by John Jakes
In that troubled spring of 1846, George Hazard took a good look around him, blinked, and realized that in four years, while he was busy with cigars, girls, and occasional study, profound changes had taken place. Boys had become young men; young men had become survivors; survivors were about to become brevet officers—in his case, and Orry’s, brevet officers with new growths of whiskers.
Orry was going to the infantry, so George put in for it too. Some of the professors and tactical officers disapproved. They said George, with his high marks, could get the artillery, perhaps even the topogs. Orry urged his friend to heed that counsel, but George was adamant.
“I’d rather serve in the infantry with a friend than go flying around on a limber with a lot of strangers. Besides, I still plan to resign at the end of four years. It’s immaterial to me where I spend that time, so long as I don’t get shot at too often.”
If George was not precisely overjoyed at the idea of going to war, Orry, on the other hand, really wanted to confront danger—see the elephant, as the popular phrase had it—on some distant battlefield in Mexico. Sometimes he felt guilty about that desire, but combat experience would be invaluable to a man planning on a military career. Although Orry’s superiors hadn’t seen fit to promote him, that hadn’t changed his mind about his goal. He would be a soldier no matter what anyone else thought.
Like Orry, most of the other first classmen were thrilled, although nervously so, over the possibility of seeing action. West Point’s corps of “pampered aristocrats” might at last have a chance to prove its worth. So might the entire Army, for that matter. A great many citizens were contemptuous of the American soldier, saying he had but one skill—he knew how to raise malingering to a high art.
The question of war was decided before George and Orry graduated. On April 12 the Mexican commander at Matamoros had ordered General Taylor to withdraw. Old Rough and Ready had ignored the warning, and on the last day of the month Mexican soldiers began to cross the Rio Grande. Early in May, at Palo Alto, Taylor’s army repulsed an enemy force three times its size and did so again at Resaca de la Palma a few days later. The ball was open. Congress responded to the invasion of American territory by declaring war on the twelfth of May.
The war created a windstorm of controversy. George didn’t go so far as some anti-Southern Whigs such as Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, who called the war a trumped-up land grab and warned that a Southern cabal was pushing the nation into a “fathomless abyss of crime and calamity.” George also scoffed at Mexican propaganda about a perverse crusade to expunge Catholicism from North America. After looking forward to four lazy years in the Army, he found the war merely inconvenient and annoying.
The moment George made the decision about his branch of service, he had written his father and asked him to pull a few wires. Now, at last, his orders arrived, posting him to the Eighth Infantry. Orry announced with astonishment that he had been sent to the same regiment. George pretended to be greatly surprised by the coincidence.
In the fine June weather, the graduates accepted the good wishes of their professors and marched in their last parade. George and Orry for the first time donned regular Army blue: the dark blue coat, the light blue trousers with the thin white seam stripe of the infantry.
George’s father and his brother Stanley attended the final parade. None of Orry’s family had been able to make the trip from South Carolina. Immediately after the parade, the Hazards took a boat for Albany, where they had business. George and Orry were ready to leave about an hour later.
As the steamer pulled away from the dock, Orry stepped to the rail and gazed up at the bluff, visually tracing the path they had climbed for the first time four years ago.
“I’ll miss the place. You’ll laugh at this, but what I’ll miss most is the drum. It gets into your bones after a while.”
George didn’t laugh, but he shook his head. “You’ll miss a drum that divided your life into rigid little compartments?”
“Yes. It lent the days a certain rhythm. A pattern and order you could depend on.”
“Well, don’t pine away, Mr. Stick. We’ll hear plenty of drums in Mexico.”
Night was settling as the steamer plowed past Constitution Island. Soon they were moving down the Hudson in darkness. In the city they registered at the American House, and next day saw the sights of New York. On Broadway they happened on a couple of dragoon noncoms and received their first salutes. Orry was excited. “We’re soldiers now. Officially.”
