This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “He abdicated when he fled Little Rock.” Hindman shifted on his crutches, gesturing at the table. “As far as I am concerned, I am the Arkansas government. And you, gentlemen, are my cabinet. We may have to take some distasteful actions if we are going to save this state from Federal occupation.”

  “And how do we do that?” Shoup asked, his thoughtful eyes on the collection of balls marking Federal superiority. “They could run right across to Helena and flank the Mississippi defenses. Or their advance units could be in Little Rock tomorrow night. We might as well spit at them as try and stop them with scarcely fifteen hundred men. We’re not even sure that all of our troops have weapons, let alone training.”

  “And there’s no supply. You saw what was left in Memphis,” Palmer reminded. “Even when we were in Corinth, on the other side of the river, with the benefit of railroads, you know the pitiful state of supply for the Army of Mississippi. Only a lunatic would think the Confederacy is going to supply us on this side of the river.” He looked mystified. “Tom, we’re on our own.”

  Hindman’s secretive smile widened. “Precisely. And I mean to rely on exactly that.”

  “How?” Newton asked, thoughtful gaze on the table.

  “You have to become Caesar,” Butler whispered, understanding. “Supporting and maintaining your own legions. Running your own economy. Building your own bridges across the Rhine, and taking them down again.”

  Hindman’s eyes flashed with that old excitement, his smile thinning in satisfaction. “Veni. Vidi. Vici. I came. I saw. I conquered.”

  “Dear God,” Newton whispered. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Here’s the reality.” Hindman resettled on his crutches. “You’re right. There will be no supplies from the Confederacy. No arms, caps, powder, or cannon. We have to make our own. I know for a fact that there’s a rifling machine for making gun barrels in Little Rock.”

  “And only fifteen hundred ill-trained troops to fight with.” Palmer looked unconvinced.

  Hindman propped himself on his crutches and lifted a glass of sherry, studying it in the lamplight. Butler gaped. The man’s commitment to temperance was well-known. “We’ve got the conscription act, and on my honor, I’m going to use it if I have to lasso, drag, and herd every last male of military age into the ranks.”

  “This isn’t Virginia. Push too hard and our Arkansas frontiersmen will rebel. Try and force them and they’ll take to the swamps and forests. Hell, Tom, Rector already told Jefferson Davis he was going to secede from the Confederacy if he didn’t get his way.”

  “And become what?” Wilson cried. “The United State of Arkansas?”

  Butler, half afraid, said, “We could have all the men we need.”

  “How?” Palmer demanded.

  “Slave owners are filling our part of Arkansas with their slaves in hopes of keeping them out of Federal hands. If we conscripted them, offered them their freedom for fighting, we could—”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Palmer gaped, expression incredulous. “Arm Negroes?”

  Butler smiled his discomfort. “It would do two things. First we could fill our ranks, and second, it would send a powerful message to the—”

  A cacophony of shouts overwhelmed him as all but Hindman crowded around.

  “Gentlemen!” Hindman bellowed, restoring order. He glanced from face to face. “Lieutenant Hancock makes a valid—if impossible—point. He’s a westerner who sees the issue differently. And yes, Negro regiments would swell our numbers and make a statement to the Yankees that even Negroes will fight for secession and slavery. But it won’t happen. Not in the Confederacy as we know it.”

  Palmer asked, “Are you serious?”

  Hindman shrugged. “If it came down to slavery or secession? I choose secession. But we haven’t been driven to that extreme yet.” He paused. “We have the resources, caves with niter deposits, lead mines, foundries, and mills. Enough textile mills, though small, exist for some uniform production, and women can be enticed first to spin and then weave additional garments for the men. We don’t much care what it looks like as long as men are warm.

  “Francis”—Hindman turned to Shoup—“I am giving you free rein. Requisition bells, boilers, and brass, but build me a cannon foundry and an arsenal. Offer fair compensation from the funds we took from Memphis. If anyone stands in your way, arrest them.”

  “Some people won’t take Confederate notes,” Palmer reminded.

  “They will. From this moment on, the use of Federal currency or specie is illegal. Violators will be arrested for treason.”

