The Cotton Run

by Daniel Wyatt

  So what was the problem with Robert, the family wanted to know.

  Carlisle thought of his nine-year-old son, Jonathan, back home in Connecticut, at boarding school. He had already decided that his only offspring wouldn’t have anything to do with a navy career if he didn’t want to. No damned academy for him. He’d be better off forgetting about the navy altogether. Maybe he could be a banker, or a doctor, or a newspaperman, or a lawyer. All honorable professions.

  Carlisle reached the steps of the house and lowered himself into a veranda chair. At least his headache had finally dispersed. He rubbed his knee and withdrew the flask from inside his uniform jacket. Uncapping the container, he tilted it, and held it long to his lips. The brandy stung his throat, but he savored the taste with aggressive delight. He had been relying on his brandy more often now since his wife had died a painful, untimely death in February. He had loved her deeply, but always doubted if she had ever loved him back. He fixed her in his mind in an instant, then erased her just as quickly. He took a second swallow. His friend Bottled Brandy was helping.

  Blockading was hell, he reminded himself. He wiped his mouth. For what? Thirty dollars a month pay. Freeze his ass off in the winter, and bake his skin brown swatting mosquitoes in the summer heat. Carlisle considered his crew. It was even worse for those of lower rank in his command. Sixteen dollars a month to be part of an excursion that sometimes lasted weeks, in which they had to stand watch for hours. Tempers flared frequently. A sailor’s day at sea consisted of long bouts of boredom interspersed with short periods of excitement, if any. So far, the moments of excitement had been few and far between for Carlisle and his crew.

  Why couldn’t the higher powers increase the pay? But, then again, the mere thought of having to fight and die in some vicious land battle in some horrid place no one had ever heard of before was enough to make Carlisle appreciate his calling. If one could call the Navy a calling. In addition to being safer, the Navy had more to offer than the Army. There was still the chance of catching a blockade runner. There was still the hope of sharing with the crew a piece of the valuable booty at a Northern auction. Besides, a promotion coupled with the possibility of a new ship was attractive. He might have better luck now outside neutral ports. He knew the international naval laws concerning neutrals would be observed only when it suited the warring nations. Neutral rights on the open seas were often ignored.

  Then, suddenly, the anger toward his Rebel adversaries grew within him, and he swore under his breath. He had loathed Southerners since his academy days.

  “Filthy bastards!” he muttered to himself. “They’re the cause of all this.”

  He guzzled twice more, and wiped his chin. Then he popped the cap on the flask before thumping into the house for dinner.

  Chapter three

  Washington, D.C.

  By the third year of the war the United States of America was caught in the thick web of a martial law dictatorship. Trouble was, most citizens didn’t know it. It was a time when thousands of Northerners had been jailed on suspicion without cause, unable to seek legal advice. Only a favored few had rights, depending on who they were and who they supported politically. Military courts had replaced civil courts. All transportation had been nationalized, and it was rumored that all telegraph communication might be forced into the same fate. The two men behind this terrifying consolidation of power were about to meet for one of their regular gab sessions in a corner of a Washington hotel dining room.

  Edwin Stanton finished his afternoon meal and ordered the wine once he saw Colonel Lafayette Baker arrive in the lobby. Stanton peered over his small, wire-rimmed spectacles at his younger associate moving towards the table.

  “You’re late,” he frowned, as Baker neared the table.

  “I was busy at the office.”

  “Is that so,” Stanton remarked.

  The two bearded men waited for a servant to clear the table. Stanton poured the newly-arrived wine for both him and Baker. Stanton was an ill-tempered, chubby, fidgety man, a lawyer by trade. A former director of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, he entered federal politics in 1860 as attorney general to then-president James Buchanan. Although a Democrat and a fierce rival of the current President Lincoln, Stanton was appointed by Lincoln as secretary of war two years later in a move that stunned political circles. Washington quickly saw Stanton as an opportunist, preoccupied with his own growing power, someone who took advantage of every situation dumped in his lap. In one short year, Stanton had taken the backroom reins of the country with the help of Baker, a man of questionable reputation, and never let go.

