by John Jakes
All very fine and humane, Charles thought. But certain other passages suggested that while Mr. Lincoln might forgive Southerners as individuals, he could not forgive the sin of slavery. And so long as the institution survived, he would prosecute the war.
… if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword … it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
The judgments of the Lord. Charles kept returning to the phrase, staring at the five words on the yellowing newsprint. They summed up and reinforced what had been with him ever since the fire. A positive, guilt-tainted conviction that the war was ending in the only fitting and proper way.
Still, resting the back of his head against the tree and closing his eyes—speculation—he did recognize that it might have come out differently had not chance betrayed the South on so many occasions.
If the copy of Lee’s order had not been found wrapped around the cigars before Sharpsburg.
If Jackson had not been wounded by a North Carolina rifleman.
If Stuart hadn’t disappeared off the map, riding to repair his reputation, before Gettysburg.
If the Commissary Department had been run by a competent man instead of a bungler.
If Davis had cared more for common folk and the land and less for the preservation of philosophic principles.
If, if, if—what the hell was the use? They would lose. They had lost.
Up in Virginia, however, the war went on. And he had a remount. The war had done things to his head. Burned him out, used him up, like a piece of fatwood kindling. But he still had to go back. West Point taught duty above all.
He crumpled the newspaper and threw it away. He sat staring into the rain where he imagined he saw Gus standing, smiling at him.
He put his hand over his eyes, held it there half a minute, lowered it.
She was gone.
He climbed to his feet feeling as if he weighed seven hundred pounds. Still limping slightly from the healing leg wound, he went off to search for his mule. He collected his old army Colt, for which he had no ammunition, the cross-shaped sword fragment, which might in an emergency serve as a dagger, and his gypsy cloak of scraps and rags. He said good-bye to everyone and rode away north before dark.
131
ON PALM SUNDAY EVENING, Brett and Billy walked up through the laurel above Belvedere. Hazard’s was shut down, customary on the Sabbath, though some of the banked fires still fed smoke traceries out of the chimneys. The air was warm and fragrant with spring. Behind them, the tiered streets of the town, the peaceful river, the sunset over the mountains created a landscape of grays and mauves and small patches of pale, dusty orange.
That morning they had attended church, then partaken of a huge noonday meal, at which Mr. Wotherspoon had been a welcome guest. Ever since, Brett had silently rehearsed the two things she wanted to say to her husband. One was directly related to the impending end of the war, the other less so.
She knew the essence of each statement and some of the words, but she wanted a proper setting, too. So she had suggested the stroll. Now she found herself anxious and strangely unable to begin.
Billy seemed content to walk in silence, relishing the spring dusk and the feel of her hand in his. They came to the meteorite crater they had discovered the night before he returned to duty in the spring of ’61, a night followed by so many changes in Brett herself and in the country that it sometimes resembled a series of tableaux on a stage, viewed from a balcony, rather than events in which she had taken part.
She noticed that weeds had at last begun to grow in the crater, covering about two-thirds of the surface of the sloping sides. But the poisoned earth at the bottom remained bare.
They strolled toward the next summit. Should she start with the second subject? No, it was better to dispose of the difficult one first. She forced herself.
“How soon do you think Madeline will be able to travel to South Carolina?”
He thought a moment. “They say there’s almost nothing left of Lee’s army. Or Joe Johnston’s. I can’t imagine that either can hold out more than a few weeks longer. I would guess she could start home sometime in May, if not sooner.”
She took his other hand. Holding both, she faced him in the fading, dusty light.
“I’d like to go with her.”
A smile. “I suspected you might.”
“It isn’t entirely for the reason you think. I do want to see how Mont Royal fared, but I have another motive. One which—” steadily, she looked at him “—which I’m not sure you’ll approve of. I want to go back and stay awhile. The nigras will be free, and they’ll need help adjusting to the change.”
“You’ll forgive me, but that sounds faintly like the benevolent mistress of the plantation speaking.”
His wry smile angered her unexpectedly. “It may be, but don’t you dare patronize me for it.”
Billy put his arm around her. “Here, I didn’t mean to upset you—”
She sighed. “And I didn’t mean to snap. But I’ve been away so long—I admit I’m homesick. And I’m not patronizing the people at Mont Royal when I say they need help. Protection. They’re in danger of being transferred from one kind of slavery to another. It was your own brother, Stanley, who warned me.”
“Stanley? What do you mean?”
As accurately as she could, she repeated Stanley’s remarks of a couple of years ago concerning the Republican scheme to befriend the freed Negroes, the better to manipulate them as voters.
“Stanley said that?”
“Indeed he did. He was drunk at the time, else he wouldn’t have spoken so freely. He declared that the party, or one faction anyway, had already agreed on the strategy. I believe him. That’s why I want to go home and stay for a time. The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it’s the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it’s hard to detect an invisible one.”
She watched for a reaction. He lowered his head slightly, the dark hair, so like his brother George’s, tossing in the strengthening breeze. A few bright stars shone against the mauve now. She could only interpret his silence as disapproval.
