A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (29 page)

Yes, he thought to himself. Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
He was humbled at the glory of Christ's love. He said to the night itself,
"We are all sinners. Can God forgive us this war?"

Major Taylor said, "Sir?"

Lee turned with a father's smile to the young man. "That line of the
hymn,'On to the close,' Major Taylor,'On to the close.' May God give us
that close."23

Lee sighed as the hymn ended and with it, his hope-filled exaltation. He had more to oppress his thoughts than the failure of the day's
assaults. Yes, he had outwitted Meade and stolen a march on Washington, but Meade would not stay fooled long, especially with screams of
help raging over the wires to him. Lee had sent Stuart and most of his
cavalry and an infantry division to hold Meade as long as he could. That
would give him one more day and one more chance to break through to
the river and bring Washington under fire. With that, the enemy's capital
would cease functioning. With so many other blows, this could well be
the one that shattered the Union's will to stay in the fight. The Washington area was also the logistics hub from which Meade's army and all
other Union efforts against him were centered. His only frustration was
that the Potomac lay as a barrier to actually occupying the city. He could
not assume that a single bridge would remain standing when he reached
the river.

"Are the Stonewall Brigade's preparations progressing well?" Lee
asked. Before Taylor could answer, the noise of horses riding up to the command group was heard along with fragment of a statement, "must
see General Lee immediately." Lee looked up from his field desk as Colonel Marshall, his senior aide, and a cloaked man entered.

"General Lee, may I present Captain Hancock, Royal Navy, emissary of Vice Admiral Milne."

THE OLD SENATE HOUSE, KINGSTON, NEW YORK,
10:15 AM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

Hooker waved his hat as he rode his white charger through the dense
crowds that rushed to cheer him through the streets of Kingston, New
York's first capital after the Revolution sundered royal authority. The
crowd was swelled with refugees from nearby Rondout, Kingston's river
port, which was now ashes and ruins, courtesy of a British raid. Tom
Meagher rode at his side, waving to the delighted throngs. He leaned
over to Hooker and said, "A little early for the victory parade, General,
don't you think?"

Meagher's remark was not lost on Hooker, who smiled and waved
back at the crowd as the band played behind him, and his color bearer
was careful to shake out the magnificent army command flag Hooker
had had specially made in New York. "Oh, Tom, enjoy it," he laughed.
"It's all a matter of morale. Must give the people hope, you know. Then
every hand will turn out to help us."

He pulled up at the stone Senate House and drew his sword to return the salute of the home guard that had turned out to defend the town
if the British raid had come inland. Mostly they were invalids from the
local regiments off with Meade - the 20th New York State Militia, the
120th and 156th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiments. He remembered then that the 120th was Sharpe's old regiment. A one-armed captain returned the salute with his surviving left hand.

Hooker gave a short speech to the thunderous applause of the sea of
faces massed before the Senate House. It crossed his mind that these people might be as devoted to him when it came time to vote for president
one of these days. He introduced Meagher, the victor of Cold Spring. The
trees seem to shake with the applause and shouts of the people, scattering their red and gold leaves.24

Hooker knew he had made the right decision to give Meagher command of XI Corps. If any unit needed a heroic leader who carried victory fresh on the tip of his sword, it was the damned Dutch. The Irishman
had that rare touch for the grand statement. After Cold Spring, he had
returned to New York City and paraded his "Glorious 200" down 5th
Avenue, every man carrying a red coat dangling from the tip of his bayonet to sway in unison with the perfect step of the men. New York loved
it, roaring its delight in a deafening din that echoed off the tall buildings
that lined the avenue. The last flowers of the year fell like a rainbow rain
on the Irishmen. Young women who would not have given them the
time of day a month ago ran up to them to plant kisses on their cheeks.
Grown men and women who had starved in the Great Hunger burst into
tears as the emerald green flag with its golden harp and the Stars and
Stripes marched by, followed by the swaying red coats. After that day,
not a business window could be found posting that old sign stating, "No
Irish Need Apply.""

GOVERNOR'S MANSION, ALBANY, 10:30 AM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

Lord Paulet was not happy to see Wolseley. On the assistant quartermaster's advice, he had lost a company of the Scots Fusilier Guards at
Cold Spring. He didn't give a damn about the Canadians that were lost.
Her Majesty would not thank him for losing so many of her big Guardsmen-and to the bloody Irish! He would never live this down.

Still, he could not dismiss the man out of hand; Wolseley had the
ear of the commander of Her Majesty's forces in North America. He was
also the protege of Maj. Gen. Hope Grant, a man whose star was very
much on the rise. So Paulet weighed how much he could risk slighting
the man and decided not much-at this time.

He was relieved that his judgment had held him back. One of Wolseley's first comments when they sat down for business was that Hope
Grant was on his way with almost twenty thousand men to assume command in British North America. "The home garrisons have been stripped
to assemble this force. The object, my lord, is to hold Albany through
the winter. We sit in the center of this state and paralyze it for months.
With Maine in our hands and New York under our thumb-not to mention their Great Lake States in revolt, the Confederates pressing from the
south, and the Royal Navy blockading their ports - they will be hard
pressed everywhere. A coherent defense will become increasingly difficult to the point of impossibility. We must sit in Albany long enough for the Royal Navy's blockade to do its work of disintegration of their
economy.

"Your raids keep them off balance. I told General Williams that you
took the raid on Cold Spring entirely on my suggestion and assurance
that it was undefended." Wolseley paused to run his finger down the
map of the Hudson Valley to where the latest information pushed Hooker's rapidly advancing army. "Because we must hold Albany, my lord,
you will have to accept battle with Hooker and defeat him before winter
closes down fighting. We are reinforcing you with two more brigades.
With the three you already have, you should be a match for Hooker.

