by John Jakes
The Boy General led his troop of red-scarfed cavalrymen while his regimental band blared “Garry Owen.” The schoolgirls surged up, ready to sing again. They threw flowers. Near the presidential stand, Custer stretched out his gauntlet to catch one. The sudden move spooked the bay. It bolted.
George glimpsed Custer’s furious face as the bay raced toward Seventeenth. When Custer regained control of Don Juan, it was impossible for him to turn back against the tide of men and horses to salute Johnson. Enraged, he rode on.
No Custer’s luck this morning, George thought, lighting a cigar. The road of ambition was not smooth. Thank God he himself had no designs on high office.
According to his engraved program, it would be a while before the engineers appeared. He excused himself to search again for the politician he hoped to find in the crowd.
He did find him, holding forth among the trees behind the special stand. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Republican of Lancaster and perhaps the foremost of the Radicals, was over seventy but still had an aura of craggy power. Neither a clubfoot nor an obvious and ugly dark-brown wig could diminish it. He wore neither beard nor mustache, letting his stern features show clearly.
He finished his conversation, and his two admirers tipped their hats and walked away. George stepped up, extending his hand. “Hello, Thad.”
“George. Splendid to see you. I’d heard you were out of uniform.”
“And back at Lehigh Station, managing the Hazard works. Do you have a moment? I’d like to speak to you as one Republican to another.”
“Surely,” Stevens said. A curtain dropped over his dark blue eyes. George had seen this happen before with the eyes of politicians put on guard.
“I just want to say that I’m in favor of giving Mr. Johnson’s program a chance.”
Stevens pursed his lips. “I understand the reason for your concern. I know you have friends down in Carolina.”
God, the man had a way of setting you off with his righteousness. George wished he was five inches taller, so he wouldn’t have to look up. “Yes, that’s right. My best friend’s people; my friend didn’t survive the war. I must say in defense of the family that I don’t consider them aristocrats. Or criminals—”
“They are both if they held blacks in bondage.”
“Thad, please let me finish.”
“Yes, certainly.” Stevens was no longer friendly.
“A few years ago, I believed that overzealous politicians on both sides had provoked the war, unnecessarily. Year after year, I rethought the question, and I decided I was wrong. Terrible as it was, the war had to be fought. Gradual peaceful emancipation would never have worked. Those with vested interests in slavery would have kept it going.”
“Quite right. With their cooperation and encouragement, the blackbirders imported and sold slaves from Cuba and the Indies long after Congress outlawed the trade in 1807.”
“I’m more interested in this moment. The war’s over, and there must never be another one. The cost to life and property is too high. War defeats every attempt at material progress.”
“Ah, there it is,” Stevens said with a frosty smile. “The businessman’s new creed. I am well aware of this tide of economic pacifism in the North. I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
George bristled. “Why not? Aren’t you supposed to represent your Republican constituents?”
“Represent, yes. Obey, no. My conscience is my sole guide.” He laid a hand on George’s shoulder and gazed down; the mere act of inclining his head was somehow condescending. “I don’t want to be rude, George. I know you donate heavily to the state and national organizations. I’m aware of your fine war record. Unfortunately, none of that changes my view about the Southern slavocracy. Those who belong to that class, and all who support them, are traitors to our nation. They presently reside not in sovereign states, but in conquered provinces. They deserve full punishment.”
In the eyes beneath the overhanging brows, George saw the light of true belief, holy war.
Cynics often cited sordid reasons for that fanaticism. They linked Stevens’s championship of Negro rights with his housekeeper in Lancaster and Washington, Mrs. Lydia Smith, a handsome widow, and a mulatto. They linked the burning of his iron works in Chambersburg by Jubal Early’s soldiers with his hatred of all things Southern. George didn’t entirely believe the explanations; he considered Stevens an honest idealist, though an extreme one. It had never surprised him that Stevens and his sister Virgilia Hazard were close friends.
