The Secrets of Mary Bowser

by Lois Leveen

  I looked into my husband’s eyes, knowing the choice I had to make now was as hard as any of those. But it was different, too. This time I was choosing to stay.

  “Husband, you better hurry up and get healed, so you and the rest of the USCT can march on into Richmond. Because there’ll be a slave working up in the Gray House who’s going to need some liberating, nasty a mistress as that Varina Davis is. In the meanwhile, that slave will do everything she can to help you and the whole Union army get there. And she’ll have quite a welcome for you when you do.”

  Wilson smiled. “I suppose she will.”

  Twenty-seven

  23 December 1864

  My dearest one

  How many times I have wrote those words! Now before you go thinking I been carrying on with other women remember the US Army is full up with men cant write for their selfs & USCT got more than its share. Many the hour I take up a pen for to write out the words of this fellow or that to send to wife mother or child who ever they got home can read or be read to. So when a certain Scotsman turned up here I see time come to write for myself. He says he might as well bring my letter risk of being caught no worse than risk of what my dear wife do to him if he comes back with no missive from me.

  I love you & miss you so. The loving could make a man impashent with the missing but I figure come spring Federals will be in Richmond & youll be in my arms. The thought of it is enuff to keep me warm though the nights are mighty chilly. Leastwise the cold keeps them from marching us around overmuch. Even then I dont grouse like some of the men glad enuff to feel my leg grow strong again. Yes I am recovered from my trial & hope my wife is recovered from hers.

  Our friend is making noises about he needs to leave before nightfall so I guess time to close this with a Merry Christmas & know you are in my thoughts even when no messenger can carry a note between us.

  Ever your loving

  Husband

  McNiven brought me that letter on Christmas Eve, and I fell asleep that night hugging the pages as though they were part and parcel of my husband. When I climbed Church Hill the next morning, I found Bet more agitated, her mother more fragile, and the dinner even more paltry than all had been the Christmas before. But still I had all the yuletide joy I could hope for, savoring the anticipation of the fall of the Confederacy as surely as I ever did a slice of goose or a mouthful of plum pudding.

  Jeff Davis was about as popular among the Confederates as Abraham Lincoln, by the time 1865 rolled in. So when a pair of senators came stomping into the Gray House one late February morning, I could see it was more than the chill winter air that had them red in the face. Queen Varina tried to shoo them off, saying her poor husband lay abed stricken with neuralgia.

  “I suppose he can converse with us as easily in his dressing gown as in his frock coat,” said Senator Hunter as he strode past her to make his way up the grand staircase. Hunter’s stern visage graced the Confederate ten-dollar note, but nowadays the downward turn of his features pulled even more severe than in the bygone time when he sat for that portrait. Back then, ten Confederate dollars might have bought a barrel of flour. Of late it wasn’t enough to buy a loaf of bread, nor this week even a single slice.

  “Queen Varina gonna throw a fit they talk at her so,” Hortense whispered as we watched the exchange from the adjacent corridor. “Only a fool stay down here where she like to find ’em, make trouble just ’cause them white mens come barking.”

  She yanked me along as she headed up the servants’ stair. Not even making a pretense of cleaning once we reached Jeff Davis’s office, we cupped our hands against the passage door to the Davises’ bedchamber. Hortense’s open curiosity didn’t much surprise me. Queen Varina and her friends complained loudly to one another over how impudent their servants had grown. Why not Hortense along with the rest?

  The first we made out was Senator Wigfall’s Texas drawl. “That infernal Jew Benjamin is behind it, I suppose.”

  “Secretary Benjamin supports it,” Davis replied. “But the idea originates with General Lee. He has advocated this course of action for some time, although until this winter I did not deem it necessary to pursue. Now, however—”

  Hunter wouldn’t suffer him to finish. “We cannot allow a Confederate president to take away the very thing at the heart of our Cause.”

  Davis answered like a hyena whooping at his pack. “Without this measure, the Federals will defeat us in a matter of weeks.”

  Confusion tugged at the corners of Hortense’s mouth. I shrugged back my own puzzlement and leaned closer to the door.

