Chapter 13

A s the: Louisville campaign ground on, Colonel Alfred Von Schlieffen found himself with ever freer access to Orlando Willcox and to the map-filled tent where the commander of the Army of the Ohio planned his operations. He found himself less and less happy each time he visited the U.S. general. It was too much like having ever freer access to a sickroom where the patient grew visibly more infirm as day followed day.

Brigadier General Willcox seemed uneasily aware of the wasting sickness afflicting his campaign, aware but doing his best to pretend he wasn't. "Good afternoon, Colonel," he said when he spied Schlieffen through the partly open tent fly. "Come in, come in. Ah, I see you have coffee. Very good."

"Yes, General, I have coffee. Thank you." Carrying the tin cup stamped USA, Schlieffen ducked his way into the tent and came over to stand beside Willcox. "The guns in the night were not noisier than usual. Have I right-no, am I right; this mistake I make too oftennothing new happened?"

"Nothing new," Willcox agreed with a small sigh. He stared down at the maps, at the blue lines and the red that had moved so much less than he'd hoped. "It's always good to see you here, Colonel. I want you to know that."

"You are too kind to a man who is not of your country," Schlieffen said.

Without looking over at the German military attache, General Willcox went on, "You always keep your temper. You never judge me.

My corps commanders, my division commanders-sometimes this tent gets like a kettle full of live lobsters over the fire. But I never hear recriminations from you, Colonel, and, if you send telegrams to Philadelphia, you don't send them to General Rosecrans."

Schlieffen hadn't heard the word recriminations before, but he didn't bother asking Willcox to explain it; context made the meaning plain. An army that was winning had little backbiting. When things went wrong, everyone was at pains to prove the misfortune could not possibly have been his fault.

Willcox said, "Tell me what you think of our position at the present time."

"Let me examine the map before I answer." Schlieffen seized without hesitation the chance to think before he spoke. He wished he had Kurd von Schlozer's diplomatic talents, so he might come somewhere near the truth without destroying the U.S. commander's good opinion of him. At last, he said, "I think it now unlikely that you will from the east into Louisville break."

Willcox sighed again. "I'm afraid I think the same thing, although, if 1 admit it to anyone but you, I'll see my head go on a platter faster than John the Baptist's after Herodias' daughter danced before King Herod. We came close; I'll wager we scared old Stonewall out of a year's growth. But in war, the only thing that does any good if it's close to where it ought to be but not quite there is an artillery shell."

That was an effective image; Schlieffen filed it away to use if and when he had the luck to return to General Staff duty in Berlin. He said, "In the salient you made with the flanking move, you still have most of your men on the line facing Louisville, and in other places not so many."

"Well, yes, of course I do," General Willcox replied. "I have orders that I am still to do everything I can to capture the city, and I must obey them."

"If you think you can do this, then naturally you… are right," Schlieffen said, pleased he'd remembered the English idiom this time. "If you think you cannot do this, and you leave your flank as weak as it is-"

"The Rebs looked to have a weak flank," Willcox said. "It got strong a lot faster than we wished it would have, and that's the Lord's truth. If the Confederates could stop us, I reckon we'll be able to stop them."

"This may well be so, but your situation here seems to me not to be the same as that of the Confederate States," Schlieffen said.

"And why not?" Willcox bristled at what was to Schlieffen a gentle suggestion of something so obvious a schoolchild should see it.

Patiently, the attache spelled it out in words almost literally of one syllable: "The Confederate States had more depth to use than you have now. They could halt you for a little while, fall back, halt you again, and so on. This is not something you enjoy. If they break through your trenches from the south, they will go into the rear of the main body of your forces there."

"Ah, I see what you're saying." General Willcox was mollified. Nonetheless, he brushed aside Schlieffen's concern. "We do have men enough and guns enough to make them pay a high price if they try that. Myself, I don't think they'll do it. All their attacks up till now have been aimed at the line closest to Louisville." Someone came into the tent. Willcox nodded a greeting. "What is it, Captain Richardson?"

After saluting Willcox and politely inclining his head to Schlieffen, the adjutant answered, "Sir, we just got a report that the Rebels have raided the stretch of trench the Sixth New York was holding."

After a glance at the map, Willcox turned triumphantly to Schlieffen. "There? Do you see? They persist in striking us where we are strongest." He spun back toward Oliver Richardson. "A raid, you say? They didn't break through, did they?"

"Oh, no, sir," Richardson assured him. "I'm sorry to say Colonel van Nuys was killed in the attack, but they seemed to be trolling for prisoners more than anything else-and, I daresay, paying back the Sixth for a raid yesterday. They captured a few men, then withdrew to their own entrenchments."

"Why even bring this to my notice, then?" Willcox asked. He took a longer look at the young captain. "And why, after a raid in which a colonel was killed, have you that smirk on your face?"

Schlieffen wondered if Richardson had an enemy in the Sixth New York, of whose demise in the raid he had heard. The adjutant had sounded properly regretful when reporting Colonel van Nuys' death, so Schlieffen doubted he was the man, if any man there were. He would not have wanted an officer who gloated at a comrade's death on his staff. By the building anger on Willcox's round face, the commander of the Army of the Ohio felt the same way.

And then Captain Richardson said, "Sir, you must know that Frederick Douglass has made the Sixth New York his pet regiment, and also the horse on which he mounts all his complaints about the manner in which you have conducted this campaign. He was with them today; I gave him a letter authorizing a river crossing this morning. And I have reports, sir, that he was among those whom the Confederates captured in this raid."

"Ah," Schlieffen said: a short, involuntary exclamation. His opinion of Captain Richardson recovered to some small degree. Disliking a reporter to the point of enjoying his misfortune was a lesser matter than similarly disliking a fellow officer. And Richardson had made no secret of his distaste for Douglass, though Schlieffen could not understand what, aside from being a Negro, Douglass had done to deserve it.

"Good God!" Willcox exclaimed, taking a point that had eluded the German. "Douglass has been a thorn in the slaveholders' side since long before the War of Secession. What will the Confederates do to the poor man, if he has been so unfortunate as to fall into their hands?"

"I don't know, sir, but my bet would be that they don't do anything good." Yes, Richardson sounded delighted at Douglass' discomfiture. English lacked the word Schadenfreude, but not the idea behind it. Men being the sinful creatures they were, no nation, Schlieffen was sure, lacked that idea.

He said, "But is he not protected from mistreatment as a civilian citizen of the United States?"

"The Confederate States seldom feel obliged to recognize any black man's rights of any sort," Willcox said.