A new messenger boy—the other had presumably gone home for the evening—arrived with more telegrams. Lee took them, unfolded the first few. He read them, set them down on the table. “Well?” Brown asked.
“Arkansas, or the first considerable returns therefrom.” Again Lee declined to continue. This time, his running mate did not press him: he could figure out what silence meant. Lee made himself get the words out: “The trend is against us.”
“So it all rides on Tennessee, does it?”
“It would appear that way, yes—or do you think results in any of the other states likely to change?”
Albert Gallatin Brown shook his head. He surprised Lee by starting to laugh. At Lee’s raised eyebrow, he explained, “Even if I fail of election, I remain in the Senate, and shall continue to serve my state as best I can.”
Again, Lee found himself envying Brown’s quick adaptability. If he was not elected, he would go back to Arlington, put in a crop on the sloping fields, and no doubt be more contented living the life of a semiretired gentleman farmer than as president of the Confederate States of America. Yet the idea of losing the election was intolerable to him; he would carry the weight of that rejection for the rest of his days.
The night dragged on. A colored waiter took away the dishes. Fresh stacks of telegrams replaced them. Before long, the whole big table was flooded. In Louisville, Lee had been getting returns from only two states. Now six times that many were voting.
“I have more election results here,” someone said. This was a man’s voice, not the treble of previous boys from the telegraph office. Lee looked up to find Jefferson Davis holding a handful of telegrams. The president said, “I waylaid the messenger at the dining room door.” He pulled out his watch. “It’s already past two. How long do you aim to stay up?”
“Until we know, or until we fall asleep in our chairs—whichever comes first,” Lee answered. The outgoing President smiled. Lee said, “From where are your telegrams, sir?”
“I beg your pardon, but I have yet to look at them.” Davis did so, then said, “These first several are from Tennessee: from Chattanooga and its environs, mostly.”
“Let me hear them,” Lee said, suddenly alert.
The President read off the returns. As he did, Brown scrawled figures and, lips moving, rapidly added them up. Finally he said, “That cuts Forrest’s lead there in half, more or less.” He glanced over at a pile of telegrams off to one side. “We gain when reports come in from the eastern part of the state, but fall behind when they’re out of the west.”
“The plantations in Tennessee are in the south and west. The planters there, I would infer, want their slaves back,” Davis. said. One eyebrow quirked as he turned toward Lee. “Whereas you, sir, are winning the votes of folk who, during the war, I feared would go over to the United States en masse, as did those of what must now be known as West Virginia. How can you call yourself a good Confederate, sir, if those who half wanted to be Yankees give you the election?”
But for that eyebrow, Lee would have thought the President in earnest. As it was, he hoped Davis was making one of his wintry jokes. He gave back another one: “If Forrest had seen the result there before the rest of the country voted, no doubt he would have taxed me with the same charge.”
“He did anyhow,” Brown pointed out.
“He succeeded all too well,” Lee said. “I don’t know whether you have kept track of how things stand, Mr. President, but—” He used a forefinger to point out on the map which states were going to whom.
Jefferson Davis gnawed on his lower lip as he pondered the shape of the election. “Sectionalism appears to remain alive and well among us,” he said, shaking his head. “That is dangerous; if we cannot cure it, it will cause us grief down the road: the United States, after all, tore asunder from a surfeit of sectionalism.”
“The Constitution of the Confederate States does not provide for secession,” Albert Gallatin Brown said.
“Neither did the Constitution of the United States,” Davis replied. “But if the western states have the gall to seek to abandon our confederacy as a result of this election, we shall—” He stopped; for once his façade cracked, leaving him quite humanly confused. “If they seek to abandon our confederacy, at the moment I have no idea what we shall do. In any event, the decision will be yours, not mine, General Lee.”
“Very possibly not,” Lee replied. “If the returns from Tennessee continue to favor Forrest, the decision will be his. And in that event, the states which favor him, and which favor the indefinite continuation of Negro servitude, shall have no cause for complaint as a result of this election.”
