Shelby foote THE CIVL WAR 03 the civil war, a narrative re tox (v5 0)

ALL THESE WERE HONOURED IN THEIR GENERATIONS AND WERE THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES THERE BE OF THEM THAT HAVE LEFT A NAME BEHIND THEM THAT THEIR PRAISES MIGHT BE REPORTED AND SOME THERE BE WHICH HAVE NO MEMORIAL WHO ARE PERISHED AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN AND ARE BECOME AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN BORN AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM BUT THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS HATH NOT BEEN FORGOTTEN WITH THEIR SEED SHALL CONTINUALLY REMAIN A GOOD INHERITANCE AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE WITHIN THE COVENANT THEIR SEED STANDETH FAST AND THEIR CHILDREN FOR THEIR SAKES THEIR SEED SHALL REMAIN FOR EVER AND THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE Ecclesiasticus xliv First Vintage Books Edition, September 1986 Copyright © 1974 by Shelby Foote All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto Originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1974 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foote, Shelby The Civil War, a narrative Contents: v Fort Sumter to Perryville— v Fredericksburg to Meridian— v Red River to Appomattox United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865 I Title E468.F7 1986 973.7 86-40135 eISBN: 978-0-307-74469-2 v3.1 CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright I Another Grand Design The Forty Days Red Clay Minuet II War Is Cruelty … You Cannot Refine It III A Tightening Noose Victory, and Defeat Lucifer in Starlight LIST OF MAPS, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE About the Author I Another Grand Design LATE AFTERNOON OF A RAW, GUSTY DAY in early spring — March 8, a Tuesday, 1864 — the desk clerk at Willard’s Hotel, two blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, glanced up to find an officer accompanied by a boy of thirteen facing him across the polished oak of the registration counter and inquiring whether he could get a room “A short, round-shouldered man in a very tarnished major general’s uniform,” he seemed to a bystanding witness to have “no gait, no station, no manner,” to present instead, with his ill-fitting jacket cut full in the skirt and his highcrowned hat set level on his head, a somewhat threadbare, if not quite down-at-heels, conglomerate impression of “rough, light-brown whiskers, a blue eye, and rather a scrubby look withal … as if he was out of office and on half pay, with nothing to but hang round the entry of Willard’s, cigar in mouth.” Discerning so much of this as he considered worth his time, together perhaps with the bystander’s added observation that the applicant had “rather the look of a man who did, or once did, take a little too much to drink,” the clerk was no more awed by the stranger’s rank than he was attracted by his aspect This was, after all, the best known hostelry in Washington There had been by now close to five hundred Union generals, and of these the great majority, particularly among those who possessed what was defined as “station,” had checked in and out of Willard’s in the past three wartime years In the course of its recent and rapid growth, under the management of a pair of Vermont brothers who gave it their name along with their concern, it had swallowed whole, together with much other adjacent real estate, a former Presbyterian church; the President-elect himself had stayed here through the ten days preceding his inauguration, making of its Parlor a “little White House,” and it was here, one dawn two years ago in one of its upper rooms, that Julia Ward Howe had written her “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the anthem for the crusade the new President had begun to design as soon as he took office Still, bright or tarnished, stars were stars; a certain respect was owed, if not to the man who wore them, then in any case to the rank they signified; the clerk replied at last that he would give him what he had, a small top-floor room, if that would It would, the other said, and when the register was given its practiced half-circle twirl he signed without delay The desk clerk turned it back again, still maintaining the accustomed, condescending air he was about to lose in shock when he read what the weathered applicant had written: “U.S Grant & Son — Galena, Illinois.” Whereupon (for such was the aura that had gathered about the name “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, hero of Donelson, conqueror of Vicksburg, deliverer of Chattanooga) there was an abrupt transformation, not only in the attitude of the clerk, whose eyes seemed to start from his head at the sight of the signature and who struck the bell with a force that brought on the double all the bellboys within earshot, but also in that