Fifteen artillery batteries were built. The early part of the work was done at night when the laborers were safe from rebel sharpshooters. At each of the fifteen sites the workmen threw up an earth bank six feet high, then faced its steep sides with mats of woven wood that would stop the earth sliding away in the incessant rain. The walls of each battery were fifteen feet thick, a depth necessary to stop and smother an exploding rebel shell. Protecting the front of each battery was a ditch from which the material for the massive wall had been excavated, and in front of each ditch the engineers laid abatis of tangled branches. Any rebel attack trying to assault a battery would first have to force a way through the chest-high, thorn-infested tangles, then wade through the quagmire in the bed of the flooded ditch before climbing the wall’s slick face to where a line of sandbags formed the parapet, and all that time the attackers would be under the fire of the battery’s guns and enfiladed by the cannon fire from the flanking batteries north and south.
Once the walls, ditches, and abatis were finished the batteries were readied for the guns. The smaller guns, the twelve-pounders and four-inch rifles, merely needed a timber-faced ramp up which they could recoil after each shot, but the large guns, the great cannons that would blast the rebel defenses into bloody ruin, needed more careful work. Foundations were dug behind the embrasures, then filled with rubble stone brought from Fort Monroe in heavy wagons. The engineers then laid an aggregate of stone, sand, and cement that was leveled to make a rock-hard platform, though before the concrete could set hard a great curve of metal rail was sunk into its surface. The rail formed a semicircle, its open side facing the enemy. Just inside the embrasure a metal post was sunk into the gun platform so that the curved rail described an arc like a compass line around the post’s protruding stud.
The post’s stud and the curved rail were now ready to take a gun carriage. The base of the carriage was simply a pair of cast-iron beams that sloped upward from front to back. Beneath the rear of the twin beams was a pair of metal wheels which fitted into the curved rail, while at the front was the socket that slid over the post’s greased stud, so that now the whole gun carriage could be swung around on the hinge of the post. Mounted on top of the beams was the gun carriage itself which, when the gun was fired, slid back along the beams. The friction of the tons of metal crashing back along the twin beams was sufficient to soak up the massive recoil. Last of all the huge guns themselves were brought to the batteries. The biggest guns were too heavy for the corduroyed roads and had to be fetched from Fort Monroe on flat-bottomed boats that crept up the peninsula’s creeks at the top of the spring tides. The guns were transferred from the barges onto sling carts that consisted of little more than a pair of wheels so vast that the heavy gun barrels could be suspended from their axle. The weird, gaunt vehicles rolled up to the batteries and the mighty cannon were winched carefully down until their trunnions dropped into the sockets of the waiting carriages. The job had to be done at night, yet even so the rebels detected the activity and sent shell after shell screaming across the waterlogged ground in an effort to frustrate the Yankee progress.
The biggest guns were monsters more than thirteen feet long and over eight tons in weight. They fired a shell that was eight inches in width and weighed two hundred pounds. A dozen more guns fired shells a hundred pounds in weight, and even those smaller guns were larger than any of the cannon concealed behind the rebel embrasures. Yet still McClellan was not satisfied and he decreed that the siege bombardment could not commence until he had brought up the North’s largest mortars, the largest over ten tons in weight. The mortars were short-barreled, wide-mouthed guns that squatted on their wide wooden bases like monstrous cooking pots and could blast shells weighing two hundred and twenty pounds into a high looping trajectory that would drop the tumbling missiles almost vertically into the Confederate lines. The big guns on their traversing carriages were designed to batter down the rebel ramparts with direct fire while the mortar bombs exploded behind the crumbling walls to fill the rebel bastions with high-explosive death. McClellan planned to keep up the bombardment for twelve terrible hours, and only when the great guns had finished their awful work would the northern infantry be asked to cross the spring grass that grew between the lines.