Jefferson Davis let out an audible sniff. Though his background was more like Forrest’s than Lee’s, he had enjoyed the education denied to Forrest, and had come to identify himself completely with the old, landed aristocracy of the South. He said, “I cannot imagine that—that brawler at the head of our nation.”
“The voters, unfortunately, seem to have suffered no similar failure of imagination,” Lee said.
“That is not so,” Brown said stoutly. “The aggregate total of the popular vote continues to favor us, regardless of what the Electoral College may say.”
“By the Constitution, however, the Electoral College is the final arbiter of the election. I shall not dispute its results, whatever they prove to be,” Lee said. “If we set aside the Constitution for our convenience, what point in having it?” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he realized others would apply them to his own views on slavery. It is not the same thing, he told himself, not quite comfortably.
The messenger boy whose function President Davis had usurped now returned with a fresh set of results, which he placed in front of Lee. Brown asked, “Where are these from?”
Lee unfolded the top one, read it. “Texas,” he answered. His tone of voice said all that needed saying about the way the votes there were going. He did his best to find a silver lining to the cloud. “We had no great hope for Texas in any event.” He opened another telegram.” Ah, now this one from North Carolina is more like it: we have carried Nash County by three to two.”
“Good,” Brown said. “What are the numbers?” Lee read them off. As Brown wrote them down, he grinned the grim grin of a fighter who has landed a telling blow. Jefferson Davis’s smile held something of the same quality. Lee’s own initial burst of enthusiasm quickly faded. The news from North Carolina was no more cause for jubilation than that from Texas was cause for despair; the two sets of returns merely confirmed and extended trends that were already there. Results that went against those trends would have been more interesting.
“Anothuh cup of coffee, suh?” the waiter asked.
“No, thank you,” Lee said. “I am sufficiently awash as is. My elder brother Sydney has always been the naval officer of the family, but at the moment I am certain I am shipping more water than he.”
As the waiter left, Lee put a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn. Altogether without intending to, he fell asleep in his chair. A few minutes later, more telegrams arrived. Jefferson Davis took them and read the results to Brown, who asked, “Shall we wake the general?”
“No,” Davis said. “They make no significant changes. When more word from Tennessee arrives, that will be time enough.”
“By the feel of things, the only definitive word from Tennessee will be the last word. It will be days before we have the final count.”
“Then we needs must compose ourselves to wait,” Davis answered. “And all the less point to waking him now, would you not agree?”
Nate Caudell stared at the empty space on the counter where newspapers should have lain. “Confound it, Mr. Liles, when are they going to come in?”
“They’ve been in,” the storekeeper said. “Went right back out again today, too—I done sold every copy I had. Wept faster’n I ever seen ‘em before, matter of fact.” Caudell stared at him in blank dismay. Grinning, he went on, “You ask me pretty enough, might
could be I’» tell you who won Tennessee.”
“Why, you—” Caudell swore as he hadn’t sworn since his army days. Raeford Liles laughed at him. When he finally ran down, he said, “You’d better tell me, before I start tearing this place apart.” He sounded as menacing as he could.
It was, he knew, a poor best. Liles didn’t quiver in his shoes; in fact, he didn’t stop laughing. When he’d let Caudell hang long enough, though, he said, “Vote from Knoxville came in at last. That nails it down tight—Lee carried the state by twenty-five hundred votes.”
“That’s first rate,” Caudell said, letting out a long sigh of relief. The results had hung in the balance for more than a week. Usually, even if one or two states’ returns remained in doubt, the shape of a national election grew clear soon enough. This time, everything rode on the one closest state. Caudell asked, “How big an edge in the popular vote did Lee end up with?”
“Just under thirty thousand votes, out of almost a million, cast: sixty-nine to fifty in the Electoral College,” Liles said. “But if a couple thousand people in Tennessee had gone the other way, well, we’d be talkin’ about President Forrest now, no matter what the popular vote had to say.”
