Antebellum BK 1

by Jeffry S. Hepple

  “Read it,” the voice replied. “I can hear you.”

  “Very well.” Stuart struggled to keep the flag erect while he opened the sealed message. “Colonel Lee, United States Army, commanding the troops sent by the President of the United States to suppress the insurrection at this place, demands the surrender of the persons in the armory buildings. If they will peaceably surrender themselves and restore the pillaged property, they shall be kept in safety to await the orders of the President. Colonel Lee represents to them, in all frankness, that it is impossible for them to escape; that the armory is surrounded on all sides by troops; and that if he is compelled to take them by force he cannot answer for their safety.” Stuart looked over his shoulder, then back toward the building. “Do you understand the terms offered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you surrender?”

  “No. I prefer to die here.”

  Stuart did a smart about face, marched back and saluted Colonel Lee. “He refuses to surrender, sir,” he said, unnecessarily.

  “Very well.” Lee replied. “Mount up. Officers rejoin your units. We will attack when all are in place.”

  Stuart gave the white flag to a sergeant, took the reins of his horse and swung up into the saddle. “Here we go at last.” He winked at Lieutenant Paul Van Buskirk and kicked his horse into a canter.

  On Stuart’s command, a storming party of Marines carrying sledgehammers rushed the doors of the firehouse. Because the doors were tied closed with rope, the first attempts with the sledgehammers failed. The reserve was then brought forward and the men used a heavy ladder as a battering ram to burst through. One Marine was shot in the throat as they entered, but the others swarmed in with fixed bayonets and quickly killed or overpowered the belligerents. After a brief sword duel, Lieutenant Israel Green of the Marines wounded John Brown and took him prisoner.

  ~

  “Anyone with sense can see that John Brown’s a madman, Pea,” Jeb Stuart shouted.

  “You had better lower your voice,” Paul Van Buskirk said in a warning tone.

  Stuart flapped his arms. “All right, all right. I’m sorry. But your sour attitude has ruined my good spirits.”

  “Your good spirits are ill-conceived,” Paul shot back. “Brown may well be a madman, but he represents a growing number of people who are willing to sacrifice themselves to end slavery. Can’t you see the implications in that?”

  “Of course I see. It’s very clear that the South must defend herself against that growing number.”

  Paul looked away for a moment. “I’m going to put in for a transfer, Beauty.”

  “What?” Stuart’s eyes popped.

  “I don’t fit in here. With the exception of a handful, the officers and men are all Virginians with fierce loyalties to the State. I’m a Texan with strong ties to the Union. Virginia means nothing to me.”

  “Oh, wait. No, no, no. You can’t transfer, Pea. You’re my brother. You can’t leave me.”

  “I can’t continue to bite my tongue while you and the others talk of secession and forming a southern confederacy,” Paul said. “If that happens, I’ll be defending the Union. I don’t fit in here. This is no place for me.”

  “Very well.” Stuart was making a visible effort to calm down. “I agree that there’s some friction, but up until now you’ve seemed to handle it well. What’s brought this on so suddenly?”

  Paul sighed. “I might as well tell you. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What?” Stuart asked.

  “Do you recall the conversation we had with my Aunt Anna yesterday?”

  “Indeed. How could I forget? Handsome woman. And so intelligent.”

  “You may want to revise your opinion of her after you read this.” He took a folded page from inside his tunic. “That will appear in the New York Times in the next few days.”

  Stuart skimmed the article, then stopped and reread a paragraph. “The bitch.”

  “Indeed.”

  “That was said lightheartedly, between friends.”

  “Keep reading.”

  “It’s worse?”

  “Read her quote of me.”

  Stuart searched ahead. “Granny Lee? I don’t recall you ever using that disparaging term.”

  “I never use it when you’re present because I know it would offend you.”

  “Why would you use it at all? Colonel Lee is a fine man and these kinds of slurs can hurt his career.”

  “I said it to be funny. I wish I hadn’t, but there it is.”

  Stuart handed him the page. “Yes. Your resignation is in order. God speed, Lieutenant.”

  October 19, 1859

  Arlington, Virginia

  Lieutenant Johnny Van Buskirk handed the clipping back to his brother. “You’re making too much of this, Pea. I’m quite certain that Colonel Lee will forgive you for calling him Granny.”

  “My mind is made up,” Paul said emphatically. “I’m resigning.”

  “Resigning? I thought you said you were going to request a transfer.”

  “I did. But now I’ve changed my mind. I’m resigning my commission. You should do the same. We could go back to Texas and start a ranch.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. Take a transfer, and then if you still feel the same way at Christmas, I’ll consider resigning with you.”

  “You’ll consider? That’s not much of a commitment.”

  “It’s more commitment than I want to make, but I’ll go that far because you’re my brother.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’ve begun to like it here.”

