by John Jakes
“It was many—and many—a year ago, in a kingdom by—in a kingdom—”
He couldn’t go on. His drink-dulled memory had failed him. He picked up a fragile chair and swung it against the wall, reducing it to kindling. In the hall he spied a small gilt mirror, jerked it from its peg, and trampled on it. Then he staggered to the staircase.
Alarmed black faces peeped at him from doorways below. He clutched the banister with his hand and somehow stumbled all the way to the bottom without breaking his neck. Another mirror loomed on his left, an ornate one Ashton had purchased in Charleston long ago. He had never realized there were so many mirrors in the house. Mirrors to show him what he was: a failure as a man, a failure in everything he had ever tried to do.
He ripped the mirror off the wall, carried it outside into the frosty dark, and hurled it against the nearest tree. Shards of glass fell like a silvery rain.
He ran back into the house, found another full bottle of sour mash, and dragged himself up the stairs again, shouting gibberish in an angry voice.
At her drawing board, Clarissa listened with a look of puzzlement. After a moment she sighed and returned to her work.
“To Charleston? In the middle of the night?” Downstairs next morning, Orry slitted his eyes against the harsh daylight. “Where was she going, a hotel?”
“No, sir,” the nervous house man responded. “To Mr. Cooper’s. She had four trunks with her. Said she planned to be there awhile.”
“Christ,” he muttered.
His intestines churned, his head hammered. Brett had run away while he lay passed out in the wreckage of his bedroom. He had never behaved like that before, never in his entire life. His shame was worse than his physical misery, and his pride was shattered. His own sister had beaten him. It might have been possible to drag her back from the Mills House or some other hotel, but she had cleverly chosen Tradd Street. She knew, and so did he, that Cooper would give her sanctuary as long as she needed it.
He kicked tinkling bits of mirror with the toe of his boot. “Clean this up.” Feeling sickness and defeat in every bone, he slowly climbed the stairs again.
On New Year’s Day, 1860, Orry wrote a letter to his sister. It was couched in vaguely threatening language, employing words such as defiance, duty, and authority. It asked for her immediate return to Mont Royal.
He sent the letter to Charleston with a slave. But even as he was writing the pass, he felt a sense of futility. It turned out to be justified. He received no answer.
A couple of days later Cooper paid a visit. Orry accused him:
“You’re abetting a family quarrel by permitting her to stay with you.”
“Don’t be an ass,” his brother retorted. “It’s better that she live with Judith and me than in some public lodging house. Brett’s perfectly all right—which is what I came to tell you. As to the rest, I am abetting nothing, unless it might be her long-overdue effort to assert her independence. It is her life, after all. She’s not some nigra girl to be married to whomever you think will produce the best offspring.”
“You son of a bitch.”
Cooper reached for his hat. “I had heard you were acting like a drunken boor. I’m sorry to discover it’s true. Good-bye.”
“Cooper, wait. I apologize. I haven’t been feeling mysel—”
His brother had already left the room.
54
WITH EVERY MONTH THAT passed, the storm winds blew harder. Late in the spring the Democratic party convened its national nominating convention in Charleston. From the start the Douglas candidacy—Cooper’s cause—was in trouble.
In the aisles of Institute Hall on Meeting Street, in caucus rooms and on curbstones, Cooper and others argued that unless the party chose a man who could appeal to voters in other regions, the South would suffer. The Black Republicans could be worse medicine than Douglas, he insisted. Few listened. Douglas men were a rapidly shrinking minority.
Then came a critical test of principle. Douglas’s floor operatives refused to support a black code protecting slavery in the territories. Infuriated, delegates from six Southern states walked out of the hall to plan a rump convention. Huntoon proudly left with the others from South Carolina. In the joyous crowd in the gallery, Cooper spied Ashton, flushed and applauding wildly.
It was all over. After fifty-seven ballots, the convention adjourned without naming a candidate. The party was hopelessly sundered.
