Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘You are to have a son,’ she told him.

  ‘Already?’ As usual there was banter in his tone.

  ‘Already.’

  ‘You cannot possibly be sure. It could well be all the travelling, the unaccustomed cold, the emotional upset of leaving Martine’s ...’

  ‘I am sure,’ she insisted. ‘So you cannot possibly go away.’

  He frowned at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You had talked of absenting yourself for a year. That is impossible, if I am to bear your child.’

  He held her shoulders, gently. ‘But I must go away, my dearest darling. I am an officer in the United States Navy. I go where I am sent.’

  ‘But ... surely you can apply for a posting here in America? Which will allow you to return regularly to Long Island?’

  He shook his head. ‘Where would the Navy be, if every officer with a pregnant wife wanted to stay at home?’

  ‘You cannot leave me,’ she gasped, suddenly terrified. ‘Not alone.’

  ‘Alone? Why, Mother and Grandmother will be here to care for you.’

  Savages, she thought. They will probably have me scrubbing floors up to the moment of delivery; the slave women had been made to do that on Martine’s. ‘Jerry,’ she begged.

  He kissed her. ‘I must go. And you knew that when you married me. Besides ...’ he chucked her under the chin, ‘you cannot even be sure you are pregnant.’

  *

  ‘There is a letter from Marguerite,’ Wilbur Grahame announced, pointing at his desk, where there were several sheets of paper. ‘It seems she is pregnant.’

  Rod nodded, and sat down. Jacob immediately poured him a brandy, and he equally immediately sipped it. He was becoming a perfect planter.

  ‘You’re not surprised, or concerned?’ Grahame demanded.

  ‘I had expected it, soon enough.’

  ‘That that Goddamned Yankee monster would have stuffed her womb, yes. But for such a little traitorous bitch to write a whining letter ...’

  ‘Is it a whining letter?’

  Grahame glared at him. ‘It announces the fact. But why should she write it were she not whining to return home. I’ll not have it. She is no longer a daughter of mine. But I cannot persuade Antoinette to reconsider and cut her out of her Will.’ Having marched to and fro several times, Grahame also sat down, his booted legs thrust out in front of him. ‘And due to the peculiar provisions ofher father’s Will, she has the total ultimate disposition of the property.’

  ‘You never told me that before,’ Rod said. Although it had been easy to guess.

  ‘Well, I am telling you now. She is very fond of you, of course. She never bore a grudge against you for that contretemps with Claudine, and she refuses always to listen to Claudine’s complaints, so much so that Claudine doesn’t make them any more. Where is she today, by the way?’

  ‘She decided not to come,’ Rod explained.

  Grahame raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, really, Wilbur, I hope you don’t expect me to tie her to a saddle every time I come visiting,’ Rod said.

  ‘I expect you to get her pregnant. Why the hell can’t you?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you try?’

  ‘From time to time. It is not a very attractive prospect.’

  ‘My daughter is not a very attractive prospect?’

  ‘Cool down,’ Rod suggested. He was certainly no longer afraid or even very respectful to this man. If Grahame could always arouse the Louisiana gentry with his talk of defying the elected government of the country, if that government was not to his taste, he remained uncertain of how that gentry would regard him, a renegade Yankee himself, should it ever come to a truly critical situation. Grahame knew that there had been open criticism of him for not challenging Stephen McGann for calling him a scoundrel in his own house, and that the criticism had been linked to a suggestion of cowardice. Perhaps he even knew the charge was justified; fighting was Stephen McGann’s profession, and for all his size and bluster, Wilbur Grahame had never fought a duel in his life. Thus he needed a man like Rod at his side, equally experienced at warfare and possessing the nerves that accompanied such experience; he had made sure that his son-in-law practise with a pistol until he had become a first-class shot, just in case. ‘She is a very attractive prospect, to look at. But no woman is an attractive proposition when she lies there hating you.’

