North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Because of his increasingly pro-Negro position and his failure to bring the war to a successful end, Lincoln was a detested man. The capital seethed with rumors of plots to kidnap or murder him. Stanley heard a new one approximately once a week.

  Further, influential Republicans believed the President had done the party great harm by insisting on a new draft of half a million men on the first of February. There would be a call for an additional one or two hundred thousand by mid-March, Stanton had confided. Humans were being ground up like sausage meat in a butcher shop because the generals couldn’t win. Thomas had held fast at Chickamauga last autumn—the Rock, the rabble quickly named him—but the engagement itself had been disastrous, redeemed only slightly when Bragg’s army was driven from Chattanooga into Georgia in November. Now, flogged to almost insane desperation, Congress had reactivated the grade of lieutenant general and bestowed it on a man Lincoln had chosen—that drunkard, Unconditional Surrender Grant. As general-in-chief, he would soon take charge in the Eastern theater; Old Brains had been demoted to chief of staff.

  None of that would save the President, Stanley felt. Lincoln would lose the fall election—no cause for grief there. But the number of Republicans he could drag along to defeat frightened Stanley and his friends.

  Increasingly, Stanley felt a desire to leave Washington. He still relished the power that went with his job. But he wasn’t comfortable with the philosophies and programs of those with whom he had allied himself in order to survive the Cameron purge. In January, the Senate had proposed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery—in Stanley’s view, far too radical a step, taken too hastily. Too many Negroes were already free and out of hand. Everywhere you looked in the city, black soldiers and freedmen postured and paraded, swollen with new self-importance.

  One morning Stanley was summoned by the secretary only moments after arriving at his desk. Stanley’s cravat was askew, his hair rumpled, his appearance wild-eyed. Stanton noticed.

  “What the devil’s biting you?” he asked, brushing the underside of his scented beard. Before leaving home, Stanley had taken some swallows of whiskey on the sly. They loosened his tongue.

  “Walking here on the avenue, I had an unbelievable experience. Unbelievable—disgusting—I scarcely know the proper word, it shook me so. I came face to face with seven freedmen who forced me to step into the street to get around them. They would not give me room on the walk!”

  The whiskey lent him courage to ignore Stanton’s sudden scowl. “I realize they have been downtrodden people, sir. But now they presume too much. They strut about with all the boldness of white men.”

  Through the little round spectacles, Stanton peered at his assistant. The patient air of the teacher replaced the anger of the zealot. “You must get used to it, Stanley. Like it or not, that’s the way it will be henceforth. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘For the trumpet shall sound—and we shall be changed.’”

  Not I, Stanley thought, still seething when he and the secretary concluded their business and he left. Not I, Mr. Stanton.

  Yet he knew he swam against a flooding tide. When his part of the office was temporarily deserted, he unlocked a bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He had slipped the first bottle into the drawer on the first business day of the new year; this was the third replacement.

  A swift look at his surroundings. Safe. Moted sunlight flashed from the bottle as he tilted it. The loudly ticking clock showed twenty before ten.

  The thunder blow—“Missing in action”—had fallen on the Hazards late last year. In mid-February, George finally learned something definite about Billy’s fate, and with mingled relief and reluctance telegraphed Lehigh Station: YOUR HUSBAND SHOWN ON LATEST ROSTER LIBBY PRISON RICHMOND.

  Brett packed the instant she got the news and took the first available train for Washington. When she arrived at the house in Georgetown—thinner now; nervous from months of anxiety—her first question was “What can we do?”

  “Officially, the answer is very little,” George said. “The mills of the exchange system have nearly ceased to grind. Too much bad feeling on both sides. Each receives reports of the other starving and mistreating prisoners. The War Department’s furious because the rebs won’t follow protocol when they capture men from Negro regiments. They treat them as runaways and ship them back to slavery. White officers commanding Negro units are threatened with flogging or hanging. It’s all gotten very nasty.”

