The Sword (37 page)

“General Stuart, I have a task for you.”

Jeb had been called to General Lee’s headquarters, which was nothing more than a simple soldier’s tent. The two men had been good friends when Stuart studied at West Point. Jeb’s eyes were fiery blue as he said, “I’m anxious for action, General Lee. Just tell me what to do.”

Lee studied Jeb Stuart carefully. “I want you to make a movement in the enemy rear. Inspect their communications, take cattle and grain, burn any Federal wagon trains that you find.”

“Yes, sir.”

“General, the utmost vigilance on your part will be necessary. The greatest caution must be practiced to keep you from falling into the enemy hands. And let me remind you that the chief object of your expedition is to gain intelligence for the guidance of future movements. Should you find that the enemy is moving to his right or is so strongly posted as to make your expedition inopportune, you will return at once.”

Jeb Stuart could not conceal his joy. He was like a small boy as he slapped his gloves against one hand and said, “General, if I find a way open, I’ll ride all the way around him. My father-in-law is in charge of their cavalry, you know. I’ve never forgiven him for going with the North, so I’m going to show him up.”

Stuart left and handpicked twelve hundred men, including Robert E. Lee’s son, nicknamed Rooney. He rode at once to share the news with his men, and he made a gallant figure. His gray coat was buttoned to the chin, he carried a saber and a pistol in a black holder, and he wore his polished thigh-high cavalry boots with the golden spurs. As always, a black ostrich plume was stuck in his hat, floating above the bearded features. His eyes were brilliant, and he made the perfect picture of a dashing cavalier.

As the troop left, one officer called out, “When will you be back, Stuart?”

“It may for years. It may be forever.” Stuart laughed and spurred his horse forward. The troop thundered around McClellan’s men. Several times Federal horsemen appeared and tried to make a fight of it, but Stuart’s yelling riders simply swallowed them up.

Clay was watering Lightning when they had stopped to rest their horses. He watched Stuart, who was contemplating the country ahead of him. “What next, General?”

“Well, we’ve already come eighteen miles southeast of Hanover Courthouse. The enemy is going to expect me to go back to camp, I know. I’ve already learned what General Lee sent me to learn. The right flank of McClellan is in the air, and there are no trenches on the ridges on the west. The enemy could be struck in the flank by an infantry assault.”

Clay did not speak; he merely watched and listened. Finally he saw Jeb Stuart straighten up and order, “Move the column ahead at a trot.”

“Yes, sir.” The pace picked up and they soon became a group of cheerful horsemen. From time to time they had to spur their horses when pickets appeared and took after them, and they had a couple of skirmishes.

But in the end, Jeb Stuart completely encircled McClellan’s enormous army, something that had never even been thought of, much less accomplished, before.

When Jeb Stuart rode in with his men, he gave his report in such colorful phrases and in rhetoric that was almost epic in praise of his officers. “Their brave men behaved with coolness and intrepidity in danger, unswerving resolution before difficulties. … They are horsemen and troopers beyond praise.”

General Lee’s order in reply reflected the pride of the command in Stuart’s feat. “The general commanding announces with great satisfaction to the army the brilliant exploit of Brigadier General J. E. B. Stuart … in passing around the rear of the whole Federal
army, taking a number of prisoners, and destroying and capturing stores to a large amount. … The general commanding takes great pleasure in expressing his admiration of the courage and skill so conspicuously exhibited throughout by the general and the officers and men under his command.”

Word spread like wildfire across the entire Confederacy, and everywhere was heard the name of Jeb Stuart. He was a hero, and the newspapers could not find language elevated enough.

“You’re going to get bigheaded, I’m afraid,” Clay said, grinning at Jeb as the two of them were riding to check on the men.

“Aw, if I do, Flora will take me down a peg or two. We showed those Yankees though, didn’t we, Tremayne?”

“Yes you did, sir. What do you think will happen now?”

Jeb stared to the north, where the vast Federal armies were waiting. Clay saw that he was more serious than he had ever seen him. “We’re going to be hit with an army of a hundred and sixty thousand men, Lieutenant. We’re outnumbered, clearly five to one. It’s as I said all along, we can’t match the Yankees man for man. But we will always best them in daring and courage.”

