Tuesday, June 2
Jackson reluctantly took the offered hand. He would not have let anyone else help him. A man with only one arm should still be able to dismount from a buggy.
“Thank you,” he said to the woman with the smiling blue-green eyes.
He had never encountered a woman who beamed so warmly. Truly, the Heavenly Father had sent her.
“The buggy should be safe enough here,” she said. “We will have it under eye the whole time.”
She had parked the carriage off Baltimore Pike by several sycamore trees. She had tethered the two horses so their heads could reach grass; they were already chewing while their tails swished at flies.
Amanda spoke with a northern accent, as she had from the day they crossed the Chesapeake Bay. It had disconcerted him how easily she changed her voice. But an angel of the Lord could do many things.
A couple hundred yards to the east rose McAllister’s Hill. It was a low, wooded hill. He would put one of Early’s brigades there. Quick work with the axe would provide both breastworks and clear fields of fire.
Immediately before them, on the left side of the Pike, rose Power’s Hill. It was much higher. Amanda had called this hill the key to the battle.
At first he doubted her pronouncement. But after he had studied her wonderful map, he saw she was right. It was the perfect spot to snap shut the trap.
The map she gave him was the finest piece of topography he had ever seen. In addition to a wealth of contour lines the map displayed foliage, road, building, fence and steam in exquisite detail. All accurate to a foot, she said.
They had left the map at the farm; if they were searched the map—which also showed unit dispositions—would be difficult to explain. They well might be detained as spies. Besides, its absence would force a test of how well he had instructed himself.
A buckboard wagon with a farmer rattled toward them. As the wagon approached Jackson shifted so Amanda shielded his left side. Though he wore a sack coat with a glove attached to his left sleeve, she said he must leave little to chance. They would be looking for a man with no left arm.
Amanda greeted the driver cordially. Jackson said nothing—his Virginia voice he could not change—but he made a point of raising his good arm. The red bearded farmer nodded and tipped his hat to Amanda as the wagon continued toward the town.
The farmer’s thick beard reminded Jackson that he no longer possessed one. Jim had shaved it off shortly after they stole away from the Chandler plantation. Jackson had felt naked without it. Of course, no whiskers made an effective disguise. On the first look into a mirror he barely recognized himself.
The late morning air retained coolness. The cloud cover helped. It was a relief to be away from the prickly heat of Tidewater Virginia. It was no relief, though, to be so far from his corps.
But they would come.
Again he had to take her assistance as they crossed the split rail fence. He hated this. All his life it was he who gave the helping hand. Never had he felt so dependent, even when a child.
A low stone wall ran to the top of the rounded hill. They followed it up. On one side of the wall grew sweet smelling hay, on the other side golden wheat.
This was good. Nothing other than thigh high crops—and a single Union regiment—would hinder the onrush of infantry. He would commit the rest of Early’s division to this attack. He would send Johnson’s division south of the hill to link with Longstreet
The smooth, open slope of Power’s Hill would also allow quick deployment of artillery. The few trees at the summit would not constrict fire. Cannon could instantly engage; their canister would shred the Yankees if they tried to breakout. Jackson prayed that whoever remained in command had enough sense to instead surrender.
He stopped, gasping.
“Are you all right, Thomas?”
Jackson was ashamed he had to catch his breath. This hill was not steep, and they had gone less than a quarter of the way up. He was breathing like he had run a furlong.
He did not take her extended hand. A soldier—a commanding general—did not need a woman’s assistance to reconnoiter terrain. He forced a smile as he declined and started to climb again.
Twice more they paused before reaching the top. Each time Amanda would not let him continue until his breathing returned to normal. She reminded him he had been fully on his feet only a week. Each time he grimly nodded. He thought this must be what old age was like.
At the top Amanda handed Jackson a pair of opera glasses. He of course would have preferred field glasses, but that was another chance they could not take. They also retreated into the clump of oak trees to make it difficult for travelers on the Pike to see him inspecting the land.
He turned to the northeast. A mile away, past hidden Rock Creek, rose the highest prominence in the area: Wolf Hill. There he would place Rodes’ division. Earlier fighting would leave the division at half strength, but the steep slope and stream below would compensate for loss of numbers.
Jackson faced north. His eyes traveled across tan crops and verdant pastures to another rise a mile away. Like Wolf Hill it was rocky and wooded and an ideal defensive position. This hill the Yankees would occupy in strength.
