by John Jakes
Gettys darted behind the counter. He’d been a fool to invite Jolly and his tatty kinfolk to settle along the Ashley. The man was as dangerous as a rabid dog, and about as sensible. He and his family survived by thieving or taking corn rations on draw day in Charleston. One of the women told fortunes, and the Bohemian lady sold herself, he’d heard.
“All right,” Gettys said, sweat steaming his spectacles. “But I’m keeping an account, because my friend Des and I, we’re going to want you to do that little service we discussed.”
Jolly grinned, showing brown stumps of teeth. “Wish you’d say when. I’m gettin’ impatient. Hell, I don’t even know who I’m s’posed to get rid of.”
“She was just here, driving her wagon. Maybe you passed her on the road.”
“That handsome black-haired woman? Why, my God, Gettys, I’ll do her for free, no pay expected. Provided you let me have an hour with her, private, before I blow out her lamps.”
Gettys mopped his damp face with the inevitable pocket handkerchief. “Des insists we wait for a pretext. A good, safe one. We don’t want those infernal Bureau soldiers investigating and going to Washington to testify, the way they’re doing with Tom’s murder.”
“I don’t know a damn thing about no murder,” Jolly said, no longer smiling. “If you bring it up once more, acting like I do, your lamps will go out prompt.”
He scratched his crotch. “As to the other matter, you all just let me know. I’ll do it clean, without a trace. And have a fine time while I’m at it.”
Andrew J. used his veto power to reject what Congress calls its “civil rights act.” As I understand it, the act gives freedmen equal access to the law and allows federal courts to hear cases of interference with all such rights. Read some of the President’s objections in a Courier. He sounds as fierce about the sanctity of “states’ rights” as Jos. Huntoon before the rebellion. …
And still the roads are crowded. Men and women, sold away from spouses years ago, rove the state in hopes of finding a loved one. Sundered families seek reunions with brothers, sisters, cousins. The black river flows day and night.
It flooded M.R. in an unexpected and tragic way. A man named Foote appeared yesterday. He, not Nemo, is Cassandra’s husband. Foote was sold to Squire Revelle, of Greenville, in ’58, and Cassandra gave up hope of ever seeing him again.
But her little boy is Nemo’s. When Foote discovered this, he drew a knife and tried to slash her. Andy threw him down and summoned me. I told them to settle it peaceably. This morning, Nemo is gone, Foote has established himself, and Cassandra is wretchedly upset. Is there no end to the misery caused by “the peculiar institution”?
April, 1866. History made in Washington, the papers say. President J.’s veto of the rights bill overridden by the Congress. Never before has major legislation been passed in this way, or a sitting President thus humiliated.
… We are reaping the harvest of white against black. Town of Memphis devastated by three days of rioting touched off by confrontations between federal troops—colored men—and angry white police. At least 40 dead, many more injured, and riot not yet under control …
… Rioting over at last. Am sure the Committee of 15 will investigate. Col Munro gone to Washington with a local black man to testify before the committee …
“I know this is difficult for you,” Thaddeus Stevens said. “Please collect yourself and continue only when you’re completely ready.”
Representative Elihu Washburne of Illinois groaned to protest Stevens’s emotional tone. The congressman from Pennsylvania could manipulate a hearing until it began to resemble a tear-laden melodrama, which was exactly what he was doing with the poorly dressed black man seated at the table facing the committee members. Sitting behind the committee in one of the chairs for observers, Senator Sam Stout made a note to speak to the leadership about Washburne’s unseemly display.
The witness wiped his cheeks with pale palms and finally struggled on with his testimony:
“Ain’t much more to tell, sirs. My little brother Tom, he said no to Mr. Woodville’s contrack. He was scared when he done it, but down in Charleston, Colonel Munro, he tol’ him it was a bad contrack. The contrack say Tom mustn’t ever go off the farm without old Woodville sayin’ he could. And he got to be respeckful an’ polite all the time or he get no pay. An’ he couldn’t keep dogs—Tom loved to hunt. He kep’ two fine hounds.”
