by Lois Leveen
I’d seen enough suffering in war-time Richmond to know a wealthy man lying in a featherbed on the second story of his mansion didn’t hardly compare, even if he was stricken with lung disease. As for perfection, I hadn’t met a person yet I’d mistake for perfect, and certainly no Van Lew.
Particularly not the one who asked me to meet her here this morning.
“I hardly know where else I can find a moment’s privacy these days,” Bet said when she arrived. She’d left off her buckskins and calico bonnet in favor of a mourning dress, the costume worn by so many Richmond ladies. “Every time I turn, I find a detective at my elbow.” She leaned close before continuing, as though the very graves might harbor some unwanted auditor. “I have learned where they’ve left Colonel Dahlgren’s body.”
When the news-sheets published the report of Dahlgren’s orders, the Confederates condemned him so, words weren’t enough. They chopped the little finger off his corpse and stole his artificial leg. Buried him in a shallow grave, then dug him up and put him on display, before interring the moldering remains in some ignominious locale.
Now Bet declared we would retrieve those remains and lay them properly to rest. She spoke with such enthusiasm she might have been telling me we were to unearth a treasure of gold bullion rather than a month-old corpse.
“Why would we unbury and rebury someone who’s long gone?” I asked.
“It is the very least we can do for him.” She swept her hand toward her father’s grave, as though she meant to set the colonel down right in her family plot. “He was a Federal officer. He deserves a decent burial.”
“He was a cold-blooded killer.” The Richmond Examiner was so enthusiastic about proving Dahlgren a scoundrel, they published a diatribe against his treatment of the man who tried to guide the expedition to the city. Now I cited it back to Bet. “How do you think your Colonel Dahlgren was going to find his way into Richmond? Like plenty of whites, North and South, he relied on some negro. But when the rains swelled the James so high that the Federals couldn’t ford across, Dahlgren blamed the scout. As though colored people have the Lord’s own power to make the waters rise and fall. He had that man hanged, stripped the reins off his own horse to do it.” The tale haunted me, knowing Wilson had scouted for the Union army.
Bet flicked her hand, as though she were shooing away a gall wasp. “That cannot be. Why would any Federal officer do such a thing?”
I pursed my lips, thinking of George Patterson and Henry Watson and my own husband serving under who knows what chain of commanders. “Since when does being a Northerner, a Unionist, or even a Federal officer preclude hating negroes? Your Colonel Dahlgren wasn’t even decent enough to have that poor man’s body cut down once he was dead. When the Confederates found it, they were glad enough to leave it swinging from the tree. A reminder to the darkies of how the Yankees mean to treat them.” I bucked my chin up, daring her to respond.
“What you describe is a despicable act, and if it occurred as you say, there is no excuse for it. But there is no excuse for us to behave indecently, either.” She cocked her head, trying to bring her chin up to mine. “The correct thing to do is to give any body, white or colored, a proper burial. That is what we must do for Colonel Dahlgren.”
We must. I wasn’t sure which of those words irked me more—the one that assumed I was indivisible from her, or the one that declared me bound to do whatever she deemed necessary. Though she rebelled against other people’s ideas of show and ought her whole life, Bet was always glad enough to show me what she believed I ought to do.
I strode to the cemetery gate without a word of farewell. Bet could spend her Sunday plotting whatever foolishness she wanted. I’d spend mine at the colored burying yard across the way, tending Mama’s grave.
On the warm Saturday that ended April, Jeff Davis set out for his office in the old Customs House first thing in the morning, sputtering about the need for proximity to his cabinet. Queen Varina bustled after him at mid-day, half moaning and half boasting that her dear president wouldn’t remember to eat a morsel of food unless she delivered it with her own hand. Hortense and Sophronia were scrubbing the first floor, and in the momentary quiet of the second story, I left off my dusting and sweeping to search through Jeff Davis’s correspondence. The Union generals were positioning their forces for a great new confrontation with Bobby Lee, and they needed every detail I could supply about where the Confederate regiments lay in wait.
