The Federals had not, had time to extend the barricade far off the roadway itself. They had a few men posted in the bushes, but, thanks to their repeaters, the rebels pushed past them and circled around behind the improvised breastwork.
Benny Lang loaded and fired a rifle grenade. Several Federals started to turn at the odd report. The grenade landed among them. They all shouted in alarm when it went off, and a couple of men its fragments had wounded went on crying from pain. The others, though, fired out into the night in the direction from which the little shell had come; one Millie ball snarled past Caudell’s head.
By then, though, he and his comrades were shooting at the muzzle flashes from the Federals’ Springfields. A Northerner started screaming and would not stop. Others shouted for their lives: “You got us surrounded, rebs! Don’t shoot no more! We give up!”
General Kirkland’s booming, authoritative voice came out of the night: “You Yanks put that barricade up there. You can get to work and help tear it down.” Caudell heard timbers shift, heard men swear mildly, as they often did when a physical task went slightly wrong. Northern and Southern accents mingled as Lee’s troops and their prisoners worked side by side. Even before the logs were all removed, Kirkland said, “Forward, boys, forward. You won’t let ‘em stop us now, will you?”
The sky began to grow light in the east not long after Caudell marched past the junction of the Seventh Street Road and another dirt track that was marked Taylor’s Lane Road to the southwest and Rock Creek Church Road to the northeast. Now Washington City was less than two miles away. Caudell had trouble believing he’d fought all night; only a couple of hours seemed to have gone by. The Yankees still kept up a sullen fire to the front and flanks of the advancing Confederate column, but nowhere sharp enough to do more than harass it.
As dawn progressed, Caudell could see farther and farther. Washington lay spread out before him like a painted panorama. He was surprised at the mixed feelings the Federal capital evoked in him. Excitement, anticipation, the almost hectic flush of triumph—he had expected all those.
But seeing the White House for the first time in his life, seeing the Capitol…up until three years before, those had been national shrines for him as much as for any Northern man. He found they still had the power to raise a lump in his throat. Nor was he the only one for whom that held true. The Confederate advance slowed as men gaped at what they’d come to capture.
“Go on, God damn you all,” General Kirkland shouted. “D’you want to wait until Grant brings the rest of his army over the Potomac on the Long Bridge and makes you fight for the city house by house?”
That got the rebels moving again. Then someone said, “They ain’t comin’ over no Long Bridge, if that’s it straight ahead there. It’s burnin’.” Sure enough, a column of smoke rose from the middle of the Potomac.
Kirkland must have had a telescope, for a moment later he said, “Not only is it burning, by God, but it’s broken as well. The artilleryman who did that deserves a general’s wreath, and I don’t care a jot whether he’s but a private soldier. He’s sealed the victory for us.”
“He’s sealed all the ants in the nest, too, and they don’t much fancy it,” Caudell said to a soldier nearby. He pointed toward the city ahead. At this distance, the people in the streets did seem small as ants. But ants did not drive carriages, and ants generally moved with greater purpose than the throngs who jammed the avenues ahead. All they knew was that they wanted to flee the oncoming Confederates. Any person who got in their way was as much an obstacle as a tree or a post.
The soldier by Caudell spat in the dusty road. “What you want to bet we don’t catch us one single congressman at the Capitol?”
“I don’t care about Yankee congressmen,” Caudell said. “What I’d like to do is catch Abe Lincoln. That’d be about the only way my name would ever go down in history.”
By the look of him, the ragged soldier had never worried about going down in history. But his eyes lit up at the prospect of capturing Lincoln. “Let’s try it, by God! Somebody’s got to be first to the White House.” Then he shook his head. “Naah—even if we are, reckon he’ll’ve run off too, along with everybody else.”
“Worth a shot at it.” Caudell hurried over to General Kirkland; he thought well of commanders who stayed up with their troops. He wondered where Colonel Faribault and Captain Lewis were—maybe dead back in the trenches, maybe just a few hundred yards away in the confused aftermath of victory. Gaining the brigadier’s ear might be worth more now anyway. “Sir, may we head for the White House?”
The ear Caudell had gained was a keen one. “You’re that mouthy sergeant from the fight in the dark, aren’t you?” Kirkland fixed Caudell with an icy blue stare. But his expression warmed as he thought about the suggestion—what Southerner could resist going after the man for fear of whom his state had seceded?
Kirkland looked around, gauging how far other Confederate units had come. “I have no orders to the contrary, and we might get there first, mightn’t we? Let’s see if we can—why the hell not?” He waved his sword, pointed southwest, and shouted new orders. The soldiers cheered.
Into Washington City! The rebels tramped down Vermont Avenue in loose skirmish order, repeaters at the ready. Civilians peered from houses. Some came outside to gape at the spectacle they had never imagined. A few people cheered—Washington had its share of Southern sympathizers.
Caudell coughed loudly as he passed a pretty girl. So did a good many other men; the soldiers sounded as if they’d all caught cold at once. Overwhelmed by such vigorous public praise, the girl flushed and fled indoors.
About a hundred yards farther on, a company of Federal soldiers turned onto Vermont Avenue. They must not have realized Lee’s men were already in the city. The first couple of ranks never knew it; the Confederates cut them down as soon as they came into sight. A few men returned fire. Others dashed for cover. Shrieking noncombatants ran every which way, including right between the rival forces.
“Get out of there, you damned fools!” Caudell shouted, appalled at the idea of having to fight a battle in a crowd of civilians. When the Federals kept shooting, he found himself without any choice. He dove behind a hedge and looked for targets.
Benny Lang did not seem to care who got stuck in the middle of a fight. He sent a grenade through the window of a house from which Yankees were shooting. A moment later, the blast blew out every pane in that window and the one next to it. Three bluecoats dashed out of the house, as terrified as any ordinary Washingtonian. They would have done better to stay where they were. The Confederates stretched them lifeless before they’d run ten paces.
Rebels darted down side streets to get’ around the Federals. The fight did not last long. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Northern men died or fled. “Keep going!” Kirkland shouted. “Don’t let ‘em stop you now!”
Caudell and his comrades kept going. Neither he nor any of them had slept for a full day; neither he nor any of them cared. He could see the White House ahead. With that for a target, rest could wait.
He felt like crying when a lieutenant waved him onto Fifteenth Street instead of letting him keep on going straight down Vermont Avenue. The lieutenant saw his disappointment. Grinning, he said, “Don’t feel too bad, soldier. Once upon a time, General McClellan lived down this way. His house ought to be worth seeing.”
Caudell thought the house, near the corner of Fifteenth and H streets, a mean hovel, though it was three stories high, with shuttered windows and a railed porch under them from which to receive well-wishers. Who cared where a discredited Federal general had lived when the President’s house was so close?