But try as he might, he could not name it.
He was embarrassed to ask. How he wished he had the map.
“What is the name of that hill?” he finally asked.
“Culp’s Hill. And the one to the left?”
His gaze shifted to the slightly lower hill a half mile due west of Culp’s. Near the summit stood scattered conifers and a two-story red brick structure with an open arch in its middle. Through the opera glasses he could see tombstones. Among the stones a couple of men were digging with shovels.
“Cemetery Hill?” he asked.
“Yes. Cemetery Ridge drops south from it.” Her hand pointed to the southwest. “What are those two hills where the land rises again?”
His mind worked. Or failed to work. She had said they were very important hills; their possession would be crucial to trapping the Federals.
Frustration built. How could he command if he could not instantly recall? The heat of battle permitted no time to fumble for answers.
He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Big and Little Round Top, Thomas.” Beneath her sunbonnet she smiled that comforting smile. “Don’t worry. By the end of the month, you will know every hill, dale and vale around Gettysburg.”
An amputation took a lot out of a man. Dick Ewell, who now commanded his corps, had only recently returned to duty. It had required nine months for Ewell to recover from losing a limb at Groveton. Jackson would have two months.
“I pray so,” he said.
Below them the Pike ran toward the brick building, the cemetery gatehouse. The road then disappeared as it dropped toward the town. Several steeple tops poked above the saddle between Culp’s and Cemetery Hill.
Amanda said the town contained two dozen churches. Surely one or two were Presbyterian. Perhaps the Sunday after the battle he could attend service. He ached to. He had been without benefit of clergy since the angel had sent away Reverend Lacy.
The two hills concealed the town. He shifted his gaze westward to the hill line that paralleled Cemetery Ridge. Blessedly he recalled the name, Seminary Ridge.
The opera glasses sought the Lutheran Seminary. There, near the pike to Chambersburg. Trees hid much of this red brick structure, but its white cupola thrust like a beacon into the gray sky. Around the seminary heavy fighting would rage the afternoon of July 1st.
His eyes remained on the white cupola. Amanda said it would serve as a key observation point for both sides. He would meet General Lee there the afternoon of the first; from that vantage point they would coordinate the final details of the double envelopment. He would thrill to see the great man again.
Jackson followed glimpses of the Chambersburg Pike until it disappeared into the bluish green distance. Alo
ng the western horizon ran the South Mountain range. The pike ran through the range at the Cashtown Gap. Out of the gap on July 1st would march the Third and First Corps.
The Third Corps would arrive first. Two of its three divisions would initiate the battle. They and the Union I Corps would batter each other until four o’clock in the afternoon. Then a final attack would send the Yankees fleeing onto Cemetery Ridge.
From the north would come the Second Corps, his corps. With Johnson en route, Rodes and Early would attack and drive the Union XI corps through the town onto Cemetery Hill. This attack would also take place around four.
Lee would then suspend the fighting, though an all out assault could have finished off the enemy.
The First Corps would arrive after the fighting stopped. Longstreet would hide his three fresh divisions behind Seminary Ridge. Meanwhile Stuart’s cavalry would approach from the northeast. To also hide and wait.
The whole army would wait as two more Union corps rushed to reinforce. The XII corps would reach the battlefield by seven in the evening, the III corps by eleven. Fortunately both corps were commanded by inadequate men.
Even more fortunately the Federal forces would lack their two best commanders when the fighting renewed. Reynolds was to die in the morning. Hancock would be present to steady the Union lines after the rout in the afternoon, but he would leave at seven to report back to Meade in Maryland.
Almost too much good luck.
He became aware Amanda had said something.
She laughed softly. “Thomas. Pay attention.”
“Forgive me.” He no longer had the excuse of partial deafness. The angel had restored him; he now heard with absolute clarity. The little bead she had placed in his right ear provided the miracle.
“Thomas, it is imperative that you keep Johnson’s division out of the Cashtown Gap.”
“Yes, of course.” She had drilled this point.
Then he shook his head. “It seems unfair.”
“Thomas?”
“That we—you—know so much before the battle.”
“McClellan knew Lee’s plan when you invaded Maryland. This makes it even.”
