A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (30 page)

When Grant ordered Thomas to provide an officer and volunteers
to train on Mr. Gatling's guns that were arriving with Sherman's corps,
someone at Army headquarters remembered Calloway's request to be
allowed to recruit a new cavalry regiment to be armed with repeating
weapons. Calloway had no sooner picked his men on the 26th than they
were hustled out of the pocket the next morning and across the Tennessee River to Brown's Ferry where they were to marry up with the mysterious new equipment they were to train on. The first thing Calloway did
was to see his men fed the first good meal they had had in over a month.
Only the night before, Thomas had taken matters into his own hands
and seized Brown's Ferry on a loop of the Tennessee River in a daring
night operation that opened a robust supply line to his withering army.
As Calloway's men ate, they watched a solid stream of supply wagons
crossing the pontoons across the river.

An officer sought Calloway out to give him his written orders and
introduce him to Gatling. What looked like a strange artillery battery
drove off the road to park in an open field with a bluff to its back. He
marched the men to the field where they took a good look at the strange
weapons, shining bundles of brass-bound heavy rifle barrels mounted on
light artillery carriages. They viewed them with a healthy dose of soldier
skepticism. Too many promises of wonder weapons had floated through
the Army for the last two years, and all evaporated into nothing but hot
air. More than one eyebrow arched as Gatling described the weapon, its
operation, and its effect. Skepticism soured to sheer disbelief.

All of that changed in the instant Gatling began to turn the crank.
The barrels spun in whirring circles of fire, and the targets simulating a
Confederate battle line disintegrated into flying splinters and scraps of
cloth with not one left standing. The firing ceased, but the barrels kept
on spinning with a smooth mechanical whir, finally slowing to stop.

FORT BERRY, VIRGINIA, DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON,
1:10 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

The officers who looked out from the fort's parapets in the dark, cool,
early morning had their attention fixed on the Confederate artillery attack on the fort that covered Arlington Hill a mile and a half to the north.
They did not see the men crawling forward in the darkness toward them.
The first wave of engineers carried gunpowder charges to blow up the
thick abattis, axes to chop through what was left, and ropes to drag it
away. Men crawled behind them dragging rough ladders; the infantry
followed, their metal accoutrements blackened or tied up with rags to
prevent rattling. The officers had thrown away their scabbards to avoid
unnecessary noise and to symbolize that this was all or nothing.

The men of the Stonewall Brigade stopped to wait for the engineer
first wave to go forward. All around them were the dead of that day's
assault, stiffening as the last of life's warmth fled. The wounded were
there, too, moaning softly. But one man in the trench before the infantry
parapet was in agony beyond endurance, shrieking Christ's travail on
the Cross, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me!" The poor wretch went
on and on, but no man dared leave his place to go to aid, though it left a
thousand souls in torment. Hard men wept into their hands.

After a while, even orders lost their hold, and a dozen men had begun crawling forward when lights appeared on the parapet. A woman's
voice gave orders as if she were used to command. Moments later, a gate
opened, and a party with a stretcher came out led by a woman with a
lantern. They found the wounded man. The nearest men pressed to the
ground saw her kneel by the man and take his hand. The screaming stopped. A voice louder than the rest said, "We must hurry, ma'am. The
Colonel does not know we are outside the wall." The party put the man
on the stretcher and heaved it to their shoulders as the woman held the
lamp in one hand and the man's hand in the other. They quickly disappeared through the gate.

Relief washed over the men lying on the ground. They were
warmed though the ground was cold and their clothes worn thin. At
least they had eaten well, the first time in a very long time, courtesy of
fat Union warehouses. They were stacked up in column of regiments,
some of the most famous in the Confederacy. Some of the men had been
with the immortal Stonewall from the beginning and remembered his
words when they were sore-pressed at Second Manassas and he commanded the 2nd Corps, and their new commander begged for support.
"The Stonewall Brigade! Go back, and give my compliments to them and
tell the Stonewall Brigade to maintain her reputation."' Not many were
there then that had made it through all the following battles but enough
to make the moment grow in the retelling, so much that the men who
came after believed they had been there, too. They lay there waiting for
the opportunity to once more maintain their reputation. With Washington just behind the line of forts and over the river, they hoped it would
be the last time.

GUNSTON HALL PLANTATION, 1:15 Ann, OCTOBER 28, 1863

Four miles down the Potomac from Mount Vernon, the Gunston Hall
manor house overlooked the waters of Pohick and Accotink Bays. Small
boats and barges filled the two small inlets. Confederate infantry were
boarding from a half dozen landings. Their crews of British sailors bent
expertly at the oars and pushed off. The craft had been swept up from
the U.S. Navy and commercial traffic as Milne's ships overran Hampton
Roads. They had trailed the special striking force Milne had selected for
his descent on Washington. He knew that his large ships would never
make it over Kettle Bottom Shoals; the Royal Navy had made good use
of its numerous peacetime port visits over the years.

