Meeting at Fredericksburg

by Sevenstars

In the aftermath of the battle of Fredericksburg, Slim, separated from his unit and wounded, is found by Sgt. Bill Hawks and brought to Major Seth Adams's camp. #1 in a trilogy.

Meeting at Fredericksburg

A Laramie/Wagon Train crossover

by Sevenstars

SUMMARY: During the war, Second Lieutenant Slim Sherman gets separated from his unit and has a rather perilous adventure that eventually leads to new friendships.

In one episode of Laramie (whose title I can't currently recall), Slim reveals that he saw action at the Battle of Fredericksburg. As it happened, I already knew that Major Seth Adams, of Wagon Train, had also been present at that engagement: in "Around the Horn," the second-season opener, a storm at sea moves him to remark that he "ain't heard so much noise since Fredericksburg." So I got to wondering—might they have met? First in a planned trilogy. Thanks to Noelle, as always, for everything.

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From a letter by Lt. Matthew "Slim" Sherman, 3rd Indiana Cavalry, to his mother, dated Tuesday, December 30, 1862:

…We had a battle at Fredericksburg the 12th and 13th, and I got a couple of wounds and was separated from my outfit for a while, but I was never really in any danger, except maybe of being picked up by the enemy. It's a long story, but the meat of it is that I fell in with an Indiana infantry regiment, and the major commanding it had a cook who turned out to be a natural genius at doctoring—sort of like Jonesy. He fixed me up, and I rested for a few days (mostly because Major Adams said he'd have his sergeant sit on me if I didn't, and I think the man could have done it too—I saw him in a wrestling match one evening, and he pinned a big Swede who must have had him outweighed by 40 pounds)...

**SR - WT**

Saturday, December 13, 1862, about 1:00 P.M.:

I've got a bad feeling about this, Slim thought, checking in hard as his coppery-sorrel gelding, Cheyenne, flinched and half-reared at another bellow of cannon from somewhere behind them. Cheyenne—who had that name from the fact that he'd been a gift from Slim's Indian friend, Thunder Coming, before Slim set out on his journey East to enlist—didn't seem at all fazed by the Rebel yell; it probably reminded him of war whoops back home. But he'd never adjusted to cannon fire, and when, as now, he and his rider were expected to hold themselves in reserve, it sometimes took all Slim's skill and strength to keep him under control.

The campaign had gone poorly from the start, owing partly to indecision and character conflicts in the higher echelons and partly to the confusion and inefficiency that seemed endemic to Washington. General Ambrose Burnside had been promoted as of November 7th to head the Army of the Potomac. Unlike so many, he wasn't a "political general," but a graduate of West Point—he'd been eighteenth in a class of forty-seven in 1847, done garrison duty in Mexico, seen service against the Indians out West, and resigned his commission as a first lieutenant, in 1853, to devote his attention to the full-time work of designing and perfecting the good single-shot .54 breech-loading carbine, manufactured since 1858, that bore his name. He'd remained active in the Rhode Island militia and been a brigadier general in it when the war broke out. He'd raised the state's first infantry regiment and been made its colonel, served without particular distinction at First Bull Run, then led aggressive amphibious operations against the North Carolina coast and gained success at Roanoke Island and New Bern. Twice he'd been offered command of the army—after the failure of the Peninsula Campaign and following Pope's defeat at Second Bull Run—and twice he'd refused, saying he felt himself unqualified for the job. The third offer had won him over; though he was a classmate and friend of McClellan, whom he'd been ordered to replace, and would have preferred a supporting role to overall command, he felt that his duty required him to accept the President's promotion. According to gossip—and all soldiers, Regulars and volunteers alike, were cheerfully receptive to every sliver and paring of it that came their way—he also had a low opinion of Major-General "Fighting Joe" Hooker, a behind-the-scenes schemer of the first order who was Lincoln's second choice. The prospect of having Hooker—his political rival—leapfrog over him in the Union hierarchy finally did the trick, and he agreed to take the position.

He wasn't a complete fool, certainly. He took over the army knowing that McClellan had lost the job for not moving, so he realized he had to show action. He knew, too, that he had to do so quickly, before the full onset of winter. Most important, he had to move because the political climate demanded it: following the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln had assured voters that the war was progressing as planned, and had issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in areas of rebellion. But the Confederate armies of Robert E. Lee and Braxton Bragg had seized the initiative just before the fall elections in the North. Union armies beat them back, but disillusioned Northerners were shaken by the experience. Lincoln needed a military victory to allay their fears, silence his political critics, and give strength and credence to the Proclamation.

Burnside planned a late fall offensive, relying on quick movement and deception, to capture Richmond. He communicated it to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck on November 9th and took command the next day. He would concentrate his army in a visible fashion near Warrenton, feigning a movement on Culpeper Court House, Orange Court House, or Gordonsville. Then he would rapidly shift it southeast and cross the Rappahannock River to the small city of Fredericksburg, hoping that Robert E. Lee would sit still, unclear as to his intentions, and thereby give the Union Army time to make a rapid movement south along the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad. He was concerned that if he were to move directly south from Warrenton, he would be exposed to a flanking attack from Stonewall Jackson. He also believed that the Orange & Alexandria Railroad—which in any case had been blocked by Lee—would be an inadequate supply line. He meant to flank Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, crossing the Rappahannock both above and below Fredericksburg. This meant he would only have one formidable river to cross, whereas if he were to take the more direct route, he would have two—the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. He would be closer to Washington (and therefore his base of supplies) as well as on a more direct route to Richmond; he could use the RF&P as a supply line, and at worst the movement would draw Lee south, where Burnside could lure him into battle at a time and place of his own choosing. At best, a quick movement would assure surprise and catch the Army of Northern Virginia in a vulnerable position, as it was falling back to protect Richmond. Such, in any case, was his hope.

At least he proved (at this point) not to be a time-waster. While he awaited approval of his program, he changed the organizational structure of his army, retaining the overall Corps structure but organizing it into three "Grand Divisions," right, left, and center. Lincoln was impressed with the audacity of the plan, but expressed doubts about its potential for success; he would have preferred movement south on the O&A and a direct confrontation with Lee's army. He reluctantly gave Burnside the go-ahead on November 14th, while cautioning him that his program "will succeed, if you move very rapidly; otherwise not."

Burnside didn't need to be told that; he knew quite well that everything depended on speed, and even said that the attack on Fredericksburg should be made "as soon as the army arrives in front of the place." At dawn on November 15th Sumner's newly organized Right Grand Division, made up of Couch's First Corps and Willcox's Ninth (the latter in turn including Brigadier Alfred Pleasanton's cavalry division, among which the Slim's Third Indiana was numbered), set out to occupy the vicinity of Falmouth, a tiny community just above the Warrenton Road and little more than a mile upstream from Fredericksburg, where Burnside had assembled a supply base. The rest of the army was in motion by the following day. With a total of 123,000 men, including seventy-three batteries of artillery, 277 regiments and seven battalions of foot (plus a stray company of sharpshooters), and twelve regiments (among them Slim's Third and his friend Quentin Colville's Second New York) and seven companies of cavalry, it advanced cautiously south. Lee commanded the only sizeable force that could oppose him, but his army was divided: Longstreet was at Culpeper, thirty miles away, positioned to meet any advance that might come toward any point east of the Blue Ridge, and Jackson's newly-organized First Corps was a week's march from Fredericksburg, at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, just south of Winchester, guarding against any sudden assault into Virginia's vulnerable breadbasket.

Rain showers and muddy roads, the twin banes of both sides, slowed the Union advance, but the army traversed the forty miles in just two days. Sumner's advance elements marched into Falmouth just after dark on the 17th. The Left Grand Division, under Major-General William B. Franklin (who had been at the top of Ulysses S. Grant's class at West Point), and including the First Corps under Reynolds and the Sixth under Smith, reached Stafford Court House, eight miles from Falmouth, soon after, and General Hooker's Center Grand Division, composed of Stoneman's Third and Butterfield's Fifth Corps, halted at Hartwood, just seven miles away. By now the flanking move seemed to be working. Lee was nowhere in sight and clearly unprepared for such decisive swiftness; as it later turned out, initially surprised by Burnside's movement, he had looked to set up a defensive position south of the North Anna River, twenty-five miles to the south. Although he learned of Sumner's departure from Warrenton on the very day it occurred, he was uncertain as to what it meant, and his confusion lasted for several days.

Sumner, who had learned of a ford not far upstream from Falmouth, asked permission to cross at once and occupy Fredericksburg. But the rivers were already and high storm clouds were gathering, and a sudden heavy rainfall could potentially strand part of the army on the far bank, leaving them without ready supplies or artillery support, so Burnside rejected the request. When he reached Falmouth on the 19th, he examined Sumner's ford and concluded that he'd been right—it was too high for anything but cavalry to safely get over. General Hooker also proposed to cross the river, even farther upstream, at a place propitiously called United States Ford. Then, according to a scheme of his own devising, he would strike out for Bowling Green, south of Fredericksburg and only thirty-five miles from Richmond. This, too, Burnside rejected as premature. The horse soldiers, riding ahead as scouts according to their usual pattern, reported that the army was now in a position to strike between Lee's separated wings and defeat them. Burnside, for reasons unclear, rejected this promising plan in favor of sweeping through Fredericksburg and "on to Richmond." Like everyone else in the Union's highest echelons, with the possible exception of the President, he seemed convinced that taking the Confederate capital would put an end to the Confederacy.

Burnside looked like a bold commander, it was true. He was tall and affable, genial and hearty, with a big smile and winning, cavalier ways. Even McClellan, on finding himself replaced, had said with surprising graciousness, "Burnside is a pure man and a man of integrity of purpose, and such a man can't go far astray." But whatever his other qualities, he had no imagination; at Antietam, not quite three months ago, he'd rigidly followed every order given him to the letter, but no more, refusing to think or act without explicit instructions. He had little depth to back up his grand appearance, and he knew it. "I am not fit for it," he had told General Halleck. "There are many more in the army better fitted than I am; but if you and the President insist, I will take it and do the best I can." He was generally well liked, and seemed intent on pleasing everyone—and at the moment, the people he most needed to please were in Washington. Moreover, he had never led such a large army before, and he also had a host of new recruits to deal with. And his reorganization had resulted in not one of his generals having the same command as at Antietam. Slim, who'd been in three different regiments and under several generals, including Sherman and McClellan, since he'd signed up, wasn't at all sure the man's decision to accept command had been a good idea—not any more. Maybe Hooker would have made a better job of the thing after all; he wasn't called "Fighting Joe" for nothing. Of course Slim didn't say so, except privately to Quentin and to his tentmate and immediate superior, First Lieutenant Miklós Almássy. Even at not quite twenty, he had been taught to behave courteously and show proper respect for authority—and criticizing one's commanding general to his face, or to the faces of other high rankers, was a good way to get disciplined for insubordination.

Burnside's fears about the weather soon proved accurate, for heavy rain began to fall on the afternoon of the 19th, and it continued through the 20th and 21st. He tried to keep his army poised to move, but in the face of the rising river and deepening mud, rapid movement was hardly possible. Meanwhile, Lee realized that his foe was stalled north of the Rappahannock, and dispatched Longstreet's forces to Fredericksburg. While Burnside waited for his bridges to get there, under the watchful eyes of Confederate scouts, Longstreet arrived on the 21st, and took up a position stretched out four miles along Marye's Heights (so named from the Marye family's Greek Revival house located there), which overlooked the town. He was badly outnumbered, having only some 40,000 men, as the scouting cavalry could see by counting regimental banners, but he immediately began digging in, preparing to meet the Federals if and when they began to cross.

Originally Fredericksburg had been held by less than a thousand men, and if he could have gotten over the river, Burnside could easily have captured it and marched on Richmond. Indeed he'd had every intention of crossing, but his plan hinged on the arrival of the large pontoon train which would enable him to bridge the Rappahannock, because the three conventional spans over that stretch had been destroyed incidental to the Union occupation the previous spring. Halleck had promised that the train would be waiting, but it wasn't; several mixups at the War Department slowed the arrival of the equipment, and the heavy rain, which turned even the best roads into mires of clinging Virginia mud, didn't help. Even when they got started, the pontoon trains could manage five miles a day at best, and they didn't catch up till three P.M. on November 25th. Without them, Burnside's speed and superior numbers were meaningless. The river was four hundred feet across at that point; flowing east, it made a wide bend southward, descending a series of rocky falls before smoothing out just as it ran past the town. Just to the north it was shallow enough to wade across, while below the fall line it became deeper and wider, and rose and fell with the tug of the far-off tide. Some Union generals, including Winfield Scott Hancock, believed the river could be crossed even without the boats, and urged Burnside to act; Hancock, commanding the First Division of Sumner's First Corps, had observed a herd of cows crossing it above the falls, and suggested the army do the same. But Burnside, fearful of moving supplies and armaments across even the shallowest part of the river, rebuffed him as a meddling subordinate.

With more than a year of campaigning under his belt, in both the Western and Eastern theaters, and the advantage of having scouted the area before the bulk of the army arrived, Slim had tried to look at the situation the way the commanding officer of such a large force would. He'd been on cattle drives, and knew there was a difference between individuals or small groups casually crossing a river and a much larger group doing so—not to mention a military crossing: infantry might be able to cross at a ford, but it couldn't advance far without the support of the artillery and the wagon train. Both of these depended on a wheel-friendly crossing, and the rocky stretch of river Hancock pointed out wasn't wheel-friendly, meaning that the artillery, particularly, would have a tougher time getting across the river than the cows he had spotted. To position part of the army across the river in hostile territory with only the supplies it could carry—generally three days' rations and perhaps a hundred rounds of ammunition each for the foot soldiers—would be a precarious choice.

If construction had begun as soon as the boats arrived, the Army of the Potomac would still have had some chance, but the initial crossing points Burnside had planned on using, on the outskirts of the town, were deemed too dangerous. He waited more than two weeks before attempting to cross, while his engineers scouted the river and he cast about for a new plan. Although numerous fords offered possible alternatives, he still worried that if he forded the river and rain and snows swept across the valley, a portion of his army could be trapped on the southern side of the river and destroyed. As he discussed possibilities with his subordinates, their confidence in him—if they'd ever had any—seemed to wane.

Fredericksburg was the largest city between Washington and Richmond, an important rail crossing and the intersection of a network of good roads that spread out into central Virginia. It was set on a descending plain that stretched less than a mile from a long, steep ridge down to the river. This plain gradually opened up as one proceeded downstream, offering more room for maneuver, but still favoring the defender with its steep bounding hills. These, though shallower than their counterparts upstream, were mostly covered with thick woods, while the heights to the north were so steep as to be nearly unassailable by infantry. The town had before the war gained some fame as the childhood home of George Washington and the place where his mother Mary had spent the last decades of her life and was buried. But mostly it had grown to be a sleepy place of 5000, a third of them slaves. Sumner had established his headquarters across from it, at Chatham Manor, an imposing, 180-foot-long 1771 brick house on Stafford Heights connected to nearly 1300 acres of land; Pleasanton was stationed near a crossroads half a mile or so beyond him.

Lee, recognizing that if a battle did begin the civilian population would be directly between two fires, advised them to evacuate. Watching from Pleasanton's position, Slim had been able to see crowds of women and children streaming along the roads on the far side, along with carts and wagons carrying their household goods and valuables, probably taking to the countryside in quest of impromptu refugee centers and friends' farms in Spotsylvania County. The weather was cold, and he knew they must be miserable. He figured the Rebs knew it too, and wouldn't be much inclined to show mercy to the people who'd forced noncombatants out into the open at such a season.

Early in December Burnside announced to his commanders that instead of crossing at Fredericksburg, he would make his move about twelve miles downstream, at a place called Skinker's Neck, which the engineers had recommended. Sumner, ever the faithful subordinate, said he would do what he could, and Franklin expressed his readiness. But Hooker flatly opposed the idea, protesting that an attempt to cross a river in the face of the Confederates was preposterous. Burnside brushed his objections aside and called up Federal gunboats from Port Royal to support his plan. They got just as far as Skinker's Neck before being driven back downstream by the Confederate shore batteries on December 4th. Well aware that his predecessor had been removed from command for his refusal to actually take his men into battle, the general decided at last that his only option was a frontal assault on Fredericksburg itself. Meanwhile, the delay afforded Lee time to re-unite his army in strong positions across the river and get entrenched on the high ground behind the town, which effectively made Burnside's plan for an unopposed crossing impossible. His strategy had been so long delayed that it had effectively lost any merit it may have originally possessed, but he clung to it.

Burnside had never intended to fight in Fredericksburg, but he saw that unless he simply turned back and abandoned his campaign—which would expose him to the wrath of Lincoln and the Union as a whole—he must do so. At first he decided that a crossing upstream offered no opportunities, while to cross downstream—if he succeeded—would give him a chance to push Lee's right flank back and away from a line of communication and retreat to Richmond. Lee for his part seemed to anticipate this, for as more and more men joined him, he positioned them successively further to his right—Jackson nearest, then D. H. Hill, then Jubal Early at Skinker's Neck, A. P. Hill fully six miles below the town, and Taliaferro several miles beyond him again; this Slim and other cavalrymen, riding on scouts on their own side of the river, were clearly able to observe. In response, Burnside changed his mind once again: Lee was too well prepared, he decided. Instead he would cross directly in the enemy front, relying on speed and surprise to seize the city and its surrounding hills before the Confederates could react and concentrate their forces. As he said, "I think now that the enemy will be more surprised by a crossing in our immediate front than any other part of the river." There was a certain minimal logic to the plan; with his artillery on the east shore, he could completely command the city itself, making it almost impossible for Lee to mount any substantial infantry resistance against the bridging crews. Only the distant cannon fire from the Heights and the attentions of snipers and sharpshooters in Fredericksburg itself would be a threat to them. Unfortunately, the latter in particular turned out to be much more effective than he had expected. And there remained the entrenched Confederates on the Heights: Colonel Rush C. Hawkins of the Ninth New York even told Burnside flatly, "If you make the attack as contemplated, it will be the greatest slaughter of the war; there isn't infantry enough in our whole army to carry those heights if they are well defended."

The closer the time came for battle, the more muddled Burnside's thinking seemed to become, and with it his communications. The plan as it finally materialized involved six pontoon bridges at three points along a five-and-a-half-mile front: two just north of the town center at the site of an old rope ferry, a third opposite the docks on the southern end where the railroad bridge had been, and three farther south, near the confluence of the Rappahannock and a stream known as Deep Run. Sumner was to cross the uppermost bridge and move directly against the town; Franklin was to go over by the lower sets, move across the open ground, and strike Lee where Burnside thought him most vulnerable. Hooker's Center Grand Division would remain in reserve on the Falmouth side. This altered slightly on December 10th, as Burnside decided that Sumner was to move against the enemy on the heights, Franklin to secure the roads connecting Lee with Richmond and then turn northward to strike at his flank, and Hooker to cross after Sumner and hold himself ready to support either of his counterparts. What they were to do after that remained unclear; details, Burnside kept saying, would be forthcoming. None of the three was given any specific instructions on how or where to fight, or offered any coordinating influence between them. Having told them where to go, Burnside blithely left everything else up to them. Early the next morning he added to the confusion by a set of written orders to Franklin: After your command has crossed, you will move down the Old Richmond Road, in the direction of the railroad, being governed by circumstances as to the extent of your movements.

