Appomattox Saga Omnibus 2: Three Books In One (Appomatox Saga)

by Gilbert, Morris

  “You owe that young woman a great deal, don’t you, Burke?” Susanna asked.

  “Just about everything, I guess.” A thought came to him, and he blinked. “I’ve got to let her know I’m alive!”

  Thomas said slowly, “That might not be wise…not right now.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “Son, you’re out of a Confederate prison on temporary release.” Burke listened with shock as his father spoke of the terms of his release. “You’ll have to defend yourself as soon as you’re able,” Thomas said. “I think when the authorities hear the full story, they’ll understand. But you were wearing a Yankee uniform, so it might be best if you didn’t contact the young woman until this thing is cleared up.”

  Burke’s face was a study in bafflement. “So I could be shot for treason? That’s what it amounts to?”

  “Oh, it won’t come to that, my boy! We have the ear of the president, you see.”

  “Jefferson Davis.”

  “Yes, of course! He agreed to your release when one of your relatives went to Mrs. Davis with your story.”

  Burke listened incredulously as Thomas told him the machinations that had gotten him out of Libby Prison, but when his father finished, he shook his head, doubt clouding his eyes. “I don’t think the president will be too sympathetic to a Confederate soldier who fought against the South in the Union Army.”

  Thomas tried to put the best face on Burke’s chances, but later when he and Susanna were alone, he was less optimistic. “Burke’s got a point,” he admitted. “We’ve got to get on this thing right now. When will Clay be here?”

  “He’s so busy, Thomas, with the new men and the training. Do you think we should send for him?”

  “No.” Thomas gave her an adamant look, then said, “I’ll go see the president.”

  “You’re not able—!” she began to protest, but a look from her husband silenced her. She had never seen such determination in his eyes.

  “Susanna,” he said, his voice stronger than it had been in weeks, “I’ll get my son out of this trouble even if I have to die for it!”

  The city of Richmond was a microcosm of the larger world. The new nation had not learned very well how to forge cannons or produce gunpowder, but it had a system of gossip equal to that of any nation.

  The story of Burke Rocklin was too good to be kept secret, and it was not long before everyone who was anyone had some version of it.

  Thomas Rocklin got his first warning that getting Burke set free from the charges against him would not be simple when he spoke to Davis’s secretary. “The president is very busy, sir,” he was told. “Perhaps you should put your request in writing. Or perhaps you should go through a member of the military staff?”

  Thomas did both, but neither accomplished much. He found Clay, and the two of them discovered that while Varina Davis had great influence over her husband, the president was listening to others, as well. They finally talked to a member of Davis’s cabinet, who said, “Don’t use my name, if you please, but I think it fair to tell you that the president is under pressure to see that your son is charged with desertion. You’d better start looking for a good lawyer.”

  The strain had worn Thomas down, and when they left the office, Clay said, “Sir, you must go home!” His father looked ghastly, thin, and sallow, and he insisted on taking him home to Gracefield—which Thomas finally agreed to only when Clay promised he would persist in trying to see the president.

  One tangible result of the talk about Burke Rocklin was a visit paid to Gracefield by one Belinda King. She had been on a visit to Lynchburg and had received the news by means of a letter from Chad Barnes. He had pursued her with determination since the “death” of Burke Rocklin, and Chad lost no time in letting her know what had happened. In a short letter, he had written:

  You will hear it soon enough, and I would rather you would hear it from me. The man we buried was not Burke Rocklin. He is alive and at Gracefield.