Still, the congressman by no means represented all of Republican opinion. Again sharply, George said, “I thought the executive branch was in charge of reconstructing the South.”
“No, sir. That’s the prerogative of the Congress. Mr. Johnson was a fool to announce his intention to issue executive orders. Doing so has generated great enmity among my colleagues, and you may be assured that when we reconvene, we will undo his mischief. Congress will not have its rights usurped.” Stevens rapped the ferrule of his cane on the ground. “I will not have it.”
“But Johnson is only doing what Abraham Lincoln—”
“Mr. Lincoln is dead,” Stevens said before he could finish.
Reddening, George said, “All right, then. What program would you enact?”
“A complete reconstruction of Southern institutions and manners by means of occupation, confiscation, and the purging fire of law. Such a program may startle feeble minds and shake weak nerves but it is necessary and justified.” George grew even redder. “To be more specific, I want harsh penalties for traitors who held high office. I’m not content that Jeff Davis be held in irons at Fortress Monroe. I want him executed. I want amnesty denied to any man who left the Army or Navy to serve the rebellion.” Unhappily, George thought of Charles. “And I insist on equal rights, full citizenship for all Negroes. I demand the franchise for every eligible black male.”
“For that, they’ll throw rocks at you even in Pennsylvania. White people just don’t believe blacks are their equals. That may be wrong—and I think it is—but it’s also reality. Your scheme won’t work.”
“Justice won’t work, George? Equality won’t work? I don’t care. Those are my beliefs, I’ll fight for them. In matters of moral principle, there can be no compromise.”
“Damn it, I refuse to accept that. And a lot of other Northerners feel the same way about—”
But the congressman was gone, to see three new admirers.
The battalion from the Corps of Engineers, Army of the Potomac, swung down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the presidential pavilion. Eight companies marched, smartly outfitted in new uniforms, which had replaced the soiled, ragged ones worn during the last days of the Virginia campaign. On the belts of half the marchers swung short spades, emblems of their dangerous field duty—bridge building, road repair—often done under enemy fire they were too busy to return.
Marching with them in the hot sun, neatly bearded, the pain of his healing chest wound almost gone, Billy Hazard strode along with pride and vigor. He glanced toward the stand where his family should be sitting. Yes, he saw his wife’s lovely, luminous face as she waved. Then he noticed his brother and nearly lost the cadence. George looked abstracted, grim.
The brass band blared, sweeping the engineers past the special stands through a rain of flowers.
Constance, too, saw something amiss. After Billy went by, she asked George about it.
“Oh, I finally found Thad Stevens. That’s all.”
“That isn’t all. I can see it. Tell me.”
George gazed at his wife, weighed down again by that feeling of hovering disaster. The premonition was not directly related to Stevens, yet he was a part of the tapestry.
A similar feeling had come over George in April of 1861, when he watched a house in Lehigh Station burn to the ground. He had stared at the flames and visualized the nation afire, and he had feared the future. It had not been an idle fear. He’d lost Orry, and the Mains had lost the great house at Mo
nt Royal, and the war had cost hundreds of thousands of lives and nearly destroyed the bonds between the families. This foreboding was much like that earlier one.
He tried to minimize it to Constance, shrugging. “I expressed my views, and he put them down, pretty viciously. He wants congressional control of reconstruction and he wants blood from the South.” George didn’t mean to grow emotional, but he did. “Stevens is willing to go to war with Mr. Johnson to get what he wants. And I thought it was time to bind up the Union. God knows our family’s suffered and bled enough. Orry’s, too.”
Constance sighed, searching for some way to ease his unhappiness. With a forced smile on her plump face, she said, “Dearest, it’s only politics, after all—”
“No. It’s much more than that. I was under the impression that we were celebrating because the war is over. Stevens set me straight. It’s only starting.”
And George did not know whether the two families, already wounded by four years of one sort of war, could survive another.
