Brown had figured out long ago what had happened at Fort Stevens, how Hazner had knocked him cold with a single blow and dragged him from the line. The colonel still had an arm in a sling from that fight, the wound healing slowly. The only comment he had ever made on that terrible day was an offhand "Hazner, at times you are one hell of a headache," a tacit acknowledgment and no more that Hazner's direct action had undoubtedly saved his life.

"Lot of hoopla down on the road," Brown ventured.

"Yes, sir, the heavy-siege train is here."

'Took long enough."

Hazner chuckled. A cavalryman had joined the regimental mess for dinner one night and regaled them with stories about the serpent-like crawl of the heavy guns, the need to rebuild bridges so they could pass, the endless delays, all this effort to drag half a dozen guns only thirty miles to the front line.

"Think we'll attack?" Hazner asked.

Brown smiled and shook his head.

"Sergeant, perhaps I should ask what you think."

"Sir, you're the colonel; I'm just a sergeant"

"You have as much sense of all this as I do, Sergeant; please educate me as to your opinion."

"Well, sir," Hazner began expansively, inwardly delighted at the deference Brown now showed him, "there's only eight rows now of abatis to go through, a ditch half a dozen feet deeper than it was before, fortress walls half a dozen feet higher, and maybe fifteen thousand more Yankees behind it. Do you honestly think, sir, that General Lee will go straight in again?"

Brown smiled.

"The Yankees could have moved those guns in a couple of days," Brown said, thinking of the power of the Union railroads and steamships.

"That's the Yankees, not us."

Brown shook his head.

"Damn war, thought it would be over by now." "We all thought that, sir," Hazner said absently, chewing and spitting a stream of tobacco juice.

He remembered his old friend, killed at Union Mills, his journal still in his haversack. How together they had marched off two years ago, two boys ardent for some desperate glory, believing that it would be over by Christmas and they'd come home heroes. His friend was dead, buried in some mass grave in front of Union Mills, and now he stood here, looking at the Capitol dome, so close and yet such an infinity of death away.

"Maybe those six heavy guns will start something," Brown opined. "I just pray to God it doesn't mean we go in against that fort again."

"Amen to that, sir, amen to that."

Washington, D.C. The White House

August 15,1863 3:00 P.M.

President Lincoln turned away from the window and looked back at his Cabinet. Another thumping sound struck the windowpane, rattling it, all else in the room silent.

The bombardment had been going on since dawn, every two to three minutes another salvo, deeper-sounding than the fire of the previous weeks, clearly the pounding of heavy artillery against Fort Stevens. At night the sky to the north flashed and glowed from the bombardment, civilians out in the street, gathering in small knots, looking expectantly northward, talking nervously.

The city had been under siege for nearly a month and the strain was showing in every face. Every day rumors swept the city that the rebs had broken through, were falling back, had crossed the Susquehanna, had retreated back to Virginia, that renewed riots were sweeping the cities of the North, that France had declared war… and throughout it all he had learned to remain calm, sphinx-like, detached from both the rumors and the emotions.

He returned to his chair and sat down. Beside him Stanton rustled some papers and Lincoln nodded for him to continue.

"As I was saying, Mr. President. It appears that General Lee is advancing on Washington with his entire army now reinforced with the men brought north by Beauregard."

"And you anticipate an attack?"

"Yes, sir."

"How soon?"

"Within two to three days. Their siege batteries are giving an unmerciful pounding to Fort Stevens."

"How unmerciful?" Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, asked.

"Several guns have been dismounted." Welles sniffed derisively.

"Edwin, modem weapons simply are not effective against well-dug-in positions. Fort Pulaski in front of Savannah proved that older masonry forts are vulnerable to rifled guns, but a heavy earthen position, you can waste twenty tons of powder and shell against it, and in a single night a regiment of engineers armed with shovels can make it right again. I think we are overreacting."

"I beg to differ," Stanton sniffed.

"Gentlemen, we've conducted a dozen such operations with the navy since the start of this war, and always the situation favors the defenders," Welles replied forcefully. "Until someone comes up with a new way of attacking or a new explosive that can level forts like Stevens, this is an exercise in futility, and I don't see General Lee engaging in such futility."

"So why would he bother then?" Stanton replied heatedly.

Lincoln held out his hand for silence. "Gentlemen, we are at the crisis," he announced. Gideon Welles smiled and nodded in agreement "Indulge me for a moment please," Lincoln continued. No one spoke.

He settled back in his chair, tempted to put his feet up but in such a formal setting that was of course impossible.

"Some thought that Gettysburg and Union Mills were the crisis, but I realize now that they were not. Terrible as those four days were, they were but the opening of the first act in the confrontation that will decide this war.

"Yes, the Army of the Potomac was savaged in that fight, and God forgive us, ten thousand or more families will forever mourn those terrible days, but that was not the confrontation that would decide this crisis. It is now, this day and the next month, that will decide it."

"Sir. There might very well be seventy thousand or more rebel troops just outside the city this morning," Stanton announced. "In that I agree with you, the crisis has arrived, but I must beg to ask, what do you propose to do?"

"Nothing."

Stanton, flustered, set the papers he was holding back down on the table.

"We have forty-three thousand troops in the city, nearly a third of them well-seasoned veterans from Charleston. Frankly, if they can't hold the city, then I would venture to say we don't deserve to hold this city or win this war."

Gideon smiled in agreement.

"And those men are backed up by a dozen ironclad gunboats, a thousand marines, and three thousand sailors," the secretary of the navy threw in.

"And I still maintain that we should shift the Nineteenth Corps down here," Stanton replied heatedly. "They are doing nothing but lounging about up on the Susquehanna and I don't see Grant using them to any effect."

"I queried General Grant about their use in my last letter," Lincoln replied calmly, "and he said he preferred to keep them under his direct command. Gentlemen, I will not gainsay our new commander of the armies on this issue."

Stanton started to open his mouth to speak, but a sidelong look from Lincoln stilled him.

"That is final," Lincoln said softly.

Stanton nodded, crestfallen at this near-public rebuke.

"Anything else? I'd like to go up to Stevens to have a look around and then to the hospitals."

"Mr. President, the French," Secretary of State Seward said. "Go on."

"We know for a fact that the French consul in Baltimore sent a report out under a French flag. It should be in Paris by now."

"Wish we had that ocean telegraph line up," Welles interjected. "I'd love to know what is happening over there today. Perhaps the dispatching of some of our ships to the coast of France as a show of force might be required."

"I would advise against that at the moment," Seward replied. "It would only serve to provoke."

"Provoke, is it? He's the one meddling in Mexico. The English and French are helping to keep the Confederacy alive. Talk about a provocation!"