Hood looked over to Stuart as if seeking support. Lee followed his gaze and could see Stuart lower his eyes. He was troubled as well.

"Why this bad feeling, General Hood?" Lee asked, his voice pitched softly, almost deferential.

"Sir, we won the most glorious victory of the war little more than two weeks ago, but it came at a terrible price. Pettigrew, who will lead off the assault here, took nearly fifty percent casualties. My other divisions, on average, still are down by twenty percent or more."

"Reinforcements are promised," Lee offered and instantly regretted the statement. It sounded like an attempt at justification. Hood was talking about tomorrow, not what Davis had promised and what most likely would not arrive for weeks.

"Go on, General," Lee said.

"Though well fed these last six weeks, the men are exhausted; many are ill from the weather and the heat. If I go in tomorrow, sir, at best I can muster twenty thousand rifles."

"I am aware of that, sir. The question is, with those twenty thousand, can you take those works?" He pointed back toward the city.

Hood looked around at those gathered, the staff standing deferentially in the background. No general ever wanted to admit that he could not do the task assigned. He took a deep breath.

"I can take the works, sir."

"Good. I will leave the details to you, General. Fort Stevens will be the center of the attack; I need this road to move up our following units. General Longstreet's men will push into the city once you have cleared the way."

The look in Hood's eyes made him pause. Yet again it was rivalry, the sensitivity of who would claim what. He offered a smile.

"General, when we take the White House, you will be at my side."

"It's not that, sir." "What then?"

"Sir, I will have no command left to march into Washington." "Sir?"

"Just that, General Lee. I have twenty thousand infantry fit for duty in my divisions. I will lose half of them taking that fort and clearing the way for General Longstreet. The men will be charging straight into thirty-pounders loaded with canister; they throw nearly the same weight as all the guns we faced atop Cemetery Hill two weeks ago. There are some hundred-pounders on that line; a single load of canister from one of those guns can drop half a regiment."

Lee lowered his head, the memory of that debacle still haunting him.

"General Longstreet, sir, has barely twenty thousand under arms as well and, sir, once the outer ring cracks, we might have to fight Washington street by street, clear down to the Naval Yard. I must ask, sir, after that, then what?"

All were silent. Lee looked from one to the other and knew that General Hood had asked the most fundamental question of all. The answer had seemed easy enough two weeks ago; the objective was to destroy the Army of the Potomac, to take it off the field. They had achieved that… but still the war continued.

If we take Washington, then what? For over a year he had fought under the assumption that if indeed Washington fell, the war was over, but now he wondered. The thought of capturing Lincoln, of having Lincoln and Davis then meet, like Napoleon and the czar at Tilsit, to talk and to sign a peace, was that realistic? He rubbed his eyes, picked up a tin cup of coffee someone had set by his side, and sipped from it, gazing at the map, but his mind was elsewhere.

I must keep this army intact. That is what Hood is driving at. If we take Washington but bleed ourselves out, if we have only twenty thousand infantry left, the victory will be a Pyrrhic one. We would be driven from the city and lose Maryland within the month. I must now spend this army wisely. It is all that we have and we cannot form another the way the Union is most likely creating a new one at this very moment.

"General Hood, you were right to ask that, to remind me," Lee said softly, setting down the cup of coffee.

"Our objective is to win this war before autumn. We cannot sustain ourselves at this pace much longer. We must try, however, for Washington. This is the best chance we will ever have to take it"

Hood sighed, then slowly nodded in agreement.

"President Davis will be here within the week. If we can take Washington and present it to him, it will be the fulfillment of the campaign we started a year ago before the gates of Richmond. It will demonstrate to our people, to the North, and to the world that we are a viable nation."

He was silent for a brief moment, then continued.

"But we cannot bleed ourselves to death while doing it"

"Then we attack and pay the price?" Hood asked.

Lee stepped away from the table and walked out from under the awning and back toward the road. The men laboring on the makeshift bridge were still hard at work, struggling to drag the second tree trunk into place. He walked slowly up the slope. The fog was breaking up, swirling coils burning away in the morning heat. The dim outline of Fort Stevens was visible as he reached the top of the low rise.

The ground ahead was clear cut, trees removed; the fields that had once been orderly, planted with corn or wheat, were now weed choked, barren, offering no cover. He could imagine his lines going forward across those fields, the guns of the forts tearing gaping holes into the ranks, the charge hitting the abatis, men tangled up, stopping to cut their way through, stumbling into the moat thick with mud and slime. Even the greenest of troops behind those fortifications would turn it into nothing more than murder, the finest infantry in the world mowed down in a stinking moat by garrison soldiers in spotless uniforms.

He shook his head. Hood was right. His men were too precious for this. Yet he had to do it. If he did not, that in itself would be a victory for the North. Davis would not understand, though that was not his concern at this instant. He had to conceive a victory here, a victory that justified the blood shed at Gettysburg and Union Mills.

He studied the field intently, the open ground free of obstacles, the unfinished dome of the Capitol most likely visible once the fog lifted. It would be lit up with gaslight at night, a beacon, a dream so tantalizingly close, and just beyond that, Arlington and home. How many nights did I sit on the porch, the boys playing in the front yard-not yet soldiers, one of them a prisoner-the lights of the White House just across the river.

He stood there and the plan formed at last.

Looking back over his shoulder he saw Hood and Stuart waiting expectantly, the others standing behind them.

He forced a smile.

"We go in at night, gentlemen. That is how we will take it. At night." He smiled as he gave the order.

"At night, with surprise, we'll be into their works before they know it."

Hood and Stuart smiled and, turning, they left him, already giving orders, leaving him alone with his thoughts and dreams

July 17 1863 7.30pm.

Gazing out the window of the train as it raced across the broad, open countryside of Ohio, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant found his attention wandering for a moment He tried to ignore the pounding intensity of the migraine headache that had bedeviled him since last night. But of course nothing would work except for that oblivion from a bottle, which he most definitely could not indulge.

As the train took a gentle curve, heading southeast, long shadows of the cars, cast by the setting sun, reached out across the open fields. The land was rich, the last of the winter wheat being harvested, fields of corn more than waist-high, weeds and honeysuckle engulfing the split-rail fences that bordered the railroad. The train raced past a barn; a farmer and his two boys driving cows in for the evening milking paused, looked up, took off their hats, and waved.

Thoughts drifted back to his own boyhood as he absently rubbed his temples, to the hardscrabble farm not far from here, and his desire to escape its labors, a desire that had taken him to West Point, an institution that glorified a business that would sicken many a butcher. The army had been, at first an escape, then a burden so intense he had left it Only this war had brought him back into uniform. And now he was in command.