"They live here."
"Ah. I brought you these," he said, handing her a bouquet of violets
wrapped in a government document. "They're done up in the Legal Tender
Act."
"You're thoughtful, Mr. Hay."
"If you'll be legal, I'll be tender."
"Now you're out of prepared remarks."
"True. From here on, I'm on my own. Did that moment really happen after
the ball?"
Kate Chase knew she was going to enjoy the evening. Mainly on impulse,
only partly with calculation, on the night of the ball, a freakishly warm
winter evening, she had accepted his invitation to a stroll in the small garden
behind the President's house and told him he was an exciting man and kissed
him. That was not the sort of thing she usually did, but John Hay was a man
not quite a man; a youth, reallyquite different from the men who es-
corted her or trailed after her. He was a poet who traipsed through tropes, as
he put it, at the center of power. She liked the way he asserted, rather than
admitted, his pretensions as a poet. He was also a fountain of good conversa-
tion, a source of inside information, and a channel to the mind of her father's
present superior but ultimate adversary. Time flirting with this young man
was not wasted.
And he was attractive. Roscoe Conkling, the Congressman from New York,
was a package of ambition and purposefulness who wanted too much from
her; Governor Sprague had all the money she would ever need, spoiled her
outrageously, followed her around like a puppy, and ran out of things to say;
Lord Lyons never ran out of things to say, stimulated her mind elegantly, but
was nobody to dare anything with. Those men were her father's contemporar-
ies; Hay was the only young man she found to stir more than one interest. She
tried to think of him as a useful diversion, but John was more than a little
diverting.
After their intimate dinner, over coffee, she said, "Now all the girls you
dazzle at Counselor Earnes's parties get to this moment and say, 'Tell me
about Mr. Lincoln. What is he really like?' What do you tell them?"
"As cunning as Seward, as incorruptible as Stanton, as honorable as Chase,
as wily as Weed, as funny as Petroleum V. Nasby"
"Honorable?" The comparison with Chase was the interesting one to her.
It was curious that John should pick that one trait, perhaps playing the
innocent, using the word "honorable" maliciously, as Marc Antony had
about Brutus. Why not "wise" or "efficient" or "ambitious"? Did he suspect
the beginnings of the radical move within the party to replace Lincoln?
"Nothing wrong with honor," he said. "I think of your father as laden with
probity. Reverent. Self-disciplined, principled . . ." She waited. ". . . a lit-
tle on the stuffy side, which hurts him with the voters, but a great appointed
official."
"He won his race for governor." She wanted to kick herself for being on
the defensive. "Why do you worship Lincoln so?"
"I revere him," said the young man lightly. "Worship is not the word.
Worship is the word for the way men, especially older men, feel about you."
She would not let him turn the conversation back to her. "What makes you
revere him?"
"He's a poet, like me, only better than I am. That surprises you? Good, I
enjoy surprising you, Kate Chase. So few of your wide coterie do."
Oh, this young man was good at ending his statements with an arrow
pointing to a discussion of one's weaknesses. "Lincoln a poet?" she scoffed.
"Come, now."
"Not the way he thinks," he admitted. "He thinks poetry is 'Why Should
the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?' God, if I hear that gloomy, sentimental pap
once more, I may regurgitate all over his carpet slippers. Nor is it Shake-
spearehe does a pretty fair Maebeth seeing Banquo's ghost. No, Lincoln's
poetry is imagery. He talks in phrases that call up pictures."
She gave him her skeptical look.
"The other day, when McClellan asked for more troops again," he ex-
plained, "the Tycoon said that sending men to McClellan was like trying to
shovel fleas across the floor: a lot of them get lost on the way."
"That's poetry?"
"Of course. Metaphor; most specifically, simile. It's as if I were to equate
your eyes or your hair to something in nature."
"Not fleas, I hope."
"Not limpid pools,' either. Nothing is trite about you, and you're like me
you have a lust for originality." He looked at her directly, saying nothing
for a moment, thinking, she assumed, of an appropriate simile. Sure enough,
he said, "Your eyes flash bright and cold, like icicles in the sun."
He impressed her with that, and she did not try to hide it. Bright and cold
was the way she tried to appear, and the way she feared she might really turn
out to be. She thought about his figure of speech for a moment, then asked,
"What happens to an icicle in the sun?"
"It melts."
Time to break the contact off. "I'd like to take a walk in the fresh air."
"It's a lovely night," he agreed. "Except for a little freezing rain, which is
hardening the mud underfoot. We could pretend there are stars in the sky. Do
you have galoshes?"
"What I really mean is, I'd like to take you to my room." She had not
meant to say that but was glad it was out. She wanted to hold him close, and
needed also to shut him up. He had the good grace to follow her upstairs in
silence.
She closed the door behind them. The gas lamp on the street outside was
the only illumination, and they let their eyes become accustomed to the dark-
ness in the room.
Her young man stood in silence, not knowing what to do next. She gently
pushed him into a chair and sat across from him on the edge of the bed. Kate
had been planning this interlude of intimacy all day, but she had not known
how she would feel. She had taken men to her room before for moments of
almost-abandonmentexperienced men, aroused but never out of control
who had shown her how to satisfy their desires by hand, without risking the
dangers of a loss of virginity. She liked to play at passion, to feel their hands
explore her, but knew where to draw the line; she would never let the possibil-
ity of pregnancy endanger her future.
But never had she teased a man of her own age in this room in this house,
and never felt such a yearning to open herself completely. For all John's
pretenses of experience, and his reputation with the young ladies, and the
availability of local prostitutes, she could not be sure that he was not a virgin
himself.
"Something is troubling you, Kate."
She changed her mind. "I want to hold you and kiss you, John Hay," she
said. "That's all. Will you understand?" She slipped out of her dress; still
covered neck to knee with underclothes, she sat on his lap. He was hard,
which pleased her, but he did not put her hand on him and she would not
make the first advance. Innocent sparking would suffice; if their time to love
ever came, she did not want him to think of her as wanton or brazen.
He smelled youngno tobacco, no liquor, good teeth. "Legal tender," she
whispered, and they kissed for a long time. He was surprisingly gentle and
did not grope at her. When he grew up, she decided, he would be quite a man.
"You can touch me, if it pleases you," she said, and he obediently put his
hand on her breast. "I don't have much of a bosom. Always envied women
like Anna Carroll or Rose Greenhow, even Mary Lincoln."
He exhaled. "You just went past three very different women, each of whom
would dearly love to be as beautiful and as young as you."
"Not Anna. Do you suppose she's interested in my father?" She noted he
was concentrating on cupping her breast and did not hear the question. "I
think she is. They have a lot to talk about, the way we do. That's important. I
can't let her get close to him," she said, going on more than she usually did.
"He needs to focus all his energies on being a great man. We're a team, my
father and 1."
"Can you be on more than one team at a time?"
"No," she said firmly, and softened it to "not likely. We're too much
alike." She kissed him long and hard on the mouth, darting her tongue be-
tween his lips, and then quickly moved off his lap, pushing him back in the
chair, sitting on the edge of the bed again. "By that I mean we both want to
go to the top. You want to be1 don't know, a senator or Cabinet member
one day, maybe a poet besides. I want to be the most important woman in the
country. We can't do that together. You and I can watch each other, and help
each other, but we have to go our own way."
"You've thought about this too much," he said. "Remember how you feel.
Don't deny your feelings."
"I don't, that's why we're here."
"We can't go to my place," he said mournfully; "the President lives there."
She laughed. "We'll continue to be acquaintances in public, and we'll see
each other like this in private, and after a while it may be difficult for me to
want to stop you. But I trust you to remember, John, we go our own way. We
pledge each other nothing." She had not meant to be this honest with him,
but she could not help herself. She trusted in him not to believe her.
He rose, took her in his arms, and held her tightly for a long moment. She
responded, safe in the farewell embrace, with pressure of her thighs against
him.
"You're a bit too tall," he observed. He was right; she slipped out of her
shoes instantly and they were exactly the same height. "Major Garfield says
you have a pug nose, and he's wrong. You have a nice nose."
He kissed her again, toe to toe, hip to hip, mouth to mouth, perfect fit. She
was certain she could make love to him beautifully, better than with anyone
else she knew, experienced men like Conkling and Garfield or fumblers like
Sprague.
"The important thing to have is a kindred soul in an alien world," he said,
in a more serious tone. "Strangers are everywhere. Don't foreclose the future,
Kate." He was mistaken; he would be hurt. She had warned him.
She pulled away, slipped on her unrumpled dress, and led him out of the
bedroom. She liked the way his face was flushed and knew she looked at least
as excited.
After she sent him out into the freezing rain in his galoshes, Kate looked at
herself in the hallway mirror with some satisfaction. The violets in the Legal
Tender Act were lying on the table, and she arranged them in a small vase;
her father would like the thought. She turned her head to fix her hair, catch-
ing what she could of her profile out of the corner of her eye. Garfield was
right about the pug nose, but some men found it attractive.

CHAPTER 10
THE FAMILY LINE
"The important thing in life is to know who you're for," Francis P. Blair
instructed his sons and daughter, gathered in conclave at the estate in Silver
Spring. "Right now we're for McClellan. That's because we're about the only
ones around who are loyal to Lincoln."
Frank, whose mustache his father thought was getting out of hand,
frowned at the seeming anomaly. "But Lincoln is always complaining about
McClellan. Says he's got the slows. Took away his title of General-in-Chief
and let him read about it in the newspapers. I don't think they're close,
Father."
"That's for public consumption," said Monty, supporting the elder Biair's
viewpoint. "In the Cabinet meetings, Lincoln backs up McClellan most of the
time. Chase and Stanton are out to stab him in the back, and Welles and Bates
are leaning their way. Only Lincoln remembers it was McClellan who saved
the army after Bull Run."
"Make no mistake," the old man told Frank, who had had trouble grasping
the finer points of political machinations since he was a boy, "McClellan is
not personally loyal to Lincoln, the way we are. He wants to set up for
himselfas dictator maybe, or surely as Democratic candidate in sixty-four."
"If Stanton doesn't beat him to that," Monty put in.
Lizzie waved that off. "Stanton couldn't get elected assistant paymaster,"
she pointed out, as her father nodded vigorously. "Chase is the one fixing to
grab the Republican nomination away from Lincoln, with the help of Horace
Greeley. But right now, McClellan is useful to Lincoln because he's the only
general the President has got that the army will follow. And Lincoln must
know that the radicals out to get McClellan are also out to get Lincoln."
"He knows, all right," added her father. "I told him."
Frank, frowning, thought about that. "Why are the Biairs for Lincoln?"
The elder Blair started to express his exasperation and then reminded him-
self that what Frank lacked in political sagacity, he made up for in personal
likability. He was the only likable Blair, the only one with voter appeal,
except for daughter Lizzie, but a woman was not electable to anything.
"Good question, son. We're for Lincoln, first, because he's for us and he's
shown it. And second, because he knows what is best for the country. The
time is comingJefferson foresaw this, and I could never get Jackson to see it
when the extermination or deportation of the African race from among us
will be inevitable."
"Don't say deportation, Father," Lizzie cautioned. "We say colonization."
"She's right." Monty sounded judicial. " 'Colonization' implies that it is
voluntary. You cannot deport four million people against their will."
"Of course not. Stop trying to teach an old man how to suck eggs." The
elder Blair respected his older son's judgment, and was glad he had been able
to place him in the Cabinet, protecting family interests, but "the Judge"
tended to forget who had taught him all he knew. "It's Lincoln's plan, which
I've been helping him work out for the past year, to buy back the slaves from
their owners. Then, when they see how horrible the caste system will be here,
with whites treating blacks like dirt, the Africans will want to find a congenial
place to go. Liberia, maybe, but most won't want to go back to Africa. Haiti
is betterhot climate, not far away. Best of all, Panama. Vast deposits of
coal."
"Here comes the vision," Lizzie smiled at him. He would take that irrever-
ence from her.
"The blacks could be the advance agents of American empire," he de-
claimed, largely for Frank's benefit. "The Southerners, not the firebrands but
cousin John Breckinridge and the smart ones, know all about the importance
of Central America. They'll take it over if the South wins this warand so
should we when we do. It's my plan to populate Central America with our
four million blacks, speaking English, not Spanish, and friendly to usde-
pendent on us, in a lot of ways. We'll do in Central America and the Carib-
bean what the British have done in India. The colored race will be happy
down there, and we'll have far more power in the world."
"They're not going to want to go," said Frank. "They like it here. It's hot
as hell down there, snakes, jungles"
"They will prefer colonization soon enough," the elder Blair said with
confidence. "Look at the irreconcilable castes in Spainthe Spaniards and
the Moors are an abhorrent mixture in the same peninsula. Mixing does not
work, and slavery is a vicious institution that imbues a brother's hand in a
brother's blood. That means we have to find a good place for negroes to go."
He strove to make it simple, easy to remember. "Compensation, followed by
colonization, that's the ticketan end to slavery and an end to the caste
problem. Buy 'em up and ship 'em out."
Frank, hungry as always, cut a piece of cheese from the elegant service
before them and looked up at his brother Monty. "How did your get-together
in the President's office with the border state Congressmen go? They tell me it
was a flop."
"Frank is right about that, Father. I turned out all the men from Kentucky
and Maryland who could respond to Lincoln's compensation offer. The Presi-
dent argued with them, reasoned with them, finally beseeched them. I never
saw him work so hard on a delegation."
"And they turned him down flat," said Frank. "Nobody in the loyal slave
states wants to sell slaves. If the North wins, the value of slaves in the border
states will go up, and if the South wins, the notes of the federal government
paying for the slaves will be worthless. So the slave owners loyal to the Union
are sitting tight and shouting down the abolitionists. Wade and Stevens and
the rest of the radicals make a lot of noise, but the sentiment of the majority
in Congress is against abolition. I knowI'm right there on the floor every
day."
"Damn fools," said old Blair. "They'll wind up without their money and
without their slaves."
"If compensated emancipation is such a losing proposition, Father," said
Lizzie, "why are you and Lincoln pressing it so hard? According to Monty,
the President was begging them to accept. He could get turned downhumil-
iated, even. And you always used to say, when you know you can't win, back
off before you lose."
Blair smiled cannily. At least, after he died, his brain would go on calculat-
ing and conniving inside her skull. "Lays the groundwork. The President
made them the offer in good faith, it's their choice. Later on, the border states
won't be able to blame Lincoln if all the slaves are freed by amendment. Next
step is emancipation here in the District."
"Henry Wilson's bill. I'm for it, right?" Frank, who alternated between
serving in Congress and serving as an officer in the field, when he wasn't in
jail for insubordination, had a grasp on the voting basics. The old man nod-
ded, yes.
Which reminded the elder Blair; he took his watch out of his pocket and
consulted it. "I'm expecting Miss Carroll in a few minutes," he announced.
"She turned out to be right about that Tennessee River plan of hers, contrary
to what you thought, Monty. The Donelson victory is the only thing that's
given the banks confidence in the new greenbacks. She knows her railroads,
something most generals don't seem to understand." He did not add that she
was on his payroll; some things the boys did not need to know. She did good
writing work cheaply and he liked her. "Montgomery, what have you been
doing, besides failing to deliver the border states to their own salvation?"
"The Post Office department is turning around," reported his elder son
with some pride. "Lost six million dollars last year, should break even next
year. And that's without collecting anything from the receiver of letters."
"You're on the lockout for fraud?" the old man said sharply. The enemies
of the Biairs would like to find some small thievery to blacken the family
name.
"We're using a new indelible ink on cancellation to cut out the fraudulent
reuse of stamps," Monty assured him, "and I've started a money order sys-
tem to stop the theft of money in the mail. Here's the exciting part: we're
sorting the mail on the railroad cars on its way to delivery. Saves two days,
and"
The elder Blair shrugged all that off and let his natural testiness show. "It's
nice that you're running the department, but you're in Lincoln's Cabinet for
bigger things than delivering the damn mail."
