“Of course, if I may bring Major Marshall here,” Lee answered. He waited for Grant to nod, then continued, “Perhaps you will give us an hour in which to freshen ourselves? If it suits you, we shall meet you here at”—he glanced at a clock on the wall; its pendulum swung away the seconds—”half-past seven.”
“Very good, sir,” Grant said. They shook hands and went their separate ways.
Grant’s aide, Horace Porter, was a tough-looking fellow in his late twenties, with dark, wavy hair, stem eyes set in a forward-thrusting face, and a sweeping mustache set above a narrow strip of chin beard. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen,” he said when Lee and Marshall came down from their second-floor rooms. “As we are on neutral ground here, shall we proceed to the dining room together?”
“An admirable suggestion,” Lee said with a smile.
Once seated, Grant said, “I have often stayed at the Galt House; my wife and I both have relatives in and close by Louisville. In summer, the terrapins from the Ohio are very fine here, but at this time of year we’d best stick to beef and potatoes.” His dinner companions accepted the suggestion. When the roast arrived, Grant cut a piece for himself but sent it back to the kitchen for more thorough cooking. “I can’t abide bloody meat,” he explained, “or blood of any sort, come to that.”
“An odd quirk for a general,” Lee said.
Grant chuckled in self-deprecation. “So it is, but I expect we all have our crotchets.” The colored waiter brought back his beef. It was black on the outside and gray on the inside. It had to be as tough as shoe leather, and taste like it, too, but he ate it with every sign of enjoyment.
Porter drank two glasses of whiskey; Lee and Marshall shared a bottle of wine. Despite rumors about Grant’s tippling, he stuck to coffee. Once the main course and the plum pudding that followed had been cleared away, Lee said, “General, if I may make so bold as to enquire, how do you view your role and that of your men here?”
Grant paused for thought before he answered. He had a pokerplayer’s face, one that revealed nothing unintended. “More that of policeman than soldier, I believe: to keep either side from doing too much in the way of smuggling rifles, to keep this a political fight and not a new outbreak of civil war, and to keep the election as honest as may be. And you, sir?”
Lee’s glass still held a little wine. He raised it in salute to Grant. “We shall get on capitally, sir. I could not have hoped to combine accuracy and succinctness so.”
“We would do well to cooperate if we hope to maintain the fragile peace here and especially in Missouri,” Porter said; his flat Pennsylvania accent—his father was a former governor of the state—contrasted with both Grant’s western speech and the soft Virginia tones of the Confederate officers. “Both states already hold enough rifles, and to spare, to break out in fresh fighting even were no new weapons smuggled across any borders.”
“Quite true,” Lee said, remembering blue coats and gray at Munfordsville. “Having spent so much time at war, we soldiers deserve a spell as peacemakers and peacekeepers, would you not agree?”
“I’d toast you, sir, if I had strong drink before me,” Grant said.
“I am pleased to accept the spirit of the toast without the spirits,” Lee said. Charles Marshall raised an eyebrow, Horace Porter snorted and then tried to pretend he hadn’t, and Grant chuckled, just as if, less than a year earlier, the four men hadn’t done their best to slaughter one another’s armies. It was, in fact, a most convivial evening.
A sunbeam stealing through the window woke Lee up. He left his nightcap on when he got out of bed; the fire in the fireplace had died during the night, and the room was almost as cold as his rent outside Orange Court House had been the winter before. After a good, satisfying stretch, he walked over to the sideboard where his uniform hung.
Everything happened at once then. A rifle roared. The window by which he was standing blew in, showering him with splinters of glass. A bullet buzzed past his head and smacked into the opposite wall.
He instinctively ducked, though even as he did so, he knew the motion was useless. He made himself straighten, ran the two steps to the window. By the sound, the rifle had been a Springfield; whoever was firing would need time to reload, time in which he could duck. Only later did he think two gunmen might have waited outside.
The outer air was even colder than that in his room. He stuck out his head, looked up and down the street. A man was running away, fast as he could go. A couple of other people pursued him, but only a couple—the hour was too early for many people to be out and about. A rifle lay against the front wall of the bakery that lay opposite the Galt House on Second Street.
