Read Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 for Free Online Page B

with wounded and hysterical boys struggling before the final fall into oblivion.
    He had seen it in the eyes of so many women, young girls, vacant-eyed fathers dressed in black. No longer would the gay tunes of a martial band bring a smile to their faces, only the memory of a son, a husband, a boy who had heard that music and marched off ... never to return.
    "God, will this ever end?" he whispered.
    "Sir?"
    It was Hay, stirring, looking up at him, ready to return to his desk to write down another memo, another order.
    Lincoln shook his head and made a soothing gesture with long, bony hands, motioning for his loyal secretary to go back to sleep.
    He went back over to his desk and sat down, absently sifting through the pile of papers, documents, and newspapers awaiting his attention. The flow was far heavier than usual, a pile awaiting him every morning, and no matter how fast he attempted to clear it, yet more came in throughout the day and night He pushed the papers back, tilted his chair, and rested his long legs up on the desk.
    The entreaties from members of Congress, those few still in the city and the rest from around the country, would have to be answered, but that could wait The majority were simply doing the usual posturing for the home press, so they could thump their chests and announce how they had advised the president most carefully on this latest crisis.
    The implied threat in more than one letter from Congress was clear. Some were already seeking a way to disenthrall themselves from support of the war, so they could claim all along that they knew the effort to save the Union would be a failure. Others were thundering about who was responsible for the disaster at Union Mills. Several members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War had announced that hearings would be held.
    There was even the issue of who was now in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was dead; Dan Butterfield had just made it back through the lines this morning, Hancock barely surviving. In his own mind he wondered if that army even still existed or should be quietly disbanded, survivors shifted into other commands. Troops were scattered from Harrisburg to the Chesapeake; the only thing protecting that broken remnant and the cities of the North from Lee was the flooded Susquehanna. Nominally, Couch, who commanded the twenty thousand militia hastily gathered at Harrisburg, controlled the district, but the job was far beyond the capability of a general who had asked to be relieved of field command only two months ago.
    Secretary of State Seward was reporting requests from a dozen ambassadors for interviews. Already dispatches were winging to the courts of Europe, with lurid details of the collapse of the Army of the Potomac, and tomorrow more would go out, announcing that the capital was under siege.
    How long?
    Stanton, puffing and wheezing, had arrived earlier in the evening, announcing that Stuart had been spotted in front of Fort Stevens, and then predicting that rain or not, Lee would strike tomorrow.
    He looked back out the window. The steady patter of rain had eased, a damp fog was beginning to roll in from the flooded marshland just below the White House.
    If he attacks, will Heintzelman be able to hold?
    The general was confident, but then again, nearly all of them showed confidence until the shock of battle hit Still, the positions were strong, the men within them dry, well fed, rested, ammunition in abundance. Though they were inexperienced compared to the battle-hardened men of the old Army of the Potomac, his sense of them was that they would fight. They had endured two years of jibes and, when they came into the city on furlough, even brawls with the men of the field army, who denounced the heavy-artillery units as garrison soldiers afraid of a fight.
    Dug in as they were, they'd fight, but there would be precious few reserves, with every fort on a perimeter of thirty miles having to be manned.
    He stood and walked back to