of the idlers, the loungers roundabout the lobby, who soon learned the cause of the commotion in the vicinity of the desk It was as if the prayers of the curious had been answered after the flesh Here before them, in the person of this undistinguished-looking officer — forty-one years of age, five feet eight inches tall, and weighing just under a hundred and forty pounds in his scuffed boots and shabby clothes — was the man who, in the course of the past twenty-five months of a war in which the news had mostly been unwelcome from the Federal point of view, had captured two rebel armies, entire, and chased a third clean out of sight beyond the roll of the southern horizon Now that he made a second visual assessment, more deliberate and above all more informed than the first, the bystander who formerly had seen only an “ordinary, scrubby-looking man, with a slightly seedy look,” perceived that there was more to him than had been apparent before the authentication that came with the fixing of the name The “blue eye” became “a clear blue eye,” and the once stolid-seeming face took on “a look of resolution, as if he could not be trifled with.” Such, then, was the effect of the gathered aura And yet there was a good deal more to it than fame, past or present There was also anticipation, and of a particular national form Just last week, on Leap Year Day, the President had signed a congressional act reviving the grade of lieutenant general, and Grant had been summoned east to receive in person his promotion, together with command of all the armies of the Union, which he was expected to lead at last to final victory over the forces that had threatened its destruction Forgotten now was the small top-floor room his modesty had been willing to accept Instead, the clerk obsequiously tendered the distinguished guest “the best in the house”: meaning Parlor 6, where Abraham Lincoln himself had held court in the days preceding his inauguration, less than one week more than three years ago today Grant accepted this as he had the other, with neither eagerness nor protest, which caused a second witness to remark upon “his shy but manly bearing.” Still another even saw virtue in the dead-level way he wore his hat “He neither puts it on behind his ears, nor draws it over his eyes; much less does he cock it on one side, but sets it straight and very hard on his head.” A fourth believed he detected something else beneath the general’s “rough dignity” of surface “He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to it.” Just now though, here in the close atmosphere of the lobby of Willard’s — which a disgruntled Englishman complained was compounded, in about equal parts, of “heat, noise, dust, smoke, and expectoration” — what he mainly seemed to desire was an absence of fanfare But that was not to be For a week now the town talk had been of his imminent arrival, and now that the talkers had him within actual reach they intended to make the most of him Returning downstairs presently for dinner in the main dining room, and holding his son Fred by the hand as if for mutual reassurance, he managed to get as far as his table and even to order the meal before he was recognized by a gentleman from New Orleans who came over for a handshake Then, as before, all hope of privacy ended Word of his presence “spread from table to table,” according to one who was there; “people got up and craned their necks in an anxious endeavor to see ‘the coming man.’ ” This reached a climax when one of the watchers, unable to contain his enthusiasm, mounted a chair and called — prematurely, for the promotion had not yet been conferred — for “Three cheers for Lieutenant General Grant!” These were given “in the most tremendous manner” and were followed by a pounding that made the glasses and silverware dance on the tables, “in the midst of which General Grant, looking very much astonished and perhaps annoyed, rose to his feet, awkwardly rubbed his mustache with his napkin, bowed, and resumed his seat.” For a time, good sense prevailed; “the general was allowed to eat in peace.” But when he rose again and began to make his way out, once more with his son in tow, a Pennsylvania congressman took him in hand and began a round of introductions “This was his first levee,” the witness added; after which his retreat through the crowded lobby and up the staircase to his rooms was characterized by “most unsoldierly blushing.” Hard as this was on a man who valued his privacy and was discomfited by adulation, before the night was over he would find himself at storm center of an even worse ordeal Word of his arrival having spread, he found on his return to Parlor a special invitation to come by the White House, presumably for a conference with the Commander in Chief, whom he had never met although they both were from Illinois and were by now the two most famous men in the