Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 (46 page)

Hazner went back to his camp, which was all but empty, looking out through the trees toward the distant dome of the Capitol.

Didn't Lee see this? Surely he understood it. If there was a chance to take this city, it was in the days right after Union Mills and even then the chance was slim. In fact it had turned out to be no chance at all. Now an attack on these reinforced fortifications could be nothing but a suicidal gesture.

He leaned against a tree, studying the Capitol dome, the distant line of fortifications. Up at the front line, a half mile away, there were occasional puffs of smoke, the distant crack of a rifle. A mortar round arched up, sputtered, and plummeted down, exploding without effect. He heard a derisive hoot. It was almost a game, though every day a dozen or so soldiers paid the ultimate price for that game. But overall, nothing was happening. Nothing had happened here for the last three weeks.

Surely Lee would not throw them against those now-impregnable fortifications in yet another frontal assault. The Columbiads might excite the fervor of amateurs, but against heavy fortifications they would have little if any effect. Nothing more than a lot of flash and noise.

Though the generals might not realize it, after two years of war there was many a sergeant or corporal who knew how to read a map, could surmise much from little, and figure out what the bigwigs were thinking far better than the reporters, the armchair generals back home, and even some of the generals themselves.

"Hazner."

He looked up and smiled. It was Colonel Brown coming up to join him.

Brown had figured out long ago what had happened at Fort Stevens, how Hazner had knocked him cold with a single blow and dragged him from the line. The colonel still had an arm in a sling from that fight, the wound healing slowly. The only comment he had ever made on that terrible day was an offhand "Hazner, at times you are one hell of a headache," a tacit acknowledgment and no more that Hazner's direct action had undoubtedly saved his life.

"Lot of hoopla down on the road," Brown ventured.

"Yes, sir, the heavy-siege train is here."

'Took long enough."

Hazner chuckled. A cavalryman had joined the regimental mess for dinner one night and regaled them with stories about the serpent
-
like crawl of the heavy guns, the need to rebuild bridges so they could pass, the endless delays, all this effort to drag half a dozen guns only thirty miles to the front line.

"Think we'll attack?" Hazner asked.

Brown smiled and shook his head.

"Sergeant, perhaps I should ask what you think."

"Sir, you're the colonel; I'm just a sergeant"

"You have as much sense of all this as I do, Sergeant; please educate me as to your opinion."

"Well, sir," Hazner began expansively, inwardly delighted at the deference Brown now showed him, "there's only eight rows now of abatis to go through, a ditch half a dozen feet deeper than it was before, fortress walls half a dozen feet higher, and maybe fifteen thousand more Yankees behind it. Do you honestly think, sir, that General Lee will go straight in again?"

Brown smiled.

"The Yankees could have moved those guns in a couple of days," Brown said, thinking of the power of the Union railroads and steamships.

"That's the Yankees, not us."

Brown shook his head.

"Damn war, thought it would be over by now." "We all thought that, sir," Hazner said absently, chewing and spitting a stream of tobacco juice.

He remembered his old friend, killed at Union Mills, his journal still in his haversack. How together they had marched off two years ago, two boys ardent for some desperate glory, believing that it would be over by Christmas and they'd come home heroes. His friend was dead, buried in some mass grave in front of Union Mills, and now he stood here, looking at the Capitol dome, so close and yet such an infinity of death away.

"Maybe those six heavy guns will start something," Brown opined. "I just pray to God it doesn't mean we go in against that fort again."

"Amen to that, sir, amen to that."

Washington, D.C. The White House

August
15,1863 3:00
p.m.

Presid
ent Lincoln turned away from the window and looked back at his Cabinet. Another thumping sound struck the windowpane, rattling it, all else in the room silent.

The bombardment had been going on since dawn, every two to three minutes another salvo, deeper-sounding than the fire of the previous weeks, clearly the pounding of heavy artillery against Fort Stevens. At night the sky to the north flashed and glowed from the bombardment, civilians out in the street, gathering in small knots, looking expectantly northward, talking nervously.

The city had been under siege for nearly a month and the strain was showing in every face. Every day rumors swept the city that the rebs had broken through, were falling back, had crossed the Susquehanna, had retreated back to Virginia, that renewed riots were sweeping the cities of the North, that France had declared war
...
and throughout it all he had learned to remain calm, sphinx
-
like, detached from both the rumors and the emotions.

He returned to his chair and sat down. Beside him Stanton rustled some papers and Lincoln nodded for him to continue.

"As I was saying, Mr. President. It appears that General Lee is advancing on Washington with his entire army now reinforced with the men brought north by Beauregard."

"And you anticipate an attack?"

"Yes, sir."

"How soon?"

"Within two to three days. Their siege batteries are giving an unmerciful pounding to Fort Stevens."

"How unmerciful?" Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, asked.

"Several guns have been dismounted." Welles sniffed derisively.

"Edwin, modem weapons simply are not effective against well-dug-in positions. Fort Pulaski in front of Savannah proved that older masonry forts are vulnerable to rifled guns, but a heavy earthen position, you can waste twenty tons of powder and shell against it, and in a single night a regiment of engineers armed with shovels can make it right again. I think we are overreacting."

"I beg to differ," Stanton sniffed.

"Gentlemen, we've conducted a dozen such operations with the navy since the start of this war, and always the situation favors the defenders," Welles replied forcefully. "Until someone comes up with a new way of attacking or a new explosive that can level forts like Stevens, this is an exercise in futility, and I don't see General Lee engaging in such futility."

