A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (35 page)

The British ships-he counted seven-were approaching the confluence of the Potomac and the Eastern Branch. Behind them trailed a
mass of small boats and barges crammed with infantry. A Confederate
flag waved over Battery Rogers as a ship went through its last agonies
a few hundred yards away and disappeared beneath the water. Alexandria was covered by a growing pall of smoke. The forts south of it were
holding out against strong attacks. North of the town, masses of Rebel
infantry were encircling Fort Runyon, which covered access to the Long
Bridge. Rebel guns were pounding away at the fort, which was holding
its own, wreathing the area in black powder smoke. The rest of the fort
system on the Virginia side still flew the Stars and Stripes. He trained his
glass far to the west and swept the horizon. Where was Meade? Where
was Meade?

Lowe shut his glass. "Well, Count, I think we need to let some gas
out this bag and get on the ground as soon as we can." He did not realize
that aboard Greyhound off the coast of Alexandria, an officer had pointed
out the floating balloon and observed to Dunlop that it was probably
hovering over their very objective, the Navy Yard -less than five miles
away. It seemed like a promising sign to Dunlop. After losing four
ships - three at Fort Washington and one at Battery Rogers - he knew his
margin had shrunk, but the defenses of the city had been run and there
were no other fortifications to stop him. His first objective was to bring
the Arsenal under his guns and land Colonel Cooke's infantry from their
small boats and barges along 6th and 7th Street docks on the Potomac.
Then he would steam up the Eastern Branch and pound the Navy Yard
into submission or ruins.'

SOUTH OF HUDSON, NEW YORK, 7:30 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

The Army of the Hudson sprang to life with reveille. Hooker had had
them up two hours before dawn and fed a good breakfast. Now their
columns were moving north toward contact with the enemy. The cavalry
division had clattered out of its makeshift camps first, one brigade going to reinforce Custer and the other to swing wide to the east and cut
off the railroad connecting Albany to Canada. Hooker aimed XII Corps
for Claverack to put them in Paulet's path, while XI Corps took a paral lel route inland through the hills. There was no shortage of local scouts
eager to guide them over the country roads. He had told Meagher, "Tom,
your Germans might enjoy falling on someone else's flank and rear for a
c ange.

Meagher had laughed at that. Yes, the Germans would enjoy erasing their shame by the very tactics that had inflicted it. "Meagher of the
Sword" and the "Damned Dutch" might have seemed like the oddest of
matches, the spirited and mercurial Gael and the straight-forward, stolid
Teutons-but they had worked on each other in that indescribable way
that made magic in a failed organization. It had helped immensely that
Meagher spoke passable German and peppered his talks to them with
references to the heroes of Germany. Around the campfires, Meagher
would roam and speak to them of Arminius (Hermann) who destroyed
the three Roman legions at the Teutoburger Wald as Der deutsche Tat fur
Europe - the German deed for Europe to free it from a tyrant. They too
were heroes in Der deutsche Tat fur Amerika. In return they called him
by the name Unser Mauer-Our Wall, for his thickset, powerful frame.
And unlike the late Stonewall Jackson who stood like a stone wall, Unser
Mauer was the kind that fell on you.9

He appealed to their love of freedom, the very thing that had driven
so many of them out of their fatherland after the failed revolutions of
1848. These were not Prussian Junkers with the Army and militarism in
their bones. They were the men who had supported the Frankfurt Assembly and its efforts to define German nationalism in a liberal sense.
They had offered the Prussian king the German imperial throne, and he
had refused it for its revolutionary contamination. So Meagher was on
common grounds with these men; their fires burned with the same blue
flame whether it was "freedom" in an Irish brogue or freiheit in Rhenish,
Hessian, and Prussian accents.10

They were light in their step now as they pushed off through the
countryside, radiant in all its fall colors, glowing now in the clear morning light. It was all he could do to keep them from singing-it was a herculean task to keep German soldiers from singing as they marched, but
for him they did it.

