The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern army, Mac is reunited with his older brother, Will, when Stonewall Jackson's triumphant troops arrive from the Shenandoah Valley to blunt the Federal onslaught. The fortunes of the Southern army change dramatically when Robert E. Lee is made commander.
Lee's army strikes a stunning blow to the Northern army as his legions cross the Potomac River into Maryland. When the Federals intercept the Rebels near Antietam Creek, the two brothers are brought together in the bloodiest trial of the war thus far. The air is thick with shot and shell as wave after wave of Northern soldiers are hurled upon the Southern lines grouped near the town of Sharpsburg and a river of death.
Antietam is the third book in this ten-volume series, spanning the Civil War and describing one Southern family. As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it had never imagined.
The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern army, Mac is reunited with his older brother, Will, when Stonewall Jackson's triumphant troops arrive from the Shenandoah Valley to blunt the Federal onslaught. The fortunes of the Southern army change dramatically when Robert E. Lee is made commander.
Lee's army strikes a stunning blow to the Northern army as his legions cross the Potomac River into Maryland. When the Federals intercept the Rebels near Antietam Creek, the two brothers are brought together in the bloodiest trial of the war thus far. The air is thick with shot and shell as wave after wave of Northern soldiers are hurled upon the Southern lines grouped near the town of Sharpsburg and a river of death.
Antietam is the third book in this ten-volume series, spanning the Civil War and describing one Southern family. As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it had never imagined.
Paperback
-
SHIP THIS ITEMShips in 1-2 daysPICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern army, Mac is reunited with his older brother, Will, when Stonewall Jackson's triumphant troops arrive from the Shenandoah Valley to blunt the Federal onslaught. The fortunes of the Southern army change dramatically when Robert E. Lee is made commander.
Lee's army strikes a stunning blow to the Northern army as his legions cross the Potomac River into Maryland. When the Federals intercept the Rebels near Antietam Creek, the two brothers are brought together in the bloodiest trial of the war thus far. The air is thick with shot and shell as wave after wave of Northern soldiers are hurled upon the Southern lines grouped near the town of Sharpsburg and a river of death.
Antietam is the third book in this ten-volume series, spanning the Civil War and describing one Southern family. As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it had never imagined.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781581822755 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Turner Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2002 |
| Series: | Civil War Battle , #3 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.12(d) |
About the Author
James Reasoner, a veteran writer of historical fiction, is the author of the Civil War Battle series and the Wagons West series. He has also written Westward, Expedition, and Outpost, a frontier trilogy set in the years before the Lewis and Clark expedition. He received the 2014 ReadWest Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction.
Lloyd James (a.k.a. Sean Pratt) has been narrating since 1996 and has recorded over six hundred audiobooks. He is a seven-time winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award and has twice been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award. His critically acclaimed performances include Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley Jr. and Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, among others.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
MAC BRANNON HEARD THE shrill sound of the train whistle in the distance but didn't look up from what he was doing. After a long moment of studying the checkerboard with a solemn frown on his face, he reached out and moved one of the checkers.
Michael Davis, sitting opposite Mac on the other side of the cracker barrel serving as a table, let out a laugh and gleefully jumped one of his checkers over several of Mac's. Mac winced as the storekeeper said, "You must not have your mind on the game, Mac. You were never so easy to beat before."
Mac nodded. "Yep. I've got a lot of things on my mind, all right."
Like the war, and the fact that I'm not in it ...
The two men were sitting on three-legged stools near the long main counter in the rear of Davis's general merchandise emporium in Culpeper, Virginia. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, so the traditional rush of people coming in from the farms in the surrounding area to do their weekly shopping was mostly over. Davis's clerks could easily handle the few remaining customers in the store, which had led Davis to challenge Mac Brannon to a game of checkers.
Outside, the sky was gray and overcast, and a blustery March wind blew, making it chilly enough so that the warmth coming from the black cast-iron stove at the end of the counter felt good. Despite the clouds and the wind, it hadn't rained in Culpeper County for over a week, and the roads were beginning to dry out after spending most of the winter of 1861-62 as quagmires.
Mac looked atthe checkerboard and gave a slight shake of his head, uncertain what move to make next. He was saved from having to make that decision by the sound of the train whistle blowing again, much closer this time, followed by a series of excited shouts from outside.
Mac glanced up as his younger brother Henry stuck his head in the door of the general store and called urgently, "Mac! Come on! You've got to see this!"
"What in blazes?" Davis reacted.
Mac came to his feet, a tall, lean man in his late twenties with a shock of brown hair. "Sorry, Mr. Davis," he noted dryly. "I reckon we'll have to call the game a draw."
