Glory In The Name sb-1

by James L. Nelson

  He looked down at the sundry papers spread over the desk in front of him-newspapers, reports, personal correspondence. Stolen material, all. He felt a flush of guilt. Absurd. This was war.

  Warm, briny air wafted through the open window, rustled the paper. A month before he had been in New York City, where bitter, numbing wind funneled in through the Narrows and made the waterfront a frigid misery. His hands, he recalled, had been so numb he was hardly able to hold a pen. But now he was riding at anchor at Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi, lovely, semitropical, water the color of turquoise. He enjoyed the sun and the warm air. He enjoyed looking out over the ships under his command.

  The warm air carried on it the smell of coal smoke. USS Colorado had arrived an hour before, was picking her way slowly though the anchorage. She was a big bastard, a forty-gun steam frigate, eight-to ten-inch Dahlgren pivots. She drew nearly twenty-three feet aft. Farragut did not know if he could get her over the bar and into the Mississippi River.

  They would be fighting a river war with a blue-water navy, making ships do something they were never intended to do. Foote’s fleet, the “Pook Turtles,” they were made for this kind of fighting, perfect for the Western River Theater. But not the Hartford, and certainly not the Colorado.

  The marine at the cabin door announced Henry H. Bell, captain of the fleet, responding to the summons Farragut had issued moments before. Farragut called, “Come!” and Bell stepped sharply across the cabin’s deck, stopped at the desk, saluted, crisp and businesslike.

  “Captain,” Farragut said, returning the salute. He spread his hands, indicating the papers on the desk. “Here is the booty from our raid on the Biloxi post office.”

  “You should have had them take gold, sir. Laurens de Graffe or Jean Laffite could have made their fortunes with such a raiding party.”

  Farragut smiled. “There’s gold enough here for me. You should see what is in these papers.” He picked one up, held up the headline. Surrender of Nashville!

  “Nashville, sir?” Bell looked taken aback, and then he smiled.

  “The Rebels suffered a defeat at Donaldsonville as well. Grant and Foote are sweeping south along the Mississippi. New Orleans is in a panic. The papers speak volumes of discontent. It’s all collapsing around them, Henry. When we take New Orleans, I do believe the Southern morale and their will to fight will just melt away.”

  “Wonderful, sir.”

  For just over twenty days now, Farragut had been admiral in charge of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, chosen by Welles and Lincoln not just because they trusted him to blockade but because they trusted him to fight.

  The rumble of an anchor chain, and Farragut and Bell looked out the starboard windows to see Colorado’s anchor kick up a spout of water as it plunged into the harbor.

  “Captain Alden should have news of Porter, sir,” Bell said.

  “Yes, he should. I hope it is good.” Farragut was already sending ships up the Mississippi, up to the Head of the Passes, up as far as the forts, probing the Rebels, feeling them out. But the first real attack would be David Dixon Porter’s. Porter had with him a convoy of old schooners and scows, each mounting a squat thirteen-inch mortar, able to lob heavy exploding shells over the walls of the Confederate fortifications. This mortar fleet would soften Forts Jackson and St. Philip up some before Farragut’s big ships blasted their way past.

  “If I may, sir…” Bell was hedging, wanted to ask a question he was not certain would be well received.

  “Yes?”

  “If I may, when do you think we will make the push to New Orleans?” As it happened, Farragut had been thinking along those very lines, and so was well prepared to answer that question. He had been calculating when Porter would arrive, how long it might take to get the big ships over the bar, how much pounding the forts would need.

  He planned to head up to the forts himself in a few days in one of the smaller ships, take a firsthand look at what they would be facing.

  “Six weeks,” Farragut said decisively. “I do believe we will be ready to take New Orleans in six weeks’ time.”

  40

  There was neither foundry nor machine shop in the place Yazoo City. The ship was in a very incomplete condition. There was not a sufficiency of iron on hand to finish the entire ship.

  – Lieutenant George Gift, CSS Arkansas

  They tore into the Yazoo River’s deckhouse with iron bars.