  When Belinda read this information, her eyes grew large, and she scanned the rest of the short letter avidly. Barnes related how the president himself had paroled Burke, but there was cynicism in his written remarks concerning Burke’s loss of memory:

  The story is that he lost his memory and didn’t even know he was in the Confederate Army. Not only that, but he joined the Union Army and fought against our brave fellows at Fredericksburg. Well, I find that a little hard to swallow! There will be a trial or a hearing of some sort, of course. I know you will want to return at once. When you return, I will take you to see Burke myself. What this will do to what we have been feeling I am not sure. It will not change my feelings, but you are very romantic. I warn you now, Belinda, I am convinced that Burke Rocklin is an opportunist. He set out to marry you for your money, and it is my belief that somehow when he was captured, he sold out his country to avoid being sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

  Belinda was romantic. She knew full well that the trial of Burke Rocklin would be a sensational affair, and she longed to be there. She packed at once and sent a wire to Barnes, and he was there when she stepped off the train.

  He kissed her, held her hard, then let her go. “Belinda, I’m going to fight for you. I warn you now, I’ll do all I can to prove that Burke Rocklin isn’t worthy of you.”

  This was an exciting statement to Belinda. To have two attractive men fighting for her hand—and in full view of Richmond—was thrilling. She put her hand on Barnes’s broad chest and whispered, “I want to do the right thing, Chad.”

  He studied her, then smiled. “You will, Belinda. Now let’s go see the famous man who’s fought in both the blue and the gray!”

  CHAPTER 19

  TWO VISITORS FOR BURKE

  The terrible casualties suffered by the Union Army at Fredericksburg sent shock waves throughout the North. The Peace Party stepped up its efforts to allow the South to go its own way. President Lincoln knew that they were a formidable power and feared that all the blood shed by the Union would be for nothing. It took all the moral force Lincoln possessed to keep the North from giving up, and in one sense, the winter of 1862 marked the high tide of the Confederacy.

  Burnside, agonizing over his losses, withdrew the Army of the Potomac to the north bank of the Rappahannock, still determined to keep the initiative and exploit his impressive numerical superiority over Lee. But all were agreed: Burnside had to go. By January of 1863, his attempt to move upstream and cross the upper Rappahannock behind Lee’s left flank foundered in liquid mud, so Burnside told Lincoln either he must have a new staff or Lincoln had to accept his resignation.

  Lincoln found that the leadership of the ill-starred Army of the Potomac was only one of his problems, for the Union was suffering setbacks in other areas.

  On the Mississippi, Sherman’s first drive on Vicksburg had been stopped in its tracks on December 29 at Chickasaw Bluff. At Chickasaw Bluff, Lieutenant General John Pemberton, commanding the Vicksburg sector, drove back Sherman, who suffered more than seventeen hundred casualties. Hard-riding Confederate cavalry had captured Grant’s supply base at Holly Springs a week earlier, and Grant withdrew to build up a new base at Milliken’s Bend, twenty miles north of Vicksburg and on the wrong bank of the river—the west bank.

  And so, by the New Year of 1863, it was clear that there would be no more runaway Union victories on the Mississippi and that the campaign against Vicksburg would be long and hard. Even so, despite pressure from those who believed Grant’s drinking was a serious liability, Lincoln refused point-blank to replace him. “I can’t spare this man,” was his terse comment. “He fights.”

  The news was equally dismaying from central Tennessee. On December 26, Rosecrans marched out of Nashville to attack the Army of Tennessee under General Bragg at Murfreesboro and drive on to Chattanooga, 125 miles to the southeast. But on December 31, 1862, Bragg struck first, staging an uncanny replay of Shiloh by unleashing a storming attack on Rosecrans. As at Shiloh, the attacking Confederates bent the tortured U
nion Army into a horseshoe before its desperate resistance took effect. Repeated Confederate assaults only increased the toll in casualties without winning the battle.

  The cost of Murfreesboro was proportionately worse than that of Fredericksburg, as terrible as that had been! Rosecrans, with an army far smaller than Burnside’s, lost the same number of men: thirteen thousand. True, Bragg had lost ten thousand and could not find replacements, but the North reeled under the shock of such losses. Bragg was forced to withdraw, and Lincoln claimed a Union victory, but it was a hollow claim.

