Cain at Gettysburg Read Online Free PDF

George?” Reynolds asked.
    Captain Meade turned back to his father. “A message from General Halleck, sir. Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry captured a wagon train at Rockville. Smack in our rear, between us and Washington. They made off with a hundred and fifty wagons.”
    In the sliver of quiet that followed, summer’s hum swamped the noises of the camp.
    â€œWell, George,” Reynolds said at last, “it seems you’ve found General Stuart.”

TWO
    June 29
    â€œGeneral Stuart will not let us down,” the old man said. “I expect to hear from him at any hour.”
    Longstreet grunted. “It wouldn’t hurt him to worry less about getting into the Richmond papers and more about his duty to this army.”
    â€œGeneral Stuart will not let me down,” Lee repeated.
    The two men sat on camp stools under an elm tree, a few steps from Lee’s tent. The air was hot and thick, with dark clouds rolling. Out on the road, an artillery battery passed between lines of infantry, all of them bound for the high hills to the east. The men on foot heckled the mounted gunners, their words unclear in the distance, but their tone unmistakable to anyone who wore a uniform.
    Longstreet was sour. He liked Stuart well enough, was even fond of him, but the man had grown too confident. Perhaps they all had. Even the ideal gentleman before him, with his immaculate uniform—worn despite the heat—and his well-groomed beard.
    Reading his mind, Lee added, “Stuart’s young. High-spirited. We don’t want to break those spirits.” The old man thought about his own words, then half-sighed. “They’re all so young.”
    Yes, the army’s officers were young. And getting younger. Not least after Chancellorsville, that magnificent victory, Jackson’s crimson sepulchre. Jackson had been the noted loss, but there had been so many others, all of their deaths eclipsed by his alone. The army could not afford many more such triumphs. The Union could replace men, the South could not. They had to fashion their battles after Fredericksburg, not Chancellorsville. Make the Federals charge a wall of fire. Bleed them. Raise the cost intolerably.
    â€œWell, while we’re waiting for General Stuart to grace us with his presence,” Longstreet said, “perhaps Imboden’s unwashed slave-catchers could spare some time from chasing niggers to go on a scout?” He made as if to spit, but did not. Spitting was a habit Lee deplored. “The irregulars are worthless, all of them. Worthless and useless. They disgrace this army, sir.”
    Longstreet’s outburst left the old man aggrieved. In silence, the two men looked past the cluster of tents and the soldiers at their labors. The road in the middle distance, a tunnel of dust, belonged solely to the infantry now. Men plodded forward.
    The commanding general and his favored subordinate had pitched their headquarters near to one another, the way it always went now. Lee’s quartermaster had chosen a picnic spot for the encampment. “Shatter’s Woods,” the locals called it, a name the soldiers soon altered by one vowel.
    â€œThere are matters,” the old man said at last, “that trouble us both, I think. But Mr. Davis has his political flanks to guard, as we have our military flanks. The runaway-slave issue excites certain factions in Richmond.”
    â€œFactions conspicuous by their absence on any battlefield.”
    Both men chose to let the subject go. But Longstreet had been bitten by a scene he’d witnessed while riding to the artillery trains. Judging his importance by his retinue, a captive darkey, the tiniest man in a rope chain of a dozen, had called to him, “I’m no runaway, Gen’rul, I’m a freeborn man, I’m freeborn!” A cavalryman in a ragged pretense of a uniform had smashed the man across the face with his pistol, knocking him down. To Longstreet’s