Now it was Sharpe’s turn to be impressed. “What is the source of your information?” he asked.
Dana smiled. “We have a remarkable young agent in their midst. Felix Stidger, a clerk for the Tennessee Provost, volunteered for the mission and reports to Col. Henry Carrington. The governor of Indiana requested Carrington by name to get a grip on these damned traitors, and the colonel recruited Stidger. The young man ingratiated himself so well with the conspirators that he was appointed, of all things, their corresponding secretary! Hah! We get all the news faster than some of their own leaders. We’ve been able to raid many of their arms caches and arrest a number of their leaders, but I’m afraid we’re just scratching the surface. That’s why Stidger is so important. He is an admirable young man. His country owes well of him.”
3.
George the Contraband and One-Eyed Garnet
THE WHITE HOUSE, 4:00 PM, AUGUST 6, 1863
Dana and Sharpe had their heads together when Fox and Lamson passed through the anteroom. “Dana,” Fox said, “the President approved my plan.” He patted Lamson on the back and grinned. “This is the young man who is going to pull it off.”
“Well, congratulations to you, Gus, and better yet, good luck to you, Lieutenant. You’re going to need it to pull off any of Fox’s schemes.” Dana said good-naturedly. Lamson and Fox left deep in conversation.
Dana shook his head. “Sharpe, I want you to know that Gus Fox saved the Navy, and its successes stem from his drive and judgment, but there are times when Gus Fox’s grasp exceeds his reach.” He sighed. “Well, I have enough to do looking after Mr. Stanton’s office without worrying over the Navy.” Sharpe would have loved to inquire what Fox had meant about the plan that the President had just approved, but common sense told him to stay silent.
A secretary then announced that the President would see them. They had just stood up when Lincoln himself walked into the room. “Hello, Charlie,” he said as he extended his long arm to shake Dana’s hand. Sharpe had never met the man, but he had seen him on his visits to the Army as commander in chief. “I have been sitting too long and wanted to stretch my legs, and since they’re longer than most, they need more stretching than most.”
Lincoln turned to Sharpe, taking his hand as he said, “You must be the shadow man I keep hearing about from the Army of the Potomac. I make it a point to read every one of your reports that General Meade sends to the War Department. They make for lively reading, Colonel, lively reading. Especially one in particular.”
Sharpe was studying the man intently. He had rarely been put at such ease so quickly by another man. He had heard sneers about President Lincoln’slack of sophistication and dignity. But there was a warmth and kindliness to his face and a humble self-assurance that was strangely comforting. Sharpe had spent his life in the most exclusive circles in New York and Europe, and their manners, pedigrees, and protocol had become second nature. Yet Sharpe found that Lincoln had not affronted those preconceptions. In his work as a lawyer and as a first-class interrogator, Sharpe had become able to detect the smallest hint of affectation or deception. There was none of that in this man. He was what he presented himself to be. Sharpe was even flattered that the President had heard of him. He realized that in these few short moments, he wanted to please this man more than just duty or personal ambition required.
“Well, gentlemen, let’s go into my office and talk,” Lincoln winked. “We can’t keep Mr. Stanton and Mr. Seward waiting. They are mighty important people.” As they walked out, Sharpe noticed that Lincoln was wearing well-worn slippers. Amazing.
Lincoln’s office was where he held his most intimate conversations. He had adjourned the full cabinet to confer with his two senior ministers over the implications of Sharpe’s report. “You know Colonel Sharpe, don’t you, Stanton?”
“Of course,” Stanton smiled at seeing Sharpe. “How can I forget Sergeant Cline and those dispatches from President Davis he dropped into our hands? Give my regards to the good sergeant, Sharpe. And tell him there’s more gold where that came from.”
