The next couple of seconds were mad confusion. Hundreds charged around him, swarming up over the barricade. Shots rang out; the flash of knives glinted in the sun; rifle butts were raised, slammed down; the wild, hysterical crowd pushed forward, clearing the barricade.

Stunned, he just stood alone and then looked back to where his wife, Martha, knelt in the middle of the road, keening softly, cradling the body of young John, his two daughters standing wide-eyed, looking down at their mother and dead brother.

He walked back to her as if in a dream, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her back up.

"We have to go," he whispered.

"No!" She started to flail wildly at him.

"For our two who are still alive we've got to go! We stay here now we'll all be killed."

She stiffened, nodded, but her face was still buried in her hands.

He knelt down, picked up his boy, and carried him to the side of the road, to the entry of a livery stable. A couple of hands in the stable looked at him nervously, bitterness in their eyes.

He gazed at them, saying nothing as he reached into his haversack, drew out a pad and a pencil, wrote the name of his son and their address on it, then tucked the paper into the boy's breast pocket

In a way he could not believe what he was doing, so casually marking the body of his son before walking away. He folded the boy's hands and kissed him lightly on the forehead, drew out five dollars from his pocket nearly all he had, and put it into the boy's pocket then stood back up.

"His name is John Miller Junior. I put five dollars in his pocket for his burying."

"So what?" the younger of the stable hands growled.

John looked around meaningfully then back to the two.

"If you have any Christian sense to you, you'll see that my son is buried proper."

"And if not?" the young one laughed.

"I'm going to join the army now. And after this is over, I'll be back. If he isn't buried as I want, I'll track both of you down and kill you."

The older of the two, gaze lowered, nodded his head.

"I'll see to it. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you."

John turned without looking back down at his boy. He knew if he did so he'd break, and there was no time, no luxury for that now.

He gathered Martha under his arm, his two sobbing daughters clinging to her skirts.

Hundreds were still passing over the barricade, which was carpeted with a score of dead and wounded, black and white. Lying on the ground was a rifle, a new Springfield. He looked down at it, and the man still clutching the weapon, the man who had killed his son. He picked the gun up, testing its heft, then bent back over to pull off the cartridge box the man was wearing, the brass plate on its side an oval with us stamped in the middle. He put it on, picked up the cap box, and slipped it on to his belt.

He had seen it done often enough. He drew a cartridge, tore it open, poured in the powder, rammed a ball down, half cocked the gun, and capped the nipple with a percussion cap.

Some had stopped to look at him, wide-eyed. None had ever seen a colored man do this or seen a colored man with a cartridge box stamped us on his hip.

He scrambled over the barricade, then turned to help his wife and daughters. Shouldering his rifle, he headed north.

Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore

My 21, 1863 6:30 P.M.

You, sir, have let this go out of control," General Lee snapped, looking up at the quaking civilian standing before him.

The Honorable George Brown stood crestfallen, shirt open, tie gone, fine broadcloth jacket streaked and burned. "Sir, if only I could explain."

"You've tried to explain," Lee said, "and I find your explanation unacceptable.

"Young Lieutenant Kirby here tells me that you were told to help us enter the city but to keep things under control. Do you call that control down there?"

Lee pointed back down toward the center of the city, which was a raging inferno. Fort McHenry beyond was concealed in the smoke.

"General Lee, we did not want this, either."

"I should hope not."

"Sir, you have not been here these past two years," Brown said defensively. "It has been a place seething with hatred, with midnight arrests, a city under occupation. The passions simply exploded, sir."

Lee sighed wearily. He had no authority to deal with this man, but if he did, he'd have him under arrest, if for no other reason than to set an example.

"I want you to go back out there. General Stuart will provide you with an escort. You are to try and help us stop this, because if you don't, my provost guards most certainly will. I have issued orders to shoot to kill anyone caught looting or setting fires, and I don't care which side they are on."

"What about the Loyal League?" Brown asked. "Aren't you going to arrest them?"

"No, I will not. Do you want to set off yet another explosion? They are to go home. Tomorrow I will offer them amnesty if they turn in their arms."

"Amnesty, sir? They should be thrown in jail the way we were!"

"Don't you understand, Mr. Brown? I am trying to restore order here. I will not follow the practices of the Lincoln government in the process. If we act with forebearance now, it will reap rewards later. As long as they comply with military law, they and their property will not be harmed."

"At least round up their ringleaders. I have their names, sir," and Brown fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper, and placed it on Lee's desk, which had been set up under an awning right in the middle of the square.

Lee angrily brushed the note aside.

"No, sir. No! I want their help at this moment. If they will help us to restore order, no matter how naive that might sound, then they are free to live peacefully. I would think that together, both sides would wish to save this city before it burns down around your ears."

Brown said nothing.

"Now go do your duty, sir."

Brown, obviously shaken by the interview, withdrew.

Lee stood up and walked out from under the awning. The city he had loved so much was going under. The entire central district was in flames, the fire department all but helpless to contain it, since so many of the firemen had fallen in with one side or the other during the rioting.

He now had most of Pickett's division either fighting the fires or struggling to suppress the rioting. A report had come in of one company from the Fourteenth Virginia all but wiped out in an ambush, dozens more injured or killed fighting either the rioters or the flames.

It was early twilight, and as he watched the fire, he wondered if this was now symbolic of their entire nation, North and South, so consumed with growing hatred that they would rather destroy all in a final orgy of madness than band together to save what was left.

If this is indeed what we are sinking to, then we are doomed, he thought Even in victory we will be doomed, for God will surely turn away from us.

We have to retrieve something out of this, he thought. There has to be something saved out of these ashes. I must still set the example and lead if we are to restore what we have lost.

July 23 1963 8.00am

The constant stream of engines pulling the long convoy of trains coming down through the gap above Marysville, Pennsylvania, filled the Susquehanna Valley with smoke. The shriek of train whistles echoed and reechoed. The mood all along the trackside was jubilant, civilians out to watch the spectacle, boys waving and racing alongside the long strings of flatcars and open-sided boxcars packed with troops.

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.