Hell or Richmond (67 page)

Rawlins cleared his throat again. The smell wafted to Humphreys’ nostrils, but his features remained immobile.

“Well, that’s Meade’s business now,” Rawlins said. “God knows, there were plenty of people out west I would’ve liked to get rid of and couldn’t, for one reason or another. But my advice is still to cashier this Ledlie sonofabitch.” He paused for a moment, then added, “There’s nothing worse than a drunkard on a battlefield.”

Humphreys turned back to the map and gestured toward the newly revealed Confederate positions. “How much of this does Grant see?”

“More than he wants to. He thought he had Lee bagged.”

“At best, we’re in a standoff.” He met Rawlins’ eyes. “John, we can’t afford more assaults like those at Spotsylvania. Not unless we
know
there’s a chance of success. We should start planning to pull back, methodically, but damned quick. As long as we’re south of that river, the army’s paralyzed.”

Rawlins recoiled. “Grant hates to turn back. Ever. Trait of his. Hates to retrace his route on horseback, hates to leave a position. Unless it’s to go forward.”

“Then put it to him that we’d be going forward. We could still get across the Pamunkey. Turn the tables on Lee.”

“He won’t go for it. Not yet.” A note of exasperation sharpened Rawlins’ voice. “Look, Meade was right.
I
give you that. But Grant can’t admit it, not outright. It’s just not the way he is. He’s going to need at least another day to chew the cud before he spits it out. Meanwhile, I’ll try to discourage any unreasonable attacks. That’s a promise, for what it’s worth. But he’s going to have to reach his own conclusions about the situation.” Rawlins patted his mouth for spittle. Or blood. The gesture seemed unconscious, the man was excited. “Don’t underestimate Grant. Put a problem in front of him, and he’s like a dog with a great big ham bone. He’ll just gnaw it and gnaw it, until it snaps in two. Vicksburg took him, what, eight months? Nine? But he took it, by damn. And I’ll tell you what he’s going to do tomorrow. He’ll grasp about for alternatives to pulling back across the North Anna, any way to go forward instead of backward.”

Humphreys grimaced. “Warren will argue for passing Lee on the right. Where he’s been successful.”

“Might be a good idea.”

“We’d be cut off from our supply lines.”

“Might appeal to Grant. Remind him of Vicksburg. Worked then.”

“Lee’s not Pemberton. Or Johnston.”

Humphreys recalled Meade hours earlier, as the outline of the Confederate positions before Hancock grew apparent. He had spit out, “Second Bull Run! Damn it, Humph, Lee’s pulled the wool over our eyes! Just the way he did to that horse’s ass Pope. But I won’t oblige him further, so help me God.”

“Well,” Rawlins resumed, “Grant’s convinced that Lee’s on his last legs. Why else wouldn’t he attack, when he had a chance like the one he had today? And like I said, Grant only knows how to go forward. Won’t be pleased that Meade was right about the Pamunkey, either. Sam may be on the quiet side, but his pride’s a powerful thing. If George Meade’s proud, Sam’s prouder. The horses just show different.”

“That’s where you and I come in. Keep them working as partners, rather than rivals.”

Rawlins seemed to drift away for a moment. Instead of agreeing, he said, “Show me how you’d do it. Cross the Pamunkey, I mean.”

“Will the cavalry be available? Can I assume that?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, the first thing to do is to withdraw the army. Without getting caught by Lee. We’d have to—”

“Jump over that part. What happens next?”

Humphreys detailed the way the cavalry should be used to screen ahead and secure the crossing sites. Then he described how the network of roads could be used to best effect, moving all the corps rapidly, but with minimal confusion.

“If we plan this thoroughly, do it right … we could throw Lee’s army off balance.”

“What happens once we’re over the Pamunkey? Where do we end up?”

“Lee may have an opinion about that. But, if we’re quick, we can catch him out in the open, with no time to entrench. That’s the chance Grant’s been looking for.”

“Lee’s quicker than us,” Rawlins said. “I’ve learned that much.”