  And Stanton still wasn’t finished.

  Colonel Baker had risen to his position almost as rapidly, but by other routes. A roughneck from a low-to-middle-class background, he had been a founding member of the infamous 1856 Vigilante Committee of San Francisco that had policed the city during the wild California Gold Rush. The talk was that the group had cleaned up the town. But insiders said they had crossed the line. The Committee ran the city their way, making up the rules as they went along, looting and confiscating where and when they saw fit, all in the name of the law.

  Later, Baker moved east and established connections in Washington. When the war started, Baker was made a special agent in the War Department and was sent to the Rebel capital of Richmond to gather information about the enemy. The Rebels sent him back, believing he was spying for them. At the Second Bull Run battle he rode a hundred miles through enemy lines to deliver a dispatch from Stanton to Union General Nathaniel Banks. When the Internal Revenue Act of 1862 was passed as a war measure, Stanton hired Baker, who in turn hired detectives to collect from defaulting taxpayers and imprison them if they failed to pay. The jails were soon filled to capacity. Baker’s position was merely a front for his own federal secret service, the National Detective Police. Baker now had a force of two thousand NDP detectives and spies under his iron-fisted control. Next to Stanton, Baker was the most feared man in Washington.

  “Anything new from your agent at the front?” Stanton inquired, glaring at Baker.

  “Haven’t heard from him in days. But I do know that both Hooker and Lee have moved out from their winter headquarters.”

  “So what?” Stanton said. His eyes held Baker’s without blinking, as he measured the detective’s words. “The newspapers have already reported that! Your man is supposed to be there for the inside information, Baker.”

  “I know it, sir. But the spring campaign has just started. He won’t let me down.”

  “I should hope not.”

  Baker said nothing. He knew Stanton hated spies. He considered them sneaks and bloodsuckers. But Lincoln insisted on them. Spies were good for the North only as long as they were of use. Spies could also turn against their masters and become double agents, like he did to the Rebs.

  “Lee has to be defeated,” Stanton continued. “The sooner, the better. For all of us, the South included. Put them out of their misery. Lincoln wants to let the Reb states back in the Union after the war. He told me that under his plan as long as only ten percent of a state’s population agrees to an oath to the United States, then they’re in.”

  “What kind of oath?”

  “They must promise to support the Constitution of the United States and obey all federal laws concerning slavery. He’s even thinking of pardoning all Reb military and political leaders. Can you imagine, Baker?” His eyes grew larger. “Let Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Davis off dirt free?”

  “What can we do about it?”

  “Plenty.” Stanton’s face twisted. “A few choice Republicans are concocting postwar reconstruction plans to divide the South into five conquered military districts controlled by a military governor for each district. These are our kind of people, Baker. They won’t allow any Southerner to vote unless he takes the oath to the Union. We’ll make the Rebs pay.”

  Baker knew that Stanton stood to gain the most. The governors would answer to a Washington controlled by S
tanton. It would make the secretary more powerful than ever. “Who are these so-called choice Republicans?” Baker asked.

  “Senators Chandler in Michigan, Wade of Ohio, Conness from California, and Representative Davis of Maryland, to name three.”

  Baker wondered what lay beneath the surface of the Republicans’ proposals. The NDP chief saw the proposals as a plan for the Republicans to stay in power and create a Southern branch of their party by relying on Negro votes. They wanted to keep their Congress gains of 1860 — free homesteads, high tariffs, subsidies to railroads, a banking system favorable to the big business empires in New York. If the Southern-based Democrats returned to power, they would oppose the Republican reconstruction plans.

  “Does Lincoln know what these men are up to?”

  “Yes, unfortunately,” Stanton said. “And he’ll veto any such bill. That I know. He can’t win the next election. He’ll destroy everything we’re putting together. Right now, he doesn’t have much support anywhere. And he had to bring the emancipation thing into the picture. The troops are now fighting to free the slaves. And they don’t like it. Neither does our Republican round table in Washington. However,” Stanton grunted, “if we win the war by next year, or at least manage some great victories on the battlefield, it’s likely that Mr. Lincoln could win again.”