"A draw!" exclaimed Davis. "But I was beatin' you!"
From the doorway, Henry urged, "Mac, hurry up!" The other customers in the store were already starting toward the door, drawn by Henry's excitement and agitation.
Mac joined them, stepping out onto the high, broad porch. Wagons were pulled up next to it so that they could be loaded with supplies. Earlier in the day they had been lined up three deep. Wooden steps at the end of the porch led down to the dusty street.
Mac, Henry, and the other people were standing where they could look along the street to the depot of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. A locomotive had rolled into the station from the north, pulling behind it a long train of flatbed cars and freight cars with their doors thrown open. The flatbeds were stacked high with an assortment of trunks, crates and small cannon. The freight cars were bulging with men in gray uniforms. The Confederate soldiers had begun to jump down out of the cars as soon as the train shuddered and jolted to a halt, and they were still disembarking, a gray tide on a gray day.
"What in the world?" Mac inquired.
"It looks like the whole Confederate army's come to Culpeper," Henry observed.
He was shorter and stockier than his brother and a decade younger. His hair was dark brown, almost black. His eyes shone with excitement as he watched the soldiers climbing off the train.
The arrival of the troops had drawn plenty of attention. People were emerging from buildings on both sides of Culpeper's main street and were looking toward the depot. They all knew that the Orange and Alexandria ran northeast to the town of Manassas, where it joined with the Manassas Railroad coming in from the west. Near Manassas was the farming community of Centreville, and in the countryside not far away was the meandering creek known as Bull Run, where the Confederacy had met the first thrust of the invading Union armies and won a decisive victory, throwing back the Yankees and sending them running home to Washington in a rout.
Since then, the bulk of the Confederate forces in Virginia had remained headquartered in Manassas and Centreville, under the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, widely regarded as one of the heroes of the opening battle, had been sent west to Tennessee to help counter Union advances there.
Mac heard another train whistle from the northeast. Something had definitely changed, he thought. If this second train was bearing as many men and supplies as the first one, the only logical conclusion was that the Confederate army was pulling back. And from the looks of the way the gray-clad soldiers were beginning to unload the flatcars, they intended to stay in Culpeper for a while.
It looked to Mac very much like his hometown had just become the new Confederate headquarters.
And maybe, he thought with rising excitement, just maybe that meant he would soon see his older brother Will again.
* * *
WILL BRANNON hunkered on his heels and leaned his shoulder against the rough trunk of a pine tree. He had taken off his campaign hat and placed it on the ground next to him. Now he lifted a pair of field glasses to his eyes and intently studied the scene before him.
The slope of the hillside fell away steeply from the spot where Will was crouched. Below him, a half mile away, were scattered the buildings of Winchester, Virginia, a town Will knew quite well. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson's Stonewall Brigade, of which Will was a part, had been headquartered there for a time the previous autumn. Over the winter Jackson's forces had withdrawn to the vicinity of Romney, and the Yankees had taken over Winchester.
Like rats moving into an abandoned house, thought Will as his eyes followed the blue-clad figures moving around the town.
Cpl. Darcy Bennett knelt beside Will and asked in a low, rumbling voice, "What do you see, Cap'n?"
"The scouts were right," Will murmured without lowering the field glasses. "It looks like the Yankees are getting ready to move out."
He could see the railroad station in Winchester and the boxes of supplies that were being loaded onto wagons and carried to the depot. A train waited there, occasional puffs of smoke issuing from the octagonal stack of the locomotive to indicate that it already had steam up. More Yankee soldiers were waiting at the station to load the boxes onto the train.
So far, it seemed to be only supplies that the Yankees were moving. The troops were still in Winchester. Evidently they would be the last to go. But with those supplies being moved out, it was inevitable that the Union soldiers would follow them.
Will had a pretty good idea where they would be going, too: across the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Piedmont.
The Blue Ridge itself loomed in the distance to the east, beyond the Shenandoah River that had formed this great valley. Will had spent his childhood looking at the Blue Ridge from the other side, as he grew up on the Brannon family farm near Culpeper. Lowering the field glasses, he glanced toward the mountains and couldn't help but wonder how his family was doing. His mother, Abigail, his brothers Mac and Titus and Henry, his sister Cordelia—except for his wandering brother Cory, off somewhere to the west in Missouri—they were all he had left in the world. Even though his mother had disowned him, had turned him out from the bosom of his family, Will knew that she could never really break the ties that bound them all. He was a Brannon and always would be.
