‘I heard Winfield Scott offered him command of the Union Army.’
‘That’s right, Pa,’ Andrew confirmed. ‘But Lee wouldn’t have any part of an invasion of Virginia and resigned his commission the next day. Soon as Jed heard about it, he did the same thing.’
‘And now he’s gone south?’
‘With Lee,’ David confirmed. ‘Who, I see, the newspapers are now calling another Benedict Arnold.’
‘Newspapers!’ David snapped. ‘Ha! Damned newspapers, screaming for blood. They’d have us go to war just to sell more copies of their damned rags! Look at this!’
He threw a copy of the New York Tribune across the table. ‘Did you read it? Read what they said in there?’ ‘I read it.’
‘“Let us have the Stars and Stripes floating over Richmond before July 20! Forward to Richmond!”. What the devil for?’
‘The Confederate Congress—’
‘They want to commit the country to total war to stop Jeff Davis and his Congress from meeting in Richmond?’
‘I believe they do, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘And I believe they will.’
‘Then God help us all,’ David said, thinking of Jedediah. There must be hundreds of thousands of fathers all thinking the same thing, he pondered, worrying about sons serving with the armies jockeying for position in the rolling Virginia countryside. Lincoln had yielded to political necessity and public opinion. The Union commander, McDowell, had thirty thousand men massed at Centerville, glowering across twenty miles of wooded hills and deep-cut runs to where the Southern General Beauregard’s twenty-two thousand men held the vital railroad junction at Manassas. Further to the northwest, Patterson’s army confronted a Rebel force led by General Johnston. Among the twelve thousand men in his command, riding at the head of a company of’ Jeb’ Stuart’s cavalry, was Captain Jedediah Strong.
‘Said he’d rather carry a musket for Lee than command a battalion for McDowell,’ Andrew said.
‘You know McDowell, Andrew?’
‘Not personally,’ Andrew said. ‘But Sam has met him. Says he’s a big fellow, Ohioan by birth. Class of ’thirty-eight. Sam says he eats like a pig. He’s damned nearly the most unpopular officer in the army.’
‘That takes quite a lot of ground. ‘
‘They say he merits it. He’s not a combat general, and the men he’s commanding aren’t much better than an armed mob,’ Andrew said. ‘Sam says some of them are so green they don’t even know how to fold a blanket, much less fire a musket.’
‘How is Sam?’ David asked.
‘He’s well. He said, and I quote, that he was “busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest”, trying to sell some of his guns to the army. He got an order from the navy for seven hundred rifles and seventy thousand cartridges.’
‘Wasn’t there some talk about setting up a company?’
‘He’s done that. Rented half a piano factory on Tremont Street in Boston. The stockholders are putting up half a million dollars for new plant. ‘
‘That’s a lot of money,’ David said. ‘Who are the majority stockholders?’
‘Sam and a man named Ezra Carver, who’s made a pile in railroad stocks. The way I understand it, the firm pays Sam five thousand for his patent, and fifty cents royalty on each gun sold.’
‘He won’t get rich on the sale of seven hundred,’ David observed.
‘Well, this Carver fellow is confident that they’ll make a fortune. He says if anyone’s likely to make money during a war it’s a gun manufacturer, and he may well be right. Anyway, they’re trying to get an appointment with army ordnance.’
‘Taking ’em long enough,’ David said. Sam had been hawking that repeating rifle idea around for two years, give or take. If he didn’t get some decent contract soon, he was going to go broke.
‘You’ve heard about Henry of course?’ Andrew said, bringing David out of his reverie.
‘Sam wrote he was wounded in the bombardment of Fort Sumter,’ David said. ‘He didn’t say how bad.’
‘They’ve got him on crutches,’ Andrew said. ‘He was damned lucky. They had a good doctor there. Many a man wounded in the leg simply loses the leg.’
‘They’ll invalid him out?’
‘I don’t think it was that serious, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘There’s talk of a desk job in Cincinnati.’
‘Better than at the front,’ David said. ‘Takes a bit of imagining to picture Henry leading a saber charge.’ Andrew grinned. Henry had always been vapid and girlish. His and Jed’s nickname for their cousin was ‘Mary Ann.’