  “So, we’re stuck.”

  Stanton nodded. “Yes, Baker. Stuck.”

  * * * *

  Forty minutes later, deep in the basement of the Treasury Department, not far from the White House, Colonel Baker was preparing a coded dispatch for his agent in Wilmington, North Carolina. This machine was not for military purposes, but for Baker’s personal business. By using it, Baker had an excellent control of the clandestine flow of shipments — cotton, meat, guns, and medical supplies — between Washington and Richmond. His connections on both sides in the conflict were of great advantage to him. He was also becoming very wealthy, very quickly.

  Baker walked up to a subordinate in the busy office, a young man unfamiliar with the message’s true contents. “Barkley?”

  The man turned around. “Yes, sir.”

  “Drop what you’re doing and send this through our channel in Richmond.”

  The man looked at the sheet for a moment. “It’s in code?”

  “Of course it’s in code. Get to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * * *

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  Eli Jacoby slowly opened his hotel room door.

  “Yes, what is it, boy?”

  “Mr. Jacoby,” said the young telegraph messenger. “Message for you, sir. From Richmond.”

  Jacoby gave the young man a gold sovereign and took the sealed envelope. He locked the door, then spent the next few minutes deciphering the message by using his cipher-code book and his own notes. He soon discovered that all secret shipments expected to cross the Potomac bound for Wilmington were still to be grounded. Jacoby frowned, wondering when it would pick up again. He was losing money.

  Born a Southerner, Jacoby was no respecter of Southern ways and customs. He had high-level contacts in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, a network of Northern commodity speculators in the Union war effort. This group had been making a killing selling to Rebel interests on the side, and at the same time they were all making money on the transfer of cotton north. It was made to look perfectly legal by the sinister misuse of cotton and border passes issued by both the Lincoln and Davis governments.

  Jacoby appraised his image in the mirror, which reflected an influential citizen of the South. He was not the most handsome of men, with his slight paunch, square face, and cold gray eyes. Balding on top, he had long hair on the sides and back, and a patchy beard speckled with gray around a thin mouth. But he was the best-dressed man in town. He liked that distinction.

  Today, he needed a hair trim and was impatient to be doing something. The barber shop was just around the corner, a good place to pick up useful war gossip.

  Chapter four

  Chancellorsville, Virginia — May 1863

  The sun climbed over the wilderness clearing where Major Luke Keating shaved closely around his thick moustache and chin whiskers. Finished, he put his mirror away and threw his dirty cavalry coat on. Then he began to make his rounds, his spurs clinking as he went.

  The major heard the familiar early morning noises amid the piercing reveille. Tents were sparser this year. Most of the men had slept on the ground, wrapped in bug-ridden blankets. The sounds of yawns, stretches and curses began, as they did every morning. The coughs were heard over everything else. Deep, raspy coughs, the result of braving the outdoors for nearly two years. It never failed to fascinate Keating how the camp could rise, snort, and cough almost in unison. Some soldiers were smashing their rifle butts into their coffee beans as they continued to cough and clear their throats. They were the lucky ones. Most soldiers didn’t have the luxury of coffee, only substitutes such as potato or peanut brews. Within a few minutes, breakfast was on and the smells drifted over the camp. Over the last two years, rebel camp life had become an alarming struggle for proper food, shelter, and clothing.

  And it was getting worse.

  Keating had received his orders before sunup. Today his unit in the North Carolina cavalry would move out and engage. They would do battle and good men would fall. He tried to picture how many fewer campfires there would be tomorrow morning. He wondered how many more men would die in the coming campaigns until their political allies in Europe would step in and assist the Confederacy. The situation was desperate. No longer was the cavalry hailed as dashing cavaliers on horseback who rode light-heartedly through the countryside. That was a popular story in 1861. Only a story. This was no pleasant little romp in 1863. The cavalry were as starving and as ill-equipped as the other soldiers in Lee’s army. However lean they were, Keating’s Confederate unit were still part of a proud, formidable force, feared by the Yankees as excellent fighters. With good reason. The cavalry had been instrumental in most of the Rebel victories so far.