But right now he was also a captain in the Confederate army, commanding this detail on a vital reconnaissance mission. Rebel scouts had brought word to Jackson that the Yankees were getting ready to pull out of Winchester, out of the Shenandoah Valley entirely, more than likely. Will and his men had been sent to confirm or deny that speculation.
They had spent a couple of chilly days marching along muddy roads until they reached this range of hills just west of Winchester. Taking to the brush then, so that they wouldn't be as likely to be discovered by Union patrols, they had moved through the hills to this vantage point. Now they were so close to the Yankees that they could hear the shouts of men giving orders from below them and could smell the wood smoke from the many fires in the Union camp.
Will let drop the field glasses suspended from a rawhide thong around his neck. He picked up his hat and straightened from his crouch. A glance over his shoulder showed him the eight men who had accompanied him and Corporal Bennett on this mission. They were kneeling, using trees and brush for cover, their rifles held ready in their hands. To a man, their lean faces and hollow eyes showed the effects of the harsh winter just past. And spring was not yet here.
"The Yankees are getting ready to pull out," Will told them in a quiet voice. "Remember that. It's important."
They all understood what he meant. If anything happened to the group on the way back to Confederate headquarters, if some of them didn't make it ... well, then, it would be up to the survivors to carry the word to Jackson. At least one member of this detail had to make it back to Mount Jackson, which had carried its name long before the famous general had located his headquarters there.
God willing, all of them will make it back, thought Will as he motioned for the men to pull back. The Yankees in the town were all occupied and hadn't spotted the Confederates on the hillside. In a matter of moments, Will and his men had withdrawn up the brushy slope until they were no longer visible from Winchester. All they had to do now was avoid any Union patrols in the area.
Darcy took the lead. Like Will, he had grown up in Culpeper County. He had been more of a hunter and a woodsman than a farmer, although he had worked a patch of ground before the war came along. When he was sober, that is. Darcy had had a fondness for getting liquored up and brawling that had caused his path to cross that of Sheriff Will Brannon several times, always with unpleasant consequences. The war had made both Will and Darcy put any hard feelings behind them, however. It was difficult to hold a grudge against a comrade in arms.
The Confederates wove through the rugged countryside and had put a couple of miles behind them when they reached a road. Darcy lifted a hand in a signal to stop. The enlisted men went down in a crouch as Will moved alongside the burly corporal.
"Somethin' comin', Cap'n," Darcy hissed.
Will heard it, too. The noise was the creaking of wagon wheels, he decided, accompanied by soft thuds that were probably from the hooves of horses or mules hitting the still-soft surface of the road. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that his men were well concealed. He figured he and Darcy should follow their example and indicated as much with a jerk of his head. The two men faded back into the brush to wait.
They didn't have to do so for very long. Within a matter of minutes, three wagons came into view, rolling around a bend in the road to the north. The wagons were piled high with household goods. A middle-aged woman with strong features under her bonnet was driving the first vehicle. An elderly man was beside her on the seat. The team of mules pulling the second wagon was being handled by a boy around twelve. A younger girl was sitting beside him. The driver of the third wagon, a young woman who was maybe twenty years old, was alone on that seat. Will found his attention drawn most to her. Blonde curls hung out from under her bonnet, and she was quite pretty. She also looked too delicate to be handling a team of mules, but from what Will could see of it, she was doing a good job.
"Well, I'll swan," Darcy whispered from beside Will as they knelt behind some brush. "Where do you reckon they're goin'?"
Will just shook his head in silence. He thought he saw a resemblance between all five of the pilgrims. The old man might be the woman's father. The three youngsters were likely her children. Like Darcy, he wondered where the family was headed.
More hoofbeats sounded before the wagons could roll out of sight. These came from the south, and they were much more rapid. A dozen men on horseback swept into view, cantering along the road toward the wagons. They wore the short blue jackets and black caps of a Yankee cavalry patrol. The man in the lead reined in and called an order for his men to stop. Then he barked, "You there in the wagons! Halt!"
Will's jaw tightened grimly. He didn't much like the looks of this. From the sound of the low, rumbling growl that issued from Darcy's throat, neither did the corporal. Will motioned for him to be quiet and wait to see what was going to happen.
"Whoa there! Whoa, I say!" the woman called to her mules as she hauled back on the reins. The wagon came to a stop, as did the other two vehicles. The woman asked in unfriendly tones, "What is it you want?"
The officer in charge of the patrol, a lieutenant, lifted a hand to his cap and tugged respectfully on the brim. "Begging your pardon, ma'am," he said, "but civilians aren't supposed to be traveling on these roads."
