Talons of Eagles (9 page)

Jamie and his Marauders struck at a Federal gun emplacement deep in Western Kentucky, overlooking the Mississippi River, and held the gun crews captive until they had packed the barrels of the huge thirty-two pound cannons with explosives.

“You boys better get gone,” Jamie told the men with a grin on his face. “There's about to be one hell of a bang here.”

The gun crews took off at a flat run, wanting to get just as far away as possible from the site before those massive charges went off and sent pieces of cannon flying in all directions.

“MacCallister's Marauders,” one Union officer said, a disgusted note in his voice. He looked at the young artillery officer standing in front of him. “You were treated well after the surrender?”

“Yes, sir. They had a doctor with them and he saw to the wounded while the guerrillas packed the barrels with explosives.”

The young officer was clearly embarrassed, and the Union colonel noted his discomfort. “You were outnumbered, Lieutenant. There is no disgrace in an honorable surrender. You saved lives by doing so.”

“It isn't that at all, sir. It's just that, well, I don't really know how to say this. But . . .” Then he blurted out the words. “The Rebs were so darn nice to us after the fight. I mean, they weren't nice at all
during
the fight, but after it was all over, while they were tending to the wounded and holding the rest of us at gunpoint, why, they were just as friendly as could be, sir. It was as if there hadn't even been a fight at all. They asked about our families and what we did for a living before the war . . .” He hesitated, shuffling his feet on the floor and slowly shaking his head.

“Go on, Lieutenant,” the colonel urged, although he had a pretty good idea what the young officer was having so much trouble putting into words.

“Well, sir . . . it's just . . . It's hard to explain. They didn't seem like . . . they didn't act like the enemy, sir. One of my gunners, Henderson, why, he was talking with this man, and it turned out they were related by marriage . . . sort of. This guerrilla's brother, why, he'd married one of Henderson's cousins a few years back. And Henderson's father had even bought a horse from this guerrilla's father. I don't understand this war, sir. I really don't.”

The colonel waited, sensing there was more.

The young lieutenant frowned, then said, “Just before we were told to take off running, this one man—I think he was an officer, but it's hard to tell, since the Marauders don't wear any type of insignia—he looked at us and smiled and said, ‘Y'all take care now, you hear?' ” He met the colonel's eyes. “What the hell kind of war is this, Colonel?”

The colonel thought about that for a moment. “A very confusing one, Lieutenant.” He was not a career officer and added, “And if both sides hadn't of had such stiff necks, a war that could have been avoided. Should have been avoided.” He smiled. “However, if you repeat that last bit, I'll swear you were lying.”

* * *

Jamie and his men beat it back into Tennessee with dozens of Yankee patrols nipping at their heels.

For weeks, Jamie and his Marauders raided installations deep in Federal territory, always working in small groups of ten to fifteen men. Sometimes they dressed as river men, using commandeered boats, sometimes as drummers, peddling everything from pots and pans to the latest in corsets, and sometimes as laborers looking for work. They became experts in the sneak attack, the hit-hard-and-run tactics that Jamie had learned as a boy in the Shawnee villages.

But one thing slowly became apparent to the Yankees: Jamie and his men did not kill needlessly; they would not kill at all if they could avoid it. So the Federal commanders in the West, as this front was called, met and decided that was the Marauders' weak point and they could use it to their advantage.

They were very wrong.

* * *

Summer waned and turned into autumn and autumn brought cold winds that introduced winter, and a very hard and early winter all but closed down the war in Northern Virginia. The Rebels, nearly fifty thousand strong, huddled in tents and huts and hastily built log cabins around Centerville. About twenty miles away, just across the Potomac, thousands of Federals were massing. The fancy uniforms of militia were gone; the Union army wore blue, the Confederate army gray. McClellan commanded the Blue, Johnston the Gray. The armies stared at each other and did little else. The South had stated that it only wanted to be left alone; they would not take the offensive. The North would have to move against them.

