Whenever Schlieffen thought of the Kaiser's soldierly career, he could only marvel, for Wilhelm had first seen action in the Prussian puppet forces that fought under Napoleon's command when the century was young. "How many men still living can say that?" Schlieffen murmured. And afterwards, Wilhelm had helped guide Prussia's rise to greatness, had known when to urge his brother to decline the throne of a united Germany after the revolutions of 1848, and had known when to accept it himself a generation later.
From the Kaiser's portrait, Schlieffen's eyes fell briefly to the small photograph of a pretty young woman on his desk: the one bit of sentiment he permitted himself in a room otherwise utterly businesslike. Anna had been his cousin as well as, for four wonderful years, his wife. In the nine years since her death in childbed, he'd found it easier to care for the ideal of Germany than for any merely human being.
He inked his pen and wrote the last few sentences of the report he'd been working on. After scrawling his signature at the bottom, he checked his pocket watch: a few minutes past ten. He had a ten-thirty appointment at the War Department.
Precise as always, he signed the daybook in the front hall, noting his departure time to the minute. The guards outside the door saluted as he left the embassy. He punctiliously returned the courtesy.
He walked half a block southeast on Massachusetts, then turned right onto Vermont, which cut diagonally across Washington's square grid and led straight toward the White House and the War Department building just west of it. Civilians waved to him, mistaking his light blue uniform for one belonging to the U.S. Army. He'd had U.S. soldiers make the same mistake and salute him.
He ignored the misdirected greetings, as he ignored most human contact. Then a fat man on a pony that didn't seem up to bearing his weight recognized the uniform for what it was. "Hurrah for the Kaiser!" the fellow called, and tipped his hat. Schlieffen acknowledged that with a polite nod. The Kaiser was popular in the United States, not least because his army had beaten the French.
Newsboys hawked papers on every corner. Headlines screamed of coming war. Schlieffen's glance lifted toward the Arlington Heights on the far side of the Potomac. Buildings screened most of his view of them, but he knew they were there. He also knew the Confederate States had guns mounted on them, and on other high ground along the southern bank of the river. If war came, Washington would suffer.
More soldiers were on the streets than usual, but not many more. Unlike Germany, the United States had no conscription law, relying instead on volunteers to fill out the relatively small professional army once war was declared. That struck Schlieffen as the next thing to insane, even if the Confederacy used the same system. Mobs, he thought scornfully. Mobs with rifles, that's what they'll be.
The War Department was a four-story brick building with a two-story entranceway fronted by half a dozen columns. To Schlieffen's way of thinking, it would have been adequate for a provincial town, but hardly for a national capital. The Americans had talked for years of building something finer: talked, but spent no money. Still, the soldiers on duty at the entrance were almost as well drilled as the guards in front of the German embassy.
"Yes, Colonel," one of them said. "The general is expecting you, so you just follow Willie here. He'll take you to him."
"Thank you," Schlieffen said. The soldier named Willie led him up to the third-floor office where the general-in-chief of the U.S. Army carried out his duties. "Guten Tag, Heir Oberst," said the general's adjutant, a bright young captain named Saul Berryman.
"Guten Tag," Schlieffen answered, and then, as he usually did, fell back into English: "How are you today, Captain?"
"Ganz gut, danke. Und Sie?" Berryman kept up the German for the same reason Schlieffen spoke English—neither was so fluent speaking the other's language as he would have liked, and both enjoyed the chance to practice. "Der General wird Sie sofort sehen."
"I am glad he will see me at once," Schlieffen said. "He must be very busy, with the crisis in your country."
"Ja, er ist." Just then, the general opened the door to the outer room where Berryman worked. Seeing him, his adjutant returned to English himself: "Go ahead, Colonel."
"Yes, always good to see you, Colonel," Major General William Rosecrans echoed. "Come right in."
"Thank you," Schlieffen said, and took a chair across the desk from Rosecrans. The military attache's nostrils twitched. He'd smelled whiskey on Rosecrans before, but surely at a time like this—He gave a mental shrug.
