Hell or Richmond Read Free Page B

me,” the general in chief resumed, “I have no intention of being trapped, bagged up and skinned at a desk in Washington. My headquarters will be with your army. If you can’t bear the thought of me looking over your shoulder, tell me now.” Grant’s eyes turned cold again. “I don’t intend to count your bullets for you, or wipe your nose for you. I’ll tell you where I want you to go and let you decide how to get there. I’ll tell you when I want you to fight, but let you figure out how to do it. If that arrangement suits you, we can go forward.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Grant cocked his head above the overcoat’s collar, sizing up a horse he had just purchased. “Now take me around and introduce me to your staff, let them have a sniff. Early tomorrow, I’m going back to Washington, then back out west for a time to tidy things up.” He forgot his cigar as he thought on distant matters. “I’ll miss some of those men … good men, fine men…” He grunted. “Some of ’em I can’t say I’ll miss at all, though. Listen, you might as well ride along with me tomorrow. Since you’ve got that committee business. No sense taking separate trains like we’re the emperor of France and the king of Prussia. And either call me ‘Sam’ or just plain ‘Grant.’ Way it was in Mexico. Doesn’t do to make everything sound like a speech.”
    As the two generals stepped out into the rain, Meade said, “I’m afraid you’ll find Virginia a forlorn place, Sam.”
    “Going to be a sight more forlorn when we’re through with it,” Grant told him.
    March 11, 1864
Orange & Alexandria Railroad
    As the train clacked along the rails, with Meade a few rows back working on his testimony, Grant turned his face from the staff men and the guards. Hidden behind the collar of his overcoat, he smiled through the window. The look on Meade’s face yesterday! On a devilish whim, he had tossed his cigar butt on the planks, just to see how George Meade would react. The Philadelphia patrician’s look had been priceless. Old Meade standing there in full uniform, bags under his eyes that could have held a peck of potatoes each …
    Well, they’d get past the fussiness. Meade would be reminded soon enough that not every man born west of Pittsburgh picked his teeth with a knife.
    Baldy Smith had, indeed, been in the running for command of the Army of the Potomac, but Meade had said all the right things and seemed to mean them. If his performance disappointed, he could be removed. Meanwhile, Meade would do as he was told and see to the details, leaving him free to run the wider war.
    As for Lee, Grant rejected the notion that the man was invincible. Oh, they all had admired the dashing Lee in Mexico, where he was Scott’s pet, but that had been a very different horse race. Grant intended to break Lee as soon as campaigning weather came to Virginia. All that was needed was to hit Lee good and hard, shockingly hard, and not let go of him. Just keep hitting him and hitting him. The South couldn’t stand that for long.
    If he could smash Lee’s army and Sherman could take Atlanta, the war would end. As for the great and glorious Generals Butler, Banks, Sigel, and their ilk, if he had to keep them in command for election-year reasons, he would not let them jeopardize his purpose: The upcoming campaign in Virginia and Sherman’s match with Joe Johnston down in Georgia would be the combination to kill the Confederacy. Everything else was free eggs.
    As for Meade, the man had fight in him, but he was, in the end, an eastern general who believed that wars could be fought as they had been waged by the great captains of the past, with a battle followed by a pause that allowed the enemy’s army to rest up. There was still too damned much Jomini in the East, all highfalutin angles marked on maps and too little grit or even common sense. Grant intended to bring this burgeoning colossus of an army to bear in one decisive campaign, no matter how long