“They’s too stupid to know they’s get tin’ whipped,” said a private named William Winstead.
More people nodded at that, but Caudell said, “You weren’t with us at Gettysburg, Bill. They’d seen what we did to their skirmish line, so they had to know they were going into the meat grinder. But they kept coming, the same way we did then. Anybody here going to tell me they didn’t fight like soldiers?”
“Only thing niggers is good for is slaves,” Winstead said positively. Again, a good many soldiers nodded along with him.
Caudell wanted to argue more. Despite questions about Georgie Ballentine, he’d always thought pretty much as Winstead did. So did most people in the South; so, for that matter, did most people in the North. But as a teacher, he’d urged his students—especially the bright ones—to test what people said about the world against the world itself. Here, what they said and what he’d seen didn’t add up the same way. The Negroes had fought as well as anyone could expect.
One of the other things he’d seen in the world, though, was that most people didn’t really want to look at it straight on. Going with what they said—whoever they were—was easier and more comfortable than trying to figure out how things truly worked.
So instead of directly challenging Winstead, Caudell shifted the argument: “I saw Billy Beddingfield kill a couple of niggers who’d surrendered. I didn’t reckon that was right—I sure as hell wouldn’t want them to kill us if we had to give up to them.”
“Any nigger comes at me with a gun, that’s a dead nigger,” Winstead said. “An’ I wouldn’t surrender to ‘em anyways, no matter what, on account of what they’d do to me if I done it.”
“Some truth in that,” Caudell had to admit. “But if they can learn to fight like soldiers, they might be able to learn to act like soldiers other ways.”
“They better,” Dempsey Eure added. “Otherwise this here war’s gonna turn even uglier’n it is already.”
“You’ve got that right, Dempsey,” Caudell said. This time, nobody disagreed. Who could deny that black men and what to do about them lay at the heart of the war between the states? The North was convinced it had the right to dictate to the South how to treat them; the South was equally convinced it already knew. Caudell wanted no part of having someone hundreds of miles away telling him what he could or couldn’t do. On the other hand, if Negroes really could fight like “white men, the South’s answers didn’t look so good, either.
Caudell reflected that America would have been a much simpler place were the black man not around to vex it. Unfortunately, however, the black man was here. One way or another, North and South would have to come to terms with that.
“Major Marshall, I should like you to draft a general order to the Army of Northern Virginia, to be published as soon as it is completed,” Lee said.
“Yes, sir.” Charles Marshall took out notepad and pen. “The subject of the order?”
“As you must be aware, Major, the enemy has begun to employ against us large numbers of colored soldiers. I aim to order our men that, if these colored troops be captured, their treatment at our hands is to differ in no particular from that accorded to any other soldiers we take prisoner.”
“Yes, sir.” Behind Marshall’s spectacles, his eyes were expressionless. He bent his head and began to write.
“You do not approve, Major?” Lee said.
The younger man looked up from the folding table on which he was working. “Since you ask, sir, in no way do I approve of arming Negroes. The very concept is repugnant to me.”
Lee wondered what his aide would have thought of General Cleburne’s proposal that the Confederacy recruit and use Negro troops in pursuit of its independence. But President Davis had ordered him to keep silent about that. Instead, he said, “Major, not least of my concerns in issuing this order is fear for the safety of the thousands of our own captives in Northern hands. Last summer Lincoln issued an order promising to kill a Confederate soldier for each Union man slain in violation of the articles of war, and to put at hard labor one man for every black captive returned to slavery. By all means make that point explicit in the language of the order, to help the men understand its promulgation is, among other things, a matter of practical necessity.”
“You’ve thought a step farther ahead than I did,” Marshall admitted. “Put that way, I see the need for what you have asked of me.” He bent to his task again, this time with a better will. A few minutes later, he offered Lee the draft.
