The Railroad War (10 page)

Davis was passionate, erratic, and impulsive, and at times perhaps less than completely sane. But he was the chief executive.
And so, inevitably, the conflict between Davis and Johnston would soon come to a head.

At any rate, Davis had no other choice for his Western Area Commander than Joe Johnston. There was no other general officer
besides Lee of sufficient rank and stature for the job.

The strife between the Confederate Commander of the West and his commander in chief had not yet affected Noah Ballard. He
and Johnston got along famously, so Noah was a little surprised to note, as Johnston returned his salute, that the general
looked miffed with him.

“I thought I told you, Major, that you were to leave the work of corporals to corporals,” Johnston said. “I just saw you pulling
a switch. Why does the Confederacy require majors to pull railway switches? Next generals will be driving locomotives.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Noah said. “There was no one else to do it.”

“Because you looked for no one else,” Johnston said. “I don’t mind majors working, you understand. It never hurt any major
to work hard, even with his hands. But a major is a major because he is supposed to be able to tell less intelligent, knowledgeable,
or experienced men how to do things so that he doesn’t do the work of a hundred men all by himself.”

“Yes, sir,” Noah said.

“Having said that,” the general continued, appearing to mellow, “I’m still pleased with you, boy. So pleased that I’ve found
another load of manure to place on your back.” He remounted. “You will come along with me, Major. Lieutenant,” he said, addressing
one of his aides, “would you be so kind as to dismount and allow the major to borrow your horse? You can rejoin us at my quarters.”
And then the general addressed Gar Thomas. “Mr. Thomas, do you think you can manage matters until Major Ballard returns. I’ll
try not to keep him for long.”

“I’ll do what I can without him, General,” Gar Thomas said.

The general maintained his quarters in a house at the western edge of Jackson a half mile from his armies’ lines. A man in
the uniform of a captain of the Quartermaster Corps was waiting for the General and Noah in the parlor of the house. Desks
had been set up in other rooms, and various clerks and staff members were busy at them. But the parlor had been left for the
general’s personal use.

The captain had been pacing the floor impatiently when Johnston and Ballard arrived, trailed by the general’s aide. But he
came to a halt to greet them when they entered the parlor. He was a bulldog of a man, tall and barrel chested, florid and
meaty faced, thick of limb and body, with a noticeable paunch. Though he wore the elegantly tailored uniform of a bureaucrat
and his face was flushed and roughened by rich food and drink, his movements were surprisingly agile and graceful. His name
was William Hottel.

It didn’t take Noah long to realize that it was Captain Hottel’s arrival that was the source of the general’s current displeasure.
The captain, it turned out, belonged to the Railroad Bureau in Richmond. He had been sent by Colonel Sims, the head of the
Bureau, to manage the vital rail lines in eastern Mississippi and western Alabama. Before he began his stint with the Bureau,
he had been manager of the Tennessee part of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

Noah was acquainted with the work of the Railroad Bureau, though this was his first encounter with one of its officers. It
had been set up by the government in Richmond to take overall control of the railroads of the South. It had the authority
to manage the lines, if it so wished, and allocate what scarce resources and equipment were available to wherever these would
be most effectively used.

The idea hadn’t worked, not because it was a bad idea, Noah believed. On the contrary, the North had a similar organization
in place that did everything it was intended to do. But in the South, the setting up of structures of command and organization
did not necessarily lead to obedience and organized, purposeful activity.

Confederate commanders in the field never failed to overrule the wishes of the officers of the Railroad Bureau, unless of
course these wishes actually coincided with their own. And the officers of the Bureau had no better luck trying to manage
the operators of the various southern railroads. In the South, each railroad was seen as a feudal fiefdom whose territory
was inviolate.

Joe Johnston was no more eager to relegate his control of the transportation in the area under him to Richmond bureaucrats
than was any other general. In fact, his own railroad officer, Noah Ballard, was not in the Quartermaster’s Department. He
was an engineer. Even though Noah was only a few days on the job, he was well aware that Johnston had been satisfied with
his decision to put the young engineer in charge of his railways.