‘What about Travis?’ his father asked.
Travis Strong had gone to Texas and was still there when the territory seceded. Sam had been worried about his son but it was not the kind of worry you could do anything about. Andrew grinned. Hold on to your hat, Pa, he thought.
‘Travis got himself married.’
‘Married?’ David barked. ‘Married to whom?’
‘Some girl he met up with in Dallas,’ Andrew grinned. ‘That’s all I know.’
‘Dallas?’
‘Little place on the Trinity River in Texas.’
‘What the devil was he doing down there?’
Andrew shrugged. ‘You haven’t heard all of it yet,’ he said. ‘Travis enlisted. He’s in the army.’
‘As a private soldier?’
‘That’s what Sam said.’
‘What regiment?’
Andrew shrugged again. ‘He didn’t know.’
They left the table for the servant to clear and went out into the garden. There was a decanter of whiskey and two glasses on a metal table beneath the vine that grew on a trellis at the side of the house. Andrew took the stopper from the decanter and raised his eyebrows at his father.
David nodded: maybe a drink would help. ‘You know, son,’ he said slowly. ‘For the first time in my life I’m not sure what to do.’
Andrew concealed his surprise by lighting another cheroot. It was the first time he had ever heard his father confess to doubt.
‘There are no easy answers any more, Pa,’ he said, conscious as he spoke the words that they were only words, nothing helpful. There had never been any easy answers, ever; probably never would be. He saw his father’s nose wrinkle as the cigar smoke drifted on the still, summer air and concealed a grin. David had always maintained that pipe-smoke was a civilized odor, whereas cigar-smoke stank up the place. It was a delusion which Joanna had long ago convinced him was the truth.
‘How the devil you can puff on one of those damned things and enjoy it, I never will understand,’ he grumbled. ‘Damnedest stinking things I ever did encounter. A pipe, now—’
‘I know, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘But I enjoy a cigar now and again. Relaxes me.’
‘Maybe I ought to try one, then,’ David said. ‘Because I sure could do with some relaxing. Seems to me whichever way I turn these days, it’s the wrong way. Now you tell me, boy, who do you think I ought to sell our horses to, eh? That’s mainly why I come up here to ask you about.’ He stared at the table as if he had laid out the problem on it, the better to take a look at it. ‘You heard what Ed Maxwell did?’
‘No.’
‘Turned over his entire yield to the army. Never asked for a cent. By the way, did I write to you about Paulie and David?’
‘No.’
‘Damme if I’m not gettin’ addle-headed in my old age!’ David grumbled. ‘I could’ve sworn I did. Well, anyway, they both joined the army, couldn’t wait to get into uniform.’
‘It’s hardly a surprise, Pa. You had any more trouble with Maxwell?’
‘Not what you’d call trouble,’ David said. ‘But he’s been blackening my name all over the county. Damned Bible-banger, quoting from the Scriptures to prove that any man who don’t oppose slavery with his life’s blood and everything he owns, is no better than the shit on Satan’s boots.’
‘I always thought he was a little “touched”, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘That whole damned family has a vici
ous streak.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ David pondered. ‘I hate to bad-mouth a man behind his back, but Maxwell—’ He took a deep breath. ‘Ah, hell! I reckon I just don’t cotton to being bullied into making up my mind.’
‘You do whatever you feel is right, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘Nobody can call you names for that.’
‘ Jed’s gone to fight for the South,’ David said. ‘I let the army have horses, it’s like I’m giving them a sword to slay my own flesh and blood.’
‘It’s a war, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘Nobody can control what happens in a war. You just have to do what you think best.’
‘What do you reckon to do, Andrew?’
‘You know how I feel, Pa,’ he replied. ‘I want to keep out of it. The hotheads have had their way and now we’re at war. But the enemy is our own kind, our own people. If it were a war against an invader, against a foreign army, I could see a reason to go and fight. But I have no reason to pick up a rifle and fight other Americans. I will not.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ David said. ‘Likely you’ll be called … names.’
‘Maybe,’ Andrew said grimly. ‘I can be useful in other ways. Building, not destroying.
‘You sound like Jacob.’