“I know.” For as long as Caudell could remember, people had complained about the Electoral College of the United States; the only reason they didn’t complain more was that it normally did a good job of reflecting what the people decided. For whatever their reasons, the Confederate founding fathers had included an Electoral College in the new nation’s Constitution; and in its first real test—Jefferson Davis having run unopposed—it had almost thrown the Confederacy into turmoil by its mere existence. He said, “What are they saying about the election in the west and southwest?”
“The states Forrest won, you mean?” Liles said. Caudell nodded. The storekeeper told him: “They’re still bawlin’ like pigs that burned their noses on hot swill. From what the papers say, Senator Wigfall’s makin’ noises like they ought to up and pull out of the Confederacy, set up a new one of their own to suit them.”
“What? That’s crazy,” Caudell said. After a moment, he wondered why. The South had left the United States after an election it could not stomach. “What does Forrest have to say about that?”
“Hasn’t said anything yet,” Liles answered, which struck Caudell as ominous.
He also noticed something else. “You don’t seem to be up on your hind legs on account of Forrest has lost.”
“I ain’t,” Liles admitted. “Oh, I voted for him, spite of the Rivington men and everything else. I ain’t easy about let tin” all the niggers loose. But I reckon we won’t go far wrong with Bobbie Lee in Richmond. God willin’, a few o’ them hotheads in South Carolina and Mississippi’ll see it the same way once they settle down a bit an’ stop listenin’ to nothin’ but their own speeches over and over.”
“I do hope you’re right,” Caudell said. “Fighting one civil war was plenty for me—I’ve seen the elephant now, and I don’t care to see it ever again, thank you very much.”
“I can’t believe they’d try anything so stupid—just can’t believe it,” Liles said. “Damnation, Nate, might could be they’d have to fight us an’ the United States at the same time.”
“Wouldn’t that be a fine mess?” Caudell said. The very idea of three-cornered civil strife made him want to pull his hat down over his eyes. But after he thought about it, he shook his head. “I reckon the United States have enough on their hands with England up in the Canadas. Did you read what the papers had to say about the war there?”
“Sure did. We—the Yankees, I mean,” Liles amended with a shamefaced chuckle, “whipped ‘em again on land, up near a place called Ottawa, I think it was. But their navy shelled Boston harbor, an’ New York, too—started a big fire there, the paper said. Hell of a thing, ain’t it?”
“It is indeed,” Caudell said. Like the storekeeper, he almost instinctively sided with the U.S.A. in a quarrel against Great Britain. His enmity with the North was new, and fading now that the Confederacy had gained its freedom. Britain, though—Britain had been the bogeyman since his Schoolboy days. “That’s a war I’m just as glad we’re no part of.”
“Amen,” Liles said. “Next time I’ll save you a paper no matter what, Nate, I promise.”
“You’d better,” Caudell said, mock-fiercely. As he left the general store, he found himself half-delighted Lee had won the election, half-worried because even that victory looked to be bringing trouble in its wake. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. The older he got, the more he wondered if there was such a thing as an unmixed blessing.
Robert E. Lee’s heels made a reassuringly solid sound as he walked down the stairs from the great columned porch of Arlington and onto the lawn. Even the boards of those stairs were new since the war; the old timber, uncared for while the Federals occupied the mansion, had grown dangerously rotten. The lawn, at the moment, was patchy and yellow, but spring would restore its lushness for him.
Someone rode up the path toward Arlington. At first Lee thought it might be one of his sons, but he soon saw it was not. After another few seconds, when he did recognize the rider, his brows contracted in a frown. It was Nathan Bedford Forrest.
He stood stiffly, waiting for the former cavalry general to approach. After their hot words in Richmond, after the bitter campaign, he wondered that Forrest had the nerve to visit him here. He would have liked nothing better than sending his adversary away unheard. Had he been merely Robert E. Lee rather than President-elect of the Confederate States of America, he would have done just that. The good of the country, though, demanded that he give Forrest a hearing.
