The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (45 page)

Quincy could only nod. Finished with scrubbing up the spill, he stood and looked straight at James.

“You were there, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been reading the papers, things people are saying, and…”

James stepped forward and put a hand on Quincy’s shoulder.

“Believe not a word of it. I was there; I saw it all. Your sons went in like heroes, like men of war, and the truth will come out in the end.”

Quincy lowered his head, and James felt a stab to the heart, for it was obvious the man was struggling not to cry.

Without a word, clutching the soiled towels, he left the room.

James looked back at Lincoln.

“Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”

The booming outside continued and this time James only filled his cup halfway.

“The whole town is going wild with celebration tonight,” Lincoln said, and James could detect a certain note of happiness in the man’s voice, “more so than after news of Vicksburg.”

“Makes it rather clear, doesn’t it?” James replied.

“What?”

“You will win the election in November.”

Lincoln sighed and looked at him, eyes a bit cold.

“You know how I would prefer to win, and that is without the blood of one more soldier being spilled.”

“Sorry, sir,” and James shook his head. “Maybe I should have waited till tomorrow to come here.”

“No, James. I sent the order for you to report back immediately, before the trial was finished, and you did as ordered.”

“At least changed, perhaps?”

Lincoln chuckled, “I’ve smelled worse…”

“So where do we start?” Lincoln finally asked, breaking a long silence while outside the window the guns continued to fire. A band struck up a series of jaunty patriotic airs, voices joined in … something he had not heard in a long time from the soldiers back at the front … Except for the day the men of the Fourth had crossed the bridge over the James.

“I don’t know, sir,” James whispered.

“The trial, it wraps up in a few days. What do you think will be the conclusions? What happened? I have time tonight; I was never one for impromptu speeches out there,” and he gestured out the window toward the celebration.

“You should have the full printed transcript within a few days, sir.”

“But it is your impressions I seek.”

“A whitewash, a complete cover over.”

“Go on.”

James poured another cup, again only half full, and sipped it, glad for the warmth as he spoke. He described the impact of starting the testimony at the top ranks first, making clear to all subservient ranks the way events should be reported; how, halfway through the trial, one brave colonel of a Connecticut regiment dared to defy the entire process, denounced all the previous testimony, and announced that the black troops had fought with valor and if the plan had been left unhampered, victory would have been certain.

“And what happened to him?”

“Oh, he is still with the army of course; his regiment’s enlistment is nearly up anyhow, and he’ll go home and be forgotten in a few more weeks. Someone described it as the ill-judged observations of a volunteer without any professional skills.”

“But Burnside?” Lincoln asked. “From what I heard the evidence is damning. Drawing straws, for heaven’s sake, and then not personally following through to see that proper orders were followed?”

James nodded, sadly.

“An eccentric man.”

“I don’t need eccentric men in command,” Lincoln said coldly. “I need fighting leaders if we are to finish this war.”

“Please, sir, let me finish.”

“Go ahead then.”

“Eccentric, yes, but I think his plan was brilliant, and if properly followed, there would be a five-hundred-gun salute being fired tonight to celebrate the ending of this war. Richmond was in our grasp if Burnside’s plan had been followed.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, sir, it was not. I’ve seen it before with men who had been in one too many battles, sir. They get this strange look in their eyes, as if gazing off to some distant place others cannot see unless they themselves have endured the same nightmares. Too many scoff and say they are just cowards but they are not. They have seen one horror too many, seen one plan too many. So full of promise, they go astray for whatever reason, and then they just inwardly collapse. That is what happened to Burnside. When he was given that order to change the plan at the last second, he just inwardly collapsed, and then, without a leader, the battle went out of control.”

“So, it is his fault.”

“No, sir,” James said and now his voice was cold. “Sir, I will make a recommendation, but before I do so, I want you to look at these.”

He reached into his oversized haversack and drew out a bundle, sealed with waxed paper and bound tightly with a wrapping of twine. As he looked at it before handing it over, he thought it did look a bit absurd. He had compulsively spent an hour or more wrapping this package up, piling on the layers of wax paper to protect it from the elements, so that even if he should fall into the James River, the papers would remain untouched. He had showered greater care on it than on many of his drawings, the cords woven and tied in such a way that he could tell if someone had tried to tamper with them.

Lincoln looked at the heavy package dubiously, reached into his trouser pocket for a pen knife, pulled it out, and cut the cords. James watched a bit nervously as he carefully sliced open the side, reaching in and pulling out the sheaves of papers.

“What is this?”

“Sir, just take a few minutes to scan through them. They were handed to me by one of Burnside’s staff, in fact the brother of that clerk in the next room. If he had not figured out who I was, I doubt if he ever would have entrusted them to me; he most certainly wanted them laid before you.

“They’re primarily copies of records of orders and correspondence between Generals Meade and Burnside from just prior to the assault until the day after.”

Lincoln picked up one sheet, a telegraph slip.

“No one is talking about it, but both generals refused to even stand together during the entire battle, remaining in separate bunkers just eight hundred yards apart, connected only by a telegraph wire. This is a record of what was being sent back and forth between them just before the battle and while it was under way.”

Lincoln picked up a bundle of the telegraph sheets, which James had taken the time to sort out into proper sequence when possible and tied together separately. Lincoln cut the cord binding them together and began to read through them, one after another. After the fifth or sixth one, his features began to cloud.

From long ago James could remember that look. Many a case had come into his law office back in Springfield seeking counsel and, as a young lawyer hungry for business, Lincoln had taken on more than a few cases with little promise. But on occasion, while a potential client was pouring out his version of an event—making extravagant claims for compensation from whomever he wished to sue, which Lincoln would of course have had a fair share of upon winning—the prairie lawyer’s face would darken. He would suddenly stand and, with voice strained, suggest that the man seek other representation. On the few times where words of defiance and even threats were fired back, his youthful reputation as the best wrestler in the county would all but come out, Lincoln stepping forward and making it clear that the man had but two choices as to how he would descend the flight of stairs to his office.

