Down the Sky: Volume Three of the “Strike The Tent” Trilogy

by W. Patrick Lang

  “He wuz drunk, sor,” Quick interposed. “Drunk on duty.”

  Devereux saw from Ford’s face that this would not do… “Ah, no,” he said. “That would be ungenerous. We will let it go. Will Colonel Baker be sending us another? No? Too bad, we must visit Topham when he is well enough.”

  Devereux found Lincoln to be increasingly morose.

  The president’s conscience was weighed down by the butcher’s bill in what many saw as a war of his creation. His wife was ever more distant, while grieving for the loss of their son, Willie, and because of that sorrow unavailable emotionally to him as a partner.

  Lincoln arranged for two cells to be built in the basement of the War Department Building on 17th Street next to the White House. The cells were much like cages with iron bars reaching from floor to ceiling. They were comfortably furnished with a bed and chairs. The residents had oil lamps so that they could read at night. There was a small window at eye level in each. It was the president’s habit to spend parts of his insomniac nights with the prisoners held there. These were newly captured Confederate men who would not take the Oath of Allegiance. Devereux spent several August nights there with Lincoln.

  The president wanted to know why the Johnnies continued to fight. “You know that you are going to lose,” he often told them. “You do know that, do you not? Many of your people desert from your army. We are told that the will to fight is collapsing among your families. You do know that?” The prisoners were surprisingly polite and respectful, but usually unresponsive.

  “We’re not your people any longer,” a captain said to Lincoln. “Our deaths and those of your people are on your conscience…”

  Lincoln rose and left the room after that rebuke.

  The confederate officer was sent the next day to the officers’ prison on Johnson’s Island at Sandusky, Ohio on Lake Erie.

  Devereux could see that Lincoln was increasingly distraught. In this, he recognized a fellow sufferer. As a result he spent more time with the president. They sat together in the chief executive’s office on the second floor of the White House. At times they discussed affairs of state or the war, but at others Claude spoke of his personal life. If asked he would not have been able to say why he did this. It was not something he normally did. His true habit was to take refuge in hiding behind his “mask” of reticent impassivity, but little by little, over weeks and months, Lincoln came to be for him the father he had always wanted. He tried desperately to hide from this hunger and the terrible and growing ambiguity that was his life but nothing seemed to help. There were few avenues of escape left. His world was shrinking as his country approached death and his enemies gathered. Not surprisingly he sought what shelter he could in the women who surrounded him. Women had always cherished him as most men never had.

  Amy Biddle, his devoted mistress, was always pleased when he went to her. Her anxious need was a grave temptation for him because he could easily feel strong and independent by hurting her through neglect. He regretted that. He was not a man to hurt women. He spent as much time with her as possible. He believed he understood women. As Amy’s lover he matured her sexuality and appetite in much the same way as a gardener grows a plant. She had become middle aged in long years of care devoted to aged and ailing parents. When she met Devereux she had long given up hope of ever knowing the pleasures of the body. Claude easily gave her that and she desperately wanted to hold him close forever. On many occasions during this summer she begged him not to leave her bed, not yet, not for a few more hours. In his more rational moments, Claude knew that he wronged her terribly, but could not keep himself from seeking solace in her embrace.

  His wife seemed as loving and focused on him as ever, but there were hints of other interests in her life that he had not seen since his return from Europe. He was displeased that Isaac Smoot was still in his house, or more correctly in his mother’s house. He came home one day at tea time to find Hope, Smoot and a man he did not recognize at first seated together in quiet conversation in the front parlor.

  “Hello, Claude,” someone else asked from a chair by the door.

  Devereux turned to see who this was. “Jimmy, what are you doing here today?” he asked.

  “Why, we are talking of what the next year may bring,” Fowle replied. “You know John Booth, don’t you?”

  Having been reminded, he recognized the handsome actor. “Mr. Booth, I last saw you on the boards in New York City. I was there with Hope. Have I missed a meeting of some sort? My wife is involved with the Arts Society in Washington City. Is that what this is about?” He looked at Hope. Her face was unreadable.

  “Several people from Alexandria were here. Father Kruger and your mother just left. John is thinking of sponsoring a benefit performance for the Sanitary Commission…”

  “What a good idea! Let me know if I can be of help, Stanton and the president would want to be of assistance. Will you all stay for dinner?”

  They agreed and Hope left to inform his mother and the cook.

  Devereux went to the cellarette. “Whiskey, gentlemen?” he asked.

  When the guests had gone, he spoke with Hope in their private rooms.

  She sat with her back to him for several minutes. “They no longer trust you,” she finally whispered. “They don’t know who you are any longer. I mean in Richmond. They are afraid of what you might do.”

  “Why do they doubt me?” he asked. His blue army blouse lay on the bed. The burden of the stars glinted in the gaslight.

  She gestured at the garment. “Most of the time, you are that now,” she said. “You are a Union Army general. Don’t tell me that you are not. I know you better than anyone except maman.”

  “They wanted me to be this person that they now fear. They insisted. The president insisted.”