"It's a big job in itself, Father," Monty protested, and then shut up. The
elder Blair wished his older son would understand that Postmasters General
were not supposed to fuss with the mail; if that became their job, they would
lose Cabinet rank.
"Think first about winning the war and getting Frank, here, elected Presi-
dent," the old man told him. "And about helping Lincoln in that snakepit of
a Cabinet."
"Sometimes I wish Lincoln were more like your old friend Jackson," said
Frank, who liked things clear and direct.
"Not the time for a Jackson," snapped his father, "time for a Lincoln. Man
who can get together a group of men who all think they're his betters and
make them work for him. Man who can accept insults without rancor, tack
this way and that because he knows his destination."
He looked hard at his younger son, who knew it was a test.
"And that destination is"Frank took a guess"abolition?"
"No, dammit! Get it through your thick skull that it's Union, Union,
Union. Slavery is a side issue, Frankif abolition helps him, he'll use it; if it
binders him, he won't!"
"Try not to get too excited, Father," said Lizzie. "Frank needs to know
when that train is going to leave the station, so he can be in position to jump
on. If he jumps too soon, he'll never be President."
The elder Blair stomped around the room and sat down. He took a few
deep breaths. If only Lizzie were a man. He explained patiently: "Learn from
Lincoln, who never gets too far ahead of public sentiment. He knows he can't
do a thing about slavery in the loyal statesit would take a constitutional
amendment to take away a loyal citizen's property. Abolition can be used as a
device to hurt the traitors, Frank, and to satisfy the Northern radicalsbut
never anything to make some sort of moral crusade out of in the border
states, where national elections are won."
"So do we ever become abolitionists?"
"Not soon," said his father. "Never say a word in favor of slavery, Frank,
but don't join up with the radicals. They're against us and for Fr6mont, and
now Chase. That crowd hates us, always will. That's why the Biairs are for
McClellanhe'll make it possible for Lincoln to reunite this country."
The elder Blair walked out to his gardens, one of the beauties of Silver
Spring. Now that March was here and summer approached, Lincoln would
begin to spend weekends at the Soldiers' Home, on high ground west of the
Mansion, and would visit the Biairs more often. The President, the old man
knew, liked to handle the fine books in the library and to partake of the
delicious breakfasts on the terrace and the sense of gracious solitude of the
grounds of the Blair estate. Silver Spring was a good place for reflection, and
the solidity and grace of his physical establishment counted for something in
Biair's influence with this and other presidents.
The old man plucked a few rose blooms from the top of their stems until he
had a handful of colors, and returned to the house to float them in a silvel
dish. His wife liked to see that when she came in from riding.

CHAPTER II
IN DURANCE VILE

Alexander Gardner was mystified. His boss, Mathew Brady, had been trying
to arrange to take a photograph of Rose O'Neal Greenhow in Old Capitol
Prison for months. Allan Pinkerton, the Secret Service chief who had made it
possible for photographers to pass through to the front lines of McClellan's
battles, such as they were, had resolutely refused permission for Brady to see
her. Obviously, with the Wild Rose still smuggling mail and messages out of
the tightest security the Union could contrive, Pinkerton wanted to block
further publicity for the figure that the Southern newspapers had so drama-
tized.
Yet when Gardner had mentioned to Charles Dana, the former Tribune
editor who was Stanton's new assistant, that he hoped to pose Mrs. Green-
how and her daughter, word came back the same day that he would be issued
a pass to Old Capitol Prison. That was an unexpected turn of fortune; it was
the first time Gardner had seen what a personal political connection could do
in business.
Brady would not like it. The assistant hurried about Brady's studio, getting
together the cameras and plates he would need inside the prison. Up to now,
all the connections had been Brady's; the famous photographer catered to the
celebrated, gave too many free sittings to the political great, and used those
associations to cadge passes to the scenes of war. Gardner, the inside man,
knew nobody; Brady saw to it that all the credit for photographs taken by
Gardner and the others went to the owner of the gallery, and nobody raised
his eyebrows in recognition when Gardner's name was mentioned. Only
Mathew Brady was to be famous. The Scotsman thought that was unfair; he
knew Brady could ill afford to pay a decent wage, since the gallery was not
making money, and the least the boss could do was to let recognition fall on
his fellow workers. He suspected that Brady did not want a competitor.
But now Alexander Gardner, who did not make friends easily, had a con-
nection to a man in power. Charles Dana was famous as a newspaper editor,
but Gardner had met him a dozen years before when both were young ideal-
ists trying to live by the socialist teachings of the Utopian Welshman Robert
Owen. Gardner had made two trips to America from his native Glasgow,
where Owens's dream first took hold, and brought over members of his work-
ingmen's reform party to found a settlement called Clydesdale, in Iowa, on
the Mississippi River.
The thought of the tragedy of Clydesdale made him rest the heavy plates
on a counter and lower his head. "Galloping consumption" had been the
name of the disease that crushed that community, the cause of the death of so
many of the sturdy Scot families that Gardner had accompanied to America.
Gardner had gone home to Scotland on his final round trip to gather up his
family and bring them with him to the American oasis of education and
opportunity, and instead had found death and devastation. He had hurried
them back to New York City and, using his knowledge of chemistry, had
applied for employment with Brady. The famous photographer looked at
Gardner's pictures of Iowa's Indians, questioned him about his knowledge of
bookkeeping, and hired him. Gardner set aside his dream of being a business-
man in a community interested in the welfare and education of all, and
became a photographer. He was not sorry; photography was not a good
business, but it was an interesting occupation.
Brady was out of the gallery and in the field, across the Potomac, leading
Tim O'Sullivan and Gardner's younger brother James in shooting the fortifi-
cations that the rebels had recently abandoned. Washington was agog about
the embarrassing discovery that some of those dread fortifications were
"Quaker guns"big logs set up to resemble cannonthat had fooled and
terrified the McClellan commanders for a year. That would make an eye-
popping picture, published as a woodcut in Harper's Weekly or Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper, and perhaps sour Brady's relations for a while with
Pinkerton, who had been taken in by the rebel trick. Gardner had to give his
boss credit: when a picture cried out to be made, Brady stopped at nothing to
make it.
His employer's absence, Dana's intercession, and Stanton's sudden ap-
proval gave Gardner the chance to enter the prison alone. Since Brady had
been getting credit in the magazines for all the pictures Gardner and the
other assistants were taking, the young Scot felt no twinge of conscience at
grabbing the opportunity; the name on the picture would be Brady's anyway.
Maybe, one day, he would ask for the copyright in lieu of salary; his time
would come. Gardner did not know quite how to tell Brady, but he had heard
from the President's junior secretary that Mr. Lincoln preferred the young
Scot's work to that of the famous photographer; Lincoln had taken to show-
ing up at the studio when Gardner, not Brady, was behind the lens.
He left Foons, the free black, in charge of the gallery with instructions to
clean out and straighten out the Indian headdresses and leather outfits stored
for their visits. Whenever the Indian chiefs came to Washington to meet with
the Great White Father, they tried to look like white men, in jackets and
pants, but Brady insisted they be photographed in full-feathered regalia be-
cause nobody would buy a picture of an Indian without feathers. It meant a
dozen outfits had to be kept on hand, which cluttered up the studio.
He drove the small wagon up to the Old Capitol alone. Gardner first
stopped to take an exterior view of the prison, a place of historic and photo-
graphic interest. Whitewash coated the lower floor, presumably to silhouette
anyone making furtive entry or exit. The upper two stories were dreary black,
windows heavily draped to prevent prisoners from signaling to passersby.
Gardner placed a wet colloidal negative in the camera) estimated a thirty-
second exposure in the strong early April daylight, and quickly removed the
slide that allowed light to spill onto the glass. That one exposure would have
to do; Brady rarely approved taking only one shot of any scene, but Gardner
wanted to save his negatives for his primary subject.
Waiting in the lobby of the prison for a Lieutenant Nelson to approve his
pass, amidst slovenly guards and a noisome atmosphere of filth and decrep-
itude, Gardner let his mind dwell on his personal dream: to leave Brady, the
showman-promoter-pioneer of photography, to start a business with his
brother James. Unlike Brady, who was obsessed with controlling the photo-
graphic coverage of the war, and kept talking of some grandiose mission to
record history and advance the art of photography, Gardner would have a
bookkeeper to collect his receivables and pay his bills. In a month or two he
could have enough business to hire Tim O'Sullivan, the assistant who was
probably the best picture taker of them all, and who also chafed under the
"Photo by Brady" credit on all his work.
Gardner shifted his foot to crush a roach marching near his bench. Of the
one thousand photographers working in the United States, Brady's name was
the only one widely known, and the nearsighted pioneer was evidently deter-
mined to dominate the field for as long as he lived. Gardner could not accept
that; he credited Brady with the vision to make photography a part of the
war, and not a mere collection of cartes de visite by the wealthy, but he would
not credit Brady with the pictures Alexander Gardner took. Not for long.
"The superintendent wants to see you," said a burly lieutenant. Equipment
in his arms, Gardner went into the office on the ground floor marked "Super-
intendent Wood."
"I don't know how you got this pass," said Wood, a short man hunched
over a desk, examining the War Department credential, "and I don't think it
is a good idea."
"Secretary Stanton signed it himself," Gardner said helpfully. He did not
know Stanton's reason either; it hardly seemed in the interests of the govern-
ment to permit photographs of this pesthole.
"She can do anything," Wood said, as if to himself. "She can arrange for
her own protectionwe found a loaded gun in her cell a week ago. She can
write a note and get a senator to visit herHenry Wilson was in here this
morning. And now she can get Stanton to turn this prison into a photography
studio."
"I'll only be an hour or so."
"God knows what's next. I have her in solitary confinement, with her
daughter, and you know what she did? She ripped up a plank in the closet
and has been handing the girl down to the rebel prisoners of war on the floor
below. They feed the kid because the captured soldiers have better food than
the prisoners of state."
"If you know about the closet, why don't you seal it up?"
The superintendent glared. "I'm not cruel, no matter what she tells you. It
means I have to search every one of those fellows every night to make sure
she's not slipping out messages that way. Her little girl is sick, too, but the
hifalutin Mrs. Greenhow won't let the prison doctor near her. Hates him,
calls him a poisoner, gets him all upset. 'The Wild Rose' is more trouble than
any dozen prisoners in this jail."
"Does she know I'm coming to her cell?" Gardner especially wanted her to
pose in the room in which she was confined, to show the contrast between her
surroundings as a queen of society and now.
"You're not getting near that floor. I'll clear the niggers out of the court-
yard, and you can do your work against a wall. Your wall's being washed
right now. You turn your camera on anything else and I'll arrest you as a spy
and you can spend the rest of the war taking pictures of Rose."
Gardner was taken through the lobby by the lieutenant, past a room with
triple-deck bunks cramming thirty people into a space for four, and noticed
the main activity of the inmates was tracking and burning vermin. He had not
been inside fifteen minutes and he wanted to take a bath.
"What are their crimes?" he asked mildly. Gardner was a reformer at
heart, and even now, his dream of a socialist settlement gone, he found time
to work with the philanthropist Amos Kendall in his school for the deaf,
dumb, and blind. He held no brief for traitors; still, there seemed to be many
more "prisoners of state" than he expected.
"Speaking out against the President," the lieutenant listed the farrago of
crimes, "publishing incitement to desertion. Suspicion of treason. Brokering
draft substitutions."
"Wasn't there an amnesty declared a month ago?"
The lieutenant smiled grimly. "Yeah, we had no room for any more, had to
clear a bunch out. But that's just Mr. Stanton getting rid of Mr. Seward's
arrests. He'll cram this place with his own before long. You know the Green-
how woman?"
"No, we've never met. I've been out in the field working for the army." The
photographer thought it was a good idea to reaffirm his loyalty.
"Impossible bitch. We gave her a few candles and some matches to burn a
few of the graybacks off her walls," said the lieutenant. "You know what she
did? The night the Merrimack was causing all that fuss, she took down the
window drape and burned a candle in the window. When a guard on the
street warned her he'd shoot it out, she lit all the candles at once, made a
bloody celebration, singing 'Dixie' and all. She had her door bolted and we
had to break it to blow out the damn candles."
Gardner liked the woman already. One of his photo subjects last month,
General John Dix, who had been Treasury Secretary under Buchanan, knew
Rose well and had described her to him: black hair, white skin, flashing dark
eyes, a look of hauteur or passion depending on her mood, and above all,
according to General Dix, a talent for beguilement. Powerful effect on men.
Gardner suspected that Dix had been one of her many lovers. Would such a
woman's qualities be capturable on film?
In the prison courtyard, he set up a chair with a headrest in back so that
she could hold a pose for thirty seconds without movement. The child would
be a problemkids were hard to hold stillbut he wanted her in the photo-
graph too. He got behind his camera, threw the cloth over his head, and
looked through the lens at the chair.
Behind him a woman's imperious voice said, "I would like to know why
Mr. Mathew Brady could not come himself."
Gardner turned to look at the ravaged remains of what might once have
been a handsome face. Rose Greenhow's eyes were haggard, skin pocked with
insect bites and gray-pale, the mouth set in a hard line. Her hair, obviously
unwashed but tied back tightly, was turning iron-gray. She was dressed in
mourning, as Gardner was told she always dressed, in memory of a baby
daughter who had died the year before; that recent loss was why, he sup-
posed, she could not part with her eight-year-old.
"I am Alexander Gardner, manager of the Brady gallery." He presented
his only credential: "I have photographed President Lincoln twice, at his
request."
"That's no recommendation," she said. "Have you photographed a gen-
tleman? Or a statesman?"
"General Scott?" No reaction. He thought fast. "Secretary Stanton?" He
racked his brains for a rebel. "Senator Breckinridge?"
Her face softened. "I saw the photograph that was John Breckinridge's
carte de visits. You did that? It said 'Photo by Brady.' "
"They all say that. I took the picture."
"General Breckinridge is a great man. Do you know where he is right
now?"
"In the Western theater, I understand, with General Sidney Johnston." He
had read that the traitor senator was on the run clear down to Alabama, and
that Halleck had reinstated Grant to go deep into the Southwest with General
Sherman to finish off what was left of the rebel army down there.
She nodded in approval, introduced her daughter, and took a seat in the
chair in front of the camera. He hoped it would not be insulting to offer her a
chance to improve her looks for history: "Here is a comb and hand mirror,
ma'am, if you want to straighten your daughter's hair just a bit."
She took the mirror, looked at herself, and put it down in pain. She sighed,
picked it up again, and did what she could with herself, then handed both to
her daughter. He explained the posing requirements and looked through the
lens. The white wall in the background was too bright; the cleanup squad had
done its job too well. He moved the chair over toward a window, which broke
up the background. As he was doing this, she asked idly if he had been
photographing in the field recently.
"Yes, only yesterday, just across the Potomac at Winchester."
"General McDowell? A nice fellow, if an incompetent. I knew him some
years ago"
"No, General Banks."
"McDowell wouldn't pose? He's usually so vain"
"He and his men are well past Manassas, ma'am. Brady's down there with
them."
"Your employer likes to be in the thick of action."
"The main action will be down in the Peninsula," he said, and then shut
up. He had been telling her the disposition of some of the Union forces, which
she might be able to put together with reports from incoming rebel prisoners.
He reminded himself she was a spy capable of getting information out of the
prison. He said, "Hold it nowbreathe deep, hold your breath while I count
to thirty, don't move an eyelash" He let the light into the aperture and
waited for the image to impress itself on the colloid. "One more," he said.
"Without the child."
