by James Devine
“Will we be assaulting them, Colonel? Looks like that could be a pretty formidable position…”
The Colonel, whose grandfather, George, had signed the Compact, shook his head. “Not any time soon, Major. We’re pretty beat up, too.” He turned his head and snorted.
“Don’t expect to hear much of that ‘one Southerner is worth 10 Yankees’ nonsense after this. We cut up their one corps pretty much, but the other one fought us to a standstill and then made a fighting retreat. And even on Matthews Hill there was some intense fighting.”
“Then you don’t believe the war is over, that we’ve gained our independence after all this carnage?”
“No, Major. This wasn’t like Waterloo, or Bosworth Field, or any of those other one-day battles that decided a war.” He paused and shook his head sadly.
“We won, but was it decisive? I doubt it…
“Maybe the politicians will think so. Maybe the Yankees will be so horrified at their losses that they’ll let us go in peace. Or maybe the Crown will make them, on account of this Syrian business President Calhoun gets so excited about…
“Or, maybe, they’ll lick their wounds and wait till spring, after they’ve raised a new army and Scott is recovered. And when, maybe, the British Navy will be available to lend a hand…”
Colonel Mason leaned down to pat his horse’s mane. “It is quite possible, Major, that between the storm and the stand the Yankees made below Stone Bridge, we have lost our best chance for independence. Or, at least, without a lot more…carnage.”
CALHOUN’S CONFEDERACY
CHAPTER ONE
The Residency
Georgetown, D.C.
November 4, 1833,
3:00 a.m.:
Aaron Burr had intended to commandeer a squad of United States of British America Marines and ride out the Warrenton Pike yesterday afternoon. The Residency had received General Thayer’s message in midmorning that the Army’s movement across Bull Run had commenced, but nothing further. The squad was indeed sent but under the command of Captain Goodwin, the Governor-General expressly forbidding Colonel Burr to leave Georgetown. Grumbling, the ancient adventurer stomped off to the Samples’ K Street townhouse. His intention: to resume his own campaign to advance his thus-far platonic relationship with its mistress to a more physical level.
He was now awakened, in his own bed at The Residency, by a servant. Captain Goodwin was back. The Colonel hurriedly dressed and made his way quietly downstairs to the G-G’s office, where Martin Van Buren stood, short arms and tiny hands locked behind his back, staring out the window towards Arlington. Goodwin sat slumped, mud-covered and exhausted, in a chair.
One look at the tough Marine’s tired face and angry eyes and Burr knew the battle had been lost. Goodwin nodded in recognition and acknowledgment but remained silent. Secretary of War Lewis Cass, whose wrinkled shirt and pants indicated he had been sleeping on the office couch, sat dejectedly, drinking a golden liquid from a crystal decanter embellished with the G-G’s seal.
“We’ll wait for Frank. I’ve sent word across the street. No need for the Captain to continually reiterate his report.” The G-G remained staring out the window, the bitter words flowing softly over his left shoulder.
“The Duke…?”
“Whether His Grace hears the news now or in the morning will not significantly alter the situation.”
Five minutes later, after the still-yawning Blair appeared, the Captain expanded his original brief report to the G-G. Soon, the others, too, were all sipping whiskey from the G-G’s decanters…
___________
Richmond, Virginia
November 4, 1833, 12:00 p.m.:
The city’s church bells began to ring at precisely high noon, one after another, starting with the big cast iron bell atop Monumental Church on Shockoe Hill.
Rumors of all kinds had swept Richmond since messengers from Taylor’s army brought word yesterday morning that fighting had begun along Bull Run:
“The Yankees are crossing the North Anna and will overrun the town by this afternoon!”
“No, our boys have the Yankees trapped at Manassas!”
“That’s nonsense. Zach Taylor has Van Buren under guard at The Residency and is negotiating with Wellington…I have it straight from the War Department!”
“I tell you, Sir: Taylor’s been killed. General Twiggs has retreated to Culpepper Court House!”
