Grant Comes East by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen

Author:Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen [Gingrich, Newt & Forstchen, William R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Published: 2010-07-30T23:00:00+00:00

The veterans of McPherson's corps, riding east to save the Union, seemed to be delighted by the spectacle as well. Regimental flags were unfurled, hoisted up, the staffs tied securely in place, each train thus festooned with battle-torn standards from Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, emblazoned on them in gold letters the names of campaigns that to the Easterners were a mystery, except for the freshly lettered, triumphant vicksburg.

Rumbling down out of the mountain gap toward the broad, open plain of the Susquehanna Valley just ahead, the veterans looked about with approval at the rich farmlands, the open vista, the cool air of the mountains wafting down around them. It was indeed a far cry from the heat, swamps, ague, and snake-infested landscape of the lower Mississippi. These farms looked much more like the neat, well-kept farms of their Midwest.

They were, as well, coming now as saviors and heroes, and they basked in the glory of it. At crossroads and whistle-stop stations young women waved, sang patriotic airs, and passed up baskets of fresh-baked bread, biscuits, pitchers of

cool water and buttermilk, and older men, with a glimmer in their eye and a wink, would hand off bottles of stronger stuff. The reception across the Midwest had been a warm one, especially when a regiment was passing through its home state, but here at the edge of the front lines the outpouring of enthusiasm was bordering on the ecstatic. These were the men who were going to save central Pennsylvania from the Confederate army, and the local citizens were thrilled by their arrival.

The trains passed over the massive viaduct that spanned the Susquehanna a dozen miles north of the city. Earthworks and freshly built blockhouses guarded the approach to the bridge on the western shore. Fortunately, this bridge had not

been dropped, the furthest advance of the Confederates stopping down at the gap just above the city.

Along the narrow road just south of the bridge more fortifications were in place, two batteries of rifled pieces guarding this precious crossing in case any rebel raiders should now try to attack.

The river beneath the bridge was still swollen and turbulent from the torrential rains of the previous three weeks, the water dark, littered with debris that tossed on the waves. As the lead train shifted through a switch and on to the bridge, they passed out of the morning light on the west bank of the river into the shade on the steep slopes of the eastern side, the air cool and refreshing.

Spirits were up. The word had passed that their journey of almost a thousand miles was at an end. Fifers picked up songs. Here and there men joined in, some of the tunes patriotic, more than one off-colored, with loud coughs and throat-clearing at every sight of girls lining the track. A group of young women from a nearby female academy, dressed in patriotic red-white-and-blue dresses, triggered an absolute frenzy of coughing, cheers, and more than one friendly, ribald comment that set the girls to blushing but also giggling in response.

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