The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  Robert looked thoughtful. He scratched the part in his hair, then bent over and took a twig from the ground. He traced two squiggly parallel lines in the dirt. Harriet recognized the oxbow curves of the Combahee. “Where are the ones you found?” he said.

  Harriet pictured the map she had hidden in her bodice. She took Robert’s twig and made scratches at the four spots Jacob had indicated, including the one Samuel originally located.

  Robert studied the marks on the road. A long moment passed. The heat was stifling even in the shade. Harriet forced her eyes to stay open. A scattered rain started to fall just beyond the tree’s dense canopy. It sparkled in the sunshine. The perfume of wet dirt bloomed on the dry road, and Harriet drew a full breath, expanding her lungs to take in the good smell.

  Robert pointed to the drawing. “There,” he said. “The upper reaches a the river. You said they put a torpedo near the ferry. I bet they put another one opposite. They aiming to protect the ferry and the rail line to Savannah. That’s the most important spot on the river. We done that on the Stono, too.”

  The warm air became thicker. Harriet wiped her brow with her sleeve. “You laid torpedoes on the Stono?”

  “Yep.”

  “How you anchor em?”

  “Waited til dead low tide to fasten the chains,” he said. “That way, you see what you’re doing better.”

  “We won’t be there at low tide. We gone be upriver at full flood,” she said.

  Robert nodded. “Can’t breach the bar unless the tide rising. Too shallow.”

  “So how do we spot mines at high tide?” Harriet hoped he had a good answer. Hunter wouldn’t go forward without one.

  “Make a damn good guess?”

  She exhaled, disappointed. “That all?”

  The young sailor shrugged. “Take it slow. Look for snags. The Cum’bee flows steady near the ferry. No rocks or sandbars. You see a ripple out a the ordinary, it gone be a torpedo. Either that, a gator.”

  Harriet recalled the ripples in the water from the night before. In view of the swarming wildlife on the Combahee, Robert’s advice wasn’t especially useful. The thought of submerged alligators gave her the shivers. Of all God’s creatures, why this one? Still, she noted his advice. Look for snags.

  The boat pilot pushed his hands against his thighs and stood. “I best mosey along. My missus gone be waiting. Always glad to see you, Moses.”

  “You taking the packet to Beaufort?”

  “Yes’m. You, too?”

  Harriet felt as if her shoes had taken root under the bench. “I planned on heading back, but I’m worried about missing Hunter.”

  “Why don’t you talk with Colonel Montgomery? See what he thinks?”

  Harriet straightened. “He around?”

  “I jest saw him at the quartermaster’s—”

  Robert Smalls hadn’t finished his sentence before Harriet was on her feet. She would catch a later packet or find a corner in the refugee camp overnight, if necessary. Montgomery could help her with Hunter.

  Robert clapped his hat on his head. “Should I save you a seat on the packet?”

  “No, and don’t you tarry none,” Harriet said. She leaned forward to hug the lithe young sailor, and then she reached for her satchel. “Get on home to your missus. I got an insurrection to plan. You understand.”

  Robert smiled. “Yes, ma’am. That I do.”

  The thought of Robert’s family gave Harriet pause. She had never asked him, but she wondered now how he’d done it. Why he’d done it. Whisking six slaves and a gunship past Fort Sumter. Most people couldn’t muster the nerve to fight back. Even when opportunity banged on the door, they were too scared to open it.

  “Robert, tell me. How you get the gumption to steal the Planter? They might a blown you sky high, sailing right under their noses.”

  He laughed and slapped his hands together. “I tell you, Moses, I saw my chance right off.”

  She smiled. “Just like that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The captain took his officers to the grog shop. ’Round midnight. The rest a the crew was conked out below decks, half of em drunk, the other half enjoying a night off. Nobody noticed a thing til we fired up the boiler, and by then, it was too late. We’d locked the hatch. Nobody could hear em hollering over the engine.”

  “You come on the idea then?”

  “No, ma’am. I been figgering on it for months. Every time the Planter made port, I told my Hannah to be ready. When I saw the opportunity, I got her and the chil’ren aboard.”