That had been devastating, Order 191 falling into the hands of the enemy. The Order had contained the location of Lee’s separated units. The army barely regrouped in time at Antietam Creek. If McClellan had moved a little faster…
But worse, much worse, capture of the Order prevented Jackson from advancing into Pennsylvania. The plan had been for Lee and Stuart to keep the usually cautious McClellan pinned in Maryland, while Jackson sped north through the Cumberland Valley. He would have crossed the Susquehanna River, then gone on to destroy coal mines in the northeast of the state.
Closing those mines would have dealt a body blow to the North. Hard coal ran most of their industry. Just as importantly, it fueled their Navy. Without that coal their blockade of Southern ports would have collapsed. The war would be over now.
“God wants you to have the advantage here, Thomas. You are His chosen instrument.”
If the angel said so, then God must still favor him. He had thought favor lost when the bullets struck at Chancellorsville.
At the Chandler house was sure he would die. He had prepared himself to meet his Heavenly Father. At the time he did not understand why the Father called him away, with the war still to be won, but one must always yield to His will.
Then came the angel.
“His will will be done,” said Jackson.
Naylor saw the warrior don his battle face. The pale blue eyes blazed, the shaven jaw turned to stone, and his lips compressed. He was ready to slay.
And he would have plenty of help.
By evening on July 1st the entire Confederate army would be available for combat. Previously just half its strength was on site. This time the forces of both Longstreet and Stuart would be waiting in the wings to help Jackson strike the decisive blow.
This time Johnson’s division would march directly south from Carlisle. Previously, in the great blunder of the campaign, Johnson had backtracked through the Cumberland Valley to the Cashtown Gap. That caused a massive traffic jam that led to Longstreet’s corps arriving fatally late.
She had also arranged for Jeb Stuart to know where to rendezvous. Previously the great cavalry commander lost contact with Lee after crossing the Potomac and did not arrive until late on July 2nd. Without the “eyes and ears” of his army, Lee had been blind.
Lee didn’t need Stuart now to tell him the location of the enemy on July 1st. Allison wondered if Lee had been ecstatic when Sandie Pendleton showed him the position of each Union corps that day. Was their dispersal what he planned?
Accounts of the campaign—most penned many years later—were ambiguous on whether Lee intended to spread Union forces along the Mason-Dixon Line, then attack them in detail as they tried to concentrate. Lee never wrote a memoir. But it fit the modus operandi of the Gray Fox.
In addition, Lee would be physically fit to command. Sandie Pendleton had given the general a supply of 81 milligram aspirin pills. Lee was to take them as substitute for quinine. Throw in a low fat, low cholesterol diet, and Lee should be at the top of his game.
Naylor waited while Thomas continued to inspect the land. She knew he was trying to envision how the battleground would appear in moonlight. That had greatly disturbed him at first, that the double envelopment would be launched at midnight.
He of course remembered how darkness threw into confusion his victorious flank attack at Chancellorsville. Darkness also got him shot. With an hour more daylight he could have trapped Hooker and avoided friendly fire.
She had explained that a full moon in a clear sky would exist as the clock neared midnight. He countered a full moon hung over Chancellorsville when his flank attack ground to a halt. She said Chancellorsville was fought amidst a tangle of obscuring tree, bush and bramble—the Wilderness—whereas Gettysburg would be contested mainly in open field. He remained skeptical.
Naylor couldn’t blame him. Even in full daylight, a double envelopment was quite difficult to execute. The coordination between separated units had to be perfect. An enemy would desperately try to defeat it, since they were doomed if they did not.
At midnight on the first day of July the Army of Northern Virginia would try to trap four Federal corps. Jackson would command one arm of the envelopment, Longstreet the other. Their forces should meet at the Taneytown Road just east of the Round Tops.
With the Confederate forces clockwise commanding Gettysburg town, Benner’s Hill, Wolf Hill, McAllister’s Hill, Power’s Hill, the Round Tops, and Seminary Ridge, those four corps would be hopelessly snared. Artillery and dug in troops would not permit escape.
“Well, Thomas, you see with your own eyes that nighttime will not be a problem. In fact, it can only help to conceal our forces as they get into position.”
The great general nodded. “It is as you said.”
Naylor had known that Thomas would eventually accept her plan, ideal light or not. More than any other commander, even Lee, Stonewall Jackson thirsted for destruction of the enemy. Repulsing the Yankees, bloodying them, even routing them, was insufficient.
In the decades after the Civil War many declared Gettysburg would have been a Confederate victory with Jackson present. They posited Jackson would have attacked Cemetery Hill the first evening of the battle. Unlike Ewell, who let the opportunity pass.
