“Sir.”
Lee slowly turned to his Third Corps commander. “Yes?”
“They have always come to us,” Longstreet said. “Now you’ve just twice ordered us to go to them.”
“Your recommendation?” Lee asked brusquely.
“My corps is ready to keep marching out on the roads west of town,” Longstreet said. He knelt in the dirt at Lee’s feet and sketched his plan as he spoke. “Let me march hard south and then east. Swing around the Union army. Take up a position between them and Washington. I’ll find good terrain for the defense. Meade will have to come to us. This will give you time to disengage Ewell and Hill and bring them around to hit the Union on the flank.”
Lee was watching the battle, barely bothering to glance down at Longstreet’s dirt drawing. “We still do not know how much of the Union we have engaged here,” Lee said. “IT Meade is coming at us piecemeal, as I believe he is, we should take the fight to him now. Here. Before he can gather his forces.”
Longstreet got to his feet. He glanced up at the sun. “It’s late.”
“Ewell can take that ridge,” Lee whispered fiercely.
On Cemetery Ridge, General Hancock was slowly sorting out the confused Union situation, repositioning the forces that had been routed from Seminary Ridge and thrown back through Gettysburg in headlong retreat.
“Sir.”
One of his division commanders had just ridden up, blood dripping from a wound on his scalp.
“Yes?” Hancock asked, scribbling one order after another and handing them to couriers, all basically saying the same thing. Hold. At all costs.
“There’s two Confederate corps down there in the town and around it. And my flankers tell me that Longstreet’s corps is to the west. We have to pull back.”
Hancock had been at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg. He’d spent a night with a corpse covering his body from the Confederate snipers who shot anything that moved. He reached up and physically pulled the division commander off the horse and dragged him stumbling forward to the stonewall.
“Do you see that? Do you see the field of fire we have here? Those Rebels are going to have to come to us across that.” Hancock gave an evil grin. “They’ll learn what it feels like before this is over. They’ll learn it hard. Get back to your division and hold. I don’t care if you lose every man. You’ll hold with your dead bodies, damn it. Move.”
The sun was lower and Lee could no longer wait. He finally got on his horse and rode to Ewell’s headquarters. He was shocked to find Ewell standing with his staff, no orders for an advance given, no preparation made.
· “General.” Lee bit the word off. “Did you receive my order?” Lee knew that Ewell was new to corps command. Always before, it had been Stonewall who he had sent his orders to. Stonewall Jackson would already be pressing home the assault Lee knew.
“Yes, sir I did,” Ewell said. “But I sent a courier to Hill and he said he could not support my attack. And your order said assault only if it were practicable. And sir, my men have been hard tasked today.”
“So have the Federal’s,” Lee snapped. He pulled up his field glasses and peered up at Cemetery Ridge in the dying light. He could see new unit flags there. Two more Union corps at least.
Lee put a hand on Ewell’s shoulder. “The day is about done any way. Take defensive positions for the night. I’ll send you orders later for the morning. We’ll take it up again tomorrow.”
Lee went to his horse and mounted. He paused in the saddle, looking up at the Ridge one last time and the ground in between. His stomach lurched. At first, he thought it was the soldier’s curse again, but then he knew the truth. The moment — that one moment that comes in every battle and bad to be seized — bad been lost. The initiative that he had told Longstreet was so important was now gone.
Lincoln threw the newspaper down on the desk. “They dare call me a dictator.”
Early in the war, Lincoln had suspended the rite of habeus corpus, the constitutional guarantee by which a person could not be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with a specific crime. He’d done it so he could silence many of the most vocal opponents to his policies.
“You do what is necessary,” Mary said.
The ever-present map was underneath the newspaper. Even with the war going on. the country was expanding. Kansas. Nevada, and West Virginia were now states. Hundreds of thousands were migrating west. There were real plans now for a transcontinental railroad.
There was a knock on the door, and a courier from the War Department walked in and handed Lincoln a telegram, leaving as quietly and as quickly as he’d entered. Lincoln opened it.
‘’The battle has been joined.”
The center column once more took up the march, moving ten miles forward to Isandlwana. The road back to Rorke’s Drift was just to the south of the outcrop, passing over a rise between it and Stony Hill. To the north, Isandlwana was attached to the Nqutu Plateau by a narrow spur. To the east was a wide-open plain, cut by a donga beyond which there was a conical hill.
Chelmsford deployed his column on the front slope of Isandlwana. He was very pleased with the position as he had excellent observation and fields of fire to the east. The direction from which any Zulu attack might reasonably be expected to come from Ulundi, Cetewayo’s capital.
However, once more he did not order the column to take the rudimentary defensive preparations. The wagons were not circled up, breastworks were not built and no pickets were placed on the top of Isandlwana. Cavalry pickets were sent out by the militia commander, but one of Chelmsford’s staff officers recalled them, saying that they were too far away and of no use up there.
The night of the 20th was an uneasy one for the more experienced men in the camp but it passed without incident.
Already having split his force into three columns, Chelmsford compounded things early on the morning of January 21 by splitting up the center column. He sent mounted troops and sixteen companies of militia under Major Darnell of the Natal Mounted Police to scout to the southeast, searching for the Zulu. His orders were to return before darkness.
Chelmsford himself stayed in camp, spending most of the day in his tent. In the afternoon, he rode out north, to the Nqutu escarpment. Where he saw Zulu for the first time — a half dozen warriors who immediately fled. As he rode back to camp, Chelmsford was met by a messenger from Darnell who reported encountering a large force of Zulus, somewhere between five hundred and a thousand warriors, about ten miles from camp.
Most disturbing to Chelmsford was the addendum to the report in which Darnell stated that he was bivouacking for the night in place and requesting reinforcements. Irritated that Darnell had failed to comply to the letter of his orders. Chelmsford denied the request for reinforcements.
That night’s sleep was Dot as restful for the commander of British Forces. He was awoken at 0130 in the morning by another messenger from Darnell. The messenger, who had left Darnell while it was still light out, had had difficulty finding his way back to the main encampment, thus the late arrival.
The message reported that the Zulu force in front of Darnell had been reinforced and now numbered well over two thousand warriors and once more requested reinforcements.
Chelmsford was now in a bit of dilemma. Darnell’s contingent was too small to engage the Zulu force. Yet it was large enough to be an attractive target for the Zulus to attack. Chelmsford also had his doubts about the militia element supporting Darnell and their ability to fight. On the other hand, he figured that if Darnell was in serious trouble, he would have withdrawn by now, many hours after the original message had been written.