  “How y’all get past Sumter?” Harriet asked. “Don’t they stop every ship?”

  Robert rubbed his hands. He clearly relished the story. “That they do, that they do,” he said.

  “So how you trick em?”

  “Well, first I got me a fine-looking uniform from the captain’s chest.” Robert tugged at his lapels and sleeves, as if to smarten them. “Then,” he said as he adjusted the tilt of his old derby, “I fetched up his favorite straw boater. You see, most captains wear navy headgear, but not Captain Relay. He got a particular fondness for his old straw hat. The Confederate lookouts all knew that, you see.”

  “So the hat got you past Sumter?” Harriet asked admiringly. She loved a good disguise.

  “Oh, Sumter wasn’t half the problem. I had to get us past five lookouts. Charleston’s a door with five bolts. Locked tight.”

  “Nobody recognized you that whole time?”

  “If you believe a man’s a man, why then, he is. Nobody sees color in the dark. They spotted that old straw boater and the brass buttons, and I give the right signal at each lookout. So the batteries waved us on. Any a them could a sunk us with a couple a rounds.”

  Harriet shook her head with amazement. “Most folks would be scared stiff. No amount a praying would set them on that road.”

  Robert paused. His expression went vacant, and he rubbed the irritated skin of his jaw. At last, he said, “I believe it was Charlotte. She asked if she could call me daddy. Poor little mite so scared, she hardly got the question out.” His eyes cleared. “Yep. That was it.”

  Harriet recalled Robert’s stepdaughter, who had recently lost her two front teeth. From the child’s coloring, Harriet guessed her natural father might have been white. “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “I knew a real daddy had to get her safe if he could. Charlotte couldn’t help not having none.” He smiled and scratched the part in his hair again. “It worked on me. Made me feel I had to try. Every chile needs a daddy.”

  Reminded of her own daughter boarded out to the Sewards while she was away, Harriet reached out to squeeze Robert’s hands. “Charlotte sure is lucky. The good Lord looking down on you both.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was a house servant—a situation preferable to that of a field hand . . . My mother was a field hand, and one morning was ten or fifteen minutes late behind the others . . . As soon as she reached the spot where they were at work, the overseer commenced whipping her . . . I heard her voice, and knew it, and jumped out of my bunk, and went to the door. Though the house was some distance from the field, I could hear every crack of the whip, and every groan and cry of my mother. I wept aloud.

  William W. Brown, Slave

  WHEN SHE ARRIVED AT THE QUARTERMASTER’S office a few minutes later, Harriet found Colonel Montgomery reading a newspaper with his feet on a desk. He sat in a far corner of the hall that served as an exchange for foreign buyers of the rare variety of cotton for which the Sea Islands were famous. Officers examined ledgers while soldiers unpacked crates of supplies imported for the war. A man with a crowbar attacked an unhappy nail somewhere in the back of the building, though no one took notice of the nail’s protest.

  The Jayhawker removed his feet from the desk as she approached and combed his fingers through tangled hair. Tight across the shoulders and short on the wrists, his blue uniform looked as if had been sewn for someone else, though dusty elbows and a missing collar button suggested he didn’t much care
. Montgomery’s beard showed a day’s growth. “Moses,” he said. “Take a seat.”

  Harriet felt too anxious to sit still, but she pulled out the chair opposite his desk. “Afternoon, Colonel. Thank you, sir.”

  “What brings you down to Hilton Head?”

  “Looking for General Hunter,” she said.

  Montgomery’s face wrinkled like he’d bitten on a bad tooth. “You might want to give that up. The man’s as useful as a teat on a bull. Too cautious. Seems I’m here every other day to beg for a mission.”

  “I got one for you,” Harriet said.

  Montgomery hunched forward. His eyes glittered. “Tell me about it.”

  “I been back up the Cum’bee, sir.” Harriet clasped her hands in her lap. She waited for the next question.

  “Looking for the torpedoes?” he asked. Montgomery’s directness suggested he hadn’t stopped thinking about their last conversation.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “What did you find?” His voice acquired an edge.

