A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (26 page)

For Grant, it was just like the fighting in the Great Mutiny, storming one position after another, except that the Americans gave as good
as they got, and often as not threw the British out of a house and were
thrown out in turn. This was his first time fighting a Western opponent.
He didn't count the Russians; they were just blond Orientals, but brave
and stolid. And this opponent spoke English, for which Grant allowed
himself a moment of pride in the descendents of his own land. Only a
brief moment. He had a more pressing problem. The Sherbrooke Brigade
had been stopped, soaked up in the house-to-house fighting. The town
and its shipyards, filled with wood, were already beginning to burn. His
only reserve was the remnants of the 62nd Foot that Chamberlain had
savaged at the First Battle of Portland-only four hundred Imperial
troops. His Canadian battalions were doing well in their first action, but
they were no match for the veterans of VI Corps.

At the same time, the head of Third Division was approaching the
bridge with the Second Division right behind. They were double-timing
forward, rifles over their shoulders, bayonets a flowing blued-black ribbon above the moving columns. They moved with a veteran smoothness, ten thousand men, more than enough to tip the scales against
Grant's force.

Grant saw all this from the steeple of a church and knew that his
gamble had failed. It was only a matter of time before the enemy crossed
the bridge in such numbers as to overwhelm him. His face set as he turned to an aide to give the order to disengage, when a shrill whistle
rent the air. He looked south and saw a warship approaching, its funnels
streaming black smoke. It seemed to fill the river as it turned the bend.
She was the screw frigate, HMS Bacchante, and never was the arrival of
the Royal Navy more opportune." All through the noise of battle, everyone stopped to hear the whistle shriek. Grant had a bird's-eye view as
the wooden ship came up to within two hundred yards of the bridge and
swung amidships in the deep river to present her broadside. The whole
ship shuddered when she fired her portside battery of fifteen 8-inch naval rifles and ten 32-pounders. The bridge blew apart, scattering stone
and men into the air. Its spans collapsed into the river with hundreds of
men and horses. For a brief moment, the noise of the battle died, but only
for a moment, for again Bacchante's whistle shrieked in triumph 12

MOUNT VERNON ESTATE, VIRGINIA, 4:10 PM, OCTOBER 25, 1863

The lieutenant kept the guards at their posts by sheer force of cool example. He stood square in the center of the gate to Mount Vernon. His two
guards stood at either gatepost at order arms. In front of him a Confederate cavalry troop stood stock still, their only motion the swishing of their
horses' tails. The troop's officer was a slim Californian from San Francisco who had come back across the continent to defend the Union. Fate
had placed him in command of the small guard force placed on George
Washington's estate eight miles south of Alexandria.

Great battles had passed the lieutenant by as he stood his post. Both
sides had put Mount Vernon off limits to their troops, and the Union had
placed a guard to make sure neither side violated the sacred ground.
Both Blue and Gray revered Washington, and it had been an honorable
but uneventful duty for the lieutenant and his handful of men. The gentle but iron-willed ladies of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who
had rescued the estate from decay just before the war, had been most
kind to them. The ladies themselves had camped out in the mansion itself to make sure no harm came to it. The war that had seemed far away
now stood right in front of him.

The clatter of more approaching horses turned the Confederate
cavalry commander in his saddle. He straightened up immediately and
called his command to attention. The command staff of the Army of
Northern Virginia rode up, its simple yellow headquarters flag with the
black initials "ANY" waving above to blend with the first of the leaves
turning in the unusual early autumn cold.

No one could mistake Lee on his big gray horse, Traveller. He
dismounted in front of the gate, followed by a single aide. There was
no Union soldier who had not seen a likeness of Lee. He took a step
forward. The lieutenant cried out, "Present arms!" The bayoneted rifles
rose in one swift movement with a snap that would have impressed
the Grenadier Guards. The lieutenant had filled the boring hours with
drill and ceremony. He brought his own sword to present arms as well.
Lee returned the salute. "Order, arms!" The rifle butts slammed into the
ground and the lieutenant's sword swept to the side before he returned
it to his scabbard.

Lee's brown eyes misted up a bit. "Lieutenant, I beg your permission to present my respects at the tomb of General Washington."'

MOUNT EAGLE, ALEXANDRIA, VA, 4:49 PM, OCTOBER 25, 1863

From this high point in the defenses of Washington, one of Colonel
Lowe's balloons floated in a light breeze. A guest in the balloon was a
twenty-five-year-old Prussian count, Capt. Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a
military observer. Zeppelin had been fascinated with the balloons and
had been introduced to Lowe through one of his German-born assistants.
Lowe had taken to the engaging young man and gladly approved his request to ascend with him.2 From this vantage point, they all could see the
entire region in the crisp fall air. What was clear from that altitude was
what was going to be called the Washington Races. The fate of the capital
rested on who would win.

