MacPherson's Lament

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Oh, right. Well, as I said, it was here then, but it wasn’t used for government business. I think that the Phillips family played host to some minor Confederate officials. People named-” He peeked at his card. “Miss Dabney wrote this out for me in case you turned out to be a history buff. Umm… here it is. A Mr. Micajah Clark, a Mr. Semple, and the postmaster general, a Mr. Reagan. Wonder if he’s any relation?”

  “I think not,” said Huff, looking singularly unamused. Bill got the impression, though, that there had been a flash of recognition in his cold eyes at the recital of that list of names.

  They finished their tour in the antiquated kitchen, but John Huff did not seem dismayed by the lack of modern appliances or the faded linoleum and drab green walls. “It’s a big room,” Bill said lamely. “It has possibilities.”

  “So does garbage,” muttered Nathan Kimball to himself.

  “I’ve seen enough,” John Huff announced. “I’ll be staying in town a few days. Perhaps you could recommend a hotel?”

  “Sure,” said Bill. “There’s the Stratford Inn, the Best Western on Highway 58-”

  “Never mind. We’ll look in the phone book. As I was saying, Kimball and I will be staying a few days. If at the end of that time we find that everything checks out-the appraisal, the survey, and so on-then I’ll make your clients an offer for the house.”

  “Did I mention their terms?” asked Bill, waiting for the deal to come crashing down as he spoke. “I’m afraid they’re rather eccentric about business matters. They don’t seem to trust banks. It’s probably the result of having lived through the Depression, don’t you think? Anyhow, they don’t want to be bothered with financing.”

  “I understand. If the details all check out, I’ll be prepared to offer them a cashier’s check for the full amount. I will, of course, expect a discount for cash.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Bill promised. “I expect you’ll be meeting them at closing, so if there’s anything else you’d like to know about the house, perhaps you can ask them then.”

  John Huff nodded. “Well, there is one thing. Do you happen to know if there are any secret passages in the house?”

  One day he is there and smiling.

  The next he is gone as if he had taken fernseed

  And walked invisible so through the Union lines.

  You will not find that smile in a Northern prison

  Though you seek from now till Doomsday.

  – STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT,

  John Brown’s Body, Book 8

  WASHINGTON, GEORGIA- MAY 5, 1865

  GABRIEL HAWKS WAS now a lieutenant in the army, but the honor of the field promotion paled somewhat when he considered how little competition remained for a position in the ranks of Confederate officers. After Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse on Palm Sunday, President Davis and the Confederate government had left Danville by train and proceeded to Greensboro, North Carolina, to confer with General Joseph E. Johnston and General P. G. Beauregard about the fate of the Cause.

  Most of the lower ranks felt no need to wait for further advice about the outcome of the war. They were deserting from the train at every station, leaving their posts and their comrades, and slipping away to lose themselves in the tide of fugitives heading for home. Gabriel couldn’t say that he blamed them. How could anyone doubt that the war was lost in the face of the evidence of his own eyes? One of the soldiers who had been in the cabinet car was telling it all over about how he saw the secretary of the navy and the adjutant general passing a tin cup of coffee back and forth, for want of utensils, while the secretary of state himself was dipping his dinner out of a haversack of hard-boiled eggs. The soldier said they bore it all cheerfully, even joking about these sorry circumstances-and perhaps that was the worst sign of all. Surely the end was near.

  Gabriel Hawks might have run, too. He was thinking about it as the train headed westward into Piedmont, North Carolina. He could follow the New River north and be back in Giles County before June. But then the navy’s paymaster James Semple had made him a lieutenant, and he felt he ought to set an example for the rest. Bridgeford laughed at him, of course, but then they made him a lieutenant, too, so there they were, in ragged, ill-fitting uniforms scrounged from somewhere by Mr. Semple. They hoped they wore deserters’ coats, not the leavings of dead men. Still, they were officers.

  “The rise in pay delights me,” Bridgeford drawled. “Now it will only take us three months to save up our wages for a pound of butter.”

  “That is, if they pay us at all.”

  “True, Hawks. And well noted. But, hell, we may as well stick it out a while,” Bridgeford said, laughing. “Maybe Johnston can whip Sherman in Carolina. Maybe the damned Texans will march across the Mississippi and win the war for us yet. Then we’ll be fixed for life.”

  “You think they will?” Hawks had asked him, feeling a shiver of hope.

  “No,” said Bridgeford. “But look out there.” He pointed to the rolling vista of cornstalks, brown and broken behind crumbling fences. “It’s the same everywhere, Hawks.”

