Lee put his hands behind his back and gazed out at the storm now lashing the open fields, gusts of wind causing the tent to billow and flutter.

"I've been ordered by the president to allow owners to repossess escaped slaves hiding here in Maryland."

"I know."

"Slave owners here may also lease their slaves to the Confederacy and send them south."

"And what will you do?" Judah asked. "You know what will happen; free blacks by the hundreds, maybe thousands, will be kidnapped in all the confusion."

Lee shook his head.

"I keep thinking of the logic of what Rabbi Rothenberg said. I will confess I find it difficult to imagine the black man as my social equal. But before God? That is what troubles me. Where would the Savior stand upon this question? That song the Yankees love to sing, 'as He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.' It does have power to it, even if it is nothing but rhetoric."

"And the president's orders?"

Lee said nothing for a moment.

"I'm sworn to obey all orders of my government"

"And will you?"

Lee looked over at Judah.

"Please don't press me. I find the order repugnant. But can I refuse, then expect the unswerving obedience of my own men? For in battle that is what I will need if we are to win."

"You can do so as a moral statement" Judah said. Lee looked at him appraisingly. Then he smiled and said nothing.

"Perhaps we can still resolve this issue by finishing the fight as quickly as possible," Lee finally replied.

"Do you honestly think you can do mat?"

"Mr. Secretary, if I were not confident that I can still win, now there would indeed be a moral question. I would have to tell the president that, and I have not done so. Yes, the odds are steep; their strength is gathering yet again. But on the other side, it is no worse than it was seven weeks ago when we crossed into Pennsylvania. I will have to face two armies. One, our old opponents, the Army of the Potomac. After Union Mills they will be off balance, terribly off balance, and nervous. I can exploit that. The second army? It is an unknown, but then again so are we to them. They are in strange territory as well.

'Tomorrow Wade Hampton will take his brigade north. I need to know more about Grant. We have newspaper reports, but they are unreliable, as you know. The position of their Nineteenth Corps is a crucial piece of information. Which army they are positioned with will indicate much."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to get some spies up there, or scouts? Though I'm no tactician, sir, I'll be the first to admit."

Lee smiled. It was an obvious reference to Davis's daily interference at the staff meetings, urging positioning of regiments, wishing to move them like chess pieces. Davis, as a former brigade commander himself in Mexico, and as secretary of war in the previous administration, did have a good head for things military. He had, in fact, been far less interfering than Lincoln. But in this campaign, sensing that victory was near, he had taken to interfering more.

"Please, sir, your advice is always welcome to me," Lee said.

"I'm uneasy about this raid you are ordering north of the Susquehanna." "Why?"

"The river is still swollen, places to ford are few. Just a thought on my part, sir."

"I want to stir them up. If we can penetrate, get the information I seek, then perhaps push farther, threaten Lancaster, or even Reading, or the outskirts of Philadelphia, it will trigger another panic, possibly renewed riots. I think it is worth the risk."

"Rabbi Rothenberg, with his love of Napoleon, told me that the Army of Northern Virginia is like Napoleon's army in June of 1815." "How is that?"

"Wellington and Blucher's armies. Together they would outnumber us. If you can drive a wedge between them, defeat one, and then turn upon the other, there is still a chance."

Lee smiled and said nothing. The intensity of the storm was at its height, sheets of cold rain lashing down, and he stood by the entrance to the tent, looking off, flashes of lightning arcing the sky.

Philadelphia

August 11, 1863 4:00 P.M.

Cpl. John Miller stood at attention under the blazing sun. He and the men of his company had been standing thus for the last ten minutes as their white drill sergeant paced up and down the line, delivering a lecture as old as the armies of Caesar, discussing with them their lineage, legitimacy, how "his" army had indeed fallen on hard times if the men before him were now part of it, how the best thing possible would be their complete slaughter on the first volley and other such minor threats.

The sergeant did not really know his audience. Most of the men around John had known nothing but a life of abuse and denial. Most of them were freemen, born in the North or in Baltimore. Nearly all had been laborers, farmhands, dock-workers, mill workers. For John, this session under the sun was a minor annoyance compared to being in Abbott's mill in July, when the hot iron was going through the rollers, sparks flying.

His body was a crosshatching of scars, deep burns, so many in fact that his white lieutenant, seeing him one evening with his shirt off, came up and sympathically asked if his master had whipped him. The young man was embarrassed when John told him about the scars, actually concerned that he might have insulted him by implying he had been a slave. That conversation, talking about his work in the mill, his being foreman to twenty colored workers, his knowledge of writing, even some of the literature he took pleasure in, resulted in the two stripes on his sleeve the next day and an increase in pay, which meant that Sarah and the children, staying with her sister, would no longer be dependent on kin for charity.

"All right, you benighted bastards, let's do it one more time," the sergeant roared.

"Forward march!"

The company line, eighty men formed in two ranks, stepped off, moving like an undulating wave across the parade ground. John, as corporal, on the right of the line, kept looking toward the center, carefully measuring his pace to match the sergeant's.

"Keep watching the center, keep watching the center," he hissed, reaching out to push the man next to him up. The line buckled and wavered, keeping some semblance of formation.

The sergeant, now marching backward, kept up a steady cadence count; most all the men had finally mastered that, the steady tramp of left, right, left, right

"Company, by the right wheel, march!"

John instantly stopped in place, the man behind him almost banging into him as he took one more step.

The line started to turn, again wavering, one man tripping in the front rank, stumbling, breaking up the center.

"Move it, double time, double time!"

The line swung, bent like a snake, almost disintegrated.

"Halt!"

"God in heaven above, preserve me," the sergeant cried, taking off his hat and throwing it on the ground. One of the men actually stepped forward to pick it up for him.

"Get back in line there! You're a soldier, not my goddamn servant. If I want my hat picked up, I'll order you!"

John could not help but grin slightly. The sergeant had not even realized he had just complimented them. He had called them soldiers, not servants. The finer nuance was not lost on many of the men, who, even while the sergeant was swearing, had been looking sidelong at each other, a flicker of a smile on more than one face.

If this sergeant wanted to stand them under the sun all day, swear and roar, march them back and forth, that was fine with them. Dawn to dusk in a mill in July-this was like Sunday in comparison.

John knew mat there was far more, however, than simple physical endurance that would be the final issue here. This new regiment had to learn to march, live, and fight as one. Just as in the mill, where a single misstep by one man could kill an entire crew. Something he had seen beyond counting, men turned to cinders by a blast of molten iron, caught in rollers, crushed in presses. Death and hardship were no strangers to him nor to the rest.