Hell or Richmond (25 page)

When their superior had gone, staff trailing behind, Early smirked at Gordon. “You just think you know every last goddamned thing. Don’t you, John?”

Gordon remembered his division commander on the previous afternoon, begging him to save the collapsing corps. And he had done it. Gratitude had a shorter life than a mayfly.

He could not believe that the opportunity before them would not be seized. Nor was he ready to give up. There was no progress to be made at the moment, but he’d try them again in a few hours. And hope that the Yankees had not grown any wiser.

“Just every last goddamned thing,” Early repeated.

Five thirty a.m.
Orange Plank Road

His men fled. Ignoring his pleas, they ran past, only the best of them pausing to meet his eyes before running again.

“You must stop!”
Lee shouted, his tone harsh beyond custom. “Halt and re-form! Stand to your regiments, men!”

For the first time in his experience, soldiers ignored him. He rode among them, fierce of heart, alternately pleading and nearing profanity. It did no good.

“You! Captain! Form your company.”

The officer slowed, wild-featured, and shook his head. “I got no comp’ny, sir.” And he moved on. The Plank Road had flooded with such men, the heroes of the afternoon before, of the sanguinary evening.

Lee looked down the road, past the shameful exodus, yearning to see Longstreet. The man’s latest promise had been to arrive with the dawn. Now defeat swelled around a dying army and Lee could not see so much as a dust cloud.

His fault, his fault, he knew. He should have ordered Longstreet up immediately when Grant and Meade began to move, should not have placed him so far to the south, and should not have attempted a complicated plan. Surely, Longstreet had done his best. Surely. Yet, the anger was there, a thrashing anger. At Longstreet. At Hill, so afflicted today he could barely sit his horse. At these long-brave men made cowards by the numbers applied against them. And, always, at himself.

He had behaved foolishly, forbidding Hill to reorder his lines in the night or to set the men to work on better entrenchments. He had been so confident that Longstreet would come to Hill’s relief that he had chosen to let the men sleep a few hours. But war held no brief for mercy.

“Soldiers! Halt! You must re-form! Form on those guns, men!”

His words accomplished nothing.

He spotted General McGowan leading a fragment of his brigade to the rear. Lee nudged Traveller through the throng toward the brigadier.

“My God!” he cried. His voice surprised McGowan. “Your splendid brigade … are they running like geese?”

McGowan glared, but his answer was not uncivil. “General, my men were surprised, not whipped. They just need a place to form. I get ’em formed, they’ll fight as well as ever.”

Then Major General Wilcox appeared, face streaked with tears.

Lee felt a burst of anger and turned from the man. He knew the action was unjust, that Wilcox was not to blame.

But Wilcox would not be deterred from delivering his message. “Sir,” he reported, “my men can’t hold much longer. They’re flanked on both sides.”

Lee turned on him. “
Your
men … your men have
not
held, sir. They’re fleeing all around us. See to your division, man.”

Mortified, Wilcox saluted—as stiffly as an automaton—and turned back to the debacle.

He had been unjust, unjust. But his temper had leapt the fence and would not be penned again.

Turning to his aide—who was threatening men with his sword to no effect—Lee snapped, “Longstreet
must
be here. Colonel Taylor, go bring him up.”

Obedient ever, Taylor steered into the human flood.

“And ready the trains to retreat,” Lee called to his back.

Better to die. Better to die than live with such ignominy. That Grant … a wretched creature too small to retain in his memory … that such a man would humble him like this. Defeating him after but two days of effort. Lee raged against the shame.

Better to die.

He guided his horse back into the rising field, toward the line of guns by the ravaged farmhouse. Poague’s batteries stood alone against the blue swarm about to erupt from the trees around them.

Some
of his men still fought. They only wanted aid. Wilcox had tried to tell him that. He had been unjust to Wilcox. But who could bear this? Even faith in God availed nothing now.

A wave of gray fugitives burst from the far trees, running for all they were worth. Powell Hill had given up trying to rally his men. Ill or not, he had dismounted and stood by Colonel Poague. They were arguing furiously.

Lee looked to the east again and saw
them:
the first blue lines, bowed and uneven, but dauntless. Victory fed victory. So oft before,
his
men had been in pursuit.