  “That does not matter. Now they fear you. I know it is unfair, but the cause of their greatest fear is your closeness to Lincoln. They cannot believe that you have succeeded so greatly in this. They suspect that you are playing them for fools…”

  “And that I am really Lincoln and Stanton’s man…”

  She nodded at his reflection.

  “This isn’t just about me,” he laughed. “They could just ignore me and go about their business. They know that I cannot confess. I am trapped in this with you and the rest of the family. What else are they up to?”

  She was silent. She looked anxious and would not meet his eyes.

  “Ah, they have decided that they must kill the president. It took them long enough to reach that conclusion. It has been quite obvious for a long time. Last year would have been better…”

  She turned to look at him directly. “Will you help?”

  “Oh, yes, I will not kill him myself, but I will help… I know where he is almost all the time. That should be a help, a massive help.”

  “You won’t kill him?”

  “No, he is my friend. You know me better than that, but I will help your ‘valiant band’ kill him. In any event, I would not endanger our family by doing such a thing. I suppose it is Booth?”

  “They say he is one of several men here who are willing. He is to go to Toronto. There are people there…”

  “I want you to stay away from the actors in this matter,” Claude said. “Tell our ‘guests’ that I will assist them but I do not want to talk to any of them about it. You can be my go between, and stay away from Booth! Agreed?”

  She looked almost happy for the first time in weeks.

  He crossed the room and pulled her into his embrace. She was happy to have her husband focused on her once again.

  Two days later he met the redheaded Mrs. Whitman on the street in the District of Columbia. She often shopped on 14th Street in expensive shops that dealt in imported fashions. Amy Biddle and she were both from New Hampshire and in a moment of satiated “pillow talk” Amy told him of her shopping trips into Washington with Mary Whitman. As a result he began walking the streets at the appropriate hour, and eventually he saw her.

>   “Mrs. Whitman, how glad I am to meet you again,” he began.

  She seemed angry but also intent on his face as though she wished to feast on it while she could. “You have a strange way of showing it,” the little woman remarked. “How is your wound?”

  “Much better, thank you. Are you in a hurry? Can you join me for a cup of tea at Willard’s Hotel?”

  She smiled at him. “Is there not somewhere more private?”

  Within a week Elisabeth Braithwaite the wife of the second-in-command to Herman Haupt, head of the US Military Railroad told Amy Biddle that she had seen Mary Whitman on Claude’s arm in Washington.

  Claude was surprised one day to arrive home in the late afternoon to find his wife and Amy head to head in the front parlor. They ignored him as he passed and did not respond to his greetings.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  — Cedar Creek —

  In the late afternoon of the 18th of October, 1864 a council of war sat in a room adjacent to the Telegraph Office of the War Department on 17th Street in the District of Columbia.

  President Lincoln habitually spent much of his time in the telegraph office, but he was not there when the meeting began.

  Sunlight streamed through the second story windows. There were birds in the branches of the street trees. They looked cold in the unseasonable cold that had prevailed for the last week. They seemed to peer through the dirty panes at the men seated around a table. The walls were flat white. There was a lithograph of the president. A national flag was in one corner. The wooden furniture was the sort that the Quartermaster’s Department bought from the lowest bidder.

  Major General Philip Sheridan, the Commanding General of the Army of the Shenandoah looked down the table at Edwin Stanton. “I think you are exaggerating Early’s capacity,” he said to the secretary of war…

  Stanton was at the head of the table as befitted his authority. He was determined to put Sheridan in his place. “Well, gentlemen,” he said. “We can only rejoice in Sherman’s success at Atlanta. He is preparing to march to Savannah and turn north into Lee’s rear. Things are progressing nicely. The petty scoffers in the press and the Copperheads are quiet now.”

  Major General Henry Halleck, the chief of staff of the US Army was at his right. “Old Brains” was Halleck’s nickname in the army. He seemed interested in some object near the ceiling.

  “We have beaten Early hollow every time he has faced us,” Sheridan said. “My cavalry went all the way south to Waynesboro in the Valley. We destroyed the valley district’s farms. Early can’t live anywhere north of Waynesboro. There is no food, and no livestock. We took or destroyed it all, all of it. Whatever force he has left will starve if he tries to come back to the area around Strasburg. I can leave a small body of troops along Cedar Creek where Major Kimball is pointing on the map and bring the rest of the troops back to General Grant at Petersburg.”

  One of his staff stood at a gaily colored, hand drawn map of northwest Virginia. The point of his stick rested on a blue line just north of the town of Strasburg. There was a mountainous mass immediately to the east. It was labeled “Massanutten Mountain.” This high ground ended abruptly just south of the junction of Cedar Creek and the Shenandoah River. North of the mountain the ground opened into a rolling plain fifteen miles wide between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountain chains. Near the northern edge of the map was a substantial town named Winchester.

  Claude Devereux sat halfway down the table, satisfied to be at the table but content to be fairly distant from both Stanton and Sheridan. Senior officials are so easily drawn into jealousy and resentment, he thought. There were several brigadier generals in the room and Claude was pleased to believe that he was inconspicuous among them. What he did not appreciate was that his expensively tailored uniform set him apart and made others envy him.