"Don't hurry," she said. "This is the first time they've let us into the
courtyard. We haven't felt sunshine on our cheeks in over a month."
"That's terrible," he said. But was she telling the truth? He decided she
was; their pallid faces showed uninterrupted indoor incarceration.
"You're from Scotland?" Since his accent was unmistakable, Gardner fig-
ured it was safe to say yes. "I have many friends in England," Rose Green-
how chatted. "They're just waiting the proper moment to enter the war on
the side of the Confederacy. Have you photographed Lord Lyons, the British
Ambassador?"
"No."
"He told me he met with Mr. Seward one day, and the Yankee Secretary of
State said the most remarkable thing to him." In her dramatic voice, she
mimicked Seward: " 'My Lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand, and
order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the bell again, and order the
arrest of a citizen of New York. Can the Queen of England, in her dominions,
do as much?' "
Gardner had heard about that boast; the Peace Democrats had made much
of it months before, when they were trying to whip up sentiment against
arbitrary arrests. The photographer busied himself with his equipment, aware
he was under close scrutiny by the guards across the courtyard, but not
hurrying with the actual picture taking. He wanted to let the little girl and
her mother have as much fresh air as his visit allowed.
"Perhaps you are wondering," she said, "why I permit our picture to be
taken."
"Historical record," he offered.
"My purpose is to shame all my friends here in Washington, and my rela-
tives, too, who fear to visit or to help me. I know how I look, Mr. Gardner. I
used to be a famous beauty, and I am one no longer."
"We have artists who will touch up the negative," he assured her, not
knowing what to say. "We enhance the reality as a matter of course, much as
portrait painters emphasize the more positive"
"Let your camera tell the truth," she told him. "No artist's brush. Promise
me not to touch out a wrinkle of care, or to put a smile where there is a look
of hardship. I want people North and South to know what life is like in this
hellhole, how the proud and mighty Yankees can devote time and energy to
breaking the spirit of one woman. But they will never break me, Mr. Gard-
ner."
"Or me," added her daughter. Gardner had a son, fourteen, a sensitive boy
who did not want to look at the war pictures. He had a fleeting and depress-
ing thought about what life would be like with him in a rebel jail.
"The person who arranged for your pass," Rose Greenhow said, changing
the subject, "did he say anything about our release? Or about a trial?"
"No," Gardner said promptly. But why had the approval for the photo-
graph come through so suddenly? And through Stanton, not through Mc-
Clellan or Pinkerton? He suspected there could be a difference of opinion
between Stanton and McClellan about releasing the mother and daughter.
"To tell the truth, I've heard rumors of a trial. Maybe if you confessed and
signed a parole of honor, they'd release you to go South."
She set her mouth. "I would never give the tyrants that satisfaction. If
Stanton's man asks you, tell him that. In fact, tell him that whether he asks
you or not. Would you do that for us?"
That was none of his business. "Hold itbreathe deep, listen to my count
for thirty, press your head back against the rest" He let in the light. She
held her expression: dignity, determination, disdain, resignation, the faintest
touch of hope. He could hardly wait to get the plate into the wagon, back to
the gallery and into the darkroom.

CHAPTER 12
WHITE RABBITS
Lincoln rolled off the office couch and stood up. He had been allowing him-
self to think about the inevitability of this war, and that was never profitable.
Was this, as Seward had once said, an "irrepressible conflict," with great
subterranean strains and pressures building up for a century that necessitated
some terrible earthquake, or could a wise President have averted the war,
keeping the Union intact with compromises? He had not given the matter
deep thought at the time, when events led him to the decisions that had
seemed so painfully plain, but nowthousands of deaths later, with the kill-
ing just beginning in earnesthe found himself examining paths not taken.
But at a time that Union armies, East and West, were finally on the move,
such second-thinking was weakening, enthralling; he put all that out of his
mind and walked to the door.
His hand on the doorknob to his secretaries' room, Lincoln stopped; a
mental picture of Willie hanging on that doorknob, swinging the door open,
suddenly afflicted him. He shut his eyes and waited for the memory to shud-
der past. Through the oak door, he could hear the voices of Hay and Stod-
dard.
"The Hellcat is in a 'state of mind' about the steward's salary," Hay was
saying. "Her Satanic Majesty thinks she will blackguard me into giving her
the money, and I won't."
Lincoln winced, then smiled, at "Her Satanic Majesty." Hay had a nice
sense of exaggeration.
"Isn't that properly Nicolay's decision?" Stoddard asked.
"Nico is off to see the fair Therena back home," said Hay. Lincoln nodded
to himself; he had sent Nicolay west to check up on the rumors about Grant's
drinking and Halleck's desire to arrest him, and to test the local political
waters on the idea of using Treasury funds to buy up all the slaves. He did not
trust the opinions in the newspapers to accurately reflect the public senti-
ment. Apparently Nicolay had told nobody, not even his assistant, about his
mission; that was sensible. Lincoln loved Hay as he wished he could love his
son Robert, but he trusted Nicolay. He turned the doorknob noisily and
entered with his customary "What news?"
"Hill Lamon seems to be taking his title as marshal too seriously," Hay
said promptly. "Surprised us all by indicting Horace Greeley criminally for
libel. Says he's going to New York to arrest him and bring him to jail down
here."
Lincoln did not need that added burden. Ward Hill Lamon was not the
smartest of his old Illinois friends, but he was intensely loyal and a strong
physical presence to have around; accordingly, Lincoln had appointed him
U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, which paid the salary of the
President's bodyguard.
At Lincoln's pained expression, Hay said, "His best friends cannot per-
suade him to drop it. I triedhe's my cousinbut Hill says it's a point of
honor." Hill could be marvelously stubborn. Lincoln would have to pass
word to the judge that the President would not be offended if he threw out the
case.
"On top of that, sir," Stoddard added, "Secretary Stanton has arrested a
New York Tribune correspondent in the field, and he's tapping the wire of the
Tribune to see what other reports are being sent over the telegraph by report-
ers who learn too much about military movements."
Neither Hill Lamon, in his foolish pride, nor Edwin Stanton, in all his
fierce caginess, seemed to understand how much store Lincoln set in the
power of Uncle Horace. He would have to talk to Stanton about that; perhaps
it was a case of his new assistant, Dana, getting even with his old boss at the
Tribune. That harassment would have to stop; let an example be set with
other newspapers, not the Tribune.
Lincoln had just written a letter to Greeley saying he was in favor of urging
compensated emancipation "persuasively, not menacingly" upon the South.
It was not that he expected Greeley's support, or even the editor's acquies-
cence in keeping the focus of the war on preserving the Union rather than on
freeing the slaves. His object was to use Uncle Horace as a foil in assuring the
border states, and the conservative majority in his Republican Party, that A.
Lincoln had not suddenly become an abolitionist. If emancipation should
then be needed as a weapon, a military device, the world would know that
was his legitimate reason to break the compact on slavery made by the na-
tion's founders. If abolishment became needed to coerce the South or invigo-
rate the North, such an extreme action could best be taken by a President
who did not seem to want to free the slaves on moral or sentimental grounds.
The appearance of military necessity was central; reluctance rather than fer-
vor would have to be the posture. He would conceal his anti-slavery feelings.
He would have to argue with Greeley, gently and publicly, putting distance
between himself and Wade's radical crowd, but not an unbridgeable distance.
He might have to accede to some of the abolitionists' wishes one day, to serve
his own larger purpose. An approach to the molding of public sentiment
began to shape in his mind, making use of a respectful disagreement with
Greeley. First, this harassment of the Tribune with libel suits and threats of
arrest would have to be stopped.
"Stod, the President has had enough troubling news," Hay announced.
"Get the box."
At Hay's direction, Stoddard went over to the corner of the room and lifted
a large cardboard box with holes poked in it. The secretaries trooped into the
President's office and placed the box on the table with the maps.
Lincoln heard scurrying inside and lifted the lid. Two white rabbits, pink
noses twitching rapidly, looked at him in terror.
"Get Tad, quick," he told Stoddard. Grinning, he lifted the rabbits, one in
each hand, out of the box and set them on the floor. They scampered under
the desk. When Tad walked in, Lincoln told the boy to look for a present
somewhere in the room. In a moment, Tad had both white rabbits in his arms
and a look of sweet wonderment on his face. The secretaries left and the
President, his son, and the rabbits had a great romp.
That respite from care lasted until Stanton came in, and the rabbits almost
escaped between his legs. The Secretary of War stopped, looked, started to say
something, then clamped his mouth shut in disapproval. Lincoln was tempted
to put one of the rabbits in Stanton's arms, but held himself back; Mars might
drop the creature. He told Tad to put them in the box and wrote a quick note
to the sender: "Thank you in behalf of my little son for your present of White
Rabbits. He is very pleased with them." That was an understatement. He
wondered if they were a male and a female. At a nod, the boy lugged the big
box out of the office, to take them to his mother, who Lincoln hoped would
not be too surprised.
"Everybody thinks he's a great military strategist," said Stanton, bran-
dishing a copy of the Tribune. "Here's Greeley with one of his pompous
editorials, which he calls 'The Expected Blow.' "
"And where does Uncle Horace expect the blow?" Lincoln inquired.
"Not in the East, of course, where all the troops are and the action is. The
great military mind thinks we should be on our guard for a great secessionist
offensive in the West."
Lincoln frowned. Halleck and Grant had the rebel general, Sidney John-
ston, on the run in the West, pursuing the Tennessee River plan that Lincoln
had recommended. What was Greeley's cause for concern?
"A lot of alarmist talk," Stanton assured him. "I read the wires from the
Tribune man in the field who is with Grant's troops on the Tennessee River.
The correspondent foresees a new Bull Run disaster ahead, and that talk
could hamper our enlistments, especially in New York. I've censored the
dispatch, of course. Wish I could suppress the damned editorial."
Lincoln inquired whether Grant knew about the rumors.
"Of course, and it's the usual thing that frightens only generals like Mc-
Clellan." Stanton handed him a copy of a telegram from Grant near Pittsburg
Landing to Halleck at headquarters. Grant had wired: "I have scarcely the
faintest idea of an attack being made upon us, but will be prepared should
such a thing take place."
"Good man, Grant," said Stanton. "Steady, fearlessnot like the Little
Napoleon, seeing hordes of secesh behind every tree."
Lincoln knew that Stanton had countersigned McClellan's direction to
Halleck to arrest Grant if he resumed the habits that had caused him to quit
the army years before. That was the natural response of the army leadership
to one of its generalsin this case, Halleckwho needed support on a matter
of discipline in the field. Grant was a man Lincoln had heard was experienced
in personal failure, having once been reduced to selling firewood. McClellan,
on the contrary, was experienced in success, as manager of a large railroad.
Lincoln needed, above all, a man who would bring success to Union arms.
Caution, however, which was McClellan's hallmark, was not always the
route to success. "I hear he fights," was all he said to Stanton about Grant.
"Congress has passed the bill freeing the slaves in the District of Colum-
bia," Stanton said suddenly. "You'll sign it?"
"I understand it purchases the slaves from loyal citizens for no more than
three hundred dollars a head," he corrected the lawyer. "I want to think
about it." Wade had promised to pass a Joint Resolution first, putting forward
Lincoln's plan for gradual, compensated emancipation, which the radicals
hated to swallow.
"The Joint Resolution you asked about is on your desk," said John Hay,
reading his mind, "unless the rabbits ate it."
"Then I will sign the bill," Lincoln told Stanton. Senator Wade had been as
good as his word; with his conservative price met, the President allowed
himself to be drawn a radical step forward. He picked up a treaty, forcing his
attention toward an agreement with the Potowatomi Indians of Kansas, hop-
ing General McClellan would be bold and General Grant would be careful.

CHAPTER 13
THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT
"You're a political man, Breck, " said Sidney Johnston. "Did this war have to
happen? Could it have been avoided?"
On the eve of battle, the general liked to think large thoughts, of the sweeps
of history rather than the worries of the morrow. The notion of Henry V in
Shakespeare's play, walking incognito among his men before striking the
French at Agincourt, appealed to the Texan, but he chose instead to spend the
evening before the decisive battle jousting with the most political of his subor-
dinates.
"This is the most unnecessary war of the century," Breckinridge replied,
hunched forward on a cot in the tent, bourbon in hand. That was the reaction
Johnston expected from the disappointed peacemaker. Wrong, of course, but
challenging.
He had come to like Breckinridge more than any of his other commanders,
not because he was the best soldierHardee was more dependable, ran a
disciplined headquartersbut because the Kentuckian's mind, like his own,
delved into the roots of the war. Breck was the classic example of the right
man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hardee was stolid, "Bishop" Polk
too gregarious, Bragg a martinet subject to debilitating headaches, and Beau-
regard a temperamental tactician with no notion of grand designs. Pat
Clebume, the fierce and funny Irishman, was a talented general with the most
potential and, if the war dragged on, would be his candidate for commander
in the West when the time came for Johnston to step up to supreme com-
mand.
Breckinridge, though, was his choice for mutual rumination just before a
major event, and Johnston believed the attack at Pittsburg Landing would be
the turning point in the war. He thought of Breck as an honorable politician
with his fundaments eroded, through no fault of his owna good man who
had not slipped his moorings as much as one whose moorings had slipped
him. He worked hard, drank harder but not on duty, obeyed orders and
inspired his "Orphan Brigade" of homeless Kentuckians to resist the tempta-
tion to desert. Johnston counted him among those generals who was doing his
duty but not fulfilling himself in the warcaught up in neither the spirit of
the South's revolution nor the cause of his own advancement.
"Seward once called it 'an irrepressible conflict between opposing and en-
during forces,' " Breck went on, "and he was dead wrong. No reason these
sectional differences could not have been compromised, as they always were
by our forefathers. We were driven into this war by foolish, irrational, hot-
headed men."
"Lincoln's fault?"
"Partly. His speech a few years agothat the Union could not endure half
slave and half free, that it had to become all one or all the othertalk like
that helped bring on the war. But Lincoln wasn't the only one. It was the
fault of the whole blundering generation, Southerners definitely included."
The Texan drew him further on. "You don't think the issue of slavery was
that important, then."
"It became important, when demagoguesabolitionists and Republicans,
mainly, followed by the firebrand Southernerswhipped up the public into a
frenzy about it."
"Um. But one section thinks that slavery is immoral, cruel, un-Christian,
and the other thinks not," Johnston mused. "Pretty basic difference on a
matter that stirs emotions."
Breck rose and stood in the center of the tent, holding the pole, in an
attitude that Johnston assumed was a vestige of his Senate days. "That same
difference existed between Virginia and Massachusetts during the American
Revolution. Same difference in the Jackson days, when Calhoun nullified.
Same deep split later on, when we defeated the Wilmot Proviso and passed
the Missouri Compromise and worked out the Chittenden resolution. The
issue of slavery did not change, but the nature of the men who dealt with that
issue changed for the worse. Peaceful men were shunted aside, and the would-
be warriors took over."
"Issue wouldn't go away, though, would it? Kept coming back, getting
more divisive."
"That's where you're wrong," Breckinridge pounced. "Slavery was a dying
issue, because slavery had reached its natural limits. You can't raise cotton
profitably in the South without slavery, but you cannot grow cotton up North
or out West."
Johnston let himself be pushed back further. "The whole fight about the
extension of slavery into the territories, then, the subject of the Lincoln-
Douglas debates"
"All a false issue!" Breckinridge boomed. "Slavery, and cotton, had already
reached its natural frontier. Stephen Douglas was rightpopular sovereignty
would have killed slavery in the territories, because the West is free soil in its
nature. Slavery would have stayed in the South, and ultimately died there."
"Why?" He put out skirmishers. "My family had slaves, first in Kentucky,
then in Texas, pretty far west. Made good money for us."