A wave of dizziness stopped him. The early heat, his bowels. Gathering himself as best he could, he rode over to Hill and Poague in time to hear the artilleryman say, “I can’t fire across that road. Our men are mixed in with them.”

“I order you to fire now!” Hill shouted.

Newly aware of Lee’s presence, Poague looked up at him. Lee nodded:
Do as Hill says.

A bullet dropped a nearby cannoneer.

Poague leapt to his task at once, screaming to be heard, ordering his right battery to manhandle their guns to sweep the road.

They were everywhere now, those people. Swarming south of the road and to the north, slowed by the guns, by the terrible cost of advancing across open ground, but pressed on by the masses to their rear.

Lee resolved not to move. He would die here.

Some of the Union infantry paused to unleash volleys toward the artillery on the ridge. And gunners fell. But the cannon kept blasting, with Poague rushing from piece to piece and directing his left battery to swing northward.

Through new smoke, Lee spotted Hill wielding a swab, the work of an artillery private. Hill, too, had made his resolution to stay.

How could he have harbored anger toward such a man, blaming such a one as that for ancient indiscretions and ill health? He suspected that one of his last sights on earth would be of Powell Hill in a flannel shirt sweated black, hair flying as he shouted commands to the gunners still on their feet. Hill had begun as an artilleryman, and he would end as one.

Colonel Marshall edged his horse up to Lee’s side. The military secretary said nothing, but removed his spectacles and put them in a pocket of his coat.

“Why doesn’t Longstreet come?” Lee said softly, careless of whether the other man caught the words.

Marshall said nothing. There was nothing to say. But he waited for the end beside his chieftain.

With a hurrah, the Union troops south of the road burst through a last pocket of resistance. To the north, Union regiments had re-formed for a final assault on Poague’s guns, barely half of which were still manned and firing.

Those people had grown confident enough to call up drums to regulate their advance. As if they meant to parade across the field.

Straight ahead, blue ranks left the tree line at the double-quick, while the long lines in the north stepped out to a drum’s tap. Flag-bearers waved their banners in the absence of a breeze.

A bloody sun shone through the smoke behind the advancing enemy. It was a fitting sun for a last morning, suited to an apocalypse.

Lee’s hand tightened on his sword. His last guns barked. And he caught another glimpse of Hill, face blackened and gleaming. Perhaps he, too, would welcome death.

Marshall reached over and touched Lee’s sleeve.

Turning, Lee saw the head of Longstreet’s column.

*   *   *

As the lead brigade formed a hasty front to charge, Lee spurred his horse up to their commanding officer. He did not recognize the man.

“General, which brigade is this?”

“Texans,” the hard-eyed officer said, bellowing to be heard. “The Texas Brigade.”

“I’m glad,” Lee said. “Oh, I’m glad! Go in and give them cold steel. Don’t let them stand and fight. You must charge them, sir.”

“Yas, sir. That’s just what we’re aiming to do.”

Lee turned to the men around him. “The Texas Brigade has always driven the enemy … always.…” He spoke to their brigadier again, trying to recall this new man’s name. Gregg? He wasn’t certain enough to speak it. “Tell your men, General, that they fight under my eyes today. I will be with you. Every man must know.”

Gregg rose in his stirrups, roaring out his commands. “Brigade … attention. Y’all listen here. The eyes of General Lee himself are on you now.
Texans! Forward!
”

Wet-eyed, Lee tore off his hat and waved it. “Texans have never let me down,” he shouted. “Texans always move them.”

The brigade howled as it advanced, a thousand coyotes bred with a thousand wildcats.

“We’ll skin ’em alive, General Lee,” a soldier called.

Lee rode forward with them. Willing, almost wanting, to die, rather than be vanquished. Even now the issue remained in doubt. He did not know if these first brigades would be sufficient to halt the blue hordes until their comrades could join them. When a defeat began, it was difficult to stem. And he would not live on, if it meant being humbled.

They had reached the center of the field, with bullets scouring the air and Texans falling, when the men about him realized that he meant to join their charge.

The soldiers nearest Lee wavered, then stopped. The colors paused, disordering the advance.

“Go back, go back!” the soldiers cried. “General Lee, go back!”

Lee felt the sun upon his hair, his scalp. His vision blurred.

“We ain’t a-goin’ on, less’n you go back,” a soldier told him.

“Go back!” a sergeant seconded.

Men reached for his bridle, but Traveller reared his head.