“That’s why we need to plan things properly. Proceed in a disciplined manner.”

“Where do you think we could catch him out? Presumably, north of Richmond.…”

Humphreys looked hard at the map, studying the roads that led to the Chickahominy, then to the Confederate capital. He knew some of that ground firsthand. As did Meade. And many another officer and man who had served in the Peninsula Campaign.

Whatever faults he might possess, Grant was not George McClellan.

“So where do we catch him?” Rawlins demanded, returning to his customary bristling tone. “Or where does he catch us?”

Determined to give a serious answer, Humphreys traced his index finger over one road after another, reminding himself that human feet, not just colored pencils, had to cover those distances.

His fingertip touched Cold Harbor and moved on.

TWENTY-THREE

June 1, morning
Cold Harbor

Pride. He would allow no man to sully his honor or infringe upon his rights. What hath a man, but his good name? He was entitled to command, not merely by virtue of the seniority of his commission, but by his merits and services to the South over many years. And
he
would not submit to the hollow arrogance of these men whose failings had brought the Northern Vandal to the gates of Richmond, men who no longer rose to the chivalric grandeur expected of South Carolinians. Indeed, these ragtag colonels and unkempt lieutenant colonels crowding around him seemed possessed by that most dishonorable of conditions that could afflict a gentleman: fear.

Colonel Lawrence Massillon Keitt said: “My men will brush them aside.”

His new subordinates exchanged glances and muttered. Their arguments had not moved him.

Turning to Colonel Henagan, a lowly sheriff back home, the former United States congressman added, “You’ve said yourself they’re merely dismounted cavalry.”

Henagan cocked his head and tightened one eye. “Said they were cavalry. Didn’t say ‘merely.’ Those boys are armed with repeating rifles, shoot just about all day without reloading.”

“You indulge in hyperbole, sir.”

“I’m indulging in not wanting my men shot up no more than necessary.” Even as he spoke, Henagan’s features reflected the realization that, beyond his depleted regiment, the brigade was no longer his: He had been permitted to lead it only until Keitt’s arrival the day before. “Ain’t a job for just one brigade, neither.”

Towering over the colonel in the fouled and ragged uniform, Keitt said, “You underestimate the valor of the men of your own state.”

If the regiment he had raised himself had not been privileged to join the field actions of the contending armies until now, still it had done noble work at Battery Wagner and in other coastal defenses. And the 20th South Carolina’s precision drill put to shame these barefoot vagabonds. War was no excuse for shabbiness so degraded it neared the lascivious.

It was clear to Keitt why President Davis had looked with favor upon his assignment to this brigade: It wanted leadership.

Dirty uniforms rustled around him. Keitt found the very smell of these men jarring: worse than any slave he had ever owned. And some of these officers were not unknown to Charleston society.…

“Let us rejoin the march,” Keitt concluded. “The men must see who commands them.” Riding gloves in hand, he saluted his new subordinates with a gesture practiced many a time in the looking glass. “To horse, gentlemen!”

Henagan didn’t move. Keitt had heard that the man had been roughly handled at the North Anna.

“At least, Colonel,” Henagan said, “don’t ride that big gray horse of Kershaw’s on into the fight. Or you won’t stay on it long.”

Keitt regarded the advice as a flagrant insult, but let it pass. First, he had Yankees to address. And he did not doubt for a moment that his fresh regiment—larger than the remainder of the brigade—could vanquish a mob of Northern muleteers.

Nature herself seemed to recognize his prowess. Choirs of birds lauded him on his way past plodding men who eyed him with curiosity, almost suspicion. Serflike, these soldiers had grown unaccustomed to manly vigor, their officers reduced to poor-white fecklessness. But the sun shone, butter smooth, and the air in the groves was fresh, as welcome as a card for a holiday ball. Beyond the tunnel of dust raised by the column, the morning light possessed the brilliance of diamonds.

As he reached the rear ranks of his own regiment, which led the brigade’s march, Keitt felt a rush of pride.
His
men looked like proper soldiers and didn’t straggle like niggers sent to a far field.