"And why not?" demanded the old man in a high-pitched, irritated voice. "These are our roads, ain't they? They sure as shootin' don't belong to you Yankees." The last word sounded as if it tasted bad in the old man's mouth.
The Union lieutenant kept his patience, and Will couldn't help but admire that about the man. He explained, "General Shields has ordered the roads closed so that aid cannot be sent to the Rebel forces west of here."
The old man cackled. "We ain't goin' west, sonny. We're goin' south. Can't you see that? Or are you Yankees so damn dumb you don't know which way's which?"
"Hush up, Pap," the woman directed, confirming Will's suspicion that the old man was her father. She must have seen the way the Union troops bristled at his scathing words. Will had certainly noted the soldiers' reaction. The woman looked at the lieutenant and went on, "We're just poor folks moving from one place to another, mister. We're not giving aid to anybody. Just trying to look out for ourselves."
"Where are you from, and where are you bound?" asked the lieutenant.
"We used to live up in Martinsburg, but we couldn't make a go of our farm with my husband and our three oldest boys gone."
One of the cavalrymen laughed and said, "Gone off to war is what she means."
The woman ignored the interruption and continued, "We got kinfolk down in Fisher's Hill. We plan to stay with them awhile. Everything we got left to our name is on these wagons, mister. We just want to go find a home."
The lieutenant hesitated, clearly torn. His orders were clear, but it was obvious the woman was telling the truth and that this family of pilgrims did not represent a threat to the Union forces. Will watched the young officer intently, reading the struggle that played out on the man's face.
Then the soldier part of him won, and he shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you'll have to turn those wagons around and come with us into Winchester. If General Shields says it's all right, you can go on your way then."
Several of the troopers had edged their horses forward, and one of them prodded his mount into a trot that carried it alongside the third wagon, the one driven by the pretty young woman. The Yankee looked her over boldly, causing her face to flush with embarrassment.
The lieutenant snapped, "Higgins, get back here."
"Yes sir, Lieutenant," the cavalryman responded. "Right away." But he took his time turning his horse around, and his eyes lingered on the woman while he was doing it.
Will's teeth ground together in frustration. He would have liked to smash a fist into Higgins's grinning face, but he and his men had to stay out of this if at all possible. He glanced around at the others, saw the anger shining in their eyes, and knew they were anxious to intervene, even though it would jeopardize their mission.
The lieutenant seemed to be a humane sort, but he was going to follow his orders anyway and take these people into Winchester as virtual prisoners. Once again, the Yankees were going to run roughshod over the people whose homeland they had invaded.
The Union soldiers didn't seem to have any idea that they were being watched by a group of Confederates, crack shots each and every one of them. It would be so easy to teach these Yankees a lesson. One volley would knock most of them out of their saddles ...
Will drew in a deep breath, the air hissing between his clenched teeth. Again he motioned for Darcy and the other men to wait.
Slowly and awkwardly, the wagons were turned around and pointed north. They rolled off into the distance, toward a crossroad that would take them into Winchester. Will didn't motion for his men to leave their hiding places until the pilgrims and the Union cavalrymen were well out of sight.
As the Confederate soldiers emerged from the brush, Darcy Bennett looked at Will and asked angrily, "How come we didn't put a stop to that, Cap'n? Them Yankees didn't hardly outnumber us, and they didn't know we were here. We could've taken 'em."
Mutters of agreement came from the other troopers in gray.
Will knew that everything Darcy said was true, but he snapped, "A fight would have meant that some of us might be killed, and that would hurt our chances of getting back to General Jackson. The shots could have drawn more Yankees, too."
"I never knew you to be scared of Yankees, Cap'n." Darcy's voice was low, but it held a definite challenge.
Will had to fight down the impulse to take off his cap and holster and saber and settle this with fists. As fond as he had grown of Darcy, he wasn't going to let any man call him a coward.
But even though he had never considered himself much of a soldier and had become an officer by chance as much as anything else, Will had learned something of military discipline during his time in the army. He ordered tautly, "That's enough, Corporal. In my judgment, the need to help those civilians did not outweigh the need to finish our mission. That's the only explanation you're going to get from me. And by God, it's more than you would have gotten from most officers." Will became aware that both of his hands were clenched into hard fists.
Darcy regarded him for a moment, then nodded. "Will Brannon ain't like most officers," he noted. Then he jerked his head toward the other men and ordered, "Let's go."
The patrol moved out, some of them still sullen but others seeming to understand Will's decision now. Darcy took the lead, as usual, as they resumed making their way southwest toward Jackson's headquarters.
Will didn't remind them of it, but he knew that if what they wanted was to kill Yankees, they would surely get another chance to do that, probably sooner rather than later.