House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “And I’ll have no complaints out of you, Travis. You’re lucky to have a roof of your own, with Richmond full of refugees. There are four families living in a house not so large as ours, two or three blocks away from us on Franklin Street; two old gentlemen, six ladies, eight children. Every basement room in Richmond that hasn’t water actually standing on the floor has a lady and a child or two in it. I’m ashamed not to have taken someone in, but I like to keep room for Brett and Burr and Rollin, now they’re so near. People keep pouring into Richmond. They seem to think they’re safe here. There are even a few ladies from Atlanta. General Sherman drove them out as a man drives scratching chickens out of his garden. The poor things seem to get some sort of comfort out of telling their experiences. They seem to make themselves feel better off by remembering the bitter times they’ve had. But then women always like to talk. The soldiers aren’t like that, the wounded. They don’t talk about their wounds.”

  “Do you still go to the hospital every day?”

  “Almost. Of course we’ve let the carriage go, and it’s a long walk on a rainy day. It’s been good for me, though. I haven’t felt so well in years.” She laughed. “That’s probably because I don’t overeat. No one does in Richmond now. Come to dinner tomorrow, you and Cousin Jeems. We’ll give you bacon and Italian peas and sorghum and cornbread, and expect you to like it.”

  Trav and General Longstreet accepted that invitation, and Brett was there, and they spoke of General Early’s defeat in the Valley. He was beaten because after driving the Yankees into headlong flight his men stopped to plunder the captured camp; and Brett commented:

  “I suppose it’s not surprising the army should prefer looting to fighting. Everyone’s money-grabbing these days.”

  Trav felt a faint guilt, for his ventures in tobacco were steadily profitable. Captain Blackford was on Richmond duty now, had been here since September; and Trav had confessed his uneasiness about these transactions, but the Captain reminded him that other officers in the army bought and sold. Now that prices rose every day, speculation had become a game any novice could play successfully. Trav continued his dealings, but his conscience still troubled him.

  So now he shut his ears to Brett’s remark, watching the young people here at Cinda’s dinner table. His eyes turned from Vesta to Anne and back again. Vesta’s Tommy had been killed within a few days of their wedding; her Rollin even before they were married had been wounded near death. Anne’s Julian would always go on crutches. Yet in their faces there was a happy radiance, and no shadow dwelt in their eyes. They were young; and young people were resilient, bending to the storms of life without breaking. Vesta’s loss had enriched her, had bestowed upon her a rare spiritual beauty; Anne probably loved Julian maimed more tenderly than she would have loved him whole. Older people, facing like hurts, took more lasting bruises and deeper scars. He himself, and Brett, and even Cinda, had lost some deep part of themselves which they could never recover; but Anne and Julian and Vesta had for their loss some intangible gain.

  Why was it that young folk could face the future with more serenity? Was it because they knew the future was theirs, while even middle-aged people like Cinda and Brett and General Longstreet and himself unconsciously came to feel that they had no future, that life was behind them? A moment later he was sure this was true; for Judge Tudor was there that day, and he was the oldest of them all, and now when he spoke it was in a hard and fretful bitterness, in the querulous tones of age.

  “That is true, Mr. Dewain. There’s greed and corruption everywhere, high and low. Mr. Peck, whom the clerks sent to North Carolina to get supplies, bought and shipped back here at government expense wheat and bacon for himself and his friends, for Judge Campbell and for Mr. Kean—all. at government expense! Why, he bought ten barrels of flour and four hundred pounds of bacon for himself! Yet he told the clerks who sent him that he could get nothing for them. And it’s been proved in court that General Winder sold passports at two thousand dollars apiece. The rottenness runs from top to bottom of society, and government officials are the worst offenders!”

  Vesta said cheerfully that prices were not so high as they had been. “Why, flour’s only three hundred dollars a barrel!” She smiled. “But of course not everyone’s lucky enough to have jewelry and things that they can sell, to get the money to buy even at that price.”