The general skimmed through it. “This is very fine, Major, but could you not insert, perhaps after ‘the valor of your arms and your patient endurance of hardships,, something to the effect of ‘your patriotic devotion to justice and liberty’? You might also end by appealing to the men’s sense of duty, than which no soldierly virtue is of greater importance.”
Marshall noted the changes, handed the paper back to Lee. “Now we have it,” Lee said. “Have the order distributed at once; I want it read in every regiment by this evening, or tomorrow at the latest.”
“I’ll see to it, sir,” the aide promised.
“Good. Now on to other business.” Lee unfolded several newspapers. “These have been sent on to me by those behind Federal lines who are in sympathy with our cause. Not only does the government in Washington City often inadvertently reveal its intentions in the press, but through it we can gauge Northern sentiment toward the war.”
“And?” Marshall asked eagerly. “What is the Northern sentiment toward the war, now that we have beaten back yet another ‘Forward to Richmond!’ drive?”
“I shall be delighted to provide you with a representative sampling, Major.” Lee held a newspaper close to his face; even with his spectacles, the small, cramped letters were hard to read. “This is the New York Times: ‘Disaster! Grant’s army overthrown in the Wilderness. Forced to retreat above the Rappahannock, and there defeated once more.’ Below these headlines, the story continues as follows: ‘Unhappily, like many of our engagements, the late fighting, though serving to illustrate the splendid valor of our troops, has failed to accomplish the object sought. The result thus far leaves us with a loss of upwards of 40,000 men in the two battles’—useful information there—’and absolutely nothing gained. ‘Not only did the rebels hold their lines, but they are advancing behind the impetus of their new breech-loading repeaters, against which the vaunted Springfield is of scarcely greater effect than the red man’s bows and arrows.’”
“I wish that were true,” Marshall said.
“It would make the task before us rather easier, would it not?” Lee chose another paper. “Here is a statement from Stanton, the Federal Secretary of War, as reported in the Washington Evening Star: ‘A noble enthusiasm must reanimate our gallant army, who have been battling so long for the preservation of the Union. We have, it is true, recently met with serious disasters. We have suffered much, and must be prepared to suffer more, in the cause for which we are struggling. Let us, then, fellow countrymen, tread the plain path of duty. Let us show the fortitude, endurance, and courage of our race, and not permit the brute force of the enemy’s arms to extinguish the life of this Republic.’”
Marshall smiled the special smile of a man contemplating his foe’s discomfiture. “That, sir, is a cry of pain.”
“So it is. Secretary Stanton is notorious for them,” Lee said. He shook his head. “It is also almost perfectly foolish. So far as I am concerned, so far as anyone in Richmond is concerned, the United States may proceed exactly as they care to, provided only that they extend to us the same privilege.”
“Does Stanton go on?”
“Oh, at some length.” Lee put the newspaper aside. “None of it, however, is much more to the point than that which I just read you.”
Charles Venable came into Lee’s tent. “Dispatches from Richmond, sir, and a copy of yesterday’s Daily Dispatch.” He glanced over at the Northern papers on the folding table. “I suspect its tone is rather more cheerful than theirs.”
“I suspect you are correct, Major,” Lee said. “Business before pleasure, however. The dispatches, if you please.”
Venable handed them to him. As he read the first, he felt a great load of worry lift from his shoulders. “General Johnston has held General Sherman at Rocky Face Ridge, with heavy losses on the Federal side, and then again at Resaca and Snake Creek Gap, when he tried to use his superior numbers to outflank us. Sherman’s forces are now halted; prisoners report he dares not seek to outflank us again for fear of the casualties he would sustain from our rifles.”
“Business and pleasure together,” Venable exclaimed.
“True enough, Major.” Lee had feared that only his own army would derive full benefit from the repeaters the Rivington men had provided. He’d never been so glad to be proved wrong. True, Johnston had given up a little ground to the enemy instead of advancing as the Army of Northern Virginia was doing, but the enemy in Georgia had more room to maneuver than was true here. And Johnston was a counterpuncher in any case, a master of the defensive. Lee would not have wanted to be a Federal general assaulting a position he chose to hold, the more so when his men were armed with AK-47s.