"Good to see you," Rosecrans repeated, as if he'd forgotten he'd said it the first time. He was somewhere in his early sixties, with graying hair, a fairly neat graying beard, and a nose with a formidable hook in it. His color was very good, but the whiskey might have had something to do with that. He looked shrewd, but, Schlieffen judged, wasn't truly intelligent; he owed his position mostly to having come out of the War of Secession less disgraced than any other prominent U.S. commander.
"General, I am here to present my respects, and also to convey to you the friendly good wishes of my sovereign, the Kaiser," Schlieffen said.
"Of your suffering Kaiser?" Rosecrans said. "I hope he gets better, with all my heart I do. Germany has always been a country friendly to us, and we're damned glad of that, believe me, considering the way so many of the other countries in Europe treat us."
Schlieffen gave him a sharp look, or as sharp a look as could come from the military attache's nondescript, rather pinched features. Rosecrans showed not the slightest hint of embarrassment, nor even that he noticed the glare. Schlieffen concluded the fault lay in his own accented English, which Rosecrans must have innocently misunderstood. Having concluded that, the colonel dismissed the matter from his mind. If no insult had been offered, he could not take offense.
"I would be grateful, General, if you could make arrangements so that, in the event of war between the United States and the Confederate States, you might transport me to one of your armies so that I can observe the fighting and report on it to my government," he said.
"Well, if the war's not over and done with before you catch up to it, I expect we'll be able to do that," Rosecrans said. "You'll have to move sharp, though, because we ought to lick the Rebs in jig time, or Bob's your uncle."
Although Schlieffen knew he was missing some of that—the English spoken in the United States at times seemed only distantly related to what he'd learned back in Germany—the root meaning remained pretty clear. "You believe you will win so quickly and easily, then?" He did his best to keep the surprise he felt out of his voice.
"Don't you?" Rosecrans made no effort to hide his own amazement. Very few Americans, as far as Schlieffen could see, had even the least skill in disguising their thoughts and feelings: indeed, they took an odd sort of pride in wearing them on their sleeves. When Schlieffen didn't answer right away, Rosecrans repeated, "Don't you, sir? The plain fact of the matter is, they're afraid. It's plain in everything they do."
"I am nothing more than an ignorant stranger in your country," Schlieffen said, a stratagem that had often given him good results. "Would you be so kind as to explain to me why you think this is so?"
Rosecrans swelled with self-importance. "It strikes me as an obvious fact, Colonel. The government of the United States told Richmond in no uncertain terms that there would be hell to pay if a single Confederate soldier crossed over the Rio Grande. Not a one of 'em has done it. Q.E.D."
"Is it not possible that the Confederate soldiers have not yet moved only because their own preparations remain incomplete?" Schlieffen asked.
"Possible, but not likely," Rosecrans said. "They put a large force of regulars into El Paso a couple of weeks ago—that was before we warned 'em we wouldn't stand for any funny business in Chihuahua and Sonora. And since that day, Colonel, since that day, not a one of the stinking sons of bitches has dared stir his nose out of their barracks. If that doesn't say they're afraid of us, I'd like to know what it does say."
Schlieffen thought he'd already told
General Rosecrans what it said. To the American, evidently, preparations meant nothing more than moving troops from one place to another. Schlieffen wondered if his own English was at fault again. He didn't think so. The problem lay in the way Rosecrans—and, presumably, President Blaine—saw the world.
"If you fight the Confederate States, General, will you fight them alone?" Schlieffen tried to put the concept in a new way, since the first one had met no success.
"Of course we'll fight 'em alone," Rosecrans exclaimed. "They're the ones who suck up to foreigners, not us." That he was speaking with a foreigner did not cross his mind. His voice took on a petulant tone, almost a whine, that Schlieffen had heard before from other U.S. officers: "If England and France hadn't stabbed us in the back during the War of Secession, we'd've licked the Confederates then, and we wouldn't have to be worrying about this nonsense now."