‘Do I? Well, perhaps that’s no bad thing,’ Andrew said. ‘He’s a good man, Pa. I’ll be guided in this by him. He wants to set up a hospital, you know. He says we’re going to need a lot of hospitals, and I think he may be right.’
David shook his head. ‘That doesn’t help me a lot,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got to go back to Culpeper and decide what to do.’
‘Take it as it comes, Pa,’ Andrew advised. ‘Adjust to it, day by day.’
‘Easier said than done,’ David grumbled. ‘Nobody wants to give a man time to adjust to anything. They want to tell you what to think, what to believe.’
‘Pa,’ Andrew said with a grin. ‘Promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘The day you start believing what someone else tells you to believe,’ Andrew said. ‘Let me know. I’d like to be around to see it.’
David smiled. He knew what he was going to do, had done all along. Talking about it just clarified his mind a little, that was all.
‘Any of that whiskey left?’ he said.
Nine – The Story of Andrew Strong
July 1861
Like most people, Andrew had thought of Quakers as a good, simple, slightly eccentric, middle-aged group of people. A little bit like a maiden aunt, who managed to avoid personal involvement in the disasters of her time but was always on hand when they happened, ready with a cup of tea, a bandage and a kind word. So Jacob Chalfont’s family was quite a surprise to him. Jacob was anything but the Quaker legend of unremittingly staid aspect, opposed to theater, music or any but the most simple and pious lifestyle. His wife Eleanor made considerable efforts to be more than a housewife. She painted pretty water-colors, played the spinet and sang with a soft, true voice. She was an accomplished horsewoman and an excellent cook. Her daughter Ruth was uncomplicated, sunny and direct. She was the epitomization of the Quaker belief that goodness called forth the response of goodness. She was not ‘clever’. She had no feminine wiles. And Andrew treasured her.
He liked the way that men on the street cast envious looks at him, and he was secretly pleased when acquaintances tried to flirt with her. It was as if by doing so they were confirming his good fortune. Sometimes she made him feel like a great clumsy ox trying to pay court to a humming bird. He did not know why she loved him, nor could he imagine what there was about him that she could love. It constantly surprised him that someone as lovely and ashine as Ruth Chalfont could prefer a dull stick like himself to someone, say, like Jed. Jed, who ran at life headlong, sure of himself, afraid of nothing. Andrew shared his father’s uncertainties, his inclination to worry a thing through.
He watched David charming Eleanor Chalfont. She was still a handsome woman and her face had the same sweetness in repose as Ruth’s. Watching her eyes, Andrew was reminded of an evening long ago at Fort Walla Walla, when the sardonic Rexton Bunnett, the regiment’s resident cynic, had favored the officers in the mess with his lordly overview of how to handle women. Since Rex was reputed to have joined the frontier army as a Frenchman might have joined the Foreign Legion, in the aftermath of a tragic love-affair, they listened with respect. There was damned little else to do anyway. Enlisted men could take their pleasures with the Indian women who hung around the gates, and the non-coms usually had their wives or one of the washerwomen along Suds Row. Officers were true bachelors: simply because they had no alternative. Instead, they talked.
‘The secret of handling a woman is a very simple one,’ Rexton said, in the patrician drawl he affected, ‘although damned few men can do it. All you have to do, gentlemen, is to talk to them. Talk to them as if they were halfway intelligent, and they are yours.’
Like much of what Rex said, there was just enough truth in it to’ make it inoffensive. Men tended to see women the way they wanted to, anyway, Rex said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, they’re either goddesses or doormats. And I suggest to you that if you examined your hearts honestly, you’ll find the same thing applies to you.’
Andrew remembered his saturnine grin. It was a mischievous thing to say because it stuck in the mind, and, when you got right down to it, a man did tend to think of a woman as a goddess or a doormat. In fact, a man had to work damned hard not to think of them any other way. Well, he thought, Pa seemed to know about handling women. It was obvious that Eleanor Chalfont found him interesting. Attractive? Andrew thought. He had never thought of his father in those terms, yet it certainly seemed as if the thought had at least crossed Eleanor’s mind. As for David, he was as unaware of it as a child. He had not looked seriously at another woman since the day he fell in love with Joanna Ten Eyck. The thought made Andrew feel a surge of fondness for his father. We ought to spend more time together, he thought.