He began to introduce Sharpe to Seward, but Seward said, “We know each other, Mr. President. His father and I were friends when we were young. I regret that he passed so soon. I was also the one who recommended to the governor of New York that he ask Sharpe to raise a regiment in ’62 when you called for three hundred thousand more men. And look how well he’s done.” Turning to his only rival in the cabinet, he said genially, “You see, he may belong to Mr. Stanton, but I take credit for him.” Stanton frowned. A sense of humor at his own expense was not one of Edwin McMasters Stanton’s finer points.
However, sticking to business was. “If you’ve finished patting yourself on the back, Bill, let’s get down to what we are here for.”
“Yes, Colonel, let us hear more about George the Contraband.” Lincoln was leaning back in a cane-backed rocker, one knee draped over the other, his slipper dangling half off.
Sharpe noticed that his sock was darned. It occurred to him that the precariously hanging slipper was not a form of rudeness but a compliment. He was trusted. That was a relief. After Gettysburg, Meade had turned his acid tongue on Sharpe and stripped him of his duties to coordinate all the collection resources of the Army outside those in his own bureau. Meade was a general of the old school in a new war. It was not a happy headquarters. How strange that the commander in chief was capable of spreading trust and calm, where so many generals could not.
“Tell us the story about how you found him.”
Sharpe was no mean storyteller himself. This was business, and the facts were what mattered, yet he had to convince, and that was the storyteller’s art.
“Mr. President,” Sharpe leaned forward. “Before you can understand George, you have to understand what we do in the Bureau of Military Information. Since we were formed in February, thousands of men, white and black, have passed through our hands—prisoners of war, deserters, refugees, and contrabands. My chief interrogator, John Babcock, and I have developed a fine nose for the truth and just as fine a technique to get at it. We are rarely deceived.
“Those who come to us willingly are apt to exaggerate or invent what they think we want to hear. It is a common thing and easily found out, for already we have such a body of information on the organization, strengths, leaders, and problems of the Army of Northern Virginia that a simple comparison will tell if the story rings true or false. We know every regiment in Lee’s Army, its commander, and its strength. We know the state of their horses, the rations and forage they receive or not, the arrival of reinforcements or not. We follow them when they move their regiments, brigades, and divisions from one place to another, and issue updated maps and orders of battle to the general commanding on a regular basis.”
Lincoln asked, “Do you mean you get all of this from simple interrogations?”
“No, sir, we take our information from any and all sources at our disposal—and that means, in addition to interrogations, reports of my scouts and agents, examination of enemy documents, even personal letters, reports from the Signal Corps, the cavalry, the agents of the Secretary of War, and even the Provost Marshal of Maryland, James McPhail. I even encourage the pickets to obtain information from their Confederate opposites. They exchange coffee, tobacco, and newspapers often enough, why not information? That reminds me—” and before he could get further, Lincoln smiled as Seward and Stanton rolled their eyes.1
Sharpe took it in stride and pressed on, “Of the time one little private from Rhode Island took my admonition with great enthusiasm. As soon as he got onto the picket line, he called out, ‘Johnny Reb, what’s your regiment?’ The Rebel called back, ‘The 21st South Carolina. How about you, Yank? What’s your regiment?’ The little soldier responded proudly, ‘The One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Rhode Island!” That seemed to get the South Carolinian in a real twist, as he yelled back, ‘You’re a damned liar, Yank, there aren’t 147 men in that whole measly little state!’”2
Lincoln
burst out laughing and slapped his knee. “By heavens, Colonel, I will just have to steal that one from you, if you won’t stand on copyright.”
“Consider it in the public domain, Mr. President.”
Lincoln chuckled, “I don’t make the stories mine by telling them. I’m only a retail dealer.”
Stanton had enjoyed the story as much as everyone else, but thought that one storyteller in the room was more than enough. “Let’s get back to George the Contraband, Sharpe. Did he pass your test?”