In early summer the regulars, or National Democrats, assembled in Baltimore and nominated Douglas. The dissidents, calling themselves Constitutional Democrats, gathered at Richmond to endorse unrestricted slavery in the territories and to nominate Kentucky’s John Breckinridge. A third splinter group tried to rally concerned citizens behind unswerving support of the Constitution, but the effort was considered a straw in a windstorm.
At the Wigwam in Chicago, Lincoln’s managers defeated Seward and won the nomination for their candidate. One statement in the platform adopted by the convention was explosive. It said Congress had no authority to condone or promote slavery by permitting its expansion into the territories. Slavery could be allowed to exist wherever it had in the past, but the Republicans stood squarely against its spread.
“Their platform is an abomination,” Huntoon declared to Cooper. “It virtually guarantees the South will fight if that ape is elected.”
“Since a fight is what you want, I’m surprised you don’t campaign for Lincoln.”
“Why, Cooper, I surely don’t know what you mean,” Huntoon said with a bland expression.
But there was a merry light in his bespectacled eyes.
In steady rain the Wide-Awakes marched in Lehigh Station.
George stood in front of the apothecary’s, watching them. The cigar clenched in his teeth had been extinguished by the rain, and the torches of the marchers fared only a little better. It was a foul night, too damp and raw for August.
The young men passed, twenty in all, wearing oilcloth capes and kepis. On their shoulders they carried brooms, ax handles, or dummy muskets. As the head of the column vanished into darkness, a small band appeared, the drums pounding, the horns blaring “Dixie’s Land,” a minstrel song that had been adopted as the anthem of all the new Republican marching clubs. An Ohioan had written the song; George had first heard it when Bryant’s Minstrels played Bethlehem last year.
Bobbing torches cast sullen light and flung long, sinister shadows. The drums woke memories of Mexico. George saw his son’s face pass in the band. Even though William’s cheeks were puffing in and out—he played a cornet—he somehow managed to smile.
All the Wide-Awakes were smiling. Why, then, did they remind him of soldiers off to war? Why did this parade, with its jaunty marchers confident of a Republican victory, fill him with thoughts of gunfire, and blood, and formless feelings of dread?
Ashton called at Tradd Street in mid-August.
“Land sakes, Brett, I thought your intended would surely be in Charleston by now!”
“I thought so too,” Brett replied. “It’s taken months for them to prepare his orders.”
“The Army always did move like an elephant,” Cooper remarked. He looked thinner than usual these days. Fatigue circles showed under his eyes. The Star of Carolina project was going badly, and Cooper was not encouraged by the calamitous accident which had befallen Brunel’s great Trincomalee freighter the preceding year. It had left the mouth of the Thames in September, only to be ripped apart by a huge explosion. The ship had survived, but Brunel never knew it; the report of the disaster was the last news he heard before he died on the fifteenth of September.
Ashton, of course, never paid attention to such things. With her lower lip stuck out, she patted her sister’s hand. “I surely do feel sorry for you. Is there any definite word about Billy’s arrival?”
“Yes, fortunately,” Judith put in. “It came the day before last.”
Ashton’s eyes flashed. “Tell me!”
Brett said, “Billy’s to rep
ort to Captain Foster the first week in September. Foster is the engineer who just arrived in the city. The one sent to repair Fort Moultrie.”
“Why, that’s wonderful news. It’ll be ever so convenient to have Billy here in Charleston.”
Cooper puzzled over his sister’s curious expression, her odd choice of words. Billy’s presence might be enjoyable, but why should it be convenient for anyone except Brett? Ashton must have been speaking of Brett’s situation.
Yet he wondered about that, recalling the strange glint in Ashton’s eyes. What it meant he couldn’t imagine. But then, he understood Ashton even less than he understood Orry these days.
From high in the gallery, Cooper listened to Huntoon speaking to an overflow crowd in Institute Hall. Ashton’s husband was delivering the last of several addresses in support of Breckinridge for President. Actually, the half-hour oration was largely a harangue against Lincoln.