His friend shrugged, unimpressed. Before George boarded the train for Philadelphia, Orry made him promise to come to Mont Royal toward the end of his leave. They could then travel on to their regiment together. George agreed. In the past four years he had developed a liking for most of the Southerners he had met.
Besides, he had never forgotten Cooper Main’s comment about the pretty girls down home.
One of the first things George did when he arrived in Lehigh Station was to unwrap the meteorite he had found in the hills above West Point. In his room he carefully positioned it on a windowsill, where none of the upstairs maids could possibly mistake it for a piece of junk to be thrown out. Then he folded his hands under his chin and contemplated his prize.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. In the silence, the rough-surfaced, iron-rich fragment seemed to speak to him with a wordless but mighty voice, telling of its power to alter or destroy anything man could build or invent. When he finally rose to leave, a shiver ran down his spine, even though the house was hot this summer afternoon.
George took few things seriously, and fewer still touched his emotions in any significant way. That piece of star iron, the stuff at the heart of the Hazard fortune, was a rare exception. He had no intention of meeting a brave and quickly forgotten death in Mexico; he had important work to do in the years ahead. Let Orry spend his life settling border disputes on battlefields. In the iron trade, George would help change the world in many more ways than that.
He packed and said good-bye to his family in mid-September. Taylor’s Army was advancing on Monterrey, Mexico, during an eight-week armistice. George kept track of the Army’s position because his regiment was part of Taylor’s Second Division, commanded by General Worth. The Eighth had already seen hot fighting and presumably would see more.
On the long train trip to South Carolina, George tried to organize his ideas about Northerners and Southerners. At West Point cadets from both parts of the country had pretty well agreed that the Yankees were better prepared because the North had better schools. The Southerners haughtily amended their agreement by saying that it didn’t matter much; it was the bold leader, not the smart one, who usually won the battle.
If quizzed on regional differences, he would have characterized Yankees as practical, restless, curious about the ordinary things of life, and eager to make improvements wherever possible. Southerners, by contrast, struck him as content with life as they knew it. They were, at the same time, given to endless disputation and theorizing, always in the abstract, about such subjects as politics, Negro slavery, and the Constitution, to name just three.
Of course slavery was always discussed as a positive good. Interestingly, George recalled Orry’s saying that hadn’t always been the case. As a boy he had eavesdropped on the conversation of gentlemen visiting his father. The talk often turned to the peculiar institution, and once he had heard Tillet state that some elements of slavery were abhorrent to God and man. But after the Vesey and Turner rebellions, Orry noted, there was no more of that kind of free discussion at Mont Royal. Tillet said it might tend to encourage another uprising.
George had no strong views on slavery, pro or con. He decided that he wouldn’t discuss the subject in South Carolina, and he certainly wouldn’t tell the Mains how the other Hazards felt. His mother and father weren’t fanatical abolitionists, but they believed slavery to be totally wrong.
Orry met him with a carriage at a tiny woodland way station of the Northeastern Rail R
oad. During the ride to the plantation, the friends talked animatedly of the war and the months just past. Orry said his family had returned from their summer residence two weeks early, so as to be there when George arrived.”
George was fascinated by the lush vegetation of the low country, overwhelmed by the size and beauty of Mont Royal, and taken with Orry’s family.
With most of them, anyway. Tillet Main struck him as stern and a mite suspicious of outsiders. Then there was Cousin Charles, a raffishly handsome boy whose chief occupations seemed to be smiling in a sullen way and practicing lunges and feints with a large bowie knife.
Orry’s sisters were, of course, far too young for George. Brett, just nine, was pretty and bright but tended to fade into the background when eleven-year-old Ashton was present. The older sister was one of the loveliest little girls George had ever seen. What a beauty she’d be at twenty!
He spent his first full day at Mont Royal touring the fields and learning how a rice plantation operated. Late in the afternoon he was given into the care of Clarissa and her daughters, who took him to a charming summer house at one corner of the garden. When they were all comfortably seated in wicker chairs, two Negro girls served them delicious lemonade and little cakes.