country If he had known that the President’s weekly receptions were held on Tuesday evenings he would perhaps have postponed his call, but by the time he completed the short walk up the avenue to the gates of the executive mansion it was too late He found himself being ushered up the steps, through the foyer, down a corridor, and finally into the brightly lighted East Room, where the reception was in full swing The crowd, enlarged beyond the norm tonight by the news that he would be there, fell silent as he entered, then parted before him to disclose at the far end of the room the tall form of Abraham Lincoln, who watched him approach, then put out a long arm for a handshake “I’m glad to see you, General,” he said The crowd resumed its “stir and buzz”; there was a spattering of applause and even “a cheer or two,” which struck Navy Secretary Gideon Welles as “rowdy and unseemly.” Lincoln turned Grant over to Secretary of State William H Seward for presentation to Mrs Lincoln, who took his arm for a turn round the room while her husband followed at a distance, apparently much amused by the general’s reaction to being placed thus on display before a crowd that soon began to get somewhat out of hand, surging toward him, men and women alike, for a close-up look and a possible exchange of greetings Grant “blushed like a schoolgirl,” sweating heavily from embarrassment and the exertion of shaking the hands of those who managed to get nearest in the jam “Stand up so we can all have a look at you!” someone cried from the rim of the crowd, and he obliged by stepping onto a red plush sofa, looking out over the mass of upturned faces whose eyes fairly shone with delight at being part of an authentic historical tableau “It was the only real mob I ever saw in the White House,” a journalist later wrote, describing how “people were caught up and whirled in the torrent which swept through the great East Room Ladies suffered dire disaster in the crush and confusion; their laces were torn and crinolines mashed, and many got up on sofas, chairs, and tables to be out of harm’s way or to get a better view of the spectacle.… For once at least the President of the United States was not the chief figure in the picture The little, scared-looking man who stood on a crimson-covered sofa was the idol of the hour.” Rescued from this predicament — or, as the newsman put it, “smuggled out by friendly hands” — Grant presently found himself closeted in a smaller chamber, which in time he would learn to identify as the Blue Room, with the President and the Secretary of War, Edwin M Stanton Lincoln informed him that he would be given his lieutenant general’s commission at a ceremony here next day and would be expected to reply to a short speech, “only four sentences in all, which I will read from my manuscript as an example which you may follow … as you are perhaps not so much accustomed to public speaking as I am.” For guidance in preparing his reply, he gave him a copy of what he himself would say, together with two suggestions for remarks which he hoped the general would incorporate in his response: first, something that would “prevent or obviate any jealousy” on the part of the connection on his deathbed, “the infinite gainer” from having him thus meet his deadline even as I was failing to reach mine My other chief debt is to the late Allan Nevins, whose close-packed Organized War to Victory , the last in his four-volume War for the Union, was similarly available during the past two years Both gave me a wealth of useable material, but at least as valuable was their example of dedication and perseverance, double-barreled proof that such an undertaking could be carried to a finish In that sense my debt to them is personal, though not as much so, nor as large, as the ones I owe my editor, Robert Loomis, and my wife, Gwyn Rainer Foote, both of whom bore with me all the way Perhaps in closing I might add that, although nowhere along the line have I had a “thesis” to argue or maintain — partly no doubt because I never saw one yet that could not be “proved,” at least to the satisfaction of the writer who advanced it — I did have one thing I wanted to do, and that was to restore a balance I found lacking in nearly all the histories composed within a hundred years of Sumter In all too many of these works, long and short, foreign and domestic, the notion prevailed that the War was fought in Virginia, while elsewhere — in an admittedly large but also rather empty region known vaguely as “the West” — a sort of running skirmish wobbled back and forth, presumably as a way for its participants, faceless men with unfamiliar names, to pass the time while waiting for the issue to be settled in the East I not claim that the opposite is true, but I claim that it is perhaps a little closer to the truth; that Vicksburg, for example, was as “decisive” as Gettysburg, if