“A vulgar mobocrat!” Huntoon thumped the podium. The crowd roared. “An illiterate border ruffian pledged to promote hatred of the South and equality for the niggers!”
Groans. Cries of “No, no!” from every corner of the hall. Unable to take any more, Cooper rose, ignoring angry stares from those around him. As Cooper left, Huntoon once more invoked Lincoln’s name, producing more booing and hissing, then a raw-throated yell:
“Kill the baboon!”
Tumultuous applause. They wanted a fight. They refused to heed what Lincoln said—that he would adhere to the platform of his party and not interfere with slavery where it already existed. They heard only their own voices prating of betrayal and the need for resistance. Cooper was more discouraged than he had been in years.
Billy got a shock when he arrived at Fort Moultrie. In fact, he got several.
He remembered Charleston as a friendly, hospitable place where the pace of life was leisurely. Now an air of suspicion and near hysteria prevailed. People talked warmly of secession, hatefully of Lincoln and the Little Giant. They eyed Billy’s uniform in a distinctly unfriendly way.
The second shock came when he realized the nature of the work to be done at the fort on Sullivan’s Island. Drifted sand was to be cleared away from the parapet because armed men could too easily climb those slopes and storm the ramparts. Some of the fort’s fifty-five guns were to be repositioned to provide better protection for Castle Pinckney and Fort Sumter in the harbor. These were preparations for war.
Everyone, military or civilian, knew the Federal garrison probably could not withstand an organized military attack—or even that of a determined mob. Sullivan’s Island was a long, sandy strip of land fronting the sea. Round about the old fort, which was actually the third structure to bear the name Fort Moultrie, stood any number of summer residences. The fort’s interior was vulnerable to sniper fire from the nearby rooftops.
Furthermore, the Moultrie garrison was small: sixty-four men and eleven officers. The core of the fighting force consisted of two companies of the First Artillery—the total including eight regimental bandsmen—under the command of Colonel John Gardner, a relic of the War of 1812 who was ready for retirement. A brusque Yankee from Massachusetts, Gardner didn’t hide his distrust of all Southerners—a poor practice for a commandant who had to deal with and employ local people.
The senior captain, Abner Doubleday, was a tough, capable officer who had graduated from West Point the summer George arrived. Doubleday was especially disliked in Charleston because he made no secret of being an abolitionist.
Four members of the engineers were stationed at Moultrie—Captain John Foster and Lieutenants Meade, Snyder, and Hazard. Also on the post during daylight hours were some civilian workmen Foster had hired in the city and a few artisans he had imported from the North.
During Billy’s first week on duty, Captain Foster twice sent him into Charleston on business. There he again took note of the unconcealed hostility directed at any representative of the Federal government. He expressed his dismay to Doubleday as they stood in the evening wind near an eight-inch howitzer aimed at the Atlantic. Doubleday had just supervised the loading of the howitzer with double canister.
“What did you expect?” Doubleday snorted in response to Billy’s comments. “The people of South Carolina are preparing for war. If you don’t believe me, just wait till the election’s decided.”
Uneasily, he glanced along the parapet. All of Moultrie’s artillery was mounted en barbette, in the open, unprotected by casemates. A hundred men on the roofs of the summer residences could make it impossible for the First Artillery to operate the guns.
“That’s why we fire this lovely lady every day or so,” Doubleday added. “So the local folk don’t think we’re defenseless—even though in some ways we certainly are.”
He shouted the command to fire. The howitzer boomed and bucked, frightening summer guests strolling the beach, and dappling the sea with deadly bits of iron.
One warm Saturday in late October, Captain Foster gave Billy permission to dine away from the post for the first time. Billy was thankful for the opportunity. He had already seen Brett on several occasions, and he knew about her quarrel with her brother. But whenever he pressed the subject of marriage, she immediately began to talk of something else. Was she changing her mind about him? He had to know.