  Palmer looked worried. “Tom, if you alienate the people, this whole thing could turn on us. We could have our own civil war within a civil war. General Curtis is already recruiting Arkansas regiments to fight for the Union.”

  Hindman’s eyes narrowed. “John, if it takes a dictator to save a democracy, then I am indeed Arkansas’s Caesar. But I guarantee you this: when it’s all said and done, Arkansas will be free, or I will be dead for the trying.”

  26

  June 15, 1862

  Sixty-one men, including Doc, John Mays, and Augustus Clyde, had been captured when Doc Hancock’s makeshift field hospital was overrun at Shiloh. The other fifty-eight were wounded so badly the fleeing Confederates hadn’t been able to evacuate them before Brigadier General William Sherman’s Federal troops arrived on the late afternoon of April 7.

  Transported through the streets of Chicago, past the scornful eyes of gawking citizens, twenty-seven of his charges made it alive to the round-arched gate at Camp Douglas prison camp.

  The rest had died on the long and abusive journey from Shiloh to St. Louis, and then in the cramped cattle cars that had brought them to Chicago and prison camp. For Doc the journey had been a living hell as he’d watched helplessly, doing what he could for his suffering patients.

  As he watched them being processed, papers were compared by bored and careless officers, names checked off, one by one, on the lists.

  “Where’s Charles Masson?” one would call.

  “Dead,” Doc would answer. “He died in St. Louis.”

  And the name would be scratched off.

  Next they were searched, their bodies patted down, pockets turned inside out. A physician’s assistant asked if they were ill, looked in their eyes and mouths, and ushered them along.

  After finally being passed through the gate, he, Mays, and Clyde found themselves in bedlam and chaos. And then the stench hit them. They were locked in a twenty-acre compound with nearly eight thousand other Confederate prisoners of war. The smell of excrement, urine, unwashed mankind, and rot was immediately overpowering. Hovering columns of flies filled the air like a Mosaic plague.

  The swarms of mosquitoes, Doc would learn, arrived at dusk.

  The lice would take a full day to make their presence known.

  The camp was surrounded by a fence, armed sentries, and manned guard towers. The high observation platform outside the fence had been built by an entrepreneur who charged local Chicagoans ten cents to climb the steps where they could look over into the camp and see the thousands of prisoners.

  Wooden barracks, twenty-four feet by ninety, and filled with stacked bunks, were elevated three feet above the muddy soil. Originally designed to discourage escape tunnels and hiding places, the elevation did serve the positive value of raising the rickety wooden floors above the flooding each time it rained, and allowed some air circulation during the hot summer months.

  Matters would change in winter when men froze to death sleeping on the uninsulated plank floors while the Chicago winds blew snow beneath. Windows on the south side let in light, and each barracks had a fireplace and tin stove.

  “What do we do with our wounded?” Doc asked one of the guards, appalled that his amputees and immobile wounded had just been shifted off litters and left in the shade of the gate.

  “Not my problem, Reb. You might get some of the canned mackerel in here to carry them to the hospit
al square.”

  “Canned mackerel?”

  “With eight thousand of you bastards packed in here, and more coming, that’s pretty much your situation, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah,” one of the prisoners called. “We’ll he’p y’all.” He was a tall man, bearded, perhaps in his late twenties. “McNeish,” he called. “You others, give us a hand here.”

  “We appreciate it,” Doc told him.

  “Lieutenant Ab Smith,” he said, offering his hand. “Seventh Louisiana. This hyar nasty piece of work is Andy McNeish. Welcome to Camp Douglas.” He gestured to the others standing around. “Come on, boys. Grab a man and help us git ’em over to the hospital square. Ain’t like y’all was doing anything important anyway.”

  Within moments, the motley crowd had shuffled forward, grabbed up Doc’s wounded, and carefully borne them into the heart of the camp.

  Doc, last in line, tagged along behind James, who was carried on an impromptu blanket litter to join the rest in the hospital square with its infirmary and separate pesthouse: a barracks area for the isolation of the contagiously ill and dying. Doc followed James’s stretcher bearers into the clapboard building, and winced. Instinctively, he placed a hand to his nose against the stench and flies.

