Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott

Author:Karen Abbott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Emma spent her days delivering messages to and from Union commanders. Riding along the bank of the river, she saw the rebel batteries frowning on the heights beyond the city of Fredericksburg, and the Confederate and Federal pickets within patrolling the grounds, close enough to smell each other. She watched as Union engineers began assembling six pontoon bridges, rushing to finish before dawn.

On December 11, as a church tower in the distance struck five, the dense morning fog began to break up, exposing the engineers. Emma glimpsed hundreds of Confederate guns poised on the opposite banks. There was a flash of musketry, the hissing of shot, a terrible cacophony of screams. Bodies dropped into the frigid waters of the Rappahannock. Batteries of Union cannon overlooking the river opened on the town and riverbanks, a roar that could be heard for miles. The surviving engineers hurried to finish the bridges. “The work went steadily on,” Emma observed, “not withstanding that two out of every three who were engaged in laying the bridges were either killed or wounded. But as fast as one fell another took his place.” Members of the 7th Michigan climbed into boats and crossed the river under a relentless barrage of fire. Those who made it to the other side stormed into Fredericksburg and began driving the rebels out of town, back toward the heights where Lee’s main forces were entrenched. By nightfall the bridges were finished but the city was destroyed—shells crashing and bursting, houses crushed, smoke swirling, and flames leaping. Union soldiers looted everything in sight: books, petticoats, hats, bonnets, musical instruments, pillows, bedclothes, furniture. Dead rebels lay strewn about the streets.

Two days later, after both sides had regrouped and tended to their wounded, the armies prepared for battle. Emma learned that her old friend, Colonel Poe, had lost his orderly, and she volunteered to take the orderly’s place in the coming battle. She rose before dawn and dressed in her uniform, now embellished with buff epaulets trimmed in gold braid, signifying her position as aide-de-camp. She celebrated with an entry in her journal. “I wish my friends could see me in my present uniform!” she wrote. “This division will probably charge on the enemy’s works this afternoon. God grant them success! While I write the roar of cannon and musketry is almost deafening. This may be my last entry in this journal. God’s will be done. I commit myself to Him, soul and body. I must close. [Poe] has mounted his horse and says Come!”

Low-lying clouds rolled in, enshrouding the field in fog. Fifes shrieked and bugles called. Burnside kept to his plan, even though, as one Confederate colonel joked, “A chicken could not live in that field when we open upon it.” The general ordered Emma’s division to attack. With a fierce yell three brigades, one after another, charged across the field that lay between the town and the heights. They ran with heads down, as if they could not bear to glimpse what awaited them.

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