by John Jakes
Over supper at the post hotel, Benét said: “I admire the patriotism that inspired you to accept a commission. As for being in Ripley’s department—that calls for condolences.”
“That place is an infernal mess,” George agreed. “Lunatic inventors in every cranny, piles of paper a year old, no standardization. I’m trying to compile a master list of all the types of artillery ammunition we’re using. It’s a struggle.”
Benét laughed. “I should imagine. There are at least five hundred.”
“We may defeat ourselves and save the rebs the job.”
“Working for Ripley would discourage anyone. He looks for reasons to reject new ideas. He seeks their flaws. I’d rather look for strengths. Reasons to say yes.” Benét paused, twirling his glass of port. He gave his visitor a level look and decided to trust him. “Perhaps that’s why the President now sends prototypes directly here for evaluation.” He sipped. “Did you know about that—bypassing Ripley?”
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Taking the other side, I must tell you Lincoln’s very unpopular in the War Department because of his constant interference.”
“Understandable, but—” another searching look—“how will we whip the Ripleys without it?”
George carried the pessimistic question back to the city unanswered.
July sweltered away, and George hunched at his desk late into the evenings. He seldom saw Stanley, but he saw Lincoln often. The storklike, vaguely comical Chief Executive was always dashing from one government office to another with bundles of plans and papers and memoranda and a spare joke or two, some very bawdy. Gossip said the dumpy little woman to whom he was married refused to hear the stories repeated in her presence.
Occasionally Lincoln turned up at the Winder Building in the late afternoon, wanting one of the staff to join him in target practice over at Treasury Park. Once George was tempted to volunteer, but he held back, not because he was in awe of the Chief Executive—Lincoln was usually gregarious and eminently approachable—but because he feared he would let his frustrations spill out. As long as he worked for Ripley, he owed him silence as a measure of loyalty.
Although procedure outweighed performance in the departmental scheme of things, Ripley’s record was not all bad. George discovered the old man had pleaded for purchase of a hundred thousand European shoulder weapons more than three months ago to supplement the antiquated stores in federal warehouses. Cameron had insisted the army use only American-made weapons, which suggested to cynical George that some of the secretary’s cronies must have firearms contracts. The Manassas debacle darkened the cloud over Cameron, and his purchasing decision was now being denounced as a blunder. The war wouldn’t end with the summer, and there weren’t enough guns to train and arm recruits who had already reported to camps of instruction from the East Coast to the Mississippi.
George was pulled from drafting a mortar contract and assigned to rewrite and polish a new Ripley proposal for purchase of a hundred thousand foreign-made weapons. The proposal went to the War Department bearing half a dozen signatures, the most prominent after Ripley’s being George’s. After three days of silence, he walked over personally to check on the fate of the proposal.
“I found it sitting on some desk,” he reported when he returned. “Marked rejected.”
Without stopping his eternal movement of papers, Maynadier snapped, “On what grounds?”
“The secretary wants the proposal resubmitted with the quantity cut in half.”
Ripley overheard. “What? Only fifty thousand pieces?” He exploded into invective that made his typical tantrums pale; work was impossible for nearly an hour.
That night, George told Constance, “Cameron authorized the rejection, but Stanley signed it. I’m sure he took great pleasure in it.”
“George, you mustn’t sink into feelings of persecution.”
“What I’m sinking into is regret that I took the damn job. I was a fool to ignore the warning signs.”
She was sympathetic and tried to tease him out of his mood. “See here, you’re not the only one suffering. Look at my waist. If I don’t stop gaining, I’ll soon be bigger than one of Professor Lowe’s balloons. You must help me, George. You must remind me to hold back at mealtimes.” The problem wasn’t fictitious, but it was certainly a less significant worry than his. He replied with a mumbled promise and a vague look that made her fret about him all the more.