“Indeed, sir, he did so without a doubt. Mr. Babcock and Sergeant Cline like to chat up the occupants of the Bull Pen, the Provost Marshal’s prison pen, to see if they can skim any cream right off the top. Cline came to me. ‘I think you should talk to this one. He came through our lines last night, gave himself up to the pickets, and claims to be John Hunt Morgan’s body servant.’ He had my attention immediately. You will remember that Morgan was rampaging through Indiana at the time before his capture.
“I could tell at once he was no field hand. You could almost say that he carried himself like a gentleman; he was a light-skinned mulatto, about five feet and four inches tall and well dressed. I didn’t even get the first word. He told me point blank, ‘I have news for you, Colonel.’ His English had that Southern lilt, but it was clear and grammatical as any white rebel I have interrogated. He can read and write as well. He had a copy of Les Misérables in his pocket. In my line of work, I make it a habit of not interrupting a man who wants to share something. I encouraged him to start.
“‘Let me introduce myself, first,’ he said. He was a straightforward man, and his eyes remained fixed on me. There was no telltale of a lie in his unconscious up and rightward glance. ‘I am William George Morgan, and I was born in General Morgan’s household. They call me George. The general and I received the same education while we were boys so that I could become his body servant. Mr. Morgan was a generous man, perhaps because I have, by a most strange coincidence, an uncanny resemblance to the old gentleman.’” Sharpe paused with a smile and commented, “In my journeys south before the war, I gathered that the chivalry down there acted as if the profusion of mulatto children in their great houses seemed simply to have fallen out of the sky.”
Sharpe continued, “At this point, I asked him the obvious question: ‘Why weren’t you with Morgan on his raid?’
“‘You must understand, sir, that the general knows perfectly well that I am his brother, and he has done everything he can to recognize that unwelcome fact, short of acknowledge me in public. I can’t blame him; he’s trapped by slavery as much as I was – more so, because I can run away from it, and he cannot not. I went off to war with him proud to be a soldier and, strange as it may sound, fight for the South. After all, it is my home, too.’”3
Sharpe interrupted his story to comment again, “This is not as strange as he makes out. General Lee’s Army could not function without its thousands of Negroes, although they are not officially enlisted in the Confederate Army except, strangely, as bandsmen. After Gettysburg, Lee’s white troops were so depleted in strength and numbers that he ordered our five thousand prisoners escorted South by armed Negroes from his Army. And I must say they were punctilious in their duties. There was more than one white backside poked along to Richmond’s Belle Island Prison by a bayonet in black hands. I have learned also that after Grant took Vicksburg, he offered the 400 slave body servants the opportunity to go North. Everyone went South with their paroled masters.”
Stanton asked impatiently, “Then why can we trust what he has to say if they’re so damned loyal? And how do you explain the hundreds of thousands of contrabands that come into our lines?”
“One thing I have learned, Mr. Secretary, in my years with the old Negro community in Kingston, New York, and here in Virginia in dealing with thousands of contraband slaves, Negroes are eminently secret people; they have a system of understanding amounting almost to free masonry among them; they will trust each other when they will not trust white men.4
“Their actions, however, speak louder than words. I will defy anyone to claim that a Negro, outside a Confederate Army, has ever betrayed a Union soldier. The lives of my scouts and agents in the heart of Virginia have depended on the active goodwill of Negroes. They have come to the aid of my people to warn them of danger and guide them to safety countless times. Where fear made them dare not give overt assistance, they could be depended on to remain silent despite great reward. There is little in their immediate neighborhoods that they do not know, although most slaves’ knowledge does not extend beyond five miles of their plantations.”
“This George is no field hand,” Stanton replied.
“No, he is not, but he shares with his people the same dream.”
Lincoln spoke, “It seems you have learned exactly the same lesson that Mr. Douglass has been pressing.5 How many forget that freedom is the most intoxicating of all the works of man?”
He said this with such a humility that Sharpe was taken aback. Anyone else would have said it with a righteous flourish. Lincoln had said it as if the very idea was a precious marvel that one could only revere. The man dangling his slipper had assumed a glow that Sharpe had only seen in an El Greco saint in the Prado in Madrid.
