Stonewall Goes West: A Novel of The Civil War and What Might Have Been (Stonewall Goes West Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mid-October morning.
    “This is something I love about Virginia,” Jackson said to himself. My home, he thought. The foothills of the Blue Ridge on a morning like this one. The crisp, cool autumn air, the golden sunlight. I can’t see it all, but I know the hills are alive with colors, green and red, yellow and orange. The Almighty blessed us in making this place, truly.
    Jackson dutifully turned his mind back to the task at hand. By his accounting, they were three hours behind schedule, and most of his corps remained snaked back around behind the hills. But they were finally here, and he was confident the enemy remained in ignorance of his movements. Greenwich and the enemy right flank were just four miles east of their position.

CHAPTER 2
    8:40 am
    II Corps, Army of the Potomac, USA
    Auburn
    Warren lowered his field glasses, looked to Caldwell, and said “Dammit, what took them so long?”
    The Confederates were in a line of battle, men marching almost elbow to elbow in two densely packed lines, filtering their way through the low, thinly wooded slopes on the edge of the forest. They stepped out onto the muddy fields, followed by a battery clattering out to the left, its four guns unlimbering alongside them. The butternut mass paused, ordered itself, and went forward.
    Warren took a dry swallow. “I’d say they have as least three brigades over there, wouldn’t you say?”
    Caldwell replied grimly “Yes. There might be another brigade or two back in those woods there. I reckon if there is a whole Confederate division here, they must have at least another brigade tucked away about here in some place or another.”
    Warren nodded, and then turned to Captain Ricketts, posted nearby with his Pennsylvania battery. “Open the ball, Captain.”
    Ricketts gave the order, and the Federal cannon boomed out, one gun after another. Each gun crew then set about reloading and firing at will, lobbing shell at the Confederate line roughly 900 yards away.
    The butternuts had almost no cover, only a stand of trees about halfway down the field and alongside Cedar Run or the odd depression in the fields, so they had to cross over half a mile’s worth of open ground under fire. Exploding shells burst over their heads, raining down jagged iron fragments, or in the muddy ground, sending up plumes of earth. The Rebels left a trail of wounded and dead as they advanced. When the grey line came up to 300 yards, the gunners changed from shell to canister, each shot flinging dozens of inch-wide iron balls into the Rebel ranks, cutting their targets down in swathes.
    Warren could see that the Confederates had Caldwell’s small division outnumbered by a margin of about three to two. When they got here, he thought, their line would extend from Cedar Run and lap around the hill, beyond Caldwell’s line. And then there was that reserve, menacing and unseen.
    He yelled to his aide “Send to General Webb. He is to bring his division up to behind the crest of this hill and stand in reserve. He is to exercise every precaution to avoid being observed from the west.”
    Riding over to Ricketts’s and Ames’s batteries, Warren issued more orders, telling them to concentrate their fire by the right, putting two-thirds of the artillery down on the danger.
    Warren looked on as Caldwell trotted behind his line, and when the Confederates came up to 150 yards, he drew his sword and shouted “Give them the blazes - fire! Fire!” Down the line, regiment after regiment leveled their muskets and fired a crashing, rolling volley. Caldwell shouted encouragement, but what he said was smothered by the din, as his men followed up the volley by firing at will.
    The butternut and grey line still came on. Too soon, Warren thought. Caldwell fired too soon. I would have waited until the Rebs were closer. The rifled musket might kill at a quarter mile, but most of the boys couldn’t hit anything anywhere near so far as that.
    The Confederates marched another few