The Fateful Lightning

  He rode slowly, the people from the square following, word spreading to a few more. The horsemen behind him herded them in the right direction, the church spire standing tall over the ruins of what had once been a grand place of worship. He glanced up, saw a shattered hole in the spire, the impact of a random artillery shell. Or maybe, he thought, not so random at all. Target practice. He tried to feel anger, was too weary, too sickened by all he was seeing. He rounded a corner, saw the wagon his men had filled, pointed, the civilians moving forward in a mad surge. His horsemen stayed back, held away by the simple command of his raised hand, the men understanding just how desperate these people had to be. They were mostly women, with a pair of old men, a flock of small children. As they reached the wagon, one younger woman climbed up first, tearing through ragged cloth bags, scooping corn into the folds of her dress. More were there now, the woman abruptly shoved aside, tumbling in a heap to the ground. Seeley felt a stab of alarm, would not let this turn into a riot. He put his hand on his sword, ready to do what he could to protect them from one another. But there was no energy for that, either, not from him or the people who fought weakly to empty the wagon. A young girl jumped down with a pair of sweet potatoes clutched to her chest, another older woman taking her place in the wagon, more sweet potatoes, the people taking all they could haul. Beside him the old sergeant, Gladstone.

  “Wish you hadn’t done this, sir. We’ll be a-needin’ them rations afore long.”

  Seeley kept his stare on the civilians, said, “We’re supposed to be protecting these people. That’s what this army is for. I’ll not let anyone starve.”

  “Hope you’re right.”

  Seeley looked at him, saw a stubble of beard, a rumpled hat, bare remnants of a uniform.

  “Of course I’m right. These people are counting on us. Won’t much matter if we win this war if we can’t take care of the very folks we’re fighting for.”

  There was a quiet moment, and Gladstone said, “You think we can win this war? Even now?”

  Seeley had asked that question of himself too often, didn’t want to answer it now. “General Dibrell thinks we can. General Wheeler, too, I’m guessing. I know Bedford Forrest is back home fighting like the dickens, and he wouldn’t be doing that if he didn’t believe.”

  “What about you?”

  There was too much informality in the sergeant’s question, but Seeley didn’t care. The older man had been with him for more than two years now, since the bloody awful fight at Shiloh, and the devastation around them made military discipline seem out of place.

  “I’ll fight. Have to. We all have to. You remember that.”

  “Not what I asked you, Captain. I’ll fight, sure enough. I’ll push my saber through the guts of every Yankee who did this, even ole Sherman himself. But begging your pardon, I’m not certain anymore that we can win this thing.”

  Seeley took a deep breath, watched as most of the civilians moved away. One woman came his way, her skirt gathered up like a satchel, revealing a glimpse of her underpinnings Seeley tried not to see. She made a short bow toward him, said, “Mighty obliged to you, sir. Yankees didn’t leave us with much of nothing. I got three little ones in my cellar down the street there. Breathed smoke for two days, but I kept ’em alive. You fight with General Hood, then? He coming back here, set this right? Yankees need to answer for this.”

  Seeley started to answer, thought better of it, a hint of military discipline emerging. “I’ve fought with General Hood. General Forrest, too.”

  “Well, sir, you tell General Hood or any of the rest of ’em, if ’n they can’t keep them blue devils from burning up our homes, ain’t much use to keep fighting this war. Governor Brown done told us we was perfectly safe here. I seen the president, too, came through here on a train, all kinds of pretty talk about how we was whippin’ the Yankees. They didn’t look so whipped to me.”

  “Ma’am, please return to your little ones. The army is here now. There’ll be no more problems with the Yankees.”

  The woman grunted, turned away, moved with a slow waddle down a narrow street.

  One of his men eased his horse up close to the wagon, said, “Sir, there’s nothing left. They took it all.”

  Seeley nodded. “We’ll find more. That’s our job, after all.”

