by John Jakes
“They should.”
“Yes, of course. But you know the realities, Constance. Most Northerners don’t give a damn for the Negro, and they certainly don’t think he has the same rights as a white man. This war is still being fought for one reason only—love of the Union and the grand old flag. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying it’s a fact. If emancipation comes, I fear the consequences.”
Late August brought a second major battle near Bull Run and a second outcome like the first. Beaten Union armies withdrew to Washington, where fear of a direct attack spread like fire on a prairie. Critics of the war stepped up their attack, saying the whole thing was misbegotten and negotiated peace should be sought at once.
The secretary called Stanley to his office on a stormy day in early September. Stanton had relinquished direct control of the armies to Halleck, but he was quietly gathering the lines of control of other areas into his hands. Once scornful of Lincoln, he had now ingratiated himself with the President and become a trusted adviser and professed friend. Not yet fifty, Edwin McMasters Stanton—small round spectacles, perfumed beard, and Buddha face—was said to be the second most powerful man in the country.
He had emphatic views about the mounting dissent:
“We must stamp it out. We must curb these peace Democrats and their milksop cronies and make it evident that if they continue to attack the government and its actions, they face arrest, prison, even charges of treason. The war must be prosecuted to its conclusion.”
Rain spattered the office windows; the noonday was dark as twilight. Thinking of the busy production lines at Lashbrook’s, Stanley gave a fervent nod. “I definitely agree, sir.”
“Secretary Seward formerly had responsibility for matters of government integrity and security—” Seward’s prosecution of those duties was legendary. It was said he had kept a little hand bell on his desk and boasted that if he rang it, any man anywhere could be put behind bars indefinitely. “But I am in charge now.” Stanley wondered why the secretary was stating the obvious. Stanton laced his plump hands together on the desk. “I need a deputy whom I can trust. One who will be zealous in seeing that my policies as well as my specific orders are executed with dispatch and without question.”
Stanley gripped the arm of the visitor’s chair to steady himself. Rain hit the office window. The vista of power Stanton spread before him in a sentence or two was awesome.
“We must organize the security function more completely and begin to take vigorous action against enemies in our own camp.”
“No doubt of that, sir. None. But I wonder how easily the goal can be accomplished. Just the habeas corpus matter has created a storm of debate and outcries about violations of Constitutional rights.”
Up jerked the ends of Stanton’s mouth, a sneer. Stanley’s knees shook. Hoping to demonstrate his grasp of the situation, he had instead enraged the secretary.
“Was the country made for the Constitution, Stanley? I think not. The reverse, rather. Still, I know the warped view of our enemies. If the country sinks to oblivion, they will no doubt take extreme comfort in knowing the Constitution is still safe.”
Quickly, Stanley leaned toward the desk. “People like that are not only misguided, they’re dangerous. That is all I meant to say, sir.”
Stanton leaned back, stroking his beard. Today it was perfumed with lilac. “Good. For a minute I thought I might have misjudged you. You’ve served me loyally, and absolute loyalty is one qualification for the job I am proposing. I need a man who can be discreet but firm about silencing our critics—and keep any onus from falling on this office.”
A plump hand rose to indicate a large inked diagram hanging on one wall. The diagram consisted of many connected circles and boxes, each with its neat legend inside or below. “For example, the official descriptive charts illustrate the structure of this department. Should we find it wise to establish a special unit to suppress treasonous activity, it must never appear on the chart.”
“I can make sure of that, sir. I can do everything you ask, and I will.”
“Excellent,” Stanton murmured. Then, slyly, he peeked at Stanley over his round spectacles. “I should think that if you go about your new duties efficiently, you will still have ample time to sell footwear to the army.”
Stanley sat still, not daring to reply.
The secretary murmured on for another fifteen minutes, and toward the end gave Stanley a folder containing his confidential plan for strengthening the police arm of the War Department. At Stanton’s suggestion, Stanley took a few moments to leaf through the half-dozen pages of the document, paying special attention to the philosophic preamble.
