Free Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 by Newt Gingrich, William Forstchen

It was listening to Longstreet, the first night at Gettysburg, that had set victory in motion.
    "Go on, General Hood, please speak freely, sir."
    "Thank you, General. Sir, I have a bad feeling about this one.
    Hood looked over to Stuart as if seeking support. Lee followed his gaze and could see Stuart lower his eyes. He was troubled as well.
    "Why this bad feeling, General Hood?" Lee asked, his voice pitched softly, almost deferential.
    "Sir, we won the most glorious victory of the war little more than two weeks ago, but i t came at a terrible price. Pet tigrew, who will lead off the assault here, took nearly fifty percent casualties. My other divisions, on average, still are down by twenty percent or more."
    "Reinforcements are promised," Lee offered and instantly regretted the statement. It sounded like an attempt at justification. Hood was talking about tomorrow, not what Davis had promised and what most likely would not arrive for weeks.
    "Go on, General," Lee said.
    "Though well fed these last six weeks, the men are exhausted; many are ill from the weather and the heat . If I go in tomorrow, sir, at best I can muster twenty thousand rifles."
    "I am aware of that, sir. The question is, with those twenty thousand, can you take those works?" He pointed back toward the city.
    Hood looked around at those gathered, the staff standing deferentially in the background. No general ever wanted to admit that he could not do the task assigned. He took a deep breath.
    "I can take the works, sir."
    "Good. I will leave the details to you, General. Fort Stevens will be the center of the attack; I need this road to move up our following units. General Longstreet's men will push into the city once you have cleared the way."
    The look in Hood's eyes made him pause. Yet again it was rivalry, the sensitivity of who would claim what. He offered a smile.
    "General, when we take the White House, you will be at my side."
    "It's not that, sir." "What then?"
    "Sir, I will have no command left to march into Washington." "Sir?"
    "Just that, General Lee. I have twenty thousand infantry fit for duty in my divisions. I will lose half of them taking that fort and clearing the way for General Longstreet. The men will be charging straight into thirty-pounders loaded with canister; they throw nearly the same weight as all the guns we faced atop Cemetery Hill two weeks ago. There are some hundred-pounders on that line; a single load of canister from one of those guns can drop half a regiment."
    Lee lowered his head, the memory of that debacle still haunting him.
    "General Longstreet, sir, has barely twenty thousand under arms as well and, sir, once the outer ring cracks, we might have to fight Washington street by street, clear down to the Naval Yard. I must ask, sir, after that, then what?"
    All were silent. Lee looked from one to the other and knew that General Hood had asked the most fundamental question of all. The answer had seemed easy enough two weeks ago; the objective was to destroy the Army of the Potomac, to take it off the field. They had achieved that ... but still the war continued.
    If we take Washington, then what? For over a year he had fought under the assumption that if indeed Washington fell, the war was over, but now he wondered. The thought of capturing Lincoln, of having Lincoln and Davis then meet, like Napoleon and the czar at Tilsit, to talk and to sign a peace, was that realistic? He rubbed his eyes, picked up a tin cup of coffee someone had set by his side, and sipped from it, gazing at the map, but his mind was elsewhere.
    I must keep this army intact. That is what Hood is driving at. If we take Washington but bleed ourselves out, if we have only twenty thousand infantry left, the victory will be a Pyrrhic one. We would be driven from the city and lose Maryland within the month. I must now spend this army wisely. It is all that we have and we cannot form another the way the Union is most likely creating a new one at this very