Ripley informed George and certain others that they would all receive brevets in August, Ripley himself rising to brigadier. George would be wearing three loops of black silk braid on his coat-cloak and the gold star of a major. The department’s crimes of omission and commission, unfolding daily like the petals of a rose, left him too disheartened to care.
Ripley let contracts to virtually any middleman who said he could obtain “foreign arms.” The mere claim was enough to induce faith and an outpouring of funds. “You should see the frauds who pass themselves off as arms merchants,” George exclaimed to Constance during another late-evening complaint, session; they were becoming chronic. “Stable owners, apothecaries, relatives of congressmen—they all promise on the Bible to deliver European arms overnight. Ripley doesn’t even question them about sources.”
“Do you have similar problems with artillery?”
“I do not. I interview at least one would-be contractor a day, and I weed out the charlatans with a few questions. Ripley’s in such a panic, he never bothers.”
Duties frequently took George to the Washington Arsenal on Greenleaf’s Point, a jut of mud flats at the confluence of the Potomac and the Anacostia south of the center of town. There, neatly ranked beneath the trees around the old buildings, were artillery pieces of all sorts and sizes. Prowling the arsenal storage rooms in search of ammunition, George discovered a curiously designed gun with a crank on the side and a hopper on top. He asked Colonel Ramsay, the arsenal commandant, about it.
“Three inventors brought it here early this year. The official name on our records is .58-caliber Union Repeating Gun. The President christened it the coffee mill. It fires rapidly—the ammunition’s loaded into that hopper—and after the initial tests, Mr. Lincoln wanted to adopt it. I’m told he sent memoranda on the subject to your commanding officer,” Ramsay finished pointedly.
“With what result?”
“There was no result.”
“Any more tests?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Why not?” George already suspected the answer, which Ramsay provided in a vicious imitation of the new brigadier general:
“Han’t got time!”
Discussing the gun, George said to Constance, “So a promising weapon molders while we waste our time with lunatic schemes and their equally deranged proponents.” He said this because he was often diverted from important tasks and forced to interview inventors.
One August afternoon when he was already late for a mortar test at the arsenal, Maynadier insisted he speak with the cousin of some congressman from Iowa.
The man wanted to sell a protective vest. Unfortunately, his sample had been delayed in shipment. “But it should be here tomorrow. I know you’ll be impressed, General.”
“Major.”
“Yes, your excellency. Major.”
“Tell me about your vest,” George snarled.
“It’s crafted of the finest blued steel and certified to stop any projectile fired by an enemy’s shoulder or hand weapon.”
With a feline smile, George smoothed his mustache. “Oh, you’re a steelmaker. Delighted to hear it. That’s my trade also. Tell me about your facility in Iowa.”
“Well, Gen—Major—actually—the prototype was crafted by a supplier in Dubuque. I am—” the man swallowed—“a hatter by profession.”
Faint with fury, George repeated, “A hatter. I see.”
“But the prototype was made to my specifications, which I assure you are metallurgically precise. The vest will do everything I claim. One test will pro
ve it.”
George experienced déjà vu. Vendors of body armor visited the department in regiments these days. “Would you be willing to stay in Washington until a test can be arranged?”
The encouraged hatter beamed. “I might, if the omens for a contract were favorable.”
“And, of course, since you’re confident of the performance of your prototype, I presume you’re willing to wear it personally during the test, allowing a sharpshooter to fire several rounds at you, so we may verify—”
The hatter, with hat and diagrams, was gone.
“What a terrible thing to do, George,” Constance said that night. But she giggled.
“Nonsense. I have learned one of the primary lessons of Washington. One of the surest remedies for the madness of the place is laughter.”
Laughter was no antidote for the next bad news to reach Ripley’s office. Cameron’s decision against foreign arms had given Confederate purchasing agents some ninety days in which to snatch up all the best weapons for sale in Britain and on the Continent. When a few samples of what remained arrived at the Winder Building, gloom was instantaneous.
