Gray Skies: A Civil War legend of family courage

Anyone volunteering in that capacity will be thankfully received. Everyone thought of something. Halleck had the hospitals checked for potentially useful walking wounded, so they could be formed up and marched toward the fortifications. On the way they probably stumbled into a ragged formation of clerks from the offices of the Quartermaster General, Brig. Montgomery Meigs, who had decided that now was the time for them to exchange their pencils for rifles.

Someone else made preparations for destroying the bridges over the Potomac River. A steamboat was fired up and held ready to get the President away. A restless tattoo of musketry But the President was singularly serene. I hope neither Baltimore nor Washington will be sacked. Both the Federal defenses and the Confederate threat looked stronger than they were. The unprotected space was broad enough for the easy passage of Early's army without resistance. Just beyond this inviting gap lay the legislative and administrative heart of the enemy government. What is more, there was the Federal Navy yard, with its ships to burn; the United States Treasury with its millions of dollars in bonds and currency, the seizure of which would have had catastrophic effects on the Northern economy; warehouse after warehouse of medical supplies, food, military equipment, ammunition-all scarce and desperately needed in the Confederacy.

In short, a rich city, virgin to war, awaiting plunder. Not to mention the incalculable humiliation to the Union if such a rape of its capital occurred. Lew Wallace later the author of Ben Hur had been stiffened to make his desperate stand against Early on the Monocacy, he wrote afterward, by a vision of "President Lincoln, cloaked and hooded, stealing from the back door of the White House just as some gray-garbed Confederate brigadier burst in the front door. But for the moment, at least, the enormous prize was out of reach.

The problem was not a lack of will or courage or even firepower; the problem was something that civilians and historians rarely think of as part of war-simple fatigue. Early's foot soldiers were just too tired to walk that far. During the hottest and driest summer anyone could remember they had marched about miles from Lynchburg in three weeks.

They had fought hard at the Monocacy on July 9, then after burying their dead had marched again at dawn, struggling 30 miles in the searing heat to bivouac near Rockville, Maryland. The night of the 10th brought so little relief from the heat that the exhausted men were unable to sleep. On the l lth, with the sun burning more fiercely than ever, they had begun to give out.

General Early rode along the loosening formations, telling staggering, sweating, dust-begrimed men that he would take them into Washington that day. They tried to raise the old Rebel Yell to show him they were willing, but it came out cracked and thin. The mounted officers reluctantly slowed their pace, but before midday the road behind the army was littered with prostrate men who could go no farther.

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Thus when Early ordered General Rodes to attack, both men—on horseback—were far ahead of the plodding columns. While Early fumed and spat tobacco juice, his officers struggled to get men and guns in position. They managed to mount a skirmish line to chase in the Federal pickets, but putting together a massed line of battle was beyond them.

The afternoon wore on, and to Early every hour was the equivalent of a thousand casualties. It was not the fault of his men. Nor was it a failure of the officers; Jubal Early had for subordinate commanders some of the best generals in the Confederacy. John Gordon and John Breckinridge were, like Early, lawyers and politicians who lacked his West Point training but had shown a remarkable ability to lead men in combat. Breckinridge was a former Vice President of the United States and a candidate for President in , who came in second to Lincoln in the electoral vote; now he was second in command of an army advancing on the US.

Stephen Dodson Ramseur, a major general at 27, possessed a ferocity in battle that usually got results. No one embodied more of the paradoxes of this war than John Breckinridge. For his constitutional arguments he was ostracized in the Senate and described as a traitor to the United States; back in Kentucky he pleaded with his state to stay out of the spreading civil war. Union military authorities ordered his arrest. Thus John Breckinridge had been left with nowhere to go but into the armies marching against the Union, on behalf of slavery.

Jubal Early was bold, but he was not foolhardy; however tempting the prize, he would not commit to battle without knowing what he was facing.

Meanwhile, however, Abraham Lincoln had spotted something really interesting in his spyglass, and driven eagerly south to the Sixth Street wharves. He arrived in midafternoon, and stood quietly gnawing on a chunk of hardtack while Maj. Horatio Wright assembled the first arrivals from VI Corps and marched them off—in the wrong direction—toward Georgetown. With great shouting and clatter, some staff officers got the men turned around and headed up 11th Street, toward the enemy.

Citizens ran through the lines with buckets of ice-water, for the morning was sultry; newspapers and eatables were handed into the column, and our welcome had a heartiness that showed how intense had been the fear. The official welcome was less clear-cut. In the end, the only thing the soldiers did that night and this only because Wright insisted on it was to move out in front of the fortifications to restore a picket line and push back enemy skirmishers.

Apparently the Federal high command did little that night but further confuse each other. There the Confederate officers had dinner, a council of war and a party. Men were still straggling in from their hellish march, and it seemed a precious opportunity had been lost the previous afternoon. But the Federal works were still not manned in strength, and Early ordered an assault at first light. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.

Undaunted Courage [part 1]

Harriet Tubman was born around on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars. Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand.

She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

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Harriet stepped between the slave and the overseer—the weight struck her head. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions she was a staunch Christian.

Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters. Around , Harriet married John Tubman, a free black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and John threatened to sell Harriet further south. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back.

With the help of the Underground Railroad , Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and free slaves in the north to be captured and enslaved. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries. Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass , Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network.

When the Civil War broke out in , Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive slaves at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive slaves. In , Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. Quick Links Publishers A comprehensive list of publishers around the world.

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