Cain at Gettysburg (60 page)

Fellow from
The Times
had explained it to him. Never change the facts—you'll get caught out—but shade 'em so you won't spoil his lordship's breakfast.

He needed the nod from the generals who had already crowned old Lee with victory's laurels. They were the ones who had to say, “Well done, Fremantle!” Had to put a tasty sauce on a nasty cut of beef.

Hadn't had a stand-out career thus far. Promotions, thanks to the memory of the pater. But he'd missed out on the Crimea, great bollocks that it had been. No service in the Mutiny, either, although that was hardly a thing to be regretted. The right sort didn't go out to India. Squabbles over bum-boys on the Frontier, cholera and niggers everywhere. Nasty as Manchester. But service as a military secretary in Gibraltar wasn't the way a fellow made a name.

Now he had his chance. “Daring fellow, that Fremantle! Has the spark, that one! Shall we ask him round? Hear it all from the horse's mouth?”

But what could he say about the dreadful losses? Fifteen generals dead, wounded, or missing. Lee's paladins certainly didn't keep to their tents, say that much for them. Mad as drunken Scotchmen, though. And the rank-and-file losses were appalling.

Dreary, dying afternoon. Trains already off. Infantry waiting to go. Line of guns putting up a show to keep the Yankees guessing. Hundreds of wounded to be left behind.

At least the Federals weren't savages. Englishmen fighting Englishmen. Basic decencies and all that. Even if their Englishness was rather a tumbledown business.

Really did want a bath. Probably have to drag the old bones to New York City for a decent soak. Then a proper ship. Dinner at the captain's table.

His belly quivered nastily.

He might stress that the Union could not win the war. No matter how many battles its generals won. Land too vast, the Southrons too determined. Have to let them go their way, in the end. That approach might be the ticket. No need to stress the scale of the defeat.

Arrows in the bowels, one after another. Up you get, old man. Didn't do to disgrace oneself. Up, and out into the rain. Muck and mess, all of it.

Had to outshine the old pater, that was the thing. And it looked to be damnably hard, when the only available Napoleon was a nasty sort all tangled up in Mexico. Nor had his beginnings been as auspicious as he had let on to the Southrons. Out of Sandhurst, he'd been thrust into the 70th Foot, a regiment of no standing. And the best he could do was to get himself transferred promptly to the 52nd, which was precious little better. Memories of their mess still made him shudder. And not one proper hunter in the stables. It had taken a beastly long time for his father's friends to get him properly placed in the Coldstream Guards. Now he had to make a name for himself. Although it wouldn't do to seem too thrusting. Bit of adventure, firsthand account of war. Service done for the common good. Present oneself with a light touch. That sort of thing.

The outbuilding to which he rushed was occupied and Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, future general in service to Her Majesty, was forced to squat in a cluster of trees, where others had preceded him and from which his embarrassment might be viewed by the multitude.

As his bowels eased on the Pennsylvania earth, he was certain of one thing: As an officer, he had nothing to learn from these American amateurs. No English general would ever order his infantry to attack
en masse
across open fields in the face of entrenched modern weapons. It just wasn't done.

*   *   *

On the Fourth of July 1863, as rain drenched the wounded left on the fields of Gettysburg, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant, Longstreet's old friend.

*   *   *

The 26th North Carolina suffered 85 percent casualties at Gettysburg, the worst loss of any regiment on either side. Morale dropped in the battle's wake, but by autumn, the survivors recovered from the blow. Reinforced with new recruits, the regiment marched with Lee until he surrendered. When the last roll was called, 131 men answered.

Rushed west after the Union disaster at Chickamauga, the 26th Wisconsin fought in twenty-five additional battles and engagements, including Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw Mountain, the sieges of Atlanta and Savannah, and Bentonville. The survivors were present in North Carolina when General Joseph E. Johnston, who had struggled on after Lee laid down his arms, surrendered the remnants of the last great Confederate army to General William Tecumseh Sherman.

On the afternoon of July 3, the 69th Pennsylvania lost 143 of the 258 men who had filled its ranks that morning. The regiment's colonel, its lieutenant colonel, and two captains fell. No regiment of native-born Americans played as great a role in Lee's defeat as these sons of Erin.