“What is the other dispatch, sir?”
“We shall know in a moment.” Lee opened the envelope. He read the paper inside, refolded it, and put it back in its place before he lifted his head to face his aides, both of whom were fidgeting in an effort to contain their curiosity. Lee said, “In southwestern Virginia, General Jenkins with twenty-four hundred men was engaged by Federal General George Crook with between six and seven thousand on the ninth of this month just south of Cloyd’s Mountain.”
“Yes, sir,” the two men said together. They both sounded anxious; close to three-to-one was long odds against any army.
Lee lifted their suspense: “Our troops succeeded in holding their position; the Federals withdrew to the north and west up the Dublin-Pearisburg Turnpike. Among their dead were General Crook and Colonel Rutherford Hayes, who commanded a brigade of Ohioans. I regret to have to add that General Jenkins was also wounded in the action and had his right arm amputated. But as General McCausland—who replaced him—adds, the victory has preserved our control of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, without which rail connection between the two states would have been broken.”
“That’s excellent news, sir!” Charles Marshall said. “Perhaps the tide has turned at last.”
“Perhaps it has,” Lee said. The words seemed to hang in the air, as if only now, when he spoke them aloud, did he acknowledge their truth in his heart. He’d grown so accustomed to fighting at long odds that the edge the Rivington men’s repeaters gave remained difficult to believe in completely. He read on in the dispatch: “General McCausland reports that a prisoner declared the fire from our repeaters made the battlefield appear one living, flashing sheet of flame.”
“The Daily Dispatch certainly thinks the war as good as won.” Charles Venable began to read from the newspaper he’d brought: “ ‘Our information is such as to give encouragement to the hope that the sacred soil of Virginia will soon be rescued from the hands, and divested of the polluting tread, of the Yankee invader. The great battles of the week just past, fought in the Wilderness and in and around the hamlet of Bealeton, resulted in the overthrow of the army of the Federal Government, with a loss that is perhaps unequalled in the annals of the present war. General Lee has utterly routed the force under Meade and Grant. There are no grounds upon which to question the glorious success of our arms.”
“Were wars fought in the newspapers, they would be won by both sides in the first days after they were declared,” Lee observed. “In one way, that would be as well, for it would spare a great part of the effusion of blood which accompanies warfare as it actually is. In another sense, though, newspaper chatter can be dangerous. If those responsible for actually prosecuting a war take seriously the contempt for the foe which is typical newspaper fare, they leave themselves open to a defeat for which they would have only themselves to blame.”
“But we actually do have the Federals on the run,” Venable protested.
“No one could be gladder than Ito see those people in retreat, Major,” Lee said. “But if we only drive them into the fortifications across the Potomac from Washington City, then we have gained nothing but time, and these people can make better use of time than we. They have come back from too many defeats. I want to give them a lesson sharp enough to impress itself upon even the most stolid and stubborn of their leaders.”
“What do you intend, sir?” Charles Marshall asked.
Slamming his way straight up the line of the Orange and Alexandria no longer seemed as attractive to Lee as it had before. He traced on the map the plan that had come to slow fruition in his mind. “This will require General Stuart’s cavalry to more effectively screen our forces from the enemy than was achieved in last year’s campaign, but I trust and believe he has learned that lesson by heart—and once more, the repeaters his troopers carry will aid their efforts. As for General Longstreet’s part in keeping the enemy off balance, no one, I think, could play it better; Major Marshall, if you would be so kind—?”
Marshall took out the pad on which he had drafted Lee’s general order. The leader of the Army of Northern Virginia began to frame the specific commands that would set his men in motion once more.