  “We have insisted they are kept in the condition that best suits their limited capacities. Now you would make them our equals, in the very instance when honor and courage matter most,” Hunter said. “If they are truly what we claim, it will be their slaughter, and that of many of our sons as well. If they are not what we have said, then even if they triumph, Confederate society will be ruined.”

  “We need hundreds of thousand more soldiers, when there are barely ten thousand white men left to draft in the Confederacy.” Davis’s declaration wouldn’t have been much news to anyone, North or South. But what he said next was the single most astounding thing I heard uttered in the Gray House. “We hold millions of slaves among us. We would be fools if we did not enlist them at this direst hour for our Cause.”

  “Where are my damn servants?”

  Queen Varina’s demand resounded up the curving stairwell, causing Hortense to mutter, “Just let ’em ’list up this darky. Give me one a them rifles, see what way I point.”

  But even Varina Davis’s heaviest wrath couldn’t overpoise the pleasure I took at Hunter and Wigfall’s distress. I knew those men were right. The Confederate army’s enlistment of negroes would sound the death knell of slavery even more loudly than Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had.

  White ladies from the ci-devant wealthiest FFV families toiling all day as government clerks. Mansions along Church Hill turned to boardinghouses, their finest possessions carted off to auction. And now colored men might be armed to fight beside the very whites who owned them. Though the war might rage some weeks more, it seemed the so-called Southern way of life was already gone.

  Even Queen Varina saw what it portended. All through the next month, whenever her husband left off his sickbed to return to his Customs House office, strange men came to call on her. They departed the Gray House hauling off furnishings, adornments, even whatever stores of food she’d hoarded down in the cellar. Anything too big for her to take when she left the capital was sold, never mind whether those things belonged to the Davises or not. So long as there was coin to be chaffered for, she bargained away what she could, keeping her dealings tidy secret from her husband.

  For once, I hadn’t much standing to fault her. Biding her time and hoodwinking Jeff Davis, she wasn’t so different from me.

  Neither Hortense nor I bothered to put on the fool come the first April, when we packed Queen Varina and her children’s bags for their final departure from Richmond.

  Mary El, wake up now, child.

  Let me sleep, Mama, let me sleep.

  We your parents, so you know you best listen. You got to wake up.

  But, Papa, I’ve been working so hard, I need to rest. You were here, you saw me. Tell Mama.

  Minerva, the child did work hard—

  That work is near done and you know it, Lewis. But it’s not supposed to end like this.

  Near done, Mama, yes. Queen Varina’s already gone. Rumors Jeff Davis is going soon, too. I did just like you always told me. But it was hard work, and I’m so tired. Why can’t it end now?

  Dammit, Mary El. You got to get out this minute.

  I want to stay with you. If I just lie here a moment—

  Wind is blowing from the South today.

  Mr. Jones, is that you? The wind won’t have to blow from the South anymore. Freedom’s coming, along with the Union troops. Be here today maybe, or tomorrow.

  She must
wake up. Why won’t she wake up?

  Mama? You don’t sound right.

  ’Tis the damn wind, blowing fierce, carrying the hellfire with it. We hae not much time afore we be as wasted as the lass.

  Who’s there? How’d you get in?

  She is delirious. We cannot let her lie here any longer.

  Someone’s hand under my neck, a strange arm beneath my legs. They lift me out of bed. Carry me downstairs.

  Let us rest here a bit. The air is not so foul, and ’tis a long way yet to carry her.

  I cannot rest until she is safe. She did not give pause when it was my life threatened. I shall hardly do otherwise for her.

  Explosions. Shouting. A door slammed open. Hands on me again, pulling. I ought to fight. Wilson said I should, if someone comes after me. But I’m so tired. So tired.

  Something was being forced into my throat.

  “Swallow it down. Thomas must stay here to tend to the slaves, and I cannot carry you alone.”

  I blinked open my eyes. In the fumy dark, I made out the slave pens at Omohundro’s. Devil’s Half-Acre had never been truer to its name, flames and smoke and screams.

