A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (39 page)

Lowe and Cushing were peering over the edge of the basket as the
shell disappeared. Then the ship shuddered, and red flame shot out of
the funnel stump. Inside, the engines had disintegrated when the shell
exploded to rupture the boilers, flooding the engineering compartment
with scalding steam. Spiteful just drifted on momentum now to crash into
the wharf. The funnel stump was a fire spout, and flames licked over the
decks. Men jumped over the side onto the wharf to scramble over the
scattered piles of bricks and timbers that had defended the battery so
poorly. The captain was the last man off as his ship became a torch.15

HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU, LAFAYETTE
SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:30 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

Sharpe rushed out of his headquarters and had one foot in the stirrup
when he saw the president striding across the square, forcing two soldier
guards and Wilmoth to run after him. Immediately, Sharpe noticed the
drawn pistol in his lieutenant's hand and that Lincoln was wearing a
bloody bandage instead of his normal stovepipe hat. Sharpe threw the
reins to a guard and ran over to greet him. He was shocked to see the
caked blood on the president's head and face.

"Mr. President!" he barely had time to say when Lincoln waved him
off. There was a hardness to his face, an anger Sharpe had never seen before. "Sir, what has happened?"

"I don't think Mr. Baker will be picking my bodyguards any longer.
I think you should pick up that office, General." A few words of explanation left Sharpe shaken.

"Sir, I should never have removed Major Tappen's men. I hold myself responsible."

"Nonsense, Sharpe. The military guard has always been there to
protect me from the outside. All the army outside the White House
would not have protected me from an enemy inside. But Providence
averted the assassin's hand. Providence and this young man." He
pulled Wilmoth forward. Sharpe saw the deep gash across his forehead.
For the first time, Lincoln's face softened. He smiled and said, "Every
time I see this young man, he gets promoted. I thought that Lieutenant
Colonel Wilmoth just rolls off the tongue better than Captain Wilmoth. That reminds me-" He paused. "That reminds me that we need
action now."

"If we are not too late, Mr. President. Lowe's balloon reports that
the enemy landed at the 6th and 7th Street wharves, dashed up to the
Long Bridge, seized it, then marched across to the Virginia side. I expect
they're going to attack Fort Runyon from the rear. If they succeed, you
will see Lee riding up to your house within an hour or two. I was about
to join my regiment."

"Well, Sharpe, I see you have another horse here. Let's go."

Sharpe mounted up. This was a man you did not argue with.

Before the two men left, Mrs. Keckley came running up to Lincoln
and handed him his stovepipe hat. "Mrs. Lincoln said you would need
this, Mr. President." And off she went.

They found the 120th and the Horse Marines under the shelter
of the trees at the south end of the Presidential Park. As they rode up,
Tappen called the regiment to attention and presented arms. As three
hundred rifles snapped to present honors, Lincoln lifted his hat in
acknowledgment. There were gasps at the sight of his bloody bandage.

Sharpe sent the Horse Marines out first to scout the approaches to
the Long Bridge. As soon as the cavalry galloped off, he ordered Tappen
to move out after them. The column marched out of the Presidential Gardens and onto 14th Street with its dozen coffee mill guns. Word spread
of the attempted assassination and Lincoln's killing of the assassin. The
men were extraordinarily impressed.

The few refugees still in the city made way for them. Here and
there a house burned, flames spreading to the others on either side with
no one left to put out the fires. The rumble of guns echoed up from the
fighting at the Navy Yard, but the noise of battle from across the river
drowned out that fight the nearer they got. The column crossed the fetid
Tiber Creek canal over one of its arched iron bridges and marched across
the base of the Mall with the Washington Monument on their right,
closed off by the wooden slaughter-pen walls. All they could see from
the tree-lined street was the observation balloon floating high behind
Fort Runyon. Rising sharply above the rumble of cannon across the river
not too far ahead was the crackle of small arms.

Two of Sharpe's cavalrymen came dashing down the street toward
them. They pulled up sharply. A lieutenant gasped out, "General, the
bridge is held by a regiment with four guns. We're engaging from the
few nearby houses."

