Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  James yanked, and Jabez feared for his finger joints. “See what we done!”

  The boy pointed to the top of the tree, where his arrowhead, that shiny black stone that was never out of his possession, sat proudly lashed to the tip of the highest branch, point aimed to the heavens. “It’s our star.”

  “A black star,” Jabez said, kneeling. “Must be a first in the history of Christendom.”

  James looked doubtful but Rebecca nodded vigorously. “The first,” she spit out through a missing front tooth. “We never had a Christmas tree before—it’s the first!” She gazed up.

  Jabez straightened. John, wrapped in a flowered apron, was at his elbow, extending a mug. “Try this,” he said. “Tell me if there’s too much rum.”

  Jabez took the eggnog and sipped. His eyes watered. “Just right,” he said. “No such thing as too much rum.”

  “My sentiments,” John said. He went back to the table, where two large bowls sat side by side, surrounded by a basket of eggs, a mortar of fresh-ground nutmeg and several jugs of milk. Tom Kreek sat across from him, providing helpful advice. “This bowl has the rum in it. The other’s for the children and the women. Or maybe it’s the other way around . . . .”

  Jabez dipped up a generous helping from the first bowl. “This is the adult version. All you have to do is smell it,” and he took another long draught. “Good stuff, John. Didn’t know you were so skilled.”

  Elizabeth slipped up behind her father and threw an arm around his waist. “Papa, don’t make the women drink out of the children’s bowl. I want some of that.”

  “No ma’am, not with that young’un in your belly.” Her father patted her protruding stomach, swollen with new life.

  Jabez scrutinized her over the rim of his mug. Her complexion was clear, even rosy, her hair shiny and healthy, her expression serene. There was no sign of the sickness that had haunted her first pregnancy.

  Billy held out a mug. “I’ll take her share.”

  John lifted a ladle, half-filled the cup. “Go easy on this stuff, boy. It’s powerful.”

  Billy grimaced. “I’ve had worse.”

  “Your pa know that?”

  “Does your pa know what?” Sam asked, kicking the front door closed behind him, a load of wood in both arms, snow melting off his boots and puddling on Nancy’s flowered wool carpet.

  “Nothing,” John said and elbowed Billy.

  Billy set down his mug and took the load from his father. Jabez pulled a chair away from the table and motioned Elizabeth into it. “Sit, Mrs. Kreek,” he said. “That’s an order from your doctor.”

  Elizabeth ignored the chair and sank into Tom’s lap. “They chased me out of the kitchen,” she said. “Not that I needed to be chased. My back hurts like the dickens and the smell of giblets is more than I can bear.”

  Jabez smiled and settled into John’s reading chair next to the fireplace. The children chattered among themselves while they snipped paper and tied ribbons into fantastical shapes to hang on the tree. Sam fussed with the fire, John with his eggnog. Elizabeth transferred her bulk from Tom’s lap to the rocker by the front window, hummed and laughed and advised the tree trimmers. Cedar covered the mantelpiece and twined through stair rails. The smells floating in from the kitchen were enough to derange a sane man. Johnny, the Jacksons’ youngest, adrift and underfoot on unsteady feet, went ashore at Jabez’s knee, and the doctor scooped him up. He settled the child against his waistcoat, from which the boy dug out watch and fob and promptly put them in his mouth. Jabez drained his eggnog and accepted a glass of whiskey from John. This is how it should be, he thought. Eliza would have delighted in such a scene. He’d waited ten years for a home like this and in ten short weeks it had been snatched from him.

  He watched Billy fashion snowflakes from pages of The Democratic Review while Rebecca hung on his knee. The boy would have a family of his own some day, but first he needed to explore, go adventuring. Jabez took a sip of his whiskey, set the glass out of range of the baby’s reaching fingers. When regrets threatened to overwhelm him, regrets for the years that might have been spent with Eliza, he told himself that he never would have settled, never would have been a proper husband, had he not seen something of the world beforehand. That chapter was finished, nothing to be done about it. And now he was starting over. He’d started over many times, but at forty he was finding it something of a chore. He’d take it slowly. No hurry.