  ‘I thought you’d have beaten some sense into her by now,’ Grahame growled. ‘You’d better consider the matter. Antoinette’s present idea is to leave the plantation to her first grandson, with the boy’s parents as guardians. If you don’t get a move on, that Goddamned Yankee scoundrel will be lording it over Martine’s, with his bitch of a wife, and you and Claudine will find yourselves out on the street. One day.’

  ‘One day? Or next year?’ Rod grinned, savagely. ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘I’m not blind, or deaf. That’s the other thing I called you in here to discuss.’

  ‘Lincoln’s nomination as Republican candidate? We knew it was going to happen.’

  ‘Sure we did. But I’m talking about the news from Charleston. About the bust-up at the Democratic Party Convention.’

  Rod frowned and sat up. ‘I hadn’t heard about that.’

  ‘It arrived this morning. Seems the Northern Democrats reckon the only way they can win the election is to stand themselves on an anti-slavery platform. So they’ve nominated Stephen Douglas.’

  ‘Douglas? But what of Breckenridge?’

  ‘Well, that’s the point. I’ve a letter here from Stephen Mallory. You remember him. You met him at Marguerite’s so-called wedding.’

  ‘I remember Mallory.’

  ‘Well, he was one of the leading lights of the convention, as you can imagine. Goddamned West Indian. But he’s a good man. He says the southern delegates would not stand for that, and walked out of the meeting. They have nominated Breckenridge.’

  ‘Great God in Heaven,’ Rod commented. ‘Three candidates?’ As Jerry had said, ‘when thieves fall out ...’

  ‘Four,’ Grahame said sourly. ‘There’s a Union Party candidate, John Bell, hoping to sew up the middle. There’s going to be a real carve-up of votes.’

  ‘Save that it’ll be three half parties against one united: the Republicans.’

  ‘Hell, I can see that, boy. So can everyone else. The question is, what’s to be done? You’d better read this.’ He handed Mallory’s letter to Rod.

  The first page was a recounting of the unhappy split at Charleston. Then the Floridian went on to say:

  ‘It is the considered opinion here that the Democratic Party may have done itself, and our cause, irreparable harm by its failure to agree on a common candidate, and that, indeed, even if Mr Lincoln should not receive a single electoral vote here in the South, should he carry every Northern state — which he may well do with only Douglas’s splinter group to oppose him and feelings running so high — he will be elected president. To our minds, such an event will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are two nations existing in this country, one north of the Mason-Dixon line, and the other south of it, and it also raises the interesting question, can a man be legally president of a nation when one entire section of that nation has unanimously rejected him. Of course we all hope that some common sense will prevail, and that a compromise candidate, such as Bell, or even, dare I say it, Douglas, who is not quite as unbending as Lincoln, will get in. However, we must brace ourselves for the worst. In this regard it is essential that we act at all times with a joint mind, and I should be interested in learning your views on the situation and a possible remedy. Various of my colleagues have written to other prominent men in your great state, and we should appreciate a consensus of your opinions at the earliest possible moment. I need hardly tell you what opinion in the Carolinas is inclining towards, and the same can be said for my own Florida, for Georgia, and for Virginia. Alabama is sure to follow and I would expect the same of Ar
kansas. Texas, Tennessee and western Virginia are less easy to discern. Maryland would of course be the great prize, but her people refuse to commit themselves at this early stage. But Louisiana is indisputably in the very heart of our southern civilisation, and we would look for positive steps from your good people, and those of Mississippi — I do not have to spell out the importance to our cause of seizing, and keeping, control of the great river, which is as much a northern lifeline as our own.’

  Rod raised his head. ‘Do I read this right?’

  ‘I would say you do. He is talking of secession.’

  ‘But ... Good God! Is that possible?’

  ‘Anything is possible, if people are sufficiently determined to have it so, and there are enough of them.’

  ‘And suppose the North merely regards such an action as rebellion, and sends troops to quash it?’

  ‘Then we will have to fight them, and beat them.’

  ‘As simple as that, is it?’