Charles Marshall pounded on the door. “General Lee! Are you all right?”
“Yes, thank you, Major.” Lee let his aide in to prove it. On his way back to the bed, he started to hop. “No, not quite, I fear; I seem to have cut my foot on some of this glass. A maid will have to sweep it up.”
“You have some in your beard, too,” Marshall said. Lee ran his fingers through it. Sure enough, glittering shards fell down the front of his nightshirt. Marshall’s voice rose with outrage as the full import of the situation sank in: “Someone tried to kill you, sir!”
“So it would appear,” Lee said. By then, the hall outside his door was full of staring, chattering people, among them a popeyed Horace Porter. He spoke to them: “I am grateful for your concern, my friends, but, as you see, I remain uninjured. Major, would you be so kind as to shut that, so I can get properly dressed?”
Marshall obeyed, although, to Lee’s secret annoyance, he stayed inside himself. “Who could want to harm you, sir?” he asked as Lee buttoned his trousers.
“There are undoubtedly a goodly number of Northern men who have little cause to love me,” Lee replied. As he pulled on his boots, he reflected that some men from the South also failed to look on him with affection. But no. An assassin from the Rivington men would have used an AK-47 at close range, not a Springfield—and with the automatic fire from an AK-47 would have been far more likely to accomplish what he’d set out to do.
Charles Marshall put his head out the window. He whistled softly. “At that range, you were very lucky, sir.” He paused, looked out toward where the rifle lay. His tone turned musing. “Or perhaps, from the position this murderer took, the reflection of the sun against the glass here helped throw off his aim.”
“Let me see.” Lee also gauged the angle. “Yes, it could well be so—but that is also luck of a sort, is it not?” Shouts came from the direction in which his assailant had fled. He turned his head that way. Of themselves, his eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens, Major, they seem to have caught him. Quick work there.” He drew back so his aide could have a look.
Behind his spectacles, Marshall’s eyebrows also rose. “It’s a nigger, by God!” he exclaimed.
“Is it?” Lee displaced Marshall again. Sure enough, the man being dragged along in the middle of the crowd was black. He saw Lee looking at him, started to shout something. One of his captors hit him just then, so his words were lost.
Lee left the window and went out into the hall, which was still crowded with people but not the mad crush it had been a few minutes before. General Grant caught his eye. “I hear you were shot at,” Grant said. Lee nodded. Grant’s mouth shaped a thin smile. “Not how I’d care to be awakened for breakfast. As long as you’re up, though, shall we go have some?”
“An excellent suggestion,” Lee said, liking the way the Federal general made no undue fuss about the incident—but then, Grant had earned a reputation for coolness under fire.
Breakfast, however, proved next to impossible. Lacking Grant’s sangfroid, a stream of local dignitaries—mayor, sheriff, lieutenant governor of Kentucky, along with a couple of others whose names and titles Lee failed to catch—came up to him and expostulated over the horror of what had just happened, how he should not deem it in any way an expression of how true and honest Kentuckians felt about him or t
he Confederacy, and on and on. The excited locals all but rent their garments. Lee answered as patiently as he could. Meanwhile, his ham and eggs sat on the plate in front of him, untouched and getting colder by the minute.
The officials ignored Grant, who drank cup after cup of black coffee, sliced up a cucumber, dipped the slices into vinegar, and ate them one after another, methodically, until they were all gone. It was not the sort of breakfast for which Lee would have cared, but at least Grant got to eat it.
When what seemed like the seven-hundredth uninvited guest approached the table, even Lee’s glacial patience started to slip. His hand tightened on the fork he had finally managed to pick up, as if he intended to stick it into this importunate fellow instead of his ham. But the man proved to have news worth hearing: “Found out why that crazy nigger took a shot at you, General.”
“Ah?” Lee’s grip on the fork relaxed. “Tell me, sir.” Interest also sparked in Grant’s eyes.