She refused to be so easily defeated. Not after Scipio Brown and his brood of lost children had worked such changes in the way she viewed people. She snapped off a bit of laurel, twirling it in her fingers.
“Do you remember your last night at home when the war started?” A nod. “We walked up here, and I said I was frightened. You reassured me by talking about this.” She held out the sprig. “You told me what your mother had taught—that the laurel is like a man and woman’s love for each other. It can endure anything. Well, I made a discovery while you were gone. I discovered it in the eyes and faces of those children at Mr. Brown’s school. If the kind of love your mother described doesn’t touch everyone—embrace everyone—if it can’t be given freely and equally to everyone, it’s meaningless. It doesn’t exist.”
“And going home—helping the nigras in whatever way you have in mind—that’s an expression of love?”
Very softly: “To me it is.”
“Brett—” he cleared his throat—“I met hundreds of men in the army who finally accepted emancipation because it was government policy, but they would choke on what you just said. There are a lot of them in that town right down there. They’d reach for a club or a gun to defend their right to be superior to Negroes.”
“I know. But how can love be the property of a favored few? Or freedom, either? I was raised to believe they could. Then I came here to this state, this town, an utter stranger—and I learned.”
“Changed, I would say.”
“Use any term you like. I gather you object to my wish to—?”
His palm touched her cheek. “I object to nothing. I love you. I’
m proud of you. I believe every word of what you just said.”
“Is that really true?”
“You’re not the only one this war affected,” he said. He hadn’t described the incident outside the recruiting office and didn’t do so now. It struck him as too much like bragging. But his next statement touched the core of the incident. “I’m not the same soldier boy who stood here four years ago. I didn’t realize what a distance I’ve traveled until—well, lately.”
His smile warmed. Bending in the starlight, he kissed her mouth.
“I love you, Brett. What you are and what you believe. You’re right about going home. Your help will probably be needed. I’ll be proud and honored to escort you and Madeline back to Mont Royal. And since I’ll have to return to duty sometime soon, there isn’t any reason you can’t stay as long as you wish.”
“There’s one.”
The soft words startled him. Was that scarlet in her cheek? The lowering dark made him unsure.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “you’ve been so ardent despite the wound—well, I’m not entirely certain yet—I haven’t seen the doctor—but I believe we’re going to have a child.”
Wonderstruck, he could find no words. New life after so much loss—there was magic in it. Something miraculous. He looked at the laurel sprig in her hand, took it from her gently and studied it while she said, “You see, if I stay at Mont Royal, there’s a possibility our child could be born there.”
“I don’t care where it happens, just so long as it happens. I don’t care!” Exuberantly, he tossed the laurel in the air and hugged her, exclaiming his joy. The whoop rose up and echoed back from clear across the river.
That same Sunday evening, April 9, George was in Petersburg, having spent the afternoon assembling and loading construction materials on two flatcars. The Petersburg & Lynchburg line that ran west from town was under repair to supply the army pursuing Lee. George had to be up before daylight and on his way toward Burkeville.
Tired, he walked in the direction of the tents assigned to visiting officers. Off in the darkness, several horns, two fifes, and a snare drum struck up “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Yells and whistling accompanied the music.
“Damned strange hour for a concert,” he muttered. He jumped back suddenly as a horseman galloped by, shouting, “Surrender! Surrender!”
An officer with his galluses down and his chest bare stumbled sleepily from a nearby tent. “Surrender? My God, I didn’t even know we were under attack—”
Grinning, George said, “I think someone else may have surrendered. Hear the music? Come on, let’s find out.”
Away he went on his stocky legs. The other officer snapped his suspenders over his naked shoulders and ran after him. They soon came upon a whole mob of men piling out of tents. George could barely make sense of their noise:
“—sometime today—”
“—old Gray Fox asked Ulysses for terms—”
“—out by Appomattox Court House someplace—”
In an hour, Petersburg was bedlam. It was true, apparently; the Army of Northern Virginia was laying down its arms to stop the shedding of more blood in a war that couldn’t be won. Under the Southern stars, George snatched off his kepi, tossed it in the air, and caught it, then began to take brain-pummeling swallows of busthead from bottles shoved into his hand by officers and enlisted men he had never seen before and never would again, but who were fine friends, closest of comrades, in this delirious moment of lifting burdens and spirits.
Pistols and rifles volleyed into the dark. Large and small musical groups blared patriotic airs. It occurred to George that, once he got home, he could sleep next to Constance every night for the rest of his life, with no one to tell him otherwise. He jammed his fists on his hips and danced a jig without knowing how.
Men swirled around him, jumping, dancing, staggering, drinking, cheering. He helped himself to more stiff drinks from the bottles being passed. He threw his cap in the air again, bellowing like a schoolboy.
“—rally round the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of—”
Singing lustily, jigging madly, he didn’t notice the sink in the dark behind him, though he had certainly whiffed it. Luckily he only sank to his knees, though that was bad enough.