“You’re all wrong. We’ve won a great victory but the Royal Navy has landed a British army at Yorktown! Taylor’s turned our army around and is marching to meet them!”
Arguing, worrying, praying, the citizens of the capital now descended on the Confederate White House, where President John C. Calhoun had reportedly been observed receiving his grim-faced Secretary of War, Charles Gratiot, and General Gaines in the pre-dawn.
By 12:15, the streets surrounding the White House were filled. Men and women stood anxiously as far away as the Capitol Building itself, almost three blocks to the south. A cheer suddenly exploded from the front of the crowds as a broadly smiling President emerged out the front door and onto the landing atop the steps with a gaunt young officer whose tailored grey uniform was spattered with dried mud. Secretary Gratiot and the General followed, both also smiling, though not as broadly.
“My fellow Southerners! This outstanding young officer has heroically ridden directly from Manassas with a message from General Taylor.” Calhoun paused theatrically as the crowd roared and Maj. Jefferson Davis looked sheepishly at his formerly black, now brown-spotted boots. The President put up his hands as if to call for silence, obviously relishing the moment.
“We have met the invader along the banks of Bull Run, northwest of Manassas around the Warrenton Pike…” He paused again as word rippled back through the crowd.
“The invader has been thrown back and was last evening in full retreat toward Georgeto…”
The crowds erupted with joy, planter’s hats flying into the air, strangers hugging, Southern gentlemen sweeping staid---and flirtatious---women off their feet to hold them aloft by their waists. In the pandemonium, no one noticed the scattering of sad-eyed blank black faces in their midst.
Nor did anyone pay particular attention to the smiling, well-dressed, wiry gentleman with the planter’s hat perched over his jet-black hair standing alone near the mansion’s steps. If someone had, perhaps it would have been noted that his smile did not extend to his eyes. Even the curious half-blue, half-brown one…
Calhoun continued: “General Taylor reports that our army is in full control of the Bull Run fords and bridges and is across in strength. The pursuit of the retreating enemy is imminent.”
As the wildly-cheering Richmonders surged forward to the bottom of the steps above which the Presidential party stood, Calhoun’s arm now around Davis’ shoulders, the quick, significant look that flashed from the War Secretary to General Gaines went unnoticed…
___________
The rebellion that broke out in the southern portion of the British Empire’s North American possessions in the second half of 1833 stunned much of the western world, though it was not a complete surprise to those who had kept tabs on the burgeoning, boisterous adolescent patchwork political entity established as a result of the Colonial Compact of 1776.
The Compact, a desperate, last-second attempt to foil off an armed secession of the original 13 American colonies from the Empire, had succeeded because the ‘Continental Congress’ accepted the compromise plan coauthored by Edmund Burke and Benjamin Franklin. This Compact converted the unamalgamated colonies into a united “dominion”---a new concept for the British Empire---labeled the ‘United States of British America.’
The compromise essentially granted the new ‘dominion’ home rule in domestic matters (under London oversight) and representation in Parliament. London retained control of foreign policy. Its right to impose taxation was also accepted by the new entity. While the Crown continued to establish and operate military bases, primarily n
aval stations, in the USBA, the Dominion fielded (and funded) its own army and coastal guard to ensure domestic security. The Compact also incorporated the Empire’s newly won Canadian territories, including the organized provinces of Quebec and Ontario, in the USBA.
The Compact clearly entitled the Crown’s Government to intervene as a last resort in a Dominion domestic crisis, including the authority to remove from office democratically-elected officials, and equally clearly mandated that the USBA government implement Parliamentary-approved legislation of an Empire-wide scope. No such intervention nor implementation, however, occurred in the 57 years following the adoption of the Compact by both Parliament and the Continental Congress.
In early January 1833, however, the Duke of Wellington was dispatched to the USBA by Lord Grey’s Government to inform the citizens of the Dominion, represented by their elected Congress and elected Governor-General Andrew Jackson, that such a piece of Empire-wide legislation, with anticipated overwhelming bipartisan support, would soon be introduced in Parliament: legislation that would abolish the institution of slavery throughout the Empire.
