A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (22 page)

He leaned against a tree, lost in thought, one arm on his hip, his
only movement an occasional puff on the cigar. His staff relaxed. Grant
had the inexplicable talent to emanate calm force from his nondescript,
almost shabby self, in powerful waves. The staff had an unshakable belief in his good judgment and determination. He was relentless in pursuit of success. So indisposed was he to retreat that he would not even
backtrack while traveling, preferring to cut a new route even over the
most difficult terrain.

Then he walked back to the stump, sat down, and pulled out his
dispatch book and a pencil from his pocket. In a precise and calm hand,
he began to write. Historians would later marvel at the neat and unhur ried handwriting of his dispatches, written even in the fiercest battles.
The man simply could not be rattled. His ability to coldly focus even
in the most hellish crisis had become legend. Finished, he gave it to his
old friend and chief of staff, Col. John Rawlins. "Get this to Sherman immediately." Rawlins read it as he called for a telegrapher. "Join me with
your corps at once. Turn over remaining pacification to state authorities
and militia."

Grant got up and took Rawlins by the arm, "Now, John, let's see
how we can get General Bragg to help us out."

"HOOKER'S DIVISION," WASHINGTON, D.C.'S RED-LIGHT DISTRICT,
9:33 PM, OCTOBER 23, 1863

No one noticed the little black boy gliding in the shadows between the
brightly lit saloons and whorehouses in Washington's red-light district,
known as Hooker's Division, a triple play on a nickname for the oldest
profession, the bawdy general, and the unsavory reputation of his former headquarters. Jimmy was an expert and determined tracker in the
urban jungle that had become wartime Washington. He had never had
so much difficulty in tracking a man as the big, bearded man he has seen
at Baker's that morning. Big Jim Smoke had a lifetime's experience of
thuggery to hone his feral survival instincts. He could just sense his tail.
If Jimmy hid in the shadows, Smoke disappeared time and time again in
the crowds of soldiers and civilians that crowded the streets and wooden
sidewalks or into one or another of the noisy, crowded saloons. But each
time he slipped out, the shadow followed.

Jimmy was as relentless as he was careful. Sharpe's instructions
had been clear. "Find out where he goes and whom he sees." He had
picked up Miller's trail after the man had returned to Baker's office later
that day. Now with the gas lamps flickering over the crowded street, he
slipped into another shadow to wait the man's exit from Madame LeBlanc's, one of the middling whorehouses. He munched on an apple that
Sergeant Wilmoth had given him as he bounded out of the BMI office, intent on Sharpe's instructions. He had the gift of patience and could wait
and wait. This time he did not have to wait long. The big man pushed
open the double swinging doors and looked about, then quickly strode
down the sidewalk. The shadow followed.

The man abruptly turned into a darkened alley. Jimmy waited a
moment and went into the darkness after him. His eyes were good in the
dark, and his shoes so worn that they made no sound as he picked over
the patches of bare ground between piles of garbage.

As good as his eyes were, they could not see around corners. No
sooner had he glided around the edge of the building than an iron grip
took him by the throat and lifted him into the air. He couldn't breathe.
"Not so good, are you, nigger?" Jimmy would have screamed as the
knife buried itself to the hilt in his chest and twisted, but the hand had
his throat closed. He did not feel pain as the man threw his body against
a wall.

AMERICAN ENTRENCHMENTS, PORTLAND, MAINE,
1:55 AM, OCTOBER 24, 1863

The early morning cold of a hard autumn seemed to bite to the bone. The
breath of the entire Maine Division rose in vapor wisps as they stood silent in their ranks, broken down into their sequenced assault groups. Almost three thousand veteran men in blue and another two thousand militia, men hardened quickly in the two weeks of siege, waited behind the
city's landward defenses. Two days of intensive preparation had readied
them for the supreme effort - the sortie to break the siege.

The opportunity for such a desperate measure had leaped almost
instantly into Chamberlain's mind when his interrogation of the Canadian lieutenant revealed how weak the force guarding the British fortifications was. He must strike before Doyle returned with his division. With
luck, Sedgwick would win, and that would be the end to the threat to
Portland. If not, then the sortie must succeed to give the garrison a new
lease on life. Chamberlain had walked down the line past each assault
group, encouraging the men in his reassuring way. They in turn encouraged him by their eagerness to do this thing.

It was time now. He looked at his watch by the light of a hooded
lantern behind the earthen walls. He nodded to his regimental commanders who sped off to join their men. They did not have far to go.
His ten regiments were now shrunk small and did not take up too much
frontage. Besides, he had grouped them into three assault groups with
one infantry regiment in reserve and the 1st Maine Cavalry ready to ride
through any breach in the enemy's lines.