Just seven weeks earlier, Mr. Lincoln had installed U. S. Grant as head of the Army of the Potomac. Unconditional Surrender, the Confederates called him, for the terms he demanded when he took Fort Donelson, Tennessee, back in February of ’62. They spat the appellation ruefully when he won the siege of Vicksburg in the summer of ’63. By ’64, after three long years of war and so many Federal generals come and gone from the Virginia campaign, it was hard for me to believe Grant could bring victory to the Union side at last. But marking how his appointment agitated the Confederates, I hoped Unconditional Surrender might prove true to his nickname once again.
Atop the pile on Davis’s desk were three drafts of a plodding, ponderous speech he was to make to the Confederate Congress when they reconvened in the coming week. Beneath those lay a copy of a letter General Breckenridge sent General Bragg three days earlier. Underneath that I found another missive, dated the day before, in a crisp hand that by then I recognized as surely as I did my own.
Headquarters, April 29, 1864
His Excellency Jefferson Davis,
President Confederate States:
Mr. President: I received this morning a report from a scout just from the vicinity of Washington that General Burnside, with 23,000 men, 7,000 of which are negroes, marched through that city on Monday last to Alexandria. This report was forwarded by General Fitz. Lee from Fredericksburg, and I presume the scout to be Stringfellow. If true, I think it shows that Burnside’s destination is the Rappahannock frontier, and that he will have to be met north of the James River. I would therefore recommend that the troops which you design to oppose him, which are south of that river, be drawn toward it. I think there are sufficient troops in North Carolina for the local operations contemplated there without those sent from this army, and request that Hoke’s brigade and the two regiments attached to it be returned to me. I think it better to keep the organization of the corps complete, and, if necessary, to detach a corps than to weaken them and break them up. I have kept Longstreet in reserve for such an emergency and shall be too weak to oppose Meade’s army without Hoke’s and R. D. Johnston’s brigades.
With great respect, your obedient servant,
R. E. Lee,
General.
That was Lee’s way. He played at humbly submitting himself to Davis, all the while telling his commander-in-chief what to do. Whether he was right about Burnside or no, I couldn’t gauge. But his great vexation at having Grant’s men on one side, Burnside’s on another, with Butler’s on yet a third, was some comfort to me, knowing my own husband served among them. I held Lee’s letter before me, arranging all the details in my mind so I could write them out that night.
“What you think you doing?”
Hortense’s question shocked a bolt from my heart to my head, and deep into my belly.
She’d come up behind me, seen the paper in my hand. Seen me squinting at it, too.
“Looking for cat ears.” I turned the page sideways, then upside down. Moving it slowly and tilting my head like I was puzzling over it. “Missy, my first master’s little girl, her name Mildred Ann. When they learnt her reading, she show me how one them letters look like cat ears. She say her name start with that letter, my name, too. Sometime I see writing, I try pick out that cat ear letter ’cause it the only one I know. But I don’t see it nowhere here, do you?” I held the page out to her.
“Don’t got time to be looking for no cat ear or dog tail. Got work enough to do ’fore Queen Varina come home hot full of holler.” She stepped closer. “I don’t kn
ow what trouble you up to in here but I know there some. Now you get to cleaning or I gonna—”
A shriek pierced the air. It came from outside, shrill and long. One of the Davis children—but with an edge of panic that distinguished it from their usual yelps of mischief.
“Where that Lazy Irish at?” Hortense strode to the open window and surveyed the backyard.
The nursemaid mustn’t have been too far from her charges, because the next moment she was screaming, “Yiv killed ’im! Sweet Mary Mother o’ Jesus, the boy is dead fir sure!”
Hortense whirled round and ran from the room. As she thumped down the stairs, I slid Lee’s missive back into the stack on the table.