The brigadier—yes, it was Gregg, that was the man’s name—rode up and snapped at him, “Go back, sir. You’re delaying my advance.”

Coming up from the rear, his aide, Venable, called out, “General Longstreet’s yonder. He’s waiting on you, sir.”

Lee still felt dazed. But the words had penetrated.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will go back.”

As he turned his horse, the Texans howled and charged.

*   *   *

Longstreet. The man’s face shone with sweat. Lee did not remonstrate with him. There was no point: Done was done. And he was here now, evidently full of fight. Suddenly, Lee felt the weight of his exhaustion. But he did not relax his spine.

“No time for fancy work,” Longstreet told him, with the battle’s renewed pandemonium a few hundred yards away. “Gregg’s boys are in, and Rock Benning’s. Perry’s coming up, I’ll put him on the left. Just need to hold ’em off until I can form up for a proper counterattack. Down that road looks about right.”

Lee nodded. His thoughts were a muddle, veering between the accusatory and feelings of relief, of gratitude. He did not quite trust himself to speak, unsure if his voice would obey him or yield to his spleen.

“I’ll take care of this, sir,” Longstreet said, with a glance toward Venable. As if the two had conspired in some matter. “Give me a free hand, and I’ll restore the line. And more, God willing.” His Old War Horse grinned, yellow teeth strong in a mighty beard. “But I do think we’d best leave this spot. It’s not quite comfortable.”

“Yes,” Lee said. At first, he allowed Venable to nudge him rearward. Then he took command of himself, gripping the reins and touching Traveller’s belly with his spurs.

More and more of Longstreet’s men were coming up. Where there had been a drought, there was a flood. The Lord was merciful, after all.

Even at a distance, he heard Longstreet shouting commands, his voice as powerful as his will.

Back on the knoll by the line of guns, Lee met a litter carrying off General Benning, badly wounded. The man had gone in only minutes before. Much hard labor remained, more blood in tribute to sway the fortunes of war. But there was hope now.

Lee felt a burst of elation so unreasonable it alarmed him.

He watched the developing battle from the ridge. Soon, he began to issue clear orders again.

Another brigade was forming up to wrest back the field’s northern edge. Lee rode over to them and asked, “What troops are these?”

“Law’s Alabama Brigade,” a soldier hollered. “Law’s men,” yelled another. “Alabamans,” came a rash of shouts.

Their commander looked taken aback. Then Lee remembered. “Law’s Brigade.” But it marched under Colonel Perry. Longstreet had arrested Law. It had not been a popular move. Perry was a good officer, and he would do his duty. As would these men. But Lee decided to speak to Longstreet about Law after the battle. The army could not afford to demean its best officers.

Lee put a good face on it all. “God bless the Alabamans!” he called to the men. “All I ask is that you keep up with the Texans. Surely, Alabamans can do that.…”

“More!” men cried. “We’ll go right on to Washington,” a stick of a man hollered. Lee felt the old adulation again, the gorgeous warmth of it. He nodded at Perry, who raised his sword in salute. It caught the sun and flashed lightning.

“Alabama,” Perry bellowed, “at the double-quick …
forward!
”

As the brigade advanced, a black-eyed, black-haired, black-bearded lieutenant colonel on foot caught Lee’s eye, a man with a look as menacing as a devil. The officer threw off a quick salute, as if even Lee didn’t matter one bit now, as if all that mattered were getting on with the killing.

“Oates,” Lee remembered.

*   *   *

William C. Oates couldn’t say whether he’d ever seen a sight grander than Lee on his fine gray horse, surrounded by his staff on that little hill, nodding as the 15th Alabama passed. “Like a god of war,” Oates told himself, instinctively repeating the phrase he’d heard used to describe Lee, “just like an old god of war.” For an instant and no more, he believed he had caught the army commander’s eyes.

Then it was all business, all done in a hurry, with Yankees somewhere down in the trees a few hundred yards along, at the rough field’s border. Colonel Perry hollered orders, doing just fine for all the deep bad feelings, and Oates bellowed to be heard above the cannon, riflery, and titanic howl of men bent on doing harm. Marching backward, ass turned to the enemy, Oates pointed with his saber wherever he wanted his men to straighten the line, but they were all right, his boys, all right, just marching forward angry as wild country sonsofbitches cheated at cards in town.