  Harriet took no offense at his impatience. She felt the same. “There’s five torpedoes between Fields Point and the ferry landing,” she said. “The Johnnies laid a pontoon across the river there.”

  “Five mines? You sure?” he asked.

  “Five,” she said, though she wondered if illness might have prevented Jacob from spotting a second crew from another plantation. Harriet gripped her hands more tightly. “Five,” she repeated.

  Montgomery glanced at two men carrying a crate through a side door, then down at a defect on his desktop. He moved aside a worn pocket Bible and worried the blemish on the table with his thumbnail. “That’s a lot of explosives to sail around.”

  “Not when you know where they is, sir.”

  Montgomery looked up with a frown. “Like John Brown knew the defenses at Harper’s Ferry?”

  Harriet raised her chin. “Brown was Joshua at Jericho. His music still tumbling walls. But he wasn’t no military man. He wasn’t even much of a soldier. We both know that.”

  Guilt shot across Montgomery’s rugged face so fast that Harriet wasn’t sure she’d glimpsed it. She wondered how he felt about not being at Brown’s side when Robert E. Lee cornered the old abolitionist at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. Harriet knew how sorry she was. John Brown had wanted her to help him start the slave rebellion, but the Lord gave her a fever that had prevented her from joining him and forced her to accept a friend’s hospitality for two weeks. It was true He worked in mysterious ways.

  “Brown wasn’t a planner,” the colonel admitted, “but I would’ve followed him anywhere.”

  “You followed him here,” she said. “John Brown’s looking down right now. This is your chance to finish his work. Get General Hunter off his duff.”

  Montgomery didn’t answer. He thumbed the scratch on the desk some more. Then, with a decisive grunt, he drew a map from the drawer and unrolled it on the tabletop. He spun the paper to face Harriet. She gazed down at the tangled yarn ball of rivers, creeks, inlets, and sandbars, and pointed to the split in the channel at Fields Point. “There,” she said, tapping the map. “That’s where they put the first torpedo, thinking we’d sneak through on their blind side.”

  Montgomery made a mark on the map with a small pencil. “Where else?”

  Harriet hesitated. If she revealed all, she might not be of further use. She might not see Hunter. “The chart’s back in Beaufort,” she said. “Don’t want to tell you one thing now and something else later.”

  Montgomery looked up from the map in irritation. “Five torpedoes aren’t that many. Surely you remember?”

  Harriet passed a hand over her brow. “Sorry, sir. Been a long night.”

  Montgomery studied the map, calculating. “But you have all the locations figured?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said despite an inner tremor.

  He glanced up again, perhaps noting something unusual in her voice. Harriet looked him in the eye and switched subjects. “If Hunter gives the go-ahead, will he ask you or Colonel Higginson to lead the raid?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know outcomes will differ depending on his choice.”

  “Differ?” she said.

  Montgomery’s mouth thinned. He rolled up the map. “Higginson and I don’t see eye to eye on how to bring war home to the Secesh.”

  She sensed it was he who was now evasive. “How’s that, sir?”

  Montgomery slipped the chart back in the drawer. He didn’t answer.

  “Something to do with Rebel pigs and turkeys?” she asked, recalling Thomas’s criticism about attacks on civilian property.

  That drew a smile. Montgomery tipped back his chair until his shoulders rested against the wall. His blue eyes were keen. “You could say that.”

  “I reckon General Hunter favors sterner measures than Colonel Higginson,” Harriet said. She hoped Montgomery did, too. She thought he did—everything pointed to it—but she needed to be sure.

  “He and I both do. I’m probably the most notorious on that account. So long as the planters have the luxury of their slaves, and the fruits of their sins, they’re going to continue this rebellion. You can’t get anywhere with a warlike people by treating them like church deacons.”

  Harriet nodded. The Union had pussyfooted long enough around the armed half of the South’s population, ignoring the other half at gunpoint.

  “In Florida, you took men and cotton,” she said. “How this gone be different, Colonel?”

  “We wouldn’t just be looking for recruits. I mean to get women and children, too. Free as many people as we can,” he said. Montgomery rocked, balancing on the back legs of the chair. “Every slave we liberate is one the Secesh can’t use.”