The guns were at last emplaced. Each of the batteries had been equipped with stone-lined underground chambers and day by day those magazines were filled with six hundred wagonloads of ammunition brought from the ships at Fort Monroe. Other engineers sapped forward to dig the parallel, a trench placed ahead of the fifteen batteries that would serve as the launching point for the infantry attack. None of this was achieved without loss. Rebel sharpshooters sniped from their lines, mortar fire sometimes fell among the diggers, cannon fire might rip away the thin wicker shield protecting a working party from the enemy’s sight, yet inch by inch and yard by yard the Federal siege lines took shape. Bombproof shelters were dug for the gunners so that they might survive the Confederate counter-battery fire, ranges were measured precisely and the heavy guns laid with a mathematical exactitude. If all the guns fired together, and McClellan was determined that they should, then each northern volley would throw more than three tons of explosive shells into the rebel lines. “We shall keep that weight of fire going for twelve hours, gentlemen,” McClellan informed the eager foreign observers on the night before the bombardment. McClellan reckoned he could soak the rebel lines with more than two thousand tons of fiery metal and that at the end of that skyborne slaughter the surviving rebel defenders would be reeling and dizzy, easy meat for the northern infantry. “We shall give the seceshers a half day’s medicine, gentlemen,” McClellan boasted, “then see what kind of defiance they can show. We shall see them beaten by tomorrow afternoon!”
That night, almost as if they knew what fate was being planned for them in the morning, the rebel guns opened fire on the completed northern lines. Shot after shot screamed through the rainy darkness, the burning fuses scratching red lines of fire against the night. Most of the shells exploded harmlessly in the waterlogged ground, but a few found targets. A tethered mule team screamed in pain, a tent in the lines of the 20th Massachusetts was hit and two of its occupants were killed, the first men of the battalion to die in action since their disastrous baptism of fire on Ball’s Bluff. And still the rebel shells whipped through the night until, as suddenly as the bombardment had begun, the guns fell silent and left the darkness to barking dogs, whinnying horses, and the calls of the mockingbirds.
The next day dawned clear. There were clouds in the north and the local farmers swore that rain would come soon, yet the early sun shone bright. Smoke from ten thousand cooking fires rose from the tented encampments of the northern infantry. The men were cheerful, anticipating an easy victory. The gunners would wreck the enemy defenses, then the infantry would stroll across the intervening ground to dig the survivors out of the smoking rubble. It would be a textbook assault, proof that an American general and an American army could achieve in twelve hours what Europeans had bungled in as many weeks in the Crimea. McClellan had been an observer of the Crimean sieges and was determined that the French and British officers with his army would be taught a quiet but unmistakable lesson this day.
Deep in the brand-new gun emplacements the Yankee gunners made their last preparations. The big cannon were loaded, friction primers were pushed into touchholes, and artillery officers examined their targets through telescopes. Over a hundred heavy guns waited for the signal to launch their terrible destruction on the Confederate defenses. A month’s hard work had been invested in this moment, and to many northerners waiting in their bastions it seemed as if the world held its breath. In the York River the gunboats edged nearer the shore, ready to add their own cannon fire to the slaughtering weight of the army’s bombardment. A small wind lifted the ships’ ensigns and carried the smoke of their steam engines east across the water.
A half mile behind the Yankee gun emplacement, hidden by a grove of pine trees that had somehow esc
aped the axes of the road builders, a curious yellow form took monstrous shape. Men struggled to pour carboys of sulfuric acid into vats half filled with iron turnings and still more men worked the giant pumps that pushed the hydrogen formed in those vats along rubberized canvas hoses that led to the great, yellow-skinned balloon that slowly swelled to its full bulbous shape above the trees. The balloon’s inflation had begun in the dark so that it would be ready soon after sunrise, and by dawn the huge device needed a crew of thirty men to keep it earthbound. Two men climbed into the balloon’s wicker basket. One was Professor Lowe, the famous aeronaut and balloonist whose skills had made the vehicle possible, the other was General Heintzelman, who was being carried aloft so that his seasoned military eye could spy on the destruction wrought by the guns. Heintzelman was looking forward to the experience. He would watch the guns work, then he would telegraph to McClellan when he saw the rebel lines break apart and flee westward in panic. Professor Lowe tested the telegraph equipment, then shouted for the crew to let the vehicle go.