“He was yellin’ an’ cussin’ and carryin’ on about how if you hadn’t gone and took Washington City, the Federals would’ve won the war and set all the niggers down South free.”
“I suspect there may be some truth in that,” Lee said. “No doubt General Grant will concur.”
“No doubt at all,” Grant said promptly, and Lee remembered first how much the Federal commander had wanted to go on fighting and then what the outcome of that fight would have been without the intervention of the Rivington men. Grant continued, “That does not give that Negro or anyone else the right to go shooting at General Lee now, though. For better or worse, the war is over.”
“What will they do with him?” Lee asked.
“Try him and hang him, I expect,” the Kentuckian answered with a shrug. “Oh, he said one other thing, General Lee: he said you must own a rabbit’s foot off a rabbit caught in a graveyard at midnight, or else he never would have missed you.”
“Morning sun is a likelier reason than anything from the black of night,” said Lee, who had no such charm. He explained how the would-be assassin had picked a poor spot from which to fire.
The Kentuckian laughed. “Ain’t that just like a fool nigger’?” He made as if to clap Lee on the back for his escape, but thought better of it; Lee was not a man to inspire casual familiarity from strangers. Leaving his gesture awkwardly half-completed, the fellow departed. Lee’s breakfast was ruined, but he ate it anyhow. A bad breakfast was far preferable to the prospect of no breakfast at all, ever again.
During the next few months, Lee traveled all through Kentucky and Missouri. He ran up more miles, faster, than he ever had on campaign, but then, but for that one Negro, no one was shooting at him now.
Grant traveled even farther, especially in Missouri. Missouri had no direct train connections with Kentucky, Tennessee, or Arkansas—Lee had to travel by coach from Columbus, Kentucky, to Ironton, Missouri, where the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad reconnected him with the rail network. Grant, on the other hand, could reach St. Louis—where he had once lived—quickly and easily by way of the Ohio and Mississippi across Indiana and Illinois, and made several trips there.
Lee was pleased at how well both sides held to their pledges of keeping soldiers out of the disputed states. That did not mean no one invaded Kentucky and Missouri, however. Every politician, Northern and Southern, who could stand on a stump and put one word after another, or ten thousand after another ten, flooded into the two states to tell their people just why they should choose the United States or the Confederacy.
Listening to a pro-Confederate orator thunder abuse at the North at a torchlight rally one night in Frankfort, Charles Marshall made a sour face and said,” Anyone can tell he spent the war safely far away from the firing lines. Had he ever faced the Yankees in battle, he would own far more respect for their manhood than he currently displays.”
“How right you are,” Lee replied, as appalled as his aide at the oratory: the speaker had just called the Northerners cold-blooded, fat-faced, nigger-loving moneygrubbers. Lee went on, “I confess to a certain amount of embarrassment at representing the same nation as does this eloquent fellow.” To emphasize his distaste, he turned half away from the shouting, gesticulating man up on the platform.
“I know what you mean, sir…, But Marshall, as if drawn by some horrid fascination, kept watching the orator. Red light from the torches flickered off his spectacle lenses. “Even if he wins votes, he also sows hatred.”
“Just so,” Lee said. “For example, have you seen this?” He took out a pamphlet and handed it to Marshall.
His aide held it close to his face so he could read it in the torchlight. “ ‘What Miscegenation Is! And What You May Expect if Kentucky Votes Union,”, he quoted. He gave the pamphlet a bemused look. “The cover is—striking.”
“That is one word which may truthfully apply to it,” Lee admitted. The pamphlet showed a black man, his nose and lips grotesquely exaggerated, embracing a white woman and tilting her face up for a kiss. “We are, fortunately, not responsible for this document: you will note the learned lawyer Mr. Seaman had it printed in New York.”
“By the look of the thing, the learned Mr. Seaman, merely by existing, besmirches the legal profession.” Marshall held the pamphlet between thumb and forefinger, as if to minimize his contact with it.” Are the contents as lurid as the cover?”
“Easily,” Lee said. “And many of our speakers, though it did not originate with us, distribute it broadside, as a warning against what may come should the Republicans gain the upper hand again. It may perhaps be effective, but I find it repugnant.”
