Copperhead

The Senator had been trying to steady his men whose nerves were being abraded by the whooping, vengeful, southern fiends. Baker had made three attempts to break out of the woods, but each northern advance had been beaten bloodily back to leave another tide mark of dead men on the small meadow that lay like a smoke-palled slaughter field between the two forces. Some of Baker’s men were abandoning the fight; hiding themselves on the steep escarpment that dropped down to the riverbank or sheltering blindly behind tree trunks and outcrops of rock on the bluffs summit. Baker and his aides rousted such timid men out from their refuges and sent them back to where the brave still attempted to keep the rebels at bay, but the timid crept back to their shelters just as soon as the officers were gone.

The Senator was bereft of ideas. All his cleverness, his oratory, and his passion had been condensed into a small tight ball of panic-stricken helplessness. Not that he showed any fear. Instead he strolled with drawn sword in front of his men and called on them to aim low and keep their spirits high. “There are reinforcements coming!” he said to the powder-stained men of the 15th Massachusetts. “Not much longer, boys!” he encouraged his own men of the 1st Californian. “Hot work now, lads, but they’ll tire of it first!” he promised the men of New York Tammanys. “If I had one more regiment like you,” he told the Harvards, “we’d all be feasting in Richmond tonight!”

Colonel Lee tried to persuade the Senator to retreat across the river, but Baker seemed not to hear the request and when Lee shouted it, insisting on being heard, Baker merely offered the Colonel a sad smile. “I’m not sure we have enough boats for a retreat, William. I think we must stand and win here, don’t you?” A bullet spat inches above the Senator’s head, but he did not flinch. “They’re only a pack of rebels. We won’t be beaten by such wretches. The world is watching and we have to show our superiority!”

Which was probably what an ancestor of Baker’s had said at Yorktown, Lee reflected, but wisely did not say aloud. The Senator might have been born in England, but there was no more patriotic American. “You’re sending the wounded off?” Lee asked the Senator instead.

“I’m sure we are!” Baker said firmly, though he was sure of no such thing, but he could not worry about the wounded now. Instead he needed to fill his men with a righteous fervor for the beloved union. An aide brought him news that the 19th Massachusetts had arrived on the river’s far bank and he was thinking that if he could just bring that fresh regiment across the Potomac he would have enough men to throw an attack against the knoll from which the rebels were decimating his left flank and preventing his howitzers from doing their slaughtering work. The idea gave the Senator instant hope and fresh enthusiasm. “That’s what we’ll do!” he shouted to one of his aides.

“We’ll do what, sir?”

“Come on! We have work!” The Senator needed to get back to his left flank and the quickest route lay in the open where the gunsmoke offered a fogbank in which to hide. “Come on,” he shouted again, then hurried down the front of his line, calling to the riflemen to hold their fire until he had passed. “We’re being reinforced, boys,” he shouted. “Not long now! Victory’s coming. Hold on there, hold on!”

A group of rebels saw the Senator and his aides hurrying in the shifting smoke, and though they did not know Baker was the northern commander, they knew that only a senior officer would carry a tasseled sword and wear a uniform so tricked out with braid and glitter. A gold watch chain hung with seals was looped on the Senator’s coat and caught the slanting sun. “There’s their gang boss! Gang boss!” a tall, stringy, redheaded Mississippian called aloud, pointing to the striding figure who marched so confidently across the battle’s front. “He’s mine!” the big man shouted as he ran forward. A dozen of his companions scrambled after him in their eagerness to plunder the bodies of the rich northern officers.

“Sir!” one of Baker’s aides called in warning.

The Senator turned, raising his sword. He should have retreated into the trees, but he had not crossed a river to flee a rabble of seceshers. “Come on then, you damn rebel!” he shouted, and he held the sword out as though ready to fight a duel.

But the red-haired man used a revolver and his four bullets thudded into the Senator’s chest like axe blows hitting softwood. The Senator was thrown back, coughing and grasping at his chest. His sword and hat fell as he tried to stay on his feet. Another bullet ripped his throat open and blood spilt in a scarlet wash down the brass-buttoned tunic of his double-breasted coat and clogged in the links of the gold watch chain. Baker was trying to breathe and was shaking his head as though he could not believe what was happening to him. He looked up at the lanky killer with a puzzled expression, then collapsed onto the grass. The red-haired rebel ran to claim his body.