  Johnny shrugged. “The girls are not as bad as you said.”

  “Oh please. They’re sticky-sweet, cold as ice and insincere.”

  “I kinda like the sticky, insincere sweetness of them. Once you have it figured out, they’re easy to thaw. These Southern gentleman always take no for an answer. If you’re not a gentleman, the ice melts and they’re just like Northern girls. In their heart of hearts, they prefer naughty to nice.”

  “If one of these Southern Belles gets her hooks in you…”

  “Stop.” Johnny raised his hand. “I’m a grownup now.”

  “I’m still requesting a transfer, Grownup.”

  “Good.”

  “But we’ll discuss it at Christmas.”

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t you dare become one of them before Christmas.”

  “One of whom?”

  “Southerners.”

  “Not likely, but no promises. If I find the girl, anything’s possible.”

  December 24, 1859

  Van Buskirk Point, New Jersey

  Johnny shook his head. “I didn’t want to believe it either, Pea, but I checked after Fitz told me and it’s all true. She was selling herself on the street. Uncle Jack found out, resigned his commission and left California to escape the scandal.”

  “Mother always said that Clementine was a tramp,” Paul muttered. “I didn’t want to believe her.”

  “Nor did I.” Johnny shook his head sadly. “She was so pretty and vivacious that I wanted her to be all that Uncle Jack thought she was.”

  “God damn all women.”

  Nancy popped her head into the living room, then stopped and walked through the arched doorway. “Who died?” She looked from Paul to Johnny and back.

  “Pea says he’s going to resign his commission,” Johnny replied.

  Nancy walked a few steps further into the room and raised an eyebrow in Paul’s direction. “Why, Pea?”

  Paul shrugged. “I’m not sure I can explain it.”

  “He asked for a transfer from Virginia because of the animosity toward northerners,” Johnny said. “Now he wants to resign.”

  Nancy thought a moment. “So you haven’t resigned yet, Pea?”

  He shook his head. “I discussed it with my commanding officer. He advised me to take thirty days leave and discuss it with the family.”

  “I think that’s sound advice,” Nancy said.

/>   “I can’t get to Texas and back in thirty days,” Pea replied.

  “No,” Nancy agreed, “but you can discuss it with Robert, Anna and Johnny while you’re here.”

  Paul nodded, but the expression on his face told her clearly that what he really wanted was his father’s advice and not that of his uncle, aunt or younger brother.

  “What can your father offer that we can’t?” Nancy asked.

  “Southern perspective,” Paul replied.

  Nancy nodded, waited a moment, then started toward the door but stopped again. “Johnny. I thought I should mention that Caitlin and her fiancé will be here tomorrow.”

  Johnny looked surprised for a moment, then covered it with a grin. “Terrific.”

  Nancy watched his face for a moment, then left the room.

  “What was that all about?” Paul asked.

  Johnny shook his head.

  “Come on,” Paul insisted. “What don’t I know?”

  Johnny sighed. “Kate Chase threw me over for some damn lawyer. So yesterday, without mentioning it to anyone, I rode over to Liberty Hall to call on Caitlin. She introduced me to her fiancé. I confessed it all to Aunt Nancy when I got back here.”

  Paul rolled his eyes. “Did you expect Caitlin to just rush into your arms?”

  “Well,” Johnny ducked his head sheepishly. “If the truth be told, yes I did. She was so heartbroken when I told her I was seeing Kate...” He laughed. “I guess her heartbreak was either an act or her heart mended very quickly.”

  “Women are manipulative at their core,” Paul said vehemently. “They’re actors always playing to an audience. Every word, every move, every swish of their skirts and flutter of their eyelashes is calculated to advance some hidden agenda. Never trust a woman. They lie when the truth would serve them better.”

  Anna had come into the room and had heard Paul’s bitter soliloquy. “Goodness, Pea. Some woman has wounded you to the core.”

  Paul shook his head. “Not me.”

  “Then who are you talking about?” Anna asked.

  “At the moment we’re talking about Uncle Jack,” Paul said peevishly. “The most promising of us all.”

  Anna knitted her brow. “What about Jack?”

  “He’s ruined by a conniving floozy of no worth,” Paul replied. “A dirty little whore with nothing of value but shapely legs and overly exposed cleavage who couldn’t keep her knees together.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say,” Anna said angrily.

  “So are you saying that you didn’t know about Clementine?” Paul asked.

  Anna hesitated. “Jack and Clementine’s business is a family secret that I’m not willing to discuss with you, Paul.”

  Paul looked at her for several seconds before answering. “You’re usually very good at discussing family secrets. Even in newspapers.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Anna asked. “Granny Lee?”

  “No,” Paul said. “It’s about why you don’t know about Clementine and Uncle Jack. Maybe you’re simply too selfish to even wonder why your brother, a full colonel in a reduced-force-army and the Military Governor of California, would suddenly resign to hide out on a New Mexico bean farm with his mother.”