On the other hand, Johnston did have his troubles with Richmond. He might be willing to sacrifice Noah on the altar of administrative
peace.

Or at least that was the worry that filled Noah’s mind as he took the measure of Captain William Hottel.

“The captain comes to us with a great deal of experience running railroads in Tennessee and elsewhere,” Johnston told Noah
as he completed making his introductions. “And he has come to
represent,”—he
said the word quite slowly—“the Railroad Bureau in our part of Mississippi. Therefore, you will be working with Captain Hottel
as you complete your current duties.”

And then Johnston addressed Hottel. “Captain, perhaps you would be so kind as to show Major Ballard a copy of your orders
from Colonel Sims?”

“Happy to,” Hottel said, and handed Noah his papers.

What the orders said was that Captain Hottel would, upon his arrival at General Johnston’s headquarters, take charge of the
entire operation of those railroads of western Alabama and eastern Mississippi then currently within the control of the Confederate
States of America.

What the orders meant, finally, would of course be up to the discretion of General Johnston.

After Noah finished reading the orders, Captain Hottel retrieved them, then handed them over to General Johnston, who passed
them to his aide.

“You will also want to see this, I think,” Hottel said to Noah, offering a folded piece of notepaper. “It’s something personal
for you from your father.”

Noah’s father had scribbled:

I’ve known Will Hottel for a long time, Noah. He’s a good man, and you can work with him. The work you and he do will be of
much use to me, and to all of us. Forgive me for having to be so brief, but the time pressures, on all of us, are severe.

Your loving Father.

*    *    *

Noah refolded the note and placed it in his pocket.

“My father likes you, Captain,” Noah said.

“I’ve gathered that,” Hottel said, “and I’m grateful for his kind words. Your father had a large hand in getting me here.”

“You’ve come a long way, Captain,” the general said, moving to end the conversation. ‘You’ll want to rest, I’m sure, before
we ease you into your new responsibilities.”

“Thank you, General,” Captain Hottel said. “But I’m as fresh as I’ll ever be. And as long as I have you and the officer who
has been handling your railroad matters together, we might take advantage of the moment to get some work done.”

“Some work?” the general asked, looking displeased.

“I think that we should all be clear as to our particular areas of responsibility,” Hottel said.

General Johnston shook his head. “You may not have noticed, Captain, but this city is currently under siege by a force of
fifty thousand men. I aim to extract our troops from that siege during the next twenty-four hours. And that means I don’t
have time to thrash out areas of responsibility with you.” And then, before Captain Hottel had a chance to reply, the general
began moving toward the door as he placed his hat on his head. “Major,” he said to Noah, “would you take care of Captain Hottel
for me? See that he is fed and housed—and otherwise taken care of?”

“Yes, sir,” Noah said, forcing himself to speak evenly. This is all I need today! he thought. Even though Father has good
words for him.

“I’d hoped that the general could find time to stay for at least a few minutes,” Captain Hottel said. But Johnston only smiled
blandly and continued on his way.

“I’ll take care of the fighting while the two of you take care of the moving,” he said. As he stood at the door, he turned
and caught Noah’s eyes.
“Major,”
he continued, “you have my full authority to do everything in your power to make life as easy and comfortable for the
captain
as you can. I’m sure, I need hardly add, that you will both be of great help to one another.”

When he finished that, he looked meaningfully at Noah. Then he winked.

“Yes, sir,” Noah said.

One thing Johnston meant, he knew, was that Noah was to use his rank to insure his authority over Hottel—no matter what Hottel’s
orders from Richmond were.

Then Noah turned to Captain Hottel. “Well, Captain,” he said, “since, as you say, you’re ready to get down to business, what
spark of reason do you have in mind to illuminate this swamp of darkness and confusion?”