  Brett flared. “You’re right, that isn’t much of an answer.”

  “Did you hear me precede it with the word officially?” George retorted. “I do have another suggestion.”

  Constance stepped behind his chair, reached down, and gently kneaded his shoulders. He was sleeping poorly these days, worrying about his brother and about his transfer to military railroads. It had not come through.

  Brett was waiting. He cleared his throat. “In his post in the Richmond War Department, Orry may be able to help us. Old Winder has direct responsibility for Libby and Belle Isle and the rest of those—” he caught himself before saying hellholes “—places. But Seddon oversees Winder. And Orry works for Seddon.”

  Constance, eagerly: “You think Orry might be able to arrange Billy’s release?”

  “He’s in the central government, and I’m sure he took an oath to serve loyally. I wouldn’t ask him to break it. Even more important than that, he’s my best friend. I would never risk endangering him by asking him to intervene directly.”

  Brett struck her skirt with her fist. “Billy’s your own brother!”

  “And Orry’s yours. Be so kind as to let me finish, will you?” George jerked away from his wife’s hand, rose, and paced from the breakfast table. “I can ask Orry to find out all he can about Billy’s condition, and exactly where he is in Libby.”

  “How will you do that?” Constance asked, skeptical.

  George looked at her. “By doing what he did when he wrote me last year. Break the law.”

  Out of uniform and wearing a dark overcoat, he rode south through a mid-March snowfall two nights later. He reached Port Tobacco after eight and paid the sly, toothless man who was waiting for him the sum of twenty dollars, gold. He gave the man a letter addressed to Orry, and a warning.

  “You must give this to Colonel Main without drawing attention to him or to the act of delivery.”

  “Don’t fret, Major Hazard. It’ll be done just that way. I deliver secret mail into offices all around Capitol Square. You’d be astonished at how many.”

  And with the wink of the experienced profiteer, he slipped out the tavern’s back door into the blowing snow.

  Grant had come to Washington at the first of the month. His hard hand was already being felt. A huge campaign would start in the spring, perhaps the final one. Fewer men would be exchanged because slowing paroles or stopping them entirely hurt the South more than it hurt the North.

  Meantime, George and Brett and Constance waited. George had said nothing to Stanley about the illegal letter. When informed of Billy’s capture last fall, Stanley had expressed only perfunctory sorrow.

  George seldom saw his older brother these days. The war had transformed Stanley into a man of enormous personal wealth and a degree of importance in the radical Republican faction. It had also transformed him, incomprehensibly, into a person almost constantly under the influence of spirits. Stanley would have been dismissed, literally and otherwise, as a mere drunkard had he not been rich. Instead, he was tolerated by most and avoided by some, George being among the latter.

  George had given up on Virgilia in much the same way. He had sent a letter to her hospital at Aquia Creek, reporting Billy’s capture. She didn’t reply. Fearing the chaos of the mails, he wrote again. The second time, he decided the silence was deliberate.

  As spring drew closer, one of George’s worries was relieved. He received orders to report for duty with the Military Railroad Construction Corps on the first of the month.

  “I
’ll be working for old McCallum of the Erie instead of Herman, but at least it’s field duty. No more contracts, crazed inventors, water-walkers—Winder Building!” He gave Constance a hug as they lay in bed the night he got the news. He felt her shiver, quickly added, “Don’t fret over this. I’ll be in no danger.”

  “Of course you’ll be in danger,” she said, a certain rare note in her voice, which told him something unusual was happening. He touched her cheek and found it damp.

  She took the hand in hers. “But I shall pack up our things, dutifully return to Lehigh Station, and try to pretend otherwise.”

  Taking him by surprise, she shifted his hand to her breast and pressed it there. “If you’d make love to me, I might be able to sleep tonight.”

  He laughed softly, nuzzled her neck. “À pleasure, dear lady.”

  “Portly as I am?”

  “Portly is in the eye of the beholder. If you call yourself portly, then portly’s perfect.”