Presently Clarissa excused herself to see to something in the kitchen. Ashton folded her hands in her lap and regarded George with great dark eyes.
“Orry says your nickname is Stump. You don’t look like a stump to me.” She smiled, her eyes flashing.
George ran an index finger under his tight, hot collar. For once he was at a loss for words. Brett rescued him.
“That’s the handsomest uniform I ever have seen—though it’s true I haven’t seen many.”
“Not as handsome as what’s in it,” Ashton said, and at that George actually blushed. The sisters seemed like miniature women, not children. Ashton’s flirtatious nature, rather than being pleasing, made him uncomfortable.
It was her age, he decided. She was too young to act coquettish, yet she did. George was attracted to pretty women, but he tended to avoid beautiful ones. They were too aware of their own good looks, and that awareness often made them moody and difficult. So it would be with Ashton Main, he suspected.
Ashton kept watching him over the rim of her lemonade glass. He was relieved to return to male company when the little party ended.
Two evenings later, at the dinner table, Clarissa announced plans for a big picnic at which George was to be introduced to neighbors and relatives.
“If we are lucky, we shall also have the honor of Senator Calhoun’s presence. He has been home at Fort Hill for a few weeks. He suffers from a lung disorder which the climate of the Potomac basin only exacerbates. Up-country the air is clear and pure. It affords him some relief, which is the reason—Tillet, why on earth are you making such a face?”
Every head swung toward the end of the table. Outside, far-off thunder rumbled in the still air. Ashton and Brett exchanged anxious looks. This was the season of the hurricanes that came sweeping off the ocean with destructive fury.
“John hardly acts like one of us any longer,” Tillet said. An insect landed on his forehead. He swatted at it, then gestured in an annoyed way.
A little Negro boy had been standing motionless in the corner, fly whisk held in front of him like a musket. In response to Tillet’s gesture the boy jumped forward and waved the whisk vigorously near Tillet’s head, but he knew he was too late. He had displeased his owner. The fear in the boy’s eyes told George more about the relationship between master and slave than he might have learned from hours of abolitionist lectures.
“We toast John on every public occasion,” Tillet went on. “We put up statues and plaques honoring him as the greatest living resident of the state—possibly the nation. Then he traipses off to Washington and utterly ignores the will of his constituents.”
Cooper gave a little snort that clearly angered his father. “Come, sir,” Cooper said, “are you suggesting Mr. Calhoun can be considered a South Carolinian only when he agrees with you? His opposition to the war. may be unpopular, but it’s patently sincere. He certainly supports and reinforces most of your other views.”
“Which you do not. Of course, I am not particularly distressed by that fact.” The sarcasm made George uncomfortable, and he suspected that deep down Tillet was greatly distressed.
“Good,” Cooper retorted with an airy wave of his wineglass. He ignored imploring glances from his mother. “You mustn’t worry about what I think. It’s the opinion of the rest of the country that you ignore at your peril.”
Tillet’s hand closed on his napkin. He glanced at George, forced a smile. “My son is a self-proclaimed expert on national affairs. Sometimes I think he’d be more at home living up North.”
Rigid in his chair, Cooper said, “Balderdash.” His smile was gone. “I despise those damn abolitionists with all their self-righteous breast-beating. But their hypocrisy doesn’t blind me to the truth of some of their charges. The moment anyone dares to criticize the way we do things in the South, we all become as defensive as treed porcupines. The Yankees say slavery is wrong, so we claim it’s a blessing. They point to scars on nigra backs—”
“You find no scars on anyone at Mont Royal,” Tillet interrupted, for George’s benefit. Cooper paid no attention.
“—and we respond with windy pronouncements that slaves are happy. No person deprived of liberty is happy, for God’s sake!”
“Watch your foul mouth in front of these children,” Tillet shouted.
