“You will disperse immediately or the Guard will open fire,” the governor shouted. The mob ceased looting but continued to mill about, grumbling darkly and refusing to go.
At that moment an ailing Jefferson Davis appeared. He climbed atop a wagon that had been overturned sideways in the street and looked out upon the crowd, stern and sickly. “Go home so the bayonets facing you may be turned toward the enemy instead,” he ordered. “Disorder in our streets will bring only famine, because farmers will refuse to bring food into the city.”
“Some already refuse,” a woman shrilled. “Your commissaries take everything and leave nothing for us and our children!”
As the crowd roared agreement, Mr. Davis raised his palms to quiet them. “I will share my last loaf with you, but you must bear your trials with courage. We must stand united against the enemy.” He reached into his pockets, took out handfuls of money, and flung it into the crowd, provoking shrieks and scrambling for paper and coins. Then he took out his watch. “The Public Guard does not wish to injure anyone, but this lawlessness must cease,” he declared. “I will give you five minutes to disperse, otherwise you will be fired upon.”
He held his watch up and waited as the seconds ticked by.
The crowd waited too, murmuring, shifting—and then it began to break apart, like an ice floe in a river, fragmenting slowly at first around the edges and then with increasing speed as larger sections broke off and drifted away. “There is a power behind the throne mightier than the throne, and that power is the people,” a man shouted, but his defiant call failed to draw the mob back together.
The next day, small groups of protesters gathered at street corners, again demanding food from the government, but this time the Guard easily scattered them, arresting nine. The City Council issued vouchers for free food to the deserving poor, and other authorities distributed flour and rice from government stores.
The assistant adjutant general had urged the Richmond press not to mention the riot in their pages lest the shameful events embarrass the Confederacy and encourage the enemy, but the editors promptly refused, so Lizzie and the rest of Richmond learned every detail of the bread riot and its aftermath. For days after the upheaval, Mayor Mayo plowed through the trials of the nearly four dozen people arrested on various charges, and listened, unsympathetic, to their testimony. “There is no reason why there should have been any suffering among the poor of this city,” he addressed the courtroom. “More money has been appropriated than has been applied for. It should be, and is, well understood that the riot yesterday was not for bread. Boots are not bread, brooms are not bread, men’s hats are not bread, and I never heard of anybody’s eating them.”
Almost without exception, the elite of Richmond society—longtime citizens, military officers, and politicians alike—denounced the lawlessness and declared that the women’s complaints were absolutely without merit. There was scarcity in the city, they acknowledged, but little want, and no one was in danger of starving. Even Jefferson Davis concurred, publishing an address to the Confederate nation in which he seemed to intend to shame the rioters and discourage anyone who might follow their selfish and misguided example. “Is it not a bitter and humiliating reflection that those who remain at home, secure from hardship and protected from danger, should be in the enjoyment of abundance,” he protested, “and that their slaves also should have a full supply of food, while their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers are stinted?”
Lizzie had no idea where this abundance Mr. Davis and his compatriots referred to was hidden, for she certainly saw no portion of it, not in the markets, not in the prisons, and not even in her own home, where no one had ever gone hungry before.
How could Mr. Davis fail to recognize the ugly consequences of war suffered by the people of his own city—and if he could not see even that far, how could he possibly understand what secession and war had inflicted upon an entire nation?
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
APRIL–SEPTEMBER 1863
N
ot two weeks later, Lizzie was presented with inarguable proof that Mr. Davis and his administration were not as blind to the troubles plaguing Richmond as they had seemed.
Reports of atrocities in Castle Thunder had become so grave that the Confederate Congress had ordered an investigation. Captain George W. Alexander, the commandant, was accused of excessive violence and cruelty to the prisoners under his supervision, and a steady stream of inmates, detectives, and prison officers testified for and against him. The committee listened to grim descriptions of inmates tied up by their thumbs, flogged up to fifty strokes with broad leather straps, confined to a windowless sweat house, forced into the painful restraints known as the buck, shut outside in the prison yard in all manner of foul weather, denied food as punishment for impudence, and menaced by Captain Alexander’s ferocious, one-hundred-eighty-pound Bavarian boarhound, Nero. One detective attested that he had observed prisoners wearing the same clothes for months until they were ready to drop off in rags. The prison hospital steward testified that he once found a deranged prisoner lying behind a door in the quarters, clad in nothing more than a short swallow-tailed coat, mired in his own filth, with his skin completely covered with scabs and vermin. The abhorrent details that emerged from the sworn statements depicted Castle Thunder as a veritable hell on earth, and Captain Alexander and his underling Detective John Caphart as devils in human form.
