The other man with the foundry on his mind was Lincoln. He vividly remembered the heat of the blast furnaces on his face and the smell of metal as it was cut and shaped by the great lathes and hammers. The place was as alive to him as a beating heart. He knew the Union could lose whole armies before it lost the foundry. He personally went to the War Department Telegraph Office and wired Hooker to protect it if he did nothing else.
Hooker did not need to be told twice. For all his defeat at Chancellorsville, Joseph Hooker was a remarkably good soldier. As a corps commander he had been one of the best the Union had produced. As an Army commander he had introduced innovative reforms that revitalized the Army of the Potomac and gave it the organization with which it had whipped Lee at Gettsyburg. Hooker was that rare transformational man who could see the future and summon it to the present. He had been Sharpe’s patron and the godfather of the first real professionalization of intelligence. Thus, he saw at an instant how vital the foundry was to the Union. The two corps that formed the striking power of his new Army of the Hudson would not arrive soon enough.
The aide had to fight his way through the crowds of Irishmen at Meagher’s recruiting offices to present Hooker’s instructions to report to him at once. Meagher was ushered immediately through the headquarters’ hive of activity into Hooker’s presence. The big, blond general rose and walked across the room, extending his hand to Meagher. “Tom, you don’t know how glad I am to have a Third Corps man I trust here. Congratulations on the promotion and the recruiting. Are you trying to bring the old corps back up to strength all by yourself?”
“Yes, if it includes my old brigade. I must have the Irish Brigade. I must bring it back to life.”
“Well, I doubt Lincoln will deny you anything with all the thousands you have recruited in so few days. But the President needs a bold man now, Tom, and I cannot think of a bolder man than ‘Meagher of the Sword.’ Come, let’s look at the map.” His finger touched down on Cold Spring just across the river from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “This is the situation, Tom. I have a direct presidential order to save the foundry. Without it, we would be hard pressed to stay in the fight. My two corps have not arrived, and neither has recovered from the Gettysburg bloodletting; together they might make one full-strength corps.”
He paused briefly, his thoughts running along a different path. “The Germans of XI Corps, you know, the ‘Damned Dutch,’ they ran at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Well, Tom, I ran at Chancellorsville, too, in a way. I ran away from command. I just lost faith in Joe Hooker. At least they had a better excuse. It’s a rare soldier who will not flinch when his flank is turned, and the enemy is shooting you in the back.” He looked out the window silently for a few moments, his thoughts lingering over that stricken field just over the Rappahannock in distant Virginia. His reverie broke, and his blue eyes were all business. “Well, Tom, both the Damned Dutch and I have a second chance.”
Meagher’s heart had been touched that his old commander would honor him with this confidence so straight from the heart. From his own heart, he said, “And well I should know it, General. I, who nearly swung on the Queen’s gallows and was sent to rot in the desolation of western Australia, was rescued by America, which gave me back my life and my hope. This is the land of second chances, and third and fourth, and is always generous to those who don’t quit. I am a living testament to that.” He paused, “And so will you, General, you and the Damned Dutch.”
Hooker half smiled to himself, buoyed by the Irishman’s pluck. “Well, back to the point. I must keep the regiments I have in the city or the people will panic. The smoke from Albany has terrified them, and they did not need much after John Bull sailed into the Upper Bay ten days ago. How many veterans can you assemble among your recruits? Just veterans.”
“At the very most, several hundred men I would trust with arms.”
“Draw arms, equipment, and uniforms for them immediately. I will write out the order now and arrange for the transports to take you there. Secure the foundry until I can send a brigade up there. Leave tonight with the men you can ready. ‘It is better to be at the right place with ten men than absent with ten thousand.’ I always thought Tamerlane had a perfect sense of these things.
“And Tom, think. If you are lucky, the redcoats will come.”
HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, ORANGE COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA, 3:40 PM, OCTOBER 5, 1863
Robert E. Lee’s style of military intelligence was old-fashioned in that like George Washington, he was his own intelligence chief. Over time, it was no match for Sharpe’s superior organization and resources, but it worked when it had to. This was one of those times.
Gettysburg had sorely tried not only the strength of his Army but its faith in itself. Twinned with the loss of Vicksburg, the South had lost almost sixty thousand men in those few days in July. The progress of defeat had seemed inexorable until Providence had set the British and the Yankees at each other’s throats. Now victory, so seemingly perched on the enemy’s shoulder, was offering her laurels again to the Confederacy, and Lee had leapt to grab them.
His intelligence sources told him accurately of the reinforcements stripped from Meade’s army and sent north to stem the British tide. That left Meade with barely sixty thousand men. Even with Longstreet’s corps at Chattanooga, Lee numbered his troops at fifty-three thousand, near parity. Given that he had always been heavily outnumbered, parity was a sheer, undreamed of advantage. He marched.
12
COLD SPRING, NEW YORK, 2:02 PM, OCTOBER 6, 1863
Meagher had reached Cold Spring early that afternoon. Upriver, the smoke from burning boats and towns was hanging over the Hudson Valley. Major General Paulet had followed Wolseley’s advice and ravaged his way south. At Albany and other river towns he had seized ships to carry raiding parties down the river to harry and panic the Americans. He had succeeded in sending waves of refugees from the river towns and farms south toward the city and into the countryside.
Meagher and his scratch command of barely two hundred men had gone upriver in a commandeered steamboat past hordes of craft coming south, their decks filled with refugees. The captain had refused to take them until Meagher had stuck his pistol in the man’s mouth and said, “I’m not joking, sir,” as he cocked the piece. The captain suddenly gushed cooperation and hastened the transfer of Meagher’s men aboard. A strange lot they were, too. Meagher had been lucky to find two hundred veterans among his horde of Irish volunteers. Half were from his old Irish Brigade, and most had been invalided out for wounds. There were too many limping legs and favored arms, but they were volunteers, and they wore their kit and handled their rifles as if it were second nature to them. He had seen more than one pair of eyes glow as man after man grasped the Springfield muskets fresh from the armory. Mc-Carter had arrived on the morning train. Meagher had promoted him sergeant major on the spot to pick the sergeants and corporals and whip them into the semblance of a unit in the few hours they had. Finding the uniforms had been impossible, all except the caps with the brass infantry bugle. The women had come to the rescue with red, white, and blue bunting armbands. That and the oath he administered would satisfy the laws of war that they were lawful combatants.
At the last moment, as the men lined the railings while the crew threw off the lines and the ship began to edge away from the dock, a carriage clattered up the dock with a young woman carrying a green flag on a staff. It was Libby, Meagher’s beautiful, young wife, her red hair bright around the edges of her bonnet. She alighted from the carriage and, carrying the flag, ran up to the ship. “Oh, Tom, Tom!” she cried out to the crowd on the railing. “Do not forget the flag, Tom!” It was the color of the 69th New York, one of the regiments of the Irish Brigade, and presented to him by the survivors when he had resigned. It had stood in the corner of his study ever since, ragged and stained with dust and blood, but its emerald green field and golden harp still were bright.