In the steamy dusk, George took one sample down to the arsenal. The weapon was a .54-caliber percussion rifle carried by Austrian jaeger battalions. Designed on the Lorenz pattern of 1854, it was ugly, cumbersome, and had a brutal recoil. After he fired three rounds at the targets normally used for testing artillery—five thick pilings planted ten feet apart in the middle of the Potomac—his shoulder felt as if a mule had kicked it.
He heard a carriage. He was at the end of one of the arsenal piers, so he walked back to see who was arriving. The carriage remained indistinct for some while, moving among trees near the U.S. Penitentiary, which shared the mud flats with the arsenal.
Beneath the hazy pink sky, the carriage finally approached the pierhead. George knew the driver, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, William Stoddard. His office stockpiled sample weapons that inventors sent directly to the President in the hope of by-passing Ripley.
Carrying some sort of shoulder gun, the President stepped out of the carriage while Stoddard tied the team to a cleat. In the dusky light Lincoln’s pallor looked worse than usual, but he seemed in good humor. He plumped his stovepipe on the ground and nodded to George, who saluted.
“Good evening, Mr. President.”
“Evening, Major—I apologize, but I don’t know your name.”
“I do,” Stoddard said. “Major George Hazard. His brother Stanley works for Mr. Cameron.” Lincoln blinked and appeared to stiffen slightly, suggesting that George’s relationship to one, possibly both, men did nothing for his status.
Still, Lincoln remained cordial, explaining, “It’s my habit to go shooting in Treasury Park, although the night police hate the racket. Couldn’t go there this evening because there’s a baseball game.” He peered at the piece George had been firing. “What have we here?”
“One of the jaeger rifles we may purchase from the Austrian government, sir.”
“Satisfactory?”
“I’m no small-arms expert, but I would say barely. I’m afraid it’s about the best we can get, though.”
“Yes, Mr. Cameron was a mite slow to enter the quadrille, wasn’t he? We could substitute this type of weapon”—Lincoln’s big-knuckled hand lifted the gun he had brought as if it were light as down—“but your chief doesn’t care for breechloaders, never mind that a scared recruit in the thick of action can have a peck of trouble with a muzzleloader. Maybe he forgets and slips the bullet down in before the powder. Maybe he forgets to pull the rammer, and there she goes, fired off like a spear—”
He puckered his lips and whooshed as he swept his free hand up and out to suggest an arc over the pink-lit river. George studied the breechloader. He could just discern the maker’s name on the right lock plate: C. Sharps.
“I also realize that new and even recent are words unwelcome in the brigadier’s vocabulary,” Lincoln continued with a smile. “But I’m reliably informed that breech-loading pieces were known and demonstrated in the time of King Henry the Eighth, so we don’t exactly have a brand-new thingamajig, do we now? I favor single-shot breechloaders, and, by Ned, the army’s going to have some.”
Stoddard asked George, “Are there any on order in Europe?”
“I don’t believe—”
“There are none,” Lincoln interrupted, sounding more melancholy than irked. Then the thunder blow: “That is why I recently sent my own buying agent over there with two millions of dollars and free rein. If I can’t get satisfaction from Cameron and Company, I shall have to get it another way, I guess.”
Awkward silence. Stoddard cleared his throat. “Sir, it will be dark soon.”
“Dark. Yes. The hour for dreams—best I get on with shooting.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. President—” George feared that he sounded strange; the bad news had dried his mouth.
“Certainly, Major Hazard. Happy to see you down here. I admire men who like to learn all they can. Try to do that myself.”
Lugging the Austrian rifle, George retreated into the gathering night. He mounted his horse and rode up past the brightly lit penitentiary to the sounds of firing from the pier. He felt as if someone had hit him over the head. Cameron and Company was in worse trouble than he had imagined. And he worked for Cameron and Company.
