The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (13 page)

“Yes, sir! I’ve armed the orderlies and kitchen staff. There’s plenty of muskets down belowground. Boxes of cartridges. I put them to work, sir. They’re out the backside of this place, figuring out how to shoot rebels. Sir, there’s a passel of rebs in a thicket of woods out that way. They’re in good cover, taking shots at our boys. Most annoying, sir. With your permission, sir, I’d like to rally these men and make a charge. They keep telling me they want to be soldiers. I figure, maybe we should let ’em. We can clean out those woods, give us some relief.”

Sherman saw youth, blind enthusiasm, knew that James had never been in any kind of fight before.

“You may do so, Lieutenant, but only if the enemy appears to be drawing closer. But take good care. Our enemy outnumbers us by a good measure. The best time to strike is when they aren’t expecting it. They line up in a formation for advance, strike them before they can prepare. Then you may make your sally.”

“Thank you, sir!”

The young man hurried away, and Sherman smiled at his enthusiasm, thought, Yes, cooks and nursemaids had better know how to fight the enemy. Right now, we don’t have much else to offer. He faced forward again, saw men watching him, dirty faces, blackened eyes. Sherman fought through the overwhelming smell of the powder, felt a hard thump, close behind, then more, saw shattering timbers, the impact of solid shot. Men were staggering back, sprayed with splinters
from their own protection, one man down, bloody face, pulled away quickly, others stepping forward, manning a smoking breach in the wall, muskets up, answering. Sherman stood in the center of the compound, had nowhere else to go, could hear the artillery shells coming in pairs, thought, One battery to our front. They’ll be more to the flanks. And we have … none. Damn! Where’s the Fourth Division? At least, their artillery teams could be moving up quick. I assume they know the meaning of
urgent
.

The smoke rolled through the stockade, thick white, stinking sulfur from the musket fire, and Sherman fought to breathe, the men around him dropping down, kneeling, finding their wind. The artillery shells whistled overhead, impacts behind the stockade, and Sherman could see them, thumping into the timbers from above, more splitting logs to his front. But the solid shot was small, a single round ball rolling past him on the ground, spent, useless. He stared at that for a long second, thought, Two inch? That’s what they’ve got? Surely there’re bigger pieces moving into position. These logs won’t hold up under too much more.

The men were mostly silent, the muskets moving back and forth, fired, reloaded, then fired again. But the rebels were close, close enough so Sherman could hear the screams, the orders, pieces of the rebel yell. He held his ground, motionless, felt his hands starting to shake, the cold in his chest, shouted out inside himself. The feeling was raw, fresh, the horror of collapse, of panic, desperate flight to safety. It had happened at Bull Run, had nearly happened at Shiloh. But that was long past, too many good fights since. He closed his eyes, cursing hard to himself, pulling himself out of that awful place, those terrible days, those fights when the enemy was too good, too fast, too strong. Or, like now, too many. He opened his eyes, the smoke thick around him, flashes of fire, the muskets inside the stockade still answering, the men still fighting back. He felt utterly powerless, no orders to give, the men fighting for survival, all of them knowing that if the rebels got inside, it was over. He thought of his guard, the battalion of regulars keeping up their fight outside the protection of the timber. Barely more than two hundred men, but they were professionals, men willing to die rather than surrender. They’ll give the rebels all they have, he thought. It might not be
enough. Movement caught his eye, Anthony again, still up high, shouting orders, rallying his men, and Sherman thought of the young Captain Smith, outside, knew he would be doing the same.

More artillery came in, piercing the timbers, and now a single whistle, high scream of the iron, and the ground to one side erupted in a fiery blast, the magazine underground seeming to rise up in a single surge. He felt the shock of that, the ground shivering beneath him, more men down to that side, his brain focusing, the magazine. They hit the damn magazine! He saw fire, but not much, the rebel artillery still only the small-bore solid shot. Thank God for that, he thought. A twelve-pounder might have blasted us all to pieces. The iron blew through the timbers in front of him, another volley from the rebel battery, one man screaming, shredded by the splinters, direct hit from the iron ball, blood on dirty blue. Sherman tried not to see that, his mind still clinging to the thought of the good men, one in particular, the young captain Smith, always the smile, until that one day, a week ago, the shock of the man’s unsheathed grief, the flood of tears. And Willie would have been with me, Sherman thought. On the train. He would have been … 
here
. Nine years old.