  ‘For God’s sake, boy, do you suppose our people are going to be licked by a bunch of factory hands?’

  ‘A big bunch.’

  ‘We can beat the North any time of the day,’ Grahame asserted.

  ‘You’ve been there. Hell, you come from there,’ Rod reminded him. ‘You’ve seen the factories, the harvests. They have a munitions industry, the capacity to manufacture arms. They have a fleet and a standing army. The South has cotton. Oh, and here in Louisiana, sugar. You can’t fight a war with cotton and sugar.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Grahame got up and started to march about the room, jabbing the air with his cigar. ‘It is cotton will win us this war. I’ll tell you why. What is the principal industry of Great Britain? Tell me that.’

  ‘Well ... textiles, I suppose.’

  ‘Right. And where do the British get the material to manufacture their textiles? Right here in the southern United States. No cotton, no British prosperity. They’ll supply us with all the arms and ammunition we want, to keep that flow coming. So will the French. They may not need cotton quite so bad, but they won’t ever forget that here in Louisiana we’re their blood brothers.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Hell, you know what I mean. All those Creoles.’

  ‘I still think it’d be suicide,’ Rod said. ‘All the North has to do is clamp a blockade on our ports, and no cotton will go out, and not a rifle will come in.’ His turn to point. ‘We don’t have a navy.’

  ‘Aha,’ Grahame countered. ‘We will have a navy. And you will have a part to play in it. You’d better finish Mallory’s letter.’ Frowning, but heart pounding most painfully, Rod looked down at the sheet of paper again, and turned the page.

  ‘In this regard,’ Mallory had written, ‘I should be most interested to hear from your young son-in-law, Lieutenant Bascom. I formed a powerful impression of his experience and know-how when we talked, briefly, at your daughter’s marriage before that unfortunate scene with the McGanns. I need hardly tell you that should it come to a parting of the ways between Washington and ourselves, we will need a navy of our own, and we will need experienced officers to man it, regardless of their antecedents. Those with experience of actual warfare will be worth their weight in gold. This is a matter of some personal interest to me, as, because of my experience in shipping, there is talk of my involvement at a high level, should matters come to a crisis. I would then be in a position to offer Mr Bascom employment which he might find more to his taste than planting.’

  He was being offered a lieutenancy, at the very least — perhaps even a command. In a navy which did not exist, and which would be in a state of rebellion against its lawfully constituted government. And against a fleet which would be manned by men like Stephen and Jerry McGann. There was a daunting prospect.

  It would also mean the end of a friendship, by which he had once set some store. But was not that friendship ended anyway, even if perhaps Jerry remained unaware of that? Circumstances had made them rivals — even if those circumstances were now rushing to a head far sooner than he had ever anticipated. And here was perhaps an opportunity to set his feet once again on his chosen career, and at a moment when all things could be possible. Nor could anyone accuse him of being a renegade; he was a fighting seaman, who was being offered employment.

  He knew better than anyone else that he was totally unfitted for life as a planter; even as a planter’s agent he was not proving a great success. He found the work boring, and he could not treat the slaves with proper disdain supported by brutality, which made it difficult for him to maintain discipline, even amongst his own domestics. When he came into the Canal Street home one afternoon to find Claudine whipping her maid he had seized the cane and snapped it in two — which had done nothing towards healing the rift between them. As if anything could ever do that. Claudine was indeed bitterly resentful of Marguerite’s pregnancy, while unable to understand that she could never achieve a similar state of bliss while she rejected her husband as much as possible, and was thus in an even less attractive mood than usual.