Captain Hottel smiled blandly. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“What I mean is that we’re up to our knees in trouble,” Noah said. “And I was wondering if you had any immediate ideas about
how to help pull us out. I have thirty thousand men, with all their baggage and equipment, and I have eighteen locomotives
and maybe a hundred and thirty cars, give or take twenty, to move them with on worn-out rails and roadbed. So you would be
a large help to me if you could come up with a way through that. Can you?”

“Not immediately. No,” Hottel said, looking pensive. “Not immediately. But…” And then he paused.

“But I’m surprised that you have so little rolling stock,” Hottel went on.

“Are you aware, Captain, that there’s a war on?”

Captain Hottel just smiled at the rebuke. “Are
you
aware, Major,” he said after a moment, “that, according to my records there are well over fifty workable locomotives in northern
Mississipi and a like number of cars—perhaps two or three hundred of them?”

“I’ve seen the inventories,” Noah said. “But I can’t use what’s on paper.”

The captain shrugged. “There are a
minimum
of fifty locomotives.” He gave Noah a self-satisfied look. “In other words, there may be even more.”

“Like I said, I can’t use paper machines.”

“Why haven’t you looked for them?” Hottel asked.

“Because I’ve been on the job for only ten days, there’s a war on, and I have other things to do,” Noah said, barely holding
on to his patience. Captain Hottel rubbed Noah the wrong way, John Ballard’s endorsement of him notwithstanding.

“But they are all still out there,” Hottel said, “in northern Mississippi. And they’re waiting to be used.”

“But they’re completely worthless if I don’t have them. You must know that.” He looked at Hottel. “God only knows where they
are, and God only knows how we could go about getting them.”

“Still, it does make you pause to think, doesn’t it?” Captain Hottel said with a smile. “Working locomotives and railroad
cars—the very things that the Confederacy needs more than anything else right now—have been sitting nearby under your very
nose. Wouldn’t you love to have them?”

“Sure,” Noah answered. “They’d be a gift from God.” He stopped. “But you know something, Captain?” He stopped again. “Tell
me,” he said, “are you thinking of trying to find all that equipment?”

“The thought passed my mind,” Hottel said.

“Don’t bother.”

“Why not?”

“I can manage—not well, but passably—with what we’ve got now. And after we pull out of Jackson, all that other machinery won’t
do us a damn bit of good.”

“How’s that?”

“There’s no way we can move them east where all that equipment is going to be needed.”

There was only one completed railroad line in the South between the Mississippi River and the East. It ran from Memphis through
the northernmost parts of Mississippi and Alabama to Chattanooga. There a line branched north toward Richmond and south toward
Atlanta. Since the Federals now held all the western portions of that east-west line, the South had no through east-west train
service.

Another line running east from Vicksburg through Jackson and then to Montgomery and Atlanta was uncompleted. The section between
Selma and Mongomery, the section bisected by the Tombigbee River, would not be completed for some time.

If the Confederacy wanted east-west rail service during the summer of 1863, they had to travel down to Mobile, ferry across
the bay, the connect with the lines that went to Atlanta.

“You don’t think that equipment will be needed here,” Hottel asked innocently, “after Sherman and his people leave?”

“After Johnston withdraws from Jackson, Captain, you can write off Mississippi from the Confederacy.”

“That’s writing off the entire West, then,” Hottel said, as though the thought came as an utter surprise to him.

Noah gave a short, sharp nod in answer. Then he made a move for the door outside. “Meanwhile,” he said, shaking his head again,
“we’ve got to do what we can with the eighteen we have.”

Hottel just looked at him with curious, probing eyes.

Noah gave him a to-hell-with-it gesture. “But I take it you’d like to track down that equipment?”

“I’d like to locate the locomotives,” Hottel said. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

“Go ahead if you want. Find out where they are.” And get out of my hair, he thought.

“I just might do that,” Hottel said. “Meanwhile, let’s get ourselves organized.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s you and me sit down to a leisurely lunch, where you can explain your procedures and methods and I can elaborate on
the information I’ve brought with me.”

“If it’s like the information about that equipment you say is ready for plucking, I’d be very interested in hearing it. But
not now. I’ve no time, I’m sorry to say.”