How Few Remain (59 page)

Brigadier General Willcox seemed uneasily aware of the wasting sickness afflicting his campaign, aware but doing his best to pretend he wasn’t. “Good afternoon, Colonel,” he said when he spied Schlieffen through the partly open tent fly. “Come in, come in. Ah, I see you have coffee. Very good.”

“Yes, General, I have coffee. Thank you.” Carrying the tin cup stamped
USA
, Schlieffen ducked his way into the tent and came over to stand beside Willcox. “The guns in the night were not noisier than usual. Have I right—no,
am
I right; this mistake I make too often—nothing new happened?”

“Nothing new,” Willcox agreed with a small sigh. He stared down at the maps, at the blue lines and the red that had moved so much less than he’d hoped. “It’s always good to see you here, Colonel. I want you to know that.”

“You are too kind to a man who is not of your country,” Schlieffen said.

Without looking over at the German military attaché, General Willcox went on, “You always keep your temper. You never judge me. My corps commanders, my division commanders—sometimes this tent gets like a kettle full of live lobsters over the fire. But I never hear recriminations from you, Colonel, and, if you send telegrams to Philadelphia, you don’t send them to General Rosecrans.”

Schlieffen hadn’t heard the word
recriminations
before, but he didn’t bother asking Willcox to explain it; context made the meaning plain. An army that was winning had little backbiting. When things went wrong, everyone was at pains to prove the misfortune could not possibly have been his fault.

Willcox said, “Tell me what you think of our position at the present time.”

“Let me examine the map before I answer.” Schlieffen seized without hesitation the chance to think before he spoke. He wished he had Kurd von Schlözer’s diplomatic talents, so he might come somewhere near the truth without destroying the U.S. commander’s good opinion of him. At last, he said, “I think it now unlikely that you will from the east into Louisville break.”

Willcox sighed again. “I’m afraid I think the same thing, although, if I admit it to anyone but you, I’ll see my head go on a platter faster than John the Baptist’s after Herodias’ daughter danced before King Herod. We came close; I’ll wager we scared old Stonewall out of a year’s growth. But in war, the only thing that does any good if it’s close to where it ought to be but not quite there is an artillery shell.”

That was an effective image; Schlieffen filed it away to use if and when he had the luck to return to General Staff duty in Berlin. He said, “In the salient you made with the flanking move, you still have most of your men on the line facing Louisville, and in other places not so many.”

“Well, yes, of course I do,” General Willcox replied. “I have orders that I am still to do everything I can to capture the city, and I must obey them.”

“If you think you can do this, then naturally you … are right,” Schlieffen said, pleased he’d remembered the English idiom this time. “If you think you cannot do this, and you leave your flank as weak as it is—”

“The Rebs looked to have a weak flank,” Willcox said. “It got strong a lot faster than we wished it would have, and that’s the Lord’s truth. If the Confederates could stop us, I reckon we’ll be able to stop them.”

“This may well be so, but your situation here seems to me not to be the same as that of the Confederate States,” Schlieffen said.

“And why not?” Willcox bristled at what was to Schlieffen a gentle suggestion of something so obvious a schoolchild should see it.

Patiently, the attaché spelled it out in words almost literally of one syllable: “The Confederate States had more depth to use than you have now. They could halt you for a little while, fall back, halt you again, and so on. This is not something you enjoy. If they break through your trenches from the south, they will go into the rear of the main body of your forces there.”

“Ah, I see what you’re saying.” General Willcox was mollified. Nonetheless, he brushed aside Schlieffen’s concern. “We do have men enough and guns enough to make them pay a high price if they try that. Myself, I don’t think they’ll do it. All their attacks up till now have been aimed at the line closest to Louisville.” Someone came into the tent. Willcox nodded a greeting. “What is it, Captain Richardson?”

After saluting Willcox and politely inclining his head to Schlieffen, the adjutant answered, “Sir, we just got a report that the Rebels have raided the stretch of trench the Sixth New York was holding.”