"The institution of slavery ultimately must crumble in the South because it
is wrong and makes good people morally sick." Breckinridge appeared abso-
lutely certain of his position, and though a border state man, without any
doubt about his ability to read the mind of the South. "Forget all that senti-
mental pap in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the stories of torture that inflamed the
North. Sure, discipline is necessary sometimes, but nobody with any sense
really abuses his slaves, because you don't destroy your own property or
encourage it to run away. But the fact is, keeping people in slavery is wrong,
corrupting to the soul, no matter how well you treat them. Didn't you feel
guilty about having slaves?"
Johnston nodded yes, urging Breckinridge to commit the reserves of his
argument.
"Washington did, too, and Jefferson. Manumission was a growing move-
ment until all this happened, and public opinion was shifting against the
ownership of human beings, because the great majority of Southerners do not
own slaves. Our peculiar institution would have steadily disappeared if the
blunderers hadn't taken over, if the fanatics up North hadn't whipped up the
zealots down South."
"Let's assume you're right. Say that slavery would not have extended into
the West, and it would have died out in the South," Johnston posited. "Still,
that's a long time to wait. Four million people would be living in slavery for
at least two generations. That's a lot of broken families, a lot of whipping, a
lot of rape, a lot of misery, you must agree. Your preacher uncle would call it
a mountain of evil."
Breckinridge let go the center pole and leaned forward, resting his big
hands on his knees. "You don't think what we're going to do tomorrow is
evil? If all goes as you've planned it, we're going to send our boys into their
camp to stick our bayonets into sleeping Americans. You don't want merely
victory in the battle, you want the utter destruction of Grant's army, followed
by the annihilation a day later of Buell's army. How many deadtwenty,
thirty thousand?"
"That should do it," said Johnston coolly. It could come to that; war was
death.
"Multiply that a hundred times, to get an idea of the evil of this war. How
many dead will both sides count if this war drags onhalf a million men?
That's one dead soldier for every six slaves to be freed. Killing innocent
young men is evil, too, General. You not only snuff out their lives, but you
deny life to the children they would have had. You don't eradicate evil by
committing a greater evil."
Johnston admired the passion and conviction in his argument, and held up
his palm in a motion to sit down.
"I disagree. I do not see this war as the blunder of a generation of agitators,
as you do." The general, who considered himself more a man of decision than
of oratory, liked to make his points march in quiet order. "I do not think this
conflict could have been avoided by leaders of goodwill. Even if you Demo-
crats had not split in 1860 and John Breckinridge had been elected President,
this war would have come."
"I watched Buchanan try to keep the peace," Breckinridge broke in, "and
he did, though everything started to unravel toward the end. I would have
kept the nation together and let the slavery issue cool down, and the war fever
would have died. It's a damn tragedy we got Lincoln and war."
Johnston hoped to open the other man's mind a crack to another point of
view, perhaps to lessen his bitterness in having been denied a chance to save
his countrymen from their holocaust of lives. The general knew that his
friend Jeff Davis had in the back of his mind the appointment of Breckinridge
as his Secretary of War. The replacement of Judah Benjamin with the Ken-
tuckian who understood the vast military opportunity in the West would
make life in the field much more productive for Albert Sidney Johnston. If
Breck could be made to see the inevitability of the struggle, perhaps he would
find it a worthier cause for his unique political talent. As a general, Breckin-
ridge was offering the Confederacy his life, but was by no means giving his all.
"This is not, as you would have it, an accidental or unnecessary war, the
work of fanatics," Johnston observed. "Jeff Davis had it right: there has been
for a generation a persistent and organized system of hostile measures devised
by Northern Congressmen to strike down the tenure of property in slaves.
Breck, that amounts to thousands of millions of dollars. No people anywhere,
ever in history, voluntarily gave up near that value of property."
His companion, apparently remembering the decorum of floor debate, held
his fire.
"Your specific assumptions about the mind of the South are inaccurate,"
Johnston told him. "Manumission has been steadily decreasing, not increas-
ing, because slavery is more profitable than ever. The proof of that is easy:
you know that the price of slaves is rising."
"There are voices"
The general shook his head. "No Southern antislavery movement exists
that I know of, and nobody in the South is calling for making the rape of a
black woman a crime. And if you think the people of the South were led
unwilling into secession by a few noisy politicians, come to Texas. We're the
only state that held a referendum on that. The people voted three to one to
secede."
"You're saying that the divisions are deep-seated," the Kentuckian ac-
knowledged, "and I don't deny that. But these disagreements existed in 1830,
and in 1850, and we didn't start killing each other."
"Our people have grown apart in that time, from competing sections into
two opposing nations," Johnston answered. "Different customs, different
ways of doing business, and a wholly different idea about what is right and
wrong. The North has come to see the South as the world's last outpost of the
most degrading economic system invented, threatening free labor everywhere.
And the South, as we know, has come to see the North as aggressive and
domineering, the masters of capital seeking to plunder the tillers of the soil.
We see the abolition radicals demanding huge, wrenching changes in South-
ern society at no cost to them."
"It's only the leaders of each side who are convinced of their rectitude,"
Breckinridge argued, "and those blundering politicians cannot see how the
two economies complement each other. United, we can compete with the
world; divided, both sections will be exploited by the world. That's why the
British want us apart."
In danger of being outflanked, the general launched his central attack:
"More important, each side, each very different culture, is persuaded that the
other is in fundamental antagonism. It is much different from a generation
ago, or from Calhoun's time. You're quite mistaken, Breck, about this desire
to disengage being the product of a few rabble-rousers and newspaper editors.
The two peoples have grown apart, and one side or the other must dominate.
With two strong-minded male dogs in the same house, only one can be top
dog. That's the way of the world."
It was Johnston's turn to rise and hold the center pole. "If the South is not
to be subjugated, it must go its own way. In life, in war, in national destinies,
timing is everything, as you will see in battle tomorrow. A century ago, it was
natural and right for these colonies to separate from England; today, it has
become just as natural for these two sections that don't belong together to
separate again."
"Rather than plunge the country into war," Breckinridge said, "I was
prepared to accept that proposition. But Lincoln wouldn't hear of it."
"Of course not, neither would I," said Johnston, enjoying the look of puz-
zlement on his adversary's face. "To resist that separation is natural, too.
Lincoln is doing what I would do, refusing to recognize the natural division,
insisting that we fight for our freedom as Americans did a century ago. No
national leader worthy of his calling can stand by and watch the dismember-
ment of his country. War was inevitable, irrepressible. It was Lincoln's duty
to force the South to fight, and the South's duty to take up the challenge."
Breck held his ground. "It was his duty, back in the campaign, to run for
President in such a way as to be able to hold the country together without
war. He failed to do that."
General Johnston pressed his point: "These are great tides, huge and fun-
damental moral and economic forces, Senator Breckinridge,"he purposely
used the political, not the military, title"and there comes a time in a na-
tion's history when fundamental debate turns from the political forum to the
military field."
"I have heard that pernicious argument expressed another way, General,
by Mr. Lincoln. He says that if you have an elephant on a string and the
elephant wants to run, better let him run. He puts it more colorfully than you
do, but both of you are wrong. The elephant of destruction must be stopped
at any cost. War is never right, enormous bloodshed is never justified, unless a
nation is resisting invasion." Breck stopped, took a swallow of bourbon, and
added glumly, "and now the South is resisting invasion. That is why I am
down here, not up there. But sometimes I wish I were still in the middle,
where my poor Kentucky tried to be, trying to stop this waste of American
lives."
Johnston felt a surge of frustration at having a better position but, facing a
more experienced opponent, not being able to win the argument. He tried his
own metaphor: "Have you ever seen a huge logjam, Breckinridge, a river
clogged impossibly, the logs backing up forever? The only way you can get
the river flowing is by blowing up a section with a huge charge of gunpowder.
We have come to the moment when only a violent shock can save us."
Breckinridge rose to face him; Johnston was tall, but his guest was about
three inches taller. "I suppose that is why you are a general, Sidney Johnston,
and I am a politician, and always will be. To me, violence is always failure.
Rage is the mask of weakness. No war was ever worth its cost."
"The War of Independence was," Johnston countered immediately. "For
the South, if we win, we will have made a nation by spilling the blood it
always seems to take, and this war of independence will be well worth the
cost." The General thought about it from the other side, as good generals
always tried to do. "And for the Union, if Grant and Sherman are not sur-
prised tomorrow and we are defeated, this war will bring an end to the fissure
that has weakened this nation in the world. Not all wars are worth the cost, I
will agree to thatbut this one is."
The general expressed confidence in Breckinridge as a soldier, and told him
that as commander of the reserve division, he and his Kentuckians would be
committed to the hottest sector at the most critical moment. The subordinate
general saluted and retired.
Johnston sat on his cot for a few more moments, thinking about Sam Grant
and "Cump" Shermaninexperienced, overconfident young commanders,
his military juniors in every wayand about the peaceful independence that
would follow victory. His final thought as he let sleep overtake him was that
the smell of the peach blossoms on this April night was deliciously overpow-
ering.

CHAPTER 14

AMERICAN WATERLOO:
SHILOH
"Where'd you leam to make Kentucky ashcakes, rich boy?"
Cabell did not take offense, but he could never figure out why his buddies
assumed he came from a slave-owning family. Maybe it was the way he
talked, more Lexington than upcountry, the big words he sometimes used
that he'd unconsciously picked up from his old man.
He mixed the cornmeal with some water, pinched on some salt, and
wrapped the mixture in the cabbage leaves. He had staked out a cabbage
patch for some rabbits, shot two, and brought back both the meat and the
makings. His buddy Albin put the pieces of rabbit on a spit and rotated them
over the fire until Cabell put the ashcakes in the embers to cook.
"Learned how at Donelson," he told his new friend.
"S'pose a big battle's shapin' up? Folks comin' in from all over. Never seen
so many generals. Breckinridge from up home, even Sidney Johnston hisself."
Johnston hisself. Cabell was down on Johnston: the general was a retreater.
He was the highest-ranking field commander in the Confederate Army, and it
was surely an honor to be near him, but after Donelson, nobody but Jeff
Davis rated Johnston a big hero. The Kentuckians were especially bitter,
because he had given up Kentucky without a fight. Tennesseeans remembered
how he'd abandoned Nashville after the fall of Donelson, moving back South,
worried about the Yankee boats using the Tennessee River to get behind him.
Fortunately, Cabell was with Forrest and his Tennesseeans, who'd fought
their way out of Donelson (well, they really walked, but would have fought if
they had run into any of Grant's troops) and struggled to get supplies out of
Nashville after General Pillow had run out of there. When crowds began
looting the Confederate stores, Forrest's men, on horses, had to charge a
jeering mob to get ammunition stores aboard the last train South. They high-
tailed it out of Nashville before Yankee general Don Carlos Buell arrived, and
spent the next two weeks raiding, harassing Buell, keeping track of his move-
ments. Cabell knew that one of Forrest's forays yielded prisoners who re-
vealed Buell's plans: to march overland through Tennessee to join Grant and
Sherman at or near Pittsburg Landing. The goal after that, so the prisoners
said, was to march twenty miles from the Landingon the west side of the
Tennessee River where Tennessee's border meets Alabama and Mississippi
to Corinth. That would cut the Memphis-to-Charleston railway. Corinth was
the railhead where the Yankees figured Johnston would stand and fight.
Cabell enjoyed the riding and reconnaissance. He thrilled at killing himself
a Yank, which gave him a kind of eerie feeling: the man in blue was two
hundred yards away, just a tiny figure at the end of a gun barrel, and Cabell
could see him drop clean. The young soldier doubted that it would be much
fun to kill anybody nearer; he would hate to see the look on the other fellow's
face up close.
Should he report to his father, now that both of them were in the same
area? Cabell loved his old man, missed him, and wanted to see him soonbut
not yet. He knew that John Breckinridge would bring him to headquarters,
take care of him, make sure he didn't get himself killed. Maybe later. It would
be a nice surprise.
Albin was a Kentucky boy, a member of the "Orphan Brigade," so called
because they were a Kentucky bunch fighting for the South while their state
was still in the Union. Cabell and Albin were thrown together on picket duty,
as Forrest's cavalry and Breckinridge's infantry were melded into lockouts.
The first indication that a passel of Nationals were near came with the
rabbits. Not the one on the spit, but the ones running in the thick underbrush
from the sounds of people. Albin and he threw dirt on the firepity about
dinnerand took positions behind shallow entrenchments they had dug ear-
lier. Must be a lot of rabbits in these woods, Cabell thought, what with the
Tennessee River rising in the spring, pushing back its banks and flooding the
countryside. Nice place, too; peach trees and dogwoods in blossom, birds
chirping away, not many people around. Albin whistled to the picket on his
left, and Cabell alerted the man to his right.
Five Yanks, fairly close together, came crashing through the woods not
thirty yards from them, and Albin opened fire. Cabell shot at a face he could
see and missed. It would take him two minutes to load and fire again if he
hurried. He bit off the cartridge cap, poured the powder into the breech, and
pushed the ball in with the ramrod. By the time Cabell was ready to fire
again, four of the Yankees had fled to a clump of trees for shelter; the fifth,
Albin's target, was holding one arm up in the air to surrender. He had taken a
shot in the other arm. Cabell was surprised at the way the Yankee was
dressed: not in Union blue, but in the same jeans material that the Kentucki-
ans in the Orphan Brigade wore. Hard to tell Yank and rebel apart. The men
in the clump of trees were not shooting, in order that their comrade surren-
dering in no-man's-land could be safely received. He came forward, pain on
his face, and Cabell heard Albin let out a holier.
"Linwood, is that you?"
"Albin?"
"Come on ahead, Linwood, you silly-ass fool, you coulda got yourself
killed. Nobody shoot him, he's my brother."
Cabell had heard of this happening but thought it was just newspaper talk.
But it should not be so surprising among Kentuckians; he thought of his
cousin Margaret, a nurse for the Federals on one of their hospital ships, and
Uncle Bob's sons split two and two.
Albin was embarrassed to have taken his brother prisoner. "You take him
back to Colonel Forrest, Cabell, like he told us. See he gets his arm fixed up.
I'll stay here." As Cabell started to take the prisoner to the rear,  Albin
resumed his position and aimed at the sound of gunfire that began again. The
prisoner wheeled around and yelled, "Hold on, Albin, don't shoot at those
trees, that's Father!"
Linwood turned out to be a useful capture. "I ain't gonna tell your people a
thang," he announced, but he was willing to chat with Cabell on their way to
Colonel Forrest. "Grant must have, oh, 'bout twenty, twenty-five thousand
troops here. Six, seven more up on Crump's Landing under General Wal-
lace."
"Any more on the way?"
Linwood grew cagey. "You're here from Corinth, aren't you? How come
you're over this close to the river?"
"We got lost. You know Albin."
"Lucky thang he never lamed to shoot."
"You ever see General Grant himself?"
"Naw, he doesn't even camp here. Sleeps warm and dry up in a house
seven miles upriver. Sherman's the one in charge here. Mean little runt,
nervous. Grant sets a big store by him, though. Gonna hit you folks hard in
Corinth, after Buell's army gets here."
"Buell won't be here for a week," said Cabell, fishing.
"What you talkin' about? He's two days away at the most. Twenty thou-
sand men. You better start runnin'."
General Breckinridge was afflicted with "the Tennessee quickstep." He
vowed not to swallow any more water in this area, but if thirsty would turn to
reliably sanitary whiskey.