  Samuel Bowater stood on the foredeck, watched Artemus Polkey wander back and forth, looking over the deckhouse like a sculptor looking at a block of marble, trying to decide where to make that first, crucial cut.

  The sun was just up, the river and the boat were still bathed in blue-gray dawn light, and already Samuel wanted to scream, It’s not a work of art, just tear the damned thing apart! But he held his tongue.

  At last Artemus nodded, patted the planking right around the door to the galley. “Right here,” he said. “We’ll start takin her down from here.” He hefted a four-foot wrecking bar, and with a swiftness and economy of motion which surprised Bowater he slammed the chisel end into the plank and with half a dozen levers of the bar dropped a five-foot section of plank onto the deck.

  He nodded again, issued orders to the men milling about, the ship’s carpenters Polkey had hired and the Yazoo Rivers who were assigned to him, essentially every man who was not on the iron wagon train.

  “Let’s rip her up, boys!” Polkey shouted, and the men fell to with a will. The morning was torn apart with the crack of wood, the squeal of protesting nails being wrenched free. The men were sweating in the cool air. Wanton destruction was in their blood.

  Bowater wandered down to the dock, watched the progress for a few minutes. He had been wrong about Polkey, and he was glad of it. Artemus Polkey deliberated, chose wisely, but for all his age and girth, he was a hurricane once the decision was made.

  Satisfied with the destruction taking place, Bowater walked over to the carpenter’s shed which had been transformed into an office for him. He opened the protesting door, stepped on nails and sawdust and wood chips on the floor, sat on the stool in front of the high desk. He looked at the papers, preprinted forms, pen, ink, laid out in front of him, and he sighed.

  This was his lot for now, the lot of the ship’s captain. Reports, requisitions, requests. Write to Mallory, update him on the state of things, beg for sailors and money, two things the Confederate Navy never had enough of. Write to the local army commander, beg that any sailors or machinists or engineers or carpenters in the ranks be reassigned to him. Best of luck. Write to local bakers and butchers and meat packers for victuals.

  He wrote for the bulk of two days, and then the first wagon train arrived, each creaking wagon half filled with gunboat iron, the most that the weary horses could pull. They unloaded the iron, stacked it on the landing, tended the horses. The next morning the wagons left again.

  Bowater did the math. At that rate, and assuming none of the wagons broke or horses died, it would take 250 days to transport all the iron to Yazoo City. He tucked that information aside and did not think about it again.

  When he had written all he could, and could do no more until he received replies, Samuel took up a wrecking bar and went at the deckhouse. In ten minutes he was sweating. In half an hour his arm muscles were protesting and he had cut his hand. In an hour and a half he had torn his sailor’s pullover in three places, cut the other hand, and was walking with a slight limp, but he felt better than he had in a week at least.

  He looked with satisfaction at the wreckage on the deck. He had personally torn out a good portion of what had been the first-class passenger cabin, could see daylight where bulkheads had been, where iron casement soon would be.

  Well, perhaps not soon.

  “Captain Bowater?” He heard a man asking after him, looked up. A fellow on a big black horse, wearing the kind of riding clothes worn by those wealthy enough to afford clothes just for riding, a tall black silk hat on his head, thi
ck silky black mustache under his nose. “Artemus, where might I find Captain Bowater?”

  Polkey spit, jerked his thumb at Samuel. Samuel set his wrecking bar down, wiped his hands on the pullover, and stepped down the brow as the man dismounted.

  “I am Captain Samuel Bowater.” Bowater extended a hand and the man took it, shook. Samuel caught the quick glance up and down, the man’s eyes noting the torn and filthy clothes, bloody hands.

  “A pleasure, sir. ‘Officers will haul with the men,’ and all that, eh, just like old Drake?”

  Bowater looked down at his clothes. He wondered when he had decided it was all right for him to appear in public, on duty, in such shabby attire. “We do what needs to be done. How may I help you?”

  “My name is Theodore Wilson, sir. I own the plantation a mile north of town, five hundred acres of the finest cotton land. In any event, I was in town collecting my mail and the postmaster mentioned there was mail for the ship, so I thought it would be a friendly gesture to carry it down to you.”