  His staff sat behind him in a row of chairs placed at the periphery of the room. With their chairs backed up to the white plaster wall, their positions signaled the subordinate status of the occupants. Colonel Wilson Ford and Detective James Topham were there. Topham had returned to Devereux’s office after a few weeks in the hospital. He seemed to be displeased with this development, but Claude demanded his return, preferring to have his enemies where they were visible rather than have them hidden from view. He knew these two men must be working against him. He knew they must be part of a continuing effort to prove him a Confederate “line crosser.” He did his best to hide his suspicion of them.

  Across the table from Devereux sat Brigadier General George Sharpe, Grant’s chief of “military information.” Sharpe greeted Devereux warmly before the meeting. The display of affection was impressive, so impressive that it was almost possible to believe in the friendship implied by Sharpe’s words and manner.

  Sheridan watched this performance with interest. He nodded to Devereux, unsmiling as always. He had been briefed about the continuing doubts concerning Devereux’s loyalty. He had also been told that Devereux was a trusted member of Lincoln’s inner circle. Sheridan was normally inscrutable when not transported by rage or frustration. Only his total lack of expression today betrayed the level of his impatience. He began again with Stanton. “We need to finish Lee off down on the Petersburg Line. We should do it before winter so that this war doesn’t drag on into the spring. As you know, Lee is a clever man. If we cannot get around his open flank south of Petersburg soon, there will be no chance of moving him from his position until we bring yet more troops from the Atlantic Coast. That will take time and we will find ourselves conducting siege operations all winter.”

  Stanton was not moved. “What if Early simply marches north through the devastated countryside and attacks immediately without waiting to starve as you think he inevitably will?”

  “That would be foolish,” Sheridan replied. “I have spoken to Sharpe, here, about this, and he calculates that even if we remove Sixth Corps and the Cavalry Corps, Early would still be outnumbered, and with the cold weather approaching he would have to withdraw south after any major engagement to find a place where he can go into winter camps to feed his men and animals.”

  Stanton turned to Sharpe.

  The intelligence chief nodded. “I am altogether in agreement with that,” he said. “Jubal Early is, in many ways, an unstable and unskilled man, but, even he is not so irresponsible as to do something so rash as to attack at bad odds and in such poor conditions. We feel sure that he will remain in the Stanton area until Lee decides to remove him from command.”

  Stanton thought about that and ran his fingers through his untidy beard. He polished his spectacles slowly with a pocket handkerchief.

  “What do you say, Devereux?” he asked. “You know these people better than most of us. I understand from General Sharpe that your older brother has been seen with Early’s army.” He examined several sheets of paper before him in search of the right one. “Ah, here it is. Here it is. He was said to be with the force that attacked Washington in August. He is an officer in an infantry unit commanded by a foreign adventurer named ‘Palltazer’.” Stanton shook his head at the outlandish sound of the name. “That sounds German,” he said looking at Sharpe.

  George Sharpe looked uncomfortable. He had not expected the secretary to discuss this report of the presence of Devereux’s brother in the enemy’s ranks. “I don’t know, sir,” he replied. “Our ‘scout’ reported the name as it was pronounced. Hopefully, we will eventually have the chance to interview them both.”

  Stanton would have rebuked this impertinence, but remembered that Sharpe in civilian life was a prominent figure in upstate New York, like Devereux in the banking world. Damn these volunteer officers. Damn…

  The detective, Topham, decided to speak. “General Devereux was the eldest of three brothers, Mister Secretary. This Confederate officer is his youngest brother. The middle brother, Patrick, was killed at Gettysburg working for General Sharpe as a citizen volunteer…” A staff assistant would normally not speak at such a meeting without b
eing asked, but all these who mattered knew that he was in Devereux’s office to watch him, and that Stanton had placed him there.

  “Ah, I remember,” Stanton said. “He was crippled as I recall and could not serve in the army.”

  Sharpe stared at Topham. He was not pleased. He disliked Lafayette Baker, and disliked Baker’s men even more. “Patrick Devereux was a great help to us at Gettysburg,” he said.

  Sheridan looked puzzled.

  “Early will not think as logically about his situation as my colleagues believe,” Devereux began slowly. His wounds were particularly painful today and he struggled to control the mask of his face. The references to his family enraged and terrified him. The poorly healed leg and shoulder wounds made it more difficult to control his face.

  Yes, my brother was crippled and could not serve, he thought. If he could have served he would have been a scourge to you all. His talent was so great… He could not help himself at Gettysburg. There was no choice but to help you.

  “Early will come back to Strasburg and Cedar Creek,” Devereux continued. “He will see what you have done to the Valley farmers. Having seen this and spoken with them he will be unable to bring himself to withdraw again to leave them to your tender care.” Careful, he thought. “Faced with this, he will be sorely tempted to attack you, no matter what the odds.”

  “You know him?” Sharpe said in a carefully neutral tone.

  The slender, erect, grey haired man nodded. “Yes, he and my father were great friends. Our bank handles his financial affairs. My father and he voted together against secession at the Richmond convention in ’61. He was often a guest at our home in Alexandria. I should mention that my family owns a farm in that area south of Strasburg. We use it as a hunting lodge. Early was a guest there as well.”