Naylor knew Jackson would have attacked and would have sent two Federal corps scurrying. That would have been the easy victory, safely carried out in daylight.
But Jackson was always looking to kill, not maim, the enemy. And her plan would do it.
Her plan was old as that employed by Hannibal at Cannae. Hannibal had lured a larger Roman army into the jaws of a double envelopment and consumed it. Two millennia later the Soviets did the same to the Germans at Stalingrad. Next month the Army of the Potomac would suffe
r a similar fate, with four of its seven corps trapped.
As the midnight battle unfolded, three more Union corps would be hurrying from Maryland toward Gettysburg. Two were scheduled to arrive at dawn. But this time Stuart’s cavalry would intercept them. His nighttime ambushes should take a fearful toll.
The last of the Federal troops, the VI Corps, was not due to arrive until the afternoon of July 2nd. And that after a forced march of nearly forty miles. They would be in no condition to attempt a breakthrough to their ensnared comrades.
Thomas continued to run the opera glasses over the land. His brow furrowed. Despite the coolness of the day, beads of sweat formed on the broad brow beneath his straw hat.
She had read that during exams at West Point, when he stood at a blackboard before a panel of professors, he would sweat copiously. Not out of fear, rather from effort of concentration to get answers exactly right. Get them right he invariably did.
He abruptly lowered the glasses. Again he shook his head.
“What’s the matter, Thomas?”
He was looking down the Baltimore Pike. Back toward the bridge over Rock Creek. Did he worry his men might fail to quickly secure the bridge? That should be no problem, it would be lightly guarded when he attacked.
But he spoke of Slocum, the Union commander of their XII Corps.
“I would have had him shot.”
Thomas would have, too.
“Yes, his behavior was indefensible.”
On the afternoon of July 1st Slocum’s men had reached Two Taverns, just four miles to the southeast on the Pike. Slocum clearly heard the guns booming at Gettysburg. Yet he delayed moving until after the Federals had been driven onto Cemetery Hill. Following the battle he gained the moniker “Slow Come”.
If Naylor had been president she would have court-martialed Slocum. And Sickles, who almost lost the battle the second day. Why did Lincoln keep such duds in uniform?
And why oh why had he waited until the eve of battle to replace Hooker with Meade? That change should have been made right after Chancellorsville. Thomas was astounded when she related Lincoln’s decision.
The confusion sowed by the ill-timed replacement—one bordering on criminal negligence—almost let Lee win. Lee might have won anyway if not suffering from quinine poisoning.
She had never agreed with the conventional wisdom that Lincoln was a superior commander in chief. He was a great politician, and at times an inspirational leader. But in military matters he cost many lives. He meddled when he should refrain, and refrained when he should meddle, and dithered when he should do something, anything.
When they departed Power’s Hill, they did not head toward Gettysburg. She and Thomas would not set foot in the town during June. Nor would they return to the battlefield.
Naylor must expect the worst. She had to assume that Hightower et al. sent operatives to 1863. She had to assume that the operatives somehow deduced Thomas Jackson still lived. She had to assume they would hunt for him in and about Gettysburg.
Those were a lot of assumptions, of course. She and Aaron had been very careful to mask their presence in 1863. And on the surface, Stonewall Jackson appeared very much dead. And a live Jackson could be hiding anywhere between here and Richmond.
But she would assume. By late this afternoon they would return to the farm fifteen miles to the east. There she, Aaron and Thomas would stay put until late June.
A mile past Rock Creek Thomas demanded they stop at a church. They had not seen the church earlier, since it lay beyond the turnoff onto Low Dutch Road. Jackson’s corps would take this lane to move to the attack the night of July 1st.
She didn’t want to backtrack; why give some farmer on that crucial route a second chance to notice them? Maybe she should have. Thomas hanging around a church—one beside a well traveled highway—would draw a lot more attention.
From the pike they pulled into a deserted churchyard. The double doors to the white washed meeting-house were closed. Thomas was not deterred. Without her assistance he fairly flew out of the carriage to rap on the doors.
No one answered.
Thomas was stoic in the extreme, but he could not hide his disappointment. She felt for him. He hungered after spiritual comfort like other men did gold. It had been very hard for him being away from churches and chaplains.
Well, at least now they could get going. Providentially no traffic had passed on the pike.
