A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (27 page)

Welles faced down Stanton, who insisted that Lincoln evacuate the
capital before Lee and the British arrived. "Stanton, I told you last year when you were in a panic that the Rebel ironclad Virginia was about
to ascend the river and subdue the entire capital that it drew too much
water to get past Kettle Bottom Shoals. And that's fifty miles down the
river. If Virginia couldn't make it with twenty-three feet of draft, how do
you expect those British monsters with twenty-six feet of draft to do it?"5

Stanton was literally wringing his hands, "But the British got up the
river in 1814!"

Welles snorted in contempt. "Yes, and it took them twenty days to
get through Kettle Bottom because they kept grounding on the shoals,
and they have bigger ships today. I guarantee you will not see Warrior
coming up the river. If any of their ships get through, it will he their
smaller ships. We still have the river forts and gunboats and plenty of
guns at the Navy Yard."

"But. .."

"Stanton, let me worry about the Navy. I would think you have as
much as you can handle with Lee."

A clerk ran in and handed Lincoln a telegram. He raised his hand,
"I have a telegram from Sharpe." The room went silent. "Lee himself is
on his way up from Mount Vernon; Sharpe expects the rebels to be in
front of the forts within an hour. Let us pray the forts hold until Meade
arrives."

Lincoln had good reason for his confidence in the dense ring of fortifications around the capital. Since his arrival in Washington,

... from a few isolated works covering bridges or commanding a
few especially important points, was developed a connected system of fortification by which every prominent point, at intervals
of 800 to 1,000 yards, was occupied by an inclosed [sic] field-fort,
every important approach or depress of ground, unseen from the
forts, swept by a battery of field-guns, and the whole connected
by rifle-trenches which were in fact lines of infantry parapet, furnishing emplacement for two ranks of men and affording covered
communication along the line, while roads were opened wherever
necessary, so that troops and artillery could he moved rapidly
form one point of the immense periphery to another, or under cover, from point to point along the line.'

These defenses had much to defend besides the seat of government.
Although Alexandria served as a major subsidiary depot for supplies,
Washington itself was the Union's primary and largest logistics center.
As one observer noted:

Hardly had war begun when camps, warehouses, depots, immense stacks of ammunition, food, equipment and long rows of
cannon, caissons, wagons and ambulances began sprouting up
all over town in vacant lots and open spaces. Centers of activity included the Navy Yard, the Army Arsenal and the Potomac
wharves at Sixth and Seventh Streets SW. By 1863 another huh of
activity had grown along the Maryland Avenue railroad yards.
These busy centers lined the southern rim of the city fronting on
the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.'

Ships unloaded off the Potomac along the Arsenal wharves and
off the Eastern Branch south of the Navy Yard where the channel was
deepest.'

The area of Foggy Bottom saw the concentration of a mass of supplies, equipment and material, and storehouses. There was also a remount depot for approximately thirty thousand horses and mules. The
large open area near the unfinished Washington Monument was a huge
slaughtering yard for cattle. Near the Capitol, another collection of supply warehouses and yards grew up along Tiber Creek near the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad depot and repair yards. More facilities of every kind
were scattered throughout the rest of the city.' Originally named Goose
Creek, this tributary of the Potomac had been given its grander title in
hopeful emulation of la cittd eterna. It had later been converted into the
Washington Canal, which was crossed at intervals by high iron bridges.
It failed in its purpose as a major thoroughfare and degenerated into an
open sewer that emptied into the Potomac just south of the Presidential
Park, which led north to the White House.

The Washington Arsenal was the largest of the government's
twenty-eight arsenals and armories and specialized in the assembly and
storage of munitions and the storage of artillery. Its complex of buildings - foundries, workshops, laboratories, and magazines - occupied the southern tip of the city where the Potomac and Eastern Branch Rivers
met. It had a large workforce, including over one hundred women and
two hundred boys whose fine motor skills were preferred for the delicate
tasks of assembling the munitions, which ranged from rifle cartridges to
artillery shells.

Outside its gates lay a number of captured bronze guns from the
victories of Saratoga, Yorktown, Niagara, and Vera Cruz. When the
British marched on Washington in 1814, Arsenal workers had hidden
gunpowder down a well. A large party of British soldiers swarmed over
the site, and one carelessly threw a lighted match down the well onto the
gunpowder bags, destroying every building in the Arsenal.1°

The Navy Yard in southeast Washington lay along the Eastern
Branch to the uppermost point of navigation. Directly above it was an
old, rickety, wooden bridge that connected Washington to Maryland.
The Navy Yard was the premier of the Navy's great yards, and its vast
foundries and dry docks were a major production center for Dahlgren
guns and the more complicated mechanical devices of war. It was there
that Lowe's gas-generating equipment was fabricated by the teams of
skilled mechanics and artisans and where those same teams had built the
experimental Alligator-class submarines that Dahlgren had used so well
at Charleston. The Yard's facilities were so complete that entire ships
could be built, repaired, or converted from merchant to naval service
there as Gettysburg had been. The Navy Yard was a major military objective in itself.