That Saturday night they ate supper at the elegant Moultrie House. The hotel was located in Moultrieville, the village at the end of the island nearest the harbor. After the meal, Billy and Brett walked arm in arm along the beach. A trick of reflected light from low clouds gave the ocean a pure white sheen. Ten pelicans, one behind the other, flew past two feet above the water, which was breaking on the shore with an almost waveless murmur.
“Brett, why don’t we get married?”
“Because you’re so busy moving sand away from the walls of the fort, you don’t have a spare minute.”
“Be serious. You told Orry you didn’t want his permission—”
“Not quite. I told him I didn’t need it. But I’d like to have it. I was furious with Orry the night I left Mont Royal. I said some things I regret.”
Gently she stroked the sleeve of his uniform. “Of course I love you. I’ll marry you no matter what. But I hate to antagonize my family. I care for them as much as you care for yours. Don’t you understand?”
“Yes, of course. But we’ve already waited so long—”
The sentence trailed off. Looking down the shore, he saw Captain Doubleday pacing the parapet with a woman. Even in conversation with his spouse, the captain had a stern air.
“I don’t want us to lose this chance,” he resumed. “Charleston is tense. Anything could happen.”
“Billy, you sound angry with me.”
“It’s the delay I’m angry about. I appreciate that you don’t want to alienate your brother, but will he ever see things our way? Maybe not.”
She didn’t answer. The line of his mouth hardened.
“I love you, Brett, but I can’t wait forever.”
“Neither can I, darling. Cooper promised to speak to Orry again. Just give them both a little more time.”
He gazed out to sea where the howitzer shot had fallen night before last. “Time seems to be the one thing we’re rapidly running out of. Come on, let’s go back to the hotel and see if your boatman has drunk himself senseless.”
He sounded so cross, Brett didn’t say another word as they hurried toward Moultrieville in the gathering dark.
On election day Colonel Gardner sent Billy into Charleston. Reacting to the temper of the city, the colonel had drafted a message to Humphreys, the officer in charge of the four-acre government arsenal. Humphreys was to be ready to load a large quantity of small arms and ammunition onto a Fort Moultrie lighter next day; stored in Charleston, the ordnance was too easily available to a mob.
Billy rowed himself over to the Battery, a hard, time-consuming trip. Gardner had given him permission to eat supper at Tradd Street, so he didn’t want an enlisted man standing around waitin
g for him. On the Battery he saw workmen erecting a liberty pole. Many houses displayed dark blue bunting carrying the state’s palmetto emblem. Some loiterers surrounded the head of the steps Billy had to climb after he tied his boat. One, a tough-looking little fellow with a greasy leather eye patch, jerked a thumb at the boat.
“What d’you figure to take back to the fort in that, sir?”
Billy reached the top step and put his hand on his holstered Colt. “Myself. Do you object, sir?”
“Leave him be, Cam,” another roughneck said to the man with the patch. “Nigger Abe won’t be elected for hours yet. After he is, I expect we can find this peacock again.”
Billy’s heart thudded. His gut tensed as he walked forward toward the roughnecks. At the last moment they stepped aside and let him through. He quickened his stride. He had been bluffing when he reached for the revolver. He couldn’t use it even to defend himself; such an incident might precipitate an attack on the fort.
He delivered Colonel Gardner’s message to the nervous commander of the arsenal. “I’ll have everything ready,” Humphreys promised. “But I’ll wager we never get it off the dock. The hotheads won’t permit it.”
Billy passed the Mills House on his way to Cooper’s. He was walking on the opposite side of the street, but he had no trouble recognizing Huntoon and Ashton as they emerged from the hotel. Huntoon touched the brim of his fancy hat, but Ashton’s greeting was no more than a faintly disdainful nod.
At Tradd Street the mood seemed melancholy. Cooper was not home yet. Judith tried to entertain her guest by gathering the children around her at the piano and encouraging them to sing while she played, but they soon stopped; enthusiasm was lacking, somehow. Finally Cooper arrived, apologizing for his tardiness. He had come from James Island, where there were more problems with laying the keel of Star of Carolina.
