Walter Williams - No Spot of Ground

He had poured everything into Eureka , all his soul, his hope, his grief over Virginia, his energy. In the end there was the book, but nothing left of the man. He lectured across America, the audiences polite and appreciative, their minds perhaps touched by his own vision of the Divine? but all his own divinity had gone into the book, and in the end Earth reached up to claim him. Entire weeks were spent in delirium, reeling drunk from town to town, audience to audience, woman to woman.

Ending at last in some Baltimore street, lying across a gutter, his body a dam for a river of half-frozen October sleet.

*

After the meal Poe stepped outside for a pipe of tobacco. He could see the soft glow of candlelight from the Starker parlor, and he thought of the girl in her coffin, laid out in her dress of virgin white. How much sadder it would have been had she lived, had she been compelled to grow old in this new, changing world, this sad and deformed Iron Age dedicated to steam and slaughter; better she was dead, her spirit purged of particled matter and risen to contemplation of the self-knowing eternal.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a man on horseback. Poe recognized Colonel Moxley Sorrel, a handsome Georgian, still in his twenties, who was Longstreet’s chief of staff. He had been promoted recently as a result of leading a flank assault in the Wilderness that had crushed an entire Union corps, though, as always, the triumph had come too late in the day for the attack to be decisive.

“General.” Sorrel saluted. “I had a devil of a time finding you. Ewell had his command post at Hackett’s place, over yonder.” He pointed at the lights of a plantation house just north of Hanover Junction. “I reckoned you’d be there.”

“I had no notion of where Ewell was. No one’s told me a thing. This place seemed as likely as any.” Poe looked off toward the lights of Hanover Junction. “At least there’s a good view.”

Sorrel frowned. He swung out of the saddle, and Sextus came to take the reins from his hand. “Staff work has gone up entirely,” Sorrel said. “There’s been too much chaos at the top for everything to get quite sorted out.”

“Yes.” Poe looked at him. “And how is General Longstreet?”

The Georgian’s eyes were serious. “He will recover, praise God. But it will be many months before he can return to duty.”

Poe looked up at the ravens, half expecting one of them to croak out “Nevermore.” But they’d stuck their heads under their wings and gone to sleep.

He will recover , Poe thought. That’s what they’d said of Stonewall; and then the crazy old Presbyterian had died suddenly.

Just like old Stonewall to do the unexpected.

The army had been hit hard the last few weeks. First Longstreet wounded in the Wilderness, then Jeb Stuart killed at Yellow Tavern, just a few days ago. In Poe’s opinion they were the two best corps commanders left to Lee. Longstreet had been replaced by Richard Anderson; but Lee had yet to appoint a new cavalry commander? both, in Poe’s mind, bad decisions. Anderson was too mentally lazy to command a corps? he was barely fit to command his old division? and the cavalry needed a firm hand now, with their guiding genius gone.

“Will you come inside, Colonel?” Poe gestured toward the tent flap with his stick.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Share some cider with me? That and some biscuits are all the rafrachissements I can manage.”

“You’re very kind.” Sorrel looked at the uncleared table. “I’ve brought your orders from General Anderson.”

Poe pushed aside his gold-rimmed dinner plate and moved a lantern onto the table. Sorrel pulled a folded map out of his coat and spread it on the pale blue tablecloth. Poe reached for his spectacles and put them on his nose. The map gave him, for the first time, an accurate look at his position.

This part of the Southern line stretched roughly northwest to southeast, a chord on the arc of the North Anna. The line was more or less straight, though it was cut in half by a swampy tributary of the North Anna, with steep banks on either side, and at that point Poe’s entrenchments bent back a bit. The division occupied the part of the line south of the tributary. In front of him was dense hardwood forest, not very useful for maneuver or attack.

“We’re going on the offensive tomorrow,” Sorrel said, “thank the lord.” He gave a thin smile. “Grant’s got himself on the horns of a dilemma, sir, and General Lee intends to see he’s gored.”

Poe’s temper crackled. “No one’s going to get gored if division commanders don’t get their instructions!” he snapped.

Sorrel gave him a wary smile. “That’s why I’m here, sir.”

Poe glared at him, then deliberately reined in his anger. “So you are.” He took a breath. “Pardon my display.”

“Staff work, as I say, sir, has been a mite precarious of late. General Lee is ill, and so is General Hill.”

Poe’s anxiety rose again. “Lee?” he demanded. “Ill?”

“An intestinal complaint. We would have made this attack yesterday had the general been feeling better.”

Poe felt his nervousness increase. He was not a member of the Cult of Lee, but he did not trust an army without a capable hand at the top. Too many high-ranking officers were out of action or incompetent.

Stuart was dead, Longstreet was wounded, Lee was sick? great heavens, Lee had already had a heart attack-

Ewell hadn’t been the same since he lost his leg, Powell Hill was ill half the time. And the young ones, the healthy ones, were as always dying of bullets and shells.

“Your task, General,” Sorrel said, “is simply to hold. Perhaps to demonstrate against the Yanks, if you feel it possible.”

“How am I to know if it’s possible?” He was still angry. “I don’t know the ground. I don’t know where the enemy is.”

Sorrel cocked an eyebrow at him, said, “Ewell didn’t show you anything?” But he didn’t wait for an answer before beginning his exposition.

The Army of Northern Virginia, he explained, had been continually engaged with Grant’s army for three weeks? first in the Wilderness, then at Spotsylvania, now on the North Anna; there hadn’t been a single day without fighting. Every time one of Grant’s offensives bogged down, he’d slide his whole army to his left and try again. Two days before, on May 24, Grant had gone to the offensive again, crossing the North Anna both upstream and down of Lee’s position.

Grant had obviously intended to overlap Lee on both flanks and crush him between his two wings; but Lee had anticipated his enemy by drawing his army back into a V shape, with the center on the river, and entrenching heavily. When the Yanks saw the entrenchments they’d come to a stumbling halt, their offensive stopped in its tracks without more than a skirmish on either flank.

“You’re facing Hancock’s Second Corps, here on our far right flank,” Sorrel said. His manicured finger jabbed at the map. Hancock appeared to be entirely north of the swampy tributary. “Warren and Wright are on our left, facing Powell Hill. Burnside’s Ninth Corps is in the center? he tried to get across Ox Ford on the twenty-fourth, but General Anderson’s guns overlook the ford and Old Burn called off the fight before it got properly started. Too bad-” Grinning. “Could’ve been another Fredericksburg.”

“We can’t hope for more than one Fredericksburg, alas,” Poe said. “Not even from Burnside.” He looked at the map. “Looks as if the Federals have broken their army into pieces for us.”

“Yes, sir. We can attack either wing, and Grant can’t reinforce one wing without moving his people across the North Anna twice.”