Then she watched flabbergasted as Thomas dropped to his knees on the front step of the church. She heard him recite the Nicene Creed. Then the Lord’s Prayer. Then the 23rd Psalm.
Naylor dared not rebuke him. That would shatter his belief she was directly sent by God. It was imperative that he follow her guidance to the letter in the weeks to come.
She waited anxiously. God must be with her, because no horse or foot traffic appeared. She managed to avoid sagging with relief when Thomas at last arose.
When he climbed into the canopied carriage she asked if he were hungry. It was past one o’clock now and she was starving. They had last eaten at first light, just before leaving the farm near Abbottstown.
Thomas vaguely nodded. He was still immersed his communion with God. He was an indifferent eater anyway. She often had to prod him to the dinner table.
They ate as she drove. She had made a simple meal for Thomas, so much a simple man. A ham sandwich, an apple, some strawberries, unsweetened lemonade. He would not eat anything spicy or rich.
Thomas ate sitting erect. One might think his stiff posture a carryover from his days at West Point. The habit of military discipline certainly played a part, but worry about indigestion was the decisive factor. This strange man believed only the straightest path could keep his bowels from mangling his food.
Naylor drove to the village of Two Taverns, then turned north. Before she reached the intersection with Hanover Road, Thomas had fallen asleep.
He was out for good. What she had read and her short experience told that once Thomas dozed off, he was nearly impossible to wake. He might as well lie under anesthetic.
She did not begrudge him a moment of slumber. Amputation put enormous stress on the body. Not to mention the pneumonia which almost killed him. It was encouraging that Thomas—a middle-aged man after all—had rallied this much in three weeks. Another month of recuperation should bring him to full strength.
The carriage contained axle springs. Nonetheless the vehicle bounced and jolted on the uneven farm lane. Thomas remained unconscious even after one bounce lifted her off the seat.
The sky had begun to clear. Patches of sunlight brightened the hills and vales. This was certainly enchanting country, lush and prosperous. Van Gogh would have had a field day here painting landscapes.
She passed big farmhouses and gigantic barns, rolling fields of young corn and wheat, ripening orchards, plump cattle and shiny horses. The Lincoln green of nearby woods and the smoky green of distant South Mountain framed it all. If she believed in a caring God, this would be His country.
Her nostrils drank the heady aroma of the adjacent farmland. The pungent smells, even that of the fields fertilized with manure, were an energizing tonic. To Thomas the country boy these scents were likely background; to her, a city girl since leaving for college, they were pure heaven.
Around four o’clock they neared the York Pike, where they would turn east. She was looking forward to that much leveler surface. She also looked forward to the soft featherbed that waited at the farm. It had been long a long day, but a most necessary one.
She heard a train whistle. The locomotive shortly appeared, chugging and spewing ugly black smoke. It pulled two passenger cars and a flatbed. The flatbed carried rails and ties, likely for the extension to the railroad northwest of Gettysburg.
The morning of July 1st a fierce battle would take place at a section of the extension, around a rail cut. Several hundred Confederates would become trapped in the c
ut, and take heavy casualties. Naylor was chagrinned she could not warn of the debacle.
She could not alter any of the first day’s carnage prior to four-thirty. The fighting must follow that written in the history books. The Army of the Potomac must be lured into the trap, no matter the loss of Confederate life.
But success here would cut short this war’s slaughter. Success could not stop World War I, but it would keep American boys from dying in it. And success would keep boys of all nations from dying in a second world war.
The train passed. Its shrieking whistle and clanging bell had not disturbed Thomas. The great warrior stirred not a muscle.
Naylor recalled what Napoleon said of China, though it applied to Thomas.
She paraphrased as she spoke softly. “Let Stonewall Jackson sleep. For when he awakes, he will shock the world.”
Mauer took Chloe’s arm as she stepped from the train to the platform. She stumbled and he had to catch her. He caught her at the waist, with both hands.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just so tired.”
He quickly removed his hands. The firmness of her narrow waist had jolted him. Lust stirred.
Fortunately Chloe was too exhausted to notice. He savagely suppressed desire. What was the matter with him?
He again took Chloe by the arm. She looked drugged. No wonder, she had slept barely a wink the past two days.
She had tossed and turned the night before leaving the Executive Mansion. Last night she had not been able to fall asleep in the hot and stuffy hotel room in Philadelphia.
He felt guilty, he had slept like a rock both nights. But he could sleep anywhere. His years in field with the military and ATU had taught him how to slumber under any condition.