But it would be some months yet before those two armies met. For now, most of the action was to the west. The greatest battle of American history, to that date, was shaping up in Tennessee. It would be known as Bloody Shiloh.

* * *

The cold winter brought the war in Northern Virginia to a halt, but out in the West, in Cairo, Illinois, an-up-and coming general named Ulysses S. Grant was massing some eighteen thousand troops for an assault against Tennessee. His attack and the offensive against the Rebel troops in Northern Virginia was originally planned to start on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1862. But Grant was ready to go and didn't plan on waiting. He pressed his superiors for permission to attack and received them despite their reluctance. He planned on heading down the Tennessee River on February 2, 1862.

Jamie and his men were under orders to begin harassing the outposts of the Union garrison at Paducah, Kentucky. It was there the boats of Grant were to take the river to Fort Henry, the first objective of his offensive. Grant crowded steamers with some sixteen thousand troops and, with heavily armed Union gunboats escorting, shoved off.

Confederate sympathizers got word to Jamie of the flotilla, and the Marauders cut across country to try to intercept Grant's army, knowing there was very little they could do even should they get there in time.

At Fort Henry, the commanding general, Tilghman, realized he was about to be overwhelmed and ordered most of the infantrymen out and over to Fort Donelson.
⁵

Tilghman kept a small unit of men with him and planned to hold long enough for the main garrison to get safely away.

Grant landed his troops on both sides of the river, and the commander of the flotilla ordered his gunboats to open fire on the poorly defended fort. Less than two hours later, General Tilghman was forced to surrender to Foote, the commander of the naval gunboats. On his flagship, Foote accepted Tilghman's surrender and invited the Confederate general to his cabin for dinner.

* * *

Jamie and his men bypassed the fallen fort and headed straight to Fort Donelson, where its defenders had been put to work digging trenches. The Rebels at Donelson, numbering less than five thousand, were up against a Union army of now more than seventeen thousand and steadily growing in number.

General Beauregard had just arrived at Donelson to act as second in command. Beauregard, not an easy man to get along with at his best, had quarreled with President Davis several times about how to fight the war, and the Confederate president was only too happy to oblige Beauregard's request that he be sent west to serve under Albert Sidney Johnston, which he did, promptly.

Jamie was liked by both Albert Sidney Johnston and Beauregard, and at Bowling Green, Johnston's headquarters, MacCallister was privy to the men's argument about how to defend Fort Donelson.

“We dig in and defend the fort,” Beauregard insisted for the umpteenth time that cold and dismally cloudy day.

Jamie, although he didn't put his opinion into words, thought that was nonsense at best and suicidal at worst, as it turned out, so did Johnston, the commanding general not at all hesitant about speaking his views.

“Then I'll just go back to Virginia,” the Louisiana Frenchman said.

For an instant, Jamie thought Johnston was going to tell Beauregard to carry his butt back to Virginia, for Johnston had a temper, even though he usually kept it in check. Instead, Johnston controlled his temper and became tactful, moving to a map.

“I have approximately forty-five thousand troops, Pierre,” he said patiently. “Many of them poorly armed. Our spies tell us that the combined total of Yankees, which includes Grant's army, Halleck's men, and Buell's army here”—he pointed to the map—“is in excess of a hundred and ten thousand men. We've lost the river down to Fort Henry and can only be supplied by land. Now how in God's name are we to defend this fort?”

For once, Beauregard kept his mouth shut, which, Johnston said later, was a momentous event that should be chiseled in stone.

“And finally, Pierre,” Johnston concluded, “it is my belief that the Union navy alone could destroy Fort Donelson. As witnessed at Fort Henry, the Union gunboats can fire their cannon accurately from two thousand yards away.”

