“He’s squeamish,” Swynyard shrugged. “Told me he once fainted when one of his slaves had a nosebleed. I guess he wanted a chance to overcome the fear, but it didn’t work. He agrees with me that Richmond might be a more suitable place for him to work.” The colonel’s ravaged face split in a smile. “So the Legion’s yours, Nate. What’s left of it. Them and the Yellowlegs.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Swynyard paused, staring across the field where the living moved so slowly among the dead. “I’ve got some other news.”

“Good, I hope.”

Swynyard nodded.

“Jackson just promoted me. I’m a Brigadier General.”

Starbuck smiled again, tearing at the stitches in his cheek. He ignored the pain and held out his hand. “Congratulations, General.”

Swynyard had tears in his eyes. “God has been good to me, Nate, so very good. Why did I wait so long to find Him?” Starbuck made no answer and the general smiled. “I’m having a prayer meeting at sundown,” he said, “but I don’t suppose you’ll come?”

“I don’t suppose I will, General,” Starbuck said.

“And after prayers,” General Swynyard said, “we march.”

“Home?” Starbuck asked.

“Home,” Swynyard said.

Because the invasion was over.

HISTORICAL NOTE

THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM (SHARPSBURG, TO SOUTHERNERS) is famous for being the bloodiest day in all America’s history. Close to 23,000 men died in that one day. It was, in the proper sense of the word, a shambles.

Lee was a gambler, and his decision to fight in the fields about Sharpsburg was one of his biggest wagers. He feared the political consequences of a retreat without a battle, and hoped that his opponent’s natural caution would make McClellan fumble and yield the outnumbered rebels a famous victory. The gamble failed. Lee’s pride demanded that his army stay in place on the day after the battle, for that, by the soldiers’ terms of honor, denoted that the battle was not lost, but the campaign was nevertheless a failure. The North was spared a prolonged invasion and no European country was encouraged to join the South. By keeping his army on the field Lee could claim a technical victory, but on the Thursday night the rebel army slipped away, and by Friday evening there were no rebel soldiers left in the United States other than the dead and the prisoners.

Lee’s invasion failed, but it was hardly because of George McClellan, who was presented with a marvelous chance to end the war at Antietam. If he had attacked twenty-four hours earlier, he would undoubtedly have destroyed Lee’s army, which was smaller than it ever would be again until the war’s very end. Yet McClellan was wracked by doubts and waited while Lee was reinforced. And if, when he did at last summon the courage to attack, McClellan had coordinated his assaults, he would have routed Lee, but instead the Northern attacks came one at a time, and Lee was able to move his shrinking forces to meet each new assault. McClellan’s plan of attack had been to engage Lee’s flanks, then send the killing blow through the center when the rebel reserves had been depleted, but the fight never remotely resembled that plan. Instead the battle degenerated into a series of bloody encounters over which neither side had full control. It has been called a soldier’s battle, for it was the common soldier who fought it, and fought it with an extraordinary bravery. McClellan could have resumed the fight on Thursday and, with his huge reserve, which had not fired a shot, he would surely have finished the business quickly enough, but he was too frightened to try. He claimed his soldiers were tired, and Lee’s army was allowed to slip away to fight again. Lee’s army had suffered grievously and all it had to show for its efforts were the captured guns and supplies from Harper’s Ferry.