Shoving my hands beneath my apron, I made my quick way outside, where I found my fellow servants huddled around the brick pathway between the basement door and the kitchen. That’s where little Joseph Davis, a child of barely five years, lay—bloody, twisted, and motionless. Fallen from the veranda balustrade twenty feet above, where he’d been playing with his brothers.
It was only later, after Catherine went to the Customs House to fetch the Davises, after Queen Varina arrived screaming and Jeff Davis praying, after the doctor came and confirmed the child would breathe no more, after we set the house in mourning for the stream of visitors who arrived that very evening to express their condolences—only after all of that, did I stop to realize that when I thanked Jesus for distracting Hortense from what she saw of my spying, it was the death of a child I thanked Him for.
I would not have harmed a hair on the boy’s head. But still I carried with me the weighty truth of what slim respite I gained, solely because he was lost.
The Sunday morning church bells had all tolled their last before I noticed the letter lying on the floor just inside my door. Someone must have slipped it in from outside while I slept, like they’d done to Bet only a few weeks before.
Though she pretended not to pay that note any mind, I’d marked the way her face twitched when she showed it to me. On the top was a skull and cross-bones, the words beneath blocked out in the unsure hand of someone without formal schooling: Dear Miss Van Lough, Old maid. White caps are arownd town. They are coming at nyte. Look out! Your house is going at last. FIRE. Is your house insherd? Put this in the fire and mum’s the word. Yours truly, White Caps. Please give me some of your blood to wryte leters with.
Picking up the unmarked packet that had been left for me, I considered burning it still sealed up, just to keep whatever image of harm it might contain out of my mind. But it was a warm May day, no fire lit, and matches a rare enough commodity I didn’t care to waste one.
Or so I told myself as I walked slowly back up the steps and set myself down at the kitchen table. I closed my hand tight around the wood handle of my kitchen knife, slid the blade under the seal, and pressed the folded pages flat.
I quite nearly cried when my eyes fell on the first lines.
6 May 1864
My dearest Wife
How I wish you could see me this morning standing in my uniform shoulder to shoulder with all the men of the company the regiment & division. Never was men prouder to serve. We have our first victory already though was hardly a battle to speak of the enemy scurrying off instead of meeting us on the field.
I hope to be as close to you in my person as I am in my heart soon enuff but for that all I can say in this letter is we are moving closer than the enemy would care to find us. Close enuff to hope the end may be at hand.
George is a great friend to me & many an evening entertains me with tales of a girl he used to know at school. She was quite something if only half what he says is true & I look forward to repeating such tales & seeing what you think could become of such a girl now that she is full grown. For my part I suppose her quite wonderfull as ever at least I hope her so.
I bear regards to you from George & throu him from your Hattie. He shows me the letters from her telling of their children Alexander named for her father Beatrice for her mother & a lovely little babe named Mary for a dear friend. That infant is quite colicky & proves a handfull for all who tend her perhaps a contrary nature in the child is why? George & the other men tease cause I havent any offspring to boast about but I tell them my wife has been very busy with important work we pray to be done soon so we can get to the business of raising a family in peace.
With that I bid you goodnight & trust that our friends will get this to you. Who knows when I may send another.
Ever your loving
Husband
The gut twisting fear fell further and further off with each line I read. But whether it was joy or sorrow that replaced it, I couldn’t quite say.
For two and a half months, I’d pored ever more assiduously over Jeff Davis’s papers, hanging all the more intently on every word I heard at the Gray House. Desperate for news of the USCT 22d, yet knowing any tidings the Confederates had might only be such as I didn’t care to hear, of defeat and capture—or worse.
Glad as I was for word from my husband, I saw right off how Wilson wrote that letter as much for the eyes of any Confederate who might intercept it as for my own. It was hard to take comfort from such correspondence, long on longing for us to be together but short on information about where he was while we were apart.
I folded the pages and pinned them to the underside of my skirts, just below my waist. It was danger for a supposed slave to be caught with writing, even if the letter didn’t suggest too directly it was from a colored soldier serving on the Union side. But the deadliest fighting was yet to be, and coming soon most likely. However many hundreds of thousands were killed already, more still would have to die before the war was done. I needed some talisman to carry close against me.