  “Friendly, indeed. Thank you, sir,” Bowater said. He waited while Wilson fished the canvas bag out of his saddlebag, waited to see why the man had really come.

  Wilson handed the bag to Bowater. It was light and the letters made only a small lump in the bottom. They had not been there long enough for the bulk of the mail to catch up with them.

  Wilson ran his eyes over the Yazoo River. “Robley Paine was by my place the other day, asking after something. Wagons, I think.” Wilson was quiet as he surveyed the boatyard with a half-amused smirk. “I have always had a keen interest in river navigation, Captain. In fact, I own a small screw steamer, often pilot her myself, runs to New Orleans and such.” He paused again. “So this here’s Robley Paine’s boat, is it?”

  “No. No, it’s not.”

  “No? I had thought…”

  “This ship belongs to the Confederate States Navy. Mr. Paine has donated it for his country’s use.”

  “I see…There is a story abroad that ol’ Robley intends to make her an ironclad.”

  That was it. Curiosity. Amusement, perhaps. Come down and see what the fools were about, make great conversation over billiards and mint juleps.

  “She is being converted to an ironclad this instant. You see the iron plate there.” Bowater waved toward the pile, a sad little stack of rail.

  “Not much iron for an ironclad vessel.”

  “That’s the first of it. We are moving it from Jackson as fast as we can, but are hampered by a lack of wagons. It seems not all the people hereabouts are as great patriots as Mr. Paine.”

  That barb made Wilson stiffen, just a bit. “There is no man in Yazoo County, you will find, who is wanting in love for his country, and support for the cause.”

  “I don’t doubt it, sir. Don’t mistake me. The men who put their lives in jeopardy for a cause, like my sailors there, or Mr. Paine, are often the ones who grumble the most. After all, didn’t our Lord Jesus himself doubt the wisdom of his cause on the night before his death? No sir, I find the staunchest patriots are often those who remain safe by their own hearths.”

  Wilson’s eyes flashed with anger now, but Bowater did not care because he had had his fill of the Wilsons of the world. “You come close to insinuation, sir, and I do not care for it. I have a son fighting in the army, as do most of the men around here.”

  “Yet when Robley came to you with the simple request for help, just a damned wagon and some manpower, you would deny him? When every bit of stubbornness on your part makes the Yankee-the Yankee who would kill your son-stronger?”

  Wilson looked at Bowater for a long moment. “I will forgive your remarks, sir, as you are a stranger here, and do not know the recent history.”

  Bowater said nothing.

  Wilson chewed on a stray hair of his mustache. “Robley Paine’s gone mad. Surely you have noticed?”

  Of course he had noticed. Curiosity battled with disgust at listening to such gossip. “I am satisfied with Mr. Paine’s dedication to the cause. Beyond that I am not interested.”

  At that Wilson smiled, and Bowater could see he was not fooling the man. “It’s not a surprise he’s lost his mind, of course. I might have myself, under the circumstances…”

  Silence. Stand-off. Finally Bowater surrendered. “What circumstances?”

  “Robley had three boys. Fine lads, he doted on them. His entire world. They joined Hamer’s Rifles, the company that mustered out of Yazoo County in April of last year. His oldest boy, Robley Junior, made lieutenant. Anyway, they were all killed at Manassas. All three.”

  Bowater nodded. Dear God! That bit of information fit like the last brick in the wall, made sense of everything he had seen Robley Paine to be.

  “You impress me, Captain,” Wilson continued. “I was afraid that Paine had collected together a cadre of madmen, undertaking some fool thing. I just hope you are not wasting your time here, on some madman’s dream.”

  Bowater straightened. Wilson’s approval felt like a dirty thing, like Judas’s handful of silver. He saw, in that instant, Robley Paine for what he was, and Theodore Wilson for what he was, and he could not hate Paine, and he could only hate Wilson.