  “Miss Bet? Why’d you bring me here?” She didn’t seem to hear me. I couldn’t make the words come out right.

  “Don’t try to speak. You haven’t any voice just now.” She tipped the canteen she held, sending another metallic rush of water into my mouth. “Can you stand? Lay your arm across my shoulder, there. If I slip a hand around your waist, like so, can you walk? Lean against me, we must get you out of here.”

  Bet Van Lew never was much for show and ought. But walking arm in arm with a negro, right up Broad Street? Good thing it was so dark, and everyone rushing about like hell had broken loose. They didn’t seem to notice her, or me.

  The odor was so sharp, it stung me full awake.

  “Aromatic spirits of ammonia may yet make it worse, if she inhaled as much smoke as you say.”

  “I cannot let her just lie there.”

  Slowly, as though prying open an oyster, I forced my eyelids apart. I lay in Bet’s bed. The Van Lew women bent over me, their faces pinched with worry.

  “Thank God you are all right,” Bet said. “We feared perhaps—”

  I tried to ask what had happened, but pain tore at my throat.

  Bet laid a hand on my cheek, her touch more soothing than I expected. “You must not attempt to speak.” She slipped away from the bedside to rummage in the secretary across the room, returning with a writing pen and a scrap of news-sheet.

  Did my house burn? I wrote.

  “Quite possibly. The Confederates incinerated the Richmond arsenal before fleeing, setting half the city on fire. Mother and I could see the conflagration from here. By the time Thomas and I reached your house, the air was teeming with soot.” She closed her eyes a moment. “Truly, I thought we might lose you.”

  I took up the pen. Thank you, Miss Bet. For saving my life.

  She frowned at the message. “So weighty a sentiment as that, at least you should state it properly.” Claiming the pen, she set a stalwart slash across the word Miss. “Now that Davis and his traitorous ilk have left the city, you may address me as we wish.” She smiled in triumph. “You ought to rest. If you need anything, ring for me.”

  She gestured at the nightstand, to the very bell her mother had used whenever she wanted to summon one of the Van Lew slaves to tend her.

  Shouts came through the open window, waking me from a deep slumber. Not the fearful screams I heard earlier. These were shouts of joy. Singing and cheering.

  I eased myself out of the bed, pulled Bet’s dressing gown over my chemise, and made my way down the stairs and along the hall. I found Bet and her mother on the back veranda. To the west and south, flames and smoke engulfed the city. But closer than that was a spectacle even more amazing to see.

  Lines of soldiers clad in Federal blue marched along Main Street. Even from atop Church Hill, we could make out the gallantry that victory marked on their faces. Faces in every hue of brown—an entire corps of the USCT, conquering Richmond at last.

  “You should not be up and about,” Bet said. “You have had a great strain, and without proper rest—”

  I cut her off, my voice a scratchy croak. “My husband is down there. I mean to go to him.”

  She began scolding me about being so stubborn as to put myself at risk, until her mother interrupted. “I don’t suppose Mary can have much faith in your making such declarations, given the way you have comported yourself.”

  I might have thought Bet was taking her usual umbrage at being lectured, when she answered, “Mary and I—and you, too, Mother—we have all three of us exhibited the true patriotism one—”

  “Ought to show,” I said.

  Her mother laughed at the way I finished the sentence, and Bet gave a look of bear-in-the-honeypot satisfaction. Shooing us both back inside, Bet set all three of us to searching through her wardrobe, and her mother’s. As we sifted over their war-worn garments for whatever might fit me, the Van Lew women took to the task with the same concentration as Hattie and her sisters dressing me for my first ball. Weary though I was, my heart soared with more excitement than if I were donning the grandest of gowns, as I put on the misfit combination of borrowed blouse and skirts, settling a bonnet of at least fifteen years’ vintage atop my plaits.

  “Do take care,” my former mistress said, when at last I was presentable enough to go about in public. “The Federal soldiers will have much to contend with, and not only from the blazes. You are welcome here as long as you care to remain, though I suppose we may not be the only household in Richmond that finds its colored members departed today.”