not more so, and that Donelson, with its introduction of Grant and Forrest onto the national scene, may have had more to with the outcome than either of the others had, for all their greater panoply, numbers, and documentation In any case, it was my hope to provide what I considered a more fitting balance, East and West, in the course of attempting my aforesaid purpose of re-creating that war and making it live again in the world around us So, anyhow, “Farwel my book and my devocion,” my rock and my companion through two decades At the outset of this Gibbon span, plunk in what I hope will be the middle of my writing life, I was two years younger than Grant at Belmont, while at the end I was four months older than Lincoln at his assassination By way of possible extenuation, in response to complaints that it took me five times longer to write the war than the participants took to fight it, I would point out that there were a good many more of them than there was of me However that may be, the conflict is behind me now, as it is for you and it was a hundred-odd years ago for them —S.F COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume One I CHAPTER l PROLOGUE—THE OPPONENTS Secession: Davis and Lincoln Sumter; Early Maneuvers Statistics North and South CHAPTER FIRST BLOOD; NEW CONCEPTIONS Manassas—Southern Triumph Anderson, Frémont, McClellan Scott’s Anaconda; the Navy Diplomacy; the Buildup CHAPTER THE THING GETS UNDER WAY The West: Grant, Fort Henry Donelson—The Loss of Kentucky Gloom; Manassas Evacuation McC Moves to the Peninsula II CHAPTER WAR MEANS FIGHTING … Pea Ridge; Glorieta; Island Ten Halleck-Grant, Jston-Bgard: Shiloh Farragut, Lovell: New Orleans Halleck, Beauregard: Corinth CHAPTER FIGHTING MEANS KILLING Davis Frets; Lincoln-McClellan Valley Campaign; Seven Pines Lee, McC: The Concentration The Seven Days; Hezekiah III CHAPTER THE SUN SHINES SOUTH Lincoln Reappraisal; Emancipation? Grant, Farragut, Buell Bragg, K Smith, Breckinridge Lee vs Pope: Second Manassas CHAPTER TWO ADVANCES; TWO RETREATS Invasion West: Richmond, Munfordville Lee, McClellan: Sharpsburg The Emancipation Proclamation Corinth-Perryville: Bragg Retreats CHAPTER LAST, BEST HOPE OF EARTH Lincoln’s Late-Fall Disappointments Davis: Lookback and Outlook Lincoln: December Message Volume Two I CHAPTER l THE LONGEST JOURNEY Davis, Westward and Return Goldsboro; Fredericksburg Prairie Grove; Galveston Holly Springs; Walnut Hills Murfreesboro: Bragg Retreats CHAPTER UNHAPPY NEW YEAR Lincoln; Mud March; Hooker Arkansas Post; Transmiss; Grant Erlanger; Richmond Bread Riot Rosecrans; Johnston; Streit Vicksburg—Seven Failures CHAPTER DEATH OF A SOLDIER Naval Repulse at Charleston Lee, Hooker; Mosby; Kelly’s Ford Suffolk: Longstreet Southside Hooker, Stoneman: The Crossing Chancellorsville; Jackson Dies II CHAPTER THE BELEAGUERED CITY Grant’s Plan; the Run; Grierson Eastward, Port Gibson to Jackson Westward, Jackson to Vicksburg Port Hudson; Banks vs Gardner Vicksburg Siege, Through June CHAPTER STARS IN THEIR COURSES Lee, Davis; Invasion; Stuart Gettysburg Opens; Meade Arrives Gettysburg, July 2: Longstreet Gettysburg, Third Day: Pickett Cavalry; Lee Plans Withdrawal CHAPTER UNVEXED TO THE SEA Lee’s Retreat; Falling Waters Milliken’s Bend; Helena Repulse Vicksburg Falls; Jackson Reburnt Lincoln Exults; N.Y Draft Riot Davis Declines Lee’s Resignation III CHAPTER RIOT AND RESURGENCE Rosecrans; Tullahoma Campaign Morgan Raid; Chattanooga Taken Charleston Seige; Transmississippi Chickamauga—First Day Bragg’s Victory Unexploited CHAPTER THE CENTER GIVES Sabine Pass; Shelby; Grant Hurt Bristoe Station; Buckland Races Grant Opens the Cracker Line Davis, Bragg; Gettysburg Address Missionary Ridge; Bragg Relieved CHAPTER SPRING CAME ON FOREVER Mine Run; Meade Withdraws Olustee; Kilpatrick Raid Sherman, Meridian; Forrest Lincoln-Davis, a Final Contrast Grant Summoned to Washington Volume Three I CHAPTER ANOTHER GRAND DESIGN Grant in Washington—His Plan Red River, Camden: Reevaluation Paducah, Fort Pillow; Plymouth Grant Poised; Joe Davis; Lee CHAPTER THE FORTY DAYS Grant Crosses; the Wilderness Spotsylvania—“All Summer” New Market; Bermuda Hundred North Anna; Cold Harbor; Early CHAPTER RED CLAY MINUET Dalton to Pine Mountain Brice’s; Lincoln; “Alabama” Kennesaw to Chattahoochee Hood Replaces Johnston II CHAPTER WAR Is CRUELTY … Petersburg; Early I; Peace? Hood vs Sherman; Mobile Bay; Memphis Raid; Atlanta Falls Crater; McClellan; Early II Price Raid; “Florida”; Cushing; Forrest Raids Mid-Tenn Hood-Davis; Lincoln Reelected CHAPTER You CANNOT REFINE IT Petersburg Trenches; Weldon RR March to Sea; Hood, Spring Hill Franklin; Hood Invests Nashville Thomas Attacks; Hood Retreats Savannah Falls; Lincoln Exultant III CHAPTER A TIGHTENING NOOSE Grant; Ft Fisher; 13th Amendment Confed Shifts; Lee Genl-in-Chief? Blair Received; Hampton Roads Hatcher’s