How Few Remain (great war)

by Harry Turtledove

  As Lincoln started down the sidewalk, a closed carriage stopped in the street alongside him. The curtains were drawn; he could see nothing within. The driver spoke to him in a low, urgent voice: "Please get in, Mr. Lincoln."

  "Who…?" Lincoln paused, then stiffened as he recognized the bright young man who'd escorted him to John Taylor's home. That home stood no more; soldiers had wrecked it, giving as their reason the suppression of polygamy.

  "Where do you propose to take me?" Lincoln asked. He supposed he might be worth something as a hostage for radical Mormons. Given his own economic radicalism, and the embarrassment he'd become to the Republican Party, he had the idea he'd be worth less than the Mormons thought. That might lead to unpleasant personal consequences for him.

  "I can't tell you that," the driver answered. "No harm will come to you, though: by God I swear it." He bit his lip. "If you aim to come, sir, come now. I cannot let soldiers spy me loitering here."

  Lincoln got aboard the carriage. Not since his ignominious passage through Baltimore on his way to his inauguration in Washington had he let concern for his safety change how he behaved. Maybe he could do some good here, if the Mormons hadn't simply snatched him.

  "Thank you, sir," the bright young man said as the carriage started to roll. Lincoln did not think he was the sort who made a habit of wearing false oaths. He realized he was betting his life on that.

  The carriage made several turns, now right, now left. The Mormon driver had the two-horse team up into a trot; their hoof beats and the jolts and rattles Lincoln felt said they were going at a fine clip. Nothing at all prevented him from opening the curtains and seeing where they were going. He sat quiet. Sooner or later, General Pope or one of his inquisitors would be interrogating him about this ride. He was as sure of that as of his own name. Truthfully being able to claim ignorance looked useful.

  After about three-quarters of an hour, the carriage pulled into a building of some sort and stopped. Lincoln thought he was outside Salt Lake City; it had been quiet outside the carriage for some time, and the driver had stopped making turns to throw off pursuit or to confuse his passenger. In the latter, at least, he had succeeded; Lincoln did not know whether he was north or south or east or west of the Mormon metropolis.

  "You may get out now, Mr. Lincoln," the driver said, climbing down from his own high seat. Outside, someone was closing a door. A bar thudded down.

  Barn, was Lincoln 's first thought on emerging from the carriage. He revised it a moment later: no, livery stable. His nose filled with the good odors of horse and hay and leather. But for the carriage, the stable was deserted. With the door closed, it was also twilight-gloomy.

  The man who had shut the door was coming toward Lincoln. Though he had expected to meet John Taylor, he needed a moment to recognize him. The fugitive Mormon president was dressed like a stablehand, in canvas trousers, collarless four-button work shirt, and straw hat. He had shaved his beard and was growing a mustache on his formerly bare upper lip.

  "Thank you for agreeing to see me," he said after shaking hands. "To come with Orem here took considerable moral and physical courage."

  "I will do what I can for you, Mr. Taylor," Lincoln said, "for that strikes me as a likely way to bring peace to this Territory. But I must warn you, I do not think I can do much. Bearing a grudge against me as he does, General Pope will not be inclined to act favorably upon any request I make."

  "You are the former president of the United States!" Taylor exclaimed.

  "I told you at our last meeting, you exaggerate the influence that gives me. I told you also, you exaggerated your ability to coerce the government of the United States into doing as you desired. Events have proved me right in the second instance. Will you not credit me for knowing whereof I speak in the first, also? In both, you would have done better to leave well enough alone."

  Taylor slowly shook his head. It was not so much disagreement as disbelief. "All we wish-all we ever wished-is to live our own lives as our conscience dictates. We harm no one, and what has been our reward? Treatment that would not be meted out to redskins or Negroes. Do the people condemn the outrages we have suffered? No. They applaud, and pile on more."

  "Mr. Taylor, from all I have seen in my extended stay in Salt Lake City, the only way you Mormons differ in the general run of your behavior from the mass of the American people is that you excel over them," Lincoln said. "But-"

  "Of course we do," Taylor said, while the driver- Orem — nodded vigorously.