He lay on his back on a blanket in the late afternoon sun, knees up to
reduce the pain in his belly. Standing at the edge of the blanket was Colonel
Forrest, the blunt cavalryman assigned to Breckinridge's Reserve Corps. For-
rest was reporting what he had learned from his pickets, one of whom had
brought in a talkative prisoner. Listening around the blanket's edges were
General Sidney Johnston and his chief lieutenants: "Bishop" Polk, Braxton
Bragg, and the hero of Fort Surnter and Bull Run, General P.G.T. Beaure-
gard. "Old Bory" had been sent by Jeff Davis to inspirit the army under
Sidney Johnston's much criticized command. This meeting, Breckinridge as-
sumed, was a kind of council of war. Since it was his first, he wished he could
comfortably stand; there was some ignominy in being flat on his back with
the Tennessee quickstep.
"There's twenty-five thousand Federals with Sherman this side of the Ten-
nessee River," reported Forrest, "plus Lew Wallace's bunch six miles away,
with seven thousand or so."
"Where is Buell's army?" Johnston asked. The Federal plan had become
apparent: to have Buell's army of 40,000 join Grant's army of 35,000 men at
Pittsburg Landing, and then march together to smash the Confederate forces
expected to defend the railhead at Corinth.
"Buell's advance guard is just t'other side of the river," Forrest said. "Main
body is two days' march away."
"Why so slow?" Johnston asked.
Breckinridge could have told him: to march troops through wet terrain in
the first week of April was damnably slow work. His Kentuckians, among the
fastest marchers in the army, had lost a day slogging over washed-out roads,
laying logs in mud to haul guns. The rest of the Confederate forces, coming
up from New Orleans and down from Murfreesboro, had also been delayed.
The Johnston plan had been to surprise Grant with an attack this morning,
but there had been no getting the Confederate force assembled in time.
"Cap'n Morgan's been driving Buell's army crazy," Forrest told Johnston
proudly. "Cavalry harassing 'em, slowing 'em down." Breckinridge remem-
bered John Morgan as a hot-tempered young fellow who took too many
chances, and was glad he'd found an outlet for his wildness as a cavalry raider
in this campaign. Delaying Buell's force was crucial: if those 40,000 bluecoats
were to arrive before Johnston's attack on Grant's army was complete, the
combined Federals would outnumber the Confederates two to one.
"Do you think Grant knows we're here, Forrest?"
"I don't think so, leastways not in force. He's spending his nights in Savan-
nah instead of with his men this side of the river."
Breckinridge wondered how Forrest had learned that. More to the point
was the import of the information: Was Grant drinking again? Why wasn't he
with his troops? Did he have a woman up there? Grant must be unhappy
about Halleck's stern treatment of him after Donelsonthe rebuff and tem-
porary relief from command had been in the newspapersbut could any
general be so confident not to need to be encamped with his own army?
Perhaps Grant was trying to emulate "Old Brains" Halleck in staying far
from the scene of action, or perhaps he wanted his friend Sherman to be in
sole command of his men.
"I don't believe it," said Beauregard. "How could Grant not know that our
force of forty thousand men is not two miles away? Our men are mostly
green, and they haven't been exactly quiet, shooting rabbits for food. Grant
knows we're here, all right."
"Why does he go upriver to sleep?" Johnston asked. Forrest had brought in
a puzzling piece of information.
"He's left Major General Sherman in charge, right in the middle of things
at the Shiloh church," Beauregard said testily, his voice constricted. "Sher-
man's not a lunatic, as the newspapers claim. He's probably got his men
entrenched up to their eyeballs, waiting for us. It's a trap."
"My men had a fairly rough skirmish with the Nationals about noontime,"
General Polk, the Episcopal bishop, put in. "They've got to know they're not
alone here. I would agree that we lack the element of surprise. Even so, I say
we should attack."
"We'll be slaughtered," insisted Beauregard. Breckinridge was surprised at
his reaction: caution was Johnston's reputation, not Beauregard's. "Look."
The short Creole drew with a stick in the mud. "Put yourself in Grant and
Sherman's shoes. You've established a camp with twenty-five thousand men
this side of the river, with men and supplies coming in from a good landing
behind you. On your right flank, to the North, you have Snake Creek
unfordable, natural protection. On your left flank, Lick Creek, also flowing
into the Tennessee River, also a natural barrier to attack. Water on three
sides. That leaves one simple line of defense, here, facing us to the West.
Sidney, I think it utterly inconceivable that Grant not order his men to
entrench along that line until Buell's men arrive. It's plain common sense.
That gives him an unassailable position."
"If he has dug in. If he knows we're here." Johnston weighed the alterna-
tive. "What is it you recommend, Bory?"
Beauregard coughed, coughed again, spit out some phlegm; Breckinridge
hoped his chest infection had not debilitated him. "I recommend we give our
exhausted men a rest tonightmost marched through the night last night,
you know. Then we slip back to Corinth in the morning and get busy building
defenses. When Buell gets here day after tomorrow, if that soon, he'll have to
cross to this side of the river in boats. That will give us time to get ready.
When Grant and Buell attack us in Corinth, we'll be in position behind
barricades. Grant will keep coming at usthat's his way, I hearand we will
be able to wear down and destroy his army."
"Thank you, General." Johnston looked down at Breckinridge. "Your
corps ready to move? The reserves will have to do some fast marching, right
or left of the line, no telling which."
Breckinridge rolled to one side and struggled to his feet. "My men are
amply provisioned, they can move. Kentucky men want to fight right here."
If another retreat should be ordered, this time to Corinth, he didn't know
how much of his force would melt away and go home.
"Gentlemen," said Johnston, "we attack at daylight tomorrow." He made
a fist. "I intend to hammer 'em. We're going to hammer 'em hard."
Beauregard shook his head in disbelief, then quickly nodded, accepting the
decision of his superior. The other generals went with him back to their
commands to prepare for the onslaught in the morning. Johnston walked
slowly down the muddy road with Breckinridge.
"I would fight them if they were a million," Johnston, wanting to talk, told
him. "They can present no greater front between those two creeks than we
can. The more they crowd in there, the worse we can make it for them."
"Horatius at the bridge," said Breckinridge, hoping he had his Greek his-
tory right. He was concerned, now that he was to go into his first major
battle, that he knew so little of classical military tactics. He assumed that was
why he had been placed in charge of the Reserve Corps, which would be the
last to engage.
"I am not going to string my army out on a line," Johnston explained. "I
will use Napoleon's order of battleline each corps behind the other and hit
the enemy in waves."
That was total offensive commitment, a form of near-suicidal assault that
Breckinridge doubted had yet been tried in this war. If the Federals were
surprised, their army would suffer terrible casualties; if Grant was not sur-
prised, but had his men entrenched and waiting, the loss of Confederate life
would be horrendous.
Johnston caught Breckinridge's worried expression. "You'll do fine, Breck.
Just control your own men, rally them when they fall back, and lead them
back to take whatever position you see is important. Late in the attack, when
everybody wants to regroup and rest, don't let them. That is the critical
moment, and victory will go to the side that keeps hammering. God! The
South can win this war tomorrow."
When Breckinridge did not respond to his elation, Johnston said, "Don't
you see what's at stake here? Forty thousand men all we have here nowis
all the Confederacy has been able to scrape up to fight in the West. In two
days Grant's army will be double ours in size, and if we retreat to Corinth
he'll drive us out of there or kill us all. But at this moment we face Grant
with a force no bigger than our own, and with his back to the river, hemmed
in. We can stick that demand of 'unconditional surrender' down his throat,
and when he refuses, destroy them all."
"Surely he'd surrender in that case"
"Why should he? I wouldn't. In his shoes, I'd fight like hell till Buell came
and saved what was left." When Breckinridge shuddered, his commander
added: "Breck, don't be a McClellan. Don't be a Beauregard or a Buckner,
arranging always to fight another day, under circumstances that will reduce
your losses. Never forget: war is not tactics. War is death."
In the silence that followed, Johnston reached up and tore a small branch
off a peach tree. He sniffed at the blossoms. "Grant understands that. I made
a mistake about Fort Donelson; I should have been there myself and I would
have beaten him there. This Tennessee River is the key to the war, don't you
see? If we fail here, they'll cut our railroad west to east at Corinth and there
goes our lifeline. If we fail here, 'Old Brains' will know the next stepto send
Grant to attack our Mississippi forts from the rear, and take Memphis and
finally Vicksburg. That's the end of the war for us."
"You paint a black picture."
Johnston shook his head and grinned. "Ah, but if I smash Grant and
Sherman herenot just defeat them, but obliterate the Union Army, that's
the important thingthen I can reverse the course of the war."
"A victory would do great things for morale in Richmond," Breckinridge
agreed, recalling the demands for Johnston's scalp, and Jeff Davis's persistent
refusals to remove the man he insisted was his best commander.
"Forget morale. Bull Run boosted our morale so high it almost ruined us.
Destruction or capture of armies is all that counts. Territory is unimportant;
we'll go back to Nashville and clear on up to Fort Donelson whenever we
want, if we destroy Grant's army now." Johnston stopped; Breck used that
moment to lean forward and take the pressure off his cramping stomach.
"Tomorrow, our aim is not merely to win a battle; we're out to win a war
against a population four times our size. When they are made to see how
costly war can be, the people of the North will desert Lincoln. If we lose"
he shrugged.
"McClellan in the East will have clear sailing," Breck finished for him.
"Either that, or Grant will grind the South into sausage."
They walked on into the gathering darkness. The commanding general
seemed reluctant to let his political general go until he understood his strat-
egy. Perhaps, Breckinridge reasoned, Johnston was apologizing in advance
for heavy casualties.
"McClellan is the most brilliant organizer and tactician on either side,"
Johnston continued, "but when it comes to the strategy of destruction, Lin-
coln is right and McClellan is wrong. The Union should be fighting overland
to Richmondnot to take Richmond, but to attack and destroy our army.
Grant must know that. He's a crude tacticianand we see here right now
that he's a stupid general not to anticipate an attackbut he knows that war
is death."
He looked hard at his junior officer, obviously eager to get through to the
born civilian decked out in a general's uniform. Breck had been impressed
with Beauregard's reservations at the council of war, and was uncertain about
Johnston's wisdom in counting on surprise.
Johnston pressed: "Robert Lee understands. He was my regimental deputy
in Texas, and before I left to put down the Mormon Rebellion, I drilled it into
himdestroy armies, destroy the other side's will to fight. He's not as skilled
in the field as McClellan, and he drives you crazy with all his talk about God,
but at least Lee's not in love with his army, the way McClellan seems to be. A
general has to spend livesthat's what an army is for."
Breckinridge straightened and said without enthusiasm, "We're ready. I'm
ready."
"Mark my words, we'll decide the War Between the States on this field
tomorrow." Johnston looked at the sky, where stars had begun to show, and
at the hundreds of pup tents in the fields, the woods, and the bloom-laden
orchards nearby. With less certainty, he added, "I only wish we had been
ready to hammer 'em today."
William Tecumseh Sherman sat with Grant at the kitchen table. They were
in the home that Grant had commandeered to await Buell's arrival, to join
forces for the march on Corinth.
"Getting dark. I better get upriver," Sherman said, reminding himself that
"upriver" meant "south" on the Tennessee. "Why are you smoking those
stogies all the time? You never used to smoke cigars."
Grant looked at the end of his cigar, pleased. "Somebody sent me a couple
of boxes after Donelson. Not bad. Takes my mind off my leg."
Sherman, who lived with teeth clenched on a cigar butt, sympathized with
his fellow general: Grant had been riding in the rain a few nights before, and
his horse stumbled and fell on his rider's leg. Grant's ankle swelled; the
surgeon had to cut the boot off and put him on crutches. That accident came
on top of the genuinely foul mood he had been in following Halleck's unac-
countable irritation after the Donelson victory.
"I think I'm going to tuck it in, Cump. After Corinth, I'm going to ask for
leave to go home."
Sherman had been afraid of that. "Why? War's just getting started."
"I'm just in the way here," Grant said, disquieted. "I've endured it as long
as I can, but I can't put up with all this stuff any more." He went to the
kitchen cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. "Halleck
says I'm drinking again. Want a shot?"
Sherman nodded. He could hold his liquor better than Grant. Two stiff
shots and Grant's voice slurred; that, in his friend Sherman's view, and not an
excessive intake of alcohol, explained his growing reputation for drunkenness.
"McClellan sends word to put me under arrest. Why? Because I went up to
Nashville and that was supposed to be outside my command, and I didn't
report in to Halleck. Can you imagine that? Arrested?"
"Halleck was worried you'd be promoted over him."
"Maybe notOld Brains claims it was McClellan's doing. I don't know.
Nothing I do ever goes right." He moved his foot, winced, and swallowed the
whiskey, pouring another shot. Sherman signaled no more for himself. He
would have stopped Grant, but the whiskey was the best medicine for the
throbbing pain in his foot.
"Donelson went right. 'Unconditional Surrender' Grant."
"You know what was good about that?" Grant cheered up for a moment.
"I had a chance to pay Buckner back what I owed him. Part of it, anywaya
hundred and fifty, I still owe him fifty. When I took Simon aside after the
surrender and handed him the money, he couldn't believe it."
"You were a little rough on Buck. That 'unconditional surrender' demand
appealed to the damned newspaper writers, but it humiliated the rebel gen-
eral, a West Pointer and a gentleman who had not deserved such treatment."
"You know why I asked for surrender in such a hurry? Because I was
afraid that Halleck would do something to change my plans, pulling me back
before I could take the fort."
That made Sherman feel better; such insulting behavior, especially to a
friend and benefactor, hardly seemed like Sam Grant.
"Since then," said Grant, reverting to gloom, "they've all been after me
you must hear the talk."
Sherman held up a hand for silence; a courier was at the kitchen door. "Sir,
should the men be ordered to entrench?"
"No need." Some regimental commander always wanted to show how he
could run his command by the book.
"General Prentiss says"
"Tell him we'll be out of here in a day or two," Sherman snapped. "There's
no sense wearing out the men digging holes in the ground when what they
need is sleep. Besides, we're on the offensive, let's not take the edge off that
spirit." He waved him off.
"Help me put this foot up," said Grant. Sherman lifted the bandaged foot
onto the kitchen table. Grant had another slow sip of the same glass of
whiskey; Sherman was glad he was making it last, and it seemed to be reliev-
ing the pain. "Old Brains will be coming down here to take personal com-
mand next week, for the attack on Corinth."
"The Ohio regiment keeps reporting reb skirmishers at Pittsburg Land-
ing."
"There will be no fight at Pittsburg Landing," Grant assured him. "We will
have to go to Corinth, where the rebels are fortified." He took a deep drag on
the cigar, the way a neophyte cigar smoker does, and coughed it out. "After
that, he won't want me around, not the way the newspaper scribblers are
after me. Let Halleck be the heroI'm going to St. Louis."
"You got business in St. Louis?"
"Not a bit."
Sherman scratched his head hard. He kept his red hair short to avoid
cooties in the field. He wanted to keep his friend, who had never been a
success in business, from going back to work with his no-good father Jesse.
Sherman had heard that Grant's father was doing some shady business right
now with the Jew peddlers following the army, perhaps peddling his supposed
influence with his son; since Sam Grant could not bring himself to castigate
his father, he often directed his private fury against all Jew peddlers. Sherman
understood; Grant had come to feel about Jews the way Sherman felt about
newspaper correspondents. Quitting the army would be a mistake for Grant;
it was his only chance for improving his lot in life.
"Sam, a couple months ago I felt the same way. The damn papers were
saying I was a lunatic, remember? Just for telling Buell I needed two hundred
thousand men, and for taking off after that pain-in-the-ass correspondent?
They weren't going to put me in jail, like younothing so respectable. I was
set for the loony bin."
He steamed again, just thinking about it: the writer who signed his dis-
patches "Agate" had called him a monomaniac, and the New York Times
reported he had been relieved six months ago for a mental disorder. That had
led McClellan to dispatch his aide, Colonel Thomas Key to examine Sher-
man, and the distraught general was certain that Key had reported his mind
was too unsteady for command; how else would Assistant Secretary Scott
have come to the conclusion that Sherman was "gone in the head"?