  The kitchen door opened to the aroma of roast goose, and Agnes leaned into the room. “Clean up time,” she called. “Dinner in five minutes,” setting off a scramble of men and children for the washroom. “Oh, hello, Doctor,” she said, catching sight of him behind the baby, and she bobbed a quick curtsy. Her cheeks were rosy with the cooking, there was flour on her chin, and her hair slipped in tendrils from its pins. She was very pretty.

  Smiling, he pulled the watch from Johnny’s sticky fingers and gave him a silver dollar to play with instead.

  

  “Look, doc,” Billy said, reaching across the sleeping forms of Rebecca and Johnny, book in hand. Dinner cleared, dishes washed, the family clustered around the Christmas tree and the square rosewood piano, John’s Christmas gift to his wife. The tree’s candles had been lit, Nancy had played and sung It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, and the candles had been extinguished. The children had received their gifts—a piece of candy, a book, a pair of mittens—and the two younger ones dozed on Nancy’s lap.

  “Mrs. Stowe,” Jabez said, taking the book and turning it in his big hands. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book that’ll launch a thousand ships.” He winked at Billy. “Or a thousand soldiers.”

  “It’s my present from Ma and Pa,” Billy said, retrieving the book and flipping through the pages. “Ma says she remembers a slave being beaten to death back in Maryland on a neighbor’s cotton farm.”

  Rachel, making the rounds with the coffee pot, looked up. “Those poor, poor creatures,” she said. “I’m glad this book is getting people riled up.”

  “Thank the Lord the people of this county aren’t so immoral,” Nancy put in.

  “The people of this county don’t happen to have tobacco or cotton crops,” Jabez said.

  “Galen Crow brought in a gang of slaves to harvest his apples,” Agnes said. She crouched on the floor, her skirts puddled around her, working through a wooden puzzle with James. “Their owner hired them out from Kansas City. Mr. Crow said it was cheaper than local labor.”

  “Were best he’d hired local,” Sam said. “Local white boys need the work.”

  John set his coffee cup on the piano just as Nancy slid a saucer beneath it. “We’ll have slaves a-plenty right across the river if Atchison has his way in Kansas,” he said.

  “Do you think there’ll be fighting?” Billy looked to Jabez.

  “Yes, I do,” Jabez said. “There’re too many hotheads on both sides to let the territories vote in peace on something as divisive as slavery.”

  “You don’t think Kansas settlers will vote to organize free?” John asked.

  “If there were such a thing as a legitimate Kansas settler who’s there to grow wheat and vegetables and cattle, sure they would. But there’s no such thing.”

  “Atchison says he’ll send five hundred Missouri men into Kansas to vote pro-slave,” Billy added.

  “Then six hundred New England men will vote free-soil,” Sam said.

  “That’s the point,” Jabez said. “The real issue isn’t slavery but sectionalism. It’s whether one set of opinions prevails over another, one group of men has the power to tell another how to live. And the argument will be condensed into an area about the size of Holt County. A keg of gunpowder.”

  John tamped tobacco into his pipe. “I would agree if the subject were any other. If we were talking about an agrarian society versus an industrial society, or religion, say. But we’re talking about slavery.
We’re talking about basic humanity, basic rights. Surely one group of men has the right to tell another group that what they’re doing is wrong.”

  “Papa’s right.” Elizabeth said. Her gray eyes flashed in the lamplight. “Slavery’s a national disgrace. We simply must do something about it.”

  “We’re a laughingstock around the civilized world,” John said. “Our influence and credibility are finished. The press in England and France ridicule us daily. It’s bound to affect our trade.”

  “England and France look down their noses at the same time they buy up the South’s cotton,” Jabez said. “If the slave society were to dissolve today, they’d cry bloody hell from here to kingdom come when the price of cotton shoots sky high. Their manufactories can’t survive without our slave labor.” He nodded to Nancy. “My apologies, ladies.”

