Yankees deployed along the far side of the wall, facing in toward Washington, were turned, crouching down, firing as well; a light field piece over there was turned, pointing straight at them, ready to sweep any charge that came into the parade ground.

He stood up for a brief instant, looking back over the parapet, back across the ground they had just stormed. It was carpeted with the dead and wounded of two divisions. Scattered groups of men were still pushing forward; down in the moat, hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more, floundered about. Any semblance of command was lost in this nightmare.

Where was the next wave? The mist revealed nothing.

"We're getting out!" Hazner shouted. He stood up, pushing his dazed colonel up on the wall. The gunners, not ten feet away, were furiously reloading their piece. For an instant he thought of taking them, but knew it was useless. Bullets were smacking into the earthen wall to either side, fired from the troops assembled below.

He violently pushed Brown, who was still dazed.

"No!" Brown cried, but Hazner ignored him, leaning down, lifting him up with his blacksmith's strength, slamming him over the parapet.

He leapt up, grabbed Brown, and rolled off the top, skidding halfway down the slope. Brown tried to stand back up.

"Goddamn it, Colonel. Lay down!"

"We can still take it!"

"Not yet, damn it. Wait for the next wave!"

"We can still take it!"

Brown tried to stand up, blood pouring from his wounded arm. Exasperated, Hazner reared back, punched him with a numbing blow on the side of the head, and Brown fell, tumbled into the mud, and was still.

Fumbling into his cartridge box while lying on his back, Hazner reloaded, awkwardly pulling out the ramrod, pushing the charge down while his musket lay on his stomach, then rolled over, capped the nipple, and poised his weapon.

Pressed flat against the slope, he knew that for the moment he was safe, though those on the far side of the moat were trapped in hell. Hundreds of men, thinking as he did, had pressed themselves down into the forward slope of the fort, the ground defilade that could not be hit. The thirty-pounder, only feet away, could sweep the far slope and the fields beyond, but it could not touch him, though the roar of it would leave him deafened. Any infantry that tried to pick him off would have to stand atop the parapet, and several did try in the next few minutes, only to be riddled, as a hundred or more fired on them, offering back some small measure of revenge for the carnage. It was a stalemate.

Hazner looked around, recognizing some faces from his regiment.

"We stay here!" he shouted. "Stay here, don't fall back, or you'll be slaughtered. Stay here till the next wave comes, then we go back in!"

He reached down to his canteen. Uncorking it, Hazner lifted it up. It was light, empty. A bullet had cut it nearly in half.

Cursing, he flung it aside, and then hunkered down to wait for what would come next

He looked back to the east The sun was breaking the horizon, dull red as it shone through the smoke and the fog, which would soon burn away. It was going to be a hot day. It was going to be a very long day.

July 18th 1863

The smoke of battle was drifting down Fifth Avenue. A gutted mansion to his right burned fitfully, its brownstone walls scorched black, glass from the broken windows lying scattered along the sidewalk, smoke pulsing out of the empty window frames soaring up in coiling plumes. Two bodies dangled from a lamppost in front of the mansion, hand-lettered signs tied to their feet… REBEL ARSONISTS, the signs twirling slowly as smoke drifted around them.

The artillery fire had stopped just after dawn, only the occasional rifle shot echoing now in the gloom. The haze of smoke hung low on the street, a fitful rain splashing down, the rain thick with soot, ash, the smell of wet wood smoke.

Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles walked purposefully down the middle of the street, his escort, a company of green-clad Berdan's sharpshooters, fanned out around him in a circle, moving like the veterans they were. Instead of stalking through woods and fields they now moved from doorway to doorway, rifles poised, scanning rooftops, open windows, abandoned barricades, racing forward, going down on one knee, then up again. Disdaining such caution, he walked upright, unafraid, setting the example he knew had to be set. Twice assassins almost got him, one of the shots nicking his hat. Of course he made sure that an illustrator from Harper's Weekly knew about that event; with luck it might be on the cover next week, with him standing as a hero in the middle of the street, the skulking coward leaning over from a rooftop. He had made a point of drawing his revolver and firing several shots back-missing, of course, but still it set the right pose. The country needs a hero in a time of crisis, he thought, and I am going to give them one.

A scattering of cheers and applause greeted him as he strode down the avenue, frightened civilians peeking out of windows, then coming outside to greet him. A beautiful young girl in a soot-darkened silk dress of bottle green came out from a doorway, carrying a flower. Shyly she curtsied and handed him the blossom.

Smiling, he bowed gallantly, took the flower with one hand, and then, taking the girl's hand, he bent over and kissed it gently.

"Thank you, my dear."

"The honor is mine, General."

She scurried back into her house, several of the veterans accompanying him looking at her, grinning slyly. He turned, handed the flower to one of his adjutants, and smiled at the knot of reporters walking behind him.

"You're a popular man this morning, General," a reporter from the Tribune shouted.

He smiled, thinking the nation needed a modest hero.

"It's the men, my men who deserve the credit," he replied diplomatically, saying it loud enough so his escort could hear it

They crossed Thirty-fourth Street, heading south. The four corners of the intersection were piled high with barricades, torn-up cobblestones, upended wagons, dead horses, a streetcar pushed over on its side… and dozens of bodies, many of them hideously riddled from the blasts of canister and solid shot, which the evening before he had directed into this rebel stronghold.

He paused at the middle of the intersection to watch as a company of infantry, New York State Militia, and several dozen firemen and policemen emerged out of the smoke and passed by, heading west. The lieutenant leading the group saw Sickles, slowed, and saluted.

"Where are you coming from, Lieutenant?" Dan asked.

"Over on the East Side, sir, down by the docks. Hard fighting, I lost half a dozen men, but we routed them into the river."

"Good work, son."

"We've been ordered over to the West Side now."

Dan nodded. There were still a few pockets of resistance down toward the Hudson, and apparently some of the rioters were trying to seize boats to get out of the city now that the insurrection was collapsing.

The lieutenant motioned to the back of his column. Four bedraggled civilians, hands tied, were being prodded along at bayonet point

"We captured these men, sir, in a burning warehouse. They claim they're innocent. I'm not sure, sir, what to do with them."

Dan looked over appraisingly at the four. One was fairly well dressed, broadcloth jacket velvet vest, looked like a clerk or young merchant in his early twenties.

Dan walked up to him, ignoring the other three, who were obviously ruffians, Irish street-sweepings.

"What's your story?"

"I got trapped in the mob, sir," the young man said nervously. "I don't know how I wound up in that warehouse; I was trying to get out but couldn't."