At that moment, Clay Tremayne saw what it was in Jeb Stuart that made men follow him right into the mouth of guns, straight toward almost certain death. There was that quality in him that few men had. Confidence, courage, audacity—it was a mixture of all of these, plus a joy in battle that few men ever experienced.

Clay observed, “That lesson you taught them, General Stuart. You’ve embarrassed and humiliated McClellan, and he’ll throw everything he’s got at us.”

“And we will stop them, Lieutenant. God will surely lead us to victory.”

Historians writing about what came to be called the Seven Days Battle have great difficulty. They were days of confusion, of missed or misunderstood orders, of men wandering, lost in the unmarked countryside.

McClellan’s army got caught on the wrong side of the river so that he was never able to bring his full force together at once to hit the Confederates—or so he maintained afterward.

The Confederates, on the other hand, were not accustomed to the tactics, and the sometimes vague orders, of Robert E. Lee. From the first battle to the very last, some colonel or general got confused, and men who should have led failed miserably. Even the great Stonewall Jackson faltered.

In battle after battle, no one was the victor except death and the grave.

Finally the long terrible days wore both armies down. McClellan had had all he could take, and again he ordered a retreat.

Strangely enough, McClellan could have won the battle, and the Civil War could have ended at the Seven Days Battle. But McClellan, for all of his organizational ability and all of his dynamic talk, could not do one thing that a successful military commander must do: he could not send men forward into the fires of battle. This was McClellan’s tragic flaw, and Lincoln had seen it before.

Time after time during this Seven Days campaign, McClellan might have defeated the South, but time after time he failed to throw enough forces in to win. He would send men in piecemeal, and they would be cut to pieces, and then he would send in another, equally small part of his army. Never once did he throw the full weight of the Army of the Potomac against the greatly outnumbered Confederates.

So, although no one could have been said to have won the battle, the war was lost for a time to the North and won for a time to the South.

McClellan was pulling his forces out, and they had gathered together on what was called Malvern Hill. Lee and the army were hot on their trail. When they came to the sight of Malvern Hill, Lee looked up and studied the ground. It was not the best place for an attack, but Lee was hungry to destroy it. He turned and said,
“Gentlemen, we will attack.”

General Longstreet said, “That’s a bad hill. The Yankees are well entrenched. There’s no cover.”

Lee had unlimited confidence in the Army of Northern Virginia, and now he made one of the two sad mistakes in his military career. “Charge the hill,” he said.

There was no choice but to obey. Clay looked up at the hill and said to his corporal, “Some of our boys aren’t going to come back from this ride.”

“No. You’re right. I don’t understand General Lee.”

“He’s too audacious, I think. People don’t know that, but he’s like a Mississippi riverboat gambler.”

The bugle sounded, and Clay spurred his horse. He was in the first line of attack. The guns began to boom from the Federal emplacements. Musket balls were whistling by, and men were falling. Clay rode hard ahead, following Jeb Stuart, ignoring the sights and sounds of sure death all around him, until the retreat sounded.

He was about to turn when a terrible blow struck him in his right arm. He looked down and saw that his sleeve was already covered with blood from shoulder to cuff, and he knew that the arm was shattered. In spite of the pain that almost blinded him, he wheeled Lightning around and rode back by himself.

Thirty minutes later he was in a field hospital, his uniform stripped off his upper body. The doctor was looking down at the arm, and Clay saw his face grow stern. “That arm’s got to come off, Lieutenant.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“You’ll get gangrene in it and lose it anyway. Let me do it now.”

“No!” In spite of his treacherous weakness, he almost shouted at the doctor.

Then General Stuart loomed over him. “How are you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Don’t let them take my arm, General,” Clay said harshly. “Tell him. I say no.”

“A man can soldier with one arm, Tremayne,” Stuart said
staunchly. “You’d better let him do it.”

“No! I’d rather die. …” That was his last word, for he began drifting away into unconsciousness.

Before the blackness closed about him, as if from faraway, he heard the doctor say, “General, we’d better take it while he’s out.”

“No,” Stuart said with sudden decision. “It’s his arm, and it’s his decision. He may die, but I don’t know but that I’d do the same.”

All Clay knew then was the darkness.