Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services

by W. Patrick Lang

  "I felt them all hit me," he said, looking down at the carnage. "Funny, after all this..."

  Herbert looked around. Now he saw the telegraph wire wrapped tight around pieces of stump and buried tent pegs. It was all about six inches off the ground, running in crazy, patternless patterns in all direction.

  A number of his men were stretched on the ground in the band of obstacles. Lifting his eyes to look back along the line of advance, he spied the brown bundles scattered across the hillside. Behind them, wagons had come into view, following a logging trail down the slope from the farmhouse. "Here you are, Robert," the colonel said. Doctor Lewis and our people will be along shortly. A month in hospital and you'll be back..."

  The man on the ground held up a hand.

  The colonel took it, held it in both hands.

  Behind him the regiment climbed out of the trench. The earthen figures formed their two ranks.

  A driven enemy must not be allowed to rest.

  "Go on, now, all of you... They'll be here in a minute. Go on."

  "Dunn, you stay with him. Get the doctor!" He squeezed the hand, and then turned to pick his way through the obstacles.

  On the ground, Robert Simpson looked at the sky. It would be a beautiful late spring day. A few billowing white clouds were coming in from the west. Birds sang in the edge of the woods.

  A cardinal chirped above him. The little bird was easy to see in his scarlet pride against the green leaves. Peering about, the tiny creature seemed to watch him.

  He tried not to breathe deeply. It hurt too much. For some reason he saw himself for an instant standing at the blackboard, chalk in hand.

  "Forwaard!" Corse's voice resounded. "Maarch!"

  Over the top of the dirt wall in front of the trench, the wounded man could see three of the five red flags. As he watched, they started forward.

  The soldier, Dunn, stared at the backs of his comrades.

  "Go with them," Simpson ordered.

  The man shook his head. "You just lay there quiet. I'll find help." With that he walked off toward the wagons.

  Simpson covered his eyes with the back of a hand. The sun had grown so bright…

  Chapter 23

  Going Home

  - August - (Richmond, Virginia)

  Harry Jenkins tied his horse to the back of the carriage. He stood on the sidewalk in front of the old house waiting for Devereux. Claude was a relative of Joseph Mayo, the mayor of Richmond, and often stayed with the mayor when he was in the city. Jenkins remembered waiting in front of the mayor’s house once before for Devereux. That had been in the winter of 1863. On that occasion, Lieutenant Franklin Bowie had waited with him. Now Bowie was dead. He had died trying to take Devereux across the Potomac so that he could begin his mission in the North. That was sadly ironic since Bowie disliked Devereux and had made no secret of it.

  The front door opened. Claude walked down the steps, nodded to Jenkins and the coachman, and entered the carriage.

  The day was warm. Jenkins’ uniform jacket was wool. Sweat would soon run in streams down his back. Summer haze had arrived and the city seemed indistinct and slightly out of focus.

  Jenkins and Devereux seated themselves on the same bench seat facing forward.

  “Personally, I think you should not go back,” Jenkins finally said. The red headed intelligence officer, like Bowie, had never liked Devereux. He disliked him for his self assured manner, for his obvious assumption of class superiority and paradoxically, for the ease with which he mastered tasks given him, tasks that would have crushed most men. There was also the matter of Patrick Devereux. Jenkins resented Claude Devereux’s survival of his brother’s death. He knew that was grossly unfair, but…. Jenkins knew he must speak to his unwanted companion. Some official business needed to be settled before they reached their destination. Chimborazo Hospital was less than a mile from the mayor’s house. “We could hide you here in the War Department,” he began. “We can hide you until the end of the war and then you can decide what to do. They may already know you have been here with us, and not as a prisoner. Perhaps we could send you back to Europe… Not to France, that would be too difficult. They have been searching for news of you there. Perhaps you could go to Rome. There has been talk of sending a permanent envoy to the pope…” He looked at Devereux who seemed fascinated by something in the street scene. “There are many uncertainties about the people involved in all this,” Jenkins continued. Just as an example, do we really know everything there is to know about this driver?” He stopped for a moment, thinking of the black coachman on top of the vehicle. “It is true that he drives for General Cooper, but how do we know who has “gotten to” him?”

