“Yet you have not sought fame or flattery. All you have asked for in return for your service is confidence from your men and a great battle to fight. A grateful nation salutes you.”
“Excellent, Colonel,” said Jackson. “Please call the men of the Black Horse and the Stonewall Brigade around.” So the old man wants a public ceremony, thought Canon, leaving the tent. He signaled for a bugler to blow company call. The men came running.
“Attend the general,” Canon shouted, and Jackson stepped out of the tent. Jackson walked up to Canon, turned and faced the gathered men.
“Rabe Canon,” he called out, “you are a true hero. Neither a man nor woman, hardly a child in the South goes to bed at night without saying a prayer for your safety. Yet you have asked for little in return. All you have asked for is the confidence of your men and a great battle to fight.
“For bravery and leadership in the field at Manassas, you are hereby brevetted brigadier general and are forthwith commander of the Stonewall Brigade and the Black Horse Cavalry. A grateful nation salutes you.
“Congratulations, General Canon.”
With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and a step slightly more jaunty than usual, Stonewall Jackson pinned his own brigadier star on the collar of a startled Canon, then walked back to his tent, leaving a new general to the roaring shouts of his men. The celebration that night was considerable, but the South’s youngest general officer had no time to dwell on it. Early next morning, Canon was given orders for the part his troops were to play in the invasion of the North.
An invasion into the North was a thing no knowledgeable officer looked forward to attempting. Better to be looked on as victims of invasion, and fight on home turf, than become the invader. Canon understood the need. He knew time was beginning to slip away for the South. Win though it did, there had never been another real chance to take Washington.
Canon heard that one crippled veteran of the Stonewall Brigade, at a fundraiser in Richmond, was asked to demonstrate the Rebel yell. The soldier replied that an authentic replication was impossible. A true Rebel yell, he said, could only be given when cold, hungry, barefoot, out of ammunition and charging up a hill in the face of enemy cannon fire.
Canon knew that Southern victories were becoming more and more pyrrhic. In more than a year of fighting, the South had not lost a battle in the Eastern Theater. But each bloody victory hurt it more than it hurt the North. In the Western Theater, in the Deep South states, Grant and Sherman were winning battles. Nashville had been under Union control since February. Raids into Mississippi were routine.
Jefferson Davis believed a serious threat to Washington might lead to an armistice and a negotiated truce. It was time to go north.
The sixth of September dawned chilly and clear as Canon led his three hundred horsemen up to the bank of a narrow ford on a shallow river. Most of the black horses were the same which Canon’s unit had brought from Alabama, but nearly fifty of the men riding them were new, brought in to replace those wounded and slain at Manassas.
The Black Horse had lost forty-seven men at Manassas, the Stonewall Brigade more than twice that number.
Canon warned the new men before leaving camp that strict silence was to be maintained throughout the morning’s reconnaissance and the first man who loosed a Rebel yell would be sent back to camp.
He nudged his knees into Old Scratch and the black stallion nimbly stepped from the low bank into the sluggish stream. Three hundred horsemen soon began to emerge on the far side, the Northern side, of the Potomac River into Maryland.
Two hours later, Canon sent back word that all was clear. By day’s end, Lee and Jackson had crossed the river with fifty-five thousand men and set up camp a couple of miles from Sharpsburg. Panic soon spread through the Northern states.
In Washington, Abraham Lincoln reluctantly turned again to George McClellan to lead the Federal army. McClellan had fallen into disfavor after Second Manassas, but wrote his wife that he was proud to resume command. She sensed a different tone in his words. McClellan was always cautious. Now he had begun to sound fearful.
Following one aborted attempt to lay siege to Richmond much earlier in the war, where Lee had mangled his army, Little Mac had not displayed any willingness to attack the Southern Army. He preferred to defend, and for once Lincoln agreed.
Under no circumstance, Lincoln told McClellan, can you let Lee get between the army and Washington. McClellan couldn’t have been happier. He could sit back, dig in, and defend the city, the Union and his honor without fear of the Southern counterattack that had greeted every Northern sally.
Robert E. Lee was happy, too. Little Mac was doing exactly what Lee and Jackson hoped, expected, gambled he would do. At the approach of McClellan’s army, Lee fell back two miles to the other side of a deep, unfordable stream called Antietam Creek.
He believed McClellan would not attack but would stay there, across the Antietam, to keep an eye on the Southern Army. And while McClellan sat there, waiting, Lee would once again split his army and play havoc with Federal posts in Maryland.
The night before Lee withdrew across the Antietam, he sent general orders to Jackson and to A. P. Hill. Jackson would take fifteen thousand men and fall on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, twenty miles South, while Hill would march with ten thousand men to hold the gap at South Mountain, twenty miles North.
Jefferson Davis and his contingent were in camp for this historic invasion. Davis said little at the meetings, which was unusual. But, always willing to display his authority, he insisted on reading over the general orders for planned troop movement. Against the unspoken but evident displeasure of Lee, Davis took the document to his tent.
It was no more than two hours later that he sent it back to Lee, along with a note of approval. Davis also took a fleeting, forgotten pleasure in the fact that he chose to demean his fawning little assistant undersecretary of war by making him serve as messenger boy.
Hillary, who had kept to his tent to avoid any possibility of meeting Jackson, had committed the document to memory before he had taken fifty steps in the direction of Lee’s tent. And the aide de camp, who accepted the document from Hillary, died quickly in the coming battle. It never dawned on him to remark to anyone that he had never seen such a huge smile of pleasure on the face of the assistant undersecretary of war.
Hillary had decided to get even with Stonewall Jackson. And the instrument for his revenge now lay within his grasp. One of Hillary’s pet mischiefs was a facility for forgery. Having once seen someone’s handwriting, Hillary could within hours offer a most perfect copy.
It afforded him a wonderful avenue of revenge, or even just entertainment. Occasionally, someone who had unknowingly incurred the little flower’s displeasure would weeks later be confronted with a love letter, wielded by wife, husband or jealous lover, in his own hand. Denials were useless in front of the damning document.
It was fate, Hillary thought. Delicious, rewarding fate that he had been chosen as the president’s courier. Hillary had seen Lee’s handwriting many times and even practiced at copying it, just on the off chance it prove useful some day. In his tent, Hillary went to work. By midnight, Lee would have been hard pressed to choose his document or Hillary’s copy as the real one.
Next morning, as the army departed for the crossing at Antietam and Davis left with his entourage for Richmond, Jackson found outside his tent a box of fine Havana cigars from an anonymous donor. Jackson rarely smoked, but he kept them to hand out to his men. If he had looked inside the box, he would have likely noticed that three of the fragrant tubes of tobacco were missing. He didn’t look. He left them by the officers’ mess. And soon, by twos and threes, the cigars were gone.
Two days later, George Mitchell was lazing on a grassy knoll beside his tent, warming in the soporific