The Confederates' situation was quite different. They were outnumbered, but they held the high ground, they'd had almost three weeks to prepare their defenses, and—unlike the Federals—they trusted their generals, who in turn respected one another and communicated well. All along their line they had built roads and improved existing ones so they could shift reinforcements rapidly if necessary.

Late on the 10th, under cover of darkness, the engineers moved their gear up close to the riverside. Some even tried a diversion by ostentatiously cutting down trees and making a lot of noise near Skinker's Neck, hoping to deceive Lee into thinking that the bridging attempt would be made there. This proved to fool no one: the commander of the Southern forces in the city could see and hear enough to conclude that the crossing would be made directly in his front.

Around two A.M. on the 11th, with the mercury hovering at twenty-four degrees and a dense river-valley fog providing cover, the engineers finally began construction. The river was covered with a thin layer of ice and the water was consequently extremely cold, but they worked swiftly, reaching a point a little past halfway, and therefore too committed to the project to quit, before the sun burned through the fog. At that time, a pair of cannon blasts from the Heights signaled the occupying Confederates into action, and the engineers positioned directly across from the city came under punishing fire from sharpshooters concealed in lofts, upper storeys, and cellars along the town's waterfront. They had no arms and so no means of self-protection, and their infantry support was at too long a range to do significant damage. Each time they retreated, the Southerners ceased firing; when they crept out to resume their work, the fire took up again. All morning the deadly cat-and-mouse game continued: nine times in all the engineers tried, and nine times they were driven back.

To break the impasse, Burnside tried something new: he sought to dislodge the Confederate marksmen by bombarding the city. It was the first time the U.S. Army had ever bombarded an American city. 147 Union artillery pieces, positioned on the heights along the river's north bank, attempted to dislodge the sharpshooters, and while one unit on the enemy left could be seen to break and run under the pressure, most simply abandoned the upper storeys and hunkered down behind walls and in cellars, which rendered the Federal fire mostly ineffective, though the barrage damaged nearly every house in the town. The mist still veiled everything except the church steeples, and above this great pillars of smoke from burning buildings rose several hundred feet before spreading outward in black sheets. Two New York infantry regiments added repeated volleys of rifle fire to the cannonade, which eventually involved 183 guns and spent between eight and nine thousand rounds. Still the Confederates held their positions.

Around two o'clock, Burnside's artillery commander, Brigadier Henry J. Hunt, came up with a new idea. He pointed out that the army had both infantry and pontoon boats, so why not put the soldiers in the boats to secure a small bridgehead and rout the sharpshooters? Colonel Norman J. Hall, commanding the six regiments of the Third Brigade, volunteered his men for the assignment. Burnside suddenly turned reluctant, lamenting to Hall in front of his men that "the effort meant death to most of those who should undertake the voyage." But when the men responded to Hall's request with three cheers, he relented.

At three o'clock, the Union artillery began a preparatory bombardment, and 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and the 19th Massachusetts crowded into small boats. The going was slow: the flat-nosed pontoons were built for buoyancy, not speed, and the sharpshooters, of course, poured fire into the easy targets. The artillery couldn't keep them pinned down because of faulty shells and because the gunners couldn't depress the barrels of their cannon low enough to hit the shore. Some boats spun in circles as the men on one side paddled faster than those on the other; others slowed due to mounting casualties. Then, as they drew nearer the city, local geography took a hand: the Confederates, situated on the far side of Sophia Street, facing the river, couldn't shoot down over the riverbank, which shielded the final stretch of the Union crossing. Soon the boats drove into and onto the shore, and Union soldiers spilled out onto the riverbank. Up the bank they rushed—up and over and into the homes that lined Sophia Street.

About thirty of the Confederates surrendered, but fighting proceeded through the town, with the defenders re-taking positions on the second and third floors of buildings, which gave them what Slim had been taught to call "high gun" and military manuals called "the high ground." The Michiganders were able to make it only twenty yards along Hawke Street before they were forced into an alley. But behind them, more Federals streamed over the river—the 20th Massachusetts, the 42nd and 59th New York, and the 72nd, 106th, and 127th Pennsylvania. The 72nd and 106th moved straight south and engaged a nest of Mississippians. The 20th headed down Hawke Street in support of the 7th, whose nemesis it drove back along Princess Anne Street, picking up a third enemy group two and a half blocks further on and forcing these to retreat as well, inland along Amelia Street. The Pennsylvania troops split up at William Street, the 72nd passing about a third of a block above the Market House and driving still more Mississippians along it, while their comrades chased their own opponents right through the center of the block between George and Hanover. The New York troops pushed through warehouses, clearing them of the enemy. House by house, street by street, block by block, the Confederates were forced back, though they resisted bitterly and inflicted many casualties, including a good third of the 20th. The remaining Union troops took up a position near the riverfront, where they could protect the engineers, giving them a chance to complete the bridges. Within half an hour the task was complete, and about half-past four the bulk of the army began to cross the river, although the Confederate artillery continued, somewhat futilely, to attempt to demolish the bridges. By nightfall, four brigades had occupied the town, and the remaining Rebels had pulled back to their army's main lines on the Heights.

As the troops were landed, they had nothing to do but wait—as Burnside had correctly guessed, Lee was reluctant to shell a Virginia town—and began milling about the vacant streets and alleyways. Before long, they lost their discipline and assumed the characteristics of an uncontrolled mob, taking out their frustrations at the delay by looting and pillaging almost at will. They did little personal harm to the few civilians they found—perhaps a thousand remained in the town at that point, and no more than four were reported killed—but they seemed to take delight in destroying or carrying off anything they found. By the time the provost marshals managed to restore some kind of order, most of the town was simply gutted. Slim, who had promised himself to make war like a civilized man, was appalled—and, what was more, having seen something of the effect of such destruction when it was committed by Indians, he knew it would only enrage the Southern forces and stiffen their spines.

He had no opportunity to make any attempt to stop it, for the Third was sent on a sweep downstream to see what the Confederates down there were doing and whether the bridge-builders were having the same kind of trouble. As it turned out, they weren't: although snipers had been present there also, their numbers were far fewer and they had no buildings, walls, or basements to furnish them with cover; five batteries of Union artillery had suppressed most of their fire, and the engineers had completed their work by eleven o'clock. Franklin, somewhat baffled by his most recent orders, had hesitated to cross, and had simply notified Burnside that his bridges were ready. In reply, Burnside told him to stay where he was and await further orders. The Left Grand Division had finally been ordered to cross at four. When they began to do so, yet another countermanding order arrived: only one brigade should deploy on the west bank to guard the bridges during the night, and the rest of the troops should wait till morning to cross. Two additional regiments that had already gone over plodded obediently back.

Meanwhile, back at the crossroads, Slim had reported his observations to his brigade C.O., Colonel (Brevet Brigadier) George Barton. "They're still spread out pretty thinly, sir," he explained. "The nearest ones have ten miles or more to cover before they can link up with Jackson. If we could get movin' fast, before they can reassemble into a single strong position—"

Barton nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I see what you mean, Sherman. I'll inform command of it. Consider yourself off duty for the moment, but be ready to report to headquarters if I send for you; General Burnside may want to hear your observations first hand."

Slim saluted and took himself off. But to his surprise, and secret dismay, there was no particular effort made to get the army across the river fast enough to hit the strung-out Southerners. No summons came that evening, and when Taps, the new lights-out call that had first been used in July, sounded over the divided army, he went uneasily to bed. This is not turning out well, he thought gloomily. Lincoln always said Little Mac had "the slows," but Burnside doesn't seem much better—or the high command in Washington either, for that matter. If only we'd had those blasted bridges when we were supposed to… He lay awake for some time, wondering whether Lee would decide to launch an attack against the badly outnumbered Federals on his side of the Rappahannock, but no racket of combat drifted across the water, and eventually he slept.

The sharpshooters had already bought Lee an entire day. The rest of Burnside's army started over at dawn on the 12th and had completed their crossing by one o'clock, and the vast majority of them had had little or nothing to do on the 11th, but the general seemed to think that his men needed a rest—a delay which gave Lee still more time. And the abandoned town was too much for the boys in blue, who made looting, vandalism, and drinking commonplace throughout the streets, parlors and homes of Fredericksburg once more. The Confederates on Marye's Heights had field glasses and a good view from a height, and saw what was going on; they couldn't stop it, but all through the later afternoon, whenever the wind set properly, a steady rumble of jeers and angry snarling could be heard drifting down toward the town. Meanwhile, Burnside's verbal instructions outlined a main attack by Franklin, supported by Hooker, on the enemy's southern flank, while Sumner made a secondary attack on the northern one. The artillery would remain ranged along Stafford Heights and above Falmouth, prepared to lob its shells across the river and the town and cover the advance.

Lee clearly knew by well before nightfall that the Federals had no intention of committing more troops farther downstream. He quickly began consolidating his right flank—Hood, Early, Taliaferro, the Hills—on and behind the long bluff called Prospect Hill, the high ground around Hamilton's Crossing, south of the three pontoon bridges farthest down the Rappahannock. Although the Federal plan of attack now seemed plain to both him and Jackson, General Franklin remained in the dark. He still had no orders to engage the enemy, and his men stood idle in formation. He discussed matters with Generals Reynolds and Smith, and all agreed that they should attack with their entire command to carry the ridge held by Jackson's troops, thereby turning Lee's right.

At five o'clock, Burnside made a cursory inspection of his left, where Franklin and his subordinates pressed him to approve an all-out attack and give definite orders, so they would have adequate time to position their forces overnight. This he failed to do, leaving them with the impression that an authorization for attack would be (again) forthcoming. Franklin didn't receive his orders till the next morning, somewhat before eight. When they arrived, they weren't what he'd expected. Rather than ordering an attack by the entire Grand Division of almost 60,000 men, Burnside gave him discretion on how he would feed his men into battle; he was to keep them in position, but send "a division at least" to "seize, if possible, the height near Captain Hamilton's." Franklin, although he had originally advocated a vigorous assault, chose to interpret this order very conservatively, and General Hardie, who delivered it, didn't ensure that the commander's intentions were understood. Franklin, therefore, determined to send in only one division—Meade's, which at 4500 men happened to be the smallest he had. Gibbon's division was to support Meade's attack, while Franklin's reserve division, under Major-General Abner Doubleday, was to face south and protect Meade's rear and his left flank between the Richmond Road and the river. Sumner, meanwhile, was to send one division through the city and up Telegraph Road, and both flanks were to be prepared to commit their entire commands. Burnside was apparently expecting these weak attacks to intimidate Lee, causing him to withdraw.

Saturday morning began cold and overcast. A dense fog blanketed the ground and made it impossible for the armies to see each other. As the day advanced, however, the weather was to become unusually warm, a fact that would cause many infantrymen to throw their jackets and blankets aside. (Slim, being a cavalryman, didn't; he simply strapped his caped military overcoat across the pommel of his McClellan saddle, where it would be easy to get at if he needed it—an act which, in later hindsight, he saw may have saved his life.) It wasn't until the fog began to lift from the town, around ten o'clock, that it became evident that Longstreet's powerful First Corps was still securely occupying Marye's Heights, with well-positioned artillery support. Meanwhile, Franklin saw that Lee, recognizing that there would be no crossing further downstream, had recalled Jackson's First Corps, assigning them to an area due south of Longstreet. This line, stretching south of Fredericksburg, was naturally strong, as Jackson's troops could dig into the side of Prospect Hill, under the cover of trees. They were further augmented by divisions under Jubal Early and D.H. Hill, whom Jackson had summoned from their downriver positions to join his main defensive lines.

Burnside examined Lee's defenses, determined to attack. He concluded that the Confederates occupied some seven or eight miles of ridges, marking the western face of the Rappahannock valley. Their line was concave in shape, with the center bowed away from the river and the Union army. Burnside couldn't attack it without getting caught in a crossfire, which left him only two alternatives: he had to strike one or the other end of Lee's defenses, where the lines jutted forward, forming two salients. He decided to strike both. He would launch his main attack—his left flank—against Lee's right, at Prospect Hill, in hopes of crushing it. Meanwhile his secondary strike would hit Longstreet at Marye's Heights and the stone-lined Sunken Road, which was the common local name for the portion of Telegraph Road that faced Fredericksburg proper. Burnside hoped thus to hold the Southern left in position and keep Longstreet occupied, so he wouldn't interfere with the battle against Jackson, or if he did, that Lee's diversion of forces to the south of the city would leave his center (and the Heights) vulnerable.

About eleven o'clock Sumner gave the order to advance. During battle, cavalry typically joined the artillery in occupying the highest available ground, serving as support to it, and frequently was held as a reserve, with detachments sent quickly to points that appeared to be weakening, sometimes dismounting to form a skirmish line with their breech-loading carbines or to fight from cover while the rest of the force began to fall back; in a retreat it was often used as rear guard on account of its mobility and flexibility. Pleasanton's Cavalry Division, obedient to this usage, started the day on the Falmouth side of the river, about half a mile from Burnside's headquarters at Phillips House and just beyond the RF&P roadbed, looking out past a battery of artillery and over the river and the town toward the Heights, and by the way getting plenty of opportunity to see what lay ahead of them. The avenue of approach was difficult—mostly open fields, but interrupted by scattered houses, fences, and gardens that would restrict the movement of battle lines. A canal ran about two hundred yards west of the town; the engineers had managed to partially drain it, but it was crossed only by three narrow bridges, which would require the Union troops to funnel themselves into columns before proceeding. One of these bridges had had its planking torn up, and anyone trying to cross it would have to pick his way over on the stringers.

Less than a mile west of Fredericksburg was Marye's Heights, rising forty or fifty feet above the plain at minimum and reaching up to 150. According to the maps Slim had seen, this was composed of several hills separated by ravines, from north to south Taylor's, Stansbury, Marye's, and Willis. Near the crest of the portion comprising the latter two, a narrow lane in a slight cut—the Telegraph Road, which had linked Richmond and Washington before the war broke out—was protected by a stout four-foot stone wall at the foot of the ridge, which the Rebs had enhanced in places with log breastworks and abatis, plus a ditch that placed them shoulder-high to the wall, making it a perfect infantry defensive position. Worse, as the Federal forces moved forward, Slim could see the sunlight winking off the barrels of massed artillery that provided almost uninterrupted coverage of the plain below. I don't like the looks of this, he told himself.

The aim of most tacticians on either side was to have soldiers function in a coordinated manner, which (it was hoped) would achieve maximum force and avoid the danger of their being destroyed "in detail," or unit by unit. But the smoothbore musket that had been the standard infantry arm as recently as the Mexican War, and whose "effective range"—the distance at which it would hit often enough to make infantry fire truly effective—was no more than a hundred yards, had by now been replaced almost universally by the rifled musket, which was both more powerful and more accurate over a longer distance. This fact seemed to have escaped the writers of tactical manuals, for the methods they recommended didn't differ greatly from those of the Napoleonic Wars, when men moved and fought in solid elbow-to-elbow formations. In those days, only the final fifteen seconds or so of a charge were truly dangerous; the men could quickly get from effective range to hand-to-hand fighting, and if they had the right numerical advantage over the enemy, they could come to grips without losing too many of their own. Soldiers of that time were therefore expected not to think as individuals, but to fight as a block of men following orders. Since the typical soldier could fire no more than three shots per minute with his muzzle-loading rifle, the drill manuals stressed firepower rather than accuracy to overcome the enemy: troops were trained to line up elbow to elbow in tight battle lines, usually two men deep, advance, and blast their way through with massed volleys fired on command, with the goal of so weakening the enemy that a quick bayonet charge would rout him. All this Slim knew because his father, who'd been involved in two "smoothbore wars," had explained it to him when he began asking questions about the pictures of armies that he saw in books and illustrated papers.

However, the new muzzle-loading, rifled Springfield .54 (and its various counterparts, which were legion) had an effective range of about 250 yards and could score a hit at nearly a mile; it had a man in range for ninety seconds and could fire, in that space, five Minié balls—fifteen if the shooter were truly expert—so that men would be hit while the rival lines were still well apart, and to advance en masse was to invite wholesale destruction. And when the defenders dug entrenchments and got some protection, as they had quickly learned to do, a direct frontal assault was little less than mass suicide. Many a "crack shot" had never reckoned on the possibility that it might be one thing to pick a squirrel out of a tree in a nice quiet woodlot and quite another to aim accurately in the noise, smoke, confusion, and sheer terror of battle. Yet an advancing infantry line out in the open, massed in Napoleonic fashion, remained a good target—bigger than a squirrel, certainly, and nowhere near as fast-moving. Dozens and even hundreds might be shot down, but the survivors were expected to close the gaps in their lines and press on, using their bayonets or even fighting hand to hand if necessary. Battle lines often had to charge, as they were doing here, against defensive positions manned in lines of battle and often fortified with field works, and ideally their generals preferred to have them "roll up" the opposing battle lines lengthwise with a flank attack. Defensive tacticians, who'd learned from the same books, sought in response to anchor their lines on impassable barriers such as rivers or mountains, or by "refusing" a portion of the line at right angles to the main body. Both sides used open-order deployment—typically an irregular, strung-out single line—to cover their front and flanks, with skirmishers who screened the main body of troops. But odds were on the side of the defender—even when the attacker had the morale-building "Rebel yell," that high, piercing scream, varied by a series of yips, that constantly changed in volume and pitch—and most battles quickly turned into static firefights.

Slim watched the first phase of the assault with the same sinking feeling he'd come to expect in such situations. On the northern end of the Union line, French's brigade, under Brigadier Nathan Kimball, began to move about noon. They advanced slowly over half a mile of wide-open ground through heavy artillery fire, and crossed the canal in columns over the narrow bridges. The Confederate cannoneers had had ample time to find the range, and were able to pinpoint them; they could also fire directly down the course of the canal, with devastating effects on any Union soldiers who sought shelter there. Those who made it formed in line, with fixed bayonets, behind the protection of a shallow bluff. Then, in perfect line of battle, they advanced up the muddy slope until they were cut down at about 125 yards from the wall by repeated rifle volleys, as the Confederates behind it calmly exchanged places, one rank stepping up to fire, then moving back to reload as its counterpart moved up instead. Some soldiers were able to get as close as forty yards, but having suffered severe casualties from both the artillery and infantry fire, the survivors clung to the ground. Kimball was severely wounded during the assault, and his brigade suffered twenty-five per cent casualties. French's brigades under Colonel John W. Andrews and Colonel Oliver H. Palmer followed. The first division, despite the great gaps opening in their lines, actually made it to within two hundred feet of the wall before they were propelled backward. As they retired they passed through the second brigade, which went into the advance only to meet the same treatment. So did the third. In barely an hour, the entire division was put out of the battle for good, with casualty rates of between forty and fifty per cent.

Sumner's original order called for General Hancock's division to support French, and Hancock sent his brigade under Colonel Samuel K. Zook forward behind Palmer's. They charged up the hill with speed and determination, pushing to within a hundred and fifty feet of the Rebel position, but took even worse casualties than French. The Confederates were standing four deep behind the stone wall by now, firing by ranks and almost without letup. Before them lay thousands of dead, dying, and wounded, along with scores of others who were untouched but dared not rise and flee for fear of being hit.