  “I wonder,” Agnes said, “that America can hold together with north and south thinking so differently. It’s like England and Ireland—very different cultures. And they’re forever squabbling.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Jabez said, jabbing an unlit cigar in her direction. He was unaccountably pleased they were in agreement, and he smiled at her. “The question that’ll split us is whether the country should be united at all costs. Or whether it should divide into separate nations, like in Europe.” He poured himself a finger of brandy from the decanter at his elbow. “The result could be civil war, and the loss of life would be stupendous. Is anything worth that kind of tragedy? I think not.”

  “Then nothing’s worth war?” Sam asked. He scowled at Jabez. “Man, I think you don’t value your country.”

  “You question my patriotism?” Jabez said quietly, holding Sam’s gaze.

  Billy frowned. “Pa, That’s not fair. He fought in the last war.”

  Sam’s broad face reddened. “Watch your tongue, boy,” he growled. It was Billy’s turn to flush.

  Jabez kept his eyes on Sam’s. The man reminded him of the tedious New Englanders he’d known in Maine, and he hectored Billy abominably.

  “The slave power—”

  “Hogwash!” Jabez slammed his empty glass on the table. Rachel’s head shot up. Children stirred. “There’s no such thing as the slave power, there’s nothing but a small class of rich spoiled landowners who can’t abide the thought of change. They can’t agree on anything—couldn’t agree on Texas, couldn’t agree on the Mexican War, couldn’t agree on the Compromise—how in heaven’s name can anyone call them a power? That’s just abolitionist bug-bite and moonshine!” He dropped back in his chair and slapped his palms on his knees.

  Agnes put a hand to her face. Jabez had the sense she was concealing a laugh.

  Billy sent a defiant look to his pa and spoke up. “You think secession’s legal, doc?”

  Jabez’s temper waned. He wondered who Agnes was laughing at and hoped it wasn’t him. “It can be argued,” he said. “I do think there are principles worth fighting for. I just don’t see that union is one of those. Is it any better to be governed by eastern seaboard aristocrats a thousand miles away than to be governed by hereditary aristocrats in England? The continent’s too big to be governed as one country. It must and will break into pieces.” His voice softened. “The question is whether it can be done peaceably. I’ve seen war. I’ve seen what it does to armies and to the civil population alike, and I tell you, forcing these two sides to live with each other in a marriage of hellish proportions is not worth the carnage. The two sections must let each other go.”

  John studied his friend. “Then you side with the southerners?”

  “I side with no one,” Jabez said. “I’m disgusted with the whole lot. Politicians take up the torch so they may go electioneering. Northerners need a cause that’ll allow them to form a new party and ride it to power. The south will decide it’s being put upon and fight them every step of the way. Both sides are unprincipled, childish and hotheaded. I can’t subscribe to that kind of irresponsibility.”

  Rachel stood. “Sam, we need to start for home,” she said. “Billy, the horses please.”

  Jabez smiled at Rachel. “Your present dredged up more dissension than you bargained for, I’m thinking, Mrs. Canon.”

  “Yes, indeed, Doctor, more than we need on Christmas Eve I think,” Rachel said.

  “But isn’t that what Mrs. Stowe had in mind?” Agnes asked. She stood, the sleeping James cradled in her arms. “Generating discussion?”

  “I wonder,” Jabez said, “if she also intended to generate war.”

  “It won’t come to that,” said Sam, “Right-thinking men won’t allow it.” His look continued black. “And Doctor, there’ll come a time when you get off the horse on one side or th’other in this business. I hope to God A’mighty you make the right choice.”

  Jabez fixed him with a stare. “I know exactly where I stand, Sam. And I’ll do everything I can to prevail.”

  18

  April 1854

  Ice crackled in puddles among the shadows, and on St. Joseph’s main street, horse turds steamed as they melted the mud around them. Jabez pulled Jupiter to a stop in front of the first of a half dozen smithies and leaned on his pommel.

  “St. Joe’s grown since last I came through,” he said to John, who reined in alongside. “I’m guessing they aim to give Kansas Town a run for its money.”

  John nodded and swung off his mount. “Full of free-soilers, I’m thinking.” He backed up to his horse’s left hind leg and picked up the hoof. “Damn nail broke right off. Be back in a minute.” He handed the reins to Jabez and disappeared into the forge.