While Wellington’s instructions called for him to utilize his enormous personal prestige to convince the USBA to accept Parliament’s plan for a seven-year, phased-in emancipation with financial compensation for all slaveholders, he was authorized to take whatever steps, up-to-and-including the removal from office of the sitting G-G, he judged necessary to ensure compliance.
Wellington had hardly departed England by fast Royal Navy frigate when the Government found itself distracted by an unanticipated, perplexing and potentially catastrophic European crisis: the landing of a Russian army, at the request of the Sultan, in Ottoman Syria to confront the powerful forces of a rebellious Egyptian vassal. Czarist forces suddenly were in position to cut the Empire’s vital land route to British India.
While London struggled to solve this crisis peacefully, the slavery powder keg exploded in Wellington’s face in America. This disastrous explosion was caused in varying degrees by the incredulous fury of the Southern slavocracy, guided by Calhoun; the diabolical instigations of a ruthless Russian secret agent; the laissez-faire attitude of the non-slaveholding sections of the USBA towards the ‘peculiar institution’ and a sudden shocking leadership crisis in the Dominion capital, Georgetown, D.C.
These---and other---factors and events had led to a brutal confrontation between ill-prepared, and in some cases badly-led, forces of the USBA and the breakaway ‘Confederate States of America’ on the banks of a Virginia stream called Bull Run in early November, 1833.
___________
The Residency
Georgetown, D.C.
November 4, 1833, 4 p.m.:
The Kitchen Cabinet had still been in session when the Duke of Wellington appeared about 7 a.m., although the G-G had given orders for a bath and bed for Captain Goodwin before 5. After a brief rest, the Captain had taken another Marine squad back across the Long Bridge shortly after 8 a.m.
Wellington had listened gravely to the second-hand account of Goodwin’s report, shaking his head sadly at the news of I Corps’ apparent collapse in the face of minimal enemy pressure. “It seems clear the Southerners were more prepared for battle. They apparently confounded your generals with their, shall we say, ‘offensive-defensive strategy.’ I say: how was such a state of affairs possible?”
Cass, who had been imbibing steadily since being awakened by Captain Goodwin’s arrival, reddened even beyond the glow of the whiskey but remained silent. The others looked at the G-G, who simply shook his head in a show of mystification. The newspaperman, Blair, finally ventured an opinion.
“The Southerners have a martial tradition, Sir Arthur, which has been passed down the generations in the coastal states and of course among those who have recently settled in Alabama and Mississippi. On the other hand, it is a long time since anyone east of the Ohio has seen an Indian in war paint…”
“Yes, I can understand that. But the Devil I say, there simply must be more to the thing than that!”
As usual, it was Colonel Burr who cut to the chase. “Face it, gentlemen. They demonstrated better leadership. As Sir Arthur said, they confounded our apparent battle plan by enticing our generals to take the offensive, only to counter-attack when our advances reached open ground.”
Now the group was gathered again, joined by Attorney-General Benjamin Butler. Maj. Robert Layne, R.A., the Liaison Office military chief who had barely succeeded this morning in convincing Wellington not to go to Centreville himself, waited outside, near The Residency Portico.
Some days later, after hearing the Army’s ranking British half-pay officer’s account of the Bull Run fiasco, the Duke privately expressed regret that he had not assumed command at the time of Gen. Winfield Scott’s wounding. General Scott, the USBAA commanding officer, had barely survived an assassination attempt just days before he had planned to lead the Army against the Confederate position west of Manassas. In attempting to foil the assassination, a top British ‘diplomatic,’ Capt. Harry Bratton, had been murdered. The assassin, assumed to be a Russian count featuring a multi-colored right eye, was also believed to have orchestrated the earth-shaking assassination of then Governor-General Jackson in the Capitol Rotunda in June. As in that case, the Russian had seemingly vanished into thin air after wounding Scott and thereafter putting a pistol ball into Bratton’s chest.