After a glance at the map, Willcox turned triumphantly to Schlieffen. “There? Do you see? They persist in striking us where we are strongest.” He spun back toward Oliver Richardson. “A raid, you say? They didn’t break through, did they?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Richardson assured him. “I’m sorry to say Major van Nuys was killed in the attack, but they seemed to be trolling for prisoners more than anything else—and, I daresay, paying back the Sixth for a raid yesterday. They captured a few men, then withdrew to their own entrenchments.”

“Why even bring this to my notice, then?” Willcox asked. He took a longer look at the young captain. “And why, after a raid in which a colonel was killed, have you that smirk on your face?”

Schlieffen wondered if Richardson had an enemy in the Sixth New York, of whose demise in the raid he had heard. The adjutant had sounded properly regretful when reporting Major van Nuys’ death, so Schlieffen doubted he was the man, if any man there were. He would not have wanted an officer who gloated at a comrade’s death on his staff. By the building anger on Willcox’s round face, the commander of the Army of the Ohio felt the same way.

And then Captain Richardson said, “Sir, you must know that Frederick Douglass has made the Sixth New York his pet regiment, and also the horse on which he mounts all his complaints about the manner in which you have conducted this campaign.
He was with them today; I gave him a letter authorizing a river crossing this morning. And I have reports, sir, that he was among those whom the Confederates captured in this raid.”

“Ah,” Schlieffen said: a short, involuntary exclamation. His opinion of Captain Richardson recovered to some small degree. Disliking a reporter to the point of enjoying his misfortune was a lesser matter than similarly disliking a fellow officer. And Richardson had made no secret of his distaste for Douglass, though Schlieffen could not understand what, aside from being a Negro, Douglass had done to deserve it.

“Good God!” Willcox exclaimed, taking a point that had eluded the German. “Douglass has been a thorn in the slaveholders’ side since long before the War of Secession. What will the Confederates do to the poor man, if he has been so unfortunate as to fall into their hands?”

“I don’t know, sir, but my bet would be that they don’t do anything good.” Yes, Richardson sounded delighted at Douglass’ discomfiture. English lacked the word
Schadenfreude
, but not the idea behind it. Men being the sinful creatures they were, no nation, Schlieffen was sure, lacked that idea.

He said, “But is he not protected from mistreatment as a civilian citizen of the United States?”

“The Confederate States seldom feel obliged to recognize any black man’s rights of any sort,” Willcox said.

“You ask me, sir, they’ve got the right idea, too,” Richardson said. “If it hadn’t been for the niggers, Abe Lincoln never would have been elected president, and we never would have fought the War of Secession in the first place. Never would have lost it, either.”

“How does the second statement follow from the first?” Schlieffen asked. The only answer Richardson gave him was a dirty look. That made him realize he’d been less than diplomatic. He wasn’t so upset as he might have been. Failures in logic distressed him; he rejected unclear thinking as automatically as he breathed.

“Most disturbing,” Orlando Willcox said. “Most disturbing indeed. I shall pray for Douglass’ safety and eventual liberation, however unlikely I fear that may prove.”

“I’ll pray, too,” Richardson said. “I’ll pray,
May God have mercy on his soul.”
He laughed a nasty laugh.

“That will be quite enough of that, Captain,” Willcox said, as
sharply as Alfred von Schlieffen had ever heard him speak. The German military attaché frowned, not understanding why Richardson’s prayer was offensive. Seeing as much, General Willcox explained: “Colonel, that’s what the judge in an American court says after he sentences a prisoner to death.”

“Ach, so,” Schlieffen murmured. Truly praying for God to have mercy was one thing, a prayer any Christian ought to be glad to make or to have made for him. Praying for a man to be condemned to death was something else again; Willcox had been right to rebuke his adjutant.

Richardson came to attention, saluted, did a smart about-turn, and left the tent with precisely machined steps. That was exactly what a German officer, similarly rebuked yet still feeling himself to be correct, would have done. The only difference Schlieffen could see was that the Americans did not include a heel-click as part of coming to attention.

Willcox drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a long sigh. “He’s an able young man, Colonel,” he said, as if Schlieffen had denied it. “He’s just—unreasonable on the whole Negro question.”

“Many in the United States are, is this not so?” Schlieffen said. “It is true almost as much in the United States as in the Confederate States, yes?”