Next to the assault came the Irish Brigade under Thomas F. Meagher, which fared no better than its predecessors. Hancock's final brigade was led by Brigadier John C. Caldwell. Leading his two regiments on the left, Colonel Nelson A. Miles suggested to Caldwell that the practice of marching in formation, firing, and stopping to reload made the Union soldiers easy targets, and that a concerted bayonet charge might be effective in carrying the works, but Caldwell denied permission. Miles was struck by a bullet in the throat as he led his men to within forty yards of the wall, where they were pinned down as their predecessors had been. Caldwell himself was soon struck by two bullets and put out of action. (Both men survived.)

The commander of the Second Corps, Major-General Darius N. Couch, was dismayed at the carnage wrought upon his two divisions in the hour of fighting and, like Colonel Miles, realized that the tactics weren't working. He first considered a massive bayonet charge to overwhelm the defenders, but as he surveyed the front, he quickly realized that French's and Hancock's divisions were in no shape to move forward again. Indeed, the futility of all frontal attacks was now evident to him. He next planned for his final division, commanded by Major-General Oliver O. Howard, to swing to the right and attempt to envelop the Confederate left, but upon receiving urgent requests for help from French and Hancock, he sent Howard's men over and around the fallen troops instead. An hour behind French and Kimball, lines of men from his First Corps began charging up the slope toward the stone wall. Colonel Joshua Owen's brigade went in first, reinforced by Colonel Norman J. Hall's, and then two regiments of Alfred Sully's. The other corps in Sumner's grand division was the Ninth, and he sent in one of its divisions under Brigadier Samuel Sturgis. As they attacked westward across the open rising ground, repeated rifle volleys met them, cutting them to pieces; only a few got within forty yards of the position. Supporting units from other corps tried to move in on Couch's left to take some of the heat off him, but came under a withering artillery fire that left them badly bloodied as well. After two hours of desperate fighting, four Union divisions had failed in the mission Burnside had originally assigned to one. Casualties were heavy: Second Corps losses for the afternoon were 4114, Sturgis's division 1011.

As the day advanced and the Union attacks continued, Lee shifted strength to that side of his line from his center and south flank, where he wasn't being pressed; ultimately two-thirds of his nine divisions were concentrated there, while the rest held the center. His cannon, firing over the heads of the infantry, were perfectly positioned to scour the plain below them. Those bluecoats who survived the massed artillery fire were cut down by the cozily positioned infantry. Wave after wave of Federal soldiers marched through Fredericksburg, across the open fields and the Canal Ditch, and advanced across the open fields, but the Southern artillery defense swept the advance with chilling efficiency, and those who survived it were annihilated before they reached the stone wall, from behind which Brigadier Thomas R. R. Cobb's Georgia brigade poured out a withering fire. While Cobb was eventually mortally wounded by an artillery shell, his troops mowed down successive divisions and brigades; reinforcements in the form of another of Longstreet's brigades only added force to their storm of musket fire.

It was a little past one when Colonel Barton, seeing the effect of the artillery, ordered several companies of his fast-moving horse soldiers, including Slim's Company C, to cross the river and try to circle around the end of the Southern position, in hopes of distracting the dug-in enemy from the hapless targets in front of it. They set out at a walk and gradually increased their speed, picking their way over the pontoon bridge and the canal, sheeting water off to either side as they crossed the enemy front, planning to ford the river just below Beck's Island and use it as a shield. The Reb artillery was too busy with the infantry advance to change the elevation of its guns to meet this new threat, and they were too far off to be vulnerable to small-arms fire. But behind them the Federal gunners were keeping up their side of the duel, hoping to put at least some of the enemy batteries out of action. Beset on either side by the gun-thunder he hated, Slim's Cheyenne became unmanageable and bolted. Slim heard a yell from Miklós Almássy, in the Hungarian's odd faintly-Germanic accent, but couldn't make out the words—or spare any attention to look back.

He tried to get Cheyenne's head around, but the sorrel was in full panicked stampede by now, ears flat and neck extended. A lucky shell whistled by overhead and hit the ground not a hundred feet to his right. Cheyenne swerved away from it, and Slim felt the ground under them rising, heard the laboring of the gelding's lungs as he breasted the slope of one of the hills. My Lord, he thought, we're heading right at them!

All he could do was flatten himself against Cheyenne's neck, hang on, and hope. And probably all that saved him—as it had endangered him—was the horse's terror of cannons. Reluctant to race full-on into their fire, the sorrel saw a gap between two batteries, swerved again, and passed directly through the opening. Startled Rebs dived or scrambled out of the way of this equine juggernaut, never having anticipated that a single cavalryman might come racing up the slope at them. An officer or two fired in Slim's direction, but they were equally as surprised and confused as their men by his advent, and missed.

Cheyenne swung south as he left the thundering cannons behind, passing close by several six-ups of artillery horses, some of which broke their tethers and raced away from him; the horse-holders had no handguns and were in any case occupied with trying to catch them, which prevented them from mounting any resistance to this unexpected one-man charge. Slim peered ahead through narrowed eyes and saw the gleam of a shallow creek enlarging in the trough of ground below him, where the back of the ridge flattened out. Cheyenne crossed it in a great sheeting of water, which somewhat slowed his pace, and plunged into the woods on the other side, and there, at last, helped by the thickness of the trees, Slim finally managed to get him under control. The sorrel was lathered and shaking, his lungs laboring like a bellows. "Easy, boy… easy… ho-shuh, ho-shuh," Slim soothed him, using the Indian calming-word the horse knew.

Slim wasn't yet old enough to vote, but he'd helped drive no less than five trail herds up from Texas before he turned fifteen, played a man's role on the wagon train that had taken his family west, and spent his upper teens helping his father establish their ranch. These experiences had exposed him repeatedly to quickly changing situations and more than once to outright danger, and if there was one thing he'd learned, it was to keep cool, keep his head, and never give in to panic. He straightened in the saddle, looking around and trying to decide where he was. He could hear the cannon behind him, and nothing out in front, which meant he was stuck behind enemy lines. The artillery, having to serve its guns, wasn't likely to come after him, and the infantry was busy too, trying to ward off Sumner's troops, but here, with the ridge for shelter, he might at any moment encounter a courier, or perhaps some reinforcements coming up. He spotted what was called in Southern parlance a "laurel-hell," a thicket of wild rhododendron, and dismounted to push his way into it, leading Cheyenne after him. Here, out of sight of any passing enemy, he and the horse could rest a bit, get their breath and their wits back, and decide what to do.

He slid out of the saddle, surprised to find that his knees didn't want to hold him up. He took his canteen down and unscrewed the cap, splashing some water into his face, then taking two or three quick gulps. He pushed Cheyenne's nose away— "Not when you're all heated up," he said. And, with a shaken laugh: "With a war-horse like you, my friend, I'm not sure I need any enemies."

The sorrel nudged his hand gently, almost apologetically. "I know. It wasn't your fault, it was the guns. Well, like Pa says, the cows are in the buckwheat, so what are we going to do now?"

He sat down at Cheyenne's feet and considered his situation. He had seen maps of the countryside and knew that much of what lay south of the city and behind the Heights was swampy woodland, though not impassable. The Old Richmond Stage Road ran roughly southeast to northwest across a broad plain before curving into the town, and approximately parallel with it was the RF&P rail line. If he could get to either, he could follow it in, and from there get back over the river and find his way back to Colonel Barton. At least it's not raining, he thought; if he could get even an approximate idea of where the sun was, he could orient himself. For that matter, the ridge itself provided a handy orienting tool; as long as he kept it on his left hand, he'd know he was going roughly south, and eventually he should be able to find the break that separated Marye's Heights from Prospect Hill.

He debated the wisdom of such a course. Maybe I'd be better off to stay where I am. Being behind enemy lines in the middle of a battle wasn't calculated to improve a man's safety, but here in the shelter of the laurel he could keep out of sight until night began to fall, and thereafter use his hunting skills to make his way out past the Confederate center and across the plain to the river. But after more than a year in the Army, he knew how suddenly a situation could reverse itself. What if Lee decided to make a charge and recapture the town? It was, after all, strategically valuable, as Burnside had shown by crossing the Rappahannock there; the Confederates might well decide it was worth garrisoning, if only to protect the railroad. They were seriously outnumbered—better than three to two, as nearly as Slim could guess—but the Rebs had already shown themselves to be what Jonesy would have called "fightin' fools," and more than once they had pulled off virtual miracles against larger forces. In a reoccupied Fredericksburg, in the artificial environment of buildings and paved streets, it would be a lot harder to keep out of sight and hearing than in the countryside, where leaf-mold and loam would muffle Cheyenne's steps and there would always be the chance of some natural cover to dodge behind. He was in uniform, so he wouldn't be taken for a spy, but that didn't mean some overeager Reb might not take a shot at him—perhaps out of pique at what had been done to the town—and get lucky.

He took stock. Unlike an infantryman or even a common cavalry trooper, an officer didn't have to carry everything he owned around with him all the time; his personal stuff was loaded into a cart when the camp broke up. He had his gum blanket—what was called out West a poncho—in case of rain, which was a frequent nuisance in this war, and his overcoat, which had been a necessity that morning, plus his canteen. The Henry fifteen-shot carbine he'd bought for himself in St. Joseph was booted under his stirrup leather; since no way had yet been found to teach a horse to take cover behind a tree, the cavalry, when they engaged the enemy, were as likely to do it as foot skirmishers as they were a-horseback, and consequently needed long-range weapons. Besides that, on his arms belt, he carried his Colt .44 cap-and-ball six-shooter and 1860-model heavy cavalry saber, the latter not as popular as the light one—"Old Wristbreaker," it was called—but a weapon worth having; its three-foot blade gave it a significant advantage of reach over most other bladed arms, and its substantial weight (fifty-seven ounces to the other's thirty-six) gave it the leverage needed to crush bones and sever limbs—or even a head—with a single blow. Besides the six rounds in the Colt's chambers, there were twenty-five more—paper cartridges—in the cartridge box at his waist, clattering around annoyingly as cartridges always did, and as many copper percussion caps in a flat envelope on the other side of the buckle. In his saddlebags he had a hundred rounds for the Henry, along with a little cold food, which he'd gotten into the habit of keeping handy at an early point, since he never knew when he'd be assigned scout or picket duty or how long he'd have to be out; mostly acquired from the sutler or the cavalry's incessant foraging—dried fruit, a jar of mixed pickles, flaky round St. Johnsbury crackers (far more palatable than Army hardtack), a wedge of cheddar cheese. He dug into his stash and treated himself to a couple of handfuls of raisins, feeling the kick of energy from the fruit's natural sugars restoring his depleted vigor, then led Cheyenne cautiously out of the laurels and walked him slowly to and fro for several minutes to cool him down, all the while keeping alert for the sound of wheels or rattling equipment—or the warning cry of a bird—that might give him a few minutes' grace to get out of sight. This respite also gave him time to continue debating the relative merits of staying put or trying to get back to his own forces. In the end he decided on the latter; it might have its perils, but so would making his way through dark forestland at night, setting aside any possible change in the weather.

He checked his battered brass watch—it was almost two o'clock—and remembered that according to the almanac, the sun would set just before five. Swinging into his saddle, he turned to put the ridge on his left and began moving, keeping his horse to a walk.

He followed the creek he had crossed before, coming at length to what he guessed had to be the Plank Road, and paused, listening to the roar of the cannons. Cheyenne shook his head, his bridle rattling, but with the bulk of Marye's Heights absorbing much of the noise he didn't seem to be quite as upset as he'd been previously. After a few minutes Slim concluded that apart from the artillery directly to his left, which was almost certainly the line above Telegraph Road, there seemed to be more straight ahead, which would probably mean cavalry in reserve, just where his own side would put it. He turned away from the creek and crossed the road, and began working his way deeper into the woods. Presently he found the ground beginning to lift, and hesitated again before listening to the silent prodding of a warning he didn't stop to question, and turning to move along the edge of the rising ground. Not till years afterward, reading accounts of this battle, would he realize that the height he skirted was very probably the one from which Robert E. Lee and his staff had observed the fighting.

After a time the hill tailed off, and he went on until he found himself confronted with yet another road. Telegraph? he guessed tentatively, leaning forward over his saddle-pommel to peer cautiously through the growth. If it is, I sure don't want to follow it either way—all I'll do is run smack into Southern hands. He turned to his right, leaving the cannon-talk behind, and continued until he reached a crossroads. A signboard presented two pointers: one southwest—Bowling Green, 14 mi.; Richmond, 43 mi.—and one approximately east—Port Royal, 14 mi. Okay, he told himself, this has to be Mine Road, then. From what he'd seen on his scouts, he figured that if he went on, he'd be riding straight into Jackson, but he knew that the Richmond road ran toward the river and the railroad, and that he should come upon it somewhere before he got that far. It was as good an alternative as any, he decided.

He drew Cheyenne off to the river side of the road and began working his way through the tree growth that lined it, reflecting in some amusement that it was clear Virginia didn't have a road-agentry problem; all this cover would have offered a bounty of ambush sites otherwise. The ground beneath the sorrel's hooves was the stiff black loam of the tidal lowgrounds, boggy in wet weather and impregnably hard in dry—the infamous Virginia mud, hardened now to the consistency of iron, as Wednesday's cold had frozen it and the unseasonable warmth of today hadn't yet had time, in the forest shade, to reverse the process. The trees were a mix of pine, oak, red cedar, gum, poplar, beech, hickory, persimmon, ash, walnut, locust, dogwood, and redbud, most of them familiar to him from his boyhood in Illinois. Wisteria vine wound its way up some of the trunks. He saw deer sign, heard squirrels bounding through the branches overhead, heard the mournful cooing of doves and once a bobwhite's whistle as he got further away from the noise of the artillery. He passed a pond and heard a soft splash as a turtle threw itself into the water.

He heard the crow before he saw what it was upset about—the unmistakable harsh jeering that had been so often a background of his boyhood on the farm. He checked, leaning forward to put his hand over Cheyenne's nostrils, and listened, his mouth slightly open. There—a metallic jingling that could mean only one thing: a rider, almost certainly cavalry, probably a courier. The tree cover here was perversely sparse, and while he knew he could pull back and get out of the fellow's line of sight, the horse might catch his scent and give warning. Without stopping to think, he slid down on Cheyenne's side, Indian-fashion, hanging on by a hand twisted through the animal's flaxen mane, as Thunder Coming and Stands Shining had taught him, and used the other to unsnap his holster flap and slowly draw his Colt. The jingling was now underlain by the soft regular thump of hooves against the earth; he catalogued it, unthinkingly, as a trot, though not a hard one. "Ho-shuh, ho-shuh," he whispered to the sorrel, and Cheyenne flicked his ears back, just once, and stood quietly.

Jingle and thump, and then a check and a slow, soft whistle. "Well, now." The accent sounded Georgian. "Where'd you come from? Army sure 'nough, but which one?" Both sides used very similar horse rigging, and Cheyenne, having been privately owned, didn't carry an Army brand; not even his saddlebags would mark him out as being definitely the property of a Yank, since they weren't issue—Slim's mother had made them, capacious canvas envelopes well stitched together with waxed thread.

Slim held himself still, listening. The hoofsteps began again, a slow walk, probably not so much because the rider feared he might be in danger, as because he didn't want to startle Cheyenne into flight—Slim had yet to see the Reb who wouldn't glom onto a good horse if he found one, no matter which branch of service he was in. The sorrel snorted and threw his head—the rider must be almost on top of them. Slim tightened his handgrip and gave one powerful pull, swinging back into the saddle, his sixgun levelled directly at the Southerner's chest.

The man let out a startled squawk, almost like the crow that had given warning of his approach, and tightened his grip on the reins. "Don't try it, friend," Slim warned evenly. "This doesn't have to be hard on either of us."

"Where—where'd you come from, Yank?"

"Ask any of your Texas friends who've had experience fightin' Comanches," Slim suggested. "Where are you headed?"

The man wore cavalry insignia, but carried no saber—a lot of horse soldiers on both sides had discarded them as inefficient and difficult to use—and his sidegun, though butt-forward in regulation style, was hung over his left hip, not his right, with the holster flap unsnapped for quick access. He took a breath, hesitated, and shut his mouth, looking sullen. Slim hardly needed that telltale stubbornness; he'd already noticed, slung over the withers of the other's dappled brown gelding, the pair of cross-horn Cavalry saddlebags, the kind mostly used by couriers to carry dispatches in. Takin' word from Lee to Jackson, like as not, he thought. "All right," he said. "Get down easy and keep your hands where I can see 'em. I can't take you with me, so I'll just leave you nice and snug in the brush and lead your horse off a mile or so."

The courier slowly shifted his weight in the saddle, beginning to rest it on his left foot, but Slim had already seen the spark shoot through his narrowed eyes as he made up his mind to act. He spun Cheyenne sharply away, firing as he moved. The courier grabbed cross-belly for his sidearm, but too late: the .44's round took him through the throat and he toppled to the ground without a sound.

Slim held still, the Colt levelled for a second shot, but there was no need. The brown horse—doubtless a veteran of several cavalry fights, and well accustomed to gunfire—danced a few steps to the side but didn't bolt. The rider lay still in a spreading pool of blood.

Slim let his breath out in a soft sigh and listened for a slow count of fifty, but there was no hint that anyone had heard the shot—which didn't surprise him: the Confederate artillery and riflemen on the far side of Marye's Heights would be effectively deafened by their own weaponry, and whoever had sent this fellow on his fatal errand probably wouldn't be in much better case. "That was a stupid thing to do," he told the dead man. "But I guess you thought you had to keep whatever you're carryin' from fallin' into enemy hands." He holstered the Colt, dismounted and quickly stripped the bridle off the brown horse, hung it round the animal's neck and turned him loose to feed. He untied the poncho from the courier's saddle and spread it across his face and upper body, glanced at the dispatch bags and shook his head—there was no telling how long he still had to go before he got back to his own side, and by the time he was able to get the messages to someone with authority to act on them, the whole temper of the battle might have changed. "Your friends will almost have to retreat this way, if they retreat," he said aloud, "and when they do, they'll find you. I'm sorry. I wish you hadn't forced it." He took the man's canteen—water was always useful—but left the rest of his gear intact; he didn't want any extra weight that might slow Cheyenne at a vital moment. "Let's go, boy," he told the sorrel, and swung into the saddle, turning east down Mine Road.

**SR - WT**

It was close to three o'clock when Slim reached a second crossroads, which after some indecision he guessed might be the stage road. This he knew continued toward the Rappahannock, crossed the railroad some distance outside the city limits of Fredericksburg, crossed a tributary of Deep Run and then the Run itself, and turned to follow the river. As he'd already seen on his Thursday scout, it also ran directly across Jackson's front on Prospect Hill, and if followed would put Slim between the two forces. But there were alternatives. Since his own people already occupied the town, he could turn upriver rather than down, cross Hazel Run below the railroad tracks, and make his way over the middle pontoon bridge and so across Stafford Heights and back to Pleasanton's HQ. Or he could follow the road just as far as Deep Run, then move along its southeast bank, which would put him behind his own lines and eventually take him down to the river and the lower bridges.

