The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (65 page)

Thomas felt sick, a burst of fear that he was witnessing another disaster, one of his own making. “I don’t know. I did not.”

He turned to Granger, who still stared out through the glasses, and Thomas gathered himself, put authority into his voice, as much for Grant’s benefit as his own.

“General Granger, did you order your divisions to assault the ridge?”

Granger kept the glasses at his eyes. “No. Not me. No such orders were given. But I tell you this, sir. When those boys get their dander up, no force in hell can stop them.”

Thomas winced, didn’t need a dose of boastfulness. He looked at Grant, who rocked the field glasses in his hand, and Grant then looked toward Granger, said, “I will not have this. Someone will pay dearly for this. Attacking that hill was not in my orders.”

Grant turned away, raised the field glasses again, and Thomas stood between the two men, felt the heat from Grant, saw a sheepish expression from Granger. Granger said nothing, the silence settling over them all.

Thomas looked again toward the ridge, flashes of fire, waves of smoke, the surge of blue seeming to spread upward, higher still. He thought of the generals, the ones he knew well, Wood and Sheridan, the center of the assault, couldn’t fathom these men would so blatantly disregard their orders, risking their careers, and the lives of their men. He closed his eyes, looked downward, heard nothing more
from Grant, no one around them offering a word, the staffs kept silent by the anticipation of a slaughter, the fear silencing even the chattiness of the newspapermen. Thomas opened his eyes, kept his gaze to the ground, let out a breath. God help us, he thought. God help them. I didn’t want this command, I didn’t expect ever to order so many men to such a potential disaster. But … here we are, and when this is over, the responsibility will be mine alone.

He twisted slightly, trying to relieve the dull aching in his back. Beside him, Granger said, “Will you look at that.…”

The words came with enthusiasm, something Thomas didn’t expect. Grant held his silence, and Thomas raised the glasses again, stared into vast clouds of smoke, caught glimpses of blue, a clearing now, solid blue mass, realized with a sudden bolt that he was looking at the crest of the hill. He saw it now, unmistakable, the hard flutter of a flag, what seemed to be the Stars and Stripes. He strained to see, wouldn’t accept that image, not yet, wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything but the awful nagging fear that the assault was still rolling over into a catastrophe.

Behind him, a cheer went up, one of the staff, and Thomas winced again, no, there can be no such certainty, no wishful thinking. He strained to see, scanned the crest of the ridgeline, another clearing through the smoke, saw it again, a different place, saw another flag, surrounded by a mass of blue spreading out along the top of the hill. The hope came now, a burst of optimism, and he held it inside, couldn’t be certain of anything, not yet, not until word came from the commanders. Beside him, Grant grunted, then said, “It appears, General, that some of your boys made it to the top.”

He had been out to the right flank twice that morning, couldn’t help being impressed with the fight Cleburne was making to hold Sherman away from Tunnel Hill. The effort from the Yankees there gave Bragg enormous satisfaction that he had been right all along, that Grant’s army would not just march into the center of his strongest lines, would instead punch in on the flanks. But Bragg’s attention had been too focused on the right, a mistake he grudgingly accepted. The loss of Lookout Mountain had rattled him severely, which he tried to keep to himself, not giving any of his commanders the ammunition to use against him for what someone in Richmond might call an oversight. But the insistence by Hardee that the loss of the mountain called for a full-out withdrawal made no sense to Bragg at all. There was still the ridgeline, so many miles of undulating, difficult ground, where the men on top had every advantage. Bragg could already sense that Grant had conceded that strength, evidenced by a complete lack of Federal aggressiveness across the center of Missionary Ridge. All Grant seemed willing to do was march out in grand parades, while Federal artillery scattered shells along the ridge in a haphazard game of target practice.

Breckinridge continued to support Bragg’s decisions, and Bragg suspected it was the politician doing what politicians did best: Offend no one, make friends. Bragg had no use for friends now at all, only expected Breckinridge to do the job, anchoring the left of the army on the marvelous ground Bragg had provided for him. He knew that Hardee had very little respect for Breckinridge as a field commander, but right now that didn’t matter. Hardee had all his attention focused on Bragg’s right, including Cleburne’s stout efforts on Tunnel Hill. Breckinridge held the left half of Bragg’s entire position now, those troops holding the ground that ran southward from Hardee’s left flank, near the center of Missionary Ridge, then downward to the deep valley that separated Lookout Mountain from the southern tip of the ridge.

Bragg had been forced to accept the complete retreat from Lookout Mountain, would reserve harsh judgment for that failure for another time. But pulling off the mountain had shortened the Confederate lines, the one silver lining on a very dark cloud, made more shining by the opposition on the left flank. That morning, the Yankees had done just what Bragg had expected, had driven down from Lookout Mountain, Joe Hooker’s men slogging into the marshy ground near Chattanooga Creek with no means of getting across without considerable effort. Facing them, Breckinridge had posted a minimal force, all that could be spared, what was now of little concern to Bragg. The most important fight was northward, Cleburne proving to Bragg that his tenacity was more than a match for what was supposed to be the fierce and unstoppable willpower of William T. Sherman.

