North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  “Of course I understand why they do it,” Wise said. “They want to regain the power that has passed from the South to the North and West. Maybe they don’t even admit that to themselves. Hell, maybe they believe their own silly pronouncements. But they’re dangerous men, Cooper. They’re organized, active, vocal—and a threat to the entire South.”

  Cooper smiled that wry, sad smile of his. “‘When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice.’”

  “Sage advice.”

  “As it was when Burke first wrote it back in 1770. Trouble is, it’s been forgotten.”

  “Not forgotten. The fire eaters would just prefer not to listen to it. The fire eaters on both sides.” Wise paused and studied the visitor. “I’ve heard about you, Cooper. You’ve been a pariah down in your home state for a long time. I’m glad you hied yourself back into the Democratic camp. We can use more like you—assuming that it isn’t already too late.”

  Evidence said that it might be. Each side continued to defy the other.

  Massachusetts passed a tough personal liberty law to protect all people, including blacks. The law was a reaction to the Burns affair the previous year. A fugitive slave, one Anthony Burns, had been detained at the Boston courthouse, where an abolitionist mob had attempted to rescue him and failed. Federal and state authorities had then cooperated to return Burns to his owner in the South.

  In Kansas, meanwhile, a pro-slavery legislature had been elected with the help of so-called border ruffians from Missouri. They had streamed into the territory with rifles and pistols and had swung the outcome by means of intimidation and fraud. The fraudulently elected legislators had then passed laws establishing stiff penalties for anti-slavery agitation.

  Month after month, both sides pushed bigger chips, and more of them, into the violent game. Missouri sent hordes of night riders over the border. The Northeast sent crates of weapons to arm the free-soil men. The crates were labeled as containing Bibles. This prompted Cooper to remark to some Democrats at a caucus in Columbia, “Even God has been recruited. In fact, each side is claiming He’s with them. Do you suppose He runs back and forth on alternate days? He must get mighty frazzled.”

  No one was amused.

  One afternoon at the C.S.C. dock, Cooper struck up a conversation with the dock foreman, a second-generation Charlestonian named Gerd Hochwalt. The foreman could be hard on malingerers, but personally he was a mild man with a generous disposition and strong religious beliefs. He had a wife, eleven children, and a house at the outskirts of town barely big enough to contain them.

  Cooper and Hochwalt were soon discussing the recent anti-slavery convention at Big Springs, Kansas. Those in attendance had drawn up a plan for the territory to seek admission as a free state. They had also repudiated the laws enacted by the fraudulently chosen legislature sitting at Shawnee Mission. A particularly fiery Mercury editorial had condemned the action at Big Springs. Hochwalt praised the editorial.

  “I read it,” Cooper said. “I found it nothing but the same old rhetoric.” As they talked, both men kept an eye on the lines of black stevedores filing aboard Mont Royal with bales marked for a Liverpool cotton factor. On this and every other trip the ship was loaded to capacity. And for each current customer, Cooper had three waiting. The packet line was showing a monthly profit of sixty to seventy percent. Even Orry had begun to take notice of the success.

  Hochwalt yelled a reprimand to one of the stevedores who had stumbled and slowed up the loading. Then he wiped his perspiring neck with a blue kerchief and said, “The sentiments expressed by Mr. Rhett may be getting a bit shopworn, Mr. Main, but I believe in them.”

  “How can you, Gerd? He was calling for a separate government again.”

  “And why not, sir? For as long as I can remember, Northern people have scorned and insulted us. They think we’re dirt, every last one of us. A nation of brothel keepers! Isn’t that the term? Yet I have never owned a slave, or favored the institution, at any time in my life. The Northern abuse outrages me. If they don’t stop it, then by heaven we should go our own way.”

  Emotionally, Cooper could understand Hochwalt’s feeling. Rationally, it was incomprehensible.

  “You honestly don’t think men like Bob Rhett and James Huntoon and Mr. Yancey from Alabama are marching us along a path to a cliff?”

  Hochwalt pondered. “No, sir. But even if they are, I’m inclined to go with them.”