"One more thing, my lord. Our coup de main to seize Portland did
not succeed. We have had to settle into siege. Unfortunately, we do not
have the heavy artillery to break into the city. Jonathan is bringing up
a strong corps to relieve the city. This is where it gets sticky. If we do
not take Portland, we lose the railroad link between the Maritimes and
the rest of Canada, and our problems then begin to multiply. We had
hoped to funnel Grant's reinforcements through Portland. Now we
may have to move them either up the St. Lawrence or through a smaller
port we have taken above Portland and march them around the city to
pick up the railroad. Either way, reinforcements will not reach you before you must fight Hooker. And we cannot reinforce you more strongly
unless we give up our grip on Portland. It all depends on you defeating
Hooker, my lord."26

Paulet was reconsidering his opinion of Wolseley. A victory in a
pitched battle would certainly take the Palace's mind off the loss of the
Scots. Then again, the Widow of Windsor had an uncannily good memory for little things like that.

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, 2:33 PM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

Taylor's Confederates marched into the state capital to a welcome that
was more unrestrained than that afforded them in the Crescent City
only ten days ago. Leaving Bazaine to bring up the French Army, he had
struck north just after the "Te Deum" was sung in the St. Louis Cathedral. For all his speed, he was hours too late. The Union garrison was
marching out of the northern edge of the town just as his men entered it
from the south, having just put the finishing touches to their orders from
Franklin.

Already tall plumes of black smoke, streaked with orange flames,
were billowing skyward from the burning warehouses, depots, and
docks. Baton Rouge had been thick with the logistics of the Union Army,
for it had served for a year as the base of operations in Banks's attempts
to take Port Hudson. Pursuit was out of the question. The sky was raining sparks that threatened to ignite the entire city, and Taylor had no
choice but to send his men to put out the dozens of fires starting everywhere in the wooden city.

Franklin had done his work well. He had emptied the supplies accumulated in the city almost immediately after arriving in Port Hudson.
Every boat on the river and every wagon he could lay his hands on had
been bent to this task. He had hoped to delay the inevitable attack on
Port Hudson until reinforcements had rebuilt the army to enable him to
march south and meet Taylor and Bazaine in the open field. Vermillionville would not be the last word in the war in Louisiana.

He would have been less optimistic had he known that that Bazaine
was coming quickly behind Taylor, for both generals had also taken
seriously the reinforcement of Port Hudson. They had hoped to concentrate fifty thousand men to seize Port Hudson before that happened.
The French Army had marched to Brashear City after Vermillionville,
entrained there for New Orleans, and stopped only long enough to parade through the city and take on supplies and reinforcements from the
French ships now crowding the docks.

Here the situation got complicated. There was no railroad or decent
road from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. The river had been the mighty
highway that had substituted for both. Had they the use of the river,
they surely would have made Franklin's position hopeless, but on its
muddy waters, the U.S. Navy still reigned. Rear Adm. David Porter was
gathering the gunboats and ironclads that been so vital in the long campaigns to seize control of the river and cut the Confederacy in two. After
Vicksburg and Port Hudson had fallen in July, they had been scattered
up and down the river to patrol its length. Now Porter was gathering
them back, but it would take time.

What had been its weakness at sea against the French was now a
clear advantage on the river. Originally, almost all of the American ships
had been merchant ships that had been converted for war; their mission was to blockade Southern ports and run down blockade runners. They were nothing like the purpose-built warships of the regular Navy
in size and armament. Against the new ironclads, ships-of-the-line, and
frigates of the French, they had no chance. But these same large French
ships had deep drafts that prevented them from crossing the bar at the
mouth of the Mississippi, the same problem faced by Admiral Farragut
in April 1862 when his flagship, USS Hartford, could barely pass. So the
French leviathans, including the ironclads Gloire, Couronne, Normandie,
and Invincible, uselessly sailed the Gulf, unable to come to grips with the
Americans.21 The shallower-draft French sloops and corvettes were able
to come up the river with the squadron's supply ships, but they quickly
discovered that operations on the river, with its shifting channels, mudflats, and snags, were a world apart from those on blue water.

With the river closed to them, the allies had no choice but to move
north by the Great Northern Railroad, detrain at the small station at
Ponchatoula, then march the forty miles west to Port Hudson. From the
observation tower at Port Hudson, Franklin could see a distant pall of
smoke hanging over Baton Rouge and the river thick with boats coming
north loaded with the supplies that would see him through the trial to
come. He said, "Thank God for the Navy."

BROWN'S FERRY, TENNESSEE, 3:42 PM, OCTOBER 27, 1863

When you begin to starve, all you can think of is food. So it was not surprising when several thousand men in the trapped Army of the Cumberland volunteered for special duty that would take them out of besieged
Chattanooga. It was Maj. James Calloway would do the choosing. For
him, there was no dilemma -he chose the 81st Indiana.

As the fighting raged at Chickamauga the month before, the commander of this hard-luck Hoosier regiment had been relieved on the
spot for gross incompetence. Calloway was snatched away from his 21st
Illinois to take command at a desperate moment of what was considered
a had regiment. Then something miraculous happened. The 81st fought
like lions. Calloway's presence had been electric. Under the power of his
charismatic hand, the regiment morphed almost instantly into an outfit
so stubborn and tough that they became the division rear guard in the
fighting retreat that helped save the Army of the Cumberland on that
deadly day.