From the mansion's porch, Captain Hancock and Confederate colonel John Rogers Cooke watched the lanterns on the boats move across
the dark water as if they were crosses between water bugs and fireflies.
Before his spectacular demise, Hill had selected Cooke's brigade for this mission for two reasons - the brigade was his reserve, not attached to
any division, and he had complete faith in the intelligence, initiative, and
fighting spirit of its commander. Cooke was born at Jefferson Barracks in
Missouri in 1833. He was the son of Virginian general Philip St. George
Cooke. When war came, his father honored his oath to the Union, and
the younger Cooke resigned his commission to offer his sword to his
mother state, severing all family ties. He had commanded the 27th
North Carolina at Antietam with such grit as to earn the admiration of
the Army. Ordered to hold a line at all costs, he had replied that though
ammunition was exhausted, he would hold it as long as he had a single
man with a bayonet left. It had come close to that. His regiment lost
eighteen of twenty-six officers holding that line. He was nearly one of
the dead when he received a bullet wound in the forehead. A Prussian
officer serving with James E. B. Stuart, his brother-in-law, said it was
"the most beautiful wound I ever saw." Now he commanded four North
Carolina regiments -15th, 27th, 46th, and 48th - of whom he was immensely proud. They had a mission that would earn them and the South
eternal glory.2

For command of the naval descent on Washington, Milne's choice
of commander fell on Commodore Hugh Dunlop, another veteran of
the Crimean War in Russian waters who had also ably commanded the
Jamaica Station. Milne selected a flotilla of sloops and gunboats for their
shallow draft. Dunlop's force included the 17-gun corvette Greyhound,
and the sloops Icarus, Peterel, Spiteful, Racer, and Hydra. Philomel-class
gunvessels, gunboats of 570 tons with five guns-such as Landrail,
Steady, and Cygnet, and the smaller Cheerful-class Nettle and Onyx with
two guns each-had been brought from the harbor defenses of Bermuda
for just this mission. Distributed among the ships was a Royal Marine
battalion fresh from the Channel Fleet.'

These ships had also crowded into the two bays, a warlike assemblage the Potomac had not seen since McClellan's vast waterborne invasion of the Peninsula partly sailed down the river the last year. Fully
appreciating the sight was a six-man cavalry patrol of the 3rd Indiana.
They had trailed the Confederate infantry brigade as it marched away
from Hill's corps in the night. Four crept up to the water's edge, leaving
two to hold the horses among the trees. They could see the ships and boats thick on the water, lit by their lanterns and the starry night. Boats
slipped by them, the English of their boatswains' orders clear in the still
air. In fifteen minutes, they had seen enough. Their sergeant signaled to
withdraw when a gentle splashing in the water drew them back to the
ground. Someone was swimming to the bank with a practiced sailor's
stroke. He found his footing as the water shallowed and hunched over to
scramble up the bank-and right into the sergeant's pistol. The dripping
man spoke first in a whisper, "Faith, and is this my welcome to the New
World?"

"Shut your gob, Paddy." The pistol found the small of his back.
"Now, move and be quiet."

What the scouts had seen was the fruit of much planning. On the
news that the Royal Navy filled the lower Chesapeake, Lee had instantly
departed down the Northern Neck to the bay to request a meeting with
Milne. The admiral pulled out all the stops to honor Lee as he climbed
aboard his flagship, HMS Nile. A full compliment of sideboys stood to
as Lee was piped aboard. A Marine honor guard -a full company -
presented arms as a naval band played "Dixie." The deck was crowded
with Royal Navy officers eager to see the Southern legend. They were
not disappointed in his bearing, immaculate uniform, and the courtliness
of his greeting to Milne. But Milne and Lee did not linger on deck. A cold
wind blew down the hay, and they had much to talk about in the admiral's cabin 4

From that meeting came the plan that was now unfolding below
Gunston Hall. Lee's offer to cooperate in a strike on Washington was
eagerly accepted by Milne, for it solved two of his three major problems. Lee supplied the pilots who would take his ships easily through
the shoals, and his land attack would seriously distract the garrison of
the Union capital. His third problem, and the one that would most seriously prevent his approach to Washington, was the city's naval fortifications. Although there were sixty-eight forts in the land defenses of the
capital, there were only two naval forts meant to defend the city from
an attack from the river. They were just below the city on either side of
the Potomac. Battery Rogers at Jones Point was on the southern edge of
Alexandria about six miles from the Washington Arsenal. Fort Foote was
on the Maryland shore about one mile south of Battery Rogers. Both forts
were only a quarter mile from the main ship channel. It would be a dead ly gauntlet. Rogers and Foote were reported to be armed with 15-inch
Rodman guns; Foote was also reported to have four 200-pounder Parrott
rifles. One hit could sink a sloop and turn the gunvessels into kindling .5