"That may be true." Schlieffen felt something close to despair. Rosecrans was not a stupid man; Schlieffen had seen as much. But it was hard to tell whether he was more naive than ignorant or the other way round. "Could your diplomacy not try to keep Great Britain and France from doing in this war what they did in the last, or even more than they did in the last?"
"That's not my department," Rosecrans said flatly. "If they stay out, they stay out. If they come in, I suppose we'll deal with 'em. Stabbed in the back," he muttered again.
"You have, I trust, made plans for fighting the Confederate States by themselves, for fighting them and Great Britain, for fighting them and France, and for fighting them and both Great Britain and France?" Schlieffen said.
Rosecrans gaped at him. After coughing a couple of times, the American general-in-chief said, "We'll hit the Rebs a couple of hard licks, then we'll chase 'em, depending on where they try to run. Whatever they try themselves, we'll beat that back, and . . . Are you all right, Colonel?"
"Yes, thank you," Schlieffen answered after a moment. He was briefly ashamed of his own coughing fit—was he an American, to reveal everything that was in his mind? But Rosecrans apparently saw nothing more than that he'd swallowed wrong. As gently as he could, Schlieffen went on, "We have developed in advance more elabourate plans of battle, General. They served us well against the Austrians and later against the French."
"I did enjoy watching the froggies get their ears pinned back," Rosecrans agreed. "But, Colonel, you don't understand." He spoke with great earnestness: Americans weren't always right, any more than anyone else was, but they were always sure of themselves. "Can't just go and plan things here, the way you do on your side of the Atlantic. The land's too big here, and there aren't enough people to fill it up. Too much room to manoeuvre, if you know what I mean, and that's hell on plans."
He had a point—no, he had part of a point. "We face the same difficulty when we think of war with Russia," Schlieffen said. "There is in Russia even more space than you have here, though I admit Russia has also more men. But this does not keep us from developing plans. If we can force the foe to respond to what our forces do, the game is ours."
"Maybe," Rosecrans said. "And maybe you're smarter than the Russians you'd be fighting, too. The next general who's smarter than Stonewall Jackson hasn't come down the pike yet, seems to me."
"I do not follow this," Schlieffen said, but then, all at once, he did. His own ancestors must have gone off to fight Napoleon with that same mixture of arrogance and dread. Comparing a backwoods Confederate general to the great Bonaparte, though, struck him as absurd—until he considered that Rosecrans and his ilk were hardly a match for Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Bliicher.
"But we will lick 'em." Suddenly, Rosecrans was full of bluff confidence again. "We outweigh 'em two to one, near enough, and that's plenty to make any general look smarter than he really is—even an old ne'er-do-well like me." The grin he sent Schlieffen had a self-deprecating charm to which the German military attache could not help responding.
And Rosecrans was right. An army with twice the men and guns of its foe went into a war with an enormous advantage. As Voltaire had said, God was always for the big battalions. Even Frederick the Great, facing odds like those, had been at the end of his tether during the Seven Years' War till the opportune death of the Tsarina and her abrupt replacement by a successor who favored the Prussian king made Russia drop out of the war.
"I repeat the question I asked before," Schlieffen said again: "What will you do if England or France or both of them at once should enter the war on the side of the Confederate States?"
"The best we can," Rosecrans answered. Brave, Schlieffen thought, but not helpful. But then the American Army commander looked sly. "Between you, me, and the wall, Colonel, I don't think it's going to happen. The reports we're getting from London and Paris say both governments over there are sick to death of the Confederacy keeping niggers as slaves, and they won't lift a finger unless the Rebs say they'll turn 'cm loose. Now I ask you, sir, what are the odds of that? Biggest reason they fought the war was on account of they were afraid the United States government would make 'em do something like that. If they wouldn't do it for their own kith and kin, why do you think the stubborn bastards'll do it for a pack of foreigners?"