That race was between the butternut and gray columns of Lee's
army and the blue of Meade's army. Lee had sidestepped Meade in
series of rapid maneuvers that would be studied for generations.
Meade's already sharp tongue had been honed to the edge of a surgical
scalpel by the stress of the last ten days as Lee had worked him away
from Washington. His staff felt the edge of that tongue as Meade summoned every last bit of his considerable professional talents, but he knew
in his heart that he had been outclassed. Now those Rebel columns had
moved like quicksilver around him to the south to march up parallel to
the Potomac. Alexandria, with its huge depots, railroad yards, and hospitals, was within Lee's grasp if he could get through the ring of forts
that had grown up around the capital. Once that ring was pierced and Alexandria taken, Lee would sweep up the few miles of the Virginia
shore of the Potomac until he was opposite Washington.

Lee knew the exact spot on the Virginia shore from which to direct
his artillery. Arlington House overlooked the city from a hill and would
give him perfect observation of Washington. It had been his wife's property; Lee had carefully managed it back from his father-in-law's mismanagement. Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, the Union Army
had occupied the estate and used the mansion as the headquarters to
oversee the construction of the ring of fortifications around Washington.
The Lees had left most of their property in the mansion when Lee had
moved to Richmond to offer his services to the new Confederacy. Wolseley himself had been affected by Lee's account of the vandalizing of his
estate, during which tears had coursed down his face. Since the Lees had
moved to Richmond

every injury that it was possible to inflict, the Northerners have
heaped upon him. His house on the Pamunky river was burnt to
the ground and the slaves carried away, many of them by force;
while his residence on the Arlington Heights was not only gutted of its furniture, but even the very relics of George Washington
were stolen from it and paraded in triumph in the saloons of New
York and Boston.'

Furniture or no, the Lees were about to come home.

Almost from the moment Lee had given Meade the slip, Sharpe
had ordered out his own scouts and Hooker's Horse Marines. But it was
Lowe's telegram warning of the glint from a river of moving bayonets
that had brought Sharpe at a gallop from Washington to ascend with
Lowe and Zeppelin over Mount Eagle, south of Cameron Run. From
their balloon they could see the enemy columns pushing up the Mount
Vernon and Telegraph roads toward Alexandria. They looked to the
west for any sign of Meade's men and saw heavy road traffic in the distance on the Leesburg and Alexandria Turnpike, but whose? A line of
Lowe's balloons extended for miles in a ring around Washington to the
south and west to give complete coverage of the enemy's approach. They
were Lowe's large Union-class balloons, each of thirty-two thousand cubic-foot capacity able to lift five men, about seven hundred and fifty
pounds, in a wicker basket, and secured by four strong cables 4

At last the morning sun illuminated the color of the approaching
host, and it was not Union blue. The telegraph operator in the balloon
clicked the message that flashed down the wire and out along the lines in
every direction: "Lee is coming!"

Panic had swept through Washington. The railroads leading north
to Baltimore were packed with frightened civilians, not the least of which
were the few of members of Congress who were in Washington during
recess. Refugees poured across the bridges into Washington from the
Virginia side as Alexandria was evacuated of nonessential personnel.
At the same time, troops from the city's defenses on its Maryland side
crossed the bridges into Virginia to strengthen the forts. Army engineers
set the bridges over the Potomac and the Alexandria warehouses for demolition. Even Stanton, who had been a rock under the pounding from
Britannia's fist, was overwhelmed as the rebellion approached to the
gates of Washington.

Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, who had more reason to be demoralized, stubbornly refused to give in to doubt. Nothing but had news
had come over the wires in the last week. The French Navy had suddenly appeared off Galveston the week before and destroyed the entire
West Gulf Blockading Squadron. Nothing had been heard of the East
Gulf Blockading Squadron off Mobile. But rumors had run up the coast
and leaped out of Reheldom with triumph that Dahlgren's squadron
had been destroyed as well off Charleston. Three days ago, the Royal
Navy had swept into Hampton Roads and come up Chesapeake Bay in a
forest of sails, including at least one of its huge ironclads, famous blackhulled Warrior. The light American ships had either been run down by
the British or prudently retreated up the shallow rivers like the James
where the deep-draft enemy ships could not follow. The large naval base
at Norfolk had been blockaded. At every hand, fearful voices had said it
was 1814 all over again-when the Royal Navy had ravaged the settlements of the great bay and made the country drink shame and humiliation to the dregs.