The room was silent for a long moment before Lincoln leaned over and said, “Now tell us, Colonel, how Jeff Davis has his fingers all over this.”6
Sharpe picked up his narrative. “Davis himself unwittingly provoked George’s escape. Morgan relied on George to act as his clerk, to do much of his paperwork and file his papers. In turn, Morgan’s adjutant depended upon George and was happy to pass paper to him. Carelessly, he passed the deciphered message to George. That is not as strange as it may seem. The chivalry are uniformly careless around their body servants and speak of the most secret matters around them. They are like the furniture to them. I have it on good authority that even Lee discounts them as useful sources of intelligence for us because of their simple natures. My experience is that they are often astute observers.
“Why, it was the contraband Charlie Wright, an officer’s body servant, who came into our lines and gave us the information that two of Lee’s corps were passing through Culpeper Court House into the Shenandoah Valley for the invasion of Pennsylvania last June. He had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of a good part of the Army of Northern Virginia, one in which Mr. Babcock could not find a single error. It was on this intelligence that General Hooker began to move the Army of the Potomac north to counter Lee. We actually crossed the Potomac before Lee did. Charlie Wright’s warning may well have been the deciding factor in our ability to meet Lee at Gettysburg rather than to our disadvantage on the outskirts of Baltimore or Washington.7
“It was Davis’s deciphered telegram that made George realize what was at stake. His memory was quite good, and he told us that the object of Morgan’s raid was to raise the Copperheads in the Northwest and assist them in the overthrow of the state governments and the destruction of the authority of the federal government. Furthermore, Morgan was to liberate the prisoner of war camps within reach, especially the six thousand men held in the camp at Indianapolis and the eight thousand in Chicago. The Copperheads were to assist in this and bring sufficient arms to completely equip them. Morgan would have had the equivalent of several rebel infantry divisions at his disposal along with thousands of Copperheads in the heart to the Northwest. The message also stated that the strategic goal was more than overthrowing the authority of the government but to bring the Northwest—at least Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio—into the Confederacy.”8
“Thank God, the rebels failed miserably,” Stanton said. “We have Morgan locked up tight as a tick.”
“Morgan is not the end of this, Edwin.” Seward added, “As I understand it, Morgan’s men behaved so badly that the damned disloyal fuse did not light. I can tell you, from the political end of this business, the Copperheads are in no way discouraged. They are biding their time. We nearly had an open revolt when th
at son-of-a-bitch Vallandingham was convicted of treason. I would not discount the rebels and Copperheads trying this again.”9
Dana commented, “Morgan’s capture did not prevent them raiding an arms warehouse on the second and murdering the guards. We lost five thousand new Springfield rifles. That would be almost enough to equip all the prisoners in the Indianapolis camp.”
“Well, Sharpe,” Stanton added with a rare smile, “if Colonel Carrington’s man, Stidger, wasn’t doing such a splendid job for us, your Sergeant Cline would seem to be the perfect man to spy upon the Copperheads. And he’s a Hoosier, too, if I remember, 3rd Indiana Cavalry.”
Sharpe’s Excelsior College pride promoted him to throw in, “Actually, sir, he’s New York born and raised and has only recently made his home in Indiana.”
“It seems you New Yorkers are a thick lot,” Lincoln winked at Seward. “Why Seward here just recently hosted a dinner for the star of the New York stage, Edwin Booth. Have you seen him perform?”
“Many times in the city, sir. My wife adores him.”
“He was here at Ford’s Theater doing his Shylock in “‘The Merchant of Venice.’” Lincoln’s voice had gone sad and soft. “A good performance, but I’d a thousand times rather read it at home if it were not for Booth’s playing.”10
Stanton spoke. “The President often goes to the theater and without any bodyguard at all. They let him quietly in the back.” Then assuming his official frown, he said, “Mr. President, I must again beg you to be not so careless of your personal safety. There are many who would do you harm.”
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