  “Yes, sir. Reckon it is.”

  Gladstone was still beside him, said, “It’s also our job to find out where the Yankees run off to. How many of ’em, what units, who’s leading ’em. The general told us they was sure to hightail it to Tennessee, wouldn’t let old John Bell out of their sights. I ain’t no more than an old muleskinner, but even I figured out the Yankees done gone somewheres else. You agree, Captain?”

  Seeley had spent most of the day on the ridges west of the city, the one direction where the smoke didn’t obscure the view. The passes that led toward Chattanooga had been empty of any marching troops, even the railroad quiet. He had led his men close to several stretches of track, nearly all of it ripped apart, bridges burned and broken. That was strange at first, and he had assumed another cavalry squad had patrolled the same area, with the same orders. But the word had come from George Dibrell, ride straight into the city, there was no longer any danger from the Yankees. Seeley had ridden slowly, cautiously, convinced Dibrell was wrong, that surely there would be enemy pickets, outposts, or even stragglers still protecting the routes into the city. But all along the route, he had seen only wreckage, and when he found Dibrell, the man’s first words had told the tale: The Yankees had destroyed their own supply line, had cut themselves off from any route back to Chattanooga, any route toward Hood’s army at all.

  Seeley rubbed his empty stomach, thought of the sergeant’s warning. We’ll find something around here, he thought. Too big a place, too much bounty, even if the Yankees stole all they could find. He thought of the man’s question now, shook his head. “No, Sergeant, they didn’t go west, didn’t go toward Tennessee. We should return to General Dibrell. I know he’s itching to find General Wheeler. Maybe they know which way Sherman took all these bluebellies. Too many of ’em to get far without being noticed.”

  “How many, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “More than you and me. More than Wheeler’s whole cavalry. Not sure what’s gonna happen if we find ’em. Might depend on how many men the state of Georgia can still give to this fight.”

  “I’ll ask you again, sir. You think we’ll win this thing?”

  “Any man thinks too hard on that, he’s thinking about home. You intend on deserting, Sergeant? You best make good on it, get a serious head start. I’ll hunt you down and cut you in two.” The boast was needless, and Seeley felt ridiculous saying the words.

  “You know better than that, Captain. Just wondering. If I’m gonna be shot outta my saddle, just want to know it’s’ cause I’m moving forward, doing some good.”

  “We’re all moving forward. Right now, it’s to find General Dibrell.”

  Seeley pulled at the reins, the tired horse sluggish, stumbling, struggling to right itself. He held tight, gripped with his legs, the horse now upright, obedient, moving with a slow gait. Seeley motioned the others to follow, led them back toward the square where the general had been, where there were certain to be new orders.

  —

  Seeley hadn’t been to his home in Memphis in nearly a year now. He had first joined the cavalry late in 1861, inspired by Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had gathered up a legion of able men from that part of Tennessee and then all through northern Mississippi. But Forrest’s command had been ripped apart, mostly by the efforts of Braxton Bragg, who despised Forrest. That feud had become legendary, but those who had pride in Forrest’s refusal to tolerate what the commanders called the overripe incompetence of Bragg soon understood that Forrest’s pride had come at a price. After Bragg’s magnificent victory at Chickamauga, with Forrest serving as an invaluable asset, Bragg had stumbled into a horrific defeat at Chattanooga. Even then Richmond had sided with Bragg, agr
eeing with his demand that Forrest be sent away, given what amounted to an independent command in central and western Tennessee. But Bragg had jabbed Forrest with one last insult. Just prior to the defeat at Chattanooga, several of Forrest’s prized cavalry units had been stripped away and placed under the command of Joe Wheeler.