  General Longstreet said: “Judge Tudor, we in the army are more interested in getting men than in making money. I see there is a widening of conscription.”

  The older man shook his head. “Most of it is much ado about nothing, I’m afraid; though it’s true any man on the streets without a pass is hustled off to the depots.”

  Julian laughed. “Why, General, they even grabbed Judge Reagan and Judge Davis, last month; because neither one is fifty years old.”

  “But they were released, Julian,” Judge Tudor reminded him. He turned to General Longstreet. “No one with any influence needs serve unless he wants to. The medical boards pass any man physically able to endure ten days of army life; but Governor Smith is dealing out certificates of exemption wholesale, three or four hundred every week, to perfectly healthy rich young men, appointing them revenue commissioners, justices of the peace, clerks, constables, anything.” He added harshly: “For that matter, there are enough conscription officers walking the streets of Richmond to make two or three divisions of able-bodied soldiers for Lee, husky loafers with muskets in their hands, challenging even soldiers and officers on the streets!”

  “They’ve stopped me a dozen times,” Julian said. “I carry no pass, and I wish they’d take me; but the medical boards say I’m no good.” Trav saw Anne at Julian’s side catch his hand and press it in strong tenderness.

  “Of course you’re not!” the Judge said angrily. “Yet these bombproofs hide behind any ridiculous pretext to save their skins. Every government official puts his sons and nephews and his cousins and their nephews—yes, and all the friends of their nephews, and the nephews of his own friends—into safe berths. The conscript men go out and drag the farmers off their farms so we’ll all starve this winter for lack of farm produce; but it takes half a dozen of them two days to go out and conscript one man!” He said sadly: “The glory has gone out of war, General! The young beaux who rushed into it in ’sixty-one are either dead or maimed or they’ve had their fill of it. The only ones still in the army are a few fine men and a lot of poor devils with neither influence nor money, nor the courage to desert.”

  Cinda spoke quietly: “I’ve heard women say they wish all the soldiers would desert and end it. Three years ago we were all telling our sons to return with their shields or on them! Now, we just want them to return, and as long as they come home alive, that’s all we ask.”

  During the weeks that followed, Trav came to realize that not only in Richmond but at the front the war now wore a different aspect. Battle was no longer a question of march and countermarch, of feeling for an undefended flank, of solid ranks of infantry standing to face the enemy at twenty yards’ range for minutes at a time, loading and firing till one line or the other recoiled or was shot to shreds. Now the Confederates fought behind breastworks, and the Yankees likewise kept under shelter, except when Grant ordered here or there a probing thrust at the defensive lines. It seemed to Trav that nothing was accomplished by these spurts of small activity, but Longstreet set him right.

  “Much is accomplished, Currain, and to our disadvantage. When we lose a man, his place can’t be filled; and ’Lys Grant kills a few of us every day, and he keeps stretching our lines thinner and thinner. By and by, when we can stretch no farther, he’ll overlap our right and hit for the Danville road; and then it will be a race to see if this army can get away before he cuts our only escape.”

  Trav had not looked so far ahead, and this word was like a revelation. “But can’t we do anything?” he protested.

  Longstreet shook his head. “No. No, we can’t give up Richmond, and we can’t hold it.” He added simply
: “We can do nothing but surrender, return to the Union, take up our lives again no longer as Confederates, but as Americans.”

  “We won’t do that.”

  “Currain, the test of any idea is its ability to get itself accepted. We’ve put our belief in the right of secession to the test of war, and by that test we have failed.”

  “Not yet, sir! We’re not beaten. We still whip them in every engagement.” Trav was a little surprised to hear himself dissent, but he persisted. “Until the Yankees begin to outfight us, I won’t accept the idea of defeat.”

  “You can’t avoid accepting it, unless you shut your eyes.”

  Trav said incredulously: “You don’t act like a man who expects defeat.”

  “Of course not.” Longstreet half smiled. “I believe it is time to end this war, yes; but—whatever I believe—I will go on fighting.”