A man in the ranks cried out, "Look, my God, look!" All eyes went
forward. The balloon above Fort Runyon had flared in an intense yelloworange flame. The burning remnant of the balloon and its basket plummeted downward, throwing the four men aboard out to twist and writhe
on fire as they plunged to their deaths.16

On the Virginia side, a Confederate sniper stood up in awe at what
he had done with the handful of explosive bullets he had been issued.
His friends whooped and pounded his back in exaltation.

They had more to celebrate. Cooke's column had rushed through
Fort Jackson, defending the Virginia end of the Long Bridge. Its garrison
had been taken totally unaware. Cooke's regiments had rushed the next
half mile and blown their way through Fort Runyon's rear gate while the
garrison's attention had been fixed to its front and flanks. The fort fell
quickly. Lee wasted no time sending a fresh brigade straight for the Long
Bridge. In twenty minutes, the first double-timing ranks reached the
edge of the mile-long bridge and thundered onto its planks.

At the head of the column, the gallant figure of Brig. Gen. John
B. Gordon led his six Georgia regiments. Gordon had laughed as he
spurred his black charger onto the bridge and under the sign that said,
"Walk Your Horses." Lee had recommended Gordon for this role, for no
man in the two years of war had proven more able to ride speed and
audacity to success than the handsome Georgian. At the rear of the brigade, his division commander, Major General Early, hurried on the
regiments of his other brigades. Lee rode over to sit Traveller next to
Early. When he appeared, the columns cheered wildly, waving their
hats. They could taste sweet victory as they were driving into the heart
of the hated Union, a living dagger. All they had to do was cross that
one wooden mile.

At that moment, the Tar Heels of the 15th on the Washington end
of the bridge were huddled behind their barricades trying to return the
rapid repeater fire from enemies hidden in the nearby houses. Twenty
men already had been picked off. Their colonel, William McCrae, looked
nervously at his watch, repeating to himself Cooke's last words, "Hold
until relieved. Hold until relieved."

STOTTVILLE, NEW YORK, 10:45 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

When two enemies unexpectedly find each other on the same road, it is
called a meeting engagement. And that is just what Maj. Gen. Adolph
von Steinwehr realized when his 2nd Division entered Stottville from
the east and ran straight into an enemy brigade that had just entered the
town from the west. Von Steinwehr's was the lead division of Meagher's
XI Corps. Early that morning, Meagher had led his two divisions in a
long march to the east in order to swing west above Hudson and then
descend on the British from the rear. Hooker's plan was to hold the British with XII Corps while XI Corps encircled them. It was a good plan,
but the enemy had a plan, too, as Hooker had discovered at Chancellorsville. In this case, though, the British arrived because of an interrupted
plan. When Custer's Wolverines had cut the railroad from Albany, Paulet's last two brigades detrained where the track was broken, joined up
with the survivors of the brigade from the wrecked train, and struck out
on the most direct road to Hudson. That took them into the small town
of Stottville.

Von Steinwehr was a good soldier. Born in Brunswick, Germany,
he had earned a commission in the Prussian Army and served six years
before resigning to immigrate to America. He got into the war by raising a regiment of German Americans and rose through ability to command a division. It was his division that had the worst luck in American
military history to hold the right flank at both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. He had played both had hands well, and his reputation had not suffered. His superiors continued to think of him as "cool, collected, and
judicious." He was uniformly admired as intelligent and agreeable.

It was his coolness that mattered now. For in a meeting engagement, the commander who strikes first and hardest seizes the moral
and physical ascendancy. Luckily, he had a lead regiment willing to take
the bit in its teeth, the 154th New York-the Hardtack Regiment-recruited from all over the state. The corps scouts had come racing back
to the head of the column as it entered Stottville from the east, spreading the word that the road through the town heading south was full of
marching redcoats. Von Steinwehr rode to the head of the regiment and
pointed with his sword. "Die Fienden sind da! Vorwaerts!" No translation
was necessary.

