The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (7 page)

But now, Lincoln could see that his friend was a man all but shattered by what he had seen over the previous month. His drawings were full of pathos and anguish. Gone was the light satirical wit.

Thumbing through the pages of drawings, Lincoln stopped at the one of the men, lined up in the trench, slips of paper pinned to their backs with their names on them.

“Tell me of this. What is it?” Lincoln asked.

He looked into James’s eyes and saw that there were tears; the man all but breaking as he described the futility of the charge.

“That was the attack your brother was in?”

“Yes, sir.” James did not offer any further explanation.

“I see,” and he continued to thumb through the drawings, stopping at the last one, bodies carpeting a field, all of them with the sheets of paper pinned to their backs.

“Talk to me about this,” Lincoln said softly. “Why the pieces of paper?”

James, head lowered, the cigar between his fingers going out, described all he had seen, his voice a monotone.

“They
baa
-ed like sheep, sir, like sheep as they climbed out of the trenches. These were veterans, sir: men who had seen three years of it. Many of their enlistments were up within a few more weeks and they had already done their duty a hundred times over. They knew what was to come, that it was the end of it all, and yet they went forward anyhow. That
baa
-ing was their last act of protest.”

He sighed deeply.

“After Antietam, I no longer heard them sing, or cheer for the Union when they charged, but they would go in like veterans, they would. However, three days ago, sir, it was different from anything I have seen in this war. I never want to see the likes of it again.”

He looked into the President’s eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about that anymore, sir,” he whispered.

Lincoln nodded, features drawn, filled with an infinite weariness. He slowly stood up, went to the door, opened it, and said something to John Nicolay, who was at his desk in the next room. Nicolay came in a minute later with a heavy crystal glass, filled halfway with whiskey. He offered it to James, who gladly took it.

“Not a word ever of this drink,” Lincoln said, trying to make a feeble attempt at a smile. “If Mary knew I served liquor in this room she’d have my head, but I think we can forget that this time.”

“Of course, sir,” John replied, withdrawing and closing the door.

“Did Grant fail?” Lincoln asked, waiting for James to drain the glass and finally relight his cigar with a shaking hand.

James looked straight at Lincoln.

“Information from a spy?”

“James, just the truth as you see it.”

“I honestly can’t say. At the Wilderness, and even at Spotsylvania, the men were saying they trusted him even though the fighting was murderous. That he was knocking the stuffing out of Bobbie Lee, keeping him pinned in place and dancing to our tune. But North Anna, and then this accursed place, Cold Harbor…”

He fell silent again.

“I’m told he saw no other choice. Richmond was right before him, he thought Lee was battered enough that he could break through.”

“Was that the official report?” James asked.

Lincoln did not reply.

“I guess it could be said that way but the men who had to do the charge knew different.”

James looked into the glass and then back at Lincoln, but the President made no offer to have it refilled.

“The war’s changed, sir.”

“How so?”

“You could see it at Antietam. In a stand-up fight, the ghastly slaughter was equal, but give one side time to dig in, dig deep, real deep…”

His voice trailed off, and he looked out the window.

“Lee had entrenchments three lines deep. Deep falls, entanglements, and a moat in front if they had time. A fortress line, miles long. Gone are the days of trying to maneuver around it. The Rebs can dig as fast, even faster, than a corps can march to flank them, and when they attack, there are the trenches filled with Rebs waiting for us.

“General Grant gambled that he could batter his way through,” James gestured to the open sketchpad of the casualties on the field. “And that is the price. Was it a mistake?”

He hesitated, Lincoln leaning forward, nodding in a reassuring gesture for him to proceed.

“Yes, sir,” he replied emphatically, almost fiercely. “Rumor is there were the usual staff work mistakes, the result the attack went in twenty-four hours later than planned, and that gave the Rebs more than enough time to turn it into a killing ground with no hope of success. If the privates and sergeants could see it, why in hell…”

He hesitated.

“Excuse me, sir, but why in hell couldn’t the generals see it?”