"This may be an important point," Schlieffen said. It was, at any rate, a point interesting enough for him to take it up with Minister von Schlozer when he got back to the brick pile on Massachusetts Avenue
. He concerned himself with politics as little as he could. Political considerations could of course affect military ones, but the latter were all that fell within his purview. Civilians set policy. He made sure the armed forces could do what the leaders required of them.
Rosecrans said, "If you'll excuse me, Colonel, I do have a deal to see to here, just on the off chance the Confederates get frisky after all."
"I understand." Schlieffen rose. So did Rosecrans, who came around the desk to shake hands with him again. "One more question, General?" the attache asked. "In case of war, you are rather vulnerable to the foe while here in Washington. What would the signal be for shifting your headquarters up to Philadelphia, which is less likely to come under attack?"
"It had better not," Rosecrans exclaimed. "Soon as the first shell falls, we all pack up stakes and head north. Everything will go smooth as clockwork, I promise you. We aren't fools, Colonel. We know the Rebs will shell this place."
"Very good," Schlieffen said. As he left the War Department, he wondered whether both of Rosecrans' last two sentences were true.
****
Black smoke—and showers of sparks—pouring from her twin stacks, the Liberty Bell steamed down the Mississippi toward St. Louis. When he'd boarded the sternwheeler in Clinton, Illinois, Frederick Douglass had taken her name as a good omen. With every mile closer to the Confederate States he drew, though, his doubts increased.
He stood on the upper deck, watching farms and little towns flow past. He was the only Negro on the upper deck, the deck that housed cabin passengers. That did not surprise him. But for one of the men who fed wood to the fire under the Liberty Bell's boiler, he was the only Negro aboard the steamboat. He was used to that, too. Over the years since the War of Secession, he'd grown very used to being alone.
"Look," somebody not far away said. "Look at the nigger in the fancy suit."
Douglass turned. He was, he knew, an impressive man, with handsome features whose leonine aspect was enhanced by his silvery beard and mane of hair. That silver, and his slow, deliberate motions, told of his age. He thought he was sixty-four, but might as easily have been sixty-three or sixty-five. Having been born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he had, to put it mildly, not been encouraged to enquire into the details of his arrival on the scene.
Two young white men, both dressed like drummers or cheap confidence men (there sometimes being little difference between the two trades) were gaping at him, their pale eyes wide. "May I help you gentlemen?" he asked, letting only a little irony seep into his deep, rich voice.
Despite his formidable presen
ce, despite the rumbles of oratorical thunder audible in even his briefest, most commonplace utterances, the whites were unabashed. "It's all right, it's all right," one of them said, as if soothing a restive child—or a restive horse. "Dick here and me, we're from St. Paul, and ain't neither one of us ever got a good look at a nigger before."
"I can sec as much," Douglass said. "I also discern that you have never had occasion to learn how to speak to a Negro, either."
That went right past the two men from St. Paul. They kept on staring, as if he were a caged monkey in a zoo. He'd had that feeling too many times in his life already. Seeing they would be rude, no matter how unintentionally, he turned his back, set both hands on the rail, and peered out over the Mississippi once more.
Ain 't neither one of us ever got a good look at a nigger before. His fingers clamped down on the white-painted cast iron with painful force. He'd heard that, or variations on it, hundreds of times since the war.
He let out a long sigh punctuated by a couple of short coughs. Before the Southern states left the Union to form their own nation, he had been a spokesman for one man in eight in the United States. Now, ninety percent of the Negroes on the North American continent resided in a foreign country, and most of the white citizens of the USA were just as glad it was so. They might have been gladder yet had the figure been one hundred percent. As often as not, they blamed the relative handful of blacks left in the United States for the breakup of the nation.
And if a Negro, tormented beyond endurance, tried to flee from, say, Confederate Kentucky across the Ohio into the United States and freedom, how was he greeted? With congratulations for his love of liberty and a hearty welcome to a better land? Douglass' laugh was sour. If a U.S. Navy gunboat didn't sink his little skiff or raft in midstream, white men with guns and dogs would hunt him down and ship him back over the river to the CSA. Why not? As an inhabitant of a different nation, he had no claim on the United States.
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