North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  He went on to explain that grateful citizens had already announced a gala ball to which favored officers from Manassas would be invited. “And you know, Charlie, cavalry officers are the most favored of all. We needn’t tell the ladies we were miles from the battle. That is, you needn’t. Out of respect for my wife, I don’t suppose I’ll attend.”

  “Why not? Beauty Stuart’s married, and I bet he’ll be there.”

  “Damn Virginians. Have to be in the forefront of everything.” During the battle, Stuart had led a much-discussed charge along the Sudley Road, further enhancing his reputation for bravery—or recklessness, depending on who told the story.

  “A ball. That does have a certain tempting ring.” Charles tried to keep his gaze away from more ambulances moving in slow file along the ridge, past the blazing disk of the sun.

  “Charming female guests from miles around are to be invited. The sponsors don’t want our brave boys to suffer a shortage of dance partners.”

  Thoughtfully, Charles said, “I just might go if I can scrounge an invitation.”

  “Well! There’s a sign of life in the weary trooper. Good for you.” Butler strolled off, and Sport nuzzled Charles’s arm as he resumed his work. He found himself whistling, having realized that with a touch of luck he might find Augusta Barclay at the ball.

  34

  THEY HAD ARRIVED IN the capital at seven in the morning, soaked and on the verge of sickness. George, Constance, and the children went straight to Willard’s; Stanley, Isabel, and the twins to their mansion, with not so much as a syllable of good-bye exchanged.

  George washed, shaved—cutting himself twice—drank two fingers of whiskey, and reported to the Winder Building in a daze. So widespread was despair over the defeat that nothing got done all morning; Ripley shut the office down at half past eleven. George heard that the President was in another of his depressive states. Small wonder, he thought as he staggered through crowds of army stragglers on his way to the hotel.

  He fell into a stuporous sleep, from which he was gently shaken around nine that night. Constance felt he should take some nourishment. In Willard’s dining room, which was packed yet unnaturally quiet, George questioned those at nearby tables and winced at the answers. He asked more questions next day. The scope and consequences of the tragedy at Bull Run became clearer.

  Everyone spoke of the disgraceful behavior of the volunteers and their officers, and of the ferocity of the enemy troops, especially something called the Black Horse Cavalry. George got the impression the rebs had no other kind, which couldn’t be true. Yet even Ripley spoke as if it were.

  Casualty figures were vague as yet, though some losses were certain; Simon Cameron’s brother had died leading a Highlander regiment, the Seventy-ninth New York. Scott and McDowell were the identified culprits. While George snored away most of Monday, McDowell had been relieved and George’s old classmate McClellan was summoned from western Virginia to command the army and, presumably, organize and train it into something more nearly worthy of the name.

  On Tuesday, office work resumed. George received orders for a flying trip to acquaint himself with activities of the Cold Spring Foundry across the river from West Point. His father had visited the foundry during George’s cadet years. Even back then, it had been turning out some of the finest ironwork in America. The foundry was now manufacturing great iron-banded artillery pieces designed by Robert Parker Parrott. The Ordnance Department’s on-site officer was a Captain Stephen Benét.

  Tuesday night, after George packed, the high-command change took up most of the conversation before he and Constance fell asleep.

  “Lincoln and the cabinet and the Congress all pushed McDowell. They forced him to send poorly trained amateurs into battle. The volunteers failed to behave like regulars, and McDowell’s been punished for it—by Lincoln and the cabinet and the Congress.”

  “Ah,” she murmured. “The first girl on the President’s card proved clumsy, so he’s changing partners.”

  “Changing partners. That says it very well.” George hoisted his nightshirt to scratch an itch on his thigh. “I wonder how many times he’ll do it before the ball is over?”

  George was thankful to exchange Washington’s air of hopelessness for the beauty of the Hudson River valley, all the more vivid because of the glorious sunshiny weather he found there. Old Parrott, class of ’24, ran the plant, and he insisted on showing the visitor every part of it personally. Bathing in the foundry’s heat and light was a kind of joyous homecoming. George was fascinated by the precision with which the workers bored out the cannon and heated, coiled, and hammered four-inch-square bars of iron to form the bands that were the maker’s mark on Parrott guns.

  Parrott seemed to appreciate the presence in the Ordnance Department of someone who understood his problems as manufacturer and manager. George liked the older man, but the real find, personally as well as professionally, was Captain Stephen V. Benét, whom George remembered from the class of ’49.

  A Florida native, so dark as to be mistaken for a Spaniard, Benét divided his time between the foundry and West Point, where he taught ordnance theory and gunnery. Together, the two men crossed the river to roam their old haunts one afternoon. They discussed everything from their own classes to the mounting attacks on the institution.

  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 woul
dn’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 prove 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.”