The Last Full Measure (6 page)

Longstreet sat down, looking even gloomier than usual. “He’ll live.”

The dissonance between Longstreet’s appearance and his news momentarily confused Chamberlain and the others, then Hancock laughed. “Do you have any more bad news, James?”

“Yeah, Win, I do.” Longstreet rubbed his head with both hands. “He can’t walk, can’t ride. Not for some time. We’ll need to transport him by wagon, and we can’t move too fast or over roads too rough.”

“That is bad news,” Hancock agreed. “How long can we let Lincoln rest here before we move?”

Mosby came in just then and shook his head. “Not another day. Our attack on Fortress Monroe has stirred the giant to action. Scouts are reporting the federals are mustering strong forces at a dozen points around my territory. They mean to quarter this region, find Lincoln, and do as much damage to my forces as they can. We need to get Lincoln out before the neck of the bag is tightened.” Dropping a map onto the table, he spread it out, then beckoned to Hancock. “You are still resolved to lead the escort for Lincoln?”

“Yes, colonel,” Hancock replied.

“The further we get from my area the less I know of the roads, but this map is supposed to be a decent one.” Mosby’s finger moved as he indicated a route. “You have two advantages. They do not yet know our full strength and may underestimate how much we can send with you, and they do not yet know that Lincoln was hurt, so they are going to assume we will try to move him out by going due west or northwest and avoiding good roads. That means they will not have as much guarding the decent roads and will not be expecting a move through the relatively open country to the north, so if you are strong enough you will be able to break through any pickets and keep going.”

Longstreet snorted. “Once they figure out what we’re doing and in what strength that advantage will not last.”

“No, it will not,” Mosby agreed. “You will have to move as fast as the roads and Lincoln’s condition permit. Take the best roads north, cut through Maryland and into Pennsylvania, then angle west. If what Captain Longstreet says is true, and we have no reason to doubt him, the closer to Illinois you get the more likely that the local populace will spring to your aid when they learn you are escorting Lincoln home. Get through Pennsylvania to Ohio and, though you will still face federal sympathizers and military forces, you will probably be through the worst of it and picking up new volunteers every mile you go.”

“What can you give me to get that far?” Hancock asked.

“I am going to be under a lot of pressure from those federal columns searching for Lincoln and seeking revenge for our raid on Fort Monroe. We stuck a stick into a hornet’s nest there. That’s fine. It couldn’t be helped.”

Hancock was studying the map. “Hell. You can’t give me enough cavalry to get through, can you?”

“No. I’ll give you a company’s worth. One hundred men. Captain Buford will join us here tonight and will be in command of your cavalry.”

That brought a grin to Hancock’s face. “I couldn’t ask for a better damned cavalryman. How much leg infantry?”

“Two hundred fifty. That’s more than I can spare, but infantry won’t do me much good evading federal hunters around here and I don’t think I will be able to manage any stand up fights.” Mosby straightened, his eyes still on the map. “And six wagons. At the pace you will have to maintain some will break down on the way, so I’m giving you more than you need.”

“In the final throw, we’re just going to need one,” Armistead commented. “One to carry Lincoln.”

Mosby looked at Armistead. “We? You wish to go with Hancock? He will also have Longstreet and Buford, of course.”

“If he will have me.”

Hancock laughed. “I wouldn’t go to the dance without you, Lo.”

Chamberlain stood up. “Major Hancock—”

“Colonel,” Hancock corrected, indicating his rank insignia. “The Army of the New Republic needs more colonels, and everyone seemed to think I qualified. Damned if I know why.”

“The rest of us know,” Longstreet mumbled. “You’re a good soldier, Win.”

“Colonel Hancock,” Chamberlain began again. “May I accompany your force as well?”

“Volunteering again, professor?” Hancock smiled derisively. “The old soldiers here will tell you that’s a damned dangerous habit.”

“But will you have me, sir? I can follow orders.”

“Stop toying with him, Win,” Armistead said. “Colonel Mosby said Chamberlain did a creditable job during the raid on Fortress Monroe.”