A rifle shot spun the red-haired man around, then another bullet put him down. A volley drove the other Mississippians back as two of the Senator’s aides dragged their dead master back into the trees. One of the men retrieved the Senator’s hat and took out the sweaty, folded message that had launched this madness across a river.

The sun was low in the west. The leaves might not have turned, but the nights were drawing on and the sun would be quite gone by half past five, but darkness could not save the Yankees now. They needed boats, but there were only five small craft, and some of the wounded had already drowned as they tried to swim back to Harrison’s Island. More wounded were climbing clumsily down the bluff to where the northern casualties already filled the small area of flat-land that lay between the base of the steep hill and the riverbank. Two aides carried the Senator’s body through the press of moaning men to one of the boats and ordered a space cleared for the corpse. The Senator’s expensive watch fell from his pocket as his carcass was manhandled down the bank. The watch swung on its bloody chain, first dragging in the mud, then striking hard against the boat’s timbers. The blow broke the watch’s crystal and scattered small sharp scraps of glass into the bilges. The Senator’s bloody corpse was rolled on top of the glass. “Take him back!” an aide ordered.

“We’re all going to die!” a man screamed on the hilltop, and a Massachusetts sergeant told him to shut his damn noise and die like a man. A group of rebels tried to cross the clearing and were hurled back by a crescendo of musket fire that twisted them around and plucked scraps of wood from the trees behind them. A Massachusetts color bearer was hit and his great, beautiful, bullet-beaten silk flag fluttered down toward the dirt, but another man seized its tasseled fringe and lifted the stars back toward the sun before the stripes had touched the ground.

“What we’ll do,” said Colonel Cogswell, who had finally established that he was the senior officer alive and thus had command of the four Yankee regiments stranded on the Virginia shore, “is fight our way downstream to the ferry.” He wanted to take his men out of the murderous shadows and into the open fields where their enemies would no longer be able to hide behind trees. “We’ll march fast. It means we’ll have to abandon the guns and the wounded.”

No one liked that decision, but no one had a better idea, and so the order was relayed back to the 20th Massachusetts, who lay at the right-hand flank of the Yankee line. The fourteen-pounder James rifle would have to be abandoned anyway for it had recoiled so far that at last it had toppled back over the bluff. As it had fired its final shot a gunner had shouted in alarm, then the whole heavy cannon had tilted over the escarpment’s crest and crashed sickeningly down the steep slope until it smashed against a tree. Now the gunners gave up their attempts to haul the gun back to the crest and listened instead as Colonel Lee explained to his officers what the regiment was about to do. They were to leave their wounded to the mercy of the rebels and gather at the left-hand flank of the northern line. There they would make a mass charge through the rebel forces and so down to the water meadows which led to where the second Yankee force had crossed the river to cut the turnpike. That second force was covered by artillery on the Maryland bank of the river. “We can’t cross back into Maryland here,” Lee told his officers, “because we don’t have enough boats, so we’ll have to march the five miles downstream and fight the rebels off all the way.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll move in five minutes.”

Lee knew it would take that long for the orders to reach all his companies and for the casualties to be gathered under a flag of truce. He hated leaving his wounded, but he knew none of his regiment would reach Maryland this night if he did not abandon the casualties. “Hurry now,” he told his officers and tried to sound confident, but the strain was telling now and his sanguine appearance was fraying under the constant whip and whistle of the rebel bullets. “Hurry now!” he called again, then he heard a terrible screaming noise from his open right flank and he turned, alarmed, and suddenly knew that no amount of hurrying could help him now.

It seemed the Harvards would have to fight where they were. Lee drew his sword, licked dry lips, then committed his soul to God and his beloved regiment to its desperate end.

WE’RE TOO FAR LEFT.” TRUSLOW HAD GROWLED AT Starbuck as soon as K Company reached the battle line. “Bastards are that way.” Truslow pointed across the clearing to where a veil of smoke hung in front of the trees. That smoke lay well to the right of K Company, while directly across from Starbuck’s men there was no gunsmoke, just empty trees and long, darkening shadows among which the maple trees looked unnaturally bright. Some of K Company had begun firing into those empty trees, but Truslow snarled at them to stop wasting powder.