  Every bed was already taken. The worst of Doc’s wounded were laid on the barracks floor. To Doc’s horror, the only place the wood could be seen was where the passing of feet had worn away the coating of feces, blood, urine, and vomit. The plank-walled building was a hothouse; the fly-filled air hummed, and the walls crawled. Not with a simple army of the beasts, but a true swarming Mongolian horde of them that set the air humming as Ab Smith’s volunteers beat a hasty retreat from the horrible place.

  As James was removed from the litter and laid on the floor, Doc noticed a writhing white mass inhabited the damp pile of feces beneath the nearest bed. Maggots. Looking around, Doc realized, to his horror, they were everywhere.

  “Doc?” Augustus Clyde asked, his hand over his mouth as he gazed at the suffering wretches in the beds. “God Almighty, is this place real?”

  “I’m going to see who’s in charge.” He made a beeline for what looked like an orderly lingering on the steps outside. The man pointed Doc to the pesthouse, where another orderly gave him directions to the surgeon’s office.

  “What would you have me do?” a bleary-eyed surgeon named Phineas Higbee asked when Doc finally ran him to ground in a small office behind the main hospital barracks. The man’s desk was piled with papers. Overweight as Higbee was, Doc wondered how he could stand food after the smell of his hospital. He wore a blue uniform with the prominent MS of the medical corps on his shoulder straps. A round face with jowls was partially hidden by a thick graying beard, in stark contrast to his shining bald pate.

  “We don’t have the water,” the surgeon said, leaning back in his chair. “It comes in wagons every day, and it’s barely enough for the men’s basic consumption, let alone the frivolity of washing.”

  “Good God, man! Even shovels would be an improvement. The floors could be scraped if nothing else!” Doc stood, fists clenched, his anger rising.

  “Shovels?” Higbee chortled in amusement. “You want me to give prisoners of war shovels? And have Camp Douglas turned into a rabbit’s warren of escape tunnels?”

  Doc paused, willing his temper under control. “Can you at least find me the materials to get some of those poor wretches off the floor and out of the miasma? Even a tent outside would be—”

  “You needn’t worry, Dr. Hancock. In this heat, and at the rate diarrhea and complaint are disposing of the worst cases, your men shall have beds aplenty.” Higbee smiled. “Probably within the next day or two.”

  Fury, hot and liquid, stirred at Doc’s core. “We’re talking about human beings, sir. Men. The worst besotted swineherd wouldn’t allow his hogs to inhabit such filth. Are you a physician or a—”

  “They are Secesh, Doctor!” Higbee shot to his feet, slamming his palm on the desk. “Rebels. As are you! Maybe you all should have thought about the consequences before you went to war with your government.”

  “That does not negate basic humanity!” Doc replied through gritted teeth.

  Higbee bellowed, “I am doing the best that I can given the conditions! No one expected the war to go on this long, or that we’d take so many prisoners, so don’t call me inhumane. How dare you, you insolent … stinking…”

  “My apologies, sir.” Doc tried to defuse the situation. “Is there any hope?”

  Higbee was fuming, face red. “I’ve heard the government is working on an exchange system. We have more than eight thousand of you bastards stuffed into a camp made for six, and if your people keep losing battles, another couple of thousand could be packed in here like sardines in a tin by the end of the month.”

  “Then allow me to at least offer my services in the surgery. They confiscated my surgical case at Shiloh. I was trained in Boston, at—”

  “You’re a damned Rebel! A traitor! I will not be bullied about conditions. You wanted your war? Well, Secesh, you got it! Now, get the hell out of my office.”

  A sense of desperation slowly replaced Doc’s rage. “Do you all hate us that much?”

  “It’s your war. And the nerve of you, coming in here to snap at me like some mongrel dog. I’ll make you pay for that. Guard!”

  The guard was there immediately, a dark-haired private with a flamboyant mustache that covered his mouth and flared out over his cheeks.

  Higbee pointed. “Get him out of here.”

  Doc raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, hearing Higbee mutter, “Call me inhumane? I’ll show him…”

  As Doc stepped out into the yard, the mustachioed guard following warily, he said, “Well, at least he didn’t order you to shoot me.”