  “For God’s sake, man—why?”

  The foreman peered at Cooper as if he were callow, not very bright.

  “South Carolina is my home. Those men speak up for it. No one else does, Mr. Main.”

  “I tell you, Orry, when Hochwalt said that, a chill came over me. My foreman is no wild-eyed revolutionary. He’s a solid, respectable Dutchman. If he and decent men like him are listening to the fire eaters, we’ve drifted farther than I ever suspected.”

  Cooper made that statement a few nights later. Orry had ridden to Charleston to go over the books of the shipping company. He and Cooper had devoted most of the day to the work, and at the end Orry had declared himself pleased, even offering his brother a rare word of congratulations. Now the two of them were seated in comfortable chairs of white-painted wicker, looking out on the garden at Tradd Street. Little Judah, a chunky boy, was rolling a ball to the baby, Marie-Louise, who sat spraddle-legged on the thick Bermuda grass.

  “Well,” Orry replied, “I try to pay as little attention as possible to that kind of thing. I’ve enough to think about.”

  But you don’t find it very satisfying, Cooper said to himself as he noted the melancholy look in his brother’s eyes. Orry slouched in his chair, long legs stretched in front of him. He watched the children play in the gathering shadows. Was there envy in his expression?

  In a moment Orry returned to the subject of the company. “I’m thankful the vessels are full every trip. The rice market in southern Europe is still depressed. Every month it falls a little more. You were wise to insist we diversify.”

  Saying that, he sounded no different from the way he always did. Yet Cooper knew something was wrong. But he couldn’t identify the problem or the cause. He was about to ask Orry to do so when Judith came out of the house carrying a small parcel.

  “A boy from the Colony Bookshop delivered this for you, Orry.”

  “Oh—the book I asked for this morning. The shopkeeper was out of stock but expected a dozen copies by mid-afternoon.” He quickly unwrapped the parcel. When Judith saw the gold stamping, she clapped her hands in surprise.

  “Leaves of Grass. That’s the book of verse Reverend Entwhistle preached against last Sunday. I read all about his sermon in the paper. He said the book was the work of a man who had abandoned reason and order, and it was filthy to boot.”

  Cooper said, “The fellow’s receiving just as much hellfire from clerics up North—what’s his name?” He turned the book in his brother’s hand. “Whitman. Since when have you found time or a liking for modern poetry?”

  Under his beard, Orry turned pink. “I bought it as a gift.”

  “For someone at Mont Royal?”

  “No, an acquaintance.”

  Cooper didn’t press, but if he had, he wondered whether he might have discovered the reason for Orry’s bleak mood.

  “Supper is nearly ready,” Judith said. “Rachel’s been picking blue crabs since early morning.” Rachel was the buxom free black woman employed as a cook. “I invited Ashton and James to join us, but they had another obligation. We seldom see them. Close as they are, they’ve never been here for a meal, I regret to say. Each time I ask, they’re busy.”

  The Huntoons had moved into a fine, airy house on East Battery, a few doors below Atlantic. From there it was a short walk along Water and Church to Tradd Street. Orry had ridden past Ashton’s house on horseback, but he was curiously reluctant to call on his sister.

  “They have a flock of new friends,” Cooper explained. “Most of �
�em are members of Bob Rhett’s crowd. I can’t pretend it feels good to be shunned by one’s own blood relation, but I expect it’s for the best that they don’t visit or dine with us. James and I are so far apart politically, we’d probably be arranging a duel by the end of the soup course.”

  Looking more cheerful, he clapped his hands. “Children,” he called, “it’s almost time to eat. Come sit on your father’s lap.”

  Unable to stop thinking of Madeline, Orry gazed at the book, rewrapped it, and carefully slid it into his pocket.

  During supper, Cooper tried several times to introduce the subject of an expansion plan that was much on his mind lately. The plan was unconventional. It would require nerve and much more capital than the Mains could handily scrape together. He was thinking of George Hazard as a potential partner, but he never got to mention that. Orry repeatedly turned aside all discussion of business. In fact, he hardly said twenty words while at the table. That night, in bed with Judith, Cooper remarked that he hadn’t seen his brother in such a strange, sad mood since the months right after his return from Mexico.