Several boys hanging around the station offered to carry their bags to their lodging, the Union Hotel. Mauer accepted.
The preteens immediately peppered with questions. He could see the exhausted Chloe wanted the noisy, nosey kids—no doubt reminding her of Tad—to shut up. Mauer answered them politely.
He said he and his wife were here to look for farm property, on behalf of a client in Boston. They would stay a week or two. No, they didn’t know anyone in town. No, they didn’t have children. Yes, he had been in the army but mustered out at enlistment’s end.
Where had he fought? With which regiment? Had he ever been wounded? Had he killed anyone, especially in hand to hand combat? How come the army couldn’t ever whip the rebels?
Chloe looked ready to take off their heads as they walked into the busy town square—the Diamond—and turned right. She however kept her lips zipped. For his part, Mauer was glad he and Chloe had rehearsed the details of their cover story. He took this interrogation as good practice.
What they would not divulge was any hint of their real mission. No flashing pictures of Naylor and Price, no asking if a man missing a left arm accompanied them. Mauer and Chloe would conduct an entirely private search.
On the train Chloe had suggested offering a modest reward for local help in locating Jackson. Say the one armed man was a distant relative, included in the will of Chloe’s late father. Word was he had taken up residence in this county.
Mauer said no. They could not chance spooking Naylor. If Naylor got wind someone was asking about a tall blue eyed amputee—or any amputee—she would bury Jackson. She would never let him come to Gettysburg for reconnaissance. Any chance of taking out Stonewall before the battle would vanish.
In the days ahead Mauer would prowl the countryside while Chloe stuck close to Gettysburg. On horseback he would seek their quarry at nearby farmhouses. If that didn’t turn them up, he would spiral outward. On foot Chloe would patrol the town. In a buggy she would ride over the roads of the battlefield. It would be a grueling search, they would put in dawn to dusk days, but there was no alternative.
If Mauer spotted Jackson, he would shoot him on sight. He would put a bullet in his brain, and into those of Naylor and Price too.
If Chloe stumbled on them, she was to wait until Mauer returned to town. He didn’t doubt she could get the job done—she had killed before and under fire—but she’d probably be immediately arrested if she gunned them down in town. He knew how to do it undetected.
Mauer gave each of the four boys a quarter when they reached the hotel. They squealed like they had won a fortune. Maybe the going rate was a nickel a bag. He was still uncertain of the proper prices of this era; living in the Executive Mansion with all expenses paid had not enlightened him. The delighted boys scampered off.
After checking in he and Chloe ate in the hotel dining room. They wolfed down a decent meal of soup, mutton, potatoes, and greens. Strawberries and cream were desert. Several glasses of wine helped everything along.
They spoke little. It was an easy quiet, for by now they were quite comfortable with each other’s company. Remarkably so. Mauer reflected that in all the years he had known Chloe, they rarely interacted socially. In their time at ATU they had certainly never sat at a meal alone.
At dinner’s end Chloe could no longer keep her eyes open. He saw her up to their room, then headed out into the early evening balm of Gettysburg. He was tired, too, but not that tired. He would walk himself into bedtime readiness.
No one knew him yet, but passersby greeted him pleasantly as he walked through the streets of this trim, now quiet town. He replied in kind and tipped his hat to every woman. Some of the younger women smiled beyond mere cordiality. He offered no encouragement.
Chloe, Chloe. He was having increasing difficulty sorting out his feelings for her. He didn’t love her romantically, that he was sure. A brother sister analogy also missed the mark. She was more like a revered first cousin.
Could one physically desire a first cousin? Lately Mauer desired this one. Each time lust reared, he hurled it away. Each time he pledged they would never know each other carnally.
Mauer feared she did love him. This past month she had not said a word along those lines. Indeed at times she had subjected him to sarcasm and tactlessness. But he had also caught longing in those close set hazel eyes. That longing was not born of sisterly affection. Cupid generated it.
He had an enormous responsibility to this woman. Chloe, who had so often risked her career for him, and occasionally her life. He owed her total honesty. He owed her no hope for a relationship. He owed her hands off, eyes straight ahead, finish the mission and go back to separate lives. His separate life would center on saving Teri.
Mauer shortly found himself at the southern edge of town, on Baltimore Pike. Above him loomed Cemetery Hill.