Run; Columbia Burned CHAPTER VICTORY, AND DEFEAT Sheridan, Early; Second Inaugural Goldsboro; Sheridan; City Point Five Forks—Richmond Evacuated Lee, Grant Race for Appomattox CHAPTER LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT Davis-Johnston; Sumter; Booth Durham; Citronelle; Davis Taken K Smith; Naval; Fort Monroe Postlude: Reconstruction, Davis ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE BOOKS The Civil War: A Narrative Volume I, Fort Sumter to Perryville “A stunning book full of color, life, character and a new atmosphere of the Civil War, and at the same time a narrative of unflagging power Eloquent proof that an historian should be a writer above all else.” —BURKE DAVIS “This is historical writing at its best.… It can hardly be surpassed.” —Library Journal “Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War, as thousands of Americans apparently do, will go through this volume with pleasure.… Years from now, Foote’s monumental narrative most likely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of its kind.” —New York Herald Tribune Book Review “There is, of course, a majesty inherent in the subject Some sense of that ineluctable fact, however reluctant its expression, is evident in every honest consideration of our history But the credit for recovering such majesty to the attention of our skeptical and unheroic age will hereafter belong peculiarly to Mr Foote.” —M E BRADFORD, The National Review The Civil War: A Narrative Volume II, Fredericksburg to Meridian “Gettysburg … is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle … Mr Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist’s skill in directing the reader’s attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest His organization of facts could hardly be bettered.” —Atlantic “Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail as in Mr Foote’s ‘Civil War: A Narrative.’ ” —New York Times Book Review “The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting are ail controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about Foote has the novelist’s feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian’s scrupulous regard for recorded fact The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled.” — WALTER MILLS ABOUT THE AUTHOR SHELBY FOOTE was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina During World War II he served in the European theater as a captain of field artillery He has written five novels: Tournament, Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season, Shiloh and Jordan County He has been awarded three Guggenheim fellowships He died in 2005 ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE VINTAGE CIVIL WAR LIBRARY All For the Union by Elisha Hunt Rhodes Trade/978-0-679-73828-2 eBook/978-0-307-77270-1 The American Civil War by John Keegan Trade/978-0-307-27493-9 eBook/978-0-307-27314-7 Ashes of Glory by Ernest B Furgurson Trade/978-0-679-74660-7 Buffalo Bill’s America by Louis S Warren Trade/978-0-375-72658-3 eBook/978-0-307-42510-2 The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War by Leonard L Richards Trade/978-0-307-27757-2 eBook/978-0-307-26737-5 Chancellorsville 1863 by Ernest B Furgurson Trade/978-0-679-72831-3 The Civil War Dictionary by Mark Boatner Trade/978-0-679-73392-8 The Civil War in the American West by Alvin M Josephy, Jr Trade/978-0-679-74003-2 Civil War Wives by Carol Berkin Trade/978-1-4000-9578-0 eBook/978-0-307-27293-5 The Civil War by Geoffrey C Ward Trade/978-0-679-75543-2 eBook/978-0-307-55515-1 Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz Trade/978-0-679-75833-4 eBook/978-0-307-76301-3 Days of Defiance by Maury Klein Trade/978-0-679-76882-1 The Destructive War by Charles Royster Trade/978-0-679-73878-7 Did Lincoln Own Slaves? by Gerald J Prokopowicz Trade/978-0-307-27929-3 eBook/978-0-307-37714-2 The Era of Reconstruction 1864–1877by Kenneth M Stampp Trade/978-0-394-70388-6 Forever Free by Eric Foner Trade/978-0-375-70274-7 Freedom Rising by Ernest B Furgurson Trade/978-0-375-70409-3 eBook/978-0-307-42595-9 Honor’s Voice by Douglas L Wilson Trade/978-0-375-70396-6 Jefferson Davis, American by William J Cooper Trade/978-0-375-72542-5 eBook/978-0-307-77264-0 Lincoln by Richard Carwardine Trade/978-1-4000-9602-2 eBook/978-0-307-26467-1 Lincoln Reconsidered by David Herbert Donald Trade/978-0-375-72532-6 Lincoln’s Sword by Douglas L Wilson Trade/978-1-4000-3263-1 Lincoln’s Virtues by William Lee Miller Trade/978-0-375-70173-3 Nathan Bedford Forrest by Jack Hurst Trade/978-0-679-74830-4 eBook/978-0-307-78914-3 The Negro’s Civil War by James M McPherson Trade/978-1-4000-3390-4 eBook/978-0-307-48860-2 Not War But Murder by Ernest B Furgurson Trade/978-0-679-78139-4 eBook/978-0-307-42704-5 Nothing But Victory by Steven E Woodworth Trade/978-0-375-72660-6 eBook/978-0-307-42706-9 President Lincoln by William Lee