With Hooker bogged down at the creek, and Cleburne deflecting every assault from Sherman, Bragg had returned to his headquarters with the full confidence that the clear skies and bracing chill were a positive omen for his army. As he rode along the crest of Missionary Ridge, Bragg sought to share his energetic optimism with his men, offering up encouraging words, spreading confidence, hoping to hear the cheers that would inspire him as much as it would them. But the officers seemed to hold their men down in a deep gloom, as though discouraging them from making any kind of show of congratulations for Bragg’s perfect strategy. It was customary for troops to cheer their
commanding general, but the reception he had received was anything but glorious. In Bragg’s mind, there could be but one cause: seeds of hostility toward him, planted by their officers. It infuriated him, but the impact of scattered Yankee artillery held his attention away from thoughts of punishment. The brigade and division commanders moved along through their own troops as he did, but Bragg had no need for councils, received no welcoming gestures, very few signs of outright respect. Instead, the men who owed Bragg their very survival seemed more interested in nervous observations of what lay out to their front, the wide-open ground around Orchard Knob, as though none of Bragg’s successes on the flank deserved any recognition at all.

The staff kept mostly close to the Nail House, the duties of the headquarters, more arguments with the supply people, dismissive denials from Richmond for more reinforcements. Little word had come from Longstreet, as though his fight at Knoxville were taking place a continent away. If Longstreet was sending any news to Richmond, that news died there, no one seeming to care if Bragg was given any real information at all. It was one more reason for Bragg to congratulate himself, that by sending Longstreet away, he had indeed rid his army of a disease. Hardee’s insistence on withdrawal from the ridge, the outrageous notion of a full-out retreat, was one more sign to Bragg that few in his command had the best interests of the army at heart. The advice and suggestions and councils still seemed designed to injure Bragg’s reputation with Richmond, laying blame for failure squarely at his feet. Withdrawing from such a strong position, even if his army might be outnumbered, would be the kind of failure that even Jefferson Davis could not ignore. Bragg had ridden through Hardee’s headquarters knowing the feelings against him, that Hardee’s plan for disgracing Bragg had not been implemented, not this time. Today’s success seemed to fill the air. If the men who held the center of his line refused to offer those glad tidings to him, even now, Bragg forced himself to ignore that. He knew better. These men would find soon enough that a crushing defeat of Sherman’s army would change everything across the way, that Grant would suffer a blow that would likely cause the Federal army to reexamine their entire campaign. Bragg held tightly to the confidence that Grant might
yet withdraw, convinced that any further bloodletting against Bragg’s invulnerable positions might cost Grant his command. That no one else seemed to share that kind of optimism dug hard at Bragg’s sense of satisfaction. It was one more reason for Bragg to keep a sharp eye on the men who professed obedience to his command, even as they pretended not to notice just how successful this army had been.

The appearance of the massive Federal advance emerging from the woods and thickets had been extraordinary, Bragg stung into silence by the sheer beauty of it. The formations of blue had rolled toward him with martial precision, the Federal artillery still throwing their shells against Missionary Ridge as though saluting their own parade with a rousing fireworks display. But very soon, the formations had pushed far closer than Bragg expected, and his own artillery began their work, smashing into the perfect lines with shot and shell, the smoke hiding the chaos that he knew was engulfing the Yankees, even as they kept up their advance. He rode out to one vantage point after another, small peaks along the ridge where he could see clearly, and the scale of the advance had become apparent. The Federal lines seemed to expand nearly two miles wide, the observers sending word through his staff that four divisions, possibly twenty-five thousand men, were pressing their advance straight into the teeth of his defenses. The first wave of musket fire from down below had exhilarated him, though the smoke hid most of the effects the volleys had against the enemy’s formations. But for the first time, the men around him took up his own cheer, that the enemy seemed eager to slaughter themselves against his guns, as though Grant was committing an act of mass suicide. There was a horror to that, even to Bragg, especially when the enemy troops emerged from the last of the thickets and woodlands, rolling forward across a half mile of wide-open ground. Bragg watched as the blue lines absorbed a stunning volume of punishment from every Confederate battery along that part of the ridge.
But on they came, with almost no answering fire from the Yankee muskets, as though holding to a single-minded goal to reach the foot of the slope, no matter the horrific cost.

What Bragg saw then crushed his exuberance. Instead of holding to their position in the rifle pits along the base of the ridge, his men withdrew, a mad, desperate scramble up the hill, some of them making their climb driven by the kind of terror he had seen in fights before. His staff had reacted by pressing the officers for explanations, bringing nothing but conflicting reports. Some of the commanders had ordered their men not to hold that ground, that if pressed, they should immediately withdraw to the heights. Others had been instructed to stay put, but when the men holding their position observed so many others pulling away, the piecemeal retreat exploded into infectious panic. By the time Bragg could sort out the confusion, too many of his men had fled the flat ground, those works now firmly in the hands of the men in blue. Bragg could only point to Hardee as the source of the chaos. Most of the regiments along the center of the ridge had been divided, half their strength sent down along the base of the ridge, the rest either holding a thin line midway up, or put into hastily dug works along the crest of the hill. Even Breckinridge had been concerned that the army’s lines were too thin, that keeping the men together in a heavy line seemed a far wiser course, the most effective way to combat what even Bragg accepted to be Grant’s superior numbers. But Hardee had insisted that dividing the men was the most effective defense, what Bragg now believed to be one more treasonous display of inept tactics.

With Bragg’s troops flowing up the hill in a panicked scramble for safety, Bragg moved again along the lines of the men who held the top of the crest, calling to them to hold the enemy back, to assist the good work of the artillery. It was only then that Bragg saw that the men had dug their entrenchments along the topmost part of the crest, with no field of fire downward. Any man who attempted to shoot down the slope would have to expose himself in the wide open, an easy target for Yankee muskets farther down the hill.