  Lincoln held up a hand. "I had not finished. However fine you may be in the general run of your behavior, you have not the slightest chance, so long as you condone and practice polygamy, of ever gaining the acceptance of the vast majority of your fellow citizens."

  "This is most unjust," Taylor said. "We cast no aspersions on anyone else's usages; in principle, none should be cast on ours."

  Lincoln sighed. "If you wish to speak of principle, maybe you are right. Do you not see, however, that by insisting on principle in this regard, you have caused the overthrow of the principle of representative government and the principle of rule under the Constitution throughout Utah Territory? Is that what you intended when you led your people into rebellion?"

  "Of course not," Taylor snapped.

  "Well, then-" Lincoln spread his hands. "The simplest way for your church to make its peace with the rest of the United States would be for it to renounce the doctrines unacceptable to the nation as a whole, and to do so in all sincerity."

  "That would require a divine revelation," the Mormon president replied. "None has been forthcoming, nor do I reckon one likely."

  "Pity." Lincoln raised one eyebrow. "A convenient revelation now would save your people enormous heartache, enormous grief, later on."

  "Revelations are not born of convenience," John Taylor said. "They spring from the will of God."

  He thrust his head forward like a stubborn snapping turtle. Lincoln realized he meant what he said from the bottom of his heart. Lawyer and politician, Lincoln reckoned almost everything negotiable. When he had stood foursquare for the principle of the indissolubility of the Union, rifle musket and cannon had refuted him.

  "If you will not change your views in any particular," he said, "what point to asking me to meet with you? You give me nothing to take to General Pope, even assuming the military governor were inclined to accept anything I might take him."

  "We have yielded peacefully to the military power of the United States," Taylor said. "We might have done otherwise. If we continue to be oppressed, to be treated as a conquered province, we arc liable to do otherwise. We are men. We can act as men. General Pope and his Cossacks should remember as much."

  "Mr. Taylor, if you value your faith, if you value the lives of your followers, I implore you, sir, do not take this course." Lincoln had never spoken more earnestly. "If you rise in arms against the United States, they will slaughter you and sow your cities with salt, as the Romans did to Carthage long ago. Do you not understand that many in the Army, many in the government, and many among the citizenry at large would be delighted to have an excuse to do exactly that?"

  "We fled here to Utah to escape persecution," Taylor said. "Persecution pursued us. Should we welcome it with open arms? Should we bow to it, as the Israelites bowed to the Golden Calf?"

  "You will have to judge the right for yourself, as every man must," Lincoln answered. "But I tell you that open resistance will bathe Utah in blood in a way never before seen upon this continent. We left religious war behind in Europe. We should be well advised not to let it emigrate from that place to our shores."

  "What would you do, Mr. Lincoln, were your faith under attack instead of mine?" John Taylor did not try to hide his bitterness.

  He framed sharp questions. He would have been dangerous in a court of law. But none of that mattered. Taylor 's failing was his inability to sec that it did not matter. Lincoln said, "I believe I should have only two choices. One would be to pay the martyr's price,
the other to accommodate myself to my neighbors' usages to the degree I could do so without tearing the living heart from what I believed in."

  "No accommodation we can make and still keep to our principles would satisfy our foes," Taylor said.

  "That is why I hoped God in His wisdom might reveal to you a course that would let you do so," Lincoln said delicately. He remained of the opinion that John Taylor and the other leaders of the Mormon Church could produce a revelation if they put their minds to it. "The promise of peace and reconciliation might-and I can say no more than might, hardly being in the confidence of General Pope or President Blaine-might, I say, persuade the authorities to rescind the harsh sentences passed against you and your colleagues."

  "If I must die on the gallows or in hunted exile, I am prepared," Taylor said.