*   *   *

Major John “Knock” Jones of the 26th Carolina ended July 3 in command of the brigade General Pettigrew had led on the first day of battle. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was mortally wounded the following year at the Wilderness.

Lieutenant Colonel John Randolph Lane, the second in command of the 26th North Carolina on July 1, had much of his jaw and tongue shot away in the regiment's attack on the Iron Brigade. His men gave Lane up for dead, but he was tough as a hickory stump. When Union cavalry threatened his train of ambulance wagons, Lane refused to surrender, took off on his own, made his way south, and, defying his wounds, returned to command the 26th as its colonel later that year. He was wounded again at the Wilderness, then a third time at Yellow Tavern, and a fourth time at Ream's Station. John Lane survived, married, built a fortune in a web of businesses, and died a hero of the South at age seventy-three.

Edward Porter Alexander, Longstreet's devoted artilleryman, rose to the rank of brigadier general. Gravely wounded as the Federal noose tightened on Petersburg, he rose from his bed through strength of will to rejoin Lee's army in the war's closing days. After the surrender, he returned to Georgia and became a railroad president. Porter Alexander wrote wisely and honestly about the war. He died in his seventy-fifth year.

Committed to personal gallantry above all, Brigadier General James Johnston Pettigrew was mortally wounded in a trivial skirmish during the final hours of Lee's retreat. His men took the dying officer back to Virginia.

Lieutenant General James Longstreet and Robert E. Lee reconciled, each recognizing the importance of the other. Longstreet's tactical skill saved the Army of Northern Virginia at the Wilderness, where it had been stunned by Grant's ferocity. Within hours, Longstreet suffered a severe wound, but returned to active service in the fall. He was present with the Army of Northern Virginia when Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

The day after the surrender, Longstreet encountered Grant near the home of Wilbur McLean. Overcome with emotion, Grant grasped Longstreet's hands, then, unable to contain himself, threw his arms around his cherished friend.

As worship of Robert E. Lee intensified through the years, the Gettysburg disaster required a scapegoat. Given that he advocated reconciliation and served his old friend Grant during his presidency, Longstreet became the obvious choice. He then made the mistake of replying angrily and sometimes disingenuously to his critics, fueling decades of acrimony as the South's surviving generals and colonels refought lost battles in print.

At last, justice was done. In Longstreet's twilight years, his veterans rallied around “Old Pete” again, acknowledging him as a titan of the Confederacy. He died in 1904, the last of the great Southern generals.

At his best, Robert E. Lee fought brilliant battles and admirable campaigns. His weakness was as a strategist: His beloved Virginia was the center of his universe and the need to defend it at all costs blinded him first to the importance of the Mississippi Valley, then to the fatal blows struck by Sherman in the Southern heartlands. When Grant came east in 1864 and gripped Lee's army, it proved all too easy to fix him in Virginia, while Grant's brilliant, ruthless subordinate swept around the South's strategic flank.

Lee's pride did not permit him either to give up Virginia or to surrender his army until it was impossible to fight on. He prolonged the war uselessly, with magnificent skill.

After the war, Lee declined all offers of gifts, position, or fortune, becoming, instead, the president of threadbare Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. To the end of his life, he declined to belittle his former foes or to cast blame on his subordinates. He died in 1870, but lives on in Southern hearts.

*   *   *

Lieutenant Alonzo P. Cushing received a posthumous Medal of Honor. In 2010.

Former sea captain Freeman McGilvery, unsung hero of the fighting on July 2 and July 3, suffered a minor wound to a finger the following year. The wound failed to heal. In the course of an amputation, McGilvery died from an overdose of chloroform.