When the war began, Washington's population had been about seventy-five thousand; in the subsequent two and a half years, it had almost
doubled and had provoked a vast spate of building. Nevertheless, a view
of the city's street plan would still have been misleading. The neat grid
did not reflect reality. Much of the land of the city was still uninhabited.
That was especially true of the large section south of Tiber Creek, which
was called "The Island" because it was bound largely by the creek and
the Potomac. Its most important and only civic building was the Gothic
Smithsonian Institution. Along the ends of 6th Street and 7th Street, SW,
were the wharves and docks for the river and sea traffic that connected
the city to Alexandria, Aquia Creek, the Chesapeake Bay, and finally
the sea " The Island also contained the most important military installa- Lion in the District of Columbia- the Washington Arsenal. Just outside
the southeastern outlet of the canal into the Eastern Branch was the
Washington Navy Yard. Outside each installation, small communities
had grown up to house their employees and the military personnel assigned to them. The Marine Barracks were only a block beyond the Navy
Yard. The country between these installations and the rest of the city was
largely uninhabited. An omnibus to the rest of the city connected the
Yard.l" Thus two of the country's most important military installations
were self-contained and not physically part of the city. They were also on
the southern and southeastern edge of the city and most easily accessible
to an attack up the Potomac.

The most densely built-up part of the city ran east and north of the
canal. Across the canal and along 10th Street, NW, was Hooker's Division. The canal emptied into the Potomac where the forlorn stub of the
incomplete Washington Monument stood almost on the water's edge.
Running just inland from the monument was the major thoroughfare
of 14th Street, which connected to the immense wooden Long Bridge
that spanned the Potomac. Earlier that year, the Army had constructed
a railroad bridge to parallel the Long Bridge. A few houses and a hotel
clustered around the bridge entrance. Small guardposts at either end of
the bridge checked all traffic.13

The fall of Washington now would not only paralyze the national
government, but would also disorder the logistics of the war effort and
bring it to a halt. "These depots, the arsenal, the large Quartermaster and
Subsistence depots in the city, and the branch Quartermaster depot in
Alexandria served the country, the nearby armies, and the army activities in and near the city."14

As the Cabinet officers left the White House, Stanton noticed the
military guard around the building was much heavier than the small
detachment that had been there before. He accosted the officer of the
guard and demanded to know who had assigned these men. His jaw
set when told it was the 120th New York Volunteers. Stanton turned his
formidable personality on the young man. "And who ordered you here,
Captain?"

"General Sharpe did, Mr. Secretary."

The first thing Stanton did on his return to his office was to call in
Lafayette Baker. Stanton paced back and forth in front of his fireplace. "Baker, I want you to increase the number of detectives you have protecting the president."

Baker had been fully aware of how Sharpe's New Yorkers had taken
over security of the White House. That was getting too close to Baker's
responsibility to protect the president himself. It did not take a genius to
know that someone was crowding his territory, in more ways than one.
He had already identified Sharpe as a rival and therefore an enemy, especially after he became aware of inquiries that seemed to point back at
Sharpe about Baker's own extrajudicial methods that poured money into
his pockets.

Baker was quick off the mark. Stanton had offered him an opportunity to reassert his power, and he snatched at it. "Yes, Mr. Secretary.
I have already seen to it two days ago. The new man's done excellent
work already. Comes from Indiana with the highest recommendations as
a bodyguard."

"Keep an eye on this, Baker. Take nothing for granted." 15

THE DOCKS, 7TH STREET, SW, WASHINGTON, D.C.,
5:22 AM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

Booth reveled in the melodrama of their meeting. For him, the passions
of the stage were indistinguishable from those of life and death. Now,
under the gas lamplight on the river docks with the mist rising off the
river from the kiss of the cold fall air on the water, he was in his element.
He waved his silver-headed cane as if it were a sword. Smoke, for his
part, did not suffer from such flights of imagination; it was not a survival
trait in his line of work. Booth was a tool in his larger plan, a tiresome
tool that required more tact to handle than Smoke liked to expend, but
he was all he had to work with. If he had thought to look back on the
efforts to reel Booth into the plan and keep him on it, he would have
marveled at how he had risen to the occasion. But Smoke was not a man
for reflection; he was a man to follow orders, the subject of their meeting
under the gaslight.

"Our chances are good," Smoke said. "Lincoln regularly walks to
the War Department or to Sharpe's office to see the telegraph traffic. The
way our friends have been stirring things up, he's back and forth all day.
I'm the only one with him. We just have to be waiting for him. Just as we
planned."

Booth stabbed the metal tip of his cane at the cobbles. "Excellent.
Almost as predictable as an entry stage right." This time he flourished
the cane as if were a wand. "His exit will be more in the way of a magician's disappearing act."

"Damn it, Booth. What have I told you? No play-acting. We do it
fast and quiet. The last thing we need is an audience."

Booth came down from his high quickly, "Of course, of course. Just
as we planned."

Then Smoke took Booth by the upper arms and looked intently at
him. "This morning, Booth. This morning. It has to be this morning. The
wagon is waiting."

Booth seemed to shrink away at first. All the fine and heroic talk of
kidnapping the president had played to his vanity. He had shown an unexpected attention to the details of the act and had coolly played his part
in their brief rehearsals. But now was the moment when he had to fix his
courage to the sticking point. The whole thing hung in the mist.

Then, as if leaping onto the stage from a height, Booth took a step
forward and grasped Smoke's hand. He cast his perfect pitch voice to
carry just in the space between them, "Sic semper tyrannis!"16

HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU (CIB), LAFAYETTE
SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:30 AM, OCTOBER 26, 1863

Much of the infantry garrison of Washington had already been stripped
to reinforce Hooker and Sedgwick in the north, leaving mostly the heavy
artillery regiments that manned the forts. Every fort and redoubt was
on full alert and was tied to Sharpe's intelligence operation by telegraph,
signal station, or messenger. The balloons went up again in the morning
to the relief of the artillerymen who looked on them almost as if they
were guardian angels. Their officers knew full well what the eyes in the
sky could do for them. They would need every advantage now that the
infantry regiments that had manned the miles of trenches and works
between the forts were largely gone. They were lucky if there was one
rifleman to twenty feet of trench line-not enough to stop a determined
charge.