The company waited expectantly for Starbuck’s orders, then turned as another officer came running through the brush. It was Lieutenant Moxey, who had reckoned himself a hero ever since taking a slight wound in his left hand at Manassas. “The Major says you’re to close on the center.” Moxey was filled with the moment’s excitement. He waved a revolver toward the sound of musketry. “He says you’re to reinforce Murphy’s company.”

“Company!” Truslow shouted at his men, anticipating Starbuck’s orders to move.

“No! Wait!” Starbuck was still gazing directly across the clearing to the undisturbed trees. He looked back to his right again, noting how the Yankee fire had momentarily died down. For a few seconds he wondered if that lull in the firing signified that the northern forces were retreating, but then a sudden charge by a yelping group of rebels triggered a furious outburst of northern rifle fire. For a few seconds the gunfire splintered in a mad tattoo, but the moment the rebels retreated the fusillade died away. Starbuck realized that the northerners were holding their fire until they could see targets while the southerners were keeping up a steady fusillade. Which meant, Starbuck decided, that the Yankees were worried about having enough ammunition.

“The Major says you’re to move at once,” Moxey insisted. He was a thin, pale-faced youth who resented that Starbuck had received a captaincy while he remained a lieutenant. He was also one of the few men in the Legion who begrudged Starbuck’s presence, believing that a Virginia regiment had no need of a renegade Bostonian, but it was an opinion he kept to himself, for Moxey had seen Starbuck’s temper and knew the northerner was more than willing to use his fists. “Did you hear me, Starbuck?” he demanded now.

“I heard you,” Starbuck said, yet still he did not move. He was thinking that the Yankees had been fighting in these woods nearly all day, and presumably they had just about used up all the cartridges in their pouches, which meant they were now relying on whatever small amounts of ammunition could be brought across the river. He was also thinking that troops worried about having sufficient cartridges were troops that could be panicked very quickly. He had seen panic at Manassas and reckoned it could bring a victory just as swift and complete here.

“Starbuck!” Moxey insisted on being heard. “The Major says you’re to reinforce Captain Murphy.”

“I heard you, Mox,” Starbuck said again, and still did nothing.

Moxey made a great play of pretending that Starbuck had to be particularly stupid. He tapped Starbuck’s arm and pointed through the trees to the right. “That way, Starbuck.”

“Go away, Mox,” Starbuck said, and he looked back across the clearing. “And on your way tell the Major we’re crossing over here and we’ll be rolling the bastards up from the left. Our left, got that?”

“You’re doing what?” Moxey gaped at Starbuck, then looked up at Adam who was on horseback a few paces behind Starbuck. “You tell him, Adam,” Moxey appealed to higher authority. “Tell him to obey orders!”

“We’re crossing the field, Moxey,” Starbuck said in a kind, slow voice, as though he addressed a particularly dull child, “and we’re going to attack the nasty Yankees from inside the trees over there. Now go away and tell that to Pecker!”

The maneuver seemed the obvious thing to do. The two sides were presently blazing away from either side of the clearing, and though the rebels had a clear advantage, neither side seemed capable of advancing straight into the concentrated rifle fire of the other. By crossing the clearing at this open flank Starbuck could take his men safe into the northerners’ trees and then advance on their undefended wing. “Make sure you’re loaded!” Starbuck shouted at his men.

“You can’t do this, Starbuck,” Moxey said. Starbuck took no notice of him. “Do you want me to tell the Major you’re disobeying his orders?” Moxey asked Starbuck cattily.

“Yes,” Starbuck said, “that’s exactly what I want you to tell him. And that we’re attacking their flank. Now go away and do it!”

Adam, still on horseback, frowned down at his friend. “Do you know what you’re doing, Nate?”

“I know, Adam, I really do know,” Starbuck said. In truth the opportunity to turn the Yankee flank was so straightforward that the dullest fool might have seized it, though a wise man might have sought permission for the maneuver first. But Starbuck was so certain he was right and so confident that his flank attack would finish the Yankee defense that he reckoned seeking permission would simply be a waste of time. “Sergeant!” he called for Truslow.

Truslow once again anticipated Starbuck’s order. “Bayonets on!” he called to the company. “Make sure they’re fixed firm! Remember to twist the blade when you drive home!” Truslow’s voice was as calm as though this were just another day’s training. “Take your time, lad! Don’t fumble!” He spoke to a man who had dropped a bayonet in his excitement, then he checked that another man’s bayonet was firmly slotted onto the rifle’s muzzle. Hutton and Mallory, the company’s two other sergeants, were similarly checking their squads.