Slowly, like a stately yellow moon rising above the trees, the balloon lifted. Fifteen hundred feet of cable tethered the vehicle to a massive winch that slowly unwound as the aeronauts climbed higher and higher into the clear patch of sky. The sight of the balloon normally provoked a flurry of long-range cannon fire from the rebel lines, but this morning there was only silence. “Saying their prayers, maybe?” Professor Lowe suggested happily.
“They need to,” General Heintzelman answered. He drummed his fingers on the edge of the balloon’s basket. He had made a wager with his chief of staff that the rebel defenders would break in six hours, not twelve. The basket swayed and creaked, but it was not, Heintzelman decided, an unpleasant sensation. Better than most sea voyages, that was certain. As the balloon passed eight hundred feet the General trained his telescope on the western horizon where he could see the dark smoky smear that was the rebel capital. He could even see the scars of earth where fresh defenses had been carved into the hills around the city. “The serpents’ lair, Professor!” Heintzelman proclaimed.
“Indeed, General, and we shall scour the vipers soon enough!”
Heintzelman abandoned his sightseeing and instead stared down at the enemy lines that lay so clear beneath him. He felt hugely powerful, granted a godlike view of his enemies’ secrets. He could see their batteries, and the trenches leading from their bombproof shelters, and the tents hidden behind earth walls. War would never be the same again, Heintzelman thought, not when there was no hiding place left. He trained his telescope on one of the bigger enemy gun batteries. None of the Yankee guns would open fire until Heintzelman was ready to report on the effects of their fire and that moment, he decided, had now come. “I think we’re ready to communicate, Professor,” the General said.
“Not many cooking fires, General,” Lowe said, nodding toward the rebel encampments where a handful of shabby tents showed among the ragged, turf-covered shelters. A few fires smoked in the lines, but very few, and no smoke at all showed from the tin chimneys sticking out of the earth shelters by the batteries.
Heintzelman stared into the gun battery. A rebel flag stirred on its flagstaff, but no gunners were visible. Were they expecting the bombardment and already under shelter? He raised the telescope to search the encampment. He could see where horses had been tethered and where limbers had left the imprint of their wheels on the grass, but he could see no men.
“What shall we tell them?” Lowe asked. The Professor had a hand poised over the balloon’s telegraph machine which communicated to the ground by a wire that ran down the tethering cable. A second telegraph machine waited at the balloon’s earthbound station to relay the aeronauts’ news to General McClellan’s headquarters. McClellan himself had stayed in bed, content to let his gunners do their work without his presence.
An aide woke the Young Napoleon two hours after sunrise. “We have a report, sir, from the balloon.”
“So?” The General resented being woken.
“The enemy, sir, is gone.”
McClellan peered at his watch on the bedside table, then leaned over and pulled back a shutter. He flinched from the bright sunlight, then turned again to the aide. “What did you say?”
“The enemy lines, sir, they are deserted.” The aide was Louis Philippe Albert d’Orleans, the Count of Paris, come to America in the spirit of Lafayette to help restore America’s unity, and for a moment he wondered whether his English was at fault. “The rebels have retreated, sir,” he said as clearly as he could. “The lines are empty.”
“Who says?” McClellan asked angrily.
“General Heintzelman is in the balloon’s gondola, sir, with Professor Lowe.”
“They’re dreaming. Dreaming!” The General could not abide such stupidity. How could the rebels have retreated? Only last night they had lit up the sky with their cannonade! The gun flashes had flickered like summer lighting on the western horizon, the fuses had seared the sky with lines of airborne fire, and the explosions had echoed dark across the waterlogged fields. The General slammed the shutter hard against the light and waved his aristocratic aide back toward the door. Downstairs the telegraph machine clattered with more news from the balloonists, but the General did not want to know. He wanted another hour’s sleep. “Wake me at eight o’clock,” he ordered. “And tell the guns to open fire!”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir.” The Count of Paris backed quietly from the room, closed the door, then allowed himself to sigh in disbelief at the General’s obtuseness.