Oh, if Susie could but see him now! That woman … he loved her with a passion exceeded only by his love of freedom, of his state, of his glorious new country and lifelong cause. For her, he had abandoned his ideals, sacrificing a splendid career in politics to indulge her dedication to music and art, taking her, as the price of her much-delayed agreement to wed, to Europe, to realms at times congenial but never as true and fair as South Carolina. As secession loomed, however, he had turned homeward, defying Susie’s threats to remain abroad with their two infants. Ultimately, she had accompanied him back to Charleston and on to Orangeburg, but did not pretend to be happy at the change.

She had accepted her own smaller duty in time, though, supporting his aspiration to the vice presidency, an ambition frustrated by a low cabal. How he missed that compelling woman now! The intimacies of body and soul! Her dark-eyed wit, her white and giving flesh …

He reached the head of the column, smiling at his aides and the rough-clad guides. “Isn’t this splendid?” he said, his words more a declaration than a question.

Ahead, skirmishers niggled.

The South would win. On this day and forever. He and his kind would never accept defeat. Northern tyranny, the monstrous Yankee lust to destroy the birthright freedoms of his people, would never again annoy one Southern hearth. If others lost heart,
his
heart was strong enough to bear their burdens.

How could any man have imagined that the Union might be preserved? He had been willing to fight, in any way, in any venue, for his God-given rights, for freedom. When his friend Brooks had given old Sumner the caning he had coming, Keitt had stood in the aisle of the House chamber, pocket pistol leveled at any abolitionist scum inclined to rush to Sumner’s aid. For that and much else, his constituents reelected him. And later, when a black Republican puppy had called him a “Negro-driver,” he had taken his fists to Grow right there on the House floor, the act flawed only by the lucky punch Grow, a smaller man, had landed.

None dared claim to have more boldly represented the Southern cause in the benighted halls of that perfidious Congress. Had not his famed oration of 1857 made the clearest case for the moral necessity and wisdom of slavery put by any man of his generation? The men of the North ignored the force of reason as willfully as they did the lessons of history. Slavery an evil? It was a primordial fact, rooted in the origin of things. Yankees made much of their admiration for the glories of Greece and Rome, but was not slavery the basis, the lifeblood, of those civilizations? If pallid abolitionists misrepresented the classics, he, Lawrence Keitt, had studied them with reverence and in detail. Had not Homer and even great Plato accepted slavery as a natural part of the human condition? Had not the census of Demetrius of Phalerus counted four hundred thousand slaves in Athens, the very birthplace of democracy? And what of the Hebrews, whose enslavement of others had been ordained by God? Only the godless North could construe slavery as an evil. It was an institution as inevitable as marriage and every bit as sanctioned by holy writ.

How could any white man placed in contact with the Negro imagine the primitive African as his brother? Suffering? Who suffered more indignities, the starving Northern laborer who quaked at inconstant markets, or the valued and cared-for Negro slave, whose lodging and feed were reliably provided? What would become of the African if he were turned out to make his way in the world? What awaited the poor devil but a life of beggary, crime, and vice, of indolence and outrage? Educate him? A hundred years hence the poor beast would still sup on charity, or not at all. Slavery was as much a part of the natural order as these songbirds celebrating infant June.

Now the degenerate Yankees, unable to find reserves of courage in their white population, had stooped to arming the apes.

A guide signaled for the column to veer left.

“Ain’t far now,” the ragamuffin said.

*   *   *

“Yankees been busy,” Henagan said. “Plenty of ’em, too.” He swept the Union line with his field glasses. “Still no infantry, though. Not as I can see.”

The other regimental commanders appeared to accept Henagan as their spokesman, but kept a careful distance, for all that. The sun mottling the tree line touched weary faces.

Keitt wanted to ask his subordinate how he knew there were no infantry over there and what evidence there was of “plenty” of the enemy. He saw only quick blue smudges behind crude earthworks. But he did not want to appear unknowing.