“That he did! Facing down Bobbie Lee in full wrath is the act of a damned brave man or a damned fool!” Hancock looked to Mosby. “Can you spare the professor, colonel?”

Mosby nodded. “Make what use you can of him, sir. He displayed a level head and cool courage during the raid. I commend his abilities to you, Colonel Hancock.”

Hancock raised his eyebrows. “Professor, you have just received high praise. If Lo and Colonel Mosby vouch for you, I’ll be happy to have you along. I hope you enjoy walking. There’s going to be a lot of it.”

Fortunately for the column under Hancock’s command, Mosby’s assessment had proven accurate. Marching as quickly as they could while burdened with wagons and wounded, the volunteers of the Army of the New Republic brushed aside a series of relatively weak roadblocks. In only one case did they have to fight their way through a checkpoint. At all others the outnumbered federals were easily put to flight or overwhelmed by sudden attacks in the dead of the night. Hancock’s forces moved steadily through Virginia and up through Maryland, actually tending east of north at times to stay on the good roads. They had made it into areas less heavily-wooded, with more farms and orchards filling the rolling landscape, as well as towns and villages with homes built of brick, stone or wood lining the road. The area felt quiet, peaceful, the marching column of soldiers and their wagons an alien presence among the farms and other gentle pursuits of this region.

Chamberlain would have been cheered by the success thus far but for two things; the ever grimmer expressions on the professional soldiers which told him they did not expect the good fortune to last, and the pain in his feet and legs from long marches each day with as few rest breaks as possible. Even the mounted soldiers were drooping with weariness as they alternated riding and leading their horses in order to avoid wearing out their mounts. Chamberlain, still wearing the officer’s cavalry hat given him for the raid on Fortress Monroe, was grateful for its protection when the sun beat down on the marching volunteers. He was less grateful as the miles wore on for the weight of the revolver hanging from his belt, not only because of its physical burden but because it served as a constant reminder that he might soon be forced to fire that weapon at other men.

One of the things that kept Chamberlain going was the fact that when Armistead wasn’t riding or walking with his old friend Hancock, he usually walked beside Chamberlain, the older man showing an endurance that the college professor envied. They spoke of many things as the days passed, including the message which Lee had given Chamberlain at Fort Monroe. “He meant it sincerely,” Armistead sighed, “but Bobbie Lee has blinded himself to what he serves. He feels duty and honor leave him no option, and so he does what he must.”

“I tried to reason with him.”

“I don’t expect he listened. Such a decision is a deeply personal thing. And, of course, Colonel Lee is a wealthy landowner, his estates just south of Washington. To choose to join us would be to choose to turn his back on all he owns.”

“Including his negro slaves,” Chamberlain said.

“There is that, and fear of what those slaves might do if freed. It’s like holding a tiger by the tail. They feel they must hold the slaves in check for fear of the consequences of letting go.”

“And yet this tiger is of their own making, and endures to this day by their own choice.”

Armistead shook his head. “I will not argue the virtues of slavery. Certainly those who were willing to hold the negroes in bondage all too easily proved willing to hold the country in bondage as well. But if eliminating this thing were easily done, surely it would have been done before this by those greater than us. Now we must face it, because those who hold the slaves also would hold us. Deciding what to do is a personal Rubicon we all must come to, Professor Chamberlain. Some of us will have great difficulty deciding whether or not to cross, others will find the decision an easy one.”

“It’s an apt metaphor.” Chamberlain looked out over the countryside, green fields, orchards, a fine land and people at least technically at peace until now. “Are you sorry you crossed the Rubicon, Captain Armistead?”

He shook his head again. “I deeply regret the necessity, but I am content I chose this path, though it pains me to think of the former comrades I may now face in battle, and of those who will call me traitor to my home and my people. Colonel Lee offered me another road. I chose not to pursue his offer, though sometimes I think my decision wavered on a sword’s edge, and could have fallen the other way, so that I would have had to dread facing Win Hancock in battle.”

“Could you have done that? I’ve known the two of you but a short time, and yet even I can see how close you are to each other.”