Friday, the thirteenth of May, seemed ill luck enough, for all Sophronia, Hortense, and I had to do readying the Gray House for the funeral reception for General J. E. B. Stuart, who’d passed the day before from a gunshot wound incurred at Yellow Tavern. All the Confederacy seemed to feel his loss. By late that afternoon, the Gray House was thick with guests. And choked with the heat held in by the blanket of smoke from the nearby skirmishes. “Fan them pullet hens till they done cackling at each other,” Hortense said, pushing me toward the knot of ladies gathered in the central parlor.
Cackle they did, as eager to gossip as to grieve. A gray-haired woman was nodding toward the men clustered in the next room. “The president has aged ten years since his dear child passed.”
A cannonade thundered outside, drowning out the murmurs of agreement from the half dozen ladies around her. But the youngest member of the circle told the others, “My aunt says some folks aren’t sorry that at last the Davises know what it is to lose a son during war. Perhaps now Varina Davis won’t hold herself above the rest of us.”
A rotund lady dominating the sofa frowned. “Sally Buxton, you oughtn’t speak that way.”
The chastised Miss Buxton picked at a worn spot on the seam of her skirt. “I’m only repeating what my aunt said.”
“Well you oughtn’t repeat it, and she oughtn’t say it. Oughtn’t even to think such a thing. The South has seen enough death, we needn’t make up accounting sheets to tally whose is worst.”
But Queen Varina herself seemed eager for such computation. In the dismal fortnight since her son’s death, she’d grown as bitter as the parched corn coffee sipped by her guests. Having stopped to seek the sympathy of the men in the adjoining drawing room, she now swept into the parlor, taking the seat closest to my fan.
“How good of you to open your home to Mrs. Stuart,” said the lady who’d spoken last, eager to change the topic of conversation. She could hardly have imagined how Jeff Davis wheedled and pleaded, just to persuade his wife to allow another woman’s mourning to eclipse her own, if only for an afternoon.
“It is hard for me even to think of her as Mrs. Stuart,” another of the guests said. “For I knew her back when she was Miss Flora Cooke. What a figure she cut in her youth. She rode so much as a girl, she wa
s nearly as deft on horseback as her husband.”
Queen Varina clucked at the image. “One more indication of her father’s queer ideas. To think of the way he turned his back on the South and rode against his native Virginia with McClellan’s invading army in ’62.”
“If she rides so well as that,” put in a young redhead, pointedly ignoring her hostess’s harsh words, “perhaps she should take over her husband’s command. We’ve few enough cavalry officers left.”
“You mustn’t make such jokes, Miranda,” the rotund lady said. “There is no amusement in suggesting a lady take up such pursuits.”
“No one would have thought ladies could serve in government,” replied a prim mouse of a woman. “But our whole bureau of clerks is female, and the superintendent says we do as well as any males.”
“Laboring in an office!” Queen Varina waved her handkerchief as though she were leading a military charge against the very idea. “I couldn’t imagine it, with my nervous headaches.”
“I haven’t had a headache since I began working for the Treasury Bureau. Some of us clerks think perhaps it isn’t effort but idleness that makes ladies ill. I shan’t care to give up the position, when the war is over.”
“Perhaps you won’t have to,” the ginger-haired Miranda said. “Far fewer of our menfolk will return than left. Someone shall have to take their places.”
The eldest of the ladies set her cup onto its saucer with an imperious clatter. “You cannot expect us to believe you are in earnest. It is one thing for Southern ladies to exert themselves in this time of great sacrifice, but the female constitution simply is not meant for constant labor.”
I didn’t let out a flicker of contradiction as I held my gaze steady across the fanning of my aching arms, past the tables I dusted and the mantel glass I scrubbed, to where Hortense and Sophronia were toiling in the drawing room, diligently refilling whiskey glasses and deftly keeping cigar ash from the carpet.