  “With his mother?” Anna shook her head. “He’s living in Juarez.”

  “He’s living with Grandmother in Mesilla,” Paul said. “They told you he was in Juarez because they don’t trust you to keep the secret. No one dares tell you anything. Not your brother, your mother or your son. You can’t be trusted.”

  Anna’s lip quivered for a moment, then she turned and hurried from the room.

  “That was cruel,” Johnny said.

  Paul waved dismissively. “It was what she deserves.”

  “I agree with you that she shouldn’t have used what you said to her in a private conversation in her news article, but to use Pug, Grandmother and Uncle Jack against her was cruel.”

  “What I said was true. Mother told me. No one trusts her. Not Pug, not Uncle Jack, not Grandmother and certainly not me.”

  “That’s sad, if it’s true.” Johnny said.

  “We’re a sad lot, little brother,” Paul replied. “The great Van Buskirk family is no more.”

  “So you’re just going to drop out? You’re going to run away like a coward.”

  Paul was surprised by the fervor in Johnny’s voice. “I’m not dropping out of the family. I’m resigning from the army.”

  “You’re abandoning our family’s values and our country when it needs you more than ever.”

  “Which country,” Paul shouted. “Our father’s made it clear that he’ll raise a regiment and join the confederacy if Texas secedes.”

  “Dad thinks only of his business,” Johnny shouted back. “He doesn’t want any government telling him what to do. Nothing else matters to him but his profits. He’s already so rich he could buy his own God damned country”

  “Here, here,” Robert hurried into the room. “What’s all this shouting and cursing about?”

  “It’s complicated,” Paul replied.

  Robert looked at the clock. “Is it so complicated that you can’t explain it to me in the two hours we have left before the tree trimming?”

  Neither boy answered.

  “Pea?” Robert asked.

  “I hate the South,” Paul said. “I’m resigning from the army.”

  “You mean you’re ashamed that you love the South,” Robert corrected. He held up his hand to keep Paul from replying. “You grew up in Texas which has strong ties to the South and strong feelings about States’ Rights. But slavery isn’t prevalent or even noticeable in Central Texas, so Virginia and the Deep South have been a shock.”

  Paul opened his mouth to argue but changed his mind.

  “Slavery is a divisive issue even in the South,” Robert continued. “If you truly believe it to be wrong, your duty is to stay and try to change it.”

  “It isn’t just slavery,” Paul said. “It’s the arrogance of the white gentry. Beauty Stuart told me not to mention to anyone that Mother’s half Montauk or that Grandmother’s Mexican.” He glanced at his brother. “I’ve never been ashamed of who I was before but…”

  “That’s your fault,” Johnny interrupted. “If you’re ashamed of Mother and Grandmother it’s not the fault of the South or of Jeb Stuart. It’s yours. All yours.”

  Paul spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have to get away from there. It’s turning me into someone that I don’t want to be.”

  January 3, 1860

  Arlington, Virginia

  An aura of calm surrounded Colonel Robert E. Lee even though his eyes glittered like black diamonds. “I do understand your dilemma, Lieutenant Van Buskirk, I really do. And I take no offense at your reference to me as Granny Lee. I have had many nicknames since I was a plebe at West Point. Granny is perhaps the least offensive and the most affectionate.”

  He looked out over the manicured lawn of his plantation. “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but being whipped and chained by a white man hardly seems a step up from being whipped and chained by a black man,” Paul replied.

  “The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things.”

  “Better things like freedom, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “When will they see it, Colonel?”

  “How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. Christian influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Savior have r
equired nearly two thousand years to convert only a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations, what gross errors still exist.

  “While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.”

  “I fear that the abolitionists are unwilling to wait thousands of years, sir.”

  “Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right nor the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor – still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course.”

  “Evil course, sir? Freeing the slaves is evil?”

  “Evil, indeed.” Lee nodded. “Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?”

  Paul looked away. “I don’t think that we will ever see eye to eye on this, sir.”

  “Then we will speak of it no more,” Lee said. “Your request for transfer is denied. You may, of course, resign your commission if you wish, but I sincerely hope and pray that your better angels will prevail and show you your duty.”

  Paul said nothing.

  “I will be leaving for San Antonio, Texas, next month to assume command of the Second Regiment of Cavalry,” Lee said after a few moments. “I had hoped that you, your brother and Lieutenant Stuart would accompany me.”

  “Texas?” Paul’s eyebrows went up for a moment, then the troubled expression returned. “I fear that I have lost the friendship of Lieutenant Stuart, sir.”

  “Nonsense. He loves you like a brother. He’s waiting for you at his quarters. And, if I am not mistaken, your brother in blood is with him there.”