They said their farewells early. The Chalfonts had a twenty-mile drive to Centerville before them on the morrow. According to Jacob the first major battle between the Federals and the Confederates was imminent. The Rebels were quite near the capital, at Manassas Junction. If there was to be fighting, Jacob said, there would be wounded and dying men who would need help, comfort, solace. Eleanor and Ruth were both trained nurses. If no battle ensued, nothing would be lost. Andrew made no bones about his uneasiness.
‘I think it would be wiser to stay in the city, sir,’ he said. ‘I wish you’d reconsider.’
‘Dear Andrew,’ Ruth smiled, her eyes merry. ‘Thou art always such a Cassandra.’
‘Senator Grimes assures me there will be no danger, Andrew,’ Jacob said. He was a spare-built man with wide shoulders and large hands. His hair and Dundreary side-whiskers were an almost startling ginger color. His ‘skin, which never tanned, was reddened by the summer sun. ‘We shall be some distance from any fighting that might occur.’
Senator Grimes of Iowa and President Lincoln’s friend, Lyman Trumbull, were taking a party down to Centerville to see the troops, he said. Would they do that if there was any danger?
‘I suppose not,’ Andrew admitted. ‘Just the same, I don’t like it.’
‘Why not come with us, Andrew?’ Eleanor Chalfont said. ‘There will be more than enough room in our carriage. ‘
‘And thou canst protect us!’ Ruth teased. ‘From the wicked Rebels!’
‘Pa’s leaving for Culpeper tomorrow,’ Andrew said. ‘I’d like to see him off.’
‘Andrew, there’s nothing to stop you going along if you want to,’ David said. ‘I can manage perfectly well on my own.’
In the end, Andrew had his way, and truth be told, David was glad. He always felt he ought to spend more time with Andrew, get to know him better. He understood Jed, always had. But Andrew was a another matter. There was a barrier, a reserve – or so David felt – he could not penetrate. He was still trying to adjust to the decisions Andrew had taken about hi
s future. Resigning from the army, becoming engaged to a Quaker girl, making a career in civil engineering, adopting a rigidly anti-war position: these were things David had to work hard to understand. Maybe you just never did understand some things, he decided, knowing that he had decided nothing at all.
David left for Culpeper early the following evening. It was about five when they rode over to the station at Alexandria, through streets crowded with people. Lowering rain clouds scudded across the sky. A cold, unfriendly breeze picked up scraps of paper and whirled them into the air like kites. The railroad station was crowded with soldiers, hawkers, newspaper vendors, women with children, old people.
‘Platform three,’ Andrew said, checking the notice board. ‘She’s on time, which is a change. Let’s hope there are no hold-ups. I’ll come to your carriage with you. Here, boy!’
He signaled a negro porter who ran over to get David’s bags. Andrew showed the man his father’s ticket and the porter nodded and went ahead of them, pushing through the knots of passengers and their friends thronging the platform. The big engine already had steam up. David climbed into his compartment and lowered the window.
‘You should have gone with the Chalfonts,’ he said. ‘Instead of wasting your Sunday on me.’
‘I enjoyed it, Pa,’ Andrew said. ‘I wish we could do it more often.’
‘You come down to the farm and see us,’ he said. ‘Bring Ruth. We’ll find her a horse to ride.’
‘We’ll see,’ Andrew said. ‘We’ll see what happens. I’ll be in touch.’
The train began to move as he shook his father’s hand. He thought David’s smile was sadder than tears could ever have been. I love you, Pa, he thought. I hope you know.
‘Take good care of yourself,’ David said. The train picked up speed and moved down the platform. In a surprisingly short time it was around the bend of the rails and out of sight. The interior of the station was suddenly gloomy and oppressive, and Andrew thought he heard the distant mutter of thunder again. He left the station and walked up the street, thoughts far away. He became vaguely aware of an air of excitement, a strange tension. He frowned. A knot of people at the corner of the street were looking up at a man standing in a mud-spattered coach who was shouting and waving his arms. The crowd grew larger. Andrew went across the street to hear what the man was saying.
Call to Arms Page 15