“This opening statement is exactly right, sir. We need to tighten up. It will be even more important if the President goes through with his plan to free the nig—the black people in the rebelling states.”
“He’s adamant about doing so. As I see it, in his mind the step has undergone a change from a punitive measure to a moral imperative. Just yesterday he told the cabinet that although he has doubts about a great many things, from generals to weapons, he has none in regard to the Tightness of emancipation. However, Seward and I and some others have convinced him to withhold the proclamation until the time is more propitious.” He seemed to hunch, his face and form darkening along with the clouds outside. From the dark mound came the intense voice. “The policy change the President proposes is so unusual, not to say radical, we dare not make it public when the war’s going against us. For the proclamation to meet even minimum acceptance, it must be announced at a peak of public confidence and euphoria. We must have a victory.”
Stanley closed his hand on the folder—his key to expanded authority and power. The secretary had made it clear. He didn’t want a brilliant thinker but an obedient soldier. Stanley had learned that kind of soldiering under one of the best, now in exile.
“Most definitely, sir,” he said with an excess of sincerity, even though he loathed the thought of all those strange, hostile, dark-skinned people being set free to roam the North at will. “A victory.”
After scouting around Frederick, Maryland, Charles and Ab turned back toward White’s Ford on the Potomac. It was the fourth of September, autumn coming on.
The scouts, both dressed as farmers, proceeded at a slow trot along a rutty road between steep, heavily treed hillsides. The leaves had not begun to change color, but Charles was already afflicted with the melancholy of the coming season. Despite his aversion to writing letters, he had sent three to Barclay’s Farm in recent months and received no replies. He hoped that was just another example of the wretchedness of the army mails, not a sign Gus had forgotten him.
Light through overhanging branches flashed and flickered over the bearded men. Charles had his wool coat open, his revolver within reach. They had found good forage at a stable near Frederick last night. Sport acted livelier today. So did Ab’s horse, Cyclone. Of late the army had provided only green corn.
Before hunting up the stable yesterday, they had ventured into Frederick itself—a nervous two hours for Charles because his accent demanded that he remain mute and let Ab do the talking. He poked about the town by himself for a while, speaking to no one and arousing no suspicion. Ab visited a saloon and came back with a disconcerting report.
“Charlie, they ain’t a damn bit interested in bein’ liberated. You think Bob Lee got the wrong information? I was told we could expect a big uprisin’ of locals to help us out when we invaded this here state.”
“I was told the same thing.”
“Well, most of them boys in that grogshop acted like they didn’t care whether I was from hell or Huntsville. I got a few stares, one offer to sit in a card game, a glass of whiskey I bought myself, and a good look at a lot of backs. The people hereabouts aren’t gonna feed us or fart on us, either one.”
Charles frowned. Had the army miscalculated again? If so, it was too late; the advance was under way. Mr. Davis and the generals did appear to be at odds
on the status of Maryland. The President insisted the state belonged to the South, and they would come as liberators—a judgment Ab’s report contradicted. Camp talk said they were marching to strike a blow on enemy soil for a change: invading Yankee territory to strip it of cattle and produce and, not incidentally, give the farmers of Virginia a chance to harvest their crops without fear of bluebellies pouring over their rail fences and trampling their fields.
Whatever the answer, they had finished their mission. After leaving Frederick and stopping at the stable, they had slept in a secluded grove, halter tie-ropes fastened to their wrists and shotguns laid across their bellies.
Now Ab said, “Ask you somethin’, Charlie?”
“Go ahead.”
“You got a girl? Been curious about it because you never say.”
He thought of Private Gervais and Miss Sally Mills. “This is the wrong time and place for a man to have a girl.”
The other scout laughed. “That’s sure-God true, but it don’t answer my question. You got one?”
Charles tugged his dirty felt hat down over his forehead, watching the road. “No.”
It was an honest answer. He didn’t have a girl except in his imagination. If you had a girl, she wrote to you. Gus had kissed him, but how much did that mean? A lot of females gave away their kisses as if they were no more special than pieces of homemade pie.