  And so it was that, with the Union war machine stopped dead in its tracks in Tennessee and on the Mississippi, Lincoln shrank from the prospect of choosing a new commander for the Army of the Potomac. Finally forced to do so, he made one of the most extraordinary appointments in modern military history.

  To “Fighting Joe Hooker,” the most outspoken of Burnside’s critics, Lincoln wrote a devastating letter of rebuke—and at the same time appointed Hooker to command the army! Lincoln poured scorn on Hooker’s assertions that both the army and the government needed a dictator. “Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators,” wrote Lincoln. And he ended, “Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”

  Lincoln had made a poor choice, indeed, as the future would prove. Hooker was a good organizer and made some reforms, but he was far better at blustering than he was at fighting. “My plans are perfect,” he announced grandly. “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none!”

  And so the two armies and the two nations fell back and waited as 1863 was born. An unusually foul North Virginia winter enforced a virtual two months’ truce, and both North and South prepared for the bloodbath that spring would bring.

  As ever, the North had all the material advantages, and Hooker made admirable use of them. By the last week of April of the New Year, he would build up the Army of the Potomac to a greater-than-ever strength of 130,000 and proclaim that it was “the finest army on the planet!”

  Lee would be less sanguine. In February he would send Longstreet’s corps to the lower James River to cover Union forces, and by the end of April Longstreet would still not return to join Lee. Thus Lee would have barely sixty thousand effectives to hold Hooker.

  Even so, the South was accustomed to long odds. Lee and Jackson had taken on all that the North could throw at them and had sent them running back to Washington. That winter in Richmond, prices were high—but so were the hopes of the Confederacy. Rumors were flying that England would recognize the new nation soon, and it seemed likely that the Peace Party in the North would bring such pressure on Lincoln that he would be forced to let the South go its own way.

  This resurgence of optimism might have been good for the Southern Confederacy, but it made things difficult for Burke Rocklin.

  He had recovered from his physical ailments almost at once. He sat up for three days, eating the heaping meals brought to him by his mother and by Dorrie and sleeping long hours. During his waking hours, his mother sat with him, reading to him and speaking of his past. She did so easily and naturally, and whether it was her constant bringing before him the details of the past, or simply the natural restorative powers of nature, was not clear, but he found himself remembering many things.

  The beginning of this recovery came one afternoon when Susanna was musing about an event that took place when Burke had been six years old. It was a simple story about how Burke and Clay had gotten into trouble. As she spoke, Burke listened almost carelessly, until suddenly he was struck by a memory so clear that he exclaimed, “I remember that! Clay was sixteen and I was only six! He took me with him over to the Huger place!”

  Susanna blinked with surprise. “You remember that? You were only six years old!”

  “I remember it all,” Burke said, his eyes wide. “Clay got drunk with Charlie and Devoe Huger. They took me with them when they went into a saloon in Richmond, and Father came in like a storm and hauled us both home. He gave Clay a whipping, and I thought he was going to start on me. But he said, ‘It’s not your fault, Burke,’ and I wanted to cry I was so relieved!”

  “Burke, that’s wonderful! Thank God!”

  Burke looked at her, his eyes filled with wonder. “That’s what Grace would say,” he said finally. “She always said God would give me back my past.”

  “She sounds like a fine girl,” Susanna said quietly. “You think of her a great deal, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Burke nodded. “She filled my whole world, Mother. I didn’t have a past, and she was there to fill my present.”

  “I’d love to meet her, son.”

  Burke brought his mind back to the present. “You’re not likely to, I guess,” he said slowly. “Looks like I’m headed for the gallows.” He shook his head in a disgusted manner and summoned up a smile. “I hate a man who feels sorry for himself!” he exclaimed. He drew his lips together into a firm line, adding, “I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I could have been killed at Fredericksburg, or crippled.”

  They sat there quietly, and then Burke reached over and took his mother’s hand. “I’ve got a fine family,” he said. “I used to wonder what it would be like if I got my memory back and found things so bad I couldn’t stand it. But I found you and Father—and that’s miracle enough for me!”