He listened to the incessant artillery, trying to guess from it just where the Rebs were. There was definitely a large concentration of it somewhere off to his left and ahead—three or four miles, he guessed tentatively; that would be Marye's Heights, directly opposite Fredericksburg. More could be heard to the left of that, probably the left wing of Lee's army, anchored on the river near Beck's Island. There was a smaller conclave of Southern cannonry between one and two miles closer to him than the Heights throng, and a third, smaller yet, quite close—probably not over half a mile down the road. He remembered that a long, heavily forested ridge—basically the tail-end of Prospect Hill—descended from the latter toward the plain. If he could get up on that, which was too steep and rough for cannon, he could avoid that quarrelsome little group that seemed to be anchored on the stage road itself, and get a look, besides, at the disposition of the two forces; maybe that would show him an opening he could exploit. There would almost certainly be infantry on the ridge—it would give them high gun and a good field of fire—but he'd hear them before he ran into them, and in the tree cover would have at least an even chance of avoiding them. It's either that, he told himself, or go on till I've cleared Jackson's position altogether, and then double back up the river. And by the time I can do that, odds are it'll be getting dark, and that will give me a chance of gettin' shot by my own side. I haven't come all this way to have that happen.

He peered up at the sky and frowned. There didn't seem to be any cloud cover building up, but it was definitely getting chilly—chillier than it should, given that three to four o'clock was generally the warmest hour of the day. Maybe there was a cold front coming through. Not wanting to have to pause in a position that would leave him vulnerable to enemy fire, he untied his overcoat and shrugged into it, buttoning the cape but not the coat itself. "All right, Cheyenne," he said, his voice grim, "here's where the fun really starts. Let's go."

**SR - WT**

While Slim had been waiting for action on the other side of the river, things had been in movement elsewhere. General Smith, commanding Franklin's Sixth Corps, wasn't happy with the position the Grand Division had taken up; there was an impassable stream on its right, a formidable range of hills (occupied by the enemy) covering almost its entire front, and behind it a river spanned by only two frail bridges. But here they'd been ordered.

Meade's division began moving out at half-past eight, with Gibbon following behind. As they assembled for battle and the fog began to lift, Major John Pelham, CSA, age twenty-four, sensed an opportunity to preempt the Yankee attack. He advanced two cannons of his horse artillery—a twelve-pounder Napoleon smoothbore and a rifled Blakely—to a shallow basin about half a mile beyond the Union army's left flank, and opened fire with solid shot on Meade's division around ten A.M., just as the Northern artillery, which had unlimbered in a vast muddy field, began to fire. His fire was both very accurate and destructive. The Federals had no idea what had hit them; many initially assumed the fire came from a confused Union gunner, until Pelham unleashed his second round. Men stumbled into confusion and the line wavered. Union batteries on the field and across the river returned fire, but Pelham's small crew, masked by hedges and fog, proved elusive. Their most prominent victim was Brigadier George D. Bayard, a promising young cavalry general who was mortally wounded by a shell while standing in reserve near Barnard House, Franklin's headquarters.

Gibbon dispatched his Iron Brigade to silence the fire, but they failed: after his Blakely was disabled, Pelham redoubled his fire with the Napoleon, whose crew kept hitching it up and changing its position frequently. At last, with his ammunition began running low, he finally disengaged and fell back to the Confederate line, having fought his guns for an hour. His feat impressed Lee, who later referred to the artillerist in his report as "the gallant Pelham." His attack both delayed the Union advance by more than half an hour and diminished its size: an entire Union division was repositioned to protect the army's flank, effectively removing it from the battle.

This was only the beginning of a disappointing day for the Union. While Sumner's infantry was breaking their hearts against the stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights, Franklin and Reynolds, to the south, spent much of the day exchanging shots with the Confederate defenders of Prospect Hill. Jackson's 37,000 men occupied wooded high ground with flat, open farmlands stretching below them for something like a thousand yards. For about half that distance the open plain rose slightly, then dipped into a gentle hollow that extended to the steep railroad embankment, which provided them with natural breastworks. The field had been part of Arthur Bernard's Mannsfield plantation, and still had some residual corn and wheat stubble left on it from the last harvest.

Meade had every reason to assume that, once he started to move, the remainder of Franklin's enormous force would join the attack, possibly sweeping around to the left, into Jackson's flank, and enveloping that entire section of the Rebel position. At about eleven A.M., Northern guns turned their full might on the hills held by Jackson's veterans. The Rebels refused to respond, and after an hour or so, Meade commenced an attack against the position, leading the center himself and moving forward with dispatch. His advance was slowed by fences and sunken roads in the way, but he paused only to position Doubleday to face Stuart's cavalry, which was off in the distance to his left, and protect his left flank against a possible charge. When he was eight hundred yards away, Jackson's artillery suddenly came to life, smothering the attackers with bursting shells and shrapnel and stopping them in their tracks about six hundred yards from their initial objective. Union soldiers took cover behind a slight ridge, and Union guns answered the Confederate cannon with a vengeance. Soldiers on both sides endured an unnerving hour of shellfire. When it finally ended, Meade tried again. Unexpectedly he discovered that Jackson's formidable defensive line had an unforeseen flaw. In A.P. Hill's division's line, a triangular patch of woods extended beyond the railroad line, with a six-hundred-yard swampy marshland directly inside it, which the Confederate commanders considered impassible, and had therefore left undefended. It was also covered with thick underbrush, and there was a gap there between the brigades of Generals Lane and Archer, with Brigadier Maxcy Gregg's brigade about a quarter mile behind it.

Meade's division of Pennsylvania Reserves had heavy casualties in crossing the open ground, but, following the path of least resistance, they penetrated the woods, charged through the swampy bog, and breached Hill's line, fighting their way into the heart of Jackson's defenses. Gregg's brigade were the only Southerners in the area; they had taken cover behind the railroad embankment of the RF&P. Meade's First and Third Brigades turned respectively right and left, and hit Lane's and Archer's flanks; the Second came up in support and intermixed with them. Caught completely unawares, the Confederates resisted fiercely, but were thrown back in disorder. As the gap widened with pressure on the flanks, thousands of Meade's men reached the top of the ridge and ran into Gregg's brigade. Gregg was partly deaf, and couldn't hear the approaching Federals or their bullets flying around him. He at first mistook them for fleeing Confederate troops and ordered his men not to fire on them. Riding prominently in front of his lines, he was shot through the spinal cord, dying two days later. Many of his men had stacked arms while taking cover from Union artillery and weren't expecting to be attacked at that moment, and so were killed or captured unarmed.

These two attacks broke the Rebel line and would have rendered the entire Southern position untenable if enough Union reinforcements were committed to the attack. But now Confederate reserves—the divisions of Generals Jubal Early and William B. Taliaferro—rushed into the fray from behind Gregg's original position. Inspired by their attack, regiments from Lane's and Archer's brigades rallied and formed a new defensive line in the gap. Now Meade's men were receiving fire from three sides and couldn't withstand the pressure. One whole company of the Pennsylvania Reserves, thirty-one men, lost four dead, twenty-five wounded, and one captured; only one of them escaped unharmed. The Yanks pulled back as fast as they had advanced. General Conrad F. Jackson, commanding the Union's Third Brigade, attempted to flank a Confederate battery, but after his horse was shot and he began to lead on foot, he was killed and his brigade fell back, leaderless.

Brigadier Nelson Taylor had proposed to Gibbon that they supplement Meade's assault with a bayonet charge against Lane's position, but Gibbon maintained that this would violate his orders, so Taylor's brigade didn't move forward till one themselves. The attack didn't have the benefit of a gap to exploit, nor did the Union soldiers have any wooded cover for their advance, so progress was slow under heavy fire from Lane's brigade and Confederate artillery. Immediately following Taylor was the brigade of Colonel Peter Lyle. One behind the other, they attacked across an open field next to the swampland. As the first line approached, the Rebels ripped it apart with concentrated artillery and deadly musketry that stopped the Yankees cold, then drove them back in confusion. When they faltered, the second took their place. This attack also failed, casualties accumulated at a fearful rate, and the advance of the two brigades ground to a halt before they reached the railroad.

At this point Gibbon committed his reserve, bringing forward his last brigade and personally leading a third assault, which moved through the survivors of the first two and attempted to push through the gap between Walker's and Thomas's troops. He managed to reach the Southern line, driving back a brigade of North Carolinians defending the railroad grade and pushing the Confederates into the marsh, but his advance lost momentum when he ordered his men to regroup before pursuing. Eventually some of them reached the crest of the ridge and had some success during hand-to-hand fighting—men on both sides had depleted their ammunition and resorted to bayonets and rifle butts, and even empty rifles with bayonets thrown like javelins—but several of their most important officers were incapacitated, and without reinforcements their assault ground to a halt. Jackson, on the other hand, received reinforcements quickly, and his troops surrounded Gibbon's men on three sides, leaving many of them exposed in the open field. Meade's men, too, having very little support, were driven from the woods and back beyond the tracks and the stage road in a disorderly retreat around quarter past two. By this time many of Franklin's officers were utterly disheartened, and many were furious with him for not properly supporting Meade. Franklin, for his part, was demoralized; he had lost all faith in Burnside, and when he finally received orders to send his men back into battle, he ignored them.

After the battle Meade complained that some of Gibbon's officers hadn't charged quickly enough. But his primary frustration was with Brigadier David B. Birney, whose division of the First Corps, positioned to Meade's right, had been designated to support the attack as well. Birney claimed that his men had been subjected to damaging artillery fire as they formed up, that he hadn't understood the importance of Meade's attack, and that Reynolds hadn't ordered his division forward. When Meade—always renowned for his intolerance of bungling subordinates—galloped to the rear to confront Birney with a string of fierce profanities that, in the words of one staff lieutenant, "almost makes the stones creep," he was finally able to order the brigadier forward under his own responsibility. Birney's men hit Colonel J. A. Walker's Virginians, who were an element of Early's brigade, and pushed them back. By this time, however, it was too late to accomplish any further offensive action, and Meade harbored resentment over the failure for weeks.

Meanwhile, Early's division, led initially by Colonel Edmund N. Atkinson's Georgia brigade, began a counterattack as Meade's retreated. Gibbon was severely wounded in the wrist by a bursting shell, and Atkinson's advance inspired the men from three other brigades to charge forward out of the railroad ditches. Early's orders to his brigades were to pursue only as far as the railroad, but in the chaos many of them kept up the pressure over the open fields as far as the stage road. Georgians, Virginians, and North Carolinians swarmed after Meade's and Gibbon's men, driving them from the woods in a disorderly retreat, and forcing them to fall back across the railroad tracks almost to their starting point. Soon the Confederates had recaptured the embankments. Union artillery crews, in an effort to blunt their charge, unleashed a blast of close-range canister shot, firing as fast as they could load their guns and cutting them down in droves. The Southrons were also struck by the leading brigade of Birney's belated advance, commanded by Brigadier J. H. Hobart Ward. Birney himself followed up with two brigades, breaking the Rebel advance that had threatened to drive the Union into the river. This bought time for Meade and Gibbon to retire after their severe mauling.

Gibbon's attack, despite heavy casualties, had failed to support Meade's temporary breakthrough, and all that deterred a further Confederate advance was the arrival of the First Corps division of Brigadier Daniel E. Sickles on the right. He rammed into Thomas and shoved him back, but not far; and off along Deep Run, advancing Federal pickets under Brigadier William T. H. Brooks moved up the stream from a point just below that at which the stage road crossed it, splashed across the Run above the river, and found themselves facing a vicious counterattack from Law's brigade of Alabama and North Carolina troops. The Southerners swept down from a position on the ridge south of Toombs and, with the momentum of the slope to help them, hit the Yanks, under Colonels Torbert and Cake and Brigadier Russell, like a battering ram…

**SR - WT**

The ridge was steep where Slim paused, and slanted sharply to his left, but that was to his advantage, as it gave him just the kind of clear overview of the situation he'd hoped for, while affording no level ground for any elements of the enemy to exploit. He could hear a rattle of small arms to his immediate right, the sound muffled by the intervening growth but unmistakable, and more farther off on the other side, accompanied by artillery—almost certainly the same he had heard before. Directly below and ahead of him, Deep Run, coming in from the northwest, made a sharp, almost right-angled bend and flowed due northeastward to join the Rappahannock; a second stream, the name of which momentarily escaped him, joined it not far below that bend, and beyond that in turn, on a patch of open ground between the stage road and the RF&P tracks, a furious fight was going on. Slim could make out unit flags and state ones—New York, New Jersey, Maine, Pennsylvania, Alabama and North Carolina—waving above the struggling lines of infantry, officers on horseback flourishing swords. The fight offered the nearest Federal group to where he was, and while joining it would mean plunging directly into the battle, it held out the possibility of getting back among his own people faster than any other alternative.

He settled his weight in the saddle, got his feet seated securely in the hooded stirrups, and drew his saber, as being most effective against enemy infantry in close quarters; at least he wouldn't have to try to reload it in the middle of the ruck. "Okay, Cheyenne," he said, patting the sorrel's neck briefly with his free hand, "here it goes. Hokahey!"

**SR - WT**

The engagement between Brooks and Law was already breaking off by the time Cheyenne's charge carried Slim into the middle of it. He never exactly knew who the man was that attacked him, except that he was obviously an enemy officer, being mounted and dressed in gray; perhaps he'd lost track of his men in the confusion and was simply following Law's retreat, just as Slim forced his path through the Confederate foot, Cheyenne rearing and lashing out with teeth and forefeet at the men seething all about him.

Slim barely twitched the war pony aside in time to avoid ramming full-on into the other man's steeldust gray. The officer, probably equally as surprised, drew a pistol and fired point-blank at him, but got only a click—either he was out of bullets or that round had a bad cap. He flung the weapon at Slim and drew his saber. Slim barely got his own up in time to parry, and they duelled furiously, horses circling and rearing, blades scraping against each other and scattering sparks. Slim took a cut on the left arm, although his heavy caped military overcoat blunted some of the blow. Then a slash across the forehead blinded him with blood. Not really knowing where his enemy was, he struck out—and, with the weight of his heavy saber and the force of his own unusually long reach to improve his leverage, just about took the fellow's head off.

This, however, he didn't see, and the head wound naturally sent him reeling. Without direction, Cheyenne simply stampeded, heading in the direction where his nose told him there were a lot of men and horses. He passed just to the left of Albion P. Howe's Second Division, swung behind him and across the path of Sickles's and Newton's advance, barely missed—or, more accurately, was barely missed by—Gibbon as he fell back, and further on, crossing the path of Meade's advance, stumbled into a shell-hole, where Slim came off. Cheyenne went briefly to his knees, then scrambled up unhurt; though the reins of his military bridle were closed, he had been trained to stick with his rider, and did.

When Slim regained consciousness, it was dark. What he didn't know was that with Jackson masterminding the defense of this part of the Southern line near Mansfield House, there had been close-quarters fighting between his command and the Union troops on the lower slopes. At one point Franklin's men, seeing a gap in Jackson's line, surged toward it, only to be met by sudden withering fire. A vicious artillery counterattack plugged the opening and drove them back. Despite vigorous attacks by Meade's and Gibbon's divisions, Franklin's troops were repulsed. His tremendous reserves might have saved the day, but he lacked the daring to bring them up. After three hours of heavy fighting, his attack was stopped around two o'clock, and by three it had become obvious that the Union assault on the ridge had failed. The survivors of the attacking force marched back over the stage road, and the Confederates, aware that position (as someone once said) was everything in life, let them go. The last Union attack was beaten off just after sunset, following six hours of intense fighting.

Slim was aware first of pain, then of the hard ground beneath him. At first he wasn't sure he hadn't been struck blind, but then he heard a snort and a soft tattoo of shifting hooves, and saw vaguely the unmistakable shape of a horse's head and neck extended toward him. "Cheyenne…?" he whispered hoarsely.

Another snort; Cheyenne knew his name. He nudged his rider gently, urging him to get up and carry on the fight.

Slowly Slim began to get a sense of his situation—his hand still clenched around the hilt of his saber, its ornamental cord looped around his wrist, which wasn't regulation but was the way he always did it, not wanting to be stuck paying for a lost one; the dark walls of the shell-hole lifting on all sides of him, a sky filled with icy stars arching overhead. He lifted his free hand and probed gingerly at his aching head, though the movement brought a sharp bite of pain from the arm, and discovered dried blood all down the left side of his face. Past the edge of the hole he could see a distant glow of campfires.

Gradually his scattered faculties began to reassemble themselves, and he was able to recall the charge he'd made off the ridge and the duel with the Confederate officer. In the wan light he could make out dark stains on the saber's blade, which suggested he'd won, or at least made a draw of it. What he didn't know was where on the field he was, how he'd gotten there, or whether he'd gotten turned around in the process.

The weather was sleety—not at this moment, but he could make out the glitter of a recent fall on his coat and on the ground around him, and hear its crunch when he moved—and it was a bitterly cold night. He didn't know whether stretcher parties were out yet, but he did know that if a Confederate one picked him up, he would quite possibly be offered parole, and if he didn't take it, sent to a prison camp till he could be exchanged. Far more to be feared were scavenging soldiers, who, if they found him unconscious and helpless, might not stop to check whether he was alive; if they stripped him, he'd die of the cold.

If he knew whose fires he was seeing, he could orient on them and make his way to help… even if it was enemy help. If he could get back into the saddle.

He loosed his fingers slowly from the saber-hilt and reached out for the nearer hanging stirrup, hoping to use it to pull himself onto his feet. The blade rattled and crunched as it dragged through the sleet…

**SR - WT**

Sergeant Bill Hawks, 14th Indiana Infantry, had spent the long day with the rest of his regiment, which was an element of the Fourth, or Iron, Brigade of General Abner Doubleday's First Division, fanned out along a creek facing Stuart's cavalry, which was off to one side of the Old Richmond Stage Road. Because of confusion in orders among the higher-ups, they'd done little more than spar with the enemy artillery, and had been mostly idle throughout the day, suffering only a few casualties while they waited in reserve. As darkness began to settle, accompanied by the first, quite unexpected, fall of sleet, Doubleday decided it might be a good idea to get in touch with Meade. He knew of one particularly experienced and trustworthy courier, and sent for Bill to do the job. Borrowing his C.O.'s white-stockinged black, Bill began his ride.

By the time he turned back toward Doubleday's HQ, full night had fallen. In the bad light and uncertain footing, he proceeded slowly; there was no special urgency about the word he carried. He was alone on the field; not even the glimmer of lanterns, which would have betrayed stretcher parties searching for men not past all help, broke the gloom around him. Seth Adams's black picked its way daintily over sleet-covered mounds that Bill had no special desire to examine closely. In the frigid air, however, sound carried distinctly, and the rattle and crunch of what could only be metal against the crusted sleet brought him up short. The artillery hadn't gotten this far. What was making the sound?

Whatever it was, someone or something was responsible, and more likely the former. It was a poor excuse for a soldier who wouldn't offer help to a man in need, friend or enemy. He listened another moment, and heard clearly the snort of a horse. His own nickered softly, and was promptly answered from somewhere almost directly ahead. Hawks frowned to himself, wondering why he couldn't see the animal, and gave the black a nudge forward.

