House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “But the Yankees have ripped the entrails out of the Confederacy, Currain,” he said. “I talked with Admiral Semmes a day or two ago. Instead of ranging the seven seas in the Alabama, he’s now commanding a few anchored gunboats here in the river. But when he was making his way back to Richmond, he travelled from Mexico clear across the South; and he saw collapse and destruction everywhere. Plantations ravaged, houses burned, every sugar mill and saw mill and grist mill put to the torch; homeless slaves wandering through the country, stealing, living any way they can. He saw our own soldiers, deserters or disorganized units, drunken, plundering, doing as much harm as Sherman did in his worst fury.” And he repeated: “The body of the South has been eviscerated, Currain. Nothing but head and heart and hands remains.”

  Trav was slowly beaten into despair. By the first of February Longstreet’s artillery had not enough horses to move the guns, and one section of his lines had only two small regiments facing seven of the enemy’s. A few days after that peace conference on a Yankee steamer in Hampton Roads, President Davis in a public speech predicted that before summer ended the North would sue for peace. He said Sherman, who had begun to march northward, was hastening to his ruin; said Lincoln would find that when he met the Confederate peace commissioners he had been talking to his masters. Davis’s predictions were so absurd that no one took them seriously, and in the army Longstreet’s comment seemed to Trav a just one.

  “I’ve thought for a long time that Mr. Davis was a rascal,” the General said. “But he’s worse: he’s a fool.”

  Yet Trav found some Richmond people thought President Davis was right, and were confident of eventual independence, and predicted that England and France would realize that if the North conquered the South she would turn her strength against them. These optimists were vocal; the pessimists kept their opinions to themselves. But if Trav stayed at home over night, when he rode out to headquarters in the early morning he sometimes saw the words “Vae Victis” chalked upon walls; and once on Purcell and Ladd’s drug store on Main Street someone had written in huge letters: “The Lord is on our side, but in consequence of pressing engagements elsewhere He could not attend at Fisher’s Creek, Winchester, and Atlanta.” More than once Trav saw the police erasing these signs, but they reappeared.

  In mid-February, Longstreet said he had written General Lee urging a surprise seizure of gold, to be used to buy supplies with which to feed the army. “The farmers won’t take Confederate money,” he pointed out. “But they’ll rush to sell their produce for gold.”

  “We can’t do that legally, can we?” Trav asked.

  “Necessity’s our law. If we stop to make a law about it, the gold will disappear. No, I’d send men with an armed guard simultaneously to every vault in Richmond and take possession.”

  Trav wondered whether such a measure would be worth the indignation it would cause. “Most of the gold in the country is in private hands. I knew a lady in Augusta who buried nineteen thousand dollars in gold in the cellar under a sawdust pile. Some of it was hers, the rest belonged to her relatives.”

  “I know who you mean,” Longstreet agreed. “Mrs. Morgan. She also confided in me.” He added honestly: “And I suppose there are many like her. But that nineteen thousand dollars would give a good many soldiers some substantial meals.” He banged his fist on his knee. “Why, Currain, hundreds of these poor fellows are so nearly starved that they’re going blind. They can’t see a thing at night, and they can’t see well even in daylight.”

  Trav knew that many men suffered from this affliction. “They’ll get better when the spring sprouts come, when they can eat some green things.”

  “A great deal can happen before that,” Longstreet reminded him.

  One day the General showed him a note from General Ord, commanding the Union army whose lines faced theirs. “What do you read in that, Currain?”

  The note asked for a meeting to discuss measures to end the friendly exchanges between pickets. “Why, General Ord can stop these exchanges whenever he chooses,” Trav pointed out.

  “Exactly. So he has some other purpose. We will meet him, hear what it is.”

  On the return from that rendezvous between the lines, Longstreet at first was silent. “General Ord thinks it is time to make peace,” he said at last. “He suggests certain amenities, informal, unofficial, which might have good result.”

  “What amenities, General?”