The terrain changed rapidly. The hills were higher, steeper. There were no cottages or shanties in the few clearings and level places because there was no way to subsist on the land. Charles suspected they were close to the river and soon heard distant sounds to confirm it—the noise of the army of fifty-five thousand men leaving Virginia by way of the ford.
He saw insects in a shaft of sun and then Gus Barclay’s face. Oughtn’t to be muddling your head that way. He blinked; the insects returned. The noise grew louder. When Little Mac got word of the invasion, the Yanks would come out from Washington and fight. Scouting for the cavalry on the peninsula, Charles had done his share of fighting and had had two close scrapes, but he would never grow accustomed to it or regard it lightly.
They reached the river in time to watch the coming of the cavalry—five thousand horse, Ab claimed, including new brigades that contained old comrades. His old friend Beauty Stuart, the golden-spurred, plume-hatted, was major general of the division—and not yet thirty. Hampton was his senior brigadier, Fitz Lee his junior. Charles’s old friend had risen rapidly; from lieutenant to general in fifteen months.
Stuart’s innovative flying artillery batteries went rolling and crashing through the water. Then Ab let out a shout, spying Hampton’s men on the Virginia side. The brigade included the newly formed Second South Carolina Cavalry, put together around the nucleus of the four original troops of the legion.
Calbraith Butler was colonel of the regiment. He saw the two scouts hunched on their horses in the shallows and greeted them with a wave of his silver-chased whip. With Butler rode his second-in-command, Hampton’s younger brother Frank.
Charles felt like the schoolroom dunce. He was still a captain, and this was one of the occasions when it hurt. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that he had come to prefer the dangerous but more independent life of a scout.
He reminded Ab that they should find Stuart’s headquarters and report. Suddenly spurring into the Potomac from the Virginia shore, came Hampton. He spied the scouts and rode toward them, scattering sunlit water. He took their salutes with a warm smile and shook each man’s hand.
Hampton’s color was good. He was a massive, martial figure on his prancing horse, even if his uniform did look shabby, like everyone else’s. Charles noticed three stars on his collar—the same insignia Stuart wore. You couldn’t tell one kind of Confederate general from another.
“I hear you like what you’re doing, Captain Main.”
“I’m better at it than I was at leading a troop, General. I like it very much.”
“Happy to hear it.”
“You look fit, sir. I’m pleased you’ve made such a fine recovery.” Commanding infantry at Seven Pines, Hampton had been on horseback when an enemy ball struck his foot. Fearing he would be unable to remount if he climbed down for treatment, he remained in the saddle while a surgeon yanked off his boot, probed and cut until the lump of lead was found and removed. With the wound bandaged, the boot shoved back on, and the bullet hole plugged, he stayed with his men until dark ended the fight and he could be lifted down. His boot was full of blood, which ran out over the top.
“I’m glad to run into you this way,” the general said to him, “because it allows me to bring you two bits of news you may regard as vindications.” Puzzled, Charles waited for him to continue. “In attempting to drill his men recently, Captain von Helm fell off his horse and cracked his neck. He was intoxicated at the time. He died within the hour. Further, your favorite, Private Cramm, has disappeared without leave.”
“He’s probably twenty miles behind with a few hundred others.”
“Cramm is not a straggler. He deserted. He left a note informing us he had enlisted to defend Southern soil, not to campaign in the North.”
“God above. I’m surprised he didn’t hire a lawyer to write up his explanation.” Charles stifled laughter. So did Ab.
“I thought the news would be of some comfort.”
“Shouldn’t admit it, General, but it surely is.”
“Don’t be ashamed. The shame was that a leader as good as you lost that election. If we had only Cramms and von Helms, we’d be finished. Godspeed, Captain. I’m sure I’ll be calling for your services and Lieutenant Woolner’s quite soon.” He galloped off to rejoin his staff.