A heavy despair pressed down on Stout as he listened. Witness after witness had reported on outrageous work contracts drawn up by Southern farmers who still wanted to be called master. Stout put some of the blame on ignorance, promoted by the South’s insularity. Men such as the one who had tried to contract with the deceased had grown up with an agricultural system based on intimidation, fear, and bondage. They probably couldn’t imagine any other kind. So they kept writing these damned sinful contracts.
The witness was watching Stevens. “Go on, sir, if you’re able,” Stevens prompted gently.
“Well, like I say, the Colonel, he tol’ Tom not to sign the contrack. So next day Tom went back and tol’ old Mr. Woodville. Tom come over to take supper that night, which was the last time I saw him. He said Woodville got pretty mad with him. Two days later they found Tom lyin’ ”—the voice of the witness broke—“lyin’ dead.”
From the adjacent chair, Orpha Munro put his arm around the weeping black man. To the clerk Stevens said, “Let the record clearly show that the murder occurred as a consequence of the man Tom’s refusal to work under terms amounting to slavery.”
“I must beg the pardon of my colleague.” Snappish, Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland waved his pen. “I am in sympathy with this gentleman’s loss. But he has brought forth no evidence to demonstrate conclusively a relationship between the unfortunate slaying and the events preceding it.”
Stout glared at the Democrat, a politician of distinguished background who was nevertheless proving an obstructionist on the committee. Stevens too looked choleric. “Do you wish the record to so state, Senator?”
“I do, sir.”
“Let it be done,” Stevens said.
“I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania,” Johnson said, satisfied and not the least grateful.
No matter, Stout thought, controlling his anger. He and Stevens and the core group of Republican idealists in the Congress were very happy with the bulk of the testimony the committee had received. Black witnesses and Bureau officers from state after state had told stories of physical and legal abuse of freedmen—while the President kept asserting that Congress had no right to intervene.
But the Tennessee tailor was on the run, while the Republican cause was blessed by accidents like the Memphis rioting. Further, to counter a possible court decision declaring the civil rights bill unconstitutional, there was already in preparation a Fourteenth Amendment, which would re-state the bill’s essential guarantees: full citizenship for all blacks and denial of representation to any state withholding the franchise from eligible males over twenty-one.
The Joint Committee on Reconstruction would soon be ready to write its report, which no doubt would focus on the South’s effort to abridge freedom by illegal means, especially by enforcement of the Black Codes. The report would offer massive evidence of this activity and once again affirm the supremacy of the Congress in setting matters right. And if that didn’t finish Johnson with the public, Stout and his fellow Radicals would write a second freedmen’s bill to extend the Bureau’s life. Johnson would veto it again, and be overridden again. Freedom’s army was on the march, and Sam Stout was one of its commanding officers.
The elderly witness had once more broken down. He sobbed into his hands despite Munro’s efforts to calm him. Stevens left the table. Stout rose. He and Stevens exchanged glances as the latter moved down to put a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the witness.
Senator Johnson showed disapproval of Steven’s behavior. Reporters in the back of the hearing room scribbled swiftly. Good, Stout thought a
s he slipped to the door. Tomorrow morning they could look forward to some favorable copy in friendly papers, commending Stevens, and hence all Republicans, for continuing to comfort the oppressed.
July, 1866. More rioting. New Orleans this time. Courier says at least 200 dead.
Andrew J. vetoed bill to continue Freedmen’s Bureau.
They say the veto will not stand, and so J. will seek a means to retaliate.
… He has found it. J. denounced the Fourteenth Amendment, urging our state and all of Dixie not to ratify it. Tennessee immediately ratified it, and Gov. Brownlow—the “Parson”—notified Washington with the words, “Give my respects to the dead dog in the White House.”
What next?
____________
KILLING OF A NEGRO BY GEN. FORREST.
A letter from Sunflower County, Miss., says a negro employed on Gen. FORREST’s plantation, while assaulting his (the negro’s) sick wife yesterday, was remonstrated with by FORREST.