  Susanna felt suddenly that she had her son back—all of him. She lifted her arms and put them around Burke’s neck. “Tell your father that, Burke,” she whispered.

  “I will.” He held his mother, then drew back, shaking his head. “He doesn’t need the trouble I’ve brought him. When he comes home, you’ve got to keep him here.”

  Susanna shook her head. “No, Burke. Your father has had great fears about himself—he’s always felt that his brother Stephen was far above him—but now he’s shown his family, and himself, that he’s a great man. I pray for him every day, but if he dies, he’ll die happy, knowing that his family respects and admires him.”

  Burke had suspected some of this and nodded slowly. “When he comes back, I’ll make it plain how much I admire him.” He smiled and said, “Now tell me some more about what a wonderful child I was, perfect in all my ways!” He sat back, listening as she began to speak, and the following day when his father came home, he made it a point to express his thanks. Thomas was exhausted, but when Burke spoke, his eyes grew bright. Finally he held out his thin hand and clasped his son’s hand, saying huskily, “It makes me feel so good to hear you say these things, Burke!”

  “I mean it, sir!”

  Thomas sat slumped in his chair, racked with pain but warmed by the knowledge that he had won the approval of his sons. “You know, Burke,” he said slowly, “I’ve spent a great deal of time grieving over my youth. I’ve wasted most of my life.”

  “Oh, don’t say that!”

  “It’s true enough. I had everything that most men long for and never have: money, position, a good wife. And I didn’t know how blessed I was.” He lifted his gaze, adding with a smile, “But God has restored to me the years that the locusts had eaten.”

  Burke looked puzzled. “What’s that, sir?”

  “It’s from the Old Testament, from the book of Joel. God’s people disobeyed Him, as I remember it, and He sent terrible judgments on them. One of them was a plague of locusts that devoured their crops and brought a famine on the land.”

  “I seem to remember Grace saying something about that.”

  “Well, it was terrible, but God said to them, If you’ll turn back to Me, ‘I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.’”

  “How could God do that?” Burke frowned. “When time is gone, it’s gone, isn’t it?”

  Thomas suddenly felt that Burke was a man who was searching after God—and it thrilled him. Clay had been a wild young man, but now he was a fervent Christian. Now Thomas was filled with a longing to see his other son find peace with God, and he wished that Susanna were present to help. But he
prayed quickly for the right words and said, “Not always, son. Oh, the time itself is gone. Time doesn’t stay for any man, does it? But God can change things so that the past doesn’t control us. Don’t you think so?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Burke said slowly. “If a man gets drunk and sleeps on the railroad track and gets his leg cut off, he’ll never have that leg again.”

  “True enough,” Thomas said, nodding. “We have to live with the results of what we do. But when a man gives himself to God, the Lord can fill his life with something new and better. I think that’s what the verse means. God was promising to give his people something better than what they had.” He hesitated, then shook his head. “I’m doing a poor job of explaining,” he said.

  “No, I can see what you mean.” Burke leaned forward, his dark eyes intent. “I’ve pretty well wasted my life,” he stated. “Mother’s been telling me about myself. She’s always kind, but I can tell I don’t have much to be proud of.”

  “Neither did your brother,” Thomas countered. “Not for many years. He ran out on his family, and no one had a good word for him. He even became a slave trader. But since he became a Christian, God has given him something wonderful, and I know He’s going to reward him even more for his faithfulness.”

  Burke shook his head. “Your sons…we haven’t been much pleasure to you, sir.”

  Thomas said at once, “I’m not a prophet, Burke, but God’s given me an assurance that both my sons will be men of honor and will bring honor to the name of Rocklin.”

  Burke was filled with doubt. Shaking his head, he said, “Be hard to do that if I’m hanged as a traitor.”

  “That will never happen, Burke! I’ll fight it to my last breath!”

  “That’s what you mustn’t do,” Burke said quickly. “You’ve done all you can, Father.”