by Lois Leveen
“ ’Tis a mighty advantage we take for oorselves this time.” He spoke with the closest I ever saw him come to glee.
“We?” I asked. I couldn’t place what he might mean.
“The disruption to the Brown’s Island manufactory,” McNiven explained. “Wasn’t our Mary Ryan a fine one, to think o’ jostling a case o’ friction primer, to ignite whatever gunpowder was floating in the shop.”
“Mary Ryan?” I recognized the name from the list of injured workers published in the Enquirer. “She’s not expected to live.”
“ ’Twould be plenty more dead from the munitions, if the wee lasses had finished their morning’s work.”
Neither Wilson nor I wanted to believe anyone we allied with could be proud over instigating such a thing. Wilson told McNiven so, rationing out his words in a low, quiet anger. “You start killing children, are you any better than what you’re fighting?”
“They say this war is become a true hell on earth, the most horrid thing what man has ever made,” McNiven answered. “But I suppose there be those of us what might still say slavery be the greater hell, the greatest sin. One what we maun destroy, the cost be what it will.”
Listening to this man I’d longed looked to as my comrade, I couldn’t apprehend whether I had more in common with him, or with the females he’d had a hand in killing.
When I first arrived in Philadelphia, Hattie told me whites could be as nasty to one another as they were to us. I’d been too wide-eyed to believe it, until Miss Douglass’s history lessons taught me it was true. Now McNiven’s scheming to kill girls and women proved it all over again.
But I wanted no part in such peccancy. Whatever animosity whites might feel for one another, at least I might make better use of it. And in such a manner as wouldn’t cost the lives of children.
Perhaps wealthy Richmond was too proud to acknowledge what poor Richmond muttered every day, but rich or poor, all had grown weary of war. Yet in the two days since the explosion, two years of discontent was suddenly forgotten, Virginians once again rallying to their Cause, vowing to sanctify those girls’ martyrdom.
Knowing we’d gain better advantage for our side if we played on white Southerners’ disgruntlement, I related the details of Mrs. Whitlock’s visit to Queen Varina. “There are more like Mrs. Whitlock, hungry and angry, than like your noble and self-immolating Mary Ryan,” I reminded McNiven. No one knows better than a slave how such festering hatred can explode. “Let the starving women and children be their own army against Jeff Davis. They may do yet more damage to the Confederacy than all the battering of Union mortar and cannon.”
The tocsin rang loud on the morning of the second April. It had been the city’s most feared sound before the war, meant to toll a slave uprising. Since ’61 we heard it often, whenever Union troops came near to Richmond. But when the clang of metal came that morning, it was neither slaves nor Federals that threatened. It was the fairer sex of Richmond.
I was in the Gray House yard, midway through hanging the wash. Hortense had gone up to Second Market, and Sophronia was scrubbing the front stoop, no doubt dawdling over the task to flirt with Tobias, her beloved groundsman. Likely not to notice if I slipped through the yard and down toward the Governor’s mansion.
I dried my hands on my apron as I hurried toward Capitol Square. McNiven had connived with two females to rile the crowd up, and as I came down Twelfth Street, I saw the pair standing before the white mob. One was about Bet’s age, though taller, with a long white feather in her hat. The other was younger and shorter, clutching an antiquated flintlock pistol. She raised it into the air and her sleeve fell back, revealing an arm no thicker than a broom handle. I wondered how many of the frayed and faded dresses in the crowd covered figures as wasted by hunger.
“Governor Letcher says he can’t speak with us just now,” she shouted. “He asks that we come back after breakfast.”
“My children haven’t got breakfast in six months,” someone in the crowd called out. Others jeered in agreement.
The older woman flashed an open-mouthed grin. “Well then, let us take our breakfast while the governor takes his.”
Her companion fired the flintlock into the air. The mob roared, pushing past Thomas Jefferson’s legislature building and the great bronze statue of George Washington astride his horse. They poured onto Ninth Street, jostling to make their way to Main.