The front ranks, heavily reinforced with militia, carried fascines -
that is, bundles of branches - to fill the ditch in front of the British positions. The militia was not expected to actually help carry the enemy
works. They were told they could withdraw after they had thrown their
fascines into the ditch. Following them were the dozens of ladder details
to cross the filled-in ditches and plant their ladders against the six-foottall earthen wall. Behind them were the special assault teams chosen
from the boldest men in each regiment.

Every piece of equipment that could make noise had been left behind or padded. No lights were allowed. It was an overcast and moonless night, pitch black even to men who had been out in it for hours, and
a cold mist rose from the ground to further envelop them as they crossed
the beaten zone between their own positions and the enemy's. It was
a recipe for disaster. Night attacks were rare because the potential for
failure was so great. Units would get lost and sent off in the wrong direction or arrive too late. It took the tightest control to even attempt a night
attack, and to do so in such darkness would have been folly. To prevent
that, the boys in each regiment-the drummers and fifers whose eyes
were the sharpest-unrolled white bandages in the direction of the enemy to within yards of the ditch. The men would advance in their ranks,
the man behind with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front.'

The mass of men began to move through the sortie breaches in the
defenses in a muffled shuffle, the cold morning mist tingling their faces
and freezing where it touched the metal of their rifles and fixed bayonets. Chamberlain moved with the center group. All three groups were
focused on the enemy line held by the Canadian militia. The batteries
of the Royal Artillery were avoided. The Canadians kept poor watch by
and large, especially the newly raised battalions. The battalions Doyle
had left behind were the most recently raised and had not soldiered long
enough to have sink into their bones a great military sin- to fall asleep
on guard. Early in the war, President Lincoln had had that problem
brought home to him again and again as he had had to review the death
sentences of new soldiers for just such failings. To the distress of his generals, he invariably pardoned these boys. The Canadians would have no
such benefactor this night. The time of early morning had been chosen
not only for the cloak of night, but also to take advantage of the time
when the body demands to sleep.

It was a sound assessment, borne out as the first Union men reached
the mist-shrouded ditch. The fascine men were brought forward to toss
in their bundles and then fall back as the ladder details crossed the now
filled-in ditch. But as the ancients liked to say, the gods are perverse. The
sergeant of the guard of the 29th "Waterloo" Battalion, raised in Galt,
Upper Canada, was no militiaman. Sgt. Henry Mocton had taken his
discharge seven years ago from an Imperial battalion, one of the more
savage schools of soldiering in the British Army. A struggling farm had
improved his memories of "the Armye," and when Galt raised this battalion, he rushed to reenlist and put on the scarlet coat again. As the
only veteran in the battalion, he had been much praised and had become
even more disliked when these amateurs learned what real soldiering
required.

At that moment, the ladder details began to move forward, Mocton's duty round took him to the guard station just above. He found
Pvt. Alexander MacCauley sound asleep, huddled below the parapet
all in a ball to keep warm. Mocton was about to wake him with a brutal
kick when the two arms of a ladder fell upon the edge of the parapet.
In moments a face appeared wearing a blue cap. In one fluid, unthinking movement, Mocton drove his bayonet through the man's left eye,
twisted it, and withdrew. The body silently fell backwards and landed
with a dull thud that brought cries from the men below. Mocton threw
the guardpost torch over the side and looked. He could see a mass of
moving shadows below and ladders to either side thick with climbing
men. He pulled back, turned, cupped his hand to his mouth to shout the
alarm-and choked. He looked down to see six inches of a bayonet protruding from below his breast, and then life went dark for him.

Chamberlain dropped over the parapet as the man ahead twisted
his bayonet out of Mocton. Men would later say he was reckless beyond
all measure for being at the point of the assault, but such a desperate
enterprise needed the animating power of the leader at the spear tip to
ensure that it continued to he driven home. The men in blue flowed into
the advanced positions where the duty sections slept and roused them
with rifle butts and the prick of bayonets in their backsides. The first
shots rang out, then more, to his left and right down the line in the dark.
Other parties had attacked the more alert Royal Artillery batteries from
the flanks and found out how well the British gunners took to losing their guns. A gun boomed and then another. Here and there a militiaman had escaped into the dark, fleeing to his encampment in the rear.
Chamberlain had drummed it into his regimental commanders that they
were not to be delayed inside the enemy positions, but were to press on
and overrun their camps where most of the enemy would be. The campfires and torches in the British works cast enough light for the assault
groups to he reassembled and thrown forward through the dark to the
lights of the Canadian camps.