The negro drew a knife and attempted to kill FORREST who, after receiving a wound in the hand, seized an axe and killed the negro. Gen. FORREST then gave himself up to the Sheriff. The negroes on the plantation justify the homicide. …
20
ON THE WINTER COUNT, Wooden Foot painted the Jackson Trading Company inside a tipi under a tiny Buffalo Hat. Outside he added two stick figures waving hatchets and a third with stick hands covering the fork of his stick legs. Whenever Boy saw that part of the picture he put his hands over his mouth, Indian fashion, and giggled.
As the snowdrifts began to melt, a white visitor rode into the Cheyenne village where the traders had wintered. Broad smiles and shouting greeted him. Mothers raised their babes to touch the black cassock visible under a buffalo robe. Wooden Foot presented Charles to the weathered, gray-haired Jesuit missionary.
Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet was sixty-five now, a legendary figure. Born in Belgium, he’d emigrated to America as a young man. In 1823, he’d left the Catholic novitiate near St. Louis to begin his remarkable career on the Plains. He not only proselytized the Indians, he also became their partisan. Some of his journeys took him as far as the Willamette Valley. To the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Cheyennes, and other tribes he was “Blackrobe,” a confessor, a mediator, a spokesman in councils of the white men, a friend.
Over the evening fire, DeSmet displayed good humor and a broad knowledge of Indian affairs. There was no doubt of his loyalty:
“Mr. Main, I say to you that if the Indians sin against the whites, it is only because the whites have greatly sinned against them. If they become angry, it is because the whites provoked them. I accept no other explanation. Only when Washington abandons truculence as an official policy will peace prevail on these plains.”
“What do you think the chances are that it will happen, Father?”
“Poor,” DeSmet said. “Greed too often conquers a godly impulse. But that does not defeat me or discourage me. I will strive to bring a peaceable kingdom till God calls me home.”
Three roads carried most of the traffic west of the Missouri. The old Overland Trail to Oregon followed the valley of the Platte, with a newer branch, Bozeman’s Trail, veering off to the Montana gold fields. The Santa Fe Trail ran southwest to New Mexico. Lying between the northern and southern routes, the Smoky Hill Road followed the river along a generally westerly route to the Colorado mines.
In May of ’66 the Jackson Trading Company met another white man while still thirty miles south of the Smoky Hill. The man drove a covered wagon, wore braids, and had cut the hair over his forehead in bangs, then greased it so that it stood up. He was fat, with a face that reminded Charles of a Father Christmas who’d just come off a week’s binge. He greeted the traders cordially and invited them to camp the night with him.
“No thanks. We’re in a hurry, Glyn,” Wooden Foot said, not smiling. He signaled his companions to ride on. Once past the wagon, Charles looked over his shoulder and reacted with surprise at the sight of an Indian girl, fourteen or fifteen, peeking at them from the back of it. He had an impression of prettiness ruined by too much eating; the girl had the multiple chins of a woman of middle age.
“Surely was obvious you didn’t like that man,” Charles said. “Competition, is he?”
“Not for us. He peddles spirits and guns. Name’s Septimus Glyn. Worked for the Upper Arkansas Agency a while. Even the Indian Bureau couldn’t stomach him. He sneaks around sellin’ what he shouldn’t, and every season or so he picks out some young girl, honeys her up with promises, gives her the jug till she grows fond of it, then takes her away with him. When she’s no good for anything but whorin’, he sells her.”
“I saw a girl in the wagon.”
“Don’t doubt it.” Disgusted, Wooden Foot didn’t turn around to verify it. “Must be a Crow. He’s cut his hair Crow style. They’re a handsome people, but he’ll ruin her looks ’fore he’s done, the no-good whoremaster.”
Charles watched the wagon receding on the rim of the gray plain and was glad he hadn’t been forced to socialize with Septimus Glyn. When he saw Willa Parker, he must tell her that not all whites exploited the Indians. Jackson didn’t. Neither did the Jesuit priest. He hoped that little bit of information would be pleasing. He found himself wanting to please her.
They reached the Smoky Hill route with their forty-six ponies; all their trading goods were gone. Wooden Foot repeatedly said his new partner brought him luck.
They’d seen no white men other than Glyn south of the Smoky Hill. Once on the trail, though, they fought eastward against a tide of galloping cavalry troops, Overland coaches, emigrant wagons. One party of wagons, driven two and three abreast, refused to allow them any clearance, and so the traders had to halloo their pack mules and ponies between the wagons, eating dust. Twice, oxen nearly trampled Fen. Two valuable ponies ran away.
