Henry said nothing, raising his field glasses back up and focusing on a distant ridge. Actually Sickles was right If someone had seized the moment before Hooker regained consciousness, had shown a little guts, they might not be sitting atop this hill in Pennsylvania this day, but instead be in Richmond.

"Nice quiet place up there on the Hudson, like some papist monastery," Sickles continued. "But I didn't go hide in some monastery, Hunt I learned my business on the streets of New York with the likes of old Clinton and Tweed.

"You don't hesitate in that game. You jump in with both feet grab hold, and thrash your opponent till he begs for mercy and crawls on the floor, and then you kick him in the ass for good measure. That's just as much war as what you learned. Don't let go and always know what the other man is thinking, whether he's your friend or your enemy. That's leadership, Hunt learning how the other man thinks; then use that to get him with you or get him the hell out of the way."

Henry sighed, trying to keep his field glasses focused, but his eyes hurt not enough sleep. He lowered the glasses and wiped his face. Already the day was getting warm.

Draining off the rest of the brandy, Sickles set the glass down on a rock. Smiling, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a thick cigar, a Havana, and offered it Henry nodded a thanks, bit off the end, and then fumbled in his pockets for a Lucifer. Dan reached into his breast pocket produced a match, and Henry puffed the cigar to life.

"I was stationed at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, for five years," Henry finally offered. "Even met you a few times at various functions, Fourth of July parades, receptions at City Hall, though I doubt you'd remember."

"Nice place, Fort Hamilton. Right in the harbor, out of the stink of the streets," Sickles replied. "That's when Lee commanded it?"

"Yes."

"I remember him from those times. Elegant distant a bit too pious for my blood. Understand you used to pray with him, studied the Bible together."

"Yes, we did." He was surprised that Sickles knew that bit of information.

"A good politician, a good general for that matter, knows such things about his friends and his enemies. You liked him, didn't you, Hunt?"

"Yes, I did."

"And now?"

Henry puffed on his cigar, and Dan chuckled softly.

"It's all right I'm not one of those damn fire-eating Republicans; you say a good word about that old man on the other side, and next thing you know you've got some damn congressman screaming for your hide before those witch-hunters with the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War."

‘I respect Lee. Anyone who doesn't is a fool, sir."

Sickles laughed. "Would never want to play poker with him. He had that look."

Henry could not help but laugh softly in reply and took another puff on the cigar. It was a good one, the best he had smoked in months. The image of Lee playing poker. No, chess was more his game; poker did not fit with Lee.

"It's always about Lee, isn't it?" Sickles offered. "Always we're wondering what he is thinking, what he is doing, chasing his tail. Politics, Hunt, is like war. The moment you start chasing the other man's tail, you've lost You've got to keep him off balance, make him dance to your jig. That's why we keep losing. Lee picks the song, and we dance to his tune.

"Chancellorsville, damn it to hell! Hooker knocked out like a cold fish, everyone staring wide-eyed, twittering like a bunch of harem eunuchs."

Henry could not help but smile at the analogy.

"Everyone kept looking at that map, saying we were flanked and Hooker knocked out cold. No one was looking at the map thinking maybe we've got them bastards flanked instead, not just flanked but divided in half, by God. We could of smashed them up good. Meade's entire corps was poised above Jackson's left flank. All that was needed was someone with the guts to go in. Meade lacked the stomach then, orders or no orders, and now he's the one running the show today."

Henry said nothing.

"Meade hates me. I could point to the sun and say it is in the east and he'll tell me to go to hell, it's in the west"

"I don't think it's that bad," Henry replied.

"I know. Nothing would please him more than me getting a bullet in the head or my leg blown off."

Henry said nothing, shifting his cigar and raising the field glasses back up. Typical of most politicians, Sickles talked too much. Yet he did have guts, there was no denying that and even some damn good sense about battle. Though an amateur, he had led his Excelsior Brigade well during the Seven Days and handled a division at Fredericksburg and Third Corps at Chancellorsville. Before Jackson hit the flank, Sickles repeatedly warned Hooker that something was up, first suspecting that the troop movement to his front was a retreat then just before they got hit judging it to be an attack about to be unleashed. His troops fought like demons trying to hold back the tide throughout that terrible night of May 2nd, with Sickles on the front line throughout

It was the other side of him, though, that was unsettling. Though Henry held little truck in how some rambled on about officers having to be gentlemen, nevertheless, Sickles was rather unsavory on many counts. He was a ward heeler out of New York, the kind who used the waves of foreigners pouring into the city as a political army to advance his own power. It was the scandal regarding his wife, however, that had shocked the entire nation.

Discovering that she was having an affair with the nephew of Francis Scott Key, Dan Sickles had confronted the man in Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House, pulled out a pistol, and gunned him down. Then, in a bizarre twist, Edwin Stanton, now the secretary of war, defended him in court, cooking up a strange new plea never heard of before-that he had been 'temporarily insane" and thus not responsible. Of course the jury had been delighted with the entertainment provided and let him off. Then Sickles does an about-turn and brings the fallen strumpet back into his bed, showing up in public with her by his side as if nothing had ever happened.

It was all but impossible to understand such a man, such a world. He calls the Point a "papist monastery." Well, better that than the world of a man like Sickles.

Is that what I am fighting for? Henry wondered. I have far more in common with Lee than with this person standing beside me. Yet it is his world I'm fighting for out here, this brawling, strange new behemoth that our Republic is evolving into. Lee fights to preserve a different world, elegant though built on the corruption of slavery, but still elegant, where men are expected to act as gentlemen and ladies, well, to act as true ladies.

Sickles, the boys from the factories of New England, the swarming mobs in the back alleys of New York, the miners coming up out of the pits of Pennsylvania and the smoke-belching iron mills, the Irish and the Germans by the hundreds of thousands swarming off the boats and into our ranks, are something new, different, a strange, vibrant energy that I barely understand.

"You think something is going on over there, don't you, Hunt?"

Henry lowered his glasses.

"Reconnaissance is not my job, sir. I'm up on this hill to place guns".

He nodded back over his shoulder where the Second Battery was laboriously working to bring up their guns, cutting down trees to clear a way, twelve horses, double teamed to a single caisson and piece, struggling up through the woods on the north flank of the hill.

A brigade from Third Corps was digging in along the crest of the slope, piling up rocks, dragging in logs. The front slope of the hill had been lumbered off the year before, thus providing a beautiful field of fire straight down to a jumble of rocks at the base of die hill and out toward an open wheat field beyond. It was wonderful ground. An entire rebel corps would bleed itself out trying to take this hill once they were dug in.