But the younger man was as angry as the older: “Instead of learning from the truth, we avoid it. We’re content to be what we’ve been for a hundred and fifty years—farmers whose crops depend on the sweat of black bondsmen. We ignore men like George’s father, even though they’re becoming legion up North. George’s father manufactures iron with free labor. That iron goes into machines. Machines are creating the future. The Yankees understand what this century’s all about, but we only understand the last one. If Senator Calhoun no longer parrots the established wisdom of the state, more power to him. We need a dozen more like him.”
There was an uncharacteristic sharpness in Clarissa’s voice. “It’s rude of you to speak so intemperately in front of our guest.”
“Yes, the hell with the truth. Good manners above all.” Cooper raised his wineglass in a mock toast. Tillet knocked the glass from his hand.
The black boy with the fly whisk ducked. The glass broke against the wall. Brett shrieked and shrank against her chair, one hand over her eyes. Orry looked at the visitor and shrugged, his smile awkward and apologetic.
Tillet seethed. “You have consumed too much wine, Cooper. You had better retire until you can control yourself.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Clarissa. Though softly spoken, it was a command.
Cooper did act a mite intoxicated, George thought. The older brother rose, stared at his father, then laughed before hurrying out. Tillet was livid; clearly, mockery enraged the head of Orry’s family even more than did heresy.
No one smiled or said much during the rest of the meal. George was depressed. There was a clear rift in the Main household. A rift much like the one his own father said was slowly but inevitably dividing the country.
9
ALTHOUGH THE PICNIC FELL within the sickly season, it drew a crowd of more than two hundred. Many came from their summer homes, and some all the way from Columbia. This impressed George, but not as much as the late-morning arrival of John Calhoun.
Senator Calhoun and his wife, Floride, drove up the lane in an old but elegant barouche. Friends and the curious hurried to surround the vehicle. George had heard someone say the senator had spent the night in Charleston, attended by his driver and three other Negroes, all house servants, who followed the barouche in a mule-drawn cart.
In the last thirty years of America’s national life, no one had played more roles with greater dominance than the tall, hawkish man who stepped quickly down fr
om the barouche and began greeting well-wishers. George couldn’t recall all the offices Calhoun had held. He knew secretary of war and Vice-President were two of them.
Early in his career Calhoun had been a fierce partisan of the Federal Union and of the Academy. When others had argued against Sylvanus Thayer’s ambitious reform programs, Calhoun had endorsed them, believing America could not be strong without a strong military arm. But of course when Northerners heard Calhoun’s name now, most of them thought of one thing—the doctrine of nullification.
The senator had propounded the doctrine in the early 1830s. At issue was a protective tariff unpopular in South Carolina. Calhoun argued that the state had the sovereign right to nullify the tariff—which in effect meant any state could disobey any Federal law it disliked. President Jackson had backed Calhoun down and ended the nullification movement with an implied threat of Federal force.
George was introduced to the Calhouns. He guessed that the senator was in his middle sixties. It was obvious that age and disease had wasted Calhoun’s face and tall, strong frame. But echoes of earlier good looks remained in his dramatic crest of gray hair thrown back from his forehead and in his brilliant dark blue eyes.
Calhoun murmured a few complimentary words about West Point, then moved on. George had an impression that the senator was an exhausted, embittered man. His smile looked false, his movements labored.
George soon grew dizzy trying to keep up with all the introductions. He met Mains and Bulls and Smiths, Rhetts and Hugers and Boykins and LaMottes and Ravenels. One member of the Smith family, female and about his own age, seemed as taken with his uniform as he was with her décolletage. They promised to meet in twenty minutes at the punch table.
Herr Nagel, who tutored the Main sisters, was already falling-down drunk. George helped him to a bench. Next he spent an uncomfortable few minutes conversing with Tillet’s overseer, a short Yankee named Salem Jones. Jones had a cherubic face but mean eyes, which he kept fixed on a distant section of the lawn. There, some favored house slaves had been given a couple of tables for their own food, which they were permitted to sample while waiting for a summons to perform some chore for the guests. Calhoun’s blacks had made straight for the slave gathering, which was growing boisterous. Jones pursed his lips, watching.