  This reminded him of the question he had been itching to ask since the previous day. “How was your talk with Cooper?” He turned to watch Devereux closely for answers that might not be contained in his words.

  Claude’s arm was still immobilized by the bandage and sling that covered the holes where the Yankee captain’s bayonet had gone into his shoulder in front and come out behind below the shoulder blade. The lung was untouched. He had always healed well, and his recovery from this latest damage was no exception. Months in hospital had seen the wound close and some mobility was returning to the arm. His uncle’s house had been a good place for convalescence.

  Devereux smiled slightly. “Cooper reminds me of all the good times we had together at home in Alexandria. My grandfather and he were close friends, similar men, really. I went fishing with them often when I was a boy, fishing on the Potomac in Cooper’s little boat with his coachman rowing. That’s him up there driving...” Claude knocked on the ceiling.

  The driver’s access hatch opened to reveal Sam Watson’s face peering down. “Yes, Mr. Devereux? You need sumfin?”

  “No, Sam we’re fine. How’s your family?” “Jus’ fine sir, jus’ fine.” Having decided that this was just friendly talk, Watson closed the little sliding door.

  This little exchange gave Jenkins one more thing to dislike. The mockery had been unmistakable.

  Devereux concentrated on the previous thread of the conversation. “Ah… Cooper… He doesn’t know what to do with me any more than you do. You people in the War Department value my group’s information, but you are fearful of Benjamin’s connection with us. You are worried about what he might have us do, or what I might do with his support. No? Is that not so? Why are we coming out here today?”

  Jenkins did not answer.

  The carriage slowed on the cobblestones as it turned off the street and into the grounds of the hospital. The old trees and the big brick house that was the headquarters were so familiar… The better parts of Richmond resembled each other in the comfortable, solid way that their inhabitants often resembled each other. Beyond the brick house were many rows of one story clapboard buildings connected by covered walkways.

  Jenkins told Sam Watson which of these was their destination.

  The low, white building looked like all the others. Patients in loose fitting hospital clothing sat in wooden chairs outside. A few were reading newspapers or books, but most either talked to neighbors or slept in the sun.

  A black hospital orderly in white clothing held the screened door open for them as they went inside. There was an open ward with a nurse’s station by the door. A doctor was leaving as they entered.

  Devereux nodded to him assuming that he had been doing morning “rounds.”

  They walked the length of the ward to Captain Fowle’s room at the other end.

  “Mornin, Bill,” Jenkins said as they entered. “How are you today? Have they decided about that leg?”

  Fowle had been watching the clouds go by. He smiled at Jenkins, an old school friend, but went blank when he saw Claude come into the room as well. Devereux had served in “H Company” of the 17th Virginia Regiment with Fowle before he had been sent on secret service duty. He had preceded William Fowle in command of the company.

  “Claude, if you want the company back, there
’s a vacancy,” he said without looking at him. His unhappiness with that thought was in his voice. His ruined leg, still immobilized on a board and heavily bandaged was obvious under the sheet. There was no need to be more specific about his injury. “You know Simpson is dead, don’t you?” he asked no one in particular. There was no reply. “He died a few days ago…”

  “Hurt much?” Devereux asked standing across the bed from Jenkins.

  Fowle turned to Jenkins and grinned. “Only when they insist on getting me up for a trip to the outhouse or some such thing… They don’t seem to like bedpans here…”

  He looked at Devereux. “It seems the knee is pretty well gone. It will always be stiff. It has been a struggle to keep them from taking the leg, but it isn’t infected, so they are going to let me keep it I believe. Nevertheless, I would like to get out of here before they change their minds. I am permanently through with field duty, permanently…” This pronouncement of the end of a big part of Fowle’s life triggered a response from Devereux.

  “We are in the same position. They won’t let me go back to the regiment, not ever.”