  I held her words dear as I made my way down to Main Street, just as Mama and I did so many Sundays of my childhood. Colored Richmond lined the road, singing every song of jubilation they knew and making up a whole new choir’s worth once those were through. I witnessed all manner of hugging and kissing, laughing and weeping among the crowd. But the USCT kept right on marching, looking more eminent than any troops the city had yet seen.

  Until that moment, I had not properly understood that my husband, who wasn’t enslaved a day in his life, could never believe himself truly free until he started marching to another man’s—a white man’s—orders. It is said that war, with its majestic maiming and majestic killing, makes animals of men. But the colored men who donned uniforms and fought had carved their own humanity out of the great hulk of combat, seizing a freedom so just and right and full, no white person could have given it to them.

  Now here in Richmond, that humanity shone before us. Born free or slave, raised South or North, these legions of colored soldiers emanated a new selfhood, chiseled on their features and meted by their gait. Praying that these precious men and we for whom they’d fought might preserve all the strength and grace of this newly won personhood once the war was done, I joined the throng following in the troops’ wake.

  We crossed Shockoe Creek and turned north, skirting the edge of the blaze to make our way to Capitol Square. Upon reaching the green, the corps fell into companies. Every negro in Richmond seemed to be searching for someone among the USCT. Knowing I hadn’t much time to seek out Wilson before they’d all be set to firefighting detail, I bizz-buzzed my way from one group of soldiers to the next.

  At last I spied a flag bearing the legend Sic Semper Tyrannis and David Bustill Bowser’s martial scene. As I pushed my way toward the standard bearer, I heard a low whistle. A familiar voice asked, “Bowser, is that your wife dressed up so?”

  I turned to find George Patterson laughing to Wilson. I fairly skipped to them, kissing my husband and embracing our friend.

  Wilson shook his head at my hastily acquired apparel. “The way you enjoy carrying on with that Bet Van Lew, I suppose I should be glad not to find you in calico and buckskins.”

  I didn’t bother to explain why I was dressed so. I didn’t much feel like confirming what he must have suspected,
that the raging fire had likely destroyed our home and his shop, along with the rest of Richmond’s commercial district.

  “We can’t all be so dapper as yourself, dear husband, dressed up in that fine uniform. I admit, it does make a colored lady proud to look upon men so.”

  “Men? I thought my wife didn’t have eyes for any man but me.”

  George cupped his hand from the peak of his kepi, warding off cinders that fell like glowing snowflakes. “We aren’t any of us going to have eyes for much, if this wind keeps up.”

  But I just grinned at him. “George Patterson, you know what Hattie’s father always said. When the wind blows from the South, nothing you say or do can stop it. Not even Bobby Lee’s whole army.”

  Not so long as I did my part to set all the slaves free.

  Fires were still smoldering by the time I reached the Gray House the next morning. The Federal pickets stationed around the perimeter of the property didn’t think any more about letting a negro maid pass than the Confederates had. I wondered what these blue-clad soldiers would say if they knew how I aided their army all through the war.

  I’d come to the Gray House from a nagging sense my work wasn’t quite done. But as I made my way through the cellar and up to the first floor, I couldn’t yet tell what impelled me here. The mansion felt as still as a sepulcher. Jeff Davis and his staff had fled the city hours before the evacuation fires were ignited. Hortense and the rest of the colored servants scattered just as quickly on the winds of freedom. Denuded of what valuables Queen Varina had sold off or taken with her, the empty chambers seemed to echo Confederate defeat.

  Tucking my plaits behind my ear, I marched defiantly up the curving center stair and into Jeff Davis’s abandoned office. But disappointment swallowed my defiance, when I saw that the desk and table were cleared of papers.

  A great hullabaloo started up outside. Hurrying to the receiving room window, I saw a massive crowd coming toward the house. Most of the throng were negroes, a procession of civilians following the USCT cavalry. Impeccable in their uniforms and mounted proudly atop fine horses, the colored troops set a high contrast to the ragged Confederates who filled Richmond’s streets only forty-eight hours before.