They were now anxiously awaiting the arrival of Captain Goodwin with an updated report. (Thayer had sent sketchy messages throughout the night that gave little real update. The lack of a reliable account of the current situation “was maddening and intolerable,” according to the Duke.)
“Thank God we never announced publicly that the army was moving on Richmond,” said Blair. “There have been a thousand rumors, but the lack of hard news has lulled the people to sleep. If in fact General Worth has established a defense at Centreville, we can reveal that in a quiet announcement tomorrow.”
“Word is spreading quickly that Long Bridge is closed to all but military traffic. The people will be demanding the reason soon enough,” said Cass, in a whisper, a cold towel lodged against his aching head.
“What’s to keep Rebel cavalry from skirting around Worth’s lines--assumi…Ah…” Colonel Burr, who had been standing guard at the office door, turned to the others. “Captain Goodwin is coming through the gates. Or so Major Layne appears to be signaling.”
The Marine was in the office minutes later, dirty, his eyes blood-shot, though the Colonel could not tell if that was from fatigue or anger.
“Your Grace, Mr. Governor, gentlemen. General Thayer wishes to report that the… redeployment…to Centreville has been successful. Second Corps is in its lines on the heights to the south of the town. Cavalry patrols report the Rebels setting up their own lines about five miles south, at a junction less than two miles north of Bull Run.”
“And I Corps?” Burr asked.
Goodwin ground the toe of his right boot into the carpet. “First Corps is strung out from Centreville to Alexandria. They’ve got the Turnpike so clogged I had to lead my squad off to the west just to get through.” He paused and looked around the room. “Unarmed, mostly. Wagons spread out, too. That’s the main source of the congestion.” He paused and grimaced.
“Most of the transportation is breaking down, too. Looks like the teamsters just bolted at the first sound of the guns, drove hell-bent back towards Centreville. That may account for your question last night, Mr. Secretary, as to why I Corps never brought up its artillery.” He paused again and shook his head in disgust before continuing:
“I ran into Captain Wilder at Thayer’s headquarters. Said there’s a trail of muskets, ammunition and other supplies clear along the route I Corps took to Sudley Springs. Said the Rebs are scooping it all up…”
“What is General Thayer’s estimate of the situation? Will the Rebels attack and, if so, can he hold?” Wellington was brisk and professional.
“Both General Thaye
r and General Worth are confident II Corps can withstand any Rebel attack, Your Grace. But, General Thayer does not believe any Rebel movement towards Centreville is likely in the foreseeable future…”
“Did the Acting Commanding General offer a reason for his optimistic forecast?” Matty Van’s voice was soft but icy.
“General Thayer is basing his…optimism…on the cavalry reports, Mr. Governor. It appears the Rebels are pretty banged up…”
“Stands to reason. It was their first battle, too, you know.” Colonel Burr was nodding his head. “But General Thayer’s report is incomplete, isn’t it, Captain?
“What happened to I Corps’ artillery? Is it, too, clogging the Warrenton Pike?” The old man shot Goodwin a shrewd look.
“No Sir. It is believed that the I Corps artillery has now been…incorporated…into the Confederate Artillery. The commander of II Corps’ artillery was with General Worth when I spoke with him. A Colonel Buford, I think.” The captain paused and shook his head.
“According to Colonel Buford, Zach Taylor presently has the USBAA outgunned significantly.” The lines around Goodwin’s mouth were taut.
“The Colonel says that if the Rebels can find enough ordinance---enough shells, cannon balls and the powder to set them off---Centreville may become untenable.”
___________
There was sudden commotion in the hallway. As the group turned its attention towards the open door, the entrance was suddenly blocked out. General Scott, in full dress uniform, right shoulder bandaged and arm tied tightly to his chest and bulging against the tunic, stepped into the room.
He crossed in three strides and, nodding “Your Grace” to Wellington, came to attention in front of Van Buren’s desk. “Mr. Governor-General, I am reporting for duty. I regret the length of my convalescence, but I am now fit to resume command.”