Lee made his decision. He pulled out pen and pad, wrote rapidly, then turned to a courier. “Take this to General Stuart at once, if you please.” The young man set spurs to his horse, rode off at a trot that he upped to a gallop as soon as he could. Lee felt Walter Taylor’s eyes on him. He said, “I have ordered General Stuart to use his cavalry to secure the Rappahannock crossing at Rappahannock Station and to hold that crossing until our infantry joins them.”
“Have you?” One of Taylor’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You’ll go straight for Grant, then?”
“Straight for Washington City, at least for the time being,” Lee corrected. “I expect General Grant will interpose himself between his capital and me. When he does, I shall strike him the hardest blow I can, and see what comes of it.”
“Yes, sir.” By Taylor’s tone, he pad no doubt what would come of it. Lee wished he had no doubts himself. His aide asked, “How soon do you think we could reach Washington City?”
“We could reach it in four or five days,” Lee said. Taylor stared at him. Deadpan, he went on, “Of course, that is only if General Grant becomes a party to the agreement. Without his cooperation, we shall probably require rather more time.”
Taylor laughed. Lee allowed himself a smile. He had slept perhaps four hours a night since the campaign started, rising at three every morning to go see how his men fared. He felt fine. His chest had pained him a couple of times, but one or two of the tablets the Rivington men had given him never failed to bring relief. He was not used to medicines that never failed.
With reins and feet, he urged Traveller forward. His aides rode after him. He scarcely noticed them; he was thinking hard. He’d beaten Grant once, and badly. But simply beating the Army of the Potomac did not suffice. He’d beaten the Federals again and again, at Chancellorsville, at Fredericksburg, at Second Manassas, in the Seven Days’ Campaign. They kept returning to the fray, and, like the mythical Hydra, seemed stronger every time they were cast to the ground. They were as determined in their insistence that the South return to the Union as the confederate States were in their desire to depart from it.
“I must suppress them,” Lee said aloud. But how? The new repeaters had caught Grant by surprise in the Wilderness. There Lee had also been able to use the detailed knowledge of Grant’s movements the Rivington men had brought him from 2014. They’d wanted to change the world of here and now, and they’d succeeded, but that meant they were no longer a move ahead of the game.
As for Grant, he’d handled his army about as well as could be expected, given the trouble in which he’d found himself. In a defensive fight, with his powerful artillery to back up his numbers, he might yet be very rough indeed.
And, Lee wondered, how long before some clever Northern gunsmith works out a way to make his own AK-47? Colonel Gorgas had been unsure it was possible. Gorgas was gifted, but for every man like him in the Confederacy, the North had three or five or ten, and the factories to assemble what those gifted men devised. If the Federals suddenly blossomed forth with repeaters of their own, the situation would return to what it had been before the men from out of time arrived.
“Not only must I suppress those people, I must do it quickly,” Lee said. Every minute’s delay hurt him and helped Grant. He brought Traveller up to a trot. The exact moment he got to Rappahannock Station almost certainly would not matter, but all at once any delay seemed intolerable.
In the middle of the afternoon, a courier on a blowing horse rode up to him, held out a folded sheet of paper. “From General Stuart, sir.”
“Thank you.” Lee unfolded the paper, read: “We hold Rappahannock Station. Federal pickets withdrew northeast past Bealeton. We pursued, and discovered more Federals approaching the town from the southeast, their cavalry leading. We shall endeavor to hold the place unless your orders are to the contrary. Your most ob’t. servant, I. E. B. Stuart, Commanding, Cavalry.”
Bealeton. Another sleepy hamlet was about to have its name written down in history in letters of blood. Lee wrote: “General Stuart: Hold your position at all hazards. Infantry is advancing in your support. R. E. Lee, General Commanding.” He gave the message to the courier, who booted his tired mount into a trot and then forced a gallop from it.
Lee turned to Walter Taylor. “Major, I should like to confer with my corps commanders. We have driven the enemy’s pickets past Bealeton, General Smart informs me, but the main force of the Army of the Potomac is now approaching that town with a view to contesting our possession of it.”
“I’ll fetch the generals, sir,” Taylor said. He rode away:
Dick Ewell came back to Lee first, his peg leg sticking out from the saddle at an odd angle as he reined in his horse. Having fought farther to the north in the Wilderness than Hill’s men, his corps headed the line of march today. He cocked his bald head and listened intently as Lee explained the report from Smart. “When Lee was done, he asked, “Can the troopers hold back the whole Federal army long enough to permit us to deploy?”
“That is the question,” Lee admitted. “With their repeaters, I hope they may.”
“We’d best hurry, all the same.” Ewell glanced at one of his aides. “Order the men up to quickstep.”
As the aide rode off, A. P. Hill rode up. Always gaunt and hollow-eyed, he no longer seemed on the edge of breaking down, as he had before the campaign began. Victory, Lee thought, agrees with him. As he had with Ewell, he told Hill of the new situation.
Hill’s jaws worked as he listened. Finally he said, “I don’t care for the prospect of fighting with the river close in our rear. We almost paid for that at Sharpsburg.”
“I remember,” Lee said.
“Grant isn’t such a slowcoach as McClellan was, either,” Hill persisted. “He wasn’t what you’d call smooth in the Wilderness, but he got more of the Army of the Potomac into the fight than we’ve seen before.”
“I want him to put his men into the fight, if that means they are advancing straight into the fire of our new rifles,” Lee said. “Not even the resources of the North will stand such bloodlettings indefinitely repeated…which reminds me, have we enough ammunition for another large fight?”
“Two trains full of cartridges came into Orange Court House from Rivington this morning,” Walter Taylor said.
“That should be all right, then,” Lee said, relieved. Thanks to the Rivington men, his soldiers had won a smashing victory in the Wilderness. Thanks to them, the Army of Northern Virginia would have the wherewithal to pursue another one. But without a continued flow of munitions from the Rivington men, his army would soon be, if it was not already, unable to fight at all. Lee reminded himself to write once more to Colonel Rains in Augusta to see if he had succeeded in producing loads suitable for the AK-47.
“How would you have us deploy?” Ewell asked.
Lee had been working on that with most of his mind ever since the message came back from the cavalry. He saw battlefields as a chess player looked over his board, save that for him no two matches were played on the same squares and both players moved at the same time. “Post your men in the most advantageous line south from Bealeton toward the Rappahannock, General, using General Johnson’s division as your reserve,” he answered. “General Hill, you will form the left. Move behind the line General Ewell will establish and into position. Be prepared to attach, or defend, as shall seem most advantageous.”
The corps commanders nodded. Walter Taylor drew out a map from a saddlebag, unfolded it. Lee traced with his finger the dispositions he had in mind. The generals looked, nodded again, and rode off, Hill all business in the saddle, Ewell instantly recognizable because of his out thrust wooden leg.