  Huntoon’s law practice was growing. So was his reputation. Ashton helped that growth. She gave parties, receptions, dinners; she cultivated local leaders and their ugly, overbearing wives, never letting any of them know how much she loathed them or how cynically she was using them.

  Huntoon worked long hours to prepare a definitive speech on the developing national crisis. One evening in late summer, at the house on East Battery, he delivered a condensed version to an audience of about thirty guests. The guests included editor Rhett and the gentleman recognized as perhaps the foremost advocate of separation, William Yancey of Alabama. A mild, even innocuous-looking man, Yancey was a splendid platform orator. Some were calling him the Prince of Fire Eaters. Ashton dreamed of promoting him to king, so that her husband could assume the other title.

  Holding his silver-rimmed spectacles in one hand as a prop, Huntoon did his best to demonstrate his worthiness. The guests listened attentively as he launched into his conclusion, which Ashton knew by heart.

  “The Union is like a great fortress, ladies and gentlemen. Half of it has already passed into the hands of barbarian invaders. Loyalists still hold the other half, which they have defended without stint for generations. Now that part of the fortress is being threatened. And I for one will apply the torch to the magazine and blow the whole place to bits before I will surrender one more inch to the barbarians!”

  Ashton led the applause, which was loud and enthusiastic. While house slaves offered punch from silver trays, Yancey approached Huntoon.

  “That kind of extreme action may very well be necessary, James. And afterward a new fortress will have to be constructed on the rubble of the old. The task will require loyal workers—and able leaders.”

  His expression said he considered Huntoon one of the latter. Or at least a candidate. Huntoon preened.

  Ashton had little understanding of the issues the men debated endlessly. She honestly didn’t give a hang about Southern rights and wasn’t even sure what they were once you got beyond the fundamental God-given right to hold property in the form of niggers. What excited her about all the talk was the way it stirred others. In that reaction she sensed an opportunity to create and hold power. Her husband had convinced her there would someday be a separate Southern government. She meant to be one of its great ladies.

  “James, that was simply wonderful,” she exclaimed as she took his arm. “I declare, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you speak so well.” She was conniving for more applause, and it worked. There was another round from guests nearby. Yancey joined in, adding a “Hear, hear!”

  “Thank you, my dear.” Huntoon’s look of gratitude bordered on the pathetic. Ashton seldom complimented him in private, and often told him that he was an inadequate lover.

  Tonight, however, the presence of notables and the success of the performance generated an unexpected sexual excitement within her. She could hardly wait to see all the guests to the door, rush upstairs, throw off her clothes, and drag her husband down beside her.

  Blinking and sweating, he labored hard. Afterward, he whispered, “Was that all right?”

  “Just fine,” she lied. He was doing so well in his role of fire eater, she didn’t want to discourage him. But he never moved her with his clumsy caresses, and in fact frequently repelled her. She consoled herself by thinking that everything, including being a great lady, had its price.

  She decided that she needed to make another trip home, however. Soon.

  Ashton’s lover had found a new spot for their assignations: the ruins of a country church called Salvation Chapel. What a deliriously wicked thrill to hoist her skirts and let Forbes have her right out in the sunshine, on top of the tabby foundation.

  Nearby, his tethered horse whinnied and pawed the ground. In the distance she could hear the boom of muskets as the bird minders in some planter’s field tried to scare the September rice birds away from the ripening grain. The sounds of the horse and the guns increased her excitement; she was limp with satisfaction afterward.

  “I worry about plantin’ a baby,” Forbes said, his handsome and sweaty face only inches above hers.

  Ashton licked the corner of her mouth. “Seems to me the risk just adds a dash of spice.”