Only the horse's night vision—better than any man's—kept them both from tumbling headfirst into the shell-hole. Bill checked as, against the white sleet, he made out the shape of a horse near the center of the depression, standing with head high and ears cocked in his direction—and there, at its feet, was movement, a dark vague form which, after a moment, Bill decided was a man in an issue overcoat, trying, perhaps, to get into the saddle. He sent the black skidding down the side of the crater and across its floor toward the tableau. "Who's there?" he called. "Are you in trouble?"

The dark form shifted, and Bill saw the hat, a wide-brimmed Western-style hat such as he'd seen during his youthful service in Apache country with the Second U.S. Cavalry, its crown creased down the center, front to back. Underneath, the pale blur of a face was half obscured by an ominous dark stain. The man's hand moved, and starlight gleamed on the long blade of a saber. Cavalry, Hawks guessed, or maybe an infantry officer, like the Major. He reined in, not wanting to get within sweep of the blade; if the man was hurt, he might be disoriented, ready to fight even if there was no real need for it. Could be a Reb, Bill thought, but not likely—I don't think any of 'em got this far, though no thanks to Franklin…

"Fourteenth Indiana," he called out. "Doubleday's division. Who are you?"

Pause, then slowly a response came back: "Third… Third Indiana Cav… Pleasanton's…"

"Okay," said Bill. "Take it easy. I'm comin' over to give you a hand, all right? Don't cut at me. I'm a Yank, same as you."

Faintly: "Yeah… 'kay…"

Bill swung down, leading the black, and advanced slowly, unthreateningly, keeping his right hand out to one side—not that the other man would expect an infantryman to have a sidearm, and most wouldn't, but if he was as bad off as he sounded, he probably wasn't thinking too clearly. The cavalryman, for his part, slowly pushed himself up into a seated position, seeming to hold his head up only with difficulty. As he got nearer, Hawks could see that the dark stain was, as he'd guessed, dried blood, a weblike lattice pattern of it dried on the fellow's forehead and his left temple and cheek, radiating downward from a gash just under his hatbrim. He couldn't make out details of the face, although the voice sounded young, if heavy with weariness and pain. Lucky he's got his overcoat on, Hawks thought. The way he's been losin' blood, if he hadn't, this cold might've killed him before I got here.

"Your horse?" he asked, and got a slow nod. "Think you can get up on him if I help you? My outfit's camped not far from here."

"Can try…" And Bill had to give him credit—he did. He even managed to get one foot almost into the stirrup before his strength gave out. Hawks caught him as he slumped backward.

Hastily Bill felt past the overcoat's collar for the pulse, allowing himself a sigh of relief when he found it. The other man's horse—he couldn't make out its true color in the darkness, though its mane and tail were very light, perhaps white—watched with intelligent eyes and thrust out a curious nose, making an odd questioning grunt deep in its throat.

"No," Bill told it, "I don't think he can ride, not without somebody to hold him in place. I'll take him up with me."

**SR - WT**

The first man Hawks encountered as he rode slowly into his own camp—probably fortunately, as it turned out—was Charlie Wooster. Charlie had started out in a Missouri regiment but had been transferred to Adams's outfit as a replacement a week before Shiloh, having just recovered from minor wounds taken in the Battle of Pea Ridge. He'd been with them ever since, most of the time as the Major's personal orderly and cook. "Who've you got there, Hawks?" he asked.

"Don't know, Chuck. One of ours, but he's not in any shape to talk. Is the Major still up?"

"Was a few minutes ago," Charlie agreed. "I'll run ahead and tell him you're back."

Being field grade, Seth Adams perhaps rated a bit more attention to his comforts than his subordinates might; whether any of his other officers had their tents yet Bill wasn't sure, but Adams's roomy wall shelter was clearly visible near the center of the camp—perhaps not quite regulation, but at least accessible from all points. Adams himself tossed the flap aside and came out as Bill carefully guided his mount past the closest scatter of dog-tents, holding the man he'd found on the saddle in front of him with both hands locked around his waist. "Thought you were only supposed to bring back word from Meade, Bill," Adams observed.

"Planned to, Major," Hawks agreed, "but I found this fellow in a shell-hole about half a mile back. Looks like he's had a fight with another horse soldier."

"Charlie, bring that lantern," Adams ordered, and Wooster did so, holding it up so his commanding officer could get a look at Bill's prize. The light also revealed the wounded man's horse, crowding close behind the black at the end of its halter's hitching strap, to be a coppery sorrel. "Yeah," Adams said, "I think you're right, Bill. That's a saber cut if I ever saw one. And there's blood on his cape too—not a lot, but then the coat and uniform underneath would've absorbed some of it…" He frowned. "Charlie, where's Durham?" —meaning the battalion hospital steward.

"Somebody came and got him, sir, about half an hour ago—guess he was needed somewhere. But you don't need him, Major. I'm here."

Bill looked at him sharply. "What can you do, Charlie? You're no doctor."

"Shows how much you know about me, Hawks. I may not be a doctor, but I've worked on wagon trains and in fur-tradin' posts where we had to be our own doctors." Wooster turned back to Adams, who had been listening to the exchange with surprised interest. "Where do you want to put him, Major?"

"Take him inside," Adams replied at once. "Here, Bill, you hand him down and I'll hold him while you get off…"

"I'll need more light, Major," Charlie declared as the two tall men—one rawboned and rangy, the other heavily built and bulkier—carried their limp burden into the tent and laid him out on Adams's cot. "And water—lots of it. Somethin' to make soup, if you can find any, and whiskey. Hawks, stoke up that stove, will ya? Gotta keep this fella warm…"

By the glow of the lantern hung from the tent's ridgepole, they could see that the wounded man was, in fact, little more than a boy, as so many soldiers were; unconscious as he was, he looked very young indeed. He was a handsome youngster, unusually tall and very lean, but with the good shoulders and deep chest that plenty of hard physical work develop, a rounded, fullish face and clean-cut features; under the Western-style felt hat his hair was sleek and sandy-blond. Bill thought that if he hadn't lost so much blood, he'd have a high color. There was a fine scar on his left cheek, not too long, and probably only visible because the lanternlight caught it just the right way. His shoulder boards, devoid of insignia (which was in itself a rank marking, showing that he was a second lieutenant), and trouser stripe were cavalry yellow, and the buttons on his cloak showed the American eagle with the cavalry C on its breast; his brass belt buckle featured the Great Seal's eagle enclosed in a separate silver wreath; and on the front of his hat crown, along with the crossed-sabers insignia of the horse soldiers, were a figure 3 and a letter C—his regiment and company—although nothing to show what state the regiment had come from. His eyelids parted briefly as they settled him, and a gleam of soft blue showed past them. "Where… wha'…?" he mumbled, and then, "Chey… enne…"

Adams's eyebrows rose. "No Indians here, son," he said reassuringly. "Nothin' for you to fret about. Just keep still and let us look after you."

"No…" the wounded man insisted. "My… horse… that's… his name…"

"Your horse is fine," Hawks told him. "I'll see to him myself, soon as I get the chance."

"Dried pear… in my saddlebag… he—he likes fruit…"

"He'll get it," Bill promised. "You rest, now."

The young man wasn't finished yet; he forced his eyes wider open as he caught sight of the gold oak leaves on Adams's shoulder straps. "Sh-Sherman… Lieutenant Matthew Sherman… C Company… Third Indiana Cavalry… mostly I'm called Slim. Sir—please—can you—send to Colonel Barton—First Brigade of Pleasanton's Division… tell him… I'm alive?"

"Sure," said Adams quietly, his tone warm and soothing. "I'll take care of it. Now do like Bill says, and rest."

Sherman's lips shaped a word and took it back again, and then the strength seemed to leave him and he sighed and settled back on the cot, his breathing changing to the slow rhythm of sleep or unconsciousness.

Charlie began unbuttoning the cape, wanting a look at the wound it concealed. Bill threw a couple of chunks into the Sibley stove in the corner, and the light and warmth in the tent immediately improved. "Bill," Adams said thoughtfully, "this boy looks like he might be pretty strong—you'd better stay here, Charlie might need you to hold him. Who'd be the best man we've got to take a message to this Colonel Barton?"

It was a natural question to ask; being a sergeant, Hawks knew the men even more intimately than their company commanders did. He thought for a moment, then said, "Horace Bentley, I'd say, Major. He doesn't talk much, but if you tell him to do somethin', he gets it done."

"Have somebody find him," Adams ordered, "while I write a note. Think my horse can go another few hours without a break? It might take Horace some time to find Barton."

"I've been keepin' to a walk because of the footing, ever since I left Meade," Bill told him. "Don't see any reason he couldn't."

"All right," Adams said with a nod. "Send for Horace, and then you two see to this boy. Not much point sendin' him all the way to the regimental hospital, we can probably do just as much for him ourselves."

"Yessir." Hawks had some personal reason to know how true that was, especially after Shiloh. As in many other aspects of war, both sides had been caught unprepared for the realities of large-scale medical care. Even in the North, at the beginning, there weren't enough field hospitals, and those that existed sometimes lacked even bandages. The only installations for treating the wounded were regimental hospitals consisting of one or more tents at the rear, staffed by the regimental surgeon; sometimes a convenient church or a large house was taken over for this purpose. There wasn't enough medicine and certainly not enough staff; doctors were lucky to have quinine and morphine. The best that could be done for most wounded men was simply to bed them down on a bit of straw in a field; open-air field hospitals were set up near the drawn-up ambulances, and here men were patched up, then put into the vehicles to be taken to a hospital or a convalescent camp, where there were at least tents and cots. And not till late in 1863 would the government be able to supply beds, medicines, and dressings in anything like the quality needed. Many surgeons feared that anesthetics were dangerous, and provided only a slug of liquor and a strong man to hold the patient down. Wounded were removed en masse by ambulance, wagon, train, or boat, but until quite recently—since Antietam—only jolting two-wheeled carts, seldom at hand when needed, passed for ambulances, and there was no clear responsibility for collecting the casualties from the battlefield. Some carried-in and walking wounded were assisted to the rear by comrades in the same company, who not infrequently seized the opportunity to escape the battle themselves; often they had to go more than a mile before they received first aid. Some made their own painful way back; some lay on or near the field for a week before being moved to a hospital, and even there one surgeon had to take care of an average three hundred. Thousands were left for days where they fell, many to die of neglect or thirst. Even the brigade hospitals were nothing but tents in which the men lay on the ground, fortunate if they had a mattress of pine boughs under their blankets, and many a field facility was a mere collection of tents on the bare ground, heated by a fire kindled at one end of a tunnel covered with old railroad iron and earth.

Particularly after a battle, when the surgeons spent a long night in ill‑lit hospital tents amputating arms and legs in assembly‑line fashion, medical care impressed the soldiers not only as dubious and painful, but as dehumanizing; they fought against being sent there and wouldn't go unless compelled, and many preferred to brave it out, and die if necessary, in camp. From what he'd seen, Bill believed they were more comfortable there, and better cared for. The food was the same in both places, as was the medical treatment when there was any. In the hospital the men lay on rotten straw; in camp their comrades provided clean hemlock or pine boughs, with the stems cut out, or cornhusks, when they could "jerk" them from a Secessionist field. In the hospital the nurses were largely convalescent soldiers, so sick themselves that they should have been in wards, and for that very reason selfish and sometimes inhuman in their treatment of the patients; as for the orderlies, they were often assigned that duty because they'd shown themselves otherwise useless, and observers of the field facilities reported that every dead man and almost every wounded one had his pockets cut open and his personal possessions looted by these vultures. In camp the stout and hearty fighting men took care of the sick—perhaps a little rough in their management, but at least not failing for lack of strength or interest; and owing to the prevailing militia system of enlistment, most of them knew their patients as neighbors, friends, or kinsmen, and gave them decent treatment on that account alone.

By the time Bill had rousted out someone to fetch Bentley, Charlie had their patient stripped to the waist and had located the source of the blood on his cape—a long transverse gash running from elbow almost to shoulder. As Adams had guessed, the cape itself, with the coat, shell jacket, shirt and undershirt beneath, had blunted a good deal of the blow; the wound was clearly a saber cut, but it wasn't deep, and Wooster quickly determined that the bone had been spared. The other cut, on his forehead, was slightly deeper, but perhaps the wide brim of his hat had obscured his assailant's aim, and of course the stout frontal bone of the skull lay close under the skin there. "Head wounds always bleed like there's no tomorrow," Charlie said. "He might be a little concussed, and he'll be kinda weak for a few days, but he's already been talkin', knows who he is and that he's with his own side. Those are good signs."

He whiskey-flushed the wounds to disinfect them—the sharp sting of the alcohol brought a murmur of pain and some restless threshing from young Sherman, but Bill kept him pinned so the work could proceed—and washed them out with hot water and turpentine from Durham's kit, then a second time with soapy warm water, and poured carbolic acid in before stitching them up with catgut, applying salt-and-flour poultices against further blood loss, and bandaging them with strips torn from a donated clean shirt of the Major's. He then set to work preparing a pot of bean soup, flecked with onions and bits from a joint end of smoked ham (both foraged), to be ready for the patient when he woke, while Bill went out to take care of the sorrel horse and bring in the man's saddlebags and carbine. "Why soup, Charlie?" Hawks asked when he came back. "He's not awake to eat it."

"He will be," Wooster replied, "and when he does I want to have somethin' ready to feed him on. I've seen my share of wounded men, and they all seem to do better if they're fed right off, even if all they get is soup and crackers and whiskey."

"Well, I found the crackers," Bill told him. "When I went to get the dried pear for that Cheyenne horse, there were some in the saddlebag. Here." He passed the orderly a paper packet of St. Johnsbury crackers, the kind that would run maybe seven cents a pound at a country store, though a sutler might charge as much as four or five times that.

"That's luck," said Charlie. "Anything that's made with flour seems to be good for folks—reckon that's why they call bread the staff of life. Now by the time he's conscious again, the flavors of this soup should have time to blend; the better it tastes, the likelier he is to eat it without complainin'."

Adams had been watching from the folding chair behind his field desk. "Looks like you've got a natural gift for this, Charlie. You should'a' told me. Don't you think you better get some sleep? It's gettin' close onto midnight, and he'll be pretty helpless for at least a couple of days—you'll have to be with him just about every minute you're not doin' orderly work for me."

Wooster considered this a moment. "Reckon I better had, Major. I'll just cover this soup and let it simmer, then I'll go find my tent—"

"No, you won't," said Adams. "You'll stay here. You can bed down along the back wall, with your feet toward the stove, and I'll sleep on this side—all I'll have to do is move the desk, and that don't weigh anything…"

**SR - WT**

Sunday, December 14:

He was warm, and there was a good smell of wood burning and hot stove metal and something like meat, though he couldn't make out what kind. Somewhere, very far off, he could just hear a faint desultory popping of small-arms fire, but there was no nearby commotion such as might suggest any immediate peril. His arm ached, and so did his head, but neither seriously. He slowly blinked his eyes open and found himself staring at the slanted roof and ridgepole of an officer's wall tent. He frowned to himself, trying to recall what had happened. He was lying down, and there was the pain—was he wounded? How had that come about? Was he in his own tent, the one he shared with Miklós?

"Well, now," said a deep, slightly gruff voice off to his right, "so you're back with us, are you?"

Not Miklós, definitely. He slowly turned his head and located the speaker, who was watching him from a folding chair between the radiant Sibley stove and a field desk not unlike the one in Slim's own quarters. A big man, heavily built, probably in his later forties, with a broad, tough yet pleasant face, a trimly clipped mustache and shrewd, hooded eyes. He wore the almost-knee-length Prussian-blue frock coat that was common to all branches except the cavalry, where the shell jacket or "short-coat," more practical for a mounted man, was favored; it was double-breasted in field-officer style, teamed with trousers to match, side-striped in sky-blue, which marked him as infantry. A pistol belt and saber hung from a pole rammed into the tent's earthen floor close beside the doorflap. The coat's shoulder boards were sky-blue like the trouser stripes, and trimmed with a major's gold oak leaves.

Reflexively Slim tried to sit up, and gasped, his head reeling. "Settle down, boy," the officer said firmly, crossing the tent quickly to clamp a hand over his right shoulder and press him back. "No need to stand on ceremony. Just consider yourself in hospital, which is where you'd be if my sergeant hadn't found you last night, supposin' you'd lived long enough."

"I—I apologize, sir—" Slim began.

"Don't trouble yourself," the other insisted. "You're Lieutenant Slim Sherman, am I right? That's the name you gave us before you passed out."

"Y—yes, sir. C Company, Third Indiana Cavalry."

"Seth Adams. Major commanding, Fourteenth Indiana Infantry, First Brigade, Third Division, under Doubleday." He extended his right hand, and Slim cautiously lifted his own to accept it. "Only," Adams proceeded, "bein' that you call your horse Cheyenne, I got more than a notion that Indiana ain't where you come from."

"No," Slim agreed slowly, "it's not. I enlisted… out of Davenport, Iowa, but that was only because… territories aren't called on to raise volunteer regiments. My family… lives in Wyoming, about… eighty miles southwest of Fort Laramie, as the crow flies."

"That explains it," said Adams. "Long way from home, aren't you? And how'd you get into an Indiana regiment from Davenport, Iowa?"

"Got promoted… and shifted to the Second Iowa after Shiloh," Slim replied, "and then… served on General Sherman's staff for a while at Memphis… till Colonel Barton asked to have me with him… when he came east and… took command of the Third, back in October. The General's… no relation," he added, more or less by reflex, since most people who heard his name seemed to assume the opposite.

"Shiloh," said Adams softly. "I was there too. Fortieth Illinois Infantry. Till the Rebs cut us down to seventeen men and we got merged with the Seventh Indiana."

Just then the doorflap was pushed aside and a short, bearded man with a corporal's chevrons on his sleeve came in. "Well, I thought I heard two voices," he said. "Major, you should know better'n to tire him out when he's only just awake."

Adams grinned. "Sure, Charlie. I'll leave him to you. By the way, Sherman, this is my orderly, Corporal Charlie Wooster. He's the one that patched you up last night."

"Then… I guess I owe you thanks, Corporal," Slim acknowledged.

"Just you call me Charlie, or Chuck, or Wooster, everybody does," the other replied. "Reckon you could maybe eat somethin'? I've had a pot of soup simmerin' away for you the last ten hours."

"Is that… what I smell?" Slim suddenly realized he was ravenously hungry. "I sure could eat somethin', Charlie."

Minutes later he was propped up on someone's haversack, being fed a warm, rich bean soup with chunks of ham and onion floating in it, accompanied by what he thought were some of his own St. Johnsbury crackers. In between spoonfuls he noticed that the sounds outside were chiefly those of a camp undergoing the ordinary routines of a day not devoted to battle. "Why am I hearin' gunfire?" he asked.

"That's up by the Heights," explained Adams, who had gone back to his desk. "Burnside's still tryin' to pry Longstreet out of there, but I don't reckon he's gettin' very far. Which reminds me—you wanted word sent to your colonel, so we did that, and he sent a note back; said he'd let your company commander know you were with us."

"I should get back—" Slim began.