After presenting their report, Charles and Ab spent the evening awaiting new orders. They didn’t get any. They ate, tended their horses, tried to sleep, and in the morning went down to watch Old Jack lead his men into Maryland.
In the mind of Charles Main and many others, Stonewall Jackson had undergone a transformation during the past year. His fame was so enormous, his feats so Olympian, that you tended to think more and more of Jackson as merely a name—a legend that couldn’t possibly be connected with a real human being, especially not one like the shy bumpkin Cousin Orry had befriended in his plebe year. But Jack was real, all right, smartly sitting his cream-colored mount as he crossed over the river to the trees while a band blared “Maryland, My Maryland” to welcome him.
Ab gave Jackson some attention, but was more interested in the long column of infantry following him. Jackson’s men looked as if they had marched and fought and slept in their clothes for years without washing them. They carried weapons but little else. Gone were the bulging knapsacks and haversacks of ’61.
These were the fabled soldiers known as Jackson’s foot cavalry because they could march sixty miles in two days, and had. Charles stared in amazement at rank on rank of wild beards, crazy glinting eyes, cheeks and foreheads burned raw by exposure to sun.
“My God, Ab, a lot of them don’t have shoes.”
It was true. Whatever footwear he saw was torn or in separate pieces kept together by snippets of twine. Watching the column pass, Charles estimated that fifty percent of Jackson’s men marched on bare feet that were cut, bruised, stained with old blood, stippled with scabs, covered with dirt. A man might learn to tolerate such misery in warm weather, but when winter came—?
Studying one wrinkled, mean-faced private sloshing through the shallows, Charles presumed the soldier was forty, then saw he was wrong. “They look like old men.”
“So do we,” Ab said, hunching over Cyclone’s neck. “Taken notice of the gray in your beard lately? They say Bob Lee’s is almost white. A powerful lot of things have changed in a year, Charlie. And it ain’t the end.”
Unexpectedly, Charles shivered. He watched the dirty feet marching into Maryland and wondered how many would march back.
57
NINTH OF SEPTEMBER. HOT light of late summer hazing the rolling country. The green y
ellowing now, drying and withering. The time of gathering a harvest.
The cavalry strung out a line nearly twenty miles long. Behind it, Lee’s divisions maneuvered, ready to strike clear to Pennsylvania, some said. Below the line, over the blurry hills—McClellan, surely. Coming out in force from Washington. Slow as ever, but coming out. Bogus rustics on horseback had been spied along the Potomac, watching the movement through White’s Ford. Scouts for the other side.
Hampton encamped at Hyattstown, a few miles south of Urbana. Charles packed all but essential possessions into the field trunk holding his original legion sword and the Solingen blade. Out of the trunk he took his gray captain’s coat. It didn’t take many brains to conclude that the invasion would lead to some heavy fighting. He wanted his own side to be able to identify him. He watched his trunk lifted into one of the baggage wagons as if for the last time.
He bundled his coat and tied it behind his saddle—his well-worn McClellan model, bought new in Columbia. The saddle had been adapted from a Prussian design by the man so earnestly trying to destroy them. Queer war, this.
Hungry war, too. Ab Woolner complained half the evening. “Nobody around here gonna feed us. It’s more green corn for the two-legged as well as the four-legged. We ought to name this the green corn campaign, Charlie boy.”
Charles said nothing, seeing to his powder and ball so he could get some sleep. They might need it, wish for it, pray for it soon.
Tenth of September. Charles and eight other scouts out after nightfall, probing. They damn near rode into blue-coated videttes. They charged the videttes on the white-drenched road and heard no yells about Black Horse, Black Horse!
Gunfire. One scout blown down—and luckless Doan lost another mount. The scouts galloped off carrying two wounded; Charles carried Doan, hot wind in his face under the moon. Had they met Pleasonton’s men, he wondered. Those boys had shot straight and ridden better than any Yankees he had seen so far. Maybe the shoe salesmen and machinery operators were learning how to fight on horseback. Maybe the Union cavalry would be something to worry about one day.