  “Oh, George—you are such a dear man. You can be obstinate. You’re short-tempered. Sometimes even a bit vain. And it’s impossible for me not to love you.”

  “Wait now—just a minute—” During the last part of her affectionate little speech, he had done a great lot of rolling and thrashing and flinging of bedclothes, propping himself at last on one elbow. “Since when do I deserve to be called vain?”

  “You know as well as I that age is affecting your eyesight. Every evening I watch you bring the Star so close to your nose you almost poke a hole in the paper. But you won’t admit you need spectacles—George, don’t snort or harrumph like Stanley. What I said was all part of paying you a compliment. Heaven knows neither of us is perfect, but I was clumsily trying to say you could have a thousand faults instead of your one or two, and I’d still love you.”

  He cleared his throat, paused, then did it again. She could hear the smile in his voice as he relaxed and reached for her waist, drawing her in.

  “Well,” he said, “you’d better. And right away, too.”

  George exploded when the toothless man showed up in the Winder Building next morning.

  “Good God, what possessed you to come here?” He shoved the courier toward the stairs, past the usual collection of contract-seekers and saviors of the Union who continued to treat the department as a second home.

  “’Cause I thought you’d want this right away.” The man dangled a soiled and wrinkled envelope in front of his client. “It was waiting at the Richmond drop day ’fore yesterday.”

  “Not so loud,” George whispered, scarlet. A brigadier coming upstairs cast a distrustful eye on the scruffy visitor. “I suppose you also brought it here expecting extra pay.”

  “Yessir, that did enter my mind. That’s what this yere war’s all about, ain’t it? A chance for the enterprising fellow to make himself comfortable for the future—”

  “Get out of here,” George said, jamming bills in the courier’s land.

  “Hey, these are greenbacks. I only take—”

  “It’s those or nothing.” Snatching Orry’s letter, he rushed back to his office.

  He didn’t dare read it there. Allowing time for the courier to leave the building, George put on his hat and escaped to Willard’s. Seated at a rear table with beer he didn’t want, he opened the letter. His hands shook.

  Stump, it began. No names this time, except the old ones from the Academy. Orry was smart as ever, George thought, embarrassing tears in his eyes for a moment. He wiped them away and read on.

  The party about whom you asked is here in Libby. I saw him day before yesterday, though from a distance only, because I did not want my interest to attract notice. I report to you sorrowfully that he appears to have been ill used by some of the bullies who staff the prison. I would guess he was beaten; he hobbles with the aid of a crutch, and I saw bruises.

  But he is alive and whole. Take heart at that. I shall attempt to locate a certain trooper of our acquaintance and, between us, we shall see what can be done. Old bonds of affection must count for something, even in these blighted times.

  It would be unwise for us to risk communication again, unless either finds it absolutely necessary. Do not be alarmed by prolonged silence from here. An effort will be made.

  My dear wife joins me in sending warmest felicitations to you and your family, and a prayer that we may all survive this terrible struggle. I sometimes fear the nation will be riven for years following a surrender—and if that word startles you, know that I do not employ it carelessly. The South is beaten. Shortages, dissent, wholesale army desertions all witness to the truth of the statement, though I might likely be hung if anyone but you read it.

  We may succeed in prolonging matters a while yet, inflicting further grief on those directly and indirectly involved, but it is essentially a concluded matter. Your side has won. Now we can only extract a high blood price for that victory. A sad state of affairs.

  My fondest hope is that whatever gulf exists after a surrender will never be so wide as to keep you and me and our respective families from bridging it once again.

  Emotionally shattered by what he was reading, George gulped the beer he didn’t want. Flashing images in his head brought back the fiery night in April ’61. The ruined house. The charred and swollen bodies. The harm beyond hope of repair. The fear was crawling in him again. Some moments passed before he had the courage to complete the letter.

  God preserve you and yours. We shall do our utmost for the person in question.