“Captain!” one of Hutton’s men called. It was Corporal Peter Waggoner, whose twin brother was also a corporal in the company. “You staying or going, Captain?” Peter Waggoner was a big, slow man of deep piety and fierce beliefs.

“I’m going over there,” Starbuck said, pointing across the clearing and deliberately misunderstanding the question.

“You know what I mean,” Waggoner said, and most of the other men in the company knew too for they stared apprehensively at their Captain. They knew Nathan Evans had offered him a job, and many of them feared that such a staff appointment might be attractive to a bright young Yankee like Starbuck.

“Do you still believe that people who drink whiskey will go to hell, Peter?” Starbuck asked the Corporal.

“That’s the truth, isn’t it?” Waggoner demanded sternly. “God’s truth, Mr. Starbuck. Be sure your sins will find you out.”

“I’ve decided to stay here until you and your brother get drunk with me, Peter,” Starbuck retorted. There was a second’s silence as the men understood just what he had meant and then there was a cheer.

“Quiet!” Truslow snapped.

Starbuck looked back at the enemy side of the clearing. He did not know why his men liked him, but he was hugely moved by their affection, so moved that he had turned away rather than betray his emotion. When he had first been made their Captain he knew the men had accepted him because he had come with Truslow’s approval, but they had since discovered that their Yankee officer was a clever, fierce, and combative man. He was not always friendly, not like some of the officers who behaved just like the men they commanded, but K Company accepted Starbuck’s secretive and cool manner as the trait of a northerner. Everyone knew that Yankees were queer cold fish and none were stranger or colder than Bostonians, but they had also learned that Starbuck was fiercely protective of his men and was prepared to defy all the Confederacy’s authorities to save one of his company from trouble. They also sensed he was a rogue, and that made them think he was lucky, and like all soldiers, they would rather have a lucky leader than any other kind. “You’re really staying, sir?” Robert Decker asked.

“I’m really staying, Robert. Now get yourself ready.”

“I’m ready,” Decker said, grinning with pleasure. He was the youngest of the fifty-seven men in the company, almost all of whom came from Faulconer County, where they had been schooled by Thaddeus Bird and doctored by Major Danson and preached at by the Reverend Moss and employed, like as not, by Washington Faulconer. A handful were in their forties, a few were in their twenties and thirties, but most were just seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years old. They were brothers, cousins, in-laws, friends, and enemies, not a stranger to each other among the lot of them, and all were familiar with each other’s houses and sisters and mothers and dogs and hopes and weaknesses. To a stranger’s eye they looked as fierce and unkempt as a pack of winter hounds after a wet day’s run, but Starbuck knew them better. Some, like the Waggoner twins, were deeply pious boys who witnessed nightly with the other soldiers and who prayed for their captain’s soul, while others, like Edward Hunt and Abram Statham, were rogues who could not be trusted a short inch. Robert Decker, who had come from the same high Blue Ridge valley as Sergeant Truslow, was a kind, hardworking, and trusting soul, while others, like the Cobb twins, were lazier than cats.

“You’re supposed to reinforce Murphy’s company!” Lieutenant Moxey still lingered close to Starbuck.

Starbuck turned on him. “Go and give Pecker my message! For God’s sake, Mox, if you’re going to be a message boy, then be a good one. Now run!” Moxey backed away and Starbuck looked up at Adam. “Will you please go and tell Pecker what we’re doing? I don’t trust Moxey.”

Adam spurred away and Starbuck turned back to his men. He raised his voice over the noise of the musketry and told the company what he expected of them. They were to cross the clearing at the double, and once on the far side they would wheel to their right and make a line that would sweep up through the far woods like a broom coming at the open edge of the Yankee’s line. “Don’t fire unless you have to,” Starbuck said, “just scream as loud as you can and let them see your bayonets. They’ll run, I promise you!” He knew instinctively that the sudden appearance of a pack of screaming rebels would be sufficient to send the Yankees packing. The men grinned nervously. One man, Joseph May, who had been praying as he climbed the hill, peered at his bayonet’s fixture to make sure it was properly secure. Starbuck saw the boy squint. “Where are your spectacles, Joe?”

“Lost ’em, Captain.” May sniffed unhappily. “Got broke,” he finally admitted.