They emerged from a side street straight onto marching Canadians
who were too surprised to do anything. The 154th fired point blank at
the length of a rifle, and the Canadian column came apart. The New
Yorkers charged with the bayonet onto the street among the startled
enemy. Other of von Steinwehr's regiments came down the few parallel streets of the small town and broke the enemy column again and
again. Hundreds of prisoners were taken at the first rush as the rest of
the Canadian battalions streamed in panic up the opposite side streets.
At the end of the column, a British Armstrong battery blocked the narrow street for the fugitives who piled up against it and pinned it in place,
unable to turn about or deploy. Von Steinwehr's regiments fired into the
helpless mass from the side streets. The gunners were desperate to save
their guns but could not move them for the mass of panicked Canadians.
Their horses fell one by one in their traces and the gunners by their guns.

Victory had its price; von Steinwehr's lead brigade was scattered all
over the town, rounding up prisoners and chasing the running Canadian
militia. He had struck the three Canadian battalions brigaded with the
15th Foot, known as the Snappers, and its attached battery. The British
were at the head of the column and escaped the attack, but true to their
nickname, they snapped back to attack into the town. They drove the
scattered Americans back down the main street, freeing many of their
prisoners and taking many of their own. The Snappers pushed past the
guns, dead horses, and gunners to drive von Steinwehr's men back into
the small town square. The 33rd New Jersey were in their way. These men had only been mustered in as a new regiment six weeks before and
came apart when the Snappers came at them with the bayonet. Half surrendered on the spot, and the rest fled down the street. The fleeing men
ran through the 27th Pennsylvania. Originally one of the German regiments, its losses had been so large that it had just received a draft of 170
conscripts. The new men bolted, and the rest followed.

The tables had been turned on von Steinwehr. His 1st Brigade was
disintegrating, being driven like cattle by British bayonets. He committed his reserve regiment, the 134th New York, to block them as he organized the rest of the men, who had been forced back into the square, to
cover each of the exits. The 134th had been raised mostly in Schenectady
County just to the north of Albany. Their towns and villages had not escaped the enemy's torch, and they knew it. This fight was close to home,
and they were not about to run away. They gaffed off the fleeing New
Jersey men and stopped the Snappers' advance with a steady volley. At
the other end of the square, von Steinwehr was just in time with the Germans of the 73rd Pennsylvania to hold off an attack by the second enemy
brigade built around the 47th Foot. His second brigade arrived in time to
fight back another attack. The British commander was a bruiser.

Von Steinwehr was in a fix. His division had numbered barely
twenty-seven hundred men, and he had taken on two enemy brigades,
each one equal to his own force. The fact that they were in the middle of
this small town was to their advantage as the men instinctively turned
each house into a little fort. The sound of smashing glass competed with
the gunfire as riflemen broke out windows. There were no regiments
marching up against each other in open order, but rushes by companies
or platoons through backyards, gardens, and alleyways, or from one
house to another. Guns found no fields of fire. Any gun pushed close
enough to fire into a house risked its crew to small arms fire. The fighting
was now house by house, and here and there the houses began to burn.

Meagher had been with his 3rd Division, commanded by Maj. Gen.
Carl Schurz, when his scouts came pounding up the column with the
news of the British in Stottville. Schurz was another German immigrant
who, unlike von Steinwehr, had no conventional military background
but was the most prominent of the "Forty-Eighters"-the German leaders of the Revolution of 1848. A staunch Republican, he had been on the
committee that nominated Lincoln at the 1860 convention. He, too, had raised German troops for the Union and, with political favor, had risen
to command a division. His experience had been dogged with defeat
also. Meagher rushed the division forward, flying ahead to fling himself into the crisis of the battle with his Cold Spring Irish battalion at
his heels.

CLAVERACK, NEW YORK, 11:05 AM, OCTOBER 28, 1863

Ironically, both Lord Paulet and Hooker were expecting reinforcement
from the north. Barely minutes apart, each man's attention was called to
the pall of smoke from burning Stottville, visible despite the cold, mizzling rain that was settling in.