  Yrs. affectionately, Stick

  “An effort will be made.” Brett clasped the letter between her breasts. “Oh, George, there it is, in Orry’s own hand. An effort will be made!”

  “Provided he can find Charles. He warns it will take a while.”

  Her face fell. “I don’t know how I’ll survive till we hear something.”

  “If Orry can stand the risk, you can stand the wait,” George said, severe as a father chastising a thoughtless child. He had a premonition that it would be a very long time indeed before they heard anything. He prayed that if word did come, it would not be tragic.

  95

  GEORGE KISSED HIS CHILDREN after delivering a short lecture on how they must behave while he was gone. Then he embraced Constance, who struggled to contain tears. She presented him with a dried sprig of mountain laurel obviously pressed in a book. He kissed her once more, tenderly, by way of thanks. Then he slipped the sprig in his pocket, pulled on his talma, promised he would write soon, and went out to find transportation to Alexandria.

  The day was gray and warm. A downpour started as the work train chugged to Long Bridge, which was wide enough to accommodate tracks and a parallel roadway for wagon and foot traffic. Pickets near a sign reading WALK YOUR HORSE waved at George on the rear platform of the caboose. He had chosen to ride there because the interior was stifling.

  He touched fingers to his hat to return the greeting, then seized the handgrip and leaned into the rain to look ahead to green hills and the solid brick homes of the riverside town. Forsythia and daffodils, azaleas and apple blossoms colored the somber day. That was Virginia. That was the war. Memory showed him lurid images of Mexico and Manassas and the foreman’s burning house. He was still glad to be going.

  After searching nearly an hour, he located Colonel Daniel McCallum, Haupt’s replacement, in the steamy O&A roundhouse. McCallum, a Scot with a fine reputation as a railway manager, had a fan-shaped beard of the kind common among senior officers. He also struck George as having a bad disposition. George’s arrival—the interruption—didn’t sit well.

  “I’ve not a lot of time for you,” the colonel said, motioning George to follow. They left the busy roundhouse with its great cupola, a local landmark, walked between stacked rails, some of Hazard’s, and entered one of the many temporary buildings scattered in the yards. McCallum slammed the door in a way that said much about his frame of mind.

  Taking the only chair in the tiny office, he unrolled the pouch containing
George’s transfer orders and smoothed the papers under rough, big-knuckled hands. He flipped to the second page, the third—too rapidly to be reading. It took no intelligence for George to realize he was unwelcome.

  Understandable enough, he supposed; the papers included a letter of recommendation from Haupt. In Washington, it was said that McCallum had intrigued against George’s friend, done his utmost to ingratiate himself with Stanton and turn opinion against Haupt so that McCallum would eventually inherit command of the department.

  McCallum put the papers in the pouch and handed it back with a slashing motion of his forearm. “You have no practical experience in bridge repair or rail construction, Major. So far as I can determine, your prime qualification for the Construction Corps seems to be your friendship with my predecessor.”

  George clenched his hand around the pouch, ready to punch the colonel’s face. McCallum wrinkled his nose and peered out a small, filthy window. A spring shower was splattering a nearby stack of rails.

  Finally he deigned to return his attention to the man standing before him. “General Grant wants the Orange and Alexandria kept open, in good repair, all the way down to Culpeper, his base camp for the spring offensive. It’s a tall order because of the Confederate partisans who operate along much of the right of way. The trestle at Bull Run has been rebuilt seven times. What I am saying is, we have not a spare moment for instructing beginners.”

  “I can swing a pick, Colonel. I can dig with a shovel, or pound a spike. No training required.” The man offended George because his dislike of Haupt, and therefore Haupt’s friends, was not hidden. George wanted no part of such politicking. He wanted to work, and he didn’t give a damn if he had to give offense to secure the place to which his orders entitled him.

  The rain drummed. A whistle blew, bells rang. McCallum’s silence conveyed increasing belligerence. All at once George realized he might be holding a trump or two.