"You should stay where you are," the Major cut him off. "For one thing, you've got a saber cut on your head, which as you might've noticed has a way of makin' a man dizzy, and dizzy's somethin' you don't want to be in the saddle. For another, your left arm's no good, which is gonna make it hard to control your horse. You're in no danger of bein' put on report, Colonel Barton'll see to that, so you just make up your mind to it, you're stayin' with us till Charlie says you're fit. And if you try to leave before that, I'll have Bill Hawks sit on you!"

"Who's Bill Hawks?" Slim asked in confusion.

"My First Sergeant. The man that found you last night. He was on his way back from carryin' a dispatch from General Doubleday to Meade, and happened on the shell-hole you were in. So he's got kind of a proprietary interest in you."

"A courier," Slim breathed. "That's kind of a strange coincidence. A Union courier rescues me after I kill a Confederate one…"

"How'd you end up down this end of the fight anyhow?" Adams inquired. "I thought the only horse soldiers in the Left Grand were Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania."

"Major," Wooster warned.

"It's okay," Slim told him. "I feel a lot better now, Charlie. I can talk a little, if the Major's curious." Slowly he recounted his adventure of the previous day. "I don't exactly know how we ended up in a shell-hole," he finished. "I guess Cheyenne's the only one who could explain that, and he's not likely to." His eyes went to the rolled-up pallet tucked against the side of the tent, under the end of the field-desk. "Are you sure about this, Major? I mean me stayin' here? I don't like turnin' you out of your bed."

The big man chuckled. "Son, I've probably slept more nights on the bare ground than you've been months alive. I retired from the Regular Cavalry in '54 and returned to civilian life in Galena, Illinois, till it got to be clear that if Lincoln won the election we'd have a war."

"Galena?" Slim repeated. "Where General Grant's from?"

"He's an old friend," Adams agreed. "Gave me a field promotion from captain the night of the first day at Shiloh."

Slim reflected that he and Adams seemed to have quite a bit in common: both field-promoted, both serving in regiments other than the ones they'd begun in, both started out in the Western Theater but come East at some point since Shiloh, both with connections (if only perceived) to noted generals. "You said you were in the Regulars?"

"That's right. Served in the war with Mexico, in Texas, in Cheyenne country… pretty much all over the west, one time or another. Don't recall I ever met any Shermans out that way, though."

"Don't guess you would have, sir," Slim agreed, "not from my branch of the family, anyway. I grew up in Illinois myself, out by Carthage—meant to enlist from there, except I came to Davenport first. My pa was in the Santa Fe trade, and the Mexican War like you, and then he went into trail-bossin' herds up from Texas. We moved out to Wyoming in '58."

"Not contractin'," Adams guessed, "not if you're so far from Fort Laramie."

"No, we've got a cattle ranch—at least, we're buildin' one. Pa never really wanted to be anything but a rancher, even when he was just a kid."

The Major nodded thoughtfully. "Well, that's good country down there," he said. "I've been through it. You should do well once your herd's had time to grow."

"Pa said so too," Slim agreed.

Over the next day or two, as he rested and ate, he learned more of the battle. On the Union's left alone, before Prospect Hill, the carnage had been devastating. In that field, nicknamed "the Slaughter Pen" by soldiers who witnessed the fighting, the Union lost its best chance for victory at Fredericksburg. The Confederates, having proved their point in several infantry clashes, withdrew back to the safety of the hills; Jackson considered mounting a resumed counterattack, but the Federal artillery and impending darkness changed his mind. Although for a few hours it had looked as if Burnside's plan might actually work, in the end a fortuitous Union breakthrough was wasted because Franklin didn't reinforce Meade's success with some of the 20,000 men standing in reserve. Neither Franklin nor Reynolds took any personal involvement in the battle, and were unavailable to their subordinates at the critical point. Skirmishing and artillery duels continued until dark, but no additional major attacks took place, while the center of the battle moved north to Marye's Heights.

Burnside, who had been observing the battle primarily from Sumner's HQ, was dismayed that his left flank attack hadn't achieved the success he assumed earlier in the day. By midafternoon, he had failed on both flanks to make progress against the Confederates. But his stubborn streak reasserted itself. It had taken him the better part of a month to decide how to fight this battle, and now that he'd committed himself he could neither give up nor change his course. Badly out of touch with a battle he'd never had control over from the start, he continued to expect his right to press on till it took the Heights. To support another push, he sent orders to Franklin to "advance his right and front," but despite repeated entreaties, Franklin refused, claiming that all of his forces had been engaged—which was in fact untrue, as Adams and his men could testify.

Meanwhile, having heard no favorable word from his left, Burnside ordered Sumner's Right Grand Division, originally designated to start when Franklin had begun to roll up Lee's right flank, to assault Longstreet anyway, while the Center Grand Division, commanded by Hooker, was to cross the Rappahannock into Fredericksburg and continue the attack on the Heights. Hooker performed a personal reconnaissance (something that neither Burnside nor Sumner had done, both remaining east of the river during the failed assaults), conferred with the officers on the scene, assessed the situation, and returned to Burnside's headquarters to advise against the attack. Even "Fighting Joe" could recognize a hopeless stalemate when he saw it. But Burnside refused his entreaty.

Brigadier Daniel Butterfield, commanding Hooker's Fifth Corps, while waiting for Hooker to return, sent his division under Brigadier Charles Griffin to relieve Sturgis's men. By this time, Pickett's division and one of John Bell Hood's brigades had marched north to reinforce the Heights. Griffin smashed his three brigades against the Confederate position, one by one. Also concerned about Sturgis, Couch sent the six guns of Captain John G. Hazard's Battery B, 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery, to within 150 yards of the Confederate line. They were hit hard by Confederate sharpshooter and artillery fire and provided no effective relief to Sturgis.

A soldier in Hancock's division reported movement in the Confederate line that led some to believe the enemy might be retreating. Despite the unlikeliness of this supposition, the Fifth Corps division of Brigadier Andrew A. Humphreys was ordered to attack and capitalize on the situation. Humphreys led his first brigade on horseback after sunset, with his men moving over and around fallen troops with fixed bayonets and unloaded rifles; some of the fallen men clutched at the passing pant legs, urging their comrades not to go forward, which caused the advance to become disorganized. The charge reached to within fifty yards of its goal before being cut down by concentrated rifle fire. The first line melted; the second came steadily on, over the dead and dying of previous charges, to share their fate. Brigadier George Sykes was ordered to move forward with his Fifth Corps regular army division to support Humphreys's retreat, but his men were caught in a crossfire and pinned down. They found what cover they could on the open plain and remained there, under fire but aware that if they tried to retreat they would simply be mowed down as they fled.

By four o'clock, Hooker had returned from his meeting with Burnside. But since Humphreys was still attacking, he reluctantly ordered the Ninth Corps division of Brigadier George W. Getty to do likewise, this time to the leftmost portion of Marye's Heights, Willis Hill. Colonel Rush Hawkins's brigade, followed by Colonel Edward Harland's, moved along an unfinished railroad line just north of Hazel Run, approaching close to the Confederate line without detection in the gathering twilight, but they were eventually spotted, fired on, and repulsed.

Hooker ordered an end to the fighting for the day; as he later said, he had "lost as many men as his orders required." Fifteen brigades altogether—106,000 Federals—had challenged the position behind the stone wall, but not one reached it; unit after unit was either cut down or broke and ran, while those who did neither hugged the open ground and prayed for nightfall. The survivors left 6300 dead and wounded behind them, the living groaning and crying out for aid. Another 6400 casualties got out of range on their own or were carried to safety by comrades. All told, Burnside's "diversion" lost him eight men for every Confederate casualty.

By sunset, the fighting had sputtered to an end. The weather, however, changed for the worse. Soldiers who had thrown aside their jackets and blankets in the balmy weather earlier that day were greeted with sub-freezing temperatures overnight. The area between Marye's Heights and Fredericksburg became a "no man's land," where the slightest movement by a Federal soldier brought a shot from the Confederates. Some were killed outright, others died from their injuries, and still more froze to death where they had fallen.

Burnside sent one unblooded division of the Fifth Corps forward under cover of darkness to bivouac close to the stone wall preparatory to an anticipated dawn assault. They made it, but could hardly find a place to lie down for the carpet of dead and wounded bodies. Meanwhile, during a dinner meeting that evening, Burnside attempted to blame his subordinates for the disastrous attacks, but they argued that it was entirely his fault and no one else's. He was determined to make additional attacks against the Heights, and even dramatically announced that he would personally lead his old Ninth Corps in one final assault. Sumner argued strenuously against any such plan, supported by the disgusted Hooker. It took them till the following morning to talk Burnside out of further action. The morale of the Federal troops had been so crushed by the fight that his wisest move was clearly to withdraw back over the Rappahannock, where the depleted units could be reorganized and the wounded sent away without danger of harassing fire from Lee's troops. Meanwhile, firing continued the 14th, pinning down the men of the Fifth Corps, who did their best to disappear into the hard earth.

At noon, Burnside held another council of war. Understandably, he felt that there should be something to show for the enormous sacrifice, and at first directed that while most of his troops should withdraw back over the Rappahannock, 12,000 men—the Second and Fifth Corps—would remain to defend Fredericksburg. That night, the Northern Lights made an appearance unusual for that latitude, bursting across the sky in a dancing cascade of color. The event was noted in the diaries and letters of many soldiers, and some of the Florida troops, who had been quite undismayed in fire, stampeded at the sight. Men on both sides paused to wonder if a divine hand was offering some message—a blessing for the fallen, a condemnation of what had taken place there.

On the 15th, while the two armies held their positions, Burnside requested and was granted a truce to gather up his casualties. With night came a driving rainfall, and beginning around sunset and continuing through the early-morning hours of the 16th, the dispirited survivors of his command began their evacuation on bridges that had been covered with dirt and straw to muffle the sound of their tramping feet. They were still on the move when Burnside changed his mind again: it was too dangerous to try to defend the town with such a small force; all must leave. At half-past seven the last units did so, taking up the bridges behind them, effectively relinquishing the gains the army had made by crossing the river in the first place. Seth Adams and the 14th Indiana went along, taking Slim in the cart Adams used for his tent and other effects. The army set up camp approximately as it had been before it crossed the river and settled down to lick its wounds.

Like most armies, when it wasn't fighting or engaged in drill or camp labor, Burnside's did its best to lead something approximating a normal life. The weather was too chill for swimming, but long lines of clothes—trousers, shirts, drawers—flapped in the breeze. Baking ovens fashioned of mud, stone, and straw dried in the sun, with flames licking from their wide mouths. The smoke of open fires cast a blue haze over the countryside, settling thickest in the valleys and creek bottoms. Bands played on the hilltops, men drilled in the fields or busied themselves with games in the company streets. At night blazing campfires and brightly lit tents and a fire‑reflected glow in the sky gave off a feeling of warmth and comfort. Soldiers off duty, always the envied, spread their beds (usually shared by two's) with a rubber blanket and a woolen one underneath, the same above, and a bundle of straw, and as they did they talked of the comforts back home. On the edge of the camp, toward the stable lines and supply wagons, teamsters lolled amidst a Babel of mules. Off in one corner portable forges sent out sprays of sparks, for blacksmiths had to work late to keep the horses shod and ready for any emergency. At their backs were barrels of flour, crackers, and hard bread, boxes of soap and bags of oats and corn. The crackers were a source of much comment. Several barrels had stamped on their sides T. Wild & Co., Boston, 1810, and one, set apart in plain view by a quartermaster with a sense of humor, bore the marking B.C. 97. Some of the soldiers who bit into the contents could well believe either.

As always, quiet moments in camp and on campaign were occasion for relaxation. A hard day of soldiering always seemed less tedious, less wearisome, even less dangerous, if a fellow could relax by a campfire with his mates. Every tent became a little illuminated pyramid, cookfires burned brightly along the alleys, and the boys larked, sang, shouted, and did all the merry things that made entertainment out of volunteer service. Checkerboards, chessmen, and dominoes appeared as men settled down. Card games of all kinds—poker, twenty‑one, euchre, seven‑up—were popular, but especially poker: immediately after receiving their pay, throngs of soldiers gathered for games of this or of dice; many a man, within a week, had "bluffed away" every penny he hadn't sent home, and even after their cash was gone, some continued to play against their next pay, using matches or dried beans as chips. Soldiers "shot craps" and rolled dice in a banking game called chuck‑a‑luck, also known as sweet‑cloth and birdcage, which was somewhat similar to roulette in that the money to be wagered was placed on numbers—in this case the numbers of spots on each side of a die—and the man who turned up a particular number took the money placed on it. Indeed, the men seemed to relish any form of competition, as evidenced by several elaborate snowball fights, sometimes pitting entire companies against each other: such units pitched into each other in regular battle fashion, led by their officers with bugles sounding and flags waving, charges and countercharges were made, prisoners taken on both sides, and many a black eye, bruised shin, and gashed face required the attention of first‑aid men.

Serious‑minded men read their Bibles, participated in occasional wholesale religious revivals, and organized army chapters of fraternal societies and benevolent associations, the Freemasons being particularly popular. Introspective chaps savored the moment to read an outdated newspaper, write a letter home, drink a cup of "Rio," or quietly smoke a pipe and gaze at the stars. Some darned socks, mended shirts, or washed underwear; others drank, smoked, gambled, and found women to help them forget that war was tedious more often than it was glorious. They bought watches from travelling peddlers, had their pictures made by itinerant photographers, swapped trophies and tall tales, and read and reread their letters from home till the pages fell apart from hard use. Pipes were carved from brier-root, chessmen from pine and sassafrass, rings fashioned from bones, leaden Minié balls converted to miniature soldiers and sundry other trifles; and strips from commissary boxes were trimmed into all sorts of shapes and patterns or reduced to piles of shavings solely for the pleasure of whittling. When sedentary diversions lost their charm, a sham fight or a tug‑of‑war might be quickly arranged; or, better yet, a midnight raid against the sutler might be mounted, with the operation carefully planned to give the raiders a chance at the delicacies he stocked. Sympathetic officers often turned a blind eye to these depredations, recognizing that the man's prices were inflationary.

Music was the single most important means of warding off homesickness, buoying spirits, combatting boredom, and relieving the weariness of a campaign. Not a few soldiers had fetched a harmonica, fiddle, guitar, or banjo from home, and such men were always heartily welcomed as accompanists. Hymns, patriotic tunes, and sentimental songs about home were the most popular fare. These impromptu camp sings were supplemented by band concerts featuring martial airs, patriotic selections, and sentimental melodies. Duets, trios, quartets, and glee clubs were all a feature of camp life. Sometimes there was a dance, with all the formal niceties observed save for the lack of actual females, and these were lively affairs, featuring cotillions, polkas, and jigs. Occasionally there were even theatrical performances—minstrel shows and dramatic productions.

Sports were popular. Companies sometimes challenged each other to shooting matches, sack races, wheelbarrow races, slick‑pole climbs, greased‑pig competitions, wrestling and boxing matches, with cash prizes of one to five dollars going to the winners, to say nothing of the enthusiastic betting on the side. Horse races brought out hundreds of soldiers to wager on and cheer for their favorite; foot races between companies were just as popular and noisy. But horses and men weren't the only things capable of racing: one company painted a round racecourse on a piece of tent canvas and held louse‑races on it. Soldiers were quick to invent schemes for betting: for a nickel, a man could buy a raffle ticket, and if his number was drawn from a hat, he might win a cash prize, a watch, a ring, a coat or blanket, even a chicken. Team sports, usually football, cricket, and especially baseball, aroused spirited participation, however improvised the equipment; regiments challenged each other to games of the last, and played with great vigor. Where space was limited, tenpins proved a popular game. Cockfights found eager audiences, and, like wrestling matches, were the occasion of much wagering; the former sometimes aroused unusual interest from the fact of the feathered gladiators' representing organizations strongly imbued with unit pride. Leapfrog, broad‑jumping, and free‑for‑all scuffles helped while away the tedious hours.

While the cavalry—more mobile by nature and definition, and moreover constantly on the move throughout the countryside, patrolling and scouting—had the best opportunities for "foraging," even a lone man afoot could improve his mess's diet by a spot of hunting; as long as he stayed on Burnside's bank of the river, he was safe enough, and in the remote chance that he did encounter a Reb or two, the worst that was likely to befall him was to be paroled and sent home. Many Union soldiers had been city clerks and factory hands in civilian life, but probably the majority of them—as of the population in general—came out of the farms and small towns of the countryside, and knew well the pleasures of seeking for possum, coon, squirrel, quail, and less often deer, wild hogs, foxes, and wild ducks. The usual weapon for small game was the gun, but now and then soldiers armed only with torches and sticks would bring in hundreds of birds knocked from their roosts in a thicket or canebrake; next day camp fare would be varied by delectable servings of pot‑pie. And once one of Adams's companies engaged in a great rabbit hunt. Conducting it on strictly military principles, a few men moved ahead as skirmishers. The rest then fanned out to beat the brush and flush the prey. Whenever a bunny broke from cover, the entire party howled in triumph and leaped to encircle it, flankers pinching in from the sides, skirmishers seeking to turn the fugitive toward the main body. The rabbit, bewildered by the tumult on every side, would double back at each point where a soldier opposed it, until its retreat was effectively cut off and it was either caught alive or felled by a blow from a stick. The entire episode was punctuated by roars of laughter and exaggerated cursing as soldiers tumbled into bushes, tripped over each other, and flailed at their agile prey. The Rappahannock and its small tributary streams, too, had bounty to offer: though ice had to be broken every morning, it was a rare angler who couldn't haul in a mess of perch or a catfish or two with minimum effort.

Those men who could read did so. Local weeklies, sent by the home folks, were perhaps the most popular; when one arrived from a locality shared by several men, it would be grabbed for by a dozen hands, and the general agreement was that whoever got it must read it aloud to the rest. Metropolitan dailies, distributed by sutlers or newsboys, also had many eager readers, and the same sources provided cheap yellowback thrillers and Beadle's dime novels. The illustrated newspapers, especially Frank Leslie's, were eagerly sought by soldiers who were quick to discover errors in features about their units. Manuals of drill and tactics were conned by men ambitious for promotion. The cultural upper crust furnished a wide following for the literary periodicals, and even Godey's Lady's Book found many readers. Religious periodicals and tracts were widely read, not because soldiers had any greater spiritual interest than civilians, but because the tracts, distributed by earnest individuals and such organizations as the U.S. Christian Commission, had the advantage of availability. Each regiment generally had a library with a larger or smaller stock of books, ranging from Latin authors and recent histories to English and Continental novelists, poetry, and humor.

Nearly every regiment, too, had one or more printers on its rolls, and these, when circumstances permitted (as they did currently), delighted in teaming up with interested comrades to publish camp newspapers, whose contents included orders and reports of battle, editorials, essays, poems, jokes, and stories, and even advertisements by sutlers, photographers, and others desiring the patronage of soldiers. Debates, orations, essays, recitations, spelling bees, and other cultural exercises were sponsored by "lyceums" and other imposingly-named literary bodies, and their topics ranged from such old favorites as capital punishment and the relative pleasures of pursuit and possession to questions of the day. There was also a good deal of drinking in camp: the liquor ration was too small to intoxicate anyone, but drinkers regularly wheedled, bought, or traded sufficient quantities from teetotaller comrades to get pleasantly tight, if not uproariously drunk. Young men who had never tasted a drop at home used spirits freely once in uniform, influenced by boredom, loneliness, anxiety about the future, freedom from home restraints, and the example of bibulous comrades. An inescapable part of soldiering was, apparently, an escape from small‑town morality. Old soldiers told the young recruits that "unless a man can drink, lie, steal, and swear he is not fit for a soldier."