I ducked along Tenth Street as frenzied mothers pushed their children down Shockoe Hill. By the time I turned onto Main, rioters had overrun a bakery. As they greedily devoured loaves of bread, others ran toward the grocers, seizing any foodstuffs they could grab. At the sound of breaking window glass, many forgot their hunger, turning instead on the clothing shops and fancy goods stores. The throng swarmed down side streets, onlookers joining the pillaging. Here or there, a soldier appeared but drew back quickly, unwilling to make a solitary attempt at restoring order.
“They are like jungle beasts, ready to tear the meat from their living prey.” Bet appeared at my side, clad in the calico bonnet and buckskin leggings she wore about the city. “To think Thomas could imagine such destruction.”
“It wasn’t McNiven who imagined it,” I said. “It was me.”
“You?” She was as surprised as if I’d sworn I’d been to the moon and back. “How ever did you get the idea?”
“A fat rat is as good as a squirrel,” I said. “That’s Jeff Davis’s response whenever someone complains the poor of Richmond have no meat. The Secessionist version of Marie Antoinette’s s’ils n’ont pas de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche. It put me in mind of Mr. Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Hunger festering into anger, anger to malice. Malice to lawlessness.”
I pointed to a familiar figure in the crowd, and Bet turned to see Mrs. Whitlock shoving her way through the street, clutching three pair of shoes in one arm and a tub of butter in the other. A flicker of recognition touched the distraught woman’s ruddy face when she saw her Church Hill neighbor. But she laughed and hurried on her way.
“And is that Virginia’s own Madame Defarge?” Bet asked.
Before I could respond, the Public Guard turned out in earnest. Jeff Davis struggled through the mob, climbing atop an overturned wagon to shout, “You must stop.” His words were barely audible over the hoots and cries of the looters. “The farmers won’t bring food to the city if they fear violence. And the Federals will hear of it and know we’re weak. It will be the end for us.”
As the crowd continued to push and shove, snatching up whatever was left to plunder, Davis ordered the Guard to load their rifles. Once the guns were readied, he shouted that the mob had better disperse or they’d be fired upon. He drew out his pocket watch and counted off three minutes. When he announced that time was up, the troops raised their rifles.
They clicked their guns to full cock, sending the women and children stampeding off in all directions. Amid the shrieking, I made for the James, pulling Bet along beside me.
“Would the Guard really have shot them?” she asked, once we’d taken cover against the brick wall of a foundry building on the canal.
I couldn’t know for certain. The Public Guard was paid in the same worthless Confederate currency as everyone else. Some of them may even have had wives and children among the rioters. But so long as both the Guard and the public believed Jeff Davis might have given the order to fire, he’d surely lost something of their loyalty, and their respect. And thus the victory was ours.
When Queen Varina returned to Richmond later that spring, she was wearing black for the father she’d just laid to rest. Though I knew full well the devastation of a daughter’s loss, I preferred to believe her melancholy might be premonitory mourning for the demise of her husband’s government.
Twenty-one
Dammit, what are you saying?” Jeff Davis’s mood was so foul, I quite nearly pitied whoever climbed the staircase of the mansion to see him the afternoon of the eleventh July.
When word came four days
earlier of the fall of Vicksburg, Davis had taken sick. When a telegram from Lee on the ninth confirmed the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, his illness hardened into irascibility. Once Lee’s official report arrived late on the morning of the eleventh, Davis ordered his wife and children, even his secretary Burton Harrison, out of the Gray House. Hearing him cuss, I left off cleaning the third-floor rooms to creep down to the narrow office where Harrison usually worked, hoping the unexpected visitor was sharing yet more glad tidings for the Union.
“Do you not find the coincidence of twin defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg otherwise inexplicable, Mr. President?” Judah Benjamin’s voice startled me. The calculating Aunt Piss seldom petitioned Davis directly, preferring to make his appeals through Queen Varina.