Poring over the lurid reports in the papers, Lizzie was impressed by the courage of the men who testified against Captain Alexander and Detective Caphart, employees and prisoners alike, for they risked much in speaking against the men under whose authority they served or suffered. Again and again, one witness’s allegations corroborated another’s, until Lizzie was convinced that the congressional committee would have no choice but to rule against the commandant. Lizzie prayed that his conviction would frighten other prison officials and compel them to treat the captives humanely, and she dared hope that the entire prison system would be subsequently reformed.
She hoped and prayed to no avail.
On the first day of May, the committee released its report on the management of Castle Thunder—and it left Lizzie first incredulous, and then annoyed with herself that she had naively believed justice might be done. The majority of the members had concluded that considering the desperate and abandoned characters of the inmates—“in the main murderers, thieves, deserters, substitutes, forgers and all manner of villains”—Captain Alexander’s tenure was not marked by such acts of cruelty and inhumanity as to warrant condemnation. On the contrary, his traits of character, especially his promptness and determination to enforce rigid discipline, eminently fit him for the management of a military prison. In a minority report, one dissenting member of the committee insisted that the evidence sustained the charges of cruelty and injustice against Captain Alexander, and that he and General Winder both had shown “a want of judgment and humanity in the management of that prison deserving not only the censure of Congress but prompt removal from the position they have abused.”
Lizzie fervently agreed with that brave, lone congressman, but the opinion of the majority carried greater influence, and so General Winder, Captain Alexander, and Detective Caphart retained their positions without receiving so much as a word of censure. They all carried on as before, and their cruelty persisted unabated.
Not long after Captain Alexander was exonerated, Lizzie was on the front portico playing dolls with her nieces when a rumble of thunder announced an approaching storm. “Come along inside, girls,” she said as the rain began to pelt the floor, first a few fat, loud drops, and then a torrent, stirring up a smell of dust and iron. Shrieking and giggling, the girls gathered up their toys, but just as Lizzie was ushering them inside, she heard a sudden, quick splashing sound from behind her and instinctively turned to look.
A young man holding his jacket over his head was
dashing up the walk toward her. “Excuse me,” he called, breathless. “May I beg the shelter of your portico until the rain stops?”
“Of course,” said Lizzie graciously, with a graceful turn of the wrist to invite him to ascend. Putting on a pleasant expression, Lizzie kept her eyes on him and bent low to murmur into Annie’s ear. “Take Eliza and find Hannah, will you?”
When Annie nodded and took her little sister’s hand, Lizzie ushered them inside, closed the door, and turned to face her visitor, who had hurried up the steps and stood a few paces away shaking the rainwater from his coat and hat. “Are you Miss Van Lew?”
Lizzie hid her surprise. “I am, sir.” As far as she could recall, she had never seen the young man before, and his accent had more of South Carolina than Virginia in it. He looked to be in his midtwenties, with a thick shock of sandy-brown hair, brown eyes, and a stubble of a beard. His clothes fit him as poorly as if he had accidentally grabbed his elder brother’s in the predawn darkness of a shared room, but his boots looked almost new.
“I have heard you are much admired in Richmond.”
Lizzie laughed. “Well, then, sir, you are either trying to flatter me or you have very poor hearing.”
“Or we have mutual friends,” he suggested, grinning. “For surely your friends have nothing but good to speak of you.”
Lizzie regarded him for a moment, not quite sure what to make of him. “Actually, I don’t think my friends are in the habit of discussing me with strangers.”
“Of course not, Ma’am,” he said, removing his hat and looking abashed. “I meant no insult. In fact, I have something to tell you which I think will interest you—and the government also.”
Lizzie was tempted to ask him which government he meant, but instead she smiled. “I can’t imagine what you would have to say on that subject to interest me, but I confess you’ve piqued my curiosity. Would you care to come in for a cup of tea until the storm passes?”
He promptly accepted, and when Lizzie called for tea and escorted the visitor to the parlor to introduce him to her mother, he gave his name as Billy Dockery and said he was employed as a courier.
“Not soldiering?” inquired Mother politely.
“No, Ma’am, that’s not for me.” He grinned again; it seemed his natural expression. “I’m no coward, I just don’t like being told what to do. I like to go my own way at my own pace.”
“Then it would seem you’ve found an occupation well suited to your temperament,” Lizzie remarked.
“That’s mostly true, but even a courier has to go where his clients bid him.”
Caroline came in with the tea, and Billy looked on eagerly as she set out little sandwiches and sliced peaches.
“I imagine your occupation is particularly dangerous in wartime,” said Mother, looking on as their guest loaded his plate.
“Dangerous, but all the more profitable for it.” He devoured a sandwich in two bites. “The people I meet and the things I hear—why, you wouldn’t believe half of it.”
“Probably not,” said Lizzie pleasantly, sipping her tea.
“I come to Richmond often, but I don’t stay long enough to justify the expense of taking a room.” Billy looked around, and suddenly his eyes widened as if inspiration had struck. “Say, I had a thought. I could board here with you.”