Five miles to the north of Hudson, the commander of the 5th Michigan Cavalry, Col. Russell A. Alger, watched from the trees as a locomotive came down the tracks of the Hudson River Railroad from Albany. It slowed to turn one of the few bends in the otherwise straight line
of tracks that ran along the river's edge. Ahead, the rails had been removed; the engineer never even saw it in time to put on the breaks. The
engine shot off the tracks and went crashing down the shale embankment, its whistle screaming in the paralyzed engineer's hand. It fell on
its side in a shriek of rending metal and slid into the river where the hot
boiler met the water and exploded in a howl of escaping steam. Five cars
followed it off the tracks and down the embankment, spewing red-coated men before crashing into the water. The rest skidded off the tracks to
crash into each other in a jumble of smashed and overturned cars.

Alger grinned as he punched one gauntleted fist into another.
Custer would have loved to have seen that. He leaped onto his horse and
charged down into the wreckage, followed by his Wolverines 11

Custer would indeed have been delighted to have been there, but
at the same moment, he had his hands full with only the 1st, 6th, and 7th
Michigan of his old brigade, and 1st Vermont recently attached-barely
thirteen hundred men-trying to slow down an advance by the enemy's
cavalry and infantry in at least division strength. Paulet had not wasted
a moment when Custer had driven his cavalry in and immediately threw
his 1st Division and cavalry right back at the Wolverines. Hooker's presence this close had surprised him, and he knew he had to get away from
the river to acquire maneuver room. The rest of his force, his 2nd Division, would have to follow as it arrived by river and train. Word of the
destruction of the train to the north had not reached him.

He had expected to have almost 22,000 men (47 percent Imperial
troops and 53 percent Canadians) and 84 guns to meet Hooker's force,
which he correctly estimated at about the same strength. Instead, he
was heading into a fight less one division of about 7,500 men. It made
him feel like he had only one boot on, a feeling he unknowingly shared
with Longstreet at Gettysburg when the Confederate general had to fight
without Pickett's division." His major combat units at hand would be his
1st Division, the Brigade of Guards, 500 inexperienced cavalry, and 68
guns (see Appendix Q. If his 2nd Division was to get into the fight, the
survivors of the wrecked train would have to pull themselves together
and join the other brigades coming behind, which would have to detrain
and all force-march toward the sound of the guns. Unfortunately for him, the 5th Michigan was picketing the road south to intercept any messengers that might tell him what had happened to his other boot.13

Custer had led more than one sharp counterattack in person with
the 1st Michigan when the enemy pressed too hard. The time was coming when he would have to break contact or become decisively engaged,
and the latter would destroy his short brigade. That time did not come.
At the last moment, the 5th New York galloped up for the fight; this was
their home, and they wanted a big piece of Custer's action. They were
the lead regiment in the cavalry brigade Hooker had sent to reinforce
him. The horse artillery batteries wheeled into line just behind them.
Brig. Gen. Henry Davies, Jr. rode up. "Well, George, it looks like you
saved some of the fight for us. Hooker should be up with XII Corps in an
hour or less. Then the party will really begin."14

Behind him appeared their division commander, Brig. Gen. Judson
Kilpatrick. Custer and Davis looked briefly at each other and looked
away. Kilpatrick was a fighting man, but reckless with his mouth, the
truth, and the welfare of his men, hence his nickname, "Kill Calvary Kilpatrick." No one had forgotten how he had thrown away the life of the
brilliant young cavalry brigadier Elon Farnsworth at Gettysburg. He had
made a completely unwarranted slight at the man's courage. Farnsworth
had charged unbroken Confederate infantry to put the lie to the slur and
died for it "s

HMS NETTLE, APPROACHING THE WASHINGTON ARSENAL,
7:30 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

The captain of Nettle was elated at the scene on the Arsenal wharves as
his gunboat came up. Wagons were rushing munitions up to a number
of barges, and teams of black laborers were transferring them-all very
orderly. One barge had pulled away to steam away upriver to directly
supply Fort Runyon on the Virginia side. The sight of Nettle's Union
Jack flapping in the southeast wind panicked the Arsenal workers. They
fled from the docks while the teamsters tried to turn their wagons in
the press of fleeing men. Bullets started to whiz over the ship. A few of
the Union guards had stuck to their posts and decided to put up a fight.
One of them was a good enough shot to drop Nettle's helmsman at the
captain's side. Guards on the escaping barge added their fire as Nettle
lurched to port with the wheel unmanned.