It had pleased Stanley to reject the proposal prepared by his brother. Stanley had a few clear memories of the long, horrible walk back from Manassas—he had none of crying at the roadside; it was Isabel who frequently reminded him of it—but those that remained included one of George pushing and bullying him as if he were some plantation nigger. If he could slight George or make his job more difficult, he now had one more reason for doing so.
Stanley was worried about his position as Cameron’s creature. Saloon gossip said the boss’s star was already falling. Yet nothing in the department appeared to change. The secretary had spent several days away from his desk, mourning his brother, but after that, it was business—and confusion—as usual.
Important congressmen had begun to inquire orally, by letter, and through press pronouncements about the purchasing methods of the War Department. Lincoln’s dispatch of his own man to Europe on a gun-buying trip showed no great faith in them, to say the least. Complaints about shortages of clothing, small arms, and equipment continued to pour in from the camps of instruction. It was stated with increasing openness that Cameron was guilty of mismanagement and that the army, which little McClellan would attempt to whip into fighting trim, had not half of what it needed.
Except for bootees, Stanley could note with self-congratulation. Pennyford was producing in quantity, on schedule. Lashbrook’s profit figures, projected out to year-end, staggered Stanley and delighted Isabel, who claimed to have expected the bonanza.
Regrettably, Stanley’s personal success couldn’t help him weather the departmental crisis. The written and oral demands for information now contained barbs in them. Scandalous shortages. Reported irregularities. If an impropriety was actually alleged, Cameron didn’t deny it. He didn’t even acknowledge it. One day Stanley overheard two clerks discussing this technique.
“Another sharp letter came in this morning. Treasury this time. Got to admire the way the boss handles them. He stands silent as a stone wall—same as that crazy Jackson at Bull Run.”
“I thought the battle was fought at Manassas,” said the second clerk.
“According to the rebs. According to us, it’s Bull Run.”
The other groaned. “If they start naming battles for places and we start naming them for streams, how the devil will schoolboys figure it out fifty years from now?”
“Who cares? I’m worried about today. Even the boss can’t put up a stone wall forever. My advice is, bank your salary and—” He noticed Stanley lingering over a bound volume of contracts. He nudged his companion and both moved away.
The clerks epitomized the desperation beginning to infec
t the department. Cameron’s precarious position was no longer a secret known only to a few. He was in trouble and, by extension, so were his cronies. When Stanley returned to his desk, the thought made it impossible for him to concentrate.
He needed to put distance between himself and his old mentor. How? No answer came to mind. He must discuss the problem with Isabel. He could count on her to know what to do.
That evening, however, she wasn’t in a mood to discuss it. He found her seething over a newspaper.
“What’s upset you, my dear?”
“Our sweet conniving sister-in-law. She’s ingratiating herself with the very people we should be cultivating.”
“Stevens and that lot?” Isabel responded with a fierce nod. “What’s Constance done?”
“Started her abolition work again. She and Kate Chase are to be hostesses at a reception for Martin Delany.” The name meant nothing—further cause for wifely fury. “Oh, don’t be so thick, Stanley. Delany’s the nigger doctor who wrote the novel everyone twittered over a couple of years ago. Blake; that was the title. He runs around in African robes, giving lectures.”
Stanley remembered then. Before the war, Delany had promoted the idea of a new African state to which American blacks could, and in his opinion should, emigrate. Delany’s scheme called for the blacks to raise cotton in Africa and bankrupt the South through competitive free enterprise.
Stanley picked up the paper, found the announcement of the reception, and read the partial list of guests. His moist dark eyes reflected the bright gas mantles as he said carefully, “I know you can’t abide the colored and those who champion them. But you’re right, we need to speed up our own—cultivation, as you call it, of the important pro-abolition people attending that party. Simon is about to go down. If we aren’t careful, he’ll take us with him. He’ll ruin our reputations and dam up the river of money that’s flowing into Lashbrook’s.” There was a hint of uncharacteristic strength in his voice as he finished. “We must do something and do it soon.”