  “He would have the ladies begin it.” Trav understood from Longstreet’s tone that the proposal appealed to him. “You know Louisa and Mrs. Grant are old friends. He suggests they exchange calls. Mrs. Longstreet would go into the Union lines under a flag and pay her respects to Mrs. Grant, and then Mrs. Grant would come into Richmond and return the courtesy. He thinks that might lead to a meeting between ’Lys Grant and General Lee; and that five minutes’ frank private talk between them would find a formula for ending all this.” He was briefly silent. “I suppose it will be necessary to consider Mr. Davis and his feelings,” he reflected, and touched his horse. “I think we must ride into Richmond, Currain.”

  In Richmond, Longstreet lodged at the Spottswood, but Trav went home. Enid was fuming at the high prices and the impossibility of getting enough to eat, and she was sure that as soon as spring dried the roads Grant would capture Richmond. Wasn’t it time Trav did something about taking care of his family? Did he propose to leave her and Lucy and Peter here till the Yankees came? Did he want the same terrible things to happen to them that had happened to ladies when Sherman’s men caught them?

  Trav said Richmond was as safe as any place, and seeking to appease her he added affectionately: “It means a lot to me to have you here, where I can see you often. And you’re all right here for the present, Enid.”

  “Oh, really!” Her tone was scornful. “Well, other husbands don’t think so. Captain Blackford’s sending his wife to Charlottesville; and I notice General Longstreet keeps his wife safe in Lynchburg!”

  Before he returned to headquarters Trav was able to tell her that she could no longer complain of this. On Longstreet’s report of his talk with General Ord, General Lee was summoned from Petersburg to confer with President Davis; and after hours of discussion it was agreed that a meeting of the two commanders might have a useful outcome. Secretary Breckenridge particularly approved the suggestion that the opening moves be made by the ladies; so Longstreet telegraphed Mrs. Longstreet asking her to come to Richmond.

  “So you see, Enid,” Trav assured her, “the General thinks Richmond is quite as safe as Lynchburg, or he wouldn’t let her come. She’s going to have another baby the end of May.”

  “Really? You never told me.” She shrugged. “Poor thing! But if she does come, she certainly won’t stay long!”

  Back at headquarters, Longstreet was in a hopeful humor; but next. day he showed Trav a letter from General Lee. Lee said it might be necessary to abandon their position on the James River. The commanding general directed Longstreet to be prepared to withdraw through Richmond to some point on the Danville road, and to accumulate wagons and supplies in readiness.

  “But he hasn’t given up,” Trav urged, when he had read the letter. “He only says withdrawal may become necessary if Sherman joins Grant.”

  “Grant won’t wait for Sherman.”

  “How long will he wait?”

  “Depends on the weather.”

  Trav made an angry movement. “Well, so can we wait.”

  Longstreet smiled grimly. “Yet for us to wait is destruction.” He added after a moment: “To act may only hasten that destruction, but it’s better than waiting. It Ewell can raise a few regiments and take over our lines here, the First Corps can move and make our right strong enough to interpose between Grant and Sherman and unite with Johnston. And if we impress gold we can supply this army and feed the men and give them strength for work.” Then he shook his head. “But General Lee will not agree to seizing the gold. He says, as you do, that it’s largely in the hands of indi
viduals. So I’m afraid we’ll—just go on waiting, till Grant moves.”

  “How soon will that be?”

  “Say the first of April.”

  Trav looked at the date on General Lee’s letter. February twenty-second. This was the twenty-third. The first of April was five weeks away.

  17

  January-February, 1865

  VESTA readily accepted Cinda’s decision to go to the Plains. Tilda said the journey would be hazardous and tiring, but Cinda laughed at her. “Tiresome? With my grandchildren waiting at the other end? Nonsense! And as for danger, there’s danger everywhere!”

  Old June would go with her mistress; and she packed an enormous hamper with food for the journey. “Take plenty,” Cinda warned her. “The trains may break down or something, and there may be hungry wounded men aboard, and no knowing how long we’ll be on the way.” Her own necessities she reduced to a minimum; and before that week’s end they departed.