He saw that look now.

The President scanned a telegram, dropped it into a pile, went to the next one, and then, at times, went back and picked up a previous telegram to compare.

“Are you certain, James, that these are authentic?”

“Sir, some of them did get into the minutes of the court of inquiry, but some you are now reading did not. General Meade ordered the arrest of Burnside’s telegraphers and confiscation of all records of communication. Several of Burnside’s staff jotted down copies of these before the records were confiscated, and in turn, a copy was given to me.”

“Could there have been more that you did not see?”

James shook his head.

“I can’t promise on that one, sir. I was in and out of the headquarters for the first two hours or so of the battle until word was sent up that the colored troops were to go in. That’s when I left the headquarters to go in with those men, so I overheard more than a few of these telegrams being discussed.

“I have no reason to believe Captain Vincent is deceiving me by passing along these records or has held some back because, as you can tell, more than a few do not cast his own superior in the best light. I’ve dealt with a lot of men during the years, sir, as you have. You can tell when a man is playing you square and when he is hiding an ace up his sleeve. I believe in what Captain Vincent gave me, but there might have been more that even he missed.”

Lincoln continued to scan through the telegrams and then the various courier notes, orders, and counter orders.

“Tell me about the colored troops,” Lincoln stated, even while continuing to look at the papers. “All reports are now saying they behaved poorly.”

“That is a damn lie, sir,” James snapped, embarrassed by his own flash of anger and heated response to his president.

Lincoln looked up at him with a bit of surprise.

“Calmly, James, calmly. You learn in court there are times to get excited and times to present your case softly; softness often carries more weight and truth.”

“Sorry, sir.” Unable to contain himself, James stood up and went to the window to look out over the park where the last of the guns had fired, the crowd still milling about. Some, seeing him in the window and hoping he was Abe, began to press toward the White House, held back by a cordon of guards, and shouted for a speech.

“Drop the curtain, come back, and sit next to me,” Lincoln said quietly.

James did as ordered.

“Now tell me everything you observed.”

The conversation went on for more than an hour: from first meeting Garland White and the men of the 28th at Arlington, observing them marching in to join the army before Petersburg, their enthusiastic and tireless weeks of training under the most relentless abuse; how at the end a veteran like Malady said it would be an honor to go in with them and die doing so. And from there to the final debacle and the madness within the crater.

It was a long talk, James emptying the silver coffee pot so often that he felt somewhat jittery by the end of it, heart racing.

“As for the overall battle itself, what did you see?”

As he spoke, James had opened his haversack and laid out the drawings, deliberately holding several back. The soundness of the initial plan for the tunnel and the soundness of Burnside’s tactical and operational plan he went over in detail.

“If ever an opportunity for a war-ending battle was thrown away it was there, sir. It was thrown away on the morning the wrong load of explosives and fuses were delivered. If the original ten tons that Burnside had requested had been delivered, it would have torn a gap half again as big in the enemy line.”

“And this report from Meade’s staff that said it would have created vertical walls useless to our men?”

“That is precisely it,” James retorted, voice a bit heated. “If the walls had been vertical and forty feet deep rather than as they were, would all those thousands of men have jumped in? Would they?”

Lincoln looked at him.

“Even without orders they would have fanned out to either flank to secure trenches that could have been used, creating a rupture in the enemy line a quarter mile wide, as Burnside had first planned, rather than a damn pit for thousands to just jump into and hide. I can’t blame the veterans for doing that, after all they had been through…”

He paused.

“Especially after Cold Harbor and the bloody prior assaults, I can’t blame them for wanting to go to ground, thinking that just seizing the next trench line was all they had to do. But, sir, just taking the trenches to either flank for a quarter mile, that alone would have placed Blandford Church Hill within easy artillery range and rendered the Jerusalem Plank Road all but useless. But that was not the final goal. It shows, nevertheless, the relentless series of mistakes and miscalculations,” he hesitated again, “or outright willful obstruction of a plan that should have worked.”

“And those final moments in the crater?” Lincoln asked, “when the black troops were sent in anyhow?”

“They went in like veterans; they did as much as was humanly possible. But by then, the Rebels had had four hours to draw a cordon and seal the perimeter off. It was futile, and they were slaughtered for no purpose.”

Lincoln coughed a bit nervously.

“Is it true there were calls for no prisoners on both sides, and that in some cases our white troops murdered black troops within the crater?”

James could only nod.

Lincoln said nothing in reply, just leaned over, hands clasped, and wearily shook his head.

“You’re holding something back,” Lincoln finally said, motioning to one side of the table where James kept several drawings folded over.

“I’m not sure now, sir.”

“Please, let me see them.”

That was what he wanted to hear, and yet he questioned whether he should burden this man with even more. Then again, after all he had seen and endured, he wanted someone else to share this burden.

He pushed them over, and Lincoln opened the first one.

“Merciful God,” he whispered.

“I call that one the
Depths of Hell,
” James whispered. “I went out with the stretcher bearers when a truce was finally called, thirty-six hours after the fighting ended.”

He spat out the last words angrily. Thirty-six hours, when Burnside had wanted a truce that first evening, when hundreds still could have been saved, and the suffering of thousands of others alleviated … on both sides.

“That is what the crater looked like thirty-six hours after the battle, when General Meade finally allowed a truce so we could remove our wounded, the few that were left, and the dead.”

Lincoln studied the drawing and then put it down, folding it over as if unable to bear gazing at it for another second.