  “We certainly won’t give in till we must!”

  “No. No, before we give in, I suppose a few thousands more of us must die.”

  Trav after that day discovered all around him signs enough to foreshadow the coming collapse. Richmond was become a nest of crime. Hunger drove the poor to petty theft, to burglary, to murder; there was again an epidemic of incendiary fires; Castle Thunder was crowded with wrongdoers. In three months that fall, the army lost ten thousand men by desertion, and public executions became so frequent that they ceased to attract throngs of morbid spectators.

  Not only in the army and in Richmond but throughout the South there was demoralization. Tony wrote in early December that he had decided to abandon Chimneys. “There are so many deserters around here that they rule the countryside,” he said. “By yielding to their demands I’ve so far avoided any trouble; but to do so has reduced our supplies till now we can’t feed the people on the place through the winter. I don’t intend to starve myself to fill the mouths of a lot of lazy niggers, so I’m leaving. I’m going to New Orleans. Chimneys will probably be looted by the local desperadoes, unless you care to resume possession. A few of the people have run away, but you’re welcome to take title to those still here; and you may consider this letter a deed of gift to you of the niggers and the place, with my blessing! Don’t feel any obligation to repay me. I’ve dabbled in blockading and in the cotton trade and I shall be able to live quite comfortably on my credits in New Orleans.”

  Trav on Sunday, when they were alone together, showed Brett and Cinda the letter, and Brett read it thoughtfully. “Tony sounds scared,” he commented.

  “I thought so,” Trav assented. “Of course people around there remember Mrs. Blandy; and Tony remembers what happened to Darrell.”

  “I suppose the bushwhackers rule the roost. Civil law must be petty well broken down everywhere outside the cities.”

  “The states can’t enforce their own laws,” Trav agreed, “and their courts nullify the laws Congress makes.”

  “States’, rights,” Brett said dryly. “Sacred states’ rights!” Already they had forgotten Tony.

  “Well, that’s what the Confederacy set out to defend,” Cinda reminded him.

  “States’ rights can’t be maintained, not against a central government,” Brett said strongly. “Not if the central government is to survive. When the South seceded, that was proof enough that no union from which the members could withdraw at will had any permanence; but we in the South tried to make the Confederacy and states’ rights work together. And we’ve failed. You can’t drive even two horses in a team, unless you harness them and bridle them so they’ll do what you want. Then imagine trying to make a dozen horses pull usefully together when you have no harness on them, no reins.”

  “Nor a whip,” said Trav.

  Cinda spoke quietly. “That’s what President Lincoln is doing, laying the whip across our backs to make us come back and pull together.” There was suddenly passion in her tones. “But oh, it’s such a pity! For the whip makes a brute of the man who wields it, and leaves a lasting scar on the man who feels its lash.” And she said: “These years will leave a stain on the souls of all of us, North and South, that our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will still be trying to scrub away.” She pressed her hands to her eyes, and after a moment, since they did not speak, she went on: “A man came into the hospital Thursday night from Petersburg. His name was Captain Martin. Both his legs had been shot away below the knee. He died that night and he was buried Friday afternoon. Next morning his wife came asking for him. She had had a telegram that he was wounded. He had been in my ward; the office knew that, so they sent her there. I was at the other end of the ward when I saw her at the door. She was a tall and lovely lady, smiling the brave smile people muster to meet their loved ones who have been hurt. She asked the nearest nurse, in a glorious, eager voice: ‘Where is Captain Martin?’ The nurse was a poor ignorant man not wise enough to understand, and he blurted out the truth. ‘Captain Martin, ma’am? Why, he’s dead and buried yesterday!’ Then she went insane for a while; and she screamed and sobbed and told us over and over how the message came to her and how she’d hurried to reach his side. Grief crucified her!” Cinda looked from one of them to the other. “What have such things to do with states’ rights, or Confederacies, or Unions, or teams of horses, Brett Dewain?”

  Brett came to touch her shoulder, and Trav asked: “What did you do?”