  “They?”

  Devereux waved a hand in the general direction of the red headed major. “He and his colleagues, all the way up to Samuel Cooper.”

  Fowle shook his head. “Cooper… I always thought you were one of his favorites. You and your grandfather…”

  “He says I am not his “property” anymore. I am still in the army but I belong to Judah Benjamin. He says he is sorry about that, but Benjamin has the president’s ear... I am sorry as well. There is nothing I can do about this just now, but we will see what can be done… What are you going to do if you can’t go back to troops?”

  Jenkins was not happy with the general tone of self pity and alienation in this conversation. “Claude, your previous wounds should have kept you out of the field. Your right leg is almost as bad as Bill’s. I don’t know how you got around up at Spotsylvania. It must hurt like hell.”

  Devereux ignored him.

  Jenkins sighed. “We have decided that Captain Fowle is going to be in charge of your group from the Richmond end.” He watched the spy for a reaction.

  A slight narrowing in the eyes was the only indication that Devereux’s response might be unpleasant for the creators of this plan. “Ah,” he said at last. “I see. It is all worked out. I go back to Alexandria, somehow, and Benjamin assumes complete control of our effort there. Harry, I thought you said that you did not think I should go home, that it was too dangerous…”

  “My personal opinion, only that… I really have no choice,” Jenkins said quietly. He seemed interested in some indeterminate point in space between them. “I could go to General Lee with this if you wish. Cooper and Benjamin would be angry, very angry. Benjamin has some grand scheme in mind in which you pay a role.”

  “Will you still be involved with us?”

  “A little, but, Bill here will be your man in Benjamin’s office. I will keep track of what they are doing with you to make sure the army agrees.”

  “This whole thing was your idea in the beginning was it not? The whole idea of sending me to Washington?”

  “Yes. I knew you through Patrick. Your family is obviously an important means to the end of doing secret service work in Washington City.”

  “That makes you responsible for what has happened to us. You and Bill here and my brother were classmates at the military institute, the VMI. You were, are, his brothers. You owed him. You owe us.”

  Jenkins looked directly at him. Anger showed for the first time. “Why do you think we have argued our way through a thicket of indifference and bull-headed inertia to have him made responsible for your case? Why do you think we did that? We have been working on this since the day I knew that Bill would not go back to the field. We asked Robert Simpson what he thought. We asked him a few days before he died… Why do you think we did all this?”

  Devereux decided. “I think you can tell the U.S. War Department that I was captured unconscious near the Brock Road. Tell them that I was out of my mind in a hospital for a while and then recuperating. Tell them that you were not notified of my capture until recently. They will believe that. They want to think you are stupid and inefficient. Tell them that. If I am going home, I want to go soon. There are people waiting for me there.”

  The slight smile made his meaning clear.

  Jenkins frowned. His Calvinist sexual morality was offended by Devereux’s behavior with women, especially women whom Jenkins knew. “It is none of my business, but….”

  “Yes. You are right. It is none of your business. Ah, I have forgotten to ask. How is Captain Smoot? I last saw him when one of Balthazar’s men had removed his hand.”

  “He is Major Smoot now,” Jenkins replied. “He was in hospital in Lynchburg when Early and Balthazar passed through there headed for the Valley. They took him and your man White with them…”

  “How do I get back to town?” Devereux asked.

  “General Cooper’s coachman will take you wherever you like, just leave my horse. I have other appointments here.”

  “All right, boys, have a nice chat. Remember, Harry, I want to leave quickly! See you soon, Bill!” With that, Devereux turned and left. His echoing boot heels could be heard in the ward, followed by the slamming of the screen door. The sound of the carriage wheels faded away.

  Jenkins realized that he had been holding his breath as the sound receded. He moved a chair next to the bed and sat. “If he had asked I would have tried to find a way around Benjamin. I would have tried to keep him here…”

  Fowle moved uncomfortably on the narrow hospital bed. “Get the nurse, would you?”