The gunners waited. Behind them, high in the sky, the yellow ballon tugged at its tether. The sun went behind cloud and the first spots of rain pattered on the balloon’s rubberized skin. A dozen foreign military attaches and a score of newspapermen waited in the largest Federal batteries for the order to open fire, but though the guns were laid and loaded and the primers ready, no order came from the balloon.
Instead a small cavalry picket rode forward from the Federal lines. The dozen horsemen were spread out in a long skirmish line in case an enemy gun crammed with grapeshot or canister was fired at them. They advanced very cautiously, stopping every few paces while their officer gazed at the enemy works through his telescope. The horses lowered their heads to crop at the luscious long grass that had grown undisturbed in the space between the two armies.
The cavalry moved on again. Here and there a sentry was visible on the enemy redoubts, but the sentries did not move even when hit by the bullets of northern sharpshooters. The sentries were men of straw, guarding abandoned earthworks, for in the night General Johnston had ordered Magruder’s defenders to retreat toward Richmond. The rebels had gone silently, abandoning their guns, their tents, their fires, abandoning whatever could not be carried on their backs.
General McClellan, awake at last to the truth of the day, ordered a pursuit, but no one in the northern army was prepared for sudden action. The cavalry horses were grazing, while the cavalrymen were playing cards and listening to the rain drum on the sides of their tents. The only troops ready for action were the artillerymen, and their targets had melted away in the night.
The rain fell harder as the northern infantry took possession of the abandoned lines. The cavalry at last saddled their horses, but the detailed orders for the pursuit were lacking and so the horsemen did not move. McClellan, meanwhile, was composing his dispatch to the northern capital. Yorktown, the General told Washington, had fallen in a brilliant display of northern soldiering. He claimed that a hundred thousand rebels with five hundred guns had been evicted from their lines, enabling the march upon the enemy capital to be resumed. There would be more desperate battles, he warned, but for this day at least, God had smiled upon the North.
Magruder’s men, unpursued and unmolested, marched west while the Young Napoleon sat down to his belated lunch. “We have a victory,” he told his aides. “Thank God Almighty, we have a victory.”
De’Ath gave Starbuck his last instructions in the hallway of the decaying Ri
chmond house. Rain streamed from broken gutters and cascaded off the porch roof; it dripped from the thick foliage in the garden and puddled on the sandy driveway where de’Ath’s ancient carriage waited. The coach’s gilded axle bosses reflected the dim light cast by the flickering lanterns on the porch. “The coach will take you to your ladies,” de’Ath said with a sour twist on the last word, “but you will not keep the coachman waiting beyond midnight. At that time he will take you to a rendezvous with a man named Tyler. Tyler is the pilot who will take you through the lines. This is the pass to get you out of the city.” De’Ath handed Starbuck one of the familiar brown paper passports. “Tyler’s the man to pilot you back too. If you come back.”
“I shall come back, sir.”
“If there’s anything to come back to. Listen!” The old man gestured toward the road which lay beyond his garden’s high, stone-capped wall, and Starbuck heard the sound of wheels and hooves. The traffic had been thick ever since the news of Yorktown’s abandonment had reached the city and plunged Richmond into panicked flight. Those who had the money had hired carts or carriages, piled them with their luggage, and set off for the state’s southern counties, while those people unable to carry their treasures to safety were burying them in their back yards. The hallways of the government offices were stacked high with boxes of official papers addressed to Columbia, South Carolina, which would be the next capital of the Confederacy should Richmond fall, while in the Byrd Street depot of the Richmond and Petersburg Railway there was a locomotive waiting with a full head of steam and a train of armored boxcars, ready to evacuate the Confederacy’s stack of gold. Even the President’s wife, it was rumored, was readying to take her children away from the advancing Yankees. “Thought she would,” de’Ath had commented sourly when that news was brought to Hyde House. “The woman has the breeding of a fishwife.”