"Sir, my scouts reported yesterday, and again today, that the Yankees have heavily fortified that crossing."

"We will move with speed. If God is willing, we will launch a surprise attack at dusk and overrun that position. They are, after all, garrison troops. Once the ferry is taken, the pontoon will be laid during the night, I will secure the position, and then, General Longstreet, you will withdraw down to it."

"Yes, sir, I think that is possible."

"Gentlemen," Lee sighed, "if we are finished as an offensive force, so is Grant. We return to Virginia and the war will continue. Perhaps what we've achieved here will be sufficient to overturn the Lincoln administration and victory can yet be ours."

He stood up, the gesture an indication of dismissal, and walked out from under the awning.

The rain was coming down steadily, not hard, just a constant drizzle. Through the gloom and smoke that still clung to the fields, he could see on the far side of the river hundreds of lanterns, bouncing about like fireflies, details of men looking for lost comrades, bringing in the wounded. All was silent except for distant cries of pain, prayers, pleas for help.

He lowered his head.

"My fault, it's all my fault now," he said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The War Office Washington, D.C.

August 29, 1863 4:00 A.M.

'The line is still down," Elihu Washburne announced, standing in the doorway of his office where Lincoln had spent the night, anxiously pacing back and forth. There was no need during the late morning and early afternoon of yesterday to be told there was a battle on. The rumble had been steady from the northwest until the rain finally came, buffering the sound.

And then the telegraph-line had gone dead. Rumor of that had spread through the city within minutes, anxious crowds gathering again around the White House, the War Department, and the Treasury Office, which was the hub for all the telegraph lines.

Lincoln had stayed in the War Office, not wishing to confront the crowds out in the street.

His pessimism had taken hold during the night. The line had gone down shortly before two in the afternoon. If it was only a temporary break, it should have been up again within minutes. The long hours of silence now told him but one thing. Grant had lost Frederick and was in retreat. The silence could only mean that.

What do I tell the nation now? He wondered. Be disciplined and wait for the facts, he counseled himself.

Dawn Gen. Ulysses S. Grant stood silently, then stretched and looked out over,the plains surrounding Frederick, Maryland.

He had not slept at all. The migraine, the sounds coming from every house in the town and from the surrounding fields, the horrid memory of the Confederate major, head blown off, connecting to the nightmares that still haunted him of a comrade dead in Mexico.

Phil Sheridan wearily came to his side, emerging from the gloom, the smoke, the fog wrapping the field, rising up from the Monocacy and the rain that had fallen throughout the night.

The battle fury was out of Phil; exhaustion was etched in his face and in the way he walked, shock overtaking him as well.

"It's a nightmare down there," Phil said softly, nodding a thanks as Ely handed him a cup of coffee, which he took in both hands. They trembled as he raised it to his lips.

"How could he do it?" Phil asked.

"Who?"

"Lee. My God, sir, he drove his men in relentlessly. It was madness, absolute madness."

"He had this one final chance," Grant said, "and felt he could grab it. If the shoe was on the other foot, we might have done the same."

"I've never seen anything like it before."

"We don't end this now, we might see it again," Grant replied. "It's finished this week or they could regroup across the Potomac and hang on for years."

Phil, still holding his coffee with trembling hands, looked over at Grant.

"I want pressure put on him."

"With what, sir? My corps is gone, McPherson's, Ord's. Sir, I never thought I'd admit something like this, but the army is fought out."

"I'm not talking a full-scale attack," Grant replied. "Even if I wanted to, the men are finished, at least for today. But we still must find a way to keep pressure on Lee, no matter what."

He looked away from Phil.

In one sense Phil was right. The Army of the Susquehanna was indeed fought out. Three out of the four corps that had marched with him only days ago were hollow, burned-out wrecks. McPherson's had taken the worst of it. Down to less than fifty percent after the first day, more than half of those surviving becoming casualties in repulsing Lee's final charge.

Yet, was it not at least as bad or even worse on the other side of Monocacy Creek this morning? Ord in his sacrifice had all but destroyed Early and part of another division. Phil's stand in what all now called the Hornets Nest had shattered Robertson, one of Lee's elite divisions, and savaged parts of two other divisions. Of the three divisions Lee had launched in the charge against Frederick, at least half of those men still littered the fields.

Grant had gone back into the town shortly before dawn. The grisly task of dragging out the Confederate dead was still going on. Fourth Street, for two blocks, was unlike anything he had ever seen, and he prayed he would never see the like again.

Every house in the town was a hospital or a morgue. Several hundred of his men, and all the available civilians, were already at work at the edge of town, digging mass graves.

In one frightful case, a woman had discovered her own out in the street, her husband and son, both with a Confederate regiment. She dragged them into her house and was found a half hour later in her bedroom, having hanged herself.

An argument had ensued when the men who discovered her and found her suicide note had gently removed her body, found the bodies of her husband and son in the parlor, and carried them out to be buried together. A town minister presiding over the burials refused to bury her in what he said was consecrated ground. One of the soldiers leveled a revolver on him, and the service continued.

It was the talk of the men this morning. Strange how one such tragedy became a metaphor for all the madness and tragedies. A delegation of citizens had sought Grant out, demanding that the soldier be found and arrested for having threatened a man of the cloth. He said he would. He watched them leave, and did nothing. The soldier who drew the revolver was right; she was a casualty of this war the same as her husband and son.

He had received word Ord was a prisoner; more than half of his division and brigade commanders were dead or wounded, but this army still had to fight. That had always been the mistake of the Army of the Potomac in the past. The Army of the Potomac had fought battles but had never been able to sustain a campaign. A battle can go on for a few very hard, bitter days, but then it dies out from sheer exhaustion. A campaign is not just one day, or two, or three… a campaign is a continuum until either one side or the other can no longer stand up… and he still had enough men standing to press the issue. Battles had proven they were indecisive and could not end the war. But a campaign pressed home with sufficient resolve just might get the job done and end the killing once and for all.

Phil finished his cup of coffee, and an enlisted man came up, offering him a plate with some fried salt pork. Phil paled and shook his head.

"I need you to keep the pressure on Lee," Grant said again.

"I realize that, sir," Phil finally replied. "I can still muster maybe three thousand out of the Ninth Corps."

"What's left of Ord's is in your hands as well," Grant said. "Yes, sir."