  “Mr. Wilson,” he said, picking the words carefully, “I have never been deluded about the state of Mr. Paine’s mind, not since meeting him. And now that you tell me the cause, I must say, I can hardly find fault or weakness in him for what he has become. But understand this…Robley Paine has thrown everything that he is and everything that he has into fighting for the cause for which his sons died. His is the purest, most unadulterated patriotism. He will die like his boys, fighting for his country, fighting for all you men who lie abed while the guns are firing, and I, sir, as an officer of the Confederate States Navy, will be proud to be with him.”

  Bowater picked up the mail sack. “Thank you for delivering the mail to us. Now if you will forgive me, I have an ironclad that requires building.”

  He turned, walked back into the office. After a few minutes he heard the jangle of Wilson’s horse’s tack, heard the clomp of hooves as he rode away.

  For a long time Samuel was too angry to move. Angry that he had been saddled with a madman’s project. Angry that men such as Wilson, who had the means to make the ironclad Yazoo River a real thing, would not. Angry that in this modern time, this age of reason, men could still fight a war in which some sorry bastard could lose his three sons in an afternoon and become the shell that was Robley Paine.

  “Son of a bitch…” he muttered and dumped the letters out on the desk, shuffled through them, set them in piles. Three for Hieronymus Taylor, that was unusual, a few more for various men in the ship’s company, some addresses written with a neat, well-practiced hand, others with the nearly illegible scrawl of the barely literate. Bowater separated them out.

  Three letters for him; his father, Wendy, and his sister, Elizabeth. He looked at his letters, considered opening them, stared for a long time at Wendy’s name. The anger was still burning in him, and he liked it, did not want to lose the sensation, like the taste of a fine meal in one’s mouth, and so he left all news from home aside, even word from Wendy Atkins, and it surprised him that he could. Time for amusements and distractions some other time. He set the rest of the letters aside to distribute to the men at the dinner break.

  Richmond, Virginia, felt somber, oppressed. The string of Confederate defeats at Port Royal and Roanoke Island, Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, made it feel like a city under siege, even though the nearest enemy was one hundred miles away-General George “Little Mac” McClellan did not seem inclined to move out of Washington.

  Jonathan Paine felt the dull panic. He knew he had to go, and he felt sharp fear. He felt the fear turn into frustration, and then anger, and that was good.

  For some weeks after the decision to go home, after Bobby’s essential offer to accompany him, Jonathan still did not leave Miss Tompkins’s. A seeming epidemic of dysentery swept through the Confederate camp, boys skinny an
d weak and gray-faced were brought in in regular succession, crowding the already crowded rooms, filling the beds and then the extra beds brought in and then the pallets piled with straw on the floor. They moaned, called out, clawed the clothing of the people who came to help. They got better and went back to their units or they died and were buried outside of Richmond.

  It was a nightmare scene, under cold, gray winter skies, and neither Bobby nor Jonathan felt they could leave until it was over. Finally, on the day that three young soldiers were dismissed from the hospital and sent back to their regiment, and not one new patient arrived, Bobby suggested that they go to the Mechanics’ Institute and find out what Jonathan needed to do to be officially discharged from the army, and to get a bit of money for his trip home.

  Jonathan tasted the panic in his throat, felt the slight tremor in his palms. This is just damned stupid… he assured himself, but that did nothing to ease his fear. Indeed, if Bobby had not brought the buckboard around, had not helped him on with his coat, led the way out, if Bobby had not in his subtle way forced Jonathan to leave Miss Tompkins’s house, Jonathan doubted that he ever would have.

  They arrived at the Mechanics’ Institute, and it was in every way the bedlam that Jonathan recalled from his previous visit.

  Bobby battered a path through the crowd, excusing himself with bowed head and sincere pleas of “Beg pardon, suh,” “I’se sorry, suh,” “Massah, he gots a leg missin’, beg pardon…” He had the ability to cover his insolence and pushiness with a veneer of respect, and thus get away with it. It was just what soldiers did, Jonathan realized, what they called “flanking” the officers. Give them just enough respect so they could not call you for insubordination.

  They came at last to the Office of Orders and Detail, stood in line until Jonathan’s stump began to throb. When finally they came up to the tall oak counter, Jonathan leaned his elbows on it, took as much weight as he could off his legs.

  “How may I help you, Private?” the clerk asked.