To make his point, Sherman fished in his wallet for the crowning clipping,
from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper: "Here, Sam, listen to this: 'Gen-
eral Sherman, who lately commanded in Kentucky, is said to be insane. It is
charitable to think so.' My wife and children, my brother the senator, must
have been so ashamed. I tell you the truth, I thought about killing myself."
But suicide was the route of a madman, and he did not want to give the
damned scribblers the satisfaction. He had been transferred west, and Grant
had given him another chance at command. He owed this man the same stout
support he had received from him.
"Well, time passes;" he told Grant. "Things change. Here I am, back in
high feather again. It was a good thing I didn't kick it all in. I was thinking
about it, though, like you now."
Another man at the doorway. "Colonel Appier, sir, wants to be sure the
general knows that his Ohio Regiment has been fired upon by what appeared
to be a picket line of men in butternut clothes."
"Tell Colonel Appier," Sherman exploded, "to take his goddamn regiment
back to Ohio! There's no enemy nearer than Corinth." The man left.
Sherman rose to return upriver to camp. "You think they'll be ready for us
in Corinth?"
"They know we're coming," said Grant. "Sidney Johnston has to make a
stand somewhere, and he might as well fight for that railroad line. We'll lick
'em. Halleck will be made general-in-chief."
"If that happens, you'd wind up top commander in the West. Lincoln will
stick by a fighter, and that's you." Sherman, seeking a command post, had
met Lincoln once, early in the war. The interview had gone badly, and it
caused Sherman pain to think about it, knowing that the President probably
gave credence now to all the stories about Sherman's being unstable. It was
better for Grant, who never made much of a first impression, never to have
met Lincoln. His deeds would speak better than he could. "I'll see you tomor-
row," Sherman told him. "Rest your foot and come over for Sunday lunch."
He poured Grant a last drink, and took the bottle with him. No sense letting
more stories get around. Grant leaned forward, took the bottle back, and
handed Sherman one of his gift cigars.
The steamer Tigress took about forty-five minutes for the trip to Pittsburg
Landing; it was dark when Sherman docked. He slept well, hoping he had
talked Grantnot a cultured man, but a good soldierinto staying in the
army. Sherman thought of himself as more intelligent than Grant, and he
knew more about war, military history, strategy, and grand tactics than
Grant did; he was Grant's superior in organization, supply, and administra-
tion. But his friend had one quality that Sherman knew he lacked himself: he
did not give a damn about what the enemy did when out of his sight. Sher-
man tended to march one way and countermarch the other, trying to out-
smart what he thought were the enemy's shifting movements; Grant held his
ground, issued his orders, and never got nervous. Sherman determined to
emulate that resolute quality in the battle at Corinth.
Next morning, stepping outside the Shiloh meetinghouse soon after dawn,
the banker-lawyer-educator turned general was struck by the beauty of the
scene: peach trees in full bloom on what the early light promised to be a fine
April Sunday. Shiloh, Sherman knew, was the biblical site of the Ark of the
Covenant; odd that such a place would turn out to be a conquering general's
headquarters.
Odder to him, though, was the sudden proliferation of rabbits and squir-
rels. They were scampering across the meetinghouse clearing, always the
same direction, west to east, by the score. Curious; rabbits did not act that
way in his boyhood home in Ohio, or at the Louisiana military academy on
the Red River, where he had been superintendent when the war came. Maybe
the small animals in this neck of the woods migrated in the mornings to the
Tennessee River for a drink. Sherman watched a deer blink at the sunrise,
then dart across the clearing with the rabbits. The general shook his head in
amused wonderment, and went back to his headquarters in the church for a
good breakfast.
About 7:30 A.M. on the morning of April 6, Grant limped off the boat onto
Pittsburg Landing. He had hastened to the Tigress as soon as he heard the
thunder of cannon.
For the better part of an hour, chugging up the river, he was heartsick at
the realization that the Southerners had not waited for him to choose the
place and time of attack. He had grown so accustomed to Sidney Johnston's
skillful retreating that he had forgotten that the man was, like him, a fighter.
He recalled Sherman's contempt at entrenchment, and his own tacit approval
of the failure to anticipate an attack. The grim Grant estimated Johnston's
strength at eighty thousand men, and supposed the firing was a flank attack at
the Union soldiers under Wallace at Crump's Landing. He was almost certain
it could not be a direct, frontal assault by the whole Confederate Army on his
main camp. That was something he might do, but not Johnston.
A newspaperman who had clambered aboard the Tigress at Crump's Land-
ing asked to see Grant; it was Whitelaw Reid of the Cincinnati Gazette, the
"Agate" who had made Sherman out to be a maniac. Grant declined, expect-
ing nothing good to be reported about the forthcoming battle, and having no
credible answer about why he was not with the troops.
As the boat pulled up to Pittsburg Landing, Grant could see the stream of
Union deserters and stragglers coming down the hill in the first sign of a rout.
The sound of a major battle was unmistakable. Rifle fire, shots mingled with
screams, the boom of artillery; the smell of smoke and powder; the dismaying
sight of the frightened green troops huddling for cover near the landing,
hoping for a boat to take them away from the savage surprise attack.
Grant proceeded to do the immediate job at the scene at the dock. The men
up front taking the attack on the heights would need ammunition; he orga-
nized an ammunition train to supply cartridges from the warehouse near the
landing. Hobbling over quickly to a confused-looking colonel standing by, he
said, "I am General Grant. Get that detachment over there to arrest the
stragglers and organize them into a reserve. Then move them up the hill."
His foot pulsing pain, Grant was assisted onto a horse, and sent an aide
downriver to order Lew Wallace, on nearby Crump's Landing, to bring his
seven thousand men immediately to the defense of the main body of troops.
He sent a message to Buell, whose army was still some forty miles away,
estimating the attacking force at one hundred thousand and urging him to
hurry. He ordered Buell's advance division across the river into the fight,
regretting the casual way he had let them stay up near Savannah the night
before, but the time for feeling guilty was not now. He rode up the bluff for
the camp of his second-in-command, Sherman.
He was encouraged to see his friend cool under the withering fire. When
asked how he was doing, the embattled Sherman, biting his own cigar, said,
"Not bad," and asked only for more ammunition. Grant moved on, glad that
Sherman did not need him. He looked for General Prentiss, an argumentative
sort who had crossed Grant on matters of seniority throughout their army
careers. His division of raw troops was in the center of the line and taking the
most punishment, slowly falling back toward a defensible patch of woods.
"You'll have to hold them here at all costs," Grant told Prentiss. He re-
peated, "At all costs." Prentiss nodded; Grant could not trust him in army
politics, but figured the man was enough of a soldier to understand the need
to take whatever losses were necessary to hang on to a key position.
Grant looked up through the trees; what sounded like rain was bullets
ripping through leaves. He wanted a place that would enable him to observe
more of the battlefield, but no commanding view was available. He rode with
six members of his staff along the sagging Union line, buoyed by the thrill of
battle and troubled at the wholesale defections from ranksmen were run-
ning away faster than they could be rounded up and thrown back into line.
He halted in an exposed position.
"General, we must leave this place," said one of his staff. "It isn't necessary
to stay here. If we do, we'll all be dead in five minutes."
"I guess so," Grant told him, and slowly moved away. His Union force was
in great trouble; the attackers were inflicting more casualties than they were
taking, reversing the usual casualty rate in battle. Should have dug in. John-
ston had twice as many men, Grant figured, and could push him back into the
river by nightfall. Grant would never surrender, but faced the prospect of
losing his entire army. He had the feeling of being in a slugfest, where finesse
didn't count and no military orders would be carried out on either side. Both
his flanks were falling back, exposing Prentiss and his men in the center. He
rode back and told Prentiss to hold on, not to fall back in any attempt to
straighten the line, but to fight it out in what the soldiers were calling the
"Hornets' Nest."
General Buell arrived on his horse, without his army: hearing the can-
nonade, he had taken a steamer upriver, and was shocked at the five thousand
Union stragglers cowering at the landing.
"My men are a hard day's march away," Grant heard Buell say. "We can
cover your retreat, if you can get across the river."
"I still think we can win," said Grant, but when he saw the disbelief in
Buell's face, he added: "Bring your artillery up fast to cover a bridge of boats
in case we need it." Grant went back up to the front to view what he could of
the carnage: a rebel battery had been pulled alongside the Union line, turning
its flank, and was pouring canister into the line of bluecoats, who were
screaming and dying, or screaming and running. Grant knew he had no good
reason for the confidence he showed to Buell. He might need that line of
boats across the river.
Breckinridge could not believe this pandemonium was an organized battle;
it was more like a swarm of individual fights, with no military tactics involved
and no understanding of what was happening outside your own small world
of fire. He received an order from Johnston to bring his Reserve Corps to the
left; they marched forward and toward the left. Another order came to cancel
the previous movement, the reserves were needed more on the right; picking
their way through the bodies of fallen Federals, they traversed the brigades to
the right. The constant booming made it hard to think.
A Federal battery on his left roared out at his men, cutting down three
soldiers and giving the others their first sight of comrades falling. A minute
later the gun roared again, this time with canister decimating the ranks of
Kentuckians moving forward in line. The Confederate line broke; Breckin-
ridge thought it might be smarter to let the men move forward their own way,
not in line, but he remembered the tactic book that stressed the power of men
moving shoulder-to-shoulder. He yelled at the men to form a line, but they
didn't listen; he rode to his left, to General Bragg, and asked for help against
the Union cannon.
"I'm too heavily engaged," shouted Bragg; "charge it yourself."
Breckinridge rode back to his brigade, pulled together a single company of
Kentuckians, pointed to the high ground where the flashing and booming had
been coming from, and dismounted. The white faces looking at him, he
sensed, could be moved to take or destroy the gun.
General Breckinridge had never ordered a charge before. He pointed
ahead, drew his sword, and yelled "Charge!" Nobody moved. Breckinridge
said quietly to one lieutenant, "Follow me, then," and the two of them ran
forward into a ravine, then up the hill. He looked back at men walking
forward. "Kentucky!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, and that word trig-
gered itmore than a hundred men broke into a run, with rebel yells, and
passed him in the charge up the hill.
When they arrived, breathless, at the crest, they found no gun. The Federal
battery had already retreated. Everybody around him looked pleased; nobody
was dead, and they had charged on command as soldiers should. Behind the
ridge was what was left of an enemy camp, which the Kentuckians invested
to find a dozen wounded and a dazed medical officer. Breckinridge waved his
men forward; the hundred on the ridge passed the signal to the three thou-
sand behind. Facing sporadic resistance, the Reserve Corps moved forward
three quarters of a mile. The battle could be won, and maybe the war, he
found himself thinking, breathing the smoke. He mounted his horse to get a
better look over the brush.
Abrupt stop. Heavy fire was coming from a Federal line along a sunken
wagon trail running across their front. The Union men had taken advantage
of a strong natural barrier and were fighting back a regiment of men in gray.
Breckinridge sucked in his breath; bodies were everywhere, lying in grotesque
positions, and some of the wounded were trying to crawl back toward him. A
general officer on a horse approached. It was General Johnston, excited,
flushed, radiating confidence; Breckinridge felt better seeing him.
"Charge the Hornets' Nest," Johnston ordered, "that's the center of the
Union line. I'll bring up another brigade to support you. Get the Tennessee-
ans in line with the Kentuckians."
Breckinridge, more certain of his ability to lead troops now, ordered his
captains to form for a general charge on the center of the Federal line. He ran
forward to get a better lookthe haze of smoke hung low in the woods under
the midday sun, and it was hard to make out the lineand saw, twenty yards
in front of him, a boy pitch his shotgun ahead of him and fall. A tall boy, in
Kentucky jeans. Breckinridge, taken by the irrational notion that it might be
Cabell, ran forward and turned the body over. The boy's face was shot away,
but a silver tooth gleamed in what was left of the mouth. Cabell had no false
tooth.
The Kentuckians went in, were bloodily repulsed, and Breckinridge called
for the Tennesseeans. Those green troops would stand behind trees and shoot
long-range, but would not be ordered into running over the bodies against a
withering fire from the wagon trail. Breckinridge was stymied; would it not be
better to slip around this pocket of resistance? He rode along the line looking
for General Johnston.
"No," said Johnston firmly, "we take 'em or kill 'em." Isham Harris, the
former Governor of Tennessee, was with him; the general directed him to go
with Breckinridge to get the Tennesseeans to break the line.
Harris managed to get his fellow Volunteers into line, but neither he nor
Breckinridge could mount a charge. The carnage was sickening; the number
of dead near the Hornets' Nest presented a sight to discourage any but fanatic
soldiers, and the Tennesseeans were no fanatics. For two hours Breckinridge
poured shell and shot into the redoubt; a captured Federal battery was turned
on the Union soldiers but they would not give, nor did their ammunition give
out. Breckinridge felt dull inside; the headiness was gone. The business of
facing and dealing death numbed him.
He went back to Sidney Johnston and said he could not get the brigade to
charge into certain death. "I think you can," Johnston replied, and Breckin-
ridge shot back, "I tried, I failed. Why don't we go around them?"
"I'll help you," said Johnston. "Be calm, Breckyou'll see, we'll water our
horses in the Tennessee River tonight."
"My men need rest. They're exhausted."
"No rest until we win this battle, and we must win it today." Johnston was
relentless, to Breck inhuman. "Beauregard is sick, he's in Sherman's head-
quarters in Shiloh church, out of action. Sherman and Grant have their backs
to the river. I want that Hornets' Nest to surrender. That will start the
surrender of the rest of the Union Army. Come on!"
Johnston rode to the front of the 45th Tennessee Regiment, exhorting the
men along the line to fix bayonets and ready themselves. He stationed Breck-
inridge at the left of the line, took the right himself, raised his sword and
spurred his horse into the enemy front. "Charge them, Tennessee, charge!"
Breckinridge shouted, breathed deep and rode forward into what he assumed
would be his death. It was a noble cause, sort of. It was his free choice, and it
was time; he was with his people and one way or another it would lead
toward the conclusion of the war.
Four thousand reluctant Southerners moved ahead in a ragged line, sweep-
ing down a short slope that gave them momentum, through a ravine and into
the Hornets' Nest. Breckinridge's horse fell and he continued on foot, shout-
ing at the top of his lungs, waving his sword like a crazy man, as the Confed-
erates overran the Union front line and broke through to a scene more heart-
stopping than any the Kentuckian had yet seen. Bodies were lying on top of
one another; over nearly an acre, it was impossible to walk across the forest
floor without treading on human flesh.
A gray-faced Union officer introduced himself as General Prentiss and
announced he was prepared to surrender.
Johnston rode over, his horse picking its way through the dead. "How
many do you have?"
"I had a force of five thousand. We may have a couple thousand left. I was
ordered by Grant to hold at all costs. All costs." Prentiss had a mariner's
beard, red-rimmed eyes; blood ran down his hand. His division had stopped
the Confederate advance for four hours.
"Send a message to Grant that you've surrendered," said Johnston quickly.
"Leave a burial detail. March your men to my rear. And don't be dispirited,
General, we'll swap you for Simon Buckner."
Breckinridge noticed a red stain on Johnston's leg, just above his boot.
"You're wounded, General."
"Just a nick. Press on here, Breckinridge, straight through to the Landing.
No rest. Win today." Johnston spotted a lieutenant nearby taking a briar pipe
out of the knapsack of a dead Union officer. "None of that!" he called out,
and the officer hurriedly dropped the pipe. Johnston spurred his horse over to
the subaltern and said, "We're not here for plunder." He leaned down and
picked up a tin cup from the table used by Sherman's staff. "Let this be my
share of the spoils today."
