelson, the swamps of Louisiana had forever dimmed the visions and dreams of those early days. What compelled them now was the pride in their regiments and the friendship of their comrades, and no vainglorious words of beribboned generals would sway them one way or the other. It was their job and that was it. War no longer held any illusions for them.

These veterans of the West held the Eastern soldiers who were greeting them with a sort of bemused contempt. Granted, they were on the same side in this war, but it was beyond their understanding how anyone could let a rebel drive them out Where they came from, it was the rebels who did the running, and so it would be here as well. They had come to save the East and they found that concept amusing. They would lord it over the Eastern boys as was their right but then they would see it through to the finish.

They held Grant in supreme confidence. He was one of them. In the shadows of evening, when he would at times walk through their camps, few would actually notice his passing. He was as rumpled as they were, unshaven, battered hat pulled down low, a man you would never notice in a crowd, the only giveaway the almost-permanent cigar clenched in his teeth, glowing like a smokestack. As quickly as it burned to a stub, another would be lit. On a rainy march you might see him sitting astride his horse by the side of the road, eyes watchful, hat brim soaked and dripping, silent, perhaps offering an occasional word of encouragement, but woe betide the man who cheered him; the response was always an icy stare.

He gave no speeches, disdained reviews, which to both him and them were a waste of time, dealt summarily with fools in command, and though they knew he would not hesitate to feed them into the cauldron, he would do so only when there was something to be gained. Their lives, they thought, did mean something to him.

They were of the armies of the West, a different kind of American than those who dwelled in these lush farmlands and burgeoning cities. Many had helped their fathers to clear land on the edge of the frontier. If they were bom in Ohio or Illinois, the stories of Indian raids, of virgin forests, and trackless wilderness were still real to their families. If they were from western Minnesota or Iowa, the frontier was indeed real to them; just beyond the western horizon was a limitless world yet to be explored. Such a vista affected a man, how he thought, what he believed, what he knew he could do, what a hundred thousand thousand of them could do if ever they set their minds to it.

Most had schooling, but not much. Perhaps, like their president, a few months in "blab school." They usually had four, maybe six years tops in a one-room structure that they walked miles to each day. A few, very few, were schooled in the classics and spoke almost like their cousins in the East. Some of these were now officers, but they learned quickly to speak like the men they commanded, to think like them and respect them, or they did not last for long.

Some came from the emerging cities of Chicago, Springfield, or Indianapolis, while others came from the new factory cities springing up around the Great Lakes, and in those regiments could be found m
echanics, iron pourers, toolmak
ers, men who could fashion anything the army might need, or fix anything broken or taken in conquest Men like these could put twenty miles of track back in operation in a matter of days, salvage a locomotive, restore a gasworks, or repair a burst steam boiler.

A sprinkling of Irish were with them, laborers who bent double fourteen hours a day in prairie heat or driving snow, laying the track that was lacing the country together, and some were river men, working the steamships or guiding the flatboats on the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio. From the far north, more than a few only spoke German, or Swedish, or Norwegian, farmers who had cleared the cold northern land or lumberjacks still felling the great, silent forests. Their new country reminded them of ancestral farms back in northern Europe. Such men were inured to the harsh winters they had always known in both the Old and New Worlds.

Until the start of the war few had ever traveled farther than their county seat to attend a fair or a Fourth of July parade, and nearly all could remember at least one old man riding there in a carriage, eyes dim, but proud and erect, a man who had so long ago marched with Washington, or Wayne, or Morgan.

They were used to vast, open vistas, the limitless plains, or the deep northern woods. This East was almost a different nation, cities to be mistrusted or hated, rich merchants and counting
-
houses of the railroads, which even at this time were wringing the profits out of their farms.

Ironically, if given a choice, they would have felt far more in common with their foes from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas than their comrades from Boston and New York City. The Southern boy might sound strange, but still, he could talk of crops, and raising hogs, and trying to spark
a girl behind the barn at a corn
husking, and knew the feel of the damp, rich earth on bare feet when you did your first plowing of spring.

If they had their eyes set anywhere for when this was finished, it was not to the East but always even farther West, maybe mining in Colorado, or perhaps all the way to California. The East was the past, the West was the future, and they were eager to see this war done so they could embrace that future.

There were no illusions now among them. Losing was a concept that was all but impossible for them to contemplate, but they knew the vagaries of battle might bring hard losses. Yet they would see it through even as they knew victory would carry a price. Comrades laughing beside them might be dead in a month; for that matter they themselves might be dead, but at this moment it seemed almost worth it. They were free of the heat and stench of Mississippi, they were back north, treated as saviors, and, as veteran soldiers, they knew how to enjoy the moment

The lead train drifted into th
e rail yard, bell ringing, whistl
e blowing. Behind the lead train were fifty more, spaced at ten-minute intervals, the convoy stretching clear back nearly to Pittsburgh, an entire corps with its artillery.

Few contemplated all that had gone into this move, brilliantly designed and orchestrated by Herman Haupt. Entire trainloads of firewood had come along the track ahead of them, replenishing stockpiles at fueling stations. Where it was felt mat watering tanks could not fill the need, hundreds of buckets had been left for the men to haul water up from the nearest stream. Patriotic civilian committees had been raised to bake bread, set out food, pack hampers to greet the soldiers at each of the refueling stops along the way, all of it choreographed so that a train could pull into a siding to take on wood and water and back out in the required ten minutes. Replacement steam engines had been set at major rail yards, ready to rush out and clear the track of breakdowns. This had only happened twice in the long journey. Countless chickens had been slaughtered, fried, and packed, tens of thousands of loaves of bread baked, barrels of fresh drinking water delivered, beeves by the hundreds slaughtered and cooked over open fires alongside the station. Hospitals had been established to take care of the sick or injured, of which there were more than a few. Guards had been posted at key bridges. All of this under the watchful gaze of Herman Haupt, who sat for endless hours by the telegraph in Harrisburg, monitoring every step of the great movement This was the largest, fastest movement of men and equipment in human history and Haupt was determined to make it work.