Johnston turned his back to the men, and the meeting was over. The very next day he issued orders that directly contradicted his own words. He ordered Fort Donelson defended and sent in just over ten thousand more men to beef up the five thousand already there in place. Johnston then ordered Beauregard to take over the evacuation of Confederate soldiers from Columbus, up in Kentucky, and Johnston personally saw to the retreat from Bowling Green. Furthermore, he left an inexperienced general in charge of Donelson, a man who was totally incompetent and whom General Grant knew and publicly held in total contempt: General Pillow.

Grant launched his assault on the 2nd of February. The day was warm and sunny; Grant did not see and his commanders did not report to him or stop many of their men as they discarded their heavy winter coats and threw their blankets in ditches along the road as they marched.

Grant began slowly surrounding the fort on three sides, the north protected by impassable swamps. One of Grant's generals was Lew Wallace, who later became a very popular novelist, penning, among other books,
Ben Hur.

That night, as Grant was getting his troops into position to attack, the temperature suddenly began dropping, finally leveling off at about twenty degrees with sleet and freezing rain. The Union troops who had thrown away their coats and blankets were miserable. There were not nearly enough tents, and no one dared to light a fire, on either side, for both Rebel and Yankee snipers had killed a half dozen men who tried that. Without fire, there was no coffee which might have helped ward away the cold. For food, the soldiers had only field rations, which at that time was hardtack.

On the morning of the 14th, Grant asked the navy to attack the fort using their gunboats. Four ironclads and two wooden gunboats steamed and sailed into position and began the attack early that afternoon. The ground was covered with a blanket of fresh-fallen snow, glistening white in the wan sunlight. In twenty-four hours it would be stained red with blood.

The gunboats opened fire on the fort, but the Rebel gunners did not return the fire. The Yankee gunboats drew closer and opened fire again. Still the cannons behind the earth-and-log walls of the fort remained mute. The gunboats drew to within about five hundred yards, and the Rebel gunners opened up with everything they had, which was twelve cannons, all lowered and positioned to do the maximum damage.

The damage they inflicted was terrible.

Four of the six Federal gunboats were so badly damaged they were forced to retreat, one of them in real danger of sinking. The captains of the two wooden gunboats had wisely stayed out of range of the cannons in the fort.

About a dozen Union sailors were killed and another dozen wounded. The Rebels in the fort suffered not a single casualty.

Jamie and his Marauders had escorted Johnston and his aides to Nashville before the battle had even begun. The general seemed to enjoy Jamie's company and certainly felt secure with these hard men guarding him.

The Rebels, even though they had won a victory that day, still made plans to evacuate the fort that night, as Johnston had ordered through a note sent to the senior general at the fort.

Moments before dawn, the Rebels started their pull-back, which meant they had to attack the Union lines in order to open a hole. The Yankees held the first time, but broke during the second charge, and the Rebels poured through. The Union forces had to be quickly repositioned, but Grant could not be found to give the orders. General Wallace finally took the initiative and swung troops around to plug the gaping hole.

But the Federals did not realize the attack was to allow the Rebels to break out; they thought the Rebels had taken the offensive and were seeking a victory. The Union troops were ordered to attack the fort, where only a small garrison had volunteered to stay.

Then General Pillow lived up to his reputation of being incompetent. With a hole in the Union lines large enough to sail the entire Confederate navy through, he ordered the troops under his command
back
to the fort.

One of the other generals refused the idiotic command and started making plans to take his men out and to the road that would lead to Nashville. Then, for reasons that would forever remain unknown, he relented and took his men back to the besieged fort.

An up-and-coming cavalry officer, Nathan Bedford Forrest, barely managed to hold his temper after he learned that two of the commanding generals were talking about surrender.

It is said the colonel's ensuing conversation with the generals was liberally sprinkled with invectives. Forrest said he would surrender when “Hell freezes over!”

The generals then began passing the buck and finally handed the entire command over to General Buckner. Buckner immediately called for a messenger with a white flag. Colonel Forrest told him to go to hell (among other things and places) and left. He gathered his men and began pulling out toward Nashville.