  “I? I could not even weep with her. It was Tilda who gave her something to do, sent her to have his body dug up again so she could take the poor legless thing home to her children. Just planning that seemed to comfort her—perhaps even saved her reason.”

  “I haven’t seen Tilda,” Trav said guiltily. “Not since I came back.” He dreaded facing her, for she might ask whether he had any word of Darrell. He was a poor liar, and he knew it. It was better not to see her at all than to risk telling her the truth about her son. “I suppose you’ve told Brett about Darrell?”

  Cinda shook her head. “No, I hadn’t thought to do so. I’d almost forgotten. It’s not easy to remember one death among so many.” So Trav gave Brett the ugly story, and when he was done, Cinda said: “But, Travis, you needn’t avoid Tilda. She never speaks of him. I think in her heart she knows he’s dead.”

  Before he returned to headquarters Trav did go to see Tilda; but they had no moment alone, for Redford Streean was at home and full of talk. He too had heard from Tony.

  “Too bad for him to abandon Chimneys,” he commented. “But of course land has no value now. I don’t suppose the place could be sold today for enough to buy a good horse. An acquaintance of mine, Mr. Thorofare, the acting adjutant general, paid twenty-seven thousand dollars for a horse last week. Probably he thought he might need it when Richmond is abandoned. Chimneys wouldn’t bring a third of that, if it could be sold at all.”

  Trav remarked that Tony seemed to have prospered, and Streean nodded. “Yes. We were associated in some blockade ventures which turned out well for both of us.” He added, as though to turn aside possible criticism: “And for the Confederacy, too! If it hadn’t been for the gunpowder we blockade-runners have brought in, and the blankets, and the material for uniforms, and the food, the South could never have fought so bravely and so long. The Confederacy owes a great debt to the men who risked their lives in that traffic.”

  Trav was often surprised by the things people said and did, and he was surprised now to see Streean assume the defensive, and wondered why. Tilda was knitting and she did not raise her eyes, but she said in a dry voice: “Wilmington is full of men who’ve grown rich while they ‘risked their lives’ so bravely. I went to visit Dolly last summer, Trav. It’s a very gay town.”

  “How is Dolly?” He asked, not with any real curiosity. He was still puzzled by Streean, and even more by Tilda’s remark. That hint of sarcasm sounded like Cinda; but Tilda had never criticized her husband.

  “Dolly’s quite well. She has rooms in a very nice house on Front Street. Lieutenant Kenyon is often able to be with her; and Captain Pew knows everyone in Wil
mington, and he’s there between his voyages. I think she finds life pleasantly exciting.”

  “I suppose Wilmington is pretty lively.”

  “In a fashion,” Tilda assented. “Of course when the yellow fever was so bad two years ago, the gentlefolk went to their country places; and the town is so changed that many of them have not returned, and those who have returned live in retirement and see no one except their friends.”

  Her quiet words were eloquent, and there was a moment’s silence before Streean spoke. “Yes, Wilmington has prospered.” Trav was wondering why Tilda had referred to Dolly in a tone so completely without inflection or emphasis. “War disturbs the economic balance of society,” Streean went on. “Business is a weed that thrives on war.” He seemed to deplore this. “And of course that leads to corruption everywhere. Many bonded officers of the Government have grown rich through the sale of privilege. Even clerks are now paid four and five thousand dollars a year, and yet they take every opportunity for private profit.” Trav thought Streean had acquired virtue somewhat belatedly, till the other added: “But of course, when we’re beaten, these poor fools won’t have a dollar they can call their own. The wise rats are already leaving the sinking ship. George Randolph has taken his family to Europe.” Trav remembered seeing Major Randolph fire the first shot at Bethel, long ago. “After he resigned as Secretary of War, he and Mr. Myers made a fortune by arranging exemptions from army service for their clients.”

  Tilda, not lifting her head, said: “Mr. Randolph’s health failed. It was for his health’s sake he went abroad; but his funds were all put into Confederate bonds before he left.”