The captain jumped to grab the swinging wheel and put his boat
back on course. He had strict orders to support the Confederate infantry
that was trailing Nettle in their boats in their mission to seize the Arsenal
intact. That meant not firing on its warehouses, but that did not mean
he could not clear the docks of snipers. Unfortunately, he did not stop
to consider that the docks themselves were piled high with powder and
munitions.

Lowe's ground crews were hard at work, raising the second balloon
while lowering Lowe's. They had met at about 500 feet above the Navy
Yard when a thunderous explosion drew every head south. The men
aboard the British flotilla stopped as the wave of the explosion rocked
their ships. More explosions ripped the air and shuddered through the
earth as the Arsenal's huge store of munitions ignited building by building. Bullets set off by the millions and whizzed through the air when
flame touched their paper cartridges. The explosions blew shells of all
calibers to arc out and fall like iron hail. Even the fighting on the Virginia
side of the Potomac stopped as every man turned to the fiery spectacle.
Cheers echoed from the massed Confederates around Fort Runyon. Lee
and his ordnance officers were less pleased. They had counted on the
spoils of the Arsenal to pump new blood into the Army of Northern Virginia for months to come.

Of course, the source of the explosion was to causes recriminations
for decades. Commodore Dunlop maintained until his death that he gave
no orders to fire upon the Arsenal. Some have blamed the men of the
27th North Carolina for firing on the Arsenal docks from their barges.
Colonel Cooke was also adamant that he gave no orders for destruction.
Both men insisted that they had orders to capture the Arsenal intact. Unfortunately, the commander of the Yard also died in the explosion, and
the few survivors could shed no light on the cause.16

Such speculations were a luxury for the future-and the survivors.
The serial explosions had shaken the city and shattered every third pane
of glass. Shells and burning debris were falling into the city itself, starting fires seemingly everywhere. The streets quickly filled with the remaining inhabitants. Terrified civilians crowded every street leading out
of the city into Maryland. Many soldiers from the vast quartermaster and
commissary establishments deserted and joined the rush. Panic was not
confined to the human inhabitants alone. Shells and debris fell among the vast herds in the Foggy Bottom stockyards, driving the animals to a
frenzied rush that broke through their pens and into the streets. Roofs
were blazing throughout half of the city. Lee's laurels, it seemed, would
be a fiery wreath.

From Lowe's balloon, the view seemed straight from judgment
Day - the Arsenal was a sea of flames and smoke, the streets were filled
with terrified refugees and animals, and the city itself was beginning to
burn here and there. Greek words filled Professor Lowe's mind as he
searched for a description -catastrophia, cataclysma, o telos (the end). But
it was not the end of miseries, for only just then did the fires find the
gunpowder bunkers at the Arsenal where thousands of tons of gunpowder had been stored. It was more than an explosion-it was a wave of
power that pulsed outward to push the balloons nearly horizontal until
their cables almost snapped. The occupants hung on for dear life. Lowe
tried to catch his telegrapher as the man was blown out of the basket and
plunged screaming to earth. He was barely able to keep Zeppelin from
following him .17

The sound followed the force wave. Men remembered it as if the
crack of doom itself had been sounded. What they recalled even more
clearly was the immense cloud that funneled into the sky in a vast column, higher and higher until it rushed laterally as well as upwards in a
great rounded head - some said like a mushroom. Lightning was seen
sending its yellow bolts inside the cloud.

The force of the explosion had staggered Dunlop's ships, which
were cruising right off the Arsenal and beginning to steam up the Eastern Branch. Nettle had disintegrated in the blast. Peterel had been doused
with flaming debris and set on fire. The rest had had men blown overboard, eardrums punctured, their vessels' rigging shredded, and fires
started. The British ships were simply stunned. The Confederate infantry
in their boats and barges had been farther back down the main channel
and not suffered as much. Colonel Cooke would write from his vantage
point that "Hell had opened up its mouth like a volcano."18