  They were the eyes of Robert E. Lee.

  * * * *

  Keating was stiff after the walk. The steady pounding on his frame was getting too much for him. For months, he had felt much older than his thirty years. For months, his bones had been whispering in voices of exhaustion that his brain was trying to ignore. Although he usually made a habit of keeping to himself, this morning he took up a tin of hot, strong coffee and stood with other officers, all junior in rank to him. In appearance, they weren’t much different than Keating. Their uniforms were the same homespun butternut or gray, with black facing, broad-brimmed dark hats, long riding boots, along with gray or filched Yankee blue short jackets and trousers. The difference was the more youthful faces.

  The second son of a well-to-do former North Carolina senator who had made his fortune in cotton, Keating had been in the Union peacetime army only a year before dropping out and joining his father in business. He had officer experience, a scarce commodity in the Rebel army when war erupted. He quickly joined up again. So far, Keating had taken part in all the great campaigns of Stonewall Jackson, his general commanding. In two years he had been a witness to some terrible bloody battles and some awe-inspiring victories such as their last major skirmish at Fredericksburg in December past, where the Union forces lost three times as many men as Robert E. Lee.

  Keating watched as a piece of hardtack floated on the surface of his coffee. Two little boll weevils, which had worked their way into the biscuit overnight, bobbed about. He skimmed them off, then coughed, and guzzled. One look around the camp left Keating with nagging doubts. How could Lee’s army continue under such appalling conditions? Where were the proper supplies in this ragged army? Pay was low and erratic if not nonexistent. Scurvy, typhoid, measles, mumps, dysentery, and pneumonia ran rampant. More soldiers were dying from diseases than bullets. Keating knew that the blockade runners couldn’t supply them with all the military necessities. According to le
tters from home in Wilmington, the blockade was tougher to break with each passing month.

  * * * *

  Lieutenant Franklin Taylor’s nerves were strung taut as a deer. He had been up for more than an hour since daybreak, circling behind his own Rebel lines on a narrow path through the forest. Even the birds weren’t making noises this morning. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Taylor’s youthful face showed his worry. He had lost track of his critical lifeline — the telegraph wires — coming out of Fredericksburg, and he wondered how he would get word to his base if he had to. At the same time he kept his eyes open for those Union snipers, the best damn shots in the army.

  Taylor barely resembled the man he had been when he joined the Army of Northern Virginia the previous summer. His tattered and patched butternut-colored Signal Corps uniform hung loosely on him. Before the war, he had been round and full in the body, living in relative comfort near Charleston, Virginia, a part of the state that contained people with a strong Union sentiment. In less than one year, Taylor, ill-fed on depleting Southern rations, had lost almost forty pounds. Sores covered his face, his scruffy beard matched the rest of his unkempt hair. The lice on his body no longer upset him.

  His unsightly appearance was typical of the majority of soldiers in the still-haughty Army of Northern Virginia. What separated him from most of the others was one outstanding possession. He still owned a pair of boots, and Yankee boots at that. The right big toe was beginning to wear through, it was true, but he was fortunate. Half the remaining soldiers in the Signal Corps, not to mention most of the entire Army of Northern Virginia, were barefoot.

  As a Signal Corps telegrapher, his duty was to keep a close watch on the Reb and Union troop movements. He knew that since the end of April, Union commander Joe Hooker had marched east from his winter headquarters at Fredericksburg, leading four corps of his 130,000-strong Army of Potomac. Hooker then ordered seventy thousand of these men behind Robert E. Lee, while the rest were left to face the Rebs across the Rappahannock River. It was a dangerous spot for Lee and his much smaller total force of only sixty thousand men. However, Franklin knew Bobby Lee had yet to back down to any Union commander. Hooker would be no exception. Lee had split his forces to shore up his flank. Portions of the two great armies had already clashed yesterday, sending Hooker into a defensive position in the Wilderness clearing around a two-story white brick building called Chancellorsville House. Taylor believed that this particular piece of ground only six miles from his Signal Corps tent at the edge of Lee’s army would be where Hooker wanted to face Lee to defeat him.