Free Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters

than once, he had felt his temper pressing him, threatening an ungentlemanly outburst against self-important officials or even President Davis. At a low point in midwinter, his men had been reduced to a quarter pound of wretched meat a day, mostly rancid bacon. Unpaid for months and left to their own devices, his officers had turned to cajoling their own men to share out their rations. But Lee had yet to encounter a famine-struck table in Richmond, nor did any man at a desk above the James wear the malnourished, beggarly look of his soldiers.
    To be with his men and of them, he had done a foolish thing with good intentions. Although he never barred his subordinates from accepting the hospitality of local families for their winter quarters—Powell Hill had taken up residence in the grandest mansion in Orange—Lee had insisted on living in a tent on the Bloomsbury grounds. And when Mrs. Taylor sent down treats from Meadow Farm, he had shared them with the soldiers. But his gestures had not eased his soul or helped his men. Instead, they had only let his chest pains grieve him, while his digestion remained an embarrassment.
    Mrs. Taylor’s generous gifts of buttermilk, jars of jam, and fresh-baked bread had pleased a few men, no doubt, but neither the cold he shared in goodwill nor the delicacies passed down had staunched the flow of deserters. Nor had it escaped him that more of his own men sneaked north to surrender than Federals came south. Desertions plagued the army, and he had needed to have men shot as examples. But he did what military law allowed to discriminate between cowards and shirkers on one hand, and the many who had gone southward to their homes in the hope that they might eat their fill and sleep warmly for a few months before returning to the ranks when the weather turned.
    The winter had been terrible. But spring had come, as it always did, and the April rains left May a shimmering legacy. Ragged or not, his men stood straight again.
    Not a week before, he had reviewed Longstreet’s returned corps in the first fine weather. The sight of the men raised his spirits and broke his heart. They were so few, barely ten thousand of all arms, the size of a division a year before. The soldiers had burnished their leathers and polished the brass that remained to them, they had washed themselves and brushed their threadbare uniforms. Their cannon gleamed. But for all that, and for all their heartfelt, heartening cheers, those brave men had looked like tatterdemalion vagabonds. And still so very many went unshod.
    But they would fight . He knew he could depend on them for that.
    They would have to fight with an even graver ferocity now. Contemplating the campaigns to come, he had bleak days when he feared he had displeased God, or that the South had sinned against the Lord. Each visit to Richmond discouraged him anew, as President Davis demanded ever more, speaking with a grandiosity to which Lee could respond only with temperate silence. Richmond was so near, yet so painfully far from the reality of this army. He endeavored to make the president understand that there were not men enough to take the offensive now, and that those still in the ranks had to be supplied. In turn, the president offered empty assurances. Mr. Davis still believed that the continental powers could be enticed to support the Confederacy, if only Lee delivered one more great victory.
    Lee no longer believed that. He struggled to keep faith with President Davis, ever careful to demonstrate his subordination to the civil authorities. But he understood that the last hope of the Confederacy was to frustrate the Union here on Virginia’s soil, to make this war so costly to the North that, come autumn, those people would elect a peace candidate who would allow the South its freedom. He would have to fight as he never had fought before, to always be the one to choose the ground, to set the terms of every battle, to send the Federals reeling. And he