  The day after Cinda took the train, Tilda heard that stormy weather had scattered the enemy fleet off Wilmington. “Mr. Streean planned to sail from there,” she remarked to Vesta, and she asked: “Did Cinda tell you? He’s gone to Europe.”

  “Mama told me, yes. And she told me you wouldn’t go with him.” Vesta said affectionately: “And I love you very much, Aunt Tilda.”

  “Probably I was foolish.”

  The girl smiled. “It’s mighty sensible to be foolish sometimes.”

  Tilda returned to the routine of her days. The flow of wounded from Petersburg and from the defenses north of the river was not heavy, but there were thousands of hungry people in Richmond who must be fed by public relief or by the Soup Association; so Tilda’s hands were full. Vesta had her problems too. After Cinda was gone, Brett asked her:

  “Were you serious, Honey, in saying we don’t need that money from the Wilmington bank?”

  “Of course I was! Why, just the things in that old trunk will buy all we can eat for months.” She kissed him quickly. “There, Mister Brett Dewain, you leave running the house to me.”

  He smiled and obeyed her; and Vesta began at once to convert those miscellaneous treasures into Confederate currency. She had had for months now an ally in Mr. Lehman, the auctioneer. When in her role of housekeeper she first felt the pinch, her mother was busy in the hospitals, and Brett was fighting somewhere toward the Wilderness, and Vesta confided her perplexities to Anne. “I don’t want to bother Papa and Mama, but we’ve lots of old silver and things we could sell and not miss them, if I only knew who to go to.”

  Anne sent her to Mr. Lehman. “Mrs. Harrison, who used to live near Papa and me up on the Northern Neck, told Julian and me about him last year. She says he’s been awfully good to her, and sold lots of things for her, and got wonderful prices.”

  Vesta took this advice, and she had never regretted it. Mr. Lehman was a round, olive-skinned, gray-haired little man in whom she at once discovered a warm and helpful heart. All this ruin and hurt and death was bad, bad, bad, he said. For fine ladies and gentlemen like her papa and mama it was terrible. But he could help, because there were so many people who had money for the first time in their lives and who were hungry to buy nice fine things. Vesta saw that it was a joy to him to make them pay dearly for the treasures they coveted. When something desirable was put up for sale, his agents bid it to a figure far above its worth before they let it be sold to one of those greedy purchasers. Vesta had heard Mr. Lehman’s race damned so violently that “Jew” and “speculator” and “extortioner” were become synonymous; but Mr. Lehman was certainly not an extortioner. She asked him one day:

  “Why do you go to so much trouble to help me?”

  His eyes beamed. “I tell you a secret, ma‘am. For ladies and gentlemen, I do the best I can. This war is over some day. I do not go away. I am here since I was a little boy, and I will be here when I die, and my children and their children. Then people remember: ‘When I am in trouble, old Lehman don’t try to rob me!’” He smiled through gentle tears. “I am a poor man, mustn’t waste money, so I tell myself it is good business to do this for you. So if it is good business for me it is all right, and I can do it and not lie awake nights oy-oying on account of the money I don’t make that day! Good business is good business, ma’am, even if the profit don’t come today or tomorrow or maybe for five-ten years. So when you need money, you bring me some little thing you can spare and I do the best I can for you.”

  The gray-haired auctioneer was Vesta’s secret, a secret she shared only with Anne and Julian. She doubted whether her father and mother would approve, as Caesar certainly did not, of her visits to the small office behind the auction rooms. “You let you’self down, Miss Vesta,” the old Negro said reproachfully, but he would not betray her.

  Vesta was fond of Mr. Lehman, and she might stay for an hour of talk with him. His father had come into the South with a pack on his back, and had saved enough to establish here a little store, and died. Mr. Lehman was then a boy of seven; but he and his mother carried on the store. Mr. Lehman’s second son fell at First Manassas. There was an older boy who before the war had settled in New Orleans. “A fine boy, in the banking business and does good, but now he rides in Forrest’s cavalry and no more bank.” Of four daughters, three were married: of their husbands, one, having left an arm at Chancellorsville, now helped Mr. Lehman; one was in the artillery; one with Mosby. “That’s a good business, too,” Mr. Lehman remarked, in full approval of Colonel Mosby’s methods.