"So why would he bother then?" Stanton replied heatedly.

Lincoln held out his hand for silence. "Gentlemen, we are at the crisis," he announced. Gideon Welles smiled and nodded in agreement "Indulge me for a moment please," Lincoln continued. No one spoke.

He settled back in his chair, tempted to put his feet up but in such a formal setting that was of course impossible.

"Some thought that Gettysburg and Union Mills were the crisis, but I realize now that they were not. Terrible as those four days were, they were but the opening of the first act in the confrontation that will decide this war.

"Yes, the Army of the Potomac was savaged in that fight, and God forgive us, ten thousand or more families will forever mourn those terrible days, but that was not the confrontation that would decide this crisis. It is now, this day and the next month, that will decide it."

"Sir. There might very well be seventy thousand or more rebel troops just outside the city this morning," Stanton announced. "In that I agree with you, the crisis has arrived, but I must beg to ask, what do you propose to do?"

"Nothing."

Stanton, flustered, set the papers he was holding back down on the table.

"We have forty-three thousand troops in the city, nearly a third of them well-seasoned veterans from Charleston. Frankly, if they can't hold the city, then I would venture to say we don't deserve to hold this city or win this war."

Gideon smiled in agreement.

"And those men are backed up by a dozen ironclad gunboats, a thousand marines, and three thousand sailors," the secretary of the navy threw in.

"And I still maintain that we should shift the Nineteenth Corps down here," Stanton replied heatedly. "They are doing nothing but lounging about up on the Susquehanna and I don't see Grant using them to any effect."

"I queried General Grant about their use in my last letter," Lincoln replied calmly, "and he said he preferred to keep them under his direct command. Gentlemen, I will not gainsay our new commander of the armies on this issue."

Stanton started to open his mouth to speak, but a sidelong look from Lincoln stilled him.

"That is final," Lincoln said softly.

Stanton nodded, crestfallen at this near-public rebuke.

"Anything else? I'd like to go up to Stevens to have a look around and then to the hospitals."

"Mr. President, the French," Secretary of State Seward said. "Go on."

"We know for a fact that the French consul in Baltimore sent a report out under a French flag. It should be in Paris by now."

"Wish we had that ocean telegraph line up," Welles interjected. "I'd love to know what is happening over there today. Perhaps the dispatching of some of our ships to the coast of France as a show of force might be required."

"I would advise against that at the moment," Seward replied. "It would only serve to provoke."

"Provoke, is it? He's the one meddling in Mexico. The English and French are helping to keep the Confederacy alive. Talk about a provocation!"

"Go on, Mr. Seward," Lincoln interrupted.

"Sir, I think we'll be at war with France by autumn," the secretary of state replied.

"How so? All based on one letter?"

"The news for Napoleon from Mexico has not been good. He thought he could seize the country in a quick coup and then put his puppet on the throne. Part of his or his wife's dream of a renewed Catholic empire. A mad delusion, but it has gained a following in France and Austria. The campaign has not gone well. Juarez, though still bruised, at this moment is gaining strength in the back country and within a year, two at most, he will be ready to counterattack in strength. Especially if we can help him. Napoleon must see, at least from his reasoning, that if ever there is a hope for him in the New World, it is now, this moment. Union Mills and Baltimore will give him the pretext to recognize the Confederacy, and I suspect he will do it."

"Napoleon's half-mad," Stanton sniffed.

"We all know that," Seward replied.

"Where will he intervene then?" Lincoln asked. 'Texas?"

"That would be my assumption. I don't see them trying a main force attack on the blockade at Charleston or Wilmington. I would venture at Brownsville, right at the border. First land some heavy guns on the Mexican side and establish fortifications. Then the main fleet moves in to engage ours. There'll be the usual claim of a provocation of some sort. Once Brownsville is secured, they'll try to roll our blockading force off the coast, clear up to New Orleans. For the French, a so-called liberation of New Orleans would have a special symbolic meaning as well, having once been French territory."

Lincoln turned to Gideon.

"Your response?"

"I'd love nothing more. Rear Admiral Farragut's job is done on the Mississippi, though he'll need to hold some forces at New Orleans to support the weakened garrison there. But we could have him shift down to Texas now. Some of our new oceangoing monitors and ironclads could move down there as well. I doubt if the French would risk their new ironclads on a transoceanic voyage. If not, our navy could pound theirs to splinters. Once that was finished, I'd love to see a blockading force off Le Havre."

Lincoln smiled.

"One thing at a time, Gideon. First, all our efforts must be to win this war. Second, to block the French if they should be so foolish as to join in. And, Mr. Seward, the English?"

"Still the same, as I said before. The sticking point is still slavery. That, and frankly, if I were the English, I'd love nothing more than to see the French make that sort of foolish mistake. We keep the war out of European waters, bloody the French noses here in ours, and it weakens Napoleon at no cost to the English. I say, let them come, and the English will stand back. Besides, they don't want to risk Canada, or some of their holdings in the Caribbean, which we would most certainly move on if they should try to challenge us. No, the English will stand clear, unless the campaign of the next month presents them with a foregone conclusion."

Lincoln nodded approvingly.

"Insightful as always, thank you."

Again the windowpanes rattled and all looked up.

"I still don't like our loss of Port Hudson," Stanton grumbled.

Lincoln nodded. Word had just arrived this morning of that reversal on the Mississippi. Such setbacks were to be expected with the concentration of forces here in the East.

"What good will it do them?" he replied. "They can't ship supplies across the Mississippi. Our navy will continue to patrol the river."