He rode out of the center of killing, his horse shying from a stream that
was running thickly red, then plunged ahead, splattering the nearby leaves
with the mixture of water and gore. Breckinridge retched and sank to his
knees; Prentiss helped him up.
Sidney Johnston knew the day was won, his reputation repaired, the cause
of the South rejuvenated. Grant might fight on all afternoon, then try to get
some of his men across the river that night. Probably the seven thousand
from up on Crump's Landing, which never did get to the fighting on time,
would cut its way back across the river, too, but Grant's army was no more.
Twenty-five, perhaps thirty thousand men killed, wounded, captured: that
would be a shattering blow to the North, especially to families in Ohio,
Illinois, Iowa. They would learn the meaning of Lincoln's invasion of the
Southnot parades, not newspaper dispatches, but death. The pressure to let
the South secede in peace would become intense.
And the captured equipment. Johnston's army had been fighting with a
ragtag collection of old muskets, ancient imports, and hunting gunsfew of
the new rifles and Mini6 balls. He reached down to his leg, where a Mini6 ball
had penetrated his boot; no pain, but his foot was squishing in the shoe. He
would have to have it seen to, during a lull. But there must not be a lull
delay worked for Grant, with Buell's army on the way.
This was exactly as he had planned: to beat the Union armies in detail.
First this army, with the stores Johnston needed so badly to equip his troops;
then Buell's army across the river, the same size as his, but leaderless and
demoralized. That would be the real test, Johnston thought, knowing how
Beauregard would insist that the men needed rest. Bragg and Breckinridge,
too, thinking of the comfort of their men, would counsel remaining in posi-
tion on Pittsburg Landing. But these generals did not understand the new
meaning of war: the side that rose from exhaustion to fight on was the side
that won, and the defeated army that is allowed to escape is the army that
ultimately defeats you.
Johnston would take his tired men across the Tennessee River, confront
Buell's forty thousandequally tired from their days of forced marching
whip them, and capture their equipment, too. With that, he would return up
through Tennessee to Kentucky, restoring those states to the Confederacy.
With Kentucky in handboth Davis and Lincoln knew how important that
state wasJohnston would link forces with his longtime subordinate, Robert
Lee, and defeat McClellan. End of the war. The prospect was dizzying. Jeff
Davis had already hinted that he wanted Johnston to succeed to the presi-
dency of the Confederacy; that would be worthwhile, the general thought, but
for only one term. After that, back to California.
Johnston, suddenly unexpectedly weak, felt a twinge of guilt. He had done
nothing for the wounded among the thousands of Union prisoners. Using his
souvenir tin cup rather than his sword as a pointera nice touch, he thought;
that was how to direct a battlehe ordered his staff surgeon to the rear to
arrange for care of the prisoners. "And after that, Doctor, check General
Beauregard in his ambulance cothe's burning with fever." The surgeon
rode off to the captured headquarters. Johnston, his throat suddenly dry,
thought of lying down a moment himself. No Federal artillery could be seen;
Johnston guessed that Grant had drawn the guns back to the bluffs for a final
stand. Grant would not need boats or pontoons for more than ten thousand
men, because he would not have ten thousand left.
"Your horse has been shot," Governor Harris told him. "Blood running
down its flank." Johnston looked over and felt terribly dizzy. "General, it's
not your horse," said the governor, alarmed; "that's you that's bleeding."
Johnston held out his hands toward the blurring face and collapsed into the
arms of his friend. He felt himself slowly lowered to the ground and his boot
being pulled off, filled with blood. It had not hurt at all. It was a minor
wound, he should have had it seen to; he was angry with himself as con-
sciousness slipped away and the cup rolled out of his hand.
Breckinridge, with Bragg's help, helped Beauregard out of the ambulance
and into the Shiloh meetinghouse, which had been Sherman's headquarters
until its capture that morning. When his coughing subsided, the ranking
officer sat up to hear the news.
"General Johnston is dead," Breckinridge told him. "Bled to death. Any-
body could have saved him with a tourniquet, but nobody knew what to do
and he'd sent the surgeon away."
"I assume command," Beauregard said immediately. "What is the situa-
tion?"
"We cannot get half our men up on the line," said Bragg angrily, "but
Grant's in worse shape. A third of his force is on the Landing trying to get
out. He's setting up an artillery semicircle, backed up by his gunboats on the
river."
"Our infantry?"
"Slowly advancing, as we have all day. Polk says he can turn the left
flank."
"Don't drive them into the Landing," said Beauregard sensibly. "Don't let
them get to the Landing. Keep Sidney's death a secret. How much more
daylight?"
"It's four o'clock," said Breckinridge. "More than three hours. We're win-
ning, Bory."
"The battle might as well go on, then." That struck Breck as a curious
thing for a general to say. The little Creole went into a coughing spasm but
would not return to the ambulance.
One man could not make all that difference, Breckinridge told himself.
This battle was not in the hands of the generals, but was up to the sergeants,
who would win or lose the thousands of life-and-death engagements all along
the front. The South's officers had no more than a vague idea of what was
going on, only that the general movement was forward. Units had drifted
apart. Some men deserted, others mingled with unfamiliar units.
Breckinridge found his Orphan Brigade swarming through a warehouse of
enemy supplies, throwing away their old guns for the Union weapons, putting
on leather shoes, stuffing rations into their knapsacks. The Kentuckians were
delighted, refreshed, ready for the victorious finish of the fight. He led them
to a small glade and gave them a brief talk about the plan to carry through to
the river tonight, saying nothing about Johnston's death. In a few minutes, at
5:30, Breckinridge was given an additional division of Folk's corps, as Bragg,
acting on Beauregard's authority, ordered a general advance.
Breck took his troops striking down the main road to the Landing, pursu-
ing the Federals hard, reaching a commanding hill less than a mile from the
river. He felt himself at the foremost point of the Southern attack, the most
advanced Confederate thrust of the day, and found that position exhilarating.
He could see, four hundred yards down the road, a clump of Federal flags
behind a semicircle of artillery pieces that were blazing away at Bragg's men.
He thought he could make out Grant and another generalstubbly red hair
to the left rear of the big guns. The combined batteries were not heavily
defended by infantry. Backs to the river's wall.
An artillery captain right behind him was ordering his gun unlimbered to
return the shelling from the Union batteries. The nearby booming of the
battery, and the river shelling from the gunboatsaimed over the heads of
the Union men into Confederate ranksshowed how heavily Grant de-
pended on his artillery for a last-ditch defense.
"Hold your fire," Breckinridge shouted to the artillery officer. "I'm going
to charge those batteries."
"If you're going to charge," came the reply, "now's the time."
Breckinridge ordered his men into line for the final assault. About six
thousand of his men would run at the Union guns from an angle, with fewer
than half the semicircled guns able to shoot directly at the charge. He sent
word to Bragg, somewhere on his right, that he was going in, but could not be
sure the messenger would reach Bragg. It was a tremendous gamble to take
on his own responsibility, and if he was wrong he would live in shame the rest
of his life, but thereless than 500 yards away, a ten-minute chargewere
the heart and brains of the Union Army of the West.
A courier came up with an order from Beauregard. "Break off all engage-
ments and retire to shelter and safety. Prepare for engagement at daylight."
"This is a mistake," Breckinridge said. "Stay in position." He rode hard to
the Shiloh church a mile away. Bragg was already there, arguing with Beau-
regard.
"Our troops are tired and disorganized," Beauregard was saying, shaking
his head. "Darkness is close at hand. We cannot hope to finish now. The men
need food and rest."
"We still have over an hour of daylight," Bragg urged. "So what if we're
not in order? The enemy is worse off."
"What about Buell's army across the river?" Breckinridge asked. "If that
swarm of Yankees gets here tomorrow, we could lose everything."
"We have information that they are still more than a day's march away,"
Beauregard replied. That was wishful thinking. Breckinridge knew that part
of Buell's army was the Kentucky Federal infantry, with Bill Nelson of Mays-
ville in charge. Nelson, an old friend, was the type to close quickly on a fight;
he could get here to help the Union sooner than that.
"Your information could be wrong," Breckinridge began.
"So could yours," snapped Beauregard. "And I am in command."
"Nobody disputes that, General," Breckinridge argued, "but Sidney John-
ston said only this morning that the side that keeps fighting past exhaustion
will win. He said this is not the normal kind of war, we could demand more
of men"
"General Johnston is dead." Beauregard did not seem overly saddened at
the fact. "I thought a battle at this time and at this place would be a mistake,
and I said so. Since the battle was in progress, and it is not good to quit the
field at midday, I permitted it to continue. At least a third of our army is
wandering about the field, plundering Union supplies, and your Kentuckians
are among the worst offenders, Breckinridge. Get them in hand. Tomorrow,
rested and reformed, we can defeat the Federals."
"We got here fust with the most," said a voice in the back of Sherman's
captured headquarters. Colonel Forrest, who had no right to speak in a gener-
als' council, said, "We oughta beat 'em now."
"Thank you for your advice," said Beauregard icily. "Stand down and
bivouac where you are. As it happens, I expect reinforcement tomorrow from
General Van Dom to the west. Be ready for an attack at daylight."
Sherman was satisfied with himself, though mostly in negatives. He had not
panicked; he had not gone crazy; he had not made a mistake after his initial,
unforgivable failure to entrench; he had comported himself honorably in the
hottest fire, four horses shot from under him.
Now, midnight, was the time to retreat from the field of defeat in good
order. The night was filled with the sound of gunfire from the Union
riverboats, lobbing cannonballs over the precarious Federal position into the
enemy camp. Buell's army was arriving on the other side of the river. Led by
Nelson's division of Union Kentuckians, it would form a potent force to
restrain the victorious rebels if they chose to try to cross the river in pursuit
of the defeated Federals.
Sherman assumed he and Grant would have plenty of explaining to do at
having been taken by surprise, and the terrible casualties of half-awake men
bayoneted in their tents would evoke a great outcry in some newspapers, but
to Sherman the escape of the main body of the Union Army was the impor-
tant thing. They would fight again another day.
A storm had rolled in from the west, pouring rain on the blood, thunder
adding to the noise of the river guns. Sherman looked for Grant at the log
house near the Landing that was headquarters, but that large room was filled
with groaning wounded.
He was directed to a large tree on the hill overlooking the Landing, where
Grant was standing, water dripping from his hat, in the warm rain. He was
holding a lantern, resting his weight on his good foot, staring at the steamers
bringing Buell's troops over to the Landing.
Sherman was moved by a sudden instinct not to ask about the details of
what he had assumed until that moment would be the night's retreat across
the makeshift bridges. "Been a devil of a day, Grant, hasn't it?"
"Yes." Grant took the wet, unlit cigar out of his mouth and repeated, "Yes.
Lick 'em tomorrow, though." He put the dripping cigar back and chomped
hard on it. No despair showed in his face; doggedness was the expression. He
was not going to run. If Sidney Johnston was going to come after him, so be
it; it occurred to Sherman that the rebel commander should have followed up
his advantage tonight, because Grant was determined put up a hell of a battle
the next day. It was a stupendous gamble, risking the loss of the entire army
on what Sidney Johnston liked to call "the iron dice of war"; Sherman hoped
Grant knew what he was doing.
Sherman watched the incoming troops with Grant for a while, then started
back up to his command post to get ready to counterattack on Monday
morning. He stopped when he thought he heard Grant talking to him. He
went back and heard Grant muttering to himself, "Not beaten by a damn
sight."
Cabell hoped he would never have to live through a day like Monday at
Shiloh again. Nobody had slept the night before, what with the rain and the
thunder, and the guns on the river and shells in camp, and the bodies all
around, some dead, others wishing they were. He got up more tired than he
had lain down.
The day started all wrong, with the Federals firing and yelling and coming
back through the peach orchard. Now he knew how the Union soldiers had
felt the morning before, surprised by an attack. Nobody was giving any or-
ders, so Cabell picked up his things and started to head back away from the
firing with a bunch of others. He suspected that was wrong, and stopped to
look for an officer. Colonel Forrest had taken the horses to the rear for the
night, and Cabell was with a group of twenty cavalrymen without their
mounts.
They tried not to step on the dead on the way to the rear. Coming forward
the day before, the bodies had all been Federals, and he had rushed past them
in his enthusiasm, but now he could see that over one in three was a Confed-
erate. Would they have a chance to come back and bury them? Did anybody
care?
"Stay behind trees or walk low," Albin called to him; "those are Kentucki-
ans. Crittenden's men, and they can shoot."
Cabel remembered Thomas Crittenden, old Senator Crittenden's son, as
one of his father's closest friends, who had been in their house a hundred
times. He used to bring Cabell a birthday present every year. The scouting
knife, the one on his belt, was a gift from the Crittendens.
Cabell moved faster toward the rear, broke into a run. Yesterday they had
walked over this mile of woods firing every three minutes, paying a terrible
enough cost in blood, and now he was racing back over it trying not to step
on anybody. He had heard Sidney Johnston was dead and couldn't be blamed
for the retreat. Who was calling for the retreat, he wondered, Beauregard?
Bragg? His father?
Ahead of him, a large tree hit by the Union battery back near the river
collapsed on the running soldiers. Cabell stopped to pull a comrade out from
under the branches and then hurried on. Nobody was going the other way;
nobody was stopping the retreat. There did not appear to be any officers
around. How could a battle turn so completely? Was yesterday a complete
waste of time and blood? He wished he were on a horse. This was not what he
had joined up for.
"You men, stop! Turn around, reform behind that big tree that fell." It was
Colonel Forrest on his horse, and Cabell suddenly felt ashamed. Unhesitat-
ingly he whipped around and took a position behind the tree trunk, hurriedly
reloading his Union rifle with the Union Mini6 balls he had taken at the
warehouse near Shiloh church. Others in gray came up beside him, and he
felt better. He had to be careful not to shoot his own men running toward
him, and it was hard to distinguish the Confederates in Kentucky jeans from
the Federals. What would his father say to his panic of a moment before? Was
his father still alive? He presumed so; the troops heard about it when a
general was killed. He wished now he had looked in on his father, because if
the Federals overran this position, Cabell and all the others would be buried
in a mass grave and nobody in his family would know if he was alive or dead.
Proving bravery and independence no longer seemed so important to Cabell.
The sweet victory of yesterday had soured to awful disaster today, and this
was a good time to be near kin.
They were coming, Crittenden's Union Kentuckians, through the forest in
a ragged linehundreds of them, surely followed by thousands more of
Buell's army from across the river. They must have poured in overnight.
He took aim at one man striding forward fifty yards away, hoped the
charge in his gun hadn't been too damp, and pulled the trigger. The cartridge
worked and the man dropped. He started to reload but knew he had no
chance to be ready with another shot before the Federals were upon him. He
looked behind him; Forrest was there, urging more men into the line. Were
they stopping them? Was it disaster everywhere? All he could know was that
the battle, the war, was this line of men coming at him, one officer pushing
them forward, one officer keeping him in line.
He could see the expression on the face of the man in blue coming directly
at him, pulling away the branches, gleam of bayonet on the end of a gun that
was as unloaded as his own. The man was going to stick the knife in him if he
didn't do something. Cabell took his own gun by the barrel and tried to
smash the butt over the man's head. He missed, crashing it onto the soldier's
shoulder and knocking him down.
He could hear the scream of Albin to his left as a bayonet reached him.
Cabell pulled his scouting knife from his belt and leaped on the man who had
charged him, stabbed him five, six times, left the bloody knife in him and
turned to recover his gun. He was crying, and his pants were wet. This was
not how it was yesterday, or how it was supposed to be. He vomited on his
victim, shook his head, found his ramrod and started to reload. He looked for
the next man coming at him, but the Union charge had failed. Did Forrest
expect him to leave the tree trunk and go after the Federals? He didn't want
to leave the tree. He wanted to stay right where he was for the rest of the war.