Book One
Lost Causes
WE ALL AGREE THAT the seceded states, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those states, is to again get them into that proper, practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these states have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad.
Last public speech of ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
from a White House balcony,
APRIL 11, 1865
Grind down the traitors. Grind the traitors in the dust.
CONGRESSMAN THADDEUS STEVENS,
after Lincoln’s assassination, 1865
1
ALL AROUND HIM, PILLARS of fire shot skyward. The fighting had ignited the dry underbrush, then the trees. Smoke brought tears to his eyes and made it hard to see the enemy skirmishers.
Charles Main bent low over the neck of his gray, Sport, and waved his straw hat, shouting “Hah! Hah!” Ahead, at the gallop, manes streaming out, the twenty splendid cavalry horses veered one way, then another, seeking escape from the heat and the scarlet glare.
“Don’t let them turn,” Charles shouted to Ab Woolner, whom he couldn’t see in the thick smoke. Rifle fire crackled. A dim figure to his left toppled from the saddle.
Could they get out? They had to get out. The army desperately needed these stolen mounts.
A burly sergeant in Union blue jumped up from behind a log. He aimed and put a rifle ball into the head of the mare at the front of the herd. She bellowed and fell. A chestnut behind her stumbled and went down. Charles heard bone snap as he galloped on. The sergeant’s sooty face broke into a smile. He blew a hole in the head of the chestnut.
The heat seared Charles’s face. The smoke all but blinded him. He’d completely lost sight of Ab and the others in the gray-clad raiding party. Only the need to get the animals to General Hampton pushed him on through the inferno that mingled sunlight with fire.
His lungs began to hurt, strangled for air. He thought he saw a gap ahead that marked the end of the burning wood. He applied spurs; Sport responded gallantly. “Ab, straight ahead. Do you see it?”
There was no response except more rifle fire, more outcries, more sounds of horses and men tumbling into the burning leaves that carpeted the ground. Charles jammed his hat on his head and yanked out his .44-caliber Army Colt and thumbed the hammer back. In front of him, strung across the escape lane, three Union soldiers raised bayonets. They turned sideways to the stampeding horses. One soldier rammed his bayonet into the belly of a piebald. A geyser of blood splashed him. With a great agonized whinny, the piebald went down.
Such vicious brutality to an animal drove Charles past all reason. He fired two rounds, but Sport was racing over such rough ground he couldn’t hope for a hit. With the herd flowing around them, the three Union boys took aim. One ball tore right between Sport’s eyes and splattered blood on Charles’s face. He let out a demented scream as the gray’s forelegs buckled, tossing him forward.
He landed hard and came up on hands and knees, groggy. Another smiling Union boy dodged in with his bayonet Charles had an impression of orange light too bright to stare at, heat so intense he could almost feel it broil his skin. The Union boy stepped past Sport, down and dying, and rammed the bayonet into Charles’s belly and ripped upward, tearing him open from navel to breastbone.
A second soldier put his rifle to Charles’s head. Charles heard the roar, felt the impact—then the wood went dark.
“Mr. Charles—”
“Straight on, Ab! It’s the only way out.”
“Mr. Charles, sir, wake up.”
He opened his eyes, saw a woman’s silhouette bathed in deep red light. He swallowed air, thrashed. Red light. The forest was burning—
No. The light came from the red bowls of the gas mantles around the parlor. There was no fire, no heat. Still dazed, he said, “Augusta?”
“Oh, no, sir,” she said sadly. “It’s Maureen. You made such an outcry, I thought you’d had a seizure of some kind.”
Charles sat up and pushed his dark hair off his sweaty forehead. The hair hadn’t been cut in a while. It curled over the collar of his faded blue shirt. Though he was only twenty-nine, a lot of his handsomeness had been worn away by privation and despair.