Andries Rhoodie’s horse came trotting up to Lee as he rode alongside the head of a long column of gray-clad troops. The Rivington man politely stayed a few feet outside the group of generals and officers with Lee and waited to be recognized. “Good morning, Mr. Rhoodie,” Lee said. He studied the way Rhoodie handled his bay gelding. “Your horsemanship has improved, sir, since I first had the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
“I’ve had a good deal of practice since then, General Lee,” Rhoodie answered. “Before I came to join your army, I’d spent little time on horseback.”
The officers with Lee concealed scornful expressions, some well, some not so well, A man who habitually rode in a buggy was hardly a man at all—and what other reason could there be for eschewing horses? Lee thought he knew the answer to that question, which to the others must have been purely rhetorical: by the distant year 2014, men must have discovered better means of transport than either horses or buggies. Lee wondered whether railroads ran down the center of every street in every city in the almost unimaginable time from which the Rivington man had sprung.
One day, he might ask Rhoodie about such things. The priceless knowledge that man had to hold in his head! No time now, though; no time, all too likely, until the war was done. No time for anything save the immediate till the war was done. To the immediate, then: “How may I help you today, Mr. Rhoodie?”
“I’d like to speak with you in private, General Lee, if I could,” Rhoodie said.
“Wait until I finish my business with these gentlemen, sir; then I am at your disposal,” Lee said. The staff officers took his ready acquiescence without blinking, but some of his commanders raised eyebrows. Rhoodie wore no uniform save the mottled clothing the Rivington men habitually used—who was he to deserve their chief’s sole attention? Lee gave them no chance to dwell on it: “Now, gentlemen, let’s make certain of our dispositions as we approach Middleburg…”
The division commanders and brigadiers rode off to make sure their forces conformed to the line of march Lee had spelled out. He glanced at his aides. They fell back fifteen or twenty yards. Lee nodded to Andries Rhoodie. He brought his bay up shoulder to shoulder with Traveller.
“And what can I do for you, sir?” Lee asked.
Rhoodie’s answer took him by surprise: “You can rescind your general order for treating captured kaffirs—niggers—like white prisoners of war. Not only that, General Lee, you can do it immediately.”
“I shall not, nor, let me remind you, have you the right to take a tone of command to me, sir,” Lee said coldly. “Common humanity forbids it, not only in regard to our treatment of the Federals’ colo
red troops, but also in that the Federals have promised to mistreat the prisoners they hold to the same degree to which we maliciously harm their men.”
“You go about giving the nigger equality in anyone way, General Lee, and you set foot on the path to making him equal in all ways.” Rhoodie sounded less peremptory than he had a moment before, but no less serious. “That is not what America Will Break stands for, General. If you don’t care to bear that in mind, we don’t care to keep providing you with ammunition.”
Lee swung his head around to stare at the Rivington man. Rhoodie’s smile was less than pleasant. Lee nodded slowly. Having wondered if this moment would ever come, he was the more ready for it now that it was here. He said, “If President Davis ordered me to do such a thing, sir, I should present him with my resignation on the spot. To you, I shall merely repeat what I said a moment before: no.” He urged Traveller up to a trot to leave Rhoodie behind.
Rhoodie stayed with him; he was a better rider than he had been. He said, “Think carefully about your decision, General. Remember what will happen to the Confederacy without our repeaters.”
“I remember what you said,” Lee answered with a shrug. “I have no way of verifying it for myself, save by living up to the days I bid you remember that, if our cause should fail, yours fails as well. You must act as your conscience dictates, Mr. Rhoodie, as shall I.”
Now it was Rhoodie’s turn to stare at Lee. “You would sacrifice your precious Virginia for the sake of kaffirs who were doing their best to kill your own men?”
“As General Forrest has said upon occasion, war means fighting, and fighting means killing. But there is a distinction to be drawn between killing on the battlefield, where foes face one another man against man and army against army, and killing helpless prisoners after the fighting is done. It is the distinction between man and beast, sir, and if it is a distinction you find yourself incapable of drawing, I shall pray to God for the salvation of your soul,”
The Guns of the South Page 20