  There was another powerful incentive inclining him towards accepting Mallory’s private offer. To be at sea, even against enormous odds, and in a lost cause — as he was sure it would be? The situation did not lack an outstanding precedent. Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, who was yet living so far as Rod knew, having attained the ripe old age of eighty-five, had been expelled from the Royal Navy in 1814, after a career which had mingled brilliantly audacious feats of arms with virulent parliamentary attacks on the shortcomings of naval administration, and which had culminated in his involvement in a fraud on the Stock Exchange, which it might have been supposed would have ruined him forever, both socially and financially. But Cochrane had refused to be beaten, and had taken his talents to South America, where he had first of all fought for the Chileans in their determination to free themselves from Spain — rising to command their fleet — and then done the same thing for the Brazilians in their determination never again to submit to Portuguese rule. He had then returned to Europe to command the Greek navy in that country’s war of independence against the Turks. His name and his feats had been blazoned around the world, and had led to his reinstatement in the Royal Navy in 1831, with the rank of Admiral. Rod had actually seen him once in Whitehall, just at the beginning of the Crimean War, when the old gentleman, then aged eighty, had been as aggressively angry as ever because he had been refused command — entirely on the grounds of age — of the fleet against the Russians.

  Why should he not emulate even so great a man as Cochrane, earn his reputation here in America, thence go wherever his services were required, until he could return to England in triumph and vindication? There were dreams.

  Which included Claudine? That he was not prepared to decide, at this moment. But they were dreams which he knew he should have gone about implementing long ago, instead of stagnating in domestic misery on the banks of the Mississippi. But now they were falling into his lap. For having written to Mallory expressing his willingness to assist the Southern cause in any way that could be useful, events throughout 1860 followed exactly the outline prognosticated by the Senator, and were alarming to everyone. Rod was even surprised, and distressed, to receive a letter from Stephen McGann — Jerry was still away in Europe with his ship — asking him for any information he could give regarding feelings in Louisiana, and attempting to sweeten the clandestine advance by saying that in the event of a ‘crisis’, the United States Navy would need every good man it could find, so that Rod might well be able to resume his career, supposing he still felt that way inclined.

  Rod allowed himself a sad smile at the way his services were now being sought by both sides, when only a year ago no one had been interested in him. And it was certainly a temptation. But having already offered his sword to the South, he could not now honourably change his mind — and besides, there was certainly more chance of advancement in a revolutionary navy than in one bound by as strict traditions and orders of seniority as o
btained in the Federal Navy. Nor, having made that decision, could he consider supplying information, even of a general nature, to a man who, however much a friend, might soon be a political enemy. So he replied as non-committally as he could, pooh-poohing talk of secession, and filling his letter with congratulations on Stephen’s imminent new role — that of grandfather.

  For in the same post there was a letter from Caroline McGann, informing them of Marguerite’s safe delivery of a son, to be called Joseph. This drove Claudine into a fury, and her mother to tears, while Wilbur Grahame growled about treacherous bitches and Rod felt more than ever convinced that he had no choice but to fight for his right to inherit the plantation.

  The presidential campaign filled the news throughout the autumn, but the patterns were early set and easily discernible. Rod, with everyone else in Louisiana, spent the first week of November anxiously awaiting news, which, when it came, was predictable. The states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Delaware and South Carolina voted almost solidly for John Breckenridge — Rod personally had preferred not to vote at all, in view of his split allegiance.

  Tennessee and Virginia were fairly evenly divided between Breckenridge and Bell, and in Kentucky and Maryland Bell was well ahead. Out in the far west, in the states of California and Oregon, the voting was mainly in support of Breckenridge, although both Lincoln and Douglas obtained sizeable votes in California, while Missouri was a three way split between Douglas, Bell, and Breckenridge.

  But north of the Mason-Dixon line, the support for Abraham Lincoln was almost unanimous. Douglas had pockets in several states, and even managed to make a fight of it in Lincoln’s own Illinois, but only in the rural south; Chicago and the great cities of the Lakes area were solidly behind their favourite son. While Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine were equally solidly behind the Illinois lawyer. In the New England states, indeed, Douglas hardly recorded a vote. Thus on a head count of states alone Lincoln was elected, quite apart from the fact that the midwest and northeastern states which had supported him so enthusiastically were also the most populous and therefore carried the most electoral votes.