  Jabez turned in his seat to look for the others. Sam and J.W. Moodie trailed a block behind, Billy and Galen Crow brought up the rear. The four men wound their way through wagons and oxen-carts, past shoppers and drovers. Under a lowering sky and a chill breeze, steamboats packed the Missouri River, lately freed of ice. On every side Jabez heard the flat, nasal accents of Boston, New York, Connecticut, Maine—the accents of New England. Free-soilers, like John said. Free-soilers and abolitionists.

  John was back. “He can do it now. You want to wait or head on? I can catch you up.”

  Sam’s big black stallion nosed up next to Jupiter and snuffled. “We’ll wait,” Sam said. “Atchison can bide his time.”

  Jabez settled onto a bench outside the smithy with a chunk of bread and a slice of cheese and watched Billy water the horses. Senator Atchison had requested a meeting with a delegation of men from Holt County, and Sam thought it’d be educational for the boy to ride along.

  Moodie lowered his bulk next to Jabez. “Strike a flint and this place’ll blow sky high,” he said, pulling a chunk of dried beef out of his pocket. “Those fellows over there ain’t looking too happy to have New Englanders amongst them.” He waved his beef at a knot of men gathered in front of the dry-goods store. Jabez recognized the type, men he saw every day in Holt County, in the backwoods of Noddaway and the bottomlands of the Platte River.

  Galen Crow squatted on his heels in front of them, drew a stag-handled knife from its sheath and carved into an apple. “Me neither. Them folks should stay home where they belong.”

  “Now Galen,” Moodie said, “Doc here’s a New England man himself. Ain’t all bad.”

  “The doc didn’t bring any foreign ideas when he come here,” Crow said.

  “Don’t seem to me claiming a homestead and making a farm is exactly a foreign idea.” Moodie pushed his hat to the back of his head.

  “Them New Englanders might as well be Russians.” Crow tossed his apple core at a stray cat and drew in the dust with the tip of his knife. “Don’t you think so, Doc?”

  Jabez brushed crumbs from his waistcoat and pulled a kerchief from his pocket. “I think there’s trouble coming, boys, that’s what I think.”

  They left St. Joe on the inland road and by sunset were a mile outside Gower. A graveled drive wound through low hills
and across a smooth-shaven lawn. Thick stands of rhododendron fronted a two-story brick mansion, a balustraded balcony stretched the length of the second floor, paddocks and outbuildings nestled in the rear.

  The men dismounted at the broad steps, and Negro boys appeared to take their horses. A black butler, in livery, stood at the open door, the faint sound of male laughter and the scent of expensive cigar smoke wafting onto the veranda. “Mr. Canon … Doctor Robinson,” a voice boomed from the hallway. “Welcome, welcome! And Mr. Jackson.” David Rice Atchison, Missouri’s senior senator, shook John’s hand. “Congratulations, sir, congratulations on your appointment as school commissioner. The education of Holt County’s scholars is in excellent hands.” The Senator stood well over six feet tall, a heavy shock of hair sweeping above a high forehead. An embroidered blue-and-gold collar hung with gilded medallions encircled his neck, the badge of his office as Grand Master of the Clinton County Masonic Lodge. A half-smoked cigar waved from fleshy fingers.

  “And Judge Canon.” He turned to Sam. “I understand you’re Holt County’s newest man on the bench? Sam, unsmiling, took the offered hand.

  “Mr. Crow, Mr. Moodie.” He gestured to his companions. “Officers in our lodge. Holt County businessmen.” Hands shook all around. “You know Doctor Robinson. John Jackson. My son, William.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, of course, delighted, sir, delighted.” The Senator swept a hand down the hall, scattering ash as he herded his guests toward a room to the left. “Shed your wraps and join us in the library, gentlemen. There’s a goodly representation of Missouri grandees gathered. You must meet them.”

  He ushered them into an overstuffed parlor where a fire cackled in a fireplace the height of a man and flashed off brass knickknacks, mahogany upholstered in rubbed velvet, crystal decanters. A tumbler of whiskey appeared for each of the new arrivals—refused only by Mr. Moodie, a teetotaler—before the men could take stock of the company. Atchison waved them to seats.