His Gettysburg obsessed father said that prior to the battle the hill was known as Raffensperger’s Hill, after the farmer owning acreage on the eastern slope. The graveyard itself was called Evergreen Cemetery. Cemetery Ridge, against which Pickett futilely charged, was Granite Ridge. The old names had but a month to live before the new ones gained immortality.
He climbed the dirt and gravel pike. There was enough of a slope to feel it in his thighs. His eyes immediately caught sight of the long gone tree near the summit, the tulip poplar. Previously he had seen this soaring tree only in black and white photographs.
The Second Louisiana troops had used this tree as a guidon when they attacked Cemetery Hill the evening of July 2nd. Their furious assault almost overran the Federals. Almost. Gettysburg had been three days of almost by Lee’s men.
Mauer had stood on the summit twice before, when the family visited the town in the 1980’s. His father had triumphantly pointed this way and that, as he showed off his knowledge of the battle. To young Mauer the excited monologue had been a blur of unit names and movements. What he did distinctly remember was description of the aftermath.
Phillip Mauer had pointed to the town. He said that most every building served as a temporary hospital. Even the cemetery gatehouse up here. They had to, as the battle produced over fifty thousand wounded.
Churches were particularly prized. Not for spiritual comfort, but because the pews substituted for dozens of cots and the chancel allowed plenty of space for sawing off shattered limbs. His father made sure his sons knew how horrible it all was; holes were drilled in church floors to let pooling blood drain.
Shortly he saw the sign. It too had been long gone when he formerly walked here. But his father—so pleased with the irony of its warning—made sure they knew the sign had existed.
The warning was indeed ironic, and tragicomic too. The sign in block letters stated: “Any person operating a firearm within these environs will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Perhaps the prohibition had stopped the Louisiana boys in their tracks.
Mauer walked through the arch of the cemetery gatehouse into the graveyard. Acacias and conifers stood amidst several hundred rounded tombstones and a score small obelisks. A couple of gravesites looked fresh.
For the most part those interred here had died nonviolently. By year’s end the adjacent national cemetery dedicated by Lincoln would hold many hundreds that had met their end quite violently.
Cemetery Hill provided a grandstand view of the battlefield. He gazed out at the silent fields and ridges, their various hues of green and gold so enchanting in the dying light of day.
His eyes fell on Little Round Top, the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, the Trostle farm. On July 2nd the most savage fighting of the battle would occur there, two miles south from where he stood. The fate of the Union truly would hang in the balance that day.
The carnage would be unbelievable. The greatest would occur as Confederate forces approached the Trostle farm. Only canister at point blank range kept the howling rebels at bay.
Mauer knew his warped father delighted telling what happened that night around the Trostle farm. The farm contained hog pens. Fighting killed many of the hogs, but destruction of the pens allowed others to escape. In darkness hogs took revenge. Wounded on both sides were eaten alive.
He took a deep breath. He would think of his father no more.
How strange he stood here prior to rather than after the battle. On his other two visits monuments and tourists dotted the landscape. Then everyone in the country knew the name Gettysburg, and that America’s most consequential battle had taken place on this site. The site that Lincoln proclaimed “hallowed and consecrated” by those who “gave the last full measure of devotion”.
At this moment only four people—well, five counting Jackson—knew the decisive battle of the Civil War would take place here. To everyone else in June of 1863 Gettysburg was just another farm town. The fighting was and would stay to the south. But war—and Jackson—had eyes on this crossroads town.
Lincoln had uttered many notable phrases in the Gettysburg Address. “The great task remaining” especially resonated in Mauer. Lincoln said a great battle had been won. But the war was not, and the nation must fight onto victory no matter the cost.
To Mauer perseverance in the face of adversity was the supreme virtue. Lacking that character trait, all the other intentions and actions of a man—or a nation—came to naught.
His own great task remaining was to see that the North won at Gettysburg, and that Lincoln got to speak here in November. Mauer was under no illusions about the difficulty. Naylor was a brilliant and determined adversary, one who believed in her cause as much as he did his. He was going to need luck along with perseverance to stop her.
The sun was now a red ball just above the dark wall of South Mountain. For a terrible moment he wondered if in a month the sun would set on the United States.
He flung off the notion. He would kill Jackson. The Union would prevail on the fields below. Lincoln would deliver his defining address. Appomattox would arrive in April of 1865, and the Stars and Stripes Forever would be the legacy of this terrible war.