Sunday routine was different from that of other days, for the Sabbath was synonymous with inspection. After breakfast the men busied themselves cleaning up the company streets, sweeping out their quarters, arranging their beds and accoutrements and putting a shine on all their leather and metal equipment. Following some two hours of this, including preliminary inspection by the first sergeants and captains, the men assembled on the drill ground and formed by company. After the last company had been examined, the inspecting officer made the rounds of the hospital, penal facilities, sutler's stand, regimental kitchens, and anything else he might choose to see. He then proceeded to the company quarters, where, with the men standing in their allotted places, he examined each tent to see that everything was in the order prescribed by regulations. Once this routine was completed, Sunday afternoon till retreat was usually free time, though some commanders required their men to attend religious services. Each regiment had a chaplain to conduct these exercises and tend to private spiritual needs; the regular service usually consisted of a sermon, Scripture reading, and songs, with texts of martial flavor being much resorted to. Religiously inclined laymen occasionally conducted prayer meetings of their own, which consisted of singing, Bible reading, supplication and testimonials of triumph over Satan, and Bible‑study sessions; chaplains or officers also led the former.

As Slim's cuts healed and he regained his strength, he spent much of his time with Major Adams and the other officers of the regiment; Charlie was usually close by to tend the coffeepot, and Bill Hawks, as First Sergeant, often sat on the periphery and put in a word here and there, for the volunteer companies were much more casual about military codes of behavior than the regulars were. There was talk, exchanges of reminiscences and stories of home, comparisons of photographs of wives, sweethearts, or families (including the one Slim's mother had sent him soon after his transfer East), card games and other diversions, including once a series of wrestling matches that lasted for several nights, as Hawks, who proved to be a good free-style man and had already earned the informally-bestowed title of regimental champion, was matched successively against challengers from other outfits, the last being a mountainous Swede from the First Minnesota Infantry who was his counterpart from Sully's brigade. After Bill pinned him, no one else felt lucky.

Quentin Colville, who'd learned of his friend's situation from Miklós Almássy, rode over almost as soon as the army had settled in, bringing with him Slim's extra uniform and some of his books; after that he was a frequent visitor, welcomed by Adams's officers as an unofficial member of their circle. He brought gifts from his own company's foragings and Slim's—once a basket of two dozen eggs, another time three live chickens, a third a jar of honey. Adams himself turned out to be a chess player of no little ability, and when he wasn't absorbed with the affairs of the regiment, he and the two younger men soon had a regular revolving tournament going.

Charlie proved surprisingly creative at turning out meals from a combination of Army rations and Quentin's offerings; he couldn't make food out of nothing, but when he got finished with whatever was provided him, it was at least as good as anything Slim had tasted in his own officers' mess, although Adams would never admit that and he and Wooster actually seemed to take pleasure in sparring back and forth about the quality (or lack thereof). Using only standard ration potatoes, salt, and sugar, the orderly had contrived a little keg of yeast starter that immeasurably improved the water-and-flour biscuits which were all that most soldiers could manage. When fresh beef was issued, he roasted it in a covered kettle and served it with potatoes browned around it, or stewed it and dished it up swimming in a sauce of mashed beans. Other times he roasted or baked potatoes in the ashes. Roast 'possum and collard greens, boiled beef with drop dumplings, squirrels cooked in a stew with onions and pepper and small potatoes, pork pie, stewed rabbit with green peppers, roast wild duck, baked quail, fresh-caught perch fried over the coals, bullheads and bacon; rice and molasses, beans baked with heavy chunks of bacon or boiled with salt pork, canned tomatoes sizzled in a skillet with rice and onion so the rice drank up all the tomato juice; boiled turnips, sweet fried parsnips, and fried or steamed squash found in Southern root cellars; once baked beans with issue molasses and "jerked" cider vinegar; dried-pea soup, rich chicken soup, potato soup, onion soup—the food Slim got may not have been equal to his mother's cooking or even Jonesy's, but it restored his strength and helped him heal. Charlie even understood the value of sweet, if elementary, desserts, and served up stewed-raisin and molasses pies, dried-apple pie flavored with red haw, bread pudding, potato pudding, rice-and-raisin pudding, dried-fruit and sweet-potato cobblers, even cornmeal cookies flavored with orange or lemon extract. He also managed to find some naphtha with which he got most of the bloodstains out of Slim's clothes, then settled down to mend the rents left by the Reb officer's sword. And when he took the neat row of stitches out of Slim's forehead, the younger man found, on examining the wound with Adams's shaving mirror, that all that remained was a nearly invisible shallow groove in the skin, not even as prominent as the scar the Comanche arrow had left on his cheek seven years ago.

Snow began to fly intermittently the third week of December, and the two hostile forces, as the weather turned colder, began to bolster their covering against the elements. It became evident that almost everybody was in favor of "shacking down" for the winter, according to the civilized custom of war in that day. Whether Burnside planned to pack it in, however, proved to be seriously in doubt. After the battle, a number of Union generals spoke out about his leadership, including his old rival Hooker. Newspaper reports informed the army that the folks back home were appalled at the waste of life that ultimately had provided no advantage to the Union effort. Had Burnside gotten across the river faster, or had he launched his attack on December 12th, he would have struck across the Slaughter Pen Farm when it was the least-populated section of the Confederate position. By waiting until the 13th, he had ended up attacking a position where an average of six Confederates defended each linear foot.

For the Union, a year that had already seen defeats during the Peninsula Campaign and Second Bull Run, along with bloody but somewhat inconclusive results at Shiloh and Antietam, now reached its nadir at Fredericksburg. Lincoln's political stock plummeted, and so did military morale: more than 86,000 Union soldiers—over a quarter of the Army of the Potomac—deserted, and there were even (unfounded) rumors that Lincoln would resign or be unseated in a coup by Radical Republicans that would place McClellan in charge. Both the Army and the President came under strong attacks from politicians and the press. The Cincinnati Commercial wrote, It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment, than were perceptible on our side that day. Senator Zachariah Chandler, a Radical Republican, wrote, The President is a weak man, too weak for the occasion, and those fool or traitor generals are wasting time and yet more precious blood in indecisive battles and delays. Andrew Curtin, the governor of Pennsylvania, visited the White House after a trip to the battlefield, and told Lincoln, "It was not a battle, it was a butchery." He later reported that the president was "heart-broken at the recital, and soon reached a state of nervous excitement bordering on insanity."

The mood in the South couldn't have been more different. The Confederacy erupted in jubilation over its great victory. The Richmond Examiner described it as a "stunning defeat to the invader, a splendid victory to the defender of the sacred soil." General Lee, normally reserved, was described by the Charleston Mercury as "jubilant, almost off-balance, and seemingly desirous of embracing everyone who calls on him… [He] knows his business and the army has yet known no such word as fail." Headlines all over the region pronounced Lee a military genius, and assured readers that a total Confederate victory was forthcoming. Even the Democratic papers up North, though perhaps a bit more muted in their sentiments out of prudence, seemed convinced of it.

Meanwhile, Burnside was formulating a new plan to attack Lee's forces (still near Fredericksburg), once again crossing the Rappahannock. By December 30th, he was on the move—until he received a curious telegram from Lincoln ordering him to halt. His generals, it turned out, were so fearful of his new plan that two of them had traveled to Washington—which was only just over fifty miles away—to personally inform the President of their concerns. Burnside was furious and demanded that the officers be fired, then offered his own resignation—neither of which Lincoln agreed to. After a nearly three-week delay, he finally approved Burnside's plan, though he urged caution.

Slim had gone back to his own regiment a little before New Year's, but he continued to be a regular visitor to the 14th Indiana's camp, as did Quentin; sometimes Miklós joined them and was welcomed for his flute-playing and keen mind. Then, just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, they did. On January 20th, in an effort to resuscitate his career, Burnside began his new offensive. Lee seemed content to keep his army in position on Marye's Heights, so Burnside decided to march upriver, toward the shallow fords he should have used the previous month, and attempt to cross over and attack his enemy's left from a more favorable direction.

This time it was the weather that was his downfall. By dusk of the first day, fog had moved in; by dark, rain had begun to fall. When the men stopped to make camp, they could find no wood dry enough to burn. By morning the rain was falling in chilling torrents that turned the roads to thick, all but impassable mud and sent every creek out of its banks. Wagons sank to their wheel hubs; artillery mired so badly that neither twelve-horse teams nor gangs of 150 men hauling on ropes could pull it out. Dozens of mules and horses died of exhaustion; one, helplessly mired, had its neck broken when men hooked a chain around it and tried to free it; others gave up the struggle and had to be put down. Men wallowed, slid, slipped, floundered, and fell sprawling, often losing their shoes in the sucking mud. Troops that had covered forty miles a day on their way to Fredericksburg now struggled to get further than a mile. For three days, Burnside's army continued its disastrous slog on what would become known as the "Mud March," accompanied most of the way by jeering Confederate forces taunting them from dry land. At last, on the 23rd, he gave up and ordered his troops into winter quarters in Stafford County. Five days after his offensive began, it was over—and so was his brief stint at the helm of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln removed him from command on January 26th, replacing him with none other than "Fighting Joe" Hooker.

The word blanketed the entire army in, it seemed, only hours. The next evening Slim rode over to the 14th Indiana's camp to discuss the new situation with Adams. "Thanks, Charlie," he said as the orderly hurried to take his horse, and, settling down on a folding stool facing across the Major's desk, he sighed and added, "You know, I don't think I'll ever get used to these McClellan saddles. I don't say they're a bad invention, but ever since I was thirteen I've been ridin' Western ones, and I can tell you, for a man who has to spend day after day on a horse, they're a lot more comfortable. And as for Army holsters and that twist-hand draw—they're just death waitin' to happen. If you've got to have your sidearm hung butt-forward, at least a Texas cross-draw is more natural. Faster, too. If I hadn't already had my Colt in my hand when I surprised that courier, I might not have lived long enough to meet you."

Adams chuckled. "Between sensible young volunteers like you and old veterans like me, sometimes I think they'd do just as well to fire all the generals and leave the Army to us. What do you plan on doin', once this is all over?"

"Go home," Slim answered, without an instant's hesitation. "Go back to Wyoming, make things right with Pa, try to make up to my mother and little brother for bein' away so long. Help build our ranch into the best little spread in the Territory… You, sir?"

"That's a funny thing," Adams admitted. "I'm not a youngster like most of you fellas. I'm past the age for bein' restless, needin' to find my place in the world. I've seen a good bit of this country, fought in two wars, had a good little business in Galena, me and Bill—made some good money out of it too. But when I think about goin' back to that… somehow it seems kind of bleak. Retirin' at half pay as a captain, I'll be due my pension again as soon as I muster out, thirty-five dollars a month—unless they go by my current rank, which will make it forty. Eight to ten dollars a week is more than a livin' wage, if it's in gold, but just to sit out the rest of my life in idleness… that don't appeal, after a life like mine."

"Don't guess it would," Slim agreed. "In some ways you're a lot like my pa—he's been earnin' his own way since he was nine years old. The great thing with him, probably, is that he figured out pretty early what he wanted to do. It took him a while to get there, and he was kind of halfway for a long time; bought his land in Illinois in '32, but it was more than twenty-five years before he could become the kind of stockman he dreamed about. Even then, though, knowin' he was workin' toward it made the shortcomings not quite so bad, I guess. I know from what I saw, workin' beside him after we settled in Wyoming, that he loves what he does. I can't imagine him ever stoppin'. He'll probably die in harness." It suddenly occurred to him that part of the reason he'd come by tonight was probably that Adams, on account of his experience in the Regulars and his nearly thirty years' advantage in age, had come to be almost a father-figure to him—something he still sorely needed in the aftermath of his lengthy disagreements with his real father regarding his desire to enlist.

"What do you think of this new Homestead Act that's just gone into effect?" the Major asked unexpectedly.

Slim frowned thoughtfully. "I guess I can see why they did it," he admitted. "A stockman, like Pa, can get a lot of the land he needs at a reduced rate under the Graduation Act—fifty cents an acre down to sometimes as little as twelve and a half—precisely because it's classified as good for nothin' but grazin'; and if he can't get title to all of it right away, he can just go for control of the water, which lets him use the land bordering it as his own. A farmer can't do that, so he has to pay the full Federal price of $1.25, and even a quarter-section will run him $200. Then he needs to get his family out West in the first place, which will run him maybe $400 for a wagon and team and $600 to $1000 for supplies, ferryage, and whatnot—though if he's startin' out from a farm somewhere else he probably has the wagon already—and he's got to have somethin' to live on till he can make his first crop. A poor man can't emigrate, unless he's young and single and can work his way out on a wagon train and then hire out at whatever job he can find to earn a stake. Even if a family's got land or a house that it can sell, a lot of that money gets eaten up with travel costs. So slicin' off even just that $200 for the land from what they'll have to lay out to get started… it can make a big difference."

"But?" Adams prompted.

"How did you know there was a 'but,' sir?" Slim asked.

"By the look on your face. And the fact that I've been West myself, as you know. Let me guess. It's the country. Those blame fools in Washington have never crossed the plains or even the prairie, except maybe the ones from California and Oregon. They don't know what it's like out there. They don't know how hard it is to find wood or water, how undependable the rain is, about the grasshoppers, the wind, the winters, the loneliness. They think anybody can make a go of supportin' a family anywhere on a hundred and sixty acres, like in the East. But the West is a whole other country. You and me, we've been there, we know. Farmers in Massachusetts or New Jersey or even Illinois, they don't. They'll try, maybe, but most will fail."

Slim nodded. "Pa said to me, the very first day we started workin' on our house, 'This country… God made it for cattle, son.' Cattle, horses, buffalo, antelope—anything that grazes. Not for farms or plows, except maybe hayland in the bottoms and a truck patch, like we've got on our place back home. The soil's good; give it plenty of water and it'll grow anything. The problem's gettin' the water, like you said. Even our well… we didn't hit water in Wyoming till we were fifty feet down; in Illinois it wasn't but half that. Some folks have to go as far as three hundred. California, now… that's different. I've never been there myself, but I've got an uncle and aunt out by San Diego. That's the kind of country where farmin' can be made to pay. And it's not the only way a man can go, either. Americans have been streamin' out that way for close to twenty years; they've had time to get established. Bein' isolated way out on the other side of the country, they've had to become self-sufficient, to build up a whole economy—not just farms or mines or ranches, but towns, factories, everything. Why, my uncle says they've even got their own railroads, not to speak of steamboats and coastal shipping. There's a pattern that newcomers can find ways to fit into."

Adams greeted this with a thoughtful expression. "That's worth chewin' over," he said. "Maybe, if I live through this, I'll think about headin' out that way, makin' a fresh start." Then: "Speakin' of fresh starts—"

Slim grinned. "Fightin' Joe."

"Yeah." They hashed over the President's decision, comparing Hooker to Burnside and McClellan—and to Sherman and Grant, under whom both had served. They agreed that Burnside had made a fatal, and foolish, mistake by attempting to dislodge an enemy securely established on higher ground; Adams, out of his frontier experience, admitted he found it hard to understand why a West Point graduate, who presumably would have studied tactics and strategy, would do such a thing, when even he, who hadn't had the advantage of Academy training, wouldn't. "When a man's in command," he said, "it's not just the actions of those beneath him that he's responsible for. It's the lives of his men. Of course he wants victory. That goes without sayin'. But to throw those lives away when he can see—or ought to—that they haven't got a chance… that's not bein' responsible. There's no excuse for it."

Slim agreed. "And Pa says that if you hire a man, and he's true to you, you have to serve him the same. You stand with him if he's in trouble. If you see he's outmatched, you make his quarrel yours. You don't ask him to do somethin' you're afraid to do yourself, and you don't waste him. I can't help thinkin' that a general should lead from the front." A moment's hesitation, then: "What would you have done, Major, if you'd been in command?"

"What would you?" asked Adams, turning his question back on him again.

Slim took a minute to think about his answer. "Lee wasn't here yet when we arrived," he remembered. "It took four days for even Longstreet to catch up with us. I think, as soon as I saw that the pontoon train wasn't waitin' for us, I'd have gone up the Rappahannock. All streams get narrower and shallower as you go up; sometimes if a trail herd can't cross a river where the boss hoped to, he turns it upstream and looks for a better place. I'd have thrown out a strong rear guard in case somebody came followin', and headed up the river as fast as the men could go while the weather was still half reasonable. I'd have had cavalry scouts out in front, checkin' everything that looked like a crossing, maybe with some artillery pieces along to hold the other side of whatever ford they found, and when they hit a good one I'd have laid down branches, brush, earth, roots to improve the teams' footing and keep the wheels from sinkin' too deeply, the way we did on the wagon train out to Wyoming, and gotten over and tried to catch Lee at the North Anna before he realized what I was up to."

"That might just have worked," Adams agreed. "A clever, deceptive, fast-movin' drive—even Burnside came close to catchin' Lee flat-footed by it. The thing is that trade, exploration, war, are all situations where things can change suddenly, and if you don't have a man in charge who's able to see when to wait and when to abandon his old plan and move on to something new, that change can finish you. Success requires quick action, decisive direction, and unlimited courage—and a decisive, daring, alert commander. Strategic advantage and war objectives never realize themselves; leadership's required to turn 'em into victories. I'm beginning to get the notion that you may be a natural strategist."

"I've had good teachers," Slim replied modestly. "Mr. Mayborn, our wagonmaster… Jim Bridger, Pa… it's a question of watchin' and rememberin'." He was silent for a moment. "And that makes me think about somethin' else. I can't help wonderin', just a little, if I did right—with that courier, I mean. If, somehow, I couldn't have managed not to kill him."

"It's war, son," Adams reminded him gently. "It's not about 'right.' It's about followin' orders and livin' to see tomorrow."

A sudden flush rose in Slim's cheeks. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, Major, but I can't agree. Doesn't there have to be 'right'? Isn't that what all this is about—that each side thinks it's right? Pa said so, when he was tryin' to talk me out of signin' up, and the longer I serve, the more I come to think maybe he had a point. You have to live with yourself, after the fighting's done. You—not the generals, or Congress, or the President. Isn't there somethin' in the Declaration of Independence about liberty of conscience? A man shouldn't be forced to do things that go against his grain."

Adams took breath as if to respond, hesitated, and murmured, "Nat Burkett held to the same notion. That was why he warned a peaceful Cheyenne village that the Army was planning an attack on it. It made him a deserter and a fugitive, but he did the thing he knew was right."