  The children’s voices on the Lowndes Plantation came back to Harriet as clearly as if they were playing in the lane outside the office. She pictured Kizzy with her armful of clothing following Pipkin back to the house with blue sash windows.

  “Anything else?” she said.

  Montgomery leaned forward until his chair legs touched the floor. Since he didn’t indulge in tobacco, Harriet was surprised when he took a small tin of locofocos from his top pocket and struck one against the corner of the wooden desk. The sulfur flared. The teetotaler watched the flame and then blew it out. He flicked the matchstick back and forth to cool it.

  “Ever see how easily these new ones spark?” he said. “It’s time to let the Secesh know what this war’s going to cost if they keep it up. Every crop we burn makes it harder for the Rebels to feed their army.”

  Harriet was silent. Most Northern officers—even abolitionists like Thomas Wentworth Higginson—believed the South must be treated according to the rules of civilized warfare. Private property mustn’t be intentionally destroyed, even if colored people were chained to it. There would be no burning of Southern estates.

  Harriet considered plantations hell on earth yet wasn’t sure God had elected her to put them to the torch. Hadn’t she dreamed of it, though? Razing those scenes of despair even if they were the only shelter some people had ever known, where their children had been born and parents were buried? Harriet’s own mother still wept for her old cabin whenever the unfamiliar weighed too heavily. Mama hadn’t a good word for New York peaches or Canadian winters. She sometimes acted as if gaining her freedom had cost her a leg.

  “Them cabins are all some folk got,” she said.

  Montgomery shrugged. “I’d think they wouldn’t mind starting over somewhere else.” He pitched the matchstick at a trash barrel a few feet away. “But we can spare the negro quarters, if you think best. The barns and mills are the structures with real value. But mind you, this isn’t some friendly boxing match, Moses. We’re fighting this to the death. And we need to do it differently if we’re going to win. Right now, we’re going nowhere.”

  Harriet’s hands curled tight. Montgomery was the man they needed.

  A grandfather clock stolen from an elegant foyer somewhere struck the hour in
the bustling office. She counted the chimes. Four o’clock. Perhaps she could catch the last packet. Let Montgomery approach Hunter first. Prepare the general for what she had to say.

  “I best head to the dock, if you’ll excuse me, colonel,” Harriet said. She stood. “Knowing bout them torpedoes changes things, don’t it?”

  “It does,” he said. “I expect Hunter’s going to give us a different answer.” Montgomery’s fingers lightly tapped the desk, as if he itched to pull out the map again. “Sure you can’t remember where they are?”

  Harriet shook her head.

  “Well, bring that chart tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” she said.

  Harriet wended her way to the door, hardly seeing the desks and chairs, grazing objects she passed with the tips of her long fingers like a blind woman.

  The raid roared up in her imagination. She saw South Carolina’s richest plantations burst into flame, crackling and smoking. Thousands of women, children, and men flocked to Jordan’s shore. The ranks of the colored infantry swelled. Shots resounded across America like the one that the ladies in Concord described with such shining eyes.Thomas Wentworth Higginson would be alarmed at Montgomery’s destructive intentions, she knew. He’d object that colored troops would be called barbaric. Harriet doubted that the Kansas Jayhawker would show Thomas his locofocos ahead of time.

  Her own evasions might have even graver consequences, Harriet realized. Colonel Montgomery plotted against property. If she proceeded with her plan, not knowing the precise location of the fifth torpedo—or if there were others—she might doom the first colored regiments of the United States. The Combahee would suck them into its depths. The Lord might forgive her come Judgment Day, but no one else would.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Some masters were kind to their slaves, and some was cruel, just like some folks treat their horses and mules—some like them, and are good to them, and some ain’t.

  Foster Weathersby, Slave

  HARRIET SLEPT SO DEEPLY THAT IT wasn’t until around noon the next day that she awoke to the realization that it was too late to do her work and still catch the ferry to distant Hilton Head before Hunter’s office closed. She was only half sorry as the thought of moving forward with limited information nagged at her. A day to ponder their strategy might be useful. “Act in haste, repent at leisure,” Mama said.