As a result of the damage done to his body on that first afternoon at Gettysburg, Wlodzimierz Bonawentura Krzyzanowski's health remained impaired for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, he continued to serve in the field, rising to the rank of brigadier general. After the war, in an age of spectacular government corruption, he had the misfortune to be an honest man. He was, of course, accused of corruption by those whose schemes he challenged. Deemed innocent, he served in a succession of Federal posts, interrupted by spells of private enterprise. His fortunes rose and fell, but he never ceased to love either the land of his birth or the country in which he found freedom. He died in genteel poverty in 1887 in New York City, beloved to the end by those who had served under him. General Krzyzanowski is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Brevetted as a major general for his service at Gettysburg, Henry Jackson Hunt continued to feud with Winfield Hancock over the proper lines of authority on a battlefield. After the war, Hunt remained in the Army, although it meant reversion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He could not imagine another, better life. Promoted again to full colonel, he remained the U.S. Army's undisputed expert on artillery matters.

Despite suffering a wound on July 3 that never healed completely, Winfield Scott Hancock returned to his corps in time to lead it in the Virginia campaign of 1864. That autumn, his wound flared again, removing him from the battlefield for the final time, but he always retained the devotion of his soldiers. In 1880, he ran for president of the United States, losing to James Garfield, a fellow war veteran, by a handful of votes.

The day after the amputation of his leg, Daniel Edgar Sickles overruled his surgeon and had himself carried to the nearest railhead in a litter borne by infantrymen. By July 5, he was in Washington, reclining on a feather bed in smart quarters near the White House. He knew the president would call on him for a firsthand account of the battle, and Lincoln fell into the trap. Sickles filled the president's ears with tales of his personal bravery, declaring that Meade had thought only of retreat, while he, Dan Sickles, forced the army to stay and save the Union. Lincoln believed only half of what he heard, but that was enough to poison his mind against Meade.

Sickles never stopped banging the drum in support of his claim that
he
was the hero of Gettysburg. He repeated his lies about Meade so often and so forcefully that they became common currency. A rogue to the end, he died in 1914. He had outlived every other senior general.

*   *   *

The right man at the right place and time, George Gordon Meade won a crucial victory at Gettysburg. But his triumph left him with a battered army, stunned by its success. Rolls had to be taken, units reorganized, ammunition and other basic supplies brought up and distributed. Thousands of wounded soldiers needed care, and thousands of prisoners had to be removed. The Army of the Potomac was in no shape to launch an immediate counterattack to annihilate the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee remained dangerous, and Meade had accomplished the mission assigned to him: preventing the capture of Washington, Baltimore, or Philadelphia.

He organized a pursuit as rapidly as circumstances allowed, determined to harry Lee's army as it retreated. Had the right opportunity presented itself, Meade would have attacked in Maryland. But his sole chance would have meant frontal attacks against far better fortifications than his own men had occupied on Cemetery Ridge.

Impatient to end the war and accustomed to poor excuses from tardy generals, Lincoln believed enough of Dan Sickles' lies to erupt in anger at Meade for not destroying Lee's army. Meade offered to resign, and the president came to his senses. But great damage had been done. In the autumn, Meade's Mine Run Campaign foundered on absurd interference from Washington and the inadequate troop strength allowed him. Nor was he willing to waste soldiers' lives to further his reputation.

Nonetheless, Meade's qualities were such that he remained in command of the Army of the Potomac until the war's end. Overshadowed in reputation by Grant, who soon came east as general-in-chief, the victor of Gettysburg served efficiently and loyally for two more years. Despite politically driven calls for his dismissal, he was the only commander of the Army of the Potomac who was not relieved. As Lincoln could not spare Grant, Grant could not spare Meade.

But performance was not as potent as publicity in the long run. Dan Butterfield rallied back to his old friend Sickles, and the two men began spreading calumnies about Meade. Jealous, “Fighting Joe” Hooker chimed in, too. After Meade's early death in 1872—his war-ravaged health could not resist pneumonia—his reputation suffered further at the hands of detractors, north and south. His no-nonsense command manner had alienated key comrades, while Southern chroniclers could not forgive him for defeating Robert E. Lee in a fair fight. Fatally, he was not a political general and had little patience with newspapermen—with the result that he was damned by partisan scribblers or, when not attacked, ignored in favor of self-promoters and liars. The man who grasped the reins of an army literally overnight and saved the Union in the course of three desperate days of battle was demoted in the public mind to a drab second-rater, his victory credited to his subordinates. It was the worst injustice ever done to an American general.