  Seeley had loved Forrest, had ridden close beside him through a dozen serious scraps, raids on Federal supply depots, confrontations with blue-coated cavalry where Forrest had nearly always prevailed. When Seeley had received the order to leave Forrest’s command, his first inclination had been to disobey, to ride back to Memphis whether the army, particularly Bragg, wanted him to or not. But Forrest understood military necessity, had convinced those men to do their job for Wheeler as well as they had done it for him. Seeley had to accept that no matter the damage to Forrest’s pride, it was a fair trade that several of his regiments would remain with Wheeler, while in return Forrest would have his precious independence. The order to Seeley had come from Forrest himself, a hand on his shoulder, that hard gleam in the man’s eye, the stern words that convinced Seeley his duty would now lie with leading his horsemen anyplace Joe Wheeler needed them to be. As if the order hadn’t been enough, Forrest had reminded Seeley what he already knew. Memphis was firmly in Federal hands, and no Confederate officer could ride back home and expect to pass unmolested into the city just so he could visit his young wife.

  Seeley wrote to Katie as often as he could find paper, but mail delivery had become nearly nonexistent, the thorough interruption caused by Federal cavalry throughout Mississippi and northern Alabama. Now a handful of letters remained in his own saddlebags, waiting for the word that it might be worthwhile to send them along.

  They had been married merely four months when he enlisted, and the rare visits home had been far too brief. One of those visits had come when the Federal naval boats shelled the city, a monstrous stroke of bad fortune for Seeley. He had been captured by a Federal patrol and sent northward to Camp Douglas in Illinois. But his fortunes changed. The desperate fear that his life would end in a Yankee prison had been erased by surprising news that he had been exchanged, could return home after all. He had passed through Federal outposts and past Federal strongholds on the Mississippi as though he had never been to war at all. But Memphis was still firmly in Federal hands, and though he had been allowed a brief visit, Forrest had sent word that his officers were greatly needed. Once more Seeley had kissed his teary-eyed wife goodbye and returned to the cavalry. Forrest rewarded him by promoting him to captain, but Forrest had already been stricken with the disease of Braxton Bragg, and very soon Dibrell’s regiment, with its young Captain Seeley, was given wholly to Joe Wheeler.

  Whether Wheeler was any closer to Bragg’s affections, Seeley learned that he at least knew to keep clear of Bragg’s erratic behavior. After Bragg’s astounding failure at Chattanooga, the man who had alienated so much of his command was alienated himself, recalled by Jefferson Davis to Richmond. But the army reorganized, pulling itself together as quickly as possible to confront whatever new threat the enemy was planning. Wheeler continued to command the cavalry, including those units that had once ridden with Forrest. Seeley had become accustomed to the rugged landscape of northern Georgia, Wheeler’s men doing all they could to follow the advances of Sherman’s army.

  During the first fights around Atlanta, Confederate commander Joe Johnston had seemed to appreciate Wheeler’s understanding that cavalry had far more value as observers than they did leading some vainglorious charge. But then Johnston was gone, one more casualty of Jefferson Davis’s penchant for managing the army based on who his friends were. Johnston had been replaced by John Bell Hood, and to the dismay of the cavalry, Hood seemed more focused on driving his army straight into Sherman’s guns than on any maneuver where the cavalry might be most useful. Though Hood still held his command, the loss of Atlanta had been a blow no one in the Confederate army could easily accept. Now Hood was off on another campaign, as though conceding that Atlanta had become unassailable, a Federal fortress Hood dared not assault. If Davis seemed to accept that, Georgia’s governor, Joseph Brown, most certainly did not. The political wrangling between Brown and Davis was far beyond what Seeley’s horsemen would ever know, but the order had come down, what must have been some kind of compromise to appease the Georgian. Hood would drive northward, assisted by Forrest’s horsemen. Wheeler’s cavalry was to remain in Georgia, if for no other reason than to scout the movements of Sherman’s forces.