The thought of his son in this place made him shudder, and he shoved that away, forced himself to look again at the men still making the strong fight, trading volleys with more rebels than they had ever seen, smoke and fire, screams and curses, orders flowing out from their officers, the men with pistols raised. Sherman stood alone, silent, still, the war raging inside of him, panic and terror and furious hatred for the men outside, the rebel cavalry, their haphazard raid now billowing up into a full-blown battle. Through it all, one image pushed through, forced itself into his brain.
Thank God my son is not here
.

The fight lasted for nearly four hours, Sherman’s men holding off a force close to five times their own. With the afternoon passing, the sun starting to set, the rebels began to pull away. The men from Indiana were as surprised as the regulars, watching as the dismounted cavalry returned to their horses, pulling back into formation, then simply riding away. Most expected a return, that the
rebels were just regrouping, taking stock, refilling ammunition boxes. At first Sherman had agreed with the men around him, that it could not just … end. Surely, he had thought, the rebels would know they had the numbers, the maneuverability, that if they kept up the assault, the Federal troops would eventually have to surrender. But the rebels didn’t return, had done what good cavalry does, had simply melted away. For their trouble, and their losses in men, the rebels had succeeded in capturing a few wagons and damaging the train, their artillery putting a scattering of holes through the engine, a portion of the train put to the torch. Sherman had made his own appraisal of the train’s engine, too many holes to repair, had sent a wire back to Memphis for a replacement, assurances already coming back to him that the new machine was on its way, that there would be no delay in his journey beyond this one day.

The greatest loss besides the casualties to the men was in horses, including Sherman’s own. But one casualty in particular punched him, and he lowered his head, had seen the young Lieutenant James, the man and his impetuously ridiculous charge, leading men who had no business in a fight at all. Amazingly, James had done the job, had cleared the patch of woods, the rebels choosing retreat rather than engaging what Sherman had to believe was a motley assortment of overweight old men, with one deranged boy at their head. But none of that mattered now. Sherman saw the stretcher, the bearers hauling it into the stockade, calling to Sherman, James with a splatter of blood on his chest. They took him away, the doctor offering Sherman a hint of optimism that the wound was not mortal. But Sherman had seen those kinds of wounds before, knew that a musket ball did terrible things inside a man’s chest. He thought, I told him to go. If I hadn’t, he might have gone anyway. There was too much happening, too many dangerous places. The stupidity of the very young. That thought dug at him, stirred up an angry response. No, it isn’t like that at all. I can’t lead every charge, every attack. It’s their job, and if they happen to be young, it’s just … how it is. They’re volunteers, after all. Stop treating them like they’re being punished for something. The only punishment comes to the generals, when they fail to do the job. He looked to the soldiers inside the stockade, the Indiana men working to make some use of the broken timbers, gathering ammunition,
preparing for what might still come. He saw Anthony, issuing orders, the man’s staff attentive, spreading out as he instructed them. That’s what makes up for youth, he thought. Leadership. Anthony did a hell of a good job here. We might have been wiped out. Maybe should have been. These … boys learned something today, something about themselves. If they had any doubts, they know now that they’re soldiers. Lieutenant James … he learned that his place was close to me, not out leading some fool attack.

He stood up high in the wooden stockade, looked beyond the walls, where men in blue moved out through the field, along the tracks, gathering up the wounded, picking up muskets, scavenging for anything still usable. Their own wounded had been gathered up inside the fort, the doctors from Indiana doing their work, the cries of the men sifting through the calm. His own staff did their work as well, the telegraph wire singing again, a different message going back to Memphis, Sherman’s brief report to Grant, nervous staff officers relating his version of the fight, what he knew had been an amazingly close call.

Sherman heard a voice, one of his aides, the man pointing to the west down the tracks. Sherman looked that way, could see horses, flags, the lead elements of his Fourth Division. He understood now. That’s why the rebels scattered out of here, he thought. They knew help was coming, and they were about to have a fair fight.