He muttered something under his breath, and Lincoln did not ask him to repeat it.

“Blame Grant? I’d say blame the whole mess on the chronic, bad luck Army of the Potomac. It always seems on the edge of victory and then someone goes off half-cocked, or does not do his job right, or gets drunk, or an order gets lost. Don’t get me wrong, never blame the men, they are the bravest of the brave, and if just once leaders ensured that things were done right by them, I know they could win.”

Lincoln nodded in agreement but said nothing.

“After Cold Harbor though, I must say this: No frontal attack will ever work again, sir, not against trenches manned by Lee’s veterans, armed with rifles, and backed up by artillery packed with canister. Around Richmond itself there is nothing but layer after layer of trenches and forts. No, sir, not Grant, nor anyone else, will break through and take Richmond. I guess he believed he had to try and that was the result.”

Lincoln whispered, “It’s the same I hear from Sherman on the approach to Atlanta. With every flanking march, he finds another wall of fortifications waiting. It seems we are in a new age of warfare, as Ericsson’s monitors have changed forever how navies will fight. Until some genius figures a new way of doing the same on land, or the will of the Rebels just falls apart…” His voice trailed off.

“Sir, I came to see you, but this will be for the last time.”

“Why so?”

“I’m asking for a change of assignment after this. I want to get as far away from this damn war as I can possibly get.”

He looked back at Lincoln and shook his head.

“Excuse my language, sir.”

“I’ve heard a lot worse, James, no apology needed.”

“Maybe go out west; I’d like to see that while it is still wild, open, and free.”

Lincoln sighed and looked out the window. Darkness was settling, but the river was aglow with lights, distant echoes of steamboat whistles drifting in the still evening air.

“Another division is shipping out tonight,” Lincoln said.

“The colored troops,” James said.

“How did you know?”

“Some of them buried my brother this morning. Good honorable men they are, and God save them, they cheered when they heard the news that they were going up to the front lines.”

“They feel they have something to prove and indeed they do.”

“They’ll be slaughtered. We’ve both heard what the Rebel government said about black troops.”

“General Lee is an honorable man, even if he is the deepest thorn in my side,” Lincoln replied sharply. “There have been communications, shall we say, in private and assurances conveyed, that regardless of what Jeff Davis and some others say, the rules of war will be observed.”

“And what is it, you think, they’ll prove?” James asked.

“The same thing the Irish Brigade proved at Fredericksburg, what hundreds of thousands from your isle proved.”

“That we’re equal? That we have brought our right to a claim to this land?” James questioned. “Sir, that might sound good in war time, but if and when this war ends, what then? And if we lose?”

“We will not lose,” Lincoln replied sharply. “We cannot lose. And, yes, I do believe those men just might prove something once and for all,” he continued, nodding toward the river and the boats heading downstream. “Believe me, I was one of the chief doubters when it came to arming Negro troops, but now? They are just about the only ones left willing to volunteer and their presence just might decide the issue. If that is the case it requires me as well to rethink many things about them.”

“For their sake, sir, I pray it is worth something, given what they are about to face.”

They sat silent for several minutes, James relighting his cigar and puffing it down to a short stub.

“I sent Grant a box of his favorites,” Lincoln said, finally breaking the silence. “Are you at the Willard? If so I’ll send a box over to you first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir, but I’m catching the noon train for New York tomorrow to turn in my sketches, they want to run them next week.”

“Which sketches?”

“The usual ones,” and he shook his head. “My editor keeps saying the others are too grim, and the public does not want to see them.”

“If both sides could see them in every detail,” Lincoln replied, “maybe this madness would indeed stop. But that is never the case in war.”

“Do you still think we can win?” James asked.

Lincoln simply nodded.

“James, there is no other choice. I pray the good Lord will forgive me for this price,” and he pointed at the drawing still open on his lap. “I could end it tomorrow with a simple command for the armies to stop, turn around, and march home, and I daresay, at this moment, most folks in the North would cheer. But what of the future?”

He looked back out the window.