Whatever brought him here set Davis barking so loudly, I didn’t need strain to make out his every word. “Johnston has made such a bumbling ass of himself since First Manassas, I am not surprised that he floundered the defense of Vicksburg.”
Aunt Piss usually disdained the braggart Joe Johnston just as much as Jeff Davis did, but for once he defended the general. “How could we expect otherwise, when Grant appears to have had clear knowledge of all attempts to reinforce our troops there? Just as Meade, one thousand miles away, appears to have known precisely when Early and Lee were taking their men into Union territory. Such information must have come from someone with access to the highest levels of Confederate correspondence.”
My heart lurched hard in my chest, and I squeezed myself tighter into the cubby-hole gap between Harrison’s writing desk and his bookcase. As though I could hide myself from what Aunt Piss must mean.
Davis’s reply confirmed my worst fears. “I am vilified in Congress, in the press, even in the streets. Now you say you think me such a simpleton as to be duped by a spy employed among my own household.”
Aunt Piss’s eager response drove icy thorns of fear deep into me, pricking me inside and out. “Do I have your permission to pursue the matter?”
“My honor is at stake if you do.”
Aunt Piss didn’t bother with any of his usual obsequience. “Your nation is at stake if I don’t. Good day, Mr. President.”
I watched Aunt Piss’s well-polished boots storm out from Davis’s office, half believing they’d sense my presence and kick me from my hiding spot.
“Investigate as you wish,” Davis called out. “If what you say is true, the culprit must hang.”
The Louisianan departed, and Davis returned to whatever occupied him at his desk in the adjoining room. But I remained huddled on the floor of Harrison’s office, my legs too weak to support me.
Jeff Davis never seemed to take notice of the house slaves. Such obliviousness, shared by all but the most lascivious Southern gentlemen, had afforded full protection for my indagations. Or so I’d always let myself believe.
I cudgeled my memory for any minor slip I might have made of late. But I was certain that every page I ever lifted from Davis’s desk, I’d taken care to return just as it was found. Perhaps that was my mistake. It flashed on me how Dulcey Upshaw used to leave my schoolwork out of order, illiteracy rendering her unable to hide that she’d been in my things. Maybe the risk was in always getting it right. Maybe I’d given too much intelligence to the Union, until the victories became otherwise inexplicable, as Aunt Piss said.
Aunt Piss. Immutably sly and scheming, it was no surprise he was the first to turn suspicious. Having gambled Davis’s goodwill to level his accusation, he’d hunt hard to deliver a culprit. And Davis would be swift enough to mete out punishment, if Aunt Piss’s charges proved true.
If—or when. For I knew Benjamin was right. The intelligence that brought Federal victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg had come from the Gray House itself.
“Don’t tell me nothing’s the matter,” Wilson insisted when he found me in our kitchen just past dawn the next morning. “Your one day of rest, and you keep yourself up all night rather than sleeping in. What’s troubling you?”
I didn’t care to lie to my husband. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d heard. As though my repeating Aunt Piss’s suspicions would somehow bring the investigation to a faster and even more furious end.
“I’m feeling a bit poorly,” I said. That was true enough, trepidation cramping me up.
“Perhaps you should take some tansy.”
I shook my head at the thought of the bitter medicinal. “It’s just the heat. Richmond July wears on me more each year.”
“Some fresh air, then. We’ll pack a picnic hamper, walk up to that stretch of creekside past Coutts Street. You deserve a pleasant Sunday, much as you did to help the Federals in their two grand victories.”
“Fifty thousand or more casualties, just at Gettysburg,” I said. “It hardly seems decent to be celebrating that.”
“I’m not celebrating anyone dead or wounded. I just think my wife needs some respite after all our working and worrying. I know her husband does.”
I supposed he was right. It was a relief to think of getting even a half mile away, just for a few hours. And stopping by Mama’s grave might help me feel sure again, even give me courage to tell my husband what was vexing me.