He didn’t know James Chalmers, knew only that a general officer who rode under Nathan Bedford Forrest could be expected to show a stubbornness that would usually bring victories. Sherman stood with his hands on his hips, fixed his gaze far behind the train. He could hear a hint of drums now, the column closing in, men moving with quick steps, expecting a fight, expecting to be heroes. Not today, he thought. There’ll be time for that, sure enough. He looked out toward the trampled cornfield, thought of the rebels, of James Chalmers. If your scouts told you reinforcements were coming, then you did exactly what I’d figured you to do: Get the hell out of here. But I know one thing you don’t, and I hope like hell that one day I have the chance to meet you face-to-face, so I can tell you exactly what you missed here, maybe the best opportunity you’ll ever have. If you’d have known, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to leave just
because you might have gotten your nose bloodied. Sherman smiled through gritted teeth, stared at the darkening horizon. You had no idea who was standing in the middle of this pile of timber. No idea at all. If you knew, you’d have poured every artillery shell you had into this stockade, sent every carbine and every saber you had … right here. Well, old fellow, you rebel son of a bitch … maybe next time.

The train left Richmond on October 6, its most prominent passenger bearing a sheaf of letters from the men he had charged with winning this war. The journey was one of necessity, a crisis of command. He believed he had chosen his generals on their merits, and the whispers around him in the capital had been mostly ignored, how too many of the commanders kept their posts only because he favored them, their friendship and loyalty a far more valuable asset than good strategic skills. The most notable exception thus far had been Robert E. Lee. Davis wasn’t ever sure of Lee’s feelings, the man keeping them mostly to himself, but that really didn’t matter to Davis. That train ran on a single track. From the earliest days of the war, Davis had suffered his critics, the men who blamed him for the failings of men like Albert Sidney Johnston, or even Lee himself. The loudest outcries yet had come in the aftermath of the fall of Vicksburg, when another Davis acolyte, John C. Pemberton, was widely blamed for a collapse of command that even Davis couldn’t ignore. Pemberton was now on Davis’s informal staff, and accompanied him on this journey westward. Everyone in Richmond knew
that Pemberton ached for another command, and that Davis was sliding through the Confederate hierarchy trying to find him one.

Davis had seen the belligerence toward Bragg in the Richmond newspapers, and more recently, had received the letters from the generals themselves, primarily Polk and Longstreet, who echoed what too many of the other commanders in Tennessee were spouting out, lengthy pleadings with Davis that he order Robert E. Lee to travel west, that Lee might be the only man in the Confederacy to carry the army to victory in Tennessee. Davis had approached Lee, feeling out Lee’s thoughts on the matter, but Lee had been adamant. His place was with the Army of Northern Virginia, a battered and bloodied force still reeling from the disaster at Gettysburg. Davis hadn’t tried to persuade Lee to go to Tennessee, knew as well as Lee did that the army closest to the northern borders near the large cities had to be rebuilt. The Federal congress was gleefully expectant that their armies, so victorious during the summer, would once again resume their drive into Southern territory, with yet another eye toward Richmond. Davis accepted Lee’s reasoning for remaining in Virginia, tried his best to ignore the chatter from those who did not understand, as he did, how best to manage this war. But the tide of hostility toward Braxton Bragg had gone far beyond what Davis had ever expected. Bragg could be difficult, had certainly made enemies, especially with his penchant for military discipline. Davis had no problem with that at all. Bragg had risen well under Albert Sidney Johnston, had been used effectively by Johnston to mold an effective fighting army out of a rabble of undisciplined volunteers. But the voices against Bragg had turned far more ugly. The complaints were no longer aimed at the man’s harsh treatment of the men. Now the focus was on Bragg’s lack of leadership, lack of action, failures to follow up successes in the field. For an army desperate for victories, a passive leader was utterly unacceptable. Davis found it hard to fathom that Bragg would have fallen into that kind of lethargy, believed instinctively that men of ambition were seeking to push Bragg aside, serving their own cause. He suspected that of Longstreet, certainly. Longstreet was no better at making friends than Bragg, and there had been talk around Richmond that Longstreet’s failures had been the army’s failures at Gettysburg. Davis had to abide by Lee’s view on
that, Lee of course doing the honorable thing, accepting blame himself. Bragg had done the same after the defeats in Kentucky and central Tennessee earlier that year, suggesting that if his generals had lost confidence in his command, Davis should replace him. Davis had rejected that out of hand, as he had rejected Lee’s offer to stand down. In Davis’s mind, there was simply no one more qualified to replace either man. There were experienced generals of course, Joe Johnston and Pierre Beauregard in particular, men who outranked Bragg. But Davis had dismissed them from his thoughts at every turn. He knew, as did everyone else, that neither of those men respected Davis, or regarded their president with the kind of loyalty Davis believed was his due. If they would not show proper deference to him, he certainly wouldn’t reward them with a significant command.