  Seeley was reluctant to ride with Wheeler. While Wheeler was a thorough and mostly diligent horseman, he carried none of the spark of Forrest, didn’t have the man’s aura, that invisible magnet that draws men to do the seemingly impossible. He seemed devoid of ambition, following orders because it was the right thing to do. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster at Chattanooga, Wheeler had stood tall alongside Patrick Cleburne at Ringgold Gap, holding the Federal army away while the Confederates succeeded in their retreat to northern Georgia. If the man lacked personality, Seeley began to appreciate that Wheeler at least knew how to lead his men against the enemy.

  Wheeler was a West Pointer, and no one doubted his abilities in the fight. But the Confederate cavalry was now suffering from the same disadvantage as the army. Increasingly, the Federal commands were growing larger, with new recruits and better supplies, fed by the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers and the network of rail links spreading northward. Even as they fought to defend the southernmost states of the Confederacy, both the cavalry and the foot soldiers began to realize that any efforts to call upon new recruits for the army met with indifference at best. The cheerleading from the government seemed to point to a vast sea of untapped manhood, but the soldiers themselves saw little of the kind. If there were civilian men lurking in various corners of the Confederacy, in Georgia they seemed to have vanished altogether.

  A problem equally damaging was the lack of rations and equipment. The numerous factories throughout Georgia had long sent the greater amount of their goods northward, mostly to Lee’s beleaguered army in Virginia. Now, with Georgia suffering a direct Federal invasion, the people seemed to be holding closely to what they produced. Few civilian officials, including Jefferson Davis, ever expected that the Federal forces would drive so deep into Southern breadbaskets. Seeley only knew what the occasional newspaper said about Virginia, that Lee was valiantly pushing back against the overpowering forces of Ulysses Grant, forces that Lee would soon eradicate. Seeley knew better than to accept anything in the papers at face value. The latest reports all pointed to the inevitable liberation of Nashville by Hood. Men who had little to cheer latched on to those claims in a burst of optimism, a boost in morale that spread quickly through southern Tennessee. But not even the most optimistic of the men around Seeley seemed to grasp that Hood’s crushing losses in and around Atlanta had cost the army more than just manpower they couldn’t afford to lose. Atlanta was a crucial rail hub, had fueled Confederate armies in every part of the war. Now those rail lines were wrecked, the factories that supplied the railcars turned to ash. But Seeley couldn’t dwell on a greater part of the war than what lay in front of his own horsemen. For now, those men who still rode with him had one duty: Find the enemy and drive them out of Georgia.

  —

  “Your men can accompany me. There might be a need for some security detail, should the Yankee stragglers make themselves known. I am not convinced that the enemy has completely vacated this city. It makes no sense that Sherman would walk away from such a prize. We shall redeem our army before this is long past. I am certain of that.”

  Seeley nodded, nothing else to say, General Dibrell seeming to offer speeches at every turn. He saw Wheeler now, standing on the veranda of an undamaged house, a cluster of officers moving around like bees at a hive. Farther away, a hundred horsemen tended to their mounts, buckets of water hauled by slaves from the wells the Yankees had left untouched. The horsemen looked as worn as Seeley’s own, poor uniforms, du
ll boots, few wearing anything that could be called “clean.” He led his own men closer to the house, glanced back, motioned with his hand the order to spread out. They complied, a single row taking position as a makeshift skirmish line, protecting the officers from whatever imaginary threat might suddenly erupt.

  Wheeler was even more unimpressive physically than Seeley could recall, a short, slightly built man who moved with the quick darting motions of a frightened squirrel. But Seeley knew that what seemed to be nervous agitation was in fact a serious attention to detail, to all that surrounded the man. Seeley had never seen Wheeler laugh, the man never offering a joke, or even a hint of lighthearted banter. But when Wheeler led them into a fight, he pushed as hard as any man could, even to the point of outrageous risk. That was something Seeley was accustomed to, a trait shared by Nathan Bedford Forrest. They shared another trait as well, a kind of vicious fire that Seeley had struggled to find in himself. Wheeler and Forrest both believed that killing Yankees was the most important task they had.