  Lincoln believed him, having seen the same implacable purpose on the faces of abolitionists and Confederate leaders alike. With another sigh, he said, "Then I fear this meeting had little point. I shall take your warning back to General Pope, but I warn you in the strongest terms not to act upon it. Do with your own life what you will, but spare your people the horrors of a war of extermination harsher than any we ever waged against the Sioux." He turned to Orem. "You may as well take me back to town. My friends will be wondering why I needed so long to buy a cake of shaving soap."

  The bright young Mormon held the carriage door open so Lincoln could get in, then closed it after him. He did not ask Lincoln not to open the curtains, but the former president again left them alone. From inside the dark, cramped box of the carriage, he heard John Taylor undo the bar and push the livery-stable door open. Orem clucked to the horses. They leaned into their work.

  After the trip back into Salt Lake City, the driver halted the carriage and said, "If you get out here, sir, you'll have no trouble finding your way to the home where you are staying."

  Sure enough, Lincoln saw he was only a couple of blocks from the Hamiltons '. "Obliged," he said to Orem, and tipped his tall hat. The bright young man returned the courtesy and drove away. Lincoln supposed he had some secure place where he could go to earth. He needed one.

  Juliette Hamilton looked up from the chicken she was plucking when Lincoln came into the kitchen. "Well, I never," she said in arch mock annoyance. "I was beginning to think you'd come down with a case of Valley Tan." Her eyes twinkled.

  "My dear lady, although I have passed my Biblical threescore and ten, I am not suddenly taken with the urge to shuffle off this mortal coil," Lincoln said. He and Mrs. Hamilton both laughed, and he went on, "In my view, Valley Tan bears the same relation to proper whiskey as a slap in the face does to a kiss on the cheek. Both will get your attention, but I know which I prefer."

  "If you're trying to sweet-talk me out of a kiss on the cheek-" Juliette walked over and gave him one. Then she wagged a finger at him. "But Valley Tan is cooked up complete with added sanctity, or so the Mormons say."

  "I have never tasted a better reason for declaring sanctity unconstitutional," Lincoln answered.

  "You are the funniest man," Juliette Hamilton exclaimed. "Why is it that everyone makes you out to be so somber and serious?"

  "Part of it is that no one has ever told my face it has the right to be amused," Lincoln said, "and the other part is that I commonly speak of serious things, even if not always in a serious manner."

  "If you mix some honey with the physic, the dose goes down easier," Juliette said.

  "That's so," Lincoln said, "and with your kind permission I'll borrow the notion in a speech one day." Seeing how astonished Mrs. Hamilton looked, he added, "I am glad to employ any figure that strikes me as both true and well said, and in all my days I have never yet heard a better answer to give to the occasional person who complains of what he calls my unsuitable levity."

  Gabe Hamilton had just come into the house when someone pounded on the front door. "Who the devil's that?" he said. The pounding went on. His scowl got darker. "Whoever it is, maybe I ought to have a revolver in my hand when I open the door."

  "I think that would be most unwise," Lincoln said hastily.

  He followed Hamilton up the entranceway to the door. When his host angrily threw it open, he was not surprised to find a squad of blue-coated U.S. soldiers outside. A young lieutenant began, "Is Abraham Lincoln-?" and then caught sight of him. "Mr. Lincoln, you are to come with me at once."

  "Why should he?" Gabe Hamilton demanded, before Lincoln could speak.

  "By order of the military governor, General Pope, he is under arrest," the lieutenant answered. The soldiers behind him aimed their rifles at Lincoln.

  "I'll come quietly," he said. "You may lower those, lest someone be injured by mischance." He walked out of the house, leaving Hamilton staring after him.

  The portly, gray-bearded man in the tweed sack suit, four-in-hand tie, and derby did not at first glance seem to belong in an army headquarters full of bustling young men in uniform. General Thomas Jackson would have been just as well pleased-far better pleased-had his visitor chosen to remain in Richmond.

  "I am glad to welcome you to Louisville, Mr. President," he said, and prayed his stern God would forgive the lie.

  "Thank you, General," James Longstreet said. "One of the things I found during the War of Secession was that military reports, however detailed, often conveyed a distorted view of an action. I also learned that newspaper reports seldom conveyed anything but a distorted view."