After the traders got through the wagons, they reined up. They looked as though they’d coated their faces in yellow flour. The dust made their eyes all the larger and whiter.
“Swear to God, Charlie, I never seen so many greenhorn wagons this early in the season.”
“And the traffic’s bound to make the Sioux and Cheyennes mad, isn’t it?”
“You’re right,” Wooden Foot said.
Charles watched the canvas tops lurching west. “I had a strange reaction when those wagons wouldn’t give us room. All of a sudden I understood how the Indians feel.”
Thirty miles outside Fort Riley, Kansas, they saw the first stakes marking the route of the oncoming railroad. Every mile or so thereafter, they passed piles of telegraph poles waiting to be planted. One pile was nothing but ashes and charred wood. “The tribes are ’bout as partial to the talkin’ wires as they are to settlers,” Wooden Foot remarked.
They rode on. Weather-burned and toughened by his return to a life outdoors, Charles felt fit and very much in harmony with his surroundings. His burned-out feeling was disappearing, replaced by renewed energy and a zest for living. If he was not yet healed, healing had begun.
The morning was warm. He cast off his gypsy robe, pushed up the sleeves of his long johns, and lit a cigar, noticing eight more vehicles coming toward them over the prairie. These turned out to be high-wheeled canvas-covered U.S. Army ambulances, each pulled by two horses. Mounted soldiers formed a moving defense ring around the vehicles. “Who the hell’s this?” Wooden Foot said.
They ran their mules and ponies in a circle and waited. The ambulances stopped. A colonel jumped down and greeted them. A second officer hopped out of the lead wagon, a stringy fellow with a hawk face and bristly red hair mixed with gray. His face startled Charles more than his three stars did.
“Morning,” said the general. “Where have you gentlemen come from?”
“The Indian Territory,” Wooden Foot said.
“We wintered with the Cheyennes,” Charles said.
“I am on an inspection tour. What’s their state of mind?”
“Well,” Wooden Foot said, cautious, “
considerin’ that no one chief or village represents the whole shebang, I guess I’d say the tribe’s mood is distrustful. Black Kettle, the peace chief, he told us he didn’t know how long he could hold his young men back.”
“Oh yes?” said the general, bristling. “Then I’d better talk to that redskin. If one more white man is scalped out here, I won’t be able to hold my men back, either.”
After that he calmed down. Charles puffed on his cigar and exhaled blue smoke. The general gave him a keen look. “Did I detect a trace of Southern speech, sir?”
“More than a trace, General. I rode for Wade Hampton.”
“An able soldier. You like cigars, sir.” Charles nodded. “I do, too. You’re welcome to a fresh one of mine while we cook up some food.”
“No thanks, General. I’m anxious to head on east and visit my son.”
“Safe journey, then.” The stringy officer gave them a casual salute and he and the colonel returned to their ambulance.
As soon as they got the horses moving, Wooden Foot said, “You know that shoulder-straps?”
“Sure. That is, I’ve seen pictures. His bummers burned a whole lot of my home state.”
“Lord God, you don’t mean that’s Uncle Billy Sherman?”
“Yes, I do. Wonder what he’s doing out here?”
At Riley, they learned the answer. Sherman had commanded the Division of the Mississippi since shortly after Charles passed through Chicago. He’d shifted his headquarters to St. Louis, and then, in March, had persuaded Grant to create a Department of the Platte, to shrink the unwieldy Department of the Missouri and promote better management of both within the Division. This displeased John Pope, the commander of the Missouri Department.
There were inevitable Army rumors to go with the facts. The larger administrative unit would soon be renamed Division of the Missouri. Sherman thought the Department of the Platte’s commander, St. George Cooke, too old at fifty-six. He wanted Winfield Hancock, “Superb” Hancock of Gettysburg, to replace Pope. He wanted Congress to authorize new infantry and cavalry regiments, assigning some of them to Plains duty, although it couldn’t be done in time to help the 1866 travel season.