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 the window.

He wondered how President Madison had felt, standing here, watching as the couriers came riding in, announcing the disaster at Blandensburg, the fact that the British would be in the city by nightfall.

And yet the republic had survived that. There was never a question of surrender then, nor with George Washington after the fall of Philadelphia, when Congress moved to the frontier outpost of York.

For Washington in 1777 and Madison in 1814 it had been a question of will. It was the same challenge for him this night

Tonight, he knew that in a fair part of those states still loyal, will was evaporating, burning away under the heat of this war. As the horrific tally from Union Mills was tapped out to distant telegraph stations across the land, the victory at Vicksburg would be washed away in a sea of mourning and recriminations.

He was almost grateful that the city was now cut off. The chattering of most of the voices of condemnation or outright surrender would gratefully be silent in this office.

I could end this tomorrow, he thought. End it and send those boys home. A month, a year from now they would still be alive, for chances are, if this continues, they will die, if not tomorrow or the day after, they will perish nevertheless in the battles still to be fought.

He thought again of Antietam, the washed-out graves, rotting corpses half out of the ground. He remembered one in particular, obviously a boy of not more than sixteen, face visible in the clay, wisps of blond hair, decaying lips drawn back in a death grimace, silent, granite-like eyes gazing up at him as he rode past Somewhere-in Maine, Ohio, or Indiana- there was a family, sitting in a parlor, who read of that boy, the name in small print, the only sound the tick-tock whisper of the clock marking out the passage of their lives, and in their hearts was the question of why did their boy die? And they were asking that again tonight with more news of defeat Why did my boy die for a cause that seems lost?

Perhaps they hoped that there was some meaning, some cause, a dream beyond that of any individual, that their son had been drawn into that storm and disappeared forever, and yet there would be ultimate purpose, a deeper grief, that in the end would be replaced by a knowledge that through him, others now lived, that from the rich earth of his grave, something now was given back to all… forever.

What would they think this night? A logic he had always held in contempt was that the sacrifice to Mars must, at times, be sustained by yet more blood sacrifices to assuage those already dead. To give in was to render meaningless the sacrifice of all those who had already died.

And yet, this night, he did see truth in it If the war could still be won, then to surrender now would be to render meaningless all the sacrifice gone before, even that sacrifice upon the bloody slopes of Gettysburg and Union Mills.

Can it be won?

He thought of two conversations of the last week, both of them so clear in intent, not the self-serving maneuverings of the political circles about him, rather the simple statements of two soldiers who had been there. Henry Hunt, who had witnessed all of it, and in tears had asked that leaders be chosen that were worthy of the men who served beneath them. He and General Haupt, who so coolly and without emotion had said that if the men could be found, he, Haupt, could marshal the supplies and equipment to support them within a matter of weeks.

That now focused him.

Grant, more than any other, had proven his worth, and he knew without doubt that here was the general he had sought for two long years. A general who understood what he as the president of a free republic expected to be done by the army of that republic. He knew that Grant fully understood the relationship between a civilian government and its general in the field… that upon accepting command to scrupulously follow the orders of the president, which were simple, at least in concept… relentlessly move forward, unleash the full power of the North, and implement a coordinated military plan to bring about a speedy victory.

Ultimately though, that decision-the decision to refocus the industrial might of the nation, to place that might into the hands of those few men still willing to volunteer, and to let the frightful dying continue-now rests with me. Do I have the will to see it through?

He looked down again at the soldiers on the lawn. Several were gathered around a lantern, playing cards, another crowd leaning against a lamppost, trying to read the latest newspaper.