"Fall back on the horses," Forrest was calling, and he was glad to be able
to turn and run back without being a coward in retreat. War was better on a
horse.
The day was lost, General Breckinridge knew, as he had known it would be
from the moment of decision the evening before. As Beauregard had not
known the time to strike the day before, Bragg had not known when to stop
striking after the reinforced Union turned the tide: the little martinet had sent
Pat Clebume's brigade into the Union center on what was surely a suicide
mission. Clebume, the Irishman who had lost two thirds of his brigade the
day before, had objected to a charge without support and into a position
where he would be outflanked; told to obey the order by the implacable
Bragg, Clebume had plunged in, losing most of the rest of his command for
no good reason.
As Breck saw it, victory at Shiloh died with Sidney Johnston, who foolishly
failed to take care of a minor wound. With his death died the hopes of
defeating the Union Army in detail, recapturing Tennessee and Kentucky,
smashing the Tennessee plan, retaking Donelson, and making the defeat of
the Confederacy difficult if not impossible. For one glorious moment the
possibility of victory in the war had been within grasp; now all that remained
was the long avoidance of defeat. Breckinridge was heartsick, not only at the
human carnage around him, but also at the lost chance of soon ending the
bloodletting. The simple, obvious Tennessee River plan had worked; at Cor-
inth in a few days, Grant's advancing army would cut the Memphis-to-
Charleston railroad, an artery as important to the heart of the South as the
artery on Sidney Johnston's leg cut by the Minie ball was to the Battle of
Shiloh.
Time now to prolong the agonies of both nations. As soon as it became
apparent that Van Dorn was not coming to help him at Shiloh, Beauregard
fled with the remainder of his army toward Corinth. Artillery was being
abandoned along the road. The tables of the previous day had been turned: a
determined push by Grant would now destroy or capture the bulk of the
defeated Southern army, and the benumbed Breckinridge could see no reason
for Grant not to press his advantage.
The Kentuckian, with his Orphan Brigade and Forrest's cavalry, was as-
signed the rear guard. The brigade of Tennesseeans that he had personally led
for the past two days had suffered such casualties as had never before been
seen in war on this continent. The men remaining hoped for the exhaustion of
the Federal forces to save them; little else stood between Grant and the
annihilation of the less than thirty thousand Southern troops left of the more
than forty thousand that had surprised their enemy at Shiloh.
Breckinridge was prepared to sacrifice the rear guard to save that army,
which was what he supposed rear guards were for. He was prepared, too, to
be killed or capturedkilled, he thought, might be better than tried for trea-
son, since the Senate had already branded him a traitor.
"I told that idiot Frenchy twice't, goddammit," Forrest was saying, "that
we should either attack last night or pull the hell out. I sent scouts dressed in
Federal overcoats down to the landing last night as Buell's army began to
cross. That was the moment to hit or to run,"
"What did you do with that information?" Breck asked dully.
"Couldn't find Bory all night. His headquarters at the church he made into
a hospital, and he didn't set up a headquarters of his own. Couldn't find his
tent. Two o'clock in the morning I knew we would face two armies instead of
one, and I had no commander to tell it to."
Breckinridge did not want to hear more of what could have been; he dis-
cussed with Forrest the best place for a series of delaying skirmishes and
retreats, to be followed by a last stand before the infuriated Sherman
pounced.
"Hell with that," growled Forrest. "Let's hit him from the flank. Sherman
thinks we're all running."
Breckinridge pondered that. Grant, like Sidney Johnston, understood that
a victory was nothing without the destruction of the enemy army. His deputy,
Sherman, in hot pursuit of the beaten Southerners, had shown he could be
taken by surprise.
"Do you have enough men to hit him hard along Lick Creek?"
"Couple hundred Texas Rangers, Morgan's cavalry and my own. Maybe a
thousand men."
Not many to string out on a line in defense, but potent if concentrated in an
attack. Sudden punishment might discourage Sherman from following fur-
ther, at least overnight. Forty-eight hours before, Breckinridge would have
hesitated before ordering a thousand men to undertake what might be a
suicidal charge, but now daring was all they had in the way of strategy. His
rearguard infantry was worn out and might throw down their guns after the
first volley.
"Hit them at dusk," he said. "I'll make a lot of noise with the artillery we
have. Make it look like a full-scale counterattack. After the first strike, get
some of your men off their horses to act like infantry. I'll move on their
skirmishers from here."
Breckinridge waited while Forrest went into action. The massed Union
infantry could make mincemeat out of cavalry, outnumbering them twenty to
one, but not at any one point. Concentration of numbers in a salient made the
difference"fust with the most," as Forrest liked to say. At dusk, when he
heard the rebel yells and the firing, Breckinridge opened with his few artillery
pieces and sent a thousand men on foot into the oncoming Federal skirmish-
ers.
Waiting, lantern in hand, in the middle of the road of retreat, he hoped
Tom Crittenden and Bill Nelson would live through all this. He thought
about his son, who might be anywhere on the road to Corinth, if he was not
dead on the field.
Two cavalrymen brought Forrest back in a stretcher on a cart. Breckin-
ridge shined the lantern on the figure. The colonel, his face twisted in pain,
gritted, "We turned the bastard around," before passing out.
"He has a ball in his back," a voice said in the darkness. "He overran the
charge, went right into the enemy infantry's second line. Shot his way out
with a pistol before they got him, but he stayed on his horse."
Forrest was the last casualty of Shiloh, Breck hoped, the last blood shed on
the bloodiest day that the American continent had ever seen. "And what
about Sherman?"
"He's digging in for the night," a second man said. "Building entrench-
ments. Learned his lesson, I guess. They won't be coming after us."
The voice of the second man was deeper than he remembered but was
familiar. He lifted the lantern to look into the bleak, dust-caked face of his
son. He slowly put down the light, and the two men leaned on each other for
a long moment in the middle of the road.
CHAPTER 15
JOHN HAY'S DIARY
APRIL 10, 1862
"I tell you, Lincoln, the nation demands that Grant not only be relieved of
command, but dismissed from the army!"
Those were the words I heard emanating from the Cabinet Room half past
midnight last night, as I was creeping back from my rendezvous at the house
on Sixth Street.
The piping voice was recognizable as that of Alexander K. McClure, the
Pennsylvania politician. He is one of the handful of menOld Man Blair,
David Davis, Leonard Swett, Hill Lamonwho can say almost anything to
Lincoln, and the Tycoon will never take it amiss because he trusts them
absolutely. He had been right about Simon Cameron from the start, too; good
judgment. One of us.
Tonight McClure has been inveighing against the man everyone is calling
"the butcher of Pittsburg Landing," who only recently was known as "the
hero of Fort Donelson."
The papers have dubbed the battle of Shiloh "the American Waterloo,"
because it has become known as a battle with only villains, no heroes, unless
you count Don Carlos Buell, whose rescuing troops arrived in time to keep
the secesh from applying the coup de grace to Grant's reeling army. Horace
Greeley, whose Tribune had so aptly warned of an expected rebel blow in the
West, now looks as astute as Grant and Sherman look foolish.
Our side took thirteen thousand casualties, the rebels maybe half that, and
Grant was as wrong about rebel strength across the Tennessee River as Mc-
Clellan has been about the rebels across the Potomac. Our man in the West
was overconfident, while our man in the East has been underconfident.
I brought a pot of tea and a couple of cups into the Prsdt and McClure and
tried to act as if I'd been assiduously on duty all evening. Lincoln was sitting
in front of the fire, his feet in carpet slippers up against the marble mantel,
looking as morose as only he can, while McClure was pacing back and forth.
I don't know why those two chose the Cabinet Room; perhaps the Prsdt
wants a change of scene from his office.
"You know I have nothing against Grant," the Pennsylvania pol said. "I've
never met the man. Neither have you, so there can be nothing personal. But I
tell you, Lincoln, the clamor for his dismissal is unprecedented in all Ameri-
can history."
Lincoln grunted to show he was listening. People who do not know him
take that grunt for assent, but it means only "keep talking."
"Have you read the dispatches from the Cincinnati Gazette's Whitelaw
Reid?" The Prsdt had; I clipped them for his agonized perusal all last week.
Every paper in the country had picked up and printed those damning dis-
patches, none with more vitriolic accompaniment than Bennett's New York
Herald, the big supporter of Breckinridge for President two years ago. Reid,
who styles himself "Agate," was on the scene at Pittsburg Landing, and
described the bloodletting in the tents of the Union Army when it was taken
by surprise. Blamed Grant for all the bunglingnot Sherman, who turns out
not to be crazy after all, but rather brave under fire.
Those "Agate" articles, taken up and resonated by the other papers, have
started all the stories about Grant's drinking again. Winners can drink, as we
learned after Fort Donelson, but generals who are surprised and who take the
worst casualties in anybody's memory have to be cold sober. Grant wasn't in
camp where he belonged, that is certain; I wonder if he was drunk, or with a
lady. So must the Prsdt wonder. The most noble and patriotic of men suc-
cumb to temptation at times, as I can testify.
"He's been denounced as incompetent by the public journals of every
party," McClure went on. "He's been repudiated in the Congress by every
leader without regard to political faith."
"Not by Elihu Washbume," Lincoln interposed. He picked up a marked
copy of the Globe, with Congressman Washburne's impassioned defense of his
constituent and protege: "Listen: 'There is no more temperate man in the
army than General Grant. He never indulges in the use of intoxicating liquors
at all.' Man knows him better than you or me."
"You believe that, Lincoln?"
"Washbume says that Falsehood will travel from Maine to Georgia while
Truth is still putting on its boots. What he says about rumors is true enough."
"His hometown Congressman defends him," conceded McClure. "But
Washburne's the one who has been pushing Grant for yearsgetting his
commission, assuring you that the stories about his drinking are not true.
'Never indulges'hogwash! Everybody else in the Congress and the country
is furious with a general too besotted to tell his troops to entrench."
"You think that hurts the Administration, McClure."
"I think the universal revulsion with Grant hurts you, Mr. President. If
you try to sustain Grant," McClure said very slowly, "I am convinced you
will not be able to sustain yourself. And I'm not the only one with your
interest at heart who thinks that way; there's Swett and Lamon"
"I know, I know." Both had spoken to him about the way Grant's unpopu-
larity would rub off on Lincoln, and how the storm of protest needed some
sacrifice to permit it to abate.
"It's your interest we're thinking about, yours and the country's." When
Lincoln stared at the fire without response, McClure added, "I don't have
any pet general who might benefit by Grant's overthrow. But I do know that
the tide of resentment is so overwhelming that you must yield to it or go
down with him."
Lincoln shifted his feet and continued to stare at the fire. I went outside
and continued hearing McClure's voice making excellent sense. "You above
all, Lincoln, are the one man who never allows himself to appear as wantonly
defying public sentiment." True; I had not known anyone else was walking
around with that insight. "Yet that is what you are doing in this instance.
Why? You owe Grant nothing. Why should you associate yourself with his
unpopularity? Let the bereaved mothers hate him, not hate you."
Long silence.
"We've been through a long winter of terrible strain with McClellan and
the Army of the Potomac," the Tycoon remarked at last, which struck me as
off the point. He was agitated; McClure had shaken him. "In the East, nearly
every day brings some new and perplexing military complication. And from
the day that Grant started on this Southern expedition until now, we've had
little else than jarring and confusion among the generals in the West." He did
not go into detail about Halleck's getting McClellan to order the arrest of
Grant; his visitor didn't know the half of it.
"All right, if I'm oppressing you, I'll drop it," said McClure.
"No, no, you have no ax to grind in this." If his visitor that night had been
Father Blair, who is prejudiced in favor of McClellan, the Prsdt's distress
would not have been so acute. But McClure is a straight shooter, his main
concern the ability of Lincoln to lead the North. In the phrase I have heard
him use a hundred times, Lincoln called for a specific recommendation:
"What, then, is to be done?"
"Remove Grant at once. He's been cashiered beforethis time do it based
on his reckless exposure of his army and be done with it. That will put you on
the side of the people who are justifiably angry, and you will ride out the
storm."
In the ensuing silence, and to help McClure make his point, I took in the
New York newspapers; the two men looked at the front-page lists of casual-
ties.
"This is only New York," McClure said, "which did not bear the brunt.
Believe me, when those casualty lists are finally posted in Ohio and Illinois
and Iowa, where the losses were worst, there is going to be a wave of fury the
likes of which you've never seen."
The Prsdt's feet came down from the mantel and hit the floor. That was
usually indicative of a decision.
In a strained, pained voice, with an earnestness I have never heard before,
Lincoln said to McClure, "I can't spare this man; he fights."
Wisely, McClure shut up. The nearest I can explain this apparent willing-
ness to go down with Grant's ship is this: Lincoln had spent the winter trying
to get McClellan off his bemedaled butt, and he was not about to join in the
bedevilment of a general who was willing to engage in battle.
"But you're right about not defying public sentiment, McClure," Lincoln
added after a while. "I cannot do nothing."
"Maybe a reprimand"
"No." Here was to come, I could tell, a plot from the master of indirection.
"A reprimand would not satisfy his critics and would destroy Grant. The
object is to remove him from command temporarily, which would appease his
critics, until such time as he can do battle again. And to do that in a way that
does not insult or demean Grant as a military officer."
So that was why he had made "Old Brains" Halleck the overall com-
mander in the West a few weeks ago. I began to see the plan in the Prsdt's
mind; we were both far ahead of the normally astute McClure.
"I have ordered Halleck to leave St. Louis and go to Pittsburg Landing,"
Lincoln continued.
"That means he will automatically supersede Grant as commander of the
army there," said McClure, comprehending, "That should take some of the
pressure off. The trick is to remove Grant from command right now. The
people demand that."
"At the same time, there is no insult to Grant in Halleck's joining the army
in the field," said Lincoln. "It could be that the public anger will subside with
another in command. Perhaps General Grant is being unjustly accused, and
this odium will be lifted, or perhaps another event will occupy the public
mind." He turned that thought over in his head, adding, "If need be, to give
him confidence, I could publicly appoint Grant second in command."
"That is what he would be anyway," said the logical McClure, "with Hal-
leck there."
"Nobody has ever appointed anybody second in command," I put in.
"Whoever is next in line down the chain of command is that automatically."
"I know that, John. But an official appointment would be encouraging,"
said the Prsdt, "and would tell the people in the armywhere there is plenty
of politics, McClurethat I'm behind him."
"That's a fairly sagacious way of handling it," McClure allowed, "if you
feel you cannot spare him."
"He fights," the Tycoon repeated. Evidently that has become a more im-
portant quality in a general than anyone realizes. We cannot know for certain
if Grant is a drunk, or an incompetent, or worse; all Lincoln can be sure of is
that the man inflicts terrible punishment, and anyone who does that for him
must be protected at all costs.
When McClure had left after one in the morningthey had been talking, I
guess, for over two hours1 told the Prsdt I knew how he could return
Grant to field command, since Halleck was an armchair general.
"It will be easy," I said. "You have just removed McClellan as General-in-
Chief." Ostensibly that had been done to free Little Mac for his field cam-
paign around the Peninsula to Richmond, but in reality it had been to mollify
the radicals who wanted McClellan fired entirely for failing to show the
proper abolitionist fervor. "After the hubbub over Grant subsides," went my
analysis, "you bring Halleck back to Washington and make him General-in-
Chief. At that point, second-in-command Grant gets his army back."
"You're too young a man to think like that," said the Tycoon, pleased at
my precocity, the deviousness learned at his knee. "I might not do that at all,
especially if McClellan wins a great victory in the Peninsula. But such a series
of moves," he granted, "would appease public sentiment, and at the same
time give me a general out West who fights."