Lincoln wondered if promising to arrange the peaceable surrender of John Taylor would let him stay here and work to avert the tragedy he so plainly saw coming. Had he seen the slightest hope of success in keeping such a promise, he would have made it. But he did not think the Mormon president would surrender. Even had he reckoned Taylor willing, he did not think General Pope would let him make the arrangements. And he did not think that, if Taylor should surrender, Pope would do anything but hang him.
"North or south?" the military governor repeated. "That is the sole choice left you."
He was right. Knowing he was right saddened Lincoln as he had not been saddened since having to recognize the independence of the Confederate States. "North," he said.
Pope clapped his hands together. "And I win an eagle from Colonel Custer. He was ten dollars sure you'd say south. But for that, though, it matters little. During the War of Secession, you exiled me to Minnesota to fight redskins, and then lost the war anyhow. Now I get to return the favor, and, if you think it isn't sweet, you're wrong."
"I hope you don't lose the war here," Lincoln said.
Being in Pope's power, he was not suffered to have the last word. "There is no war here," the military governor said harshly. "There shall be no war here. Your going makes that the more likely. You leave tomorrow."
General Orlando Willcox studied the map of Louisville. "Give me your frank opinion, Colonel Schlieffen," he said. "Might I have been wiser to attempt a flanking movement than a frontal assault?"
Alfred von Schlieffen's frank opinion was that General Willcox would have made an excellent country butcher, but was less than ideally suited to command an important army-or even an unimportant one. He did not think Willcox would appreciate his being so frank as that. Instead, he said, "Perhaps you might have made a small attack here to hold the foe, and a larger one on the flank to beat him."
"That's what I have in mind doing now," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. "I have reinforcements coming; President Blaine is committing the resources of the entire nation to this fight. Instead of sending them straight into Louisville, I purpose invading Kentucky at another point farther east, whence I can take the Confederates' defenses of the city in the flank. What is your view of the matter?"
Again, Schlieffen could not make himself be so forthright as he might have liked. "What could have at the campaign's beginning been done and what can now be done are different, one from the other," he said.
"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," Willcox said. "But we have the Rebs well and truly pinned down inside of Louisville now, thanks be to God. They won't be able to shift quickly to respond to such a move now."
Some truth lurked at the bottom of that. How much? Schlieffen admitted to himself he did not know. He did not think the world had ever known a battle like this one. Sieges had been fought around cities, yes, but in all history before now had a siege ever been fought in the heart of a city? That, in essence, was what the fight for Louisville had become.
When he said so aloud, Willcox nodded. "That's just what it's turned into," he agreed. "The question is, are we the besiegers or the besieged?"
"Both at the same time," Schlieffen answered. "Each of you thinks you can the other force back, and so you both push forward- and you collide, and neither of you can go ahead or to fall back is willing. Have you ever seen rams bang heads together?"
"Oh, yes," Willcox said. "That's why I aim to try out this flanking manoeuvre. A ram that butted another in the ribs before it was ready to fight would tup a lot of ewes."
"Before it was ready to fight? Yes, in this you have right- are – right." Schlieffen corrected himself with a grimace of annoyance at his imperfect English. Anything imperfect annoyed him. "But if the second ram were already fighting, it would be harder to surprise."
"I don't even know whether this flank move will surprise the Confederates," Willcox said. "My bet is, surprised or not, they'll be too badly beaten up to do anything save ingloriously flee."
"You place on this bet a large stake," Schlieffen said, in lieu of asking Willcox where he was hiding his wits these days.
"Our cause being just, God will provide," the general said. "I have prayed over this decision, and I am confident it is the best thing we can do."
"Prayer is good," Schlieffen agreed from the bottom of his heart. "To prepare is also good. If you do not prepare, prayer asks of God a miracle. God will work a miracle when it suits Him, but suit Him it does not often."
"No, indeed," Willcox said. "If miracles were common, they would not be miracles." Schlieffen waited from him to draw the proper lesson from that. He drew… some of it. "We shall get these men into Kentucky and hurl them against the foe as expcditiously as possible."
Schlieffen took expeditiously to mean something like expedition, and had to have that straightened out, which Willcox did with patience and tact. The German military attache admired Orlando Willcox the man, who from all he could see lived an exemplary Christian life. He wished his opinion of Orlando Willcox the commander were higher. The man did not lack courage. He had the ability to inspire his subordinates. Both of those were important parts of the general's art. These days, though, the art entailed more.
"In Germany," Schlieffen said, "we would have done more planning before this battle began. We would have looked at the choices we might make. If so-and-so happened in the fighting in Louisville, we would have known we then needed to do this thing or that. We would have done the thing. We would not have had to think out on the spot what the thing would be to do."
Willcox looked at him with wide eyes. "We haven't got anything like that in the United States."
"I know you have not this thing in your country," Schlieffen said in the pitying tones he would have used to agree with a Turk that railroads were sadly lacking in the Ottoman Empire. "You have not in your country the understanding of a general staff."
"General Rosecrans heads up a staff in the War Department,"
Willcox said, shaking his head. "I have a staff here, and a sizable one, too."
"Yes, I have seen this," Schlieffen said. "It is not the sort of staff I mean. Your staff, when you decide the army will do thus-and-so, take your orders to the commanders of corps and divisions. They to you bring back any troubles these men may have with the orders."
"Yes," Willcox echoed. "What else are they supposed to do, for heaven's sake? Aside from the quartermaster and such, I mean."
"The staff of the War Department should have in peacetime been busy at making plans for how you would fight when you had to fight." Schlieffen remembered the incomprehension with which Rosecrans had greeted the idea of having ready-made plans to roll out in case of war, and his own dismayed astonishment at the U.S. general-in-chief's lack of preparation. "Your staff here should on a smaller scale the same thing do."
What he was trying to say was that Willcox shouldn't have decided on the spur of the moment to try a flanking manoeuvre against Louisville, and only then begun to make plans for such a manoeuvre. It should have been one of the possibilities all along, as thoroughly studied as any of the others. (So it was, zero equaling zero, but that was not what Schlieffen had in mind.) If and when the time came to use it, everything would be in place beforehand: railroad transport, manpower, artillery, supplies, so much of each, to be delivered to the right place at the right time. What the Army of the Ohio had instead was frantic improvisation. Some of it was inspired improvisation, as seemed to be the American way, but not all, not all.