We filled a basket with what fruit we had from the Van Lew arbor, fly-ridden though it was, along with the last of our share of boiled eggs from their chickenhouse. Grateful we had that much to eat when many in Richmond didn’t. “What a wise husband I have, to think of such an outing,” I said, putting on my hard-worn shoes.
“And what a wise wife I have, to acknowledge it.” Wilson hoisted our basket of comestibles and followed me down the stairs. But when we opened the door, we found Bet, her fist poised to knock.
She surveyed Wilson’s attire. “I need a pair of pants, such as a farmhand might wear.”
“Aren’t any farmhands here,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re too tall anyway.”
“Then maybe you ought to find some short farmer whose pants would suit you. As though them buckskin leggings aren’t crazy enough.”
I shot Wilson a look. I wasn’t any too pleased by Bet’s arrival. But she had a bound and determined way about her this morning, and that might mean something important. “Why don’t you come upstairs,” I said, “and tell us what’s brought you?”
“I don’t know that I should stay, if you haven’t the right trousers. But where can we find such a thing on a Sunday?” She pursed her lips and turned her head, as though she were listening for something outside. “Very well, you wait upstairs. I’ll be back directly.” With that she disappeared out the door.
“Why are you letting her spoil our outing?” Wilson asked as we ascended to the parlor. “Surely she can hunt up trousers or trombones or whatever other nonsense she needs, on her own.”
“Just give her a few minutes to explain. If it isn’t important we’ll be on our way soon enough. And if it is …” I let my voice trail off as Bet appeared, leading a figure nearly as small as herself. A hunched-looking colored woman with large, fidgety hands, who kept her head bowed so low all we could see was the top of her bonnet.
“Miss Bet, I don’t believe we’ve met your companion.”
“Of course you haven’t. My companion is only lately arrived from Chambersburg.”
A colored woman, come all the way from Pennsylvania clear into Richmond? “How did she get here?” I asked.
The stooped figure straightened up and corrected, “Not she. He.” Pulling off the bonnet, the stranger revealed his face. “I came by invitation from the rebel cavalry. If you consider a bayonet prod an invitation.”
Wilson forgot his irritation at Bet, gesturing the man to our armchair. “Please, have a seat. Can we bring you anything?”
The visitor sat, folding the bonnet nervously. “A drink of water would be welcome.”
I fetched a cupful from the kitchen, and he drank it down. Then he recited his story, as though he were telling it as much for himself as for us.
; “They rode into town in the middle of June, spent three days rounding up all the negroes they could find. Claimed every one was a fugitive slave. No matter if there were whites there willing to testify they’d known us our whole lives, that we’d been born in Pennsylvania and our mammies and pappies before us. Two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty of us they took. Marched us with them to Gettysburg, then down to Richmond after the battle. Put us all to sale once they got us here.”
Even with the Union victories, the Confederates had found another way to make negroes suffer. I hadn’t heard even a word of it in the Gray House. I wondered what else was happening to colored folks that I didn’t know about.
“And your clothes?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me, holding his gaze on Wilson. “They took everyone, women and children along with the men. Wasn’t much I could do to protect my wife, but at least I managed to trade clothes with her. Whatever they’d do to a colored man, can’t be worse than what they might try with a negress. First day of my life I’ve been glad to be this small, knowing at least we could fit into each other’s things. Even so, not much comfort in it.”
My husband’s eyes flashed sympathy. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. Dear God, both of us born free and thirty years married, I never imagined my own wife could be sold away from me. I just pray McNiven can find her.”
“It was Thomas who interceded on Mr. Watson’s behalf,” Bet explained. “They are acquainted from some work Thomas did in Pennsylvania before the war.”
I thought of the many trips Hattie’s father made to Chambersburg to collect baggage. “Perhaps you are similarly acquainted with Alexander Jones? Or David Bustill Bowser?”
Mr. Watson nodded. “Know them both. Good men.”
“My name is Wilson Bowser. David is my cousin.” Wilson offered his hand to our guest. “I used to send him things before the war, by way of Chambersburg.”