  He despised speculators. “When people are in trouble, fools can make money,” he declared. “Then they think they are good business men, and as soon as they think that, then I begin to take money away from them.” He was well-informed. It was he who first told Vesta that General Hood had been relieved of command, and he who knew the day Congress in secret session created the office of General-in-chief for General Lee. “But that is too late, three years too late,” he said sorrowfully. “Everything is done too late. Cotton ought to be shipped to England four years ago. They do it now, too late. Every man ought to be a soldier three years ago. Now they try to get all the men out of the departments and the exempt places into the army. Too late! They go to teach negroes to fight. Too late! They say they will turn the slaves free. Too late! They talk about make peace on good terms, but after you have lost a war to make a bargain it is too late. All is too late.” He said reassuringly: “But one day all this foolishness end. Then we begin to fix things right again. Not me, maybe. But you do it, you and your husband and your babies when they grow up. Lose a war is like to go bankrupt. If you learn something out of it, is good business after a while.”

  She asked what could be learned from defeat. “Why, it is plain,” he told her. “One man is strong as one strong man. Two men work together, they are strong as three strong men. But three strong men that don’t work together are not so strong as one strong man.” He made an impatient gesture. “All the talk is states. The states do this; they won’t let the Government do that. So nobody does anything. That is bad business, and bad business is bad everything. Business is just be sensible, give the penny to get the dollar. Men and states is no difference. They make more if they work all together, give up little to get much. That is what to learn in this war.”

  “I’ve heard Papa say almost the same thing.”

  “Your papa is good business man. He knows when it is smart not to make money. Profit is not just money. If a man burns up all his money and feels good doing it, that is profit. Just do what makes you feel good and glad and never sorry you did it. That is good business.”

  “Papa would like you, Mr. Lehman,” she said warmly.

  “I know all about him. He is good man.” Vesta was surprised at the depth of her own pleasure in that word.

  Rollin came home in time to take Vesta to the Wellfords’ ball, and she danced her stockings to shreds. She would remember that evening as the last bright flame of the old beautiful life that was ending. Not till they came back to the house on Fifth
Street did Rollin show her a sad letter from his mother. All Mrs. Lyle’s efforts to keep the plantation on the Peedee in profitable operation had proved vain; and their rice swamps on the coast would soon be overrun with weeds and shoots. Dams and sluices were gone, there had been no ditching for six years. Her friends refugeeing from the Low Country painted a hopeless picture. When white folks left, the Negroes moved into the big houses and turned them into pig sties or, because they were too lazy to cut firewood, burned them piecemeal. If a white man tried to control them, they complained to the Yankee provosts and their masters were arrested and often imprisoned. Some of the Negroes were enlisting in Yankee regiments and lording it over their former masters. Provisions were stolen and wasted. The Yankees said that owners who left their plantations forfeited their ownership. The Negroes had not yet harmed any white folks, but no one knew when outrages would begin. Fallow Fields thus far was peaceful, except that the Negroes could not be made to work; but all the Low Country was becoming a lawless desolation and a waste.

  Vesta wept as she read. When she handed the letter back to him, he said: “So I expect you’ve married a pauper, darling.”

  She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Sh-h-h! You’re never a pauper while you have me; nor I while I have you.”

  He swept her close, laughing in her ear. “Papa made a fortune in thirty years,” he said. “If he could do it, so can I.”

  “And we’ve thirty years, and thirty years more on top of that, Rollin. You and I are young! And we love each other. That’s being just as rich as I ever want to be.” So he forgot his griefs and they spoke of love and of bright dreams.

  When Hetty Cary and General Pegram were married at St. Paul’s, Vesta insisted that Aunt Tilda go with her to the wedding; and she refused to be frightened by the long tally of mischances and ill omens which marked the occasion. “So many bad luck signs will cancel each other out,” she predicted. “Nothing really bad can happen to anyone as beautiful and sweet and dear as Hetty. Besides, I’m not superstitious anyway.”