  She really didn’t think there was much chance of a pregnancy. Huntoon was at her all the time, and she had thus far failed to conceive. She suspected some damage had been done by Aunt Belle Nin’s solution to her earlier problem. That might turn out to be a convenience, although the thought of being barren saddened her sometimes.

  “It will until a youngster pops out who looks like me instead of your husband,” Forbes said.

  “You let me fret about James. Your job’s right here.”

  With that, she pulled him down into an embrace. The far-off explosions of the guns had excited her again.

  She went home with her buttocks scraped red by the tabby, but it was worth it. Forbes was a fine lover, attentive and enthusiastic when he was with her but content to do without her until he was summoned again. Vanity prevented Ashton from asking where Forbes practiced his considerable skills when she was absent. If there were others, they obviously couldn’t compare to her; Forbes came running at her every call.

  On the return trip to Mont Royal—Forbes accompanied her to within a mile of the plantation—they had another of their obsessive discussions of various ways they might injure Billy Hazard. Forbes was always fascinated by Ashton’s inventive imagination, not least because it was so centered on power, sexual adventure, and revenge.

  “Saw that you entertained Mr. Yancey a few days ago,” Orry remarked at supper that night.

  Ashton had been quite proud of the half column that the Mercury had devoted to the gathering. “’Deed we did,” she answered. “He had some peppery things to say about the Yankees. So did James. ’Course”—she turned to Brett, who was seated opposite her—“we make exceptions for friends of the family.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Brett said, not smiling.

  “Surely we do. Billy’s special.” Ashton’s smile was sweet and flawlessly sincere. Inside, her feelings were so intense, venomous, her stomach hurt. “Has he said anything about a wedding date?”

  Orry answered the question. “No. He doesn’t even graduate until next June. What’s a second lieutenant earn these days? A thousand dollars a year? A family can’t live on that. I’d say it’s much too soon to discuss marriage.”

  Brett’s eyes flashed as she looked at her brother. “We haven’t.”

  But they would one of these days, Ashton felt. That might be the ideal moment to strike; just when they were happiest.

  After supper, Ashton walked to the family burying ground. A strong, steady wind had come up. Her hair whipped around her head like a dark flag. She knelt at the foot of Tillet’s grave, the only place she ever felt ashamed of her behavior with men. She spoke softly but with great emotion.
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  “Things are going splendidly for James, Papa. I wish you could be here to see. I know you wanted another son instead of a daughter, but I’ll make you proud of me, just like I’ve promised before. I’ll be a famous lady. They’ll know my name all over the South. They’ll beg me for favors. And James too. I swear that to you, Papa. I swear.”

  When Ashton left the house, Orry went up to his mother’s room to visit for a little while. Clarissa was polite and cheerful, but she didn’t recognize him. On her work table lay her third version of the family tree. The first two had been erased so hard, so often, that they had fallen to pieces.

  Walking downstairs again, he thought about Billy and Brett. He was glad they weren’t interested in marrying the moment Billy left West Point. He didn’t know how he’d react if Billy asked for his sister’s hand right now. All he could see in the future was turmoil.

  He let himself into the library and blew out the one lamp already burning. He threw the shutters back and inhaled the cool evening air. It smelled of autumn and the river. His gaze drifted lazily about the room, settling on the shadowed corner. He stared at his uniform. He reminded himself that he had a crop to harvest. He had no interest in it.

  What had happened to Madeline?

  That was the question savaging him these days. She had become a recluse. She seldom left Resolute, and when she did, she was always in the company of her husband. Orry had passed the LaMotte carriage on the river road a few weeks ago. He had waved at the passengers—almost too enthusiastically, he feared. He needn’t have worried. Madeline’s response was exactly like her husband’s: a fixed smile, a steady stare, a hand barely lifted in greeting as the carriage rattled on down the road and out of sight.

  From a bookshelf he took Leaves of Grass, still in its brown paper wrapping. He’d had no opportunity to present it to Madeline. She no longer called on Clarissa or responded to his pleas for a meeting. Three times during the summer he had waited at Salvation Chapel, hoping she would appear in response to one of the notes he had sent covertly to Resolute. She never did.