Across the parlor of the suite in the Grand Prairie Hotel, Chicago, he saw his gun belt lying on a chair cushion. The holster held his 1848 Colt, engraved with a scene of Indians fighting Army dragoons. Over the back of the same chair lay his gypsy cloak, a patchwork of squares from butternut trousers, fur robes, Union greatcoats, yellow and scarlet comforters. He’d sewn it, piece by piece, during the war, for warmth. The war—
“Bad dream,” he said. “Did I wake Gus?”
“No, sir. Your son’s sleeping soundly. I’m sorry about the nightmare.”
“I should have known it for what it was. Ab Woolner was in it. And my horse Sport. They’re both dead.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll be all right, Maureen. Thank you.”
Doubtfully, she said, “Yes, sir,” and tiptoed out.
All right? he thought. How could he ever be all right? He’d lost everything in the war, because he’d lost Augusta Barclay, who had died giving birth to the son he never knew about until she was gone.
The spell of the dream still gripped him. He could see and smell the forest burning, just as the Wilderness had burned. He could feel the heat boiling his blood. It was a fitting dream. He was a burned-out man, his waking hours haunted by two conflicting questions: Where could he find peace for himself? Where did he fit in a country no longer at war? His only answer to both was “Nowhere.”
He shoved his hair back again and staggered to the sideboard, where he poured a stiff drink. Ruddy sunset light tinted the roofs of Randolph Street visible from the corner window. He was just finishing the drink, still trying to shake off the nightmare, when Augusta’s uncle, Brigadier Jack Duncan, came through the foyer.
The first thing he said was “Charlie, I have bad news.”
Brevet Brigadier Duncan was a thickly built man with crinkly gray hair and ruddy cheeks. He looked splendid in full dress: tail coat, sword belt, baldric, sash with gauntlets folded over it, chapeau with black silk cockade tucked under his arm. His actual rank in his new post at the Military Division of the Mississippi, headquartered in Chicago, was captain. Most wartime brevets had been reduced, but like all the others, Duncan was entitled to be addressed by his higher rank. He wore the single silver star of a brigadier on his epaulets, but he complained about the confusion of ranks, titles, insignia, and uniforms in the postwar army.
Charles, waiting for him to say more, relighted the stub of a cigar. Duncan laid his chapeau aside and poured a drink. “I’ve been at Division all afternoon, Charlie. Bill Sherman’s to replace John Pop
e as commander.”
“Is that your bad news?”
Duncan shook his head. “We have a million men still under arms, but by this time next year we’ll be lucky to have twenty-five thousand. As part of that reduction, the First through the Sixth Volunteer Infantry Regiments are to be mustered out.”
“All the Galvanized Yankees?” They were Confederate prisoners who had been put into the Union Army during the war in lieu of going to prison.
“Every last one. They acquitted themselves well, too. They kept the Sioux from slaughtering settlers in Minnesota, rebuilt telegraph lines the hostiles destroyed, garrisoned forts, guarded the stage and mail service. But it’s all over.”
Charles strode to the window. “Damn it, Jack, I came all the way out here to join one of those regiments.”
“I know. But the doors are closed.”
Charles turned, his face so forlorn Duncan was deeply moved. This South Carolinian who’d fathered his niece’s child was a fine man. But like so many others, he’d been cast adrift in pain and confusion by the end of the war that had occupied him wholly for four years.
“Well, then,” Charles said, “I suppose I’ll have to swamp floors. Dig ditches—”
“There’s another avenue, if you care to try it.” Charles waited. “The regular cavalry.”
“Hell, that’s impossible. The amnesty proclamation excludes West Point men who changed sides.”
“You can get around that.” Before Charles could ask how, he continued. “There’s a surplus of officers left from the war but a shortage of qualified enlisted men. You’re a fine horseman and a topnotch soldier—you should be, coming from the Point. They’ll take you ahead of all the Irish immigrants and one-armed wonders and escaped jailbirds.”
Charles chewed on the cigar, thinking. “What about my boy?”