  "There, Your Excellency, we agree completely," Jackson said. "If you believe what the reporters write, we have by now slain the entire population of the United States in this engagement, men, women, and children alike. It is a sanguinary fight, sir, but not so sanguinary as that."

  "I had not thought it would be." Longstreet's voice held a rumble of amusement. "I came here to see what sort of fight it is, having acquired a fairly good notion of the sorts of fight it is not."

  "It is, as you requested and required, a defensive fight, Mr. President." Jackson 's voice had a rumble in it, too: a rumble of discontent. "Being thus constrained, I have endeavored to cause the United States the maximum of harm while yielding to them the minimum of ground."

  "That is precisely why I set you in charge here, General," Long-street said with a courtly dip of his head. "Precisely. And you have most handsomely done as I hoped you would. Papers in the United States are no less given to distortion and exaggeration than our own. Many of them quite vehemently assert you are indeed intent on slaughtering every damnyankee in creation."

  "If General Willcox will continue funneling the Yankees into Louisville, I may in fact accomplish that," Jackson replied. "It will, however, take me some little while."

  Longstreet laughed and slapped him on the back. From under his eyebrows, Jackson shot the president of the Confederate States a suspicious look. Longstreet restraining him, Longstreet arguing with him, Longstreet undercutting him-he'd grown used to those since his former fellow corps commander was inaugurated. Longstreet enthusiastic about what he did-that was so unusual, he didn't know how to react to it.

  Military formality gave him a framework in which to respond, just as it gave him a framework for his entire life. He said, "Will you come with me, Your Excellency? You can examine the map, which will give you a good notion of where we are now and what I hope to do in the near future."

  "Thank you. I shall take you up on that-it will do for the time being. Later, I intend to go up to the front, to see for myself this new sort of warfare you are inventing here."

  Jackson stared. No one had ever questioned James Longstreet's courage. Jackson had found plenty of fault with Longstreet's common sense over the years, but never for a reason like this. "Mr. President, I beg you to reconsider," he said. "One lucky sharpshooter, one shell landing at the wrong spot-"

  "Would you not be just as well pleased, General?" Longstreet said. "Were I to fall, I have no doubt my plan for manumission, which you have made it unmistakably clear you oppose, would fall with me."

&nb
sp; Jackson looked down at his scuffed, oversized boots. Usually, he was the one who spoke with relentless frankness. After coughing a couple of times, he said, "Of one thing you have convinced me, Your Excellency: that no one in the Confederate States but yourself can hope to guide us through the intricacies of our relations with our allies in this time of crisis."

  "I think you do Vice President Lamar a disservice, for he has more experience dealing with the Europeans than I do myself."

  "He has not your deviousness," Jackson declared.

  Longstreet smiled at that. "Flattery will get you nowhere," he said roguishly. "To the maps, and then on to the front." His smile got wider as he took in Jackson 's expression. "I assure you, General, I am not indispensable to the cause. So long as you continue to make Louisville and the Ohio run red with Yankee blood, our success is assured."

  "We bleed, too," Jackson said as he led the president toward the tent where he devised his strategy and whence he sent orders to his commanders at the battle line.

  Longstreet pointed to the telegraphic operators who sat ready to tap out any commands the general-in-chief might give them. "A good notion," he said. "It saves you the time involved in sending a messenger to the signals tent, and minutes in such matters can be critical."

  "Exactly so," Jackson said. He pointed to the big map of Louisville. "As you see, Mr. President, forces of the United States unfortunately have, despite our best efforts to repel them, gained a stretch of ground several miles long and varying in depth from a few hundred yards to nearly a mile. I console myself by noting the price they have paid for the acquisition."

  "How well have they fought?" Longstreet asked.

  "As we saw in the last war, they have courage to match our own," Jackson replied. "They also have numbers on their side, and their artillery is both strong and well handled. Having said so much, I have exhausted the military virtues they display. General Willcox's notion of strategy seems to be to send men forward and ram them headlong into the-"