  Jenkins came back after a minute with two black women in white aprons.

  “Could you prop me up, somehow?” Fowle asked. “I have to talk to this man. He’s a pest, but there is no avoiding it.”

  They looked doubtful, confused by his attempt at humor. He grinned through the pain of his still unhealed wounds. When they were convinced that he was joking, they piled up pillows behind him and under his leg.

  “Does Claude know that Benjamin wants to use him against Lincoln?” Fowle asked.

  Jenkins rested his elbows on the bed, holding his head in his hands. “He has been suggesting it to Benjamin since the beginning of the year. Cooper and I tried to divert his attention to something else, anything, but he knows we are losing everywhere. He knows it better than anyone else. He reads the enemy’s own documents and papers every day. He knows that Lincoln is the soul of the forces that are destroying us. He knows. What he does not know yet is that they have asked if we captured him or have his body. They refer to him in the correspondence as ‘Claude C. Devereux, Brigadier General, United States Volunteers.’ We will have to tell him soon.

  “They have promoted him?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are not going to kill him, are they?” Fowle asked. “I mean Lincoln. That would be a terrible thing. We could never recover from the effects of that. If we lose… If we lose…”

  “Benjamin is talking about capturing Lincoln, talking of holding him until they accept our ‘departure,” but I am not sure Devereux will accept restrictions on his action. I am not sure that he accepts anything anymore. You see the change in him, don’t you?”

  Fowle shook his head. “He was always headstrong and certain of himself. Now there is a bitterness in him that is worrisome.”

  “Will you take the job?”

  “I have no choice,” Fowle sighed. “None of us has much choice any longer. You caused this Harry. You never knew how much was too much. Now, go away. I need to sleep.”

  Harry Jenkins untied his horse and mounted for the ride back to headquarters in the Mechanics’ Building...

  He tried to remember. What was it Cooper had said last year after Gettysburg?

  Ah, he said that Claude would “take us where we fear to go…” What have I done?

  The End

  - Some of
the People of the Book in Alphabetical Order

  Anderson, Major General Richard Herron, CSA. Commanding General of an infantry division of Lee’s army.

  Babcock, John. Colonel George Sharpe’s civilian deputy.

  Baker, Colonel Lafayette, USV. Chief of the National Detective Bureau and colonel of the 1st D.C. Cavalry Regiment.

  Balthazar, John, also known as Jean-Marie Balthazar D’Orgueil, Major, Army of the French.

  Benjamin, Judah Philip. Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America.

  Biddle, Lieutenant Warren Knowlton, USV. Amy’ Biddle’s nephew.

  Biddle, Amy. An official of the U.S. Sanitary Commission Lodge at Alexandria, Virginia. A native of New Hampshire.

  Booth, John Wilkes. Actor.

  Bowie, Lieutenant Franklin, CSA. An officer of the Confederate Army Signal Corps.

  Braithwaite, Commander Richard, US Navy. Brother of Frederick.

  Braithwaite, Elizabeth. Wife of Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Braithwaite, United States Volunteers (USV).

  Browning, Major Charles, USV. The Provost Marshal of Alexandria, Virginia.

  Butler, Major General Benjamin, USV. The Federal commander at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast.

  297

  Butterfield, Brigadier General Daniel (Dan), USV. Chief of staff of the Army of the Potomac. The composer of “Taps.”

  Cooper, General Samuel, CSA. The Adjutant and Inspector General of the Confederate States Army. The most senior officer by rank of that army. Corse, Brigadier General Montgomery, CSA. Commanding a brigade made up of the 15th, 17th, 29th and 30th Virginia Infantry Regiments. Another banker.

  Corse’s Brigade, CSA. Confederate Army brigades were usually named for the officer who had first commanded them. An exception was the “Stonewall Brigade” which was named by act of the Confederate Congress and who claimed that the general had been named for them. He agreed. Corse’s Brigade included the; 15th, 17th, 29th, and 30th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiments.

  Davenport, William. An Assistant Secretary of War.