He cleaned up on the bank of the calm Appomattox River. Returning to the celebration, he noticed that other revelers didn’t come as close to him as they had earlier. Still, he managed to get a few more drinks and, thus fortified, could regard what had happened as a humorous cap on an already glorious night. A night men would forever recall to fellow veterans, wives, sweethearts, children, and grandchildren, in terms of where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. George could not quite picture himself being truthful:
“I was in Petersburg, gathering crossties and spikes to reopen a section of the military railroad.”
“Were you happy when you heard the news, Grandpa?”
“You can’t believe how happy.”
“What did you do to celebrate?”
“I started dancing and fell in a trench full of shit.”
132
PEACE HAD ITS OWN unique strains, Stanley realized late in the week. Washington streets mobbed with drunken celebrants extended a ten-minute trip to an hour—or made it impossible. Isabel said the patriotic illuminations glaring from the windows of most houses and public buildings gave her bad headaches, though why this should be so when she stayed home and saw very few of them, Stanley couldn’t explain.
He was bothered by the loud reports of fireworks all night long, by the tolling bells, the endlessly parading bands, and the hoots and merrymaking of gangs of whites and blacks roaming at will, even in the best neighborhoods. Add to that Stanton’s tense air and repeated expressions of fear of plots to kill Grant or the President, and it added up to a miserable week for Stanley.
Stanton wanted to see him to go over matters pertaining to his departure from the War Department to take up the new post Wade had arranged. Stanley was ready with his files at nine Friday morning, but Stanton was too busy. At eleven the secretary had to rush to the Executive Mansion for a cabinet meeting. It lasted several hours, during which time Stanley didn’t leave the department. He was hungry and out of sorts when, late in the day, he was finally summoned to Stanton’s office.
Even then, the stout man with the scented whiskers and round spectacles was preoccupied with his fear of murder plots.
“The Grants aren’t going to Ford’s, anyway. That’s half the battle won.”
“Ford’s?” Stanley repeated, blank because of fatigue.
Stanton was irritable. “What’s the matter with your memory? Ford’s on Tenth Street. The theater!”
“Oh. The President is going to see Miss Keene—?”
“Tonight. He seems to regard the appearance as some sort of patriotic obligation. He has completely disregarded my warnings. Grant listened. He was only too happy for an excuse to whisk his wife out of town on a train for New Jersey.”
He stumped to the window, hands locked behind his back. “It’s been a queer day. In that long meeting, we spent nearly as much time discussing the President’s latest dream as we did on the pressing issue of practical steps to restore the Union.”
Lincoln’s strange dreams were a subject frequently gossiped about in Washington. “Which one this time?” Stanley asked, since some of them were known to recur.
“The boat,” Stanton replied, staring out the window. “The boat in which he sees himself drifting. He says the dream always comes on the eve of some great happening. Before Antietam he dreamed of the boat. Before Gettysburg, too. It’s curious that he can describe the boat vividly but not the destination. It’s merely a dark, indefinite shore. His words,” Stanton added, returning to his desk.
“It seems to me there’s nothing indefinite about the future,” Stanley observed while the secretary settled himself. “The war’s over.” That was the consensus, even though General Johnston
’s army remained in the field somewhere in the Carolinas. “What lies ahead is a period of intensive reconstruction—including, I trust, punishment for the rebels.”
“Yes, definitely punishment,” Stanton said. Stanley smiled. It would be his pleasure to help mete it out to former slaveowners.
They ran rapidly through the agenda Stanley had prepared. Stanton made notes—these records to be transferred here, those responsibilities assigned there. Stanley was thankful the secretary was overburdened and therefore impatient. It allowed Stanley to finish and leave the office two hours earlier than expected. He knew he should go home, but went instead, despite the traffic, to Jeannie Canary’s.
It proved a bad decision. It was the wrong day for a carnal romp. And she was whiny.
“Won’t you take me out this evening, loves? Surely we wouldn’t be bothered, with so many drunken people everywhere. I’d love to see the play at Ford’s.” She no longer performed at the Varieties. She much preferred lazing about and spending the allowance Stanley furnished.
“They say the President and his wife are to appear in the state box,” she went on. “You know I’ve never seen Mrs. Lincoln. Is she as squat and beady-eyed as they say?”
“Yes, dreadful,” he retorted, made cross himself by her inability to make love just now.
“Couldn’t you get tickets?”
“Not this late. Even if I could, we’d spent most of the time squeezed in crowds and wilting in the heat—on top of which, Tom Taylor’s play is old and creaky. It would be a very disagreeable evening. A thoroughly dull one, too.”
It was as if a perverted Nature had brought forth a black spring. Crepe blossomed everywhere that Easter weekend: on coat sleeves, the President’s pew at the York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the marble façades of public buildings. Stores remained open extra hours to sell it by the yard and by the bolt.
Booth had escaped. Stanton proclaimed that the whole South must be prosecuted. Even Grant spoke of retaliatory measures of extreme rigor. In preparation for the state funeral on Wednesday, dry-goods stores quickly fashioned black-wrapped batons, sable sashes, ebony rosettes. Portraits of the slain President appeared in windows. Groups of stunned, grieving Negroes appeared on street corners. Paroled Confederate prisoners turned their coats inside out or threw them away for fear of being lynched.