He even made himself take a few steps toward Forrest, who reined in and dismounted. His horse began cropping the sere grass. Forrest began to raise his right hand, then stopped, as if unsure whether Lee would take it and unwilling to give him cause to refuse. He dipped his head instead, a sharp, abrupt gesture. “General Lee, sir,” he said, then added after a tiny pause, “Mr. President-elect.”
“General Forrest,” Lee said, with the same wary politeness Forrest had used. He was not ready to shake hands with his recent rival, not yet. Seeking neutral ground on which to begin the conversation, he nodded toward Forrest’s horse. “That is’ a handsome animal, sir.”
“King Philip? Thank you, sir.” Forrest’s eyes lit up, partly, perhaps, in relief, partly with a horseman’s enthusiasm. “I rode him in a good many fights. He’s old now, as you’ll note, but he still carries me well.”
“So I saw.” Lee nodded again. Then, because he found no other polite but meaningless questions to ask, he said, “How may I serve you today, sir?”
“I came—” Forrest had to start twice before he could get it out: “I came to congratulate you for winning the election, General Lee.” Now he did hold out his hand, and Lee took it.
“Thank you, General Forrest—thank you,” Lee said with no small relief of his own.
“I’ll do anything I can to make things easy for you as you take over,” Forrest said.
“Will you?” Lee said, all at once suspicious as well as relieved.” After the—unpleasantness which marked the campaign, that is good to hear, but—” He let his voice trail away. Forrest was notoriously touchy; if he was in earnest, no point to stirring him.
But he would not be stirred, not today. He waved his hand. “All that was just business, just trying to put a scare”—he pronounced it skeer—”on you and on the people out there who did the voting, same as I would have on a Yankee general, to get him runnin’.” He waved again, this time encompassing the whole of the Confederacy. “I came close.”
“That you did, sir,” Lee said. “And having come so close, you are most generous to come here now with your support.”
“When it comes to niggers, General Lee, I don’t agree with you still, and I don’t reckon I ever shall,” Forrest said. “But I lost. The whys of it don’t matter. That I got beat is a self-evident fact, sir. If I carried on
now, it would be nothin’ but folly and rashness. I wanted to meet you like a man and say that to you straight out.”
Lee saw he meant it. This time, he held out his hand to Forrest, who squeezed hard. Lee said, “The nation owes you a debt of gratitude for taking that view. I hope you will forgive me for saying that I wish more of those who followed you would do likewise. The talk of new secession out of the southwest is deeply troubling to me, and Senator Wigfall has produced more than his share of it.”
“He does go on, don’t he?” Forrest grinned, then sobered. “I tell you what, General Lee. If those damn fools try and leave the Confederacy, I’ll put my uniform back on and whip ‘em into line inside of six weeks. I mean it, sir. Tell it to the papers, or if you’d rather, I’ll tell it to ‘em my own self.”
“If you would do that, General Forrest, I think it would have a very happy effect on all concerned.”
“Then I will,” Forrest said.
“Would you care to come inside and take some coffee with me?” Lee asked. In Richmond, he had ordered Forrest out of his house; now he tacitly apologized.
But Forrest shook his head; he remembered the quarrel, too. “No, sir. I do this for the country’s sake, not yours. I will abide by the vote of the people, but they—and you—have not the power to make me like it. I aim to keep on working against you in every way I lawfully can.”
“That is your right, as it is the right of every citizen. Congress will have to ratify my proposals in order for them to take effect, of course; I anticipate considerable disputation before that comes to pass.” Lee and Albert Gallatin Brown had been going over the list of congressmen and senators returned to office, trying to work out the odds of their favoring the commencement of even gradual, compensated emancipation. He thought his program had a chance of passage; he knew it was far from assured.
The Guns of the South Page 52