“Mm, not so bad as that, I’d say,” Willcox replied. “On the other hand, one man in three in the CSA is a Negro, near enough, and we have only a relative handful of colored people in the USA, so white men here have less to get exercised about. A lot of folks do wish, though, we had no Negroes among us: I can’t deny that.”

“This is foolishness,” Schlieffen said, never for a moment thinking of the Polish peasants his ancestors had subjugated to help make Prussia the power that would reshape the German Reich.

“I think so myself.” Willcox spread his hands, palms up. “Not everyone agrees with me, though. And you’d be hard pressed to say my adjutant is wrong in one regard: absent the Negro, I believe the United States would still remain one nation today.”

“I understand this reason for resenting Negroes,” Schlieffen said. “But if Negroes were not resented before your War of Secession for other reasons, there would have been no war, is this not true? And these other reasons I must say I do not understand.”

“It’s a hard business, that it is,” General Willcox said, which most likely meant he didn’t understand it, either. As if to confirm that, he changed the subject: “I fear Captain Richardson is right in thinking it will be a hard business for Frederick Douglass, too.”

“If he is mistreated, will the United States avenge themselves by mistreating Confederate prisoners in their hands?” Schlieffen asked. “This is, excuse me for saying it, an ugly way to make war.”

“So it is—or so it would be, at any rate,” Willcox answered. “As for what will happen, Colonel Schlieffen, I just don’t know, and have no way to guess. Right now, I’d say it lies in the hands of God—and of the Confederate States.”

General Thomas Jackson looked as dour as usual while studying the situation map of his two-front battle in and east of Louisville, but his heart sang within him. “I truly do believe we have nothing more to fear from the Army of the Ohio,” he said.

“I think you’re right, sir,” E. Porter Alexander agreed with a boyish grin. “Been a hard fight—they
are
brave, even if their officers could be better—but I don’t really see how they can surprise us now.”

“That’s why they fight wars, General Alexander: to discover how the other fellow can surprise you.” When Jackson essayed a joke, he was in good humor indeed. More seriously, he went on, “In my view, however, you are correct. I do not think they can break free of their present lines, and the cost of containing them within those lines appears acceptable. That being said, will you take some supper with me?”

“I’d be delighted, sir, so long as you let me put mustard on my meat,” Alexander said, grinning still.

“Such sauces are unhealthy,” Jackson insisted. His artillery chef looked eloquently unconvinced. Jackson yielded, as he would not have on the battlefield. “Have it your way, General. You see, I refuse you nothing.” Laughing, the two men started out of the tent.

Had Alexander not teased Jackson, they would have been gone when the messenger came rushing in. Instead, he almost ran into them—he almost ran over them, as a matter of fact. “General Jackson, sir!” he gasped. “They’ve captured—you’ll never guess who they’ve captured, sir! He’s on his way here now, not that far behind me.”

He was so excited, he didn’t notice he’d failed to give Jackson the name. “Who is on his way here now?” the Confederate general-in-chief inquired. “By the way you sound, young man, it might be General Willcox himself.”

“Even better’n that, sir,” the messenger answered, chortling with glee. “They just captured Frederick Douglass his own self.”

“You don’t mean it!” E. Porter Alexander exclaimed. That was foolishness: the messenger obviously did mean it. Alexander turned to look at Jackson. Jackson was already looking at Alexander. The same thought had to be uppermost in both their minds. Alexander spat it out first: “We couldn’t get a hotter potato right out of the fire, sir. What in blazes do we do with him?”

“I don’t know.” Jackson briefly felt all at sea. This was not the sort of decision he was supposed to have to make. As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he knew what needed doing. Stepping back into the tent, he walked over to the telegraphers’ table. “I am going to wire President Longstreet, requesting instructions. This is more a political than a military matter, and beyond my sphere of competence.” He dictated a brief telegram, then turned back to the messenger. “You said Douglass is being brought here?”

“Yes, sir,” the man answered.

“I had better stay and await him, then. General Alexander, you may go and eat your mustard without me.”

“Sir, by your leave, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Alexander said. “It’s almost like having the Antichrist walk into the tent, isn’t it?”