“If things had been different…” Armistead’s voice trailed off and he walked silently alongside Chamberlain for a long time.

Chamberlain also looked in on Lincoln at times, worried by the suffering evident on the man whose person and words would mean so much. Weak from his wound, the lawyer from Illinois spent much of each day barely conscious as he lay upon blankets in the bed of a wagon, shielded from the direct rays of the sun by the wagon’s cover. On one occasion, when Lincoln had been awakened to drink water drawn from a well the column had stopped at, the homely man gazed intently at Chamberlain. “Professor Chamberlain, why are you here?”

Chamberlain was not accustomed to being lost for words, but now he fumbled for an answer. “It is on my way home.”

“Surely there are many paths to your home which do not involve the implements of war,” Lincoln observed.

“There are,” Chamberlain agreed. “But I must do something for liberty, for the safety and freedom of others. I cannot think only of what is best for me.”

A weak smile showed on Lincoln’s gaunt face. “Do you know why I hate slavery so, Professor Chamberlain? It is not only the terrible suffering it causes those who are slaves, not only the harm it does our Republic, but also because I have seen how it affects those who are not slaves. How it causes the real friends of freedom in the world to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, insisting there is no right principle of action but
self-interest
.”

Chamberlain shook his head, preparing to step down from the wagon where Lincoln lay as the column prepared to begin marching once more. “I cannot accept injustice done to others any more than I can accept it done to myself.”

“In that simple proposition rests the hope for the future of all mankind,” Lincoln said in a weak voice as Chamberlain dropped back onto the dusty road and slogged wearily in the wake of the wagon.

They finally entered Pennsylvania. The next day, as the column marched north along a route known as the Taneytown road, minor heights rose on their left, thickly wooded hills merging into a long ridge which paralleled the road. Up ahead, Chamberlain could see where the ridge once again became a series of hills whose slopes merged, the hills bending to the east to run perpendicular to the Taneytown road as it reached them and then on a small distance more before ending in a wide gap before some more heights rose farther to the east. As he studied the hills ahead, Chamberlain realized that another substantial road approached those same heights from his right, coming in at an angle from the southeast until it climbed the hills not far to the right of the Taneytown road.

Captain Buford came riding by and Chamberlain hailed him. “Captain, do you know what that road is?”

Buford looked to the right and nodded. “The Baltimore Pike, sir. If any federal forces are moving against us they may well be coming up that road. We’re not that far from Baltimore and its regular army garrison. My scouts have seen no sign of any regulars as of yet, but this isn’t the west where you can see to the horizon in every direction.”

“I heard that you’d been in the west.”

“Yes.” Buford’s eyes went distant with memories. “Campaigning against the plains Indians as well as the Texicans. There’s some tough foes for you. They taught me a few lessons. Between them and Colonel Mosby I’ve picked up some new ways of fighting of which the regular army would never approve.” He nodded ahead. “There’s a town just over those heights. We may get news there, and Colonel Hancock means to give the men and horses a respite.”

It was not yet noon when they reached the hill lying across the road. On the right near the bottom of the hill a farmhouse sat silent, worried faces peering from its windows as the volunteers went by. The slope up the side of the hill was gentle but long, the weary men of the column struggling to reach the crest. When they finally reached the top, Colonel Hancock held up his hand. “Column halt! Captain Buford, please send some of your mounted men into town to buy us some provisions and to see what the townsfolk can tell us. Everyone else fall out and get some rest.”

The volunteers flopped down, exhausted, some laying wherever they had stopped and others making their way to the shade of a cluster of trees on the west side of the road. Despite his own tiredness, Chamberlain walked a few more steps to survey the landscape.

On the other side of the hill, buildings clustered about a quarter of a mile to the north around the area where the Taneytown road, the Baltimore Pike, and a third road coming up from the southwest joined or ran close together into the town. From the height, Chamberlain could see at least a half dozen more roads branching out from the town toward the north, east, west and cardinal directions in between, as well as a rail line running into the town from the east and unfinished work on the same line continuing to the west.