Miller Trade/978-1-4000-3416-1 eBook/978-0-307-26871-6 The Reel Civil War by Bruce Chadwick Trade/978-0-375-70832-9 eBook/978-0-307-49008-7 Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene D Genovese Trade/978-0-394-71652-7 eBook/978-0-307-77272-5 Sherman’s March by Burke Davis Trade/978-0-394-75763-6 The State of Jones by Sally Jenkins Trade/978-0-7679-2946-2 eBook/978-0-385-53032-3 They Fought Like Demons by De Anne Blanton Trade/978-1-4000-3315-7 This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust Trade/978-0-375-70383-6 eBook/978-0-307-26858-7 Twilight at Little Round Top by Glenn W LaFantasie Trade/978-0-307-38663-2 What Lincoln Believed by Michael Lind Trade/978-1-4000-3073-6 eBook/978-0-307-43016-8 What They Fought For 1861–1865 by James M McPherson Trade/978-0-385-47634-8 What This Cruel War Was Over by Chandra Manning Trade/978-0-307-27732-9 eBook/978-0-307-26743-6 Wolf of the Deep by Stephen Fox Trade/978-1-4000-9542-1 eBook/978-0-307-49882-3 VINTAGE CIVIL WAR LIBRARY Available at your local bookstore, or visit www.randomhouse.com ALSO AVAILABLE BY SHELBY FOOTE FOLLOW ME DOWN In Jordan County, Mississippi, a murder trial is drawing to a close The victim is a young woman who has been found strangled and weighed down with concrete blocks at the bottom of a lake The defendant is a God-haunted farmer old enough to be her father The trial is a formality, because Luther Eustis has already confessed But as Shelby Foote re-creates the murder of Beulah Ross—and the annihilating passion that drew her to her murderer—he generates a suspense full of tension and foreboding Drawing on themes as old as the Bible and investing them with the chilling dignity of a mountain folk song, Follow Me Down immerses us in lives obsessed with sin and redemption, desire and vengeful retribution It transports us to a territory of the imagination that is touching, sometimes terrible, but always deeply recognizable: a place that only the best fiction ever penetrates Fiction/978-0-307-77928-1 JORDAN COUNTY The seven stories in Jordan County move backward in time, from 1950 to 1797, and through the lives of characters as diverse as a black horn player doomed by tuberculosis and convulsive jealousy, a tormented and ineffectual fin-de-siècle aristocrat, and a half-wild frontiersman who builds a plantation in Choctaw territory only to watch it burn at the close of the Civil War In prose of almost Biblical gravity, and with a deep knowledge of the ways in which history shapes human lives—and sometimes warps them beyond repair— Foote gives us an ambitious, troubling work of fiction that builds on the traditions of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor but that is resolutely unique Fiction/Literature/978-0-307-77927-4 LOVE IN A DRY SEASON Love in a Dry Season describes an erotic and economic triangle, in which two wealthy and fantastically unhappy Mississippi families— the Barcrofts and the Carrutherses—are joined by an open-faced fortune hunter from the North, a man whose ruthlessness is matched only by his inability to understand the people he tries to exploit and his fatal incomprehension of the passions he so casually ignites Combining a flawless sense of place with a Faulknerian command fo the grotesque, Foote’s novel turns a small cotton town into a sexual battleground as fatal as Vicksburg or Shiloh— and one where strategy is no match for instinct and tradition Fiction/Literature/978-0-307-77925-0 SHILOH Shelby Foote’s monumental three-part chronicle of the Civil War was hailed by Walker Percy as “an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high-readability of the first-class novelist.” Shiloh warrants similar praise, for while it is a powerful novel—a spare, unrelenting account of two days of battle in April 1862—it is also a stunning work of imaginative history, conveying not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants’ hearts and minds Through the eyes of officers and illiterate foot soldiers, heroes and cowards, Shiloh creates a dramatic mosaic of a critical moment in the making of America, complete to the haze of gunsmoke and the stunned expression in the eyes of dying men Fiction/978-0-307-77926-7 VINTAGE CIVIL WAR LIBRARY Available at your local bookstore, or visit www.randomhouse.com ... Orleans for an advance on Mobile as part of the new general-in-chief’s design for a spring offensive in the central theater This was the assignment he had coveted all along, and though he was aware... That was his plan.” That was what it basically was That was what it came to, in the end At the outset, however, the plan — which might better have been defined, at this stage, as a plan for a. .. general use the Valley approach to serve him as Stonewall had served Little Mac, did not mean that this force was not usable as part of the drive on the Virginia capital and the gray army charged