Lizzie and her mother exchanged a look. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t taking on boarders at present,” said Mother.
“Why not?” he protested. “You got enough room, as anyone can see. There’s not a closet in a boardinghouse to be found anywhere in the city.”
“Nor here either, I’m afraid,” said Mother regretfully.
He looked from one to the other, perplexed. “But I know you’ve taken boarders before.”
“Yes, but not anymore,” said Lizzie. “My nieces are living with us now, and they’re terribly noisy, especially at night and in the very early morning. You would get no sleep at all.”
For a moment Billy Dockery said nothing, allowing the silence to refute her claim. “I’ll sleep anywhere,” he eventually said. “Here, on the sofa. In the library. On the floor.”
“Dear me, you are most insistent,” said Mother with a little laugh. “I cannot tell you how much it grieves me that we’re unable to accommodate you. Do take another sandwich.”
Scowling, he obeyed, and Lizzie turned the conversation to the scarcity of food in the capital and how fortunate they were to have early peaches and how exciting and dangerous a courier’s life must be. Grumpily at first, but soon with more enthusiasm, he told them enough of his adventures for Lizzie to conclude that he probably truly was a courier, or had been, but for whom, and why he was so determined to board with strangers he had only just met, she could not say.
They were as polite and charming as could be for nearly an hour, but when they finally managed to send him on his way, Lizzie felt as if she had been soaked in hot water and put through the mangle. Mother looked equally wrung out and limp. “What on earth was the meaning of all that?” she asked, smoothing back tendrils of silver-gray hair that had escaped from her bun. “I don’t fault him for wanting to live here, but what an odd way to go about finding lodgings.”
“Perhaps we should warn the Carringtons. He may be going from house to house until he strikes gold.” Lizzie inhaled deeply and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “He knew my name. He said he had something to tell me that would be of interest to the government.”
Mother’s eyebrows rose. “Which government?”
“We’ll never know.” Lizzie went to the front window and drew back the curtain, but when she peered outside, she saw only puddles and rain and a couple hurrying down the sidewalk beneath a shared umbrella. “He’s gone, and I don’t think we’ll ever see him again.”
She was wrong.
The next week, while she and Eliza were marketing for the prisoners at Libby, a regiment of South Carolina volunteers marched by, new recruits from the look of their uniforms. As they approached, Lizzie glanced up from a sparse bin of turnips and spotted Billy Dockery marching among them, clad in the garb of a private.
He did not glance her way and probably never knew she was there, but she knew him, and she stood and watched, seized by a chill so intense she almost dropped her basket, until the regiment marched out of sight.
Spring and summer brought more fighting, more carnage, more prisoners, and more grief to Richmond.
In early May, Union troops again ventured perilously close to Richmond, wreaking havoc in the suburbs, cutting telegraph lines, capturing horses and mules, burning warehouses full of Confederate supplies, and destroying railroad bridges, engines, boxcars, and miles of track. Richmond—and indeed, the entire Confederacy—plunged into mourning when the beloved General Stonewall Jackson, the hero of Manassas, died from injuries received by friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville. When his body was brought back to the capital, bells tolled solemnly for hours in expectation of his arrival at the depot, where thousands had gathered to follow the hearse to Governor Letcher’s mansion. The next morning, a solemn and ceremonious funeral procession escorted his coffin to the Capitol, where twenty thousand mourners paid their respects as he lay in state in the House chamber. Although Lizzie would not speak ill of the dead, she could not bring herself to truly grieve for General Jackson, for he had chosen to betray his country and had brought untold grief to countless Northern families. She knew she was nearly alone in this. The rest of Richmond seemed to suffer his death with a sharper pain and greater sense of loss than any other calamity that had yet befallen them in that war.
Union prisoners and Confederate wounded kept coming to Richmond, an unrelenting stream that ebbed and flowed but never ceased entirely as skirmishes broke out and great battles were waged. Chancellorsville was followed by Port Gibson, and then by a second battle at Fredericksburg, and then Salem Church, a
nd then more engagements in Mississippi that culminated in the Sieges of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and then more fighting in Virginia at Brandy Station and Winchester.
As the Union stranglehold tightened around Vicksburg more than nine hundred miles to the southwest, threatening to wrest control of the Mississippi River from Confederate grasp, General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia once more into Pennsylvania, even as rumors came that Union troops were approaching Richmond from the Peninsula. The public knew only that General Lee was on the move, but while dusting Mr. Davis’s study, Mary Jane had fortuitously glimpsed documents outlining their plans. The general intended to take his troops north not only to feed his men and horses on the bounty of fresh territory, but also to win a decisive victory on Union soil, ideally the capture of an important city. General Lee and Mr. Davis agreed that a bold, decisive strike might finally impress France and England enough that they would intervene in the war on the side of the Confederacy—and perhaps frighten Washington into suing for peace.
The Spymistress Page 25