  The man barely cracked a smile. “Oh, Surgeon Higbee? He’s a heap more devious than that. If’n you was shot, you’d be dead. He’ll figger some way to string it out for you, Reb.”

  27

  July 15, 1862

  “I think I am the most hated man in Arkansas,” Tom Hindman noted as he and Butler rode their horses into Little Rock at the head of a small detachment of Texas cavalry.

  The day had been dismal for Butler, despite the unseasonably cool midsummer weather. Just enough of a shower had blown over to settle the dust and drop the temperature. The smell of the damp ground, the flowering corn, and the diaphanous wings of the insects against the sunlight would have delighted him once. But not today.

  The purpose of their excursion, however, had been the trial and execution of nine conscripted Arkansas men for desertion. The accused had consisted of three Searcy brothers, a father and his two sons from Prairie County, and three best friends from Arkadelphia. All had been rounded up by Texas cavalry in June pursuant to Hindman’s conscription order. Believing their rights had been trampled, they’d deserted with the intention of traveling to Helena, Arkansas, to join General Curtis and his Federal forces.

  Not only did the notion of desertion sit poorly with Hindman, but General Curtis—after having been artfully dissuaded from attacking Little Rock—had marched cross-country to Helena. There, he’d moved into Tom Hindman’s newly built, and very imposing, brick house. The opulent dwelling now served as Curtis’s headquarters. That the Union general was sleeping in Hindman’s bed, eating off his table, and sending military communiqués from Tom’s parlor, had been like pouring coal oil in a cut.

  “The most hated?” Butler asked absently. While his eyes might have been on the back of Red’s head, he kept seeing the men and boys, their arms bound, bags over their heads. One of the Searcy brothers had collapsed at the last moment, breaking out into sobs. The youngest son from the Prairie County family had cried out, “Dear God, Paw! I don’t want to die!”

  The Texans had shot them to rags as the deserters’ regiment watched with wide eyes.

  Is this what war has become?

  “Well, lookee there!” Hindman cried, breaking Butl
er’s introspection.

  Butler raised his gaze to the brick warehouse they were passing. In white paint had been scrawled the words HINDMAN! HAIL SEESUR! and THREE HEADED DEMON! The latter referred to Hindman as judge, jury, and executioner. Or, as the more politically savvy tended to think: executive, legislative, and judicial all rolled into one.

  “Do you think he means ‘Hail Caesar?’” Hindman wondered.

  “He does,” Butler said wearily. “It’s being whispered about. The affluent and educated are divided. Most understand that it has taken harsh measures to accomplish what you have. A couple of months ago, the city was in a panic and General Curtis was two days’ march away. Now, because of what our spies have planted and the artful use of misdirection, Curtis thinks we’ve got thirty thousand men waiting for him in Pulaski County.”

  “We’ve got about fifteen thousand untrained, unequipped, barely fed conscripts,” Hindman countered sourly.

  “That’s ten times what we had when we started.” Butler waved his hand around. “You’ve saved Arkansas. With General Orders Number Seventeen you created the Independent Companies of Rangers to harass the Federal rear. You’ve opened the mines, started factories, and terrified poor Governor Rector into handing the State Guard over to your command. When you issued General Orders Number Eighteen at the end of June, you placed the entire state under martial law. Your martial law. Maybe the comparisons to Julius Caesar aren’t that much out of line.”

  “What do you think, Butler? Since Shiloh, you haven’t been yourself.” Hindman walked his horse closer as they passed the first of Little Rock’s famed gas streetlights atop its pole. They didn’t work, of course, due to the lack of fuel.

  Butler felt as burned out and dark inside as the light. “I don’t know, Tom. I feel adrift, as if my mind is at sea. After Shiloh I know what’s at stake. We need a Caesar … and Jefferson Davis is not that man.”

  Hindman glanced absently at the people they passed on the sidewalks, many pausing to watch the small cavalcade, some nodding, others bending heads close to whisper to their companions. None—Butler couldn’t help but note—smiled, and many didn’t offer so much as a curt nod of the head.