“The Yankees have hardly been kind in what they say about us,” Marshall said. “Can we afford to indulge such scruples?”
Lee merely looked at him until he hung his head. “I am disappointed in you, Major. Can we afford not to indulge them? Regardless of whether we ultimately find ourselves in possession of Kentucky and Missouri, we shall have to live with ourselves—and with the United States—afterwards. Poisoning the air with lies will not make matters easier.”
“You view these matters from a higher plane than I have reached,” Marshall said, still sounding ashamed. “You truly would not mind if the disputed states chose the Union over us, would you, sir?”
“I hope they see the Confederacy’s merits, as I have,” Lee replied after some thought. “But I would sooner see them go willingly with those people than unwillingly with us. That, after all, is the principle upon which we formed our nation, and for which we fought so long and hard. That—not this.” He took the pamphlet from Charles Marshall, let it fall, and ground it beneath his boot heel.
Major Marshall thrust a telegram into Lee’s hands. “You must see this directly, sir.”
“Thank you, Major.” Lee unfolded the flimsy paper. The words on it leaped out at him:
14 MARCH 1865. u.s. LIEUTENANT ADAM SLEMMER CAPTURED TWO MEN WITH A HORSE TRAIN OF AK-47s AND CARTRIDGES THIS DATE TOMPKINSVILLE KENTUCKY. PLEASE ADVISE. RICHARD INGOM, CAPTAIN, C,S.A. ELECTION OBSERVERS.
Lee wadded up the telegram and flung it against the wall. “Those goddamned fools,” he ground out—who else would be running repeaters but the men from Rivington? His head tossed like an angry stallion’s. “Do they think they are lords of the earth, to arrogate to themselves the authority for such an action? Where the devil is Tompkinsville, Major?”
“Just north of the Tennessee border, sir, southeast of Bowling Green. It’s not on any railroad line.” Marshall must have expected and prepared for the question, for he answered as quickly and certainly as if Lee had enquired about the location of Richmond.
“We can get to Bowling Green quickly, then. We’ll hire horses there and ride for Tompkinsville. Telegraph ahead to Captain Ingom that we are on our way, and on no account to allow rifles or prisoners to proceed until we arrive.”
“I’ll head directly for the telegraph office, sir.” Marshall hurried away.
Two days later, the two gray-clad men reined in their blowing h
orses in front of Tompkinsville’s only hotel. Lee felt his years as he dismounted; he hadn’t ridden so hard for so long since his Indian-fighting days in the west. He was not surprised to see General Grant leaning against one of the columns of the hotel’s false front. Touching the brim of his hat to Grant, he said, “The stableman at Bowling Green told me you’d got there before us, sir.”
“I wish I could have done as well at Bealeton, sir,” Grant replied; by the sound of his voice, he would be mentally refighting his battles against Lee the rest of his life. He went on, “I’ve not been here long myself—no more than a couple of hours.”
“Then you will already have spoken to your Lieutenant Slemmer.”
“So I have. Seems he and his companion, Lieutenant James Porter, were riding a bit south of here when they came upon two men leading several heavily loaded horses. Becoming suspicious, they got the drop on the men and forced them to reveal what the loads were: your pestiferous repeaters and ammunition for same. They brought the men and horses here to Tompkinsville, where your Captain Ingom, who happened to be in town, was fully acquainted with the situation.”
“Generous of you,” Lee said; had Ingom not seen the Northern men bringing in their prisoners, he suspected he would never have heard of the incident. But that was what the observers were for: to make sure both sides played by the rules to which they’d agreed—rules that frowned on gun running. Lee asked, “Have you yet questioned these men?”
“No, sir. When Captain Ingom told me he had notified you and you were on your way, I decided to wait until you got here. The men and horses are under guard at the livery stable down the street. Will you join me?”
Lee inclined his head. “By all means. And let me express my thanks for your scrupulous observance of the proprieties obtaining in this matter.”
The Guns of the South Page 38