"I think Pa told me somethin' about Burkett," Slim recalled. "He was trail-bossin' by then, but he still had contacts in the frontier Army, from when he'd been in the Santa Fe trade. It's like Texans. Most are Secesh. But I've ridden and worked with Texans, helpin' Pa drive cattle, and I found most to be good men—hard workers, brave, loyal, honest, true to their word, devoted to their families and friends. Tough, sure; frontiersmen have to be. Wild sometimes. Not always too strict about 'mine and thine.' And they can lie like Ananias when they're not bindin' themselves otherwise—I never heard such yarns as they spin. But most are what we called on the trail 'fit to ride the river with.' Well, you said you'd served in Texas; you must have met some yourself…"

The Major nodded. "That's what makes a war like this one so tragic. If it's two countries that have always been more or less suspicious of each other, or even long-time rivals, that's one thing. But North and South—it's true they don't think alike, or feel alike, or live alike, or interpret the Constitution alike, but who said they had to? At the bottom they're still the same people; they speak the same language, respect the same heroes and documents, read the same Bible—even if they don't all interpret that the same way, which is their right under the Constitution. They sing the same songs, dance the same dances, join the same lodges. You've been in this army long enough to see them celebrate the same great holidays, the Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday—Christmas too."

"Ma says, bein' that God's all-powerful, if He wanted us to be all alike, He'd have made us that way," Slim recalled. "Since He didn't, she says, that tells you somethin' important about Him: He likes diversity. Why shouldn't we be just as willing to allow it in others?" He sighed. "When I first came East to enlist, I was sure the Union was right. I wouldn't have signed up if I hadn't thought its cause was just. But now—now I'm not so sure any more. Maybe the South really did have a right to secede. I've read the Constitution, and I didn't see anything there that forbids it. Maybe old John C. Calhoun was right when he said that the majority will always and inevitably tyrannize over the minority, so the minority needs to have a last-ditch remedy it can resort to, whether it's the concurrent majority he supported or something more… final. The South wasn't even the first region to threaten to break away: New England did it at least twice, once over the capital bein' moved to Washington in 1798, again over the War of 1812. Besides that, up till thirty years or so ago, slavery was legal all over the country, but once the North ended it, the New Englanders became the loudest, most self-righteous of its enemies. That strikes me as a pretty hypocritical attitude to take. Maybe they weren't gettin' rich off their slaves, the way some Southerners have done, but they had 'em, and now they act like it's the worst thing short of murder."

"That's all true enough," the Major agreed. "You sound like you're gettin' pretty discouraged."

"I guess I am," Slim admitted. "It's not that my outfit's taken such a lot of losses—it's always the infantry that bears the biggest impact in fights like this one. But still—all this blood wasted, so many young lives ended or ruined, so much destruction, and no end in sight—for what? A point of law? A republican form of government?—the South has one too. A union?—how can it be a proper union if everyone doesn't want to belong to it? The end of slavery?—Pa says our form of it's lighter than anywhere else he knows of, and what's to become of all these suddenly free slaves who have no education, no experience in running their own affairs? If the war ended tomorrow, the suffering would still go on, and the bitterness with it."

Adams regarded him in thoughtful silence for a minute. "I don't say you're not makin' a lot of good points, son. All those things have occurred to me too. What do you plan to do about it? Desert, like so many others have been doin'?"

"No!" Slim's head came up sharply, his light eyes ablaze. "And not just because it's treason. What good would it do? Would it end the war? Would it mend the harm that's been done? No," he repeated, "I signed my name to the muster-roll, and I won't go back on that promise, but… still, I wish we could have found another way to settle this. The Confederates are really only fightin' for the same right of self-determination and self-government that this country was founded on. All they ever wanted—Lord knows they said so often enough—was to be left alone to run their lives the way they saw fit. I don't claim to know whether it was the right way—even Pa admitted he wasn't sure about that. But they never wanted to rule over the North, or to force the Union to re-legalize slavery for itself, where it never really worked, not the way it has in the South. I'm not sure the opposite's true. Why, this Emancipation Proclamation—Lincoln's committed himself to conquering the South. The parts of it that are still 'in rebellion' aren't gonna let their Negroes go free just because he says they're free; they don't recognize his authority any more."

"I think Lincoln's too good a man to come down hard on the losers, supposin' they're not his side," Adams observed. "If he can stay in office long enough to win this war, or even just get somebody succeedin' him who thinks the way he does, there's still a chance we can stitch the country back together again without too much suffering and bitterness. That's the thing that worries me—whether he'll be given that chance. As for the other, I reckon there are two kinds of arguments in the world. I recollect once when I was a youngster hearin' a sermon on that subject. The preacher said that the greatest discord doesn't arise when right confronts wrong, 'cause false doctrines will eventually be shown for what they are, but when two rights confront each other. Each side in this war has at least some sense goin' for it, and each feels it had no choice but to respond the way it did to the way things developed."

"There's one thing I've made up my mind about," said Slim firmly. "No matter who comes out on top, I'm never gonna let myself hate or mistrust a man just because he was on the other side. I'll judge him by what he's been and done since I've known him…"

**SR - WT**

After the Grand Review in Washington, D.C.

May 25, 1865:

"You're sure he's alive?" Slim asked.

"We're sure," Bill Hawks replied firmly. "It took us a lot of work—we couldn't have done it at all, I guess, if General Grant hadn't been a friend of his. He's in the hospital in Savannah, Ohio. Soon as we get mustered out, we're goin' there."

"Maybe sooner," Charlie Wooster added. "We signed on to fight till the war was over, and now that it is, the Army can't tell us what to do. We wouldn't be the first ones to just leave camp without waitin' to be officially dismissed from duty."

"You haven't got a wife waitin' for you at home," Bill pointed out. "Emily's been gettin' by on what I could spare of a sergeant's twenty dollars a month ever since I got my stripes. I'm due bonus money, enough to buy a farm in the West, they say, and I plan to get it. So should you, Charlie. If the Major's still in the hospital after all this time, he may be a while gettin' well. We'll need to have somethin' to live on till he does."

"I was the one kept you at it," Wooster reminded him. "You'd near give up on him even before Lee surrendered. I was the one told you wasn't one war gonna kill the Major."

"I wasn't givin' up," Hawks retorted. "I haven't forgotten he wouldn't have got hit in the first place if he hadn't been tryin' to save me."

"What about afterward?" Slim cut the borning argument off. "I remember after Fredericksburg, he said somethin' to me about maybe headin' West if he survived, makin' a fresh start."

"We've talked a little about it," Bill admitted, "but nothin's set yet. I've been soundin' Emily out… not sure she's too keen on the idea—"

"Well, I'm like you—I'm waitin' for my bonus money and my final pay, and then I'm for Wyoming," Slim told him. "You know where to write me—let me know how he does. And, listen—if any one or all of you ever get out my way, you stop in…"

**SR - WT**

From a letter:

Savannah, Ohio

April 11, 1866

…It's hard to believe it's been almost a year already. Charlie and I've been picking up work as we could ever since we got here last July, but mostly we've been helping the Major learn to walk again. He says now he wants to go back to Galena, marry the woman he was courting before we enlisted, and go West, like you said… We haven't forgotten your invitation, and if we pass by southeast Wyoming we'll take you up on it…

Best wishes always,

Bill Hawks

**SR - WT**

From a letter:

Galena, Illinois

August 14, 1866

…I don't recall if I ever said how sorry I was to learn about your father; I know how much it would have meant to you to make things right with him. For whatever it's worth, give my condolences to your mother and brother…

…I should have been in touch a lot sooner, but I've had a rough time of it these last few months. It's not so much the wounds, I'm over those, thanks mostly to Bill and Charlie. But when I found out that Rainie hadn't waited for me, that she'd accepted another man—that took a while to work past…

I've made up my mind that Galena's no place for me now; there'd be too much here to remind me of her. But I needed to think about where I wanted to take my life, and now I know. For almost as many years as we've been moving toward this war we just fought, North and South growing further and further apart, we've been finding a common ground in the West, in the urge to explore and settle it. It's been drawing from both halves of the country alike, and from what I've heard it's diverted a lot of its settlers from the whole war question. There was no war in California or Oregon—or even your Wyoming.

I spent the best part of four years fighting a war that almost split this country in two parts. Now I want to do something to help bring it back together, heal its wounds. The South is in ruins; many of its people will want to make a new life in a new land. The North came off easier, but a lot of young men will find that they can't just go back to life the way it was, that they need a new challenge to take the place of fighting and trying to survive. The West can satisfy their needs. I want to help them get where they're going. I'm going to start leading wagon trains west—to California.

I feel I owe this to my country, to the men who followed me into battle and didn't come out, to the men I killed. What good are all their sacrifices if we don't arise from this trial better, stronger, than we were before it? And I guess that if I were going to be completely honest with myself, I'd have to say that I'm just as restless as some of those other men I mentioned before. And that I wouldn't feel right, just going on living here. Emily Hawks says I'm being a fool—she says Rainie's choice was hers to make, and I shouldn't let it dictate what I do with whatever time's left to me. In a way, I can even agree with her. But then, it's not only about Rainie. It's about all the things you and I said the night after Burnside was relieved of command…

It's too late in the season to start now, but I'll be moving to St. Joseph right after Christmas and getting set up. Charlie's already said he's going along; I hope Bill will too… The California Trail passes not too far from where you live, so watch for us along about next July…

Fondest regards,

Seth Adams, Maj., USA (Ret.)

**SR - WT**

St. Joseph, Missouri

April, 1871:

"Raised by Jim Bridger, were you?"

"That's right." The young man with the dark-red hair and generously freckled, roguishly good-looking face met Adams's eyes calmly.

"Say, Major," Charlie put in, "didn't young Slim say somethin' about goin' West on a train that Bridger guided?"

Adams leafed back through his memory, barely noticing how McCullough's eyes sharpened at the name Wooster had mentioned. "I believe you're right, Charlie. That was… let me think, now…"

" '58?" McCullough interrupted. "I was with Mr. Bridger that year—it was after we scouted for General Johnston against the Mormons. There was a kid called Slim on that train, maybe half a year younger than me. Sherman, the family name was. I helped teach him to speak Sioux."

"That's the one," Adams agreed at once, grinning. "Well, I met him a few years later, during the war. I reckon between bein' his friend and Bridger's cub, you'll suit me fine. Here, you put your name on this contract…"

**SR - WT**

St. Joseph, Missouri

March, 1873:

"Sherman? Any relation to the General?"

The young man who'd given his name as Stephen Augustus Sherman—he wasn't much past thirty by the looks of him—grinned. "No, sir. Got asked that question more than once during the war."

"Well," Adams told him, "the fact is, I knew another young fella back then who said somethin' of the same, and I wondered if you were related to him too. Come to that, you look a little like him—tall and lean, same color hair… You're from, where—Ohio? Got any kin in Illinois?"

"One uncle," said Sherman, "but the rest of 'em have mostly moved on, further West. Uncle Pete was livin' near San Diego till he died about five years back; what we heard from him got me thinkin' about headin' out there, but Jimmy was just a baby, we wanted to wait till he got bigger..."

"You don't say!" A slow smile spread across Adams's face. "That young fella I mentioned spoke of an uncle there too. Said his name was Matthew, though most called him Slim."

Stephen's face lit. "Why, that's my Uncle Matt's boy—three years younger than me, he is. I was eighteen when his folks went West. He's got a ranch somewhere in Wyoming. Running a relay station for the Overland Stage on the side, too…"

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Note: In recreating the Battle of Fredericksburg and its aftermath for this fic, I've used a variety of sources, both print and online, weaving them together to try to provide a coherent picture of the action as it might have looked to an observer a couple of hundred feet up (to the participants such battles were seldom coherent at all). My biggest challenge was trying to find out what the weather was like; although many accounts and personal letters and reminiscences of the war mention it in a general way—it was cold, or unusually warm; it rained, or there was sleet—the armies had no scientific apparatus for observing temperatures, and modern figures are deceptive: the combat came at the end of the so-called "Little Ice Age," and at a time when air pollution and its associated greenhouse gases were much less of a factor than they are today. So, although I may not have gotten the facts exactly right, judging from the information I've been able to uncover, Slim might have experienced the kind of weather I describe; certainly sources agree that the night of December 13 was, or ultimately became, "bitterly cold," and many casualties on the field, who might otherwise have survived, "froze to death."

Fredericksburg was one of the bloodiest engagements of the war, and also among the most one-sided, both in terms of numbers engaged and of casualties. The Union army suffered 12,653 of the latter (1284 killed, 9600 wounded, 1769 captured or missing), including two generals mortally wounded. The Confederates lost 5377 (608 killed, 4116 wounded, 653 captured or missing), most of them in the early fighting on Jackson's front—including, again, two generals mortally wounded. These figures showed clearly how disastrous the Union army's tactics were. Although the fighting on the southern flank produced roughly equal casualties (about 4000 Confederate and 5000 Union), the northern flank was completely lopsided: the repeated assaults on Marye's Heights cost the Yanks from 6000 to 8000—two-thirds of the total they took—while Confederate losses there totaled around 1200.

While to most logical minds it would probably seem self-evident that an officer in an infantry unit would be on foot like his men, the "Standardization of USV[=United States Volunteers] Infantry Officer Sword Drill," a PDF available online and drawing from the studies of re-enactor Geoff Walden, suggests otherwise. On page 3 of this document you can find the following: "When the sword is being carried in the scabbard and is attached to the sword belt, it is possible to carry it in a number of ways. If mounted [emphasis mine], the officer should allow the sword to hang at the full extent of the sword straps..."

Since we know that Seth Adams and his outfit were volunteers, as opposed to Regulars (the term then used for professional soldiers who enlisted for five years at a clip), Adams would have followed exactly this drill. And, obviously, a mounted man, being above the heads of his fellows, would be best positioned to remain clearly in their sight and serve, like the unit colors, as a rallying point, as well as leading charges (and retreats, when necessary) or whipping across the field to inspire a lagging unit. Therefore I've assumed that at least some infantry officers had and used horses, and it seems probable that the higher their rank, the likelier they were to do so. In the U.S. Army, majors, lieutenant-colonels, and colonels are referred to as "field" grade and, of course, rank next below the generals; they command large bodies of men and probably often had to race from one spot to another to rally failing or beleaguered sections of their units. A mounted man would be best suited to do this.

The "Standardization" also states that the sword "is not primarily a weapon, rather it is above all else, an insignia of rank – a sign of authority bestowed upon the officer by the State," but that "[i]n close combat the officer would either have to use his sword against another officer's sword..." Thus the rationale for Slim's encounter with the enemy officer.

Based upon hints given in various episodes of Wagon Train (see my biographical essays, "The Men of Wagon Train," on this site), I've concluded that for most of his canonical battles Adams headed up the 14th Indiana Infantry, which online sources have it was at Antietam, Fredericksburg, The Wilderness, and Cold Harbor, at all of which he saw service. (He also served at Second Bull Run (before any of the others), where the 7th, 19th, and 20th Indiana were all deployed, and at Shiloh, where his original unit (almost certainly from Illinois, since he enlisted, as he says here, out of Galena) was decimated; I arbitrarily selected the 40th Illinois Infantry for the latter role, as it did in fact fight there, under Colonel Stephen G. Hicks (who was wounded) and suffered 207 casualties, only one more than the figure canonically given.)

Under the Union tables of organization, a regiment was supposedly commanded by a colonel, who was supported by a lieutenant-colonel and a major. But owing to attrition, disease, and occasionally parole or even desertion, men often found themselves heading up units out of proportion to their actual rank (for example, at Fredericksburg alone, at least 21 regiments (usually headed by captains) and two artillery batteries were commanded by majors, as was, indeed, the 14th; at Antietam/Sharpsburg, the Sixth Wisconsin Regiment was commanded by Lt.-Colonel Edward S. Bragg, not, as it should have been, by a full bird colonel, and the First Texas Regiment (CSA) was headed up by Lt.-Colonel Phillip A. Work, being an element of a brigade under Colonel William T. Wofford). Hence, too, in Slim's history, the 3rd Indiana Cavalry's First Brigade being commanded by a colonel (brevet brigadier) rather than (as in ours) a full brigadier.

As Slim and Adams foresee, the Homestead Act was far from the panacea lawmakers had hoped. Not only was the character of the land west of the 100th Meridian against the farmer; not only was there the expense and difficulty of the move, or perils such as Indians, sickness, prairie fires, or weather; but selling one's crop, except locally, could be an exercise in futility—even after the railroads were laid, they were few and far between (five great transcontinental lines that took twenty-odd years to complete, and almost no north-south lines to link them) and charged such ruinous storage and shipping rates that the homesteader might find himself operating at a loss. Until the era of dams and vast irrigation projects, the western country simply wasn't suited to large-scale croppage. From 1862-90 only 372,650 Americans took advantage of the Act, and most of those did so during the depression years of the '70's and '80's, fleeing from the crowded East. Approximately 2,000,000 people settled on 377,659 farms (5.29 people per), but statistics don't specify how long they stayed there. The "Federal" West—the public lands west of the Missouri tier and excluding Texas and the Indian Territory—equalled approximately 241,824,998.4 ac.; if the entrymen tallied above claimed an average of 320 ac. ea., the total taken was 119,248,000 ac.—less than half what was available—and many of these claims may have been failures or cattlemen's devices. In 1863-83, nearly 500,000 homesteading petitions were filed—many probably duplicates on land that had been abandoned by previous hopefuls—and in 1870-90, 430,000,000 ac. were settled, but only 225,000,000 (52.3%) were supposedly cultivated. Almost 48,000,000 ac. had been given away to nearly 400,000 homesteaders since 1863, and another 400,000,000 ac.-plus was distributed in other ways, such as in grants to railroads, but the vast majority of it went to corporations and speculators. By 1885, almost 1,400,000 sq. mi. (896,000,000 ac.) was devoted to cattle raising—44% of the land in the U.S. Five years later, about 600,000 farmers had received over 80,000,000 ac.[=133.3 ea.] under the Act, but most couldn't endure the five years of hardship to get title, and 2/3 had failed, while 500,000,000 ac. (9½:1) went to major landholders (cattlemen and speculators); the latter built up holdings of up to 600,000 ac. (937+ sq. mi.) by falsifying dates of occupancy, filing for free homesteads in different states (or Territories) and/or under different names, and stealing choice sites from settlers by legal chicanery. Overall, more than 1,500,000 homestead applications were made, but usually only 25% of original entrymen remained to patent their claims; in the more difficult regions and in hard times and panic, the number slipped to 10%. Many proved up as quickly as possible, then sold out to the highest bidder; or they mortgaged the claim for the biggest sum they could secure, never intending to redeem the pledge. (Since they were usually located some distance from town, where the bank was, it wasn't hard for them to pack up and "skedaddle," and the lender wouldn't suspect the truth till the due date for the customary quarterly payment passed by with no sign of the borrower.) Many others were migratory, starting over and over in as many as half a dozen places. In 1863-1900, in Nebraska alone, homestead filings totalled about 125,000, for some 20,000,000 ac. of land; but less than half of these lasted the requisite five years—and probably some of the survivors failed eventually.

Stephen Augustus Sherman, Slim's cousin (by his Uncle Luke), who appears in the closing scene, is the father (never introduced in the episode) of five-year-old Jimmy Sherman (Johnny Bangert), who figures prominently in the third-season Wagon Train segment "The St. Nicholas Story." His much older half-brother John (played by Harry Von Zell) followed him two years later, after Chris Hale had taken over the outfit, along with his wife, 12-year-old son John Jr. (known as "Sonny"), two whiteface beef cows, and "the best bull in the Midwest;" they appear in the fifth-season episode "Clyde."