“In five years at most there will be more war,” Lincoln whispered, voice distant as if remembering a dream or nightmare. “The fire-eaters in the South will plunge into Mexico, claiming they are going to kick the French and Austrians out, but in reality, they will attempt to seize more land for slavery. California and the west coast? We will wind up fighting over that someday, or they may also just decide to split away. Then we will be three nations, maybe four or more. Then we will squabble over everything in between. You know your history of what happened after Charlemagne died; it would be the same here.

“A hundred years hence? We will be like Europe, divided against itself, scheming with ever more cruel instruments of war against each other. A Shakespeare would indeed then proclaim that there was a plague on both our houses. It has to end here and now.

“That and slavery; it, too, has to end now, and I believe it is the burden of our generation to see it done. I will not pass on to my sons the curse of yet another war and to my grandchildren, Lord forbid it, yet another and another.

“And as for those men,” and he gestured to the boats turning down the broad sweep of the Potomac, one after another in the line disappearing from view.

“There was a time, James, when I agreed with the recolonization movement, that the two races could not live side by side in peace. But those men, their blood drawn with the lash and the bullet, I realize now, have as much a place here as I do and as you do.”

James sadly shook his head.

“There are neighborhoods in New York where I would be beaten to death as a Papist Mick. You see what Thomas Nast draws about us Irish and the Negroes,” and his sarcasm was evident.

“Is there a man in any other regiment in the army who would say a word against the Irish Brigade?” Lincoln asked.

“Not unless he wants a thousand of us lined up and ready for a good bare-knuckled fight.” Now James finally smiled for the first time.

“Guess you heard all the legends about me, Jack Armstrong, and his boys of Sangamon County,” Lincoln said.

James chuckled.

“Who hasn’t?”

“Some of it is actually true. It is the way of things.”

“Except they weren’t armed with fifty-eight-caliber Springfield rifles, deadly out to six hundred yards.”

“No, but Jack wasn’t above eye gouging or biting off a man’s ear if he got him down. I had to tame him of that.”

The President smiled as if recalling a pleasant memory.

He sighed and looked back at James.

“I want you to go back, James.”

“Sir?”

“Just that. Your editor at
Harper’s
might let you take an assignment somewhere else, but believe me, my young friend, in the end you’d hate yourself for it.”

“You mean running away from a job that is not finished?” There was a cold edge now to James’s voice. “You want me to go back and draw more pictures like
that
?”

Lincoln did not reply.

“No thank you, sir. I’ve had a belly full of this damn war. I did my part being there, and I’ve had enough.”

“And who will replace you?”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Thomas Nast, perhaps?”

James looked at him crossly.

“Hit a nerve there, didn’t I?”

“That bastard? He keeps his distance from me when I’m in the office, and I keep my distance from him. Though for two cents I’d love to break both his hands good and proper so he wouldn’t be able draw for a year or two.”

Lincoln leaned back and chuckled softly.

“I’d like to see that fight, if it ever comes to that. But seriously, James, I need you back there. I can’t order you, the way I would a soldier. But I need your eyes, and, yes, your ears. This war is not going to stop because of Cold Harbor. It will go on; God forgive me if I am wrong, but I believe with all my heart and soul it must go on to the end.”

“And if McClellan wins the election?”

“We will have a victory, some kind of victory between now and then that will turn the political tide.”

“Do you really believe that, sir?”

Lincoln gazed straight at him. In reality he was no longer sure, but if he voiced the opinion that he was truly going to lose and let that infection spread, he would indeed lose, and the nation would forever be torn asunder.

“I must believe we will win,” he finally replied.

James did not reply.

“I want you to go back. Of course go to New York first, turn in your drawings, rest up for a week or two. Perhaps go back and fall in with that colored division for a while. It would be good for the nation to see how they can indeed fight. Your drawings of your Irish brethren at Fredericksburg, and again at Gettysburg, were nobly done and were as important as a victory itself. Keep an eye on these new men, perhaps you will find a moment that will immortalize them as well. I think that is a task you cannot turn down.”