  It was the same everywhere. Hawks knew that. The Yankees’ General Sheridan had laid waste to most of Virginia. The Richmond paper had quoted a message that Sheridan sent to Lincoln: “If a crow were to fly across the Shenandoah Valley, he would have to take his rations with him.”

  “And I’ve no family left,” Bridgeford went on. “I’ve grown accustomed to being hungry. What does it matter if we go or stay?”

  So they had stayed, and when the train rumbled into Greensboro with only two hundred and fifty men aboard, Hawks and Bridgeford were still among that number. Some of the men joked that they’d just keep on riding the train to Mexico; they had been traveling on it for more than a week already. After a few days’ wait in Greensboro, the train ride began again; but this time the government officials were not aboard.

  Word had it that Joe Johnston was going to surrender his army, too. They’d all heard reports of what he’d told the government officials. One of the orderlies could tell it off by heart: “ ‘I shall expect to retain no man beyond the byroad or cow-path that leads to his home. My small force is melting away like snow before the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it.’ ” The Confederacy had fallen with Robert E. Lee; only the politicians seemed ignorant of that fact. It was at last decided that Johnston would surrender his army, but political leaders would continue to retreat, perhaps to continue the fighting farther south, or failing that, to set up a government in exile in Mexico or in Europe.

  On April 16 the presidential party disbanded to go their separate ways, some on horseback, some in wagons and ambulances, all heading south, and all with a few soldiers for escort. There was word that Stoneman’s cavalry was combing the area in search of Jefferson Davis, and the officials believed that a scattering of several groups of fugitives would increase the president’s chances of getting away. The train continued on as before, as an added decoy for the Union pursuers, now escorted by a mounted guard of Admiral Semmes’s forces to fend off the enemy cavalry. Their protection was more than a decoy for the opposition. The train in itself was well worth defending, for in one of its cars was the contents of the Confederate treasury: silver coin and gold bullion transported from Richmond with the evacuation of the government.

  The tattered caravans wended their way south, following muddy roads past blackened chimneys and stubbled fields that would mean more hunger in the months to come. They stopped in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a week-long stay, where news of Lincoln’s assassination reached President Davis, but there was no rejoicing over the passing of their old adversary. He was thought a fair man, and one whose death boded only ill for the Southern people. Word of Johnston’s surrender was telegraphed to the anxious cabinet, and then a message from Johnston that the Union had denied Sherman permission to offer lenient terms of surrender. The flight was on again.

  From Charlotte, North Carolina, the parties proceeded to Yorkville,
South Carolina, with an escort of more than two hundred cavalry, troops escaping from Johnston’s surrender. They scouted the area for enemy troops and escorted the cabinet to the Greenville Railroad, on which they traveled to Cokesville. The Union forces were in hot pursuit; Davis was roused in the middle of the night to flee from enemy troops just ten miles from the town. Despite the fugitive nature of the government’s journey, its progress was never secret. The opposing forces always knew where they were going, and at each stop, the townspeople met them with cheering crowds and offers of hospitality. But the goodwill of the citizens would not protect them from the wrath of the victors; a capture would mean prison or the gallows.

  They fled to Abbeville, arriving there on the second of May, but they didn’t stay long. While the Confederate cabinet was holding its last meeting at the home of Colonel Armistead Burt, the train pulled into the depot, still guarded by Semmes’s forces, and a change in personnel was made. George Trenholm, the secretary of the treasury, had been left ill near the Catawba River, and now the president appointed Postmaster John H. Reagan acting treasurer of the Confederacy. Reagan took charge of the train and ordered the cavalry to proceed to Washington, Georgia, forty-five miles to the south. When it arrived, he relinquished the office of treasurer to Captain Micajah Clark, formerly chief clerk of Jefferson Davis’s executive office. That transfer of authority was the last official signature affixed by the president to any document.

  Hawks and Bridgeford knew nothing of these transactions of power. They accompanied the train on its southward procession, obeying whatever orders were given. They knew, though, that the train could not be guarded safely much longer. And more men were anxious to leave the service of the dying nation. How foolish it would be to die in an eleventh-hour battle for a country that no longer existed.

  At Washington, Georgia, General Breckinridge demanded that the treasurer pay his troops out of the remaining funds. The soldiers’ paper money was worthless, and they would need money to make their way home, and so the quartermasters made out their payrolls and paid each man about twenty-six dollars in coin, enough perhaps to see them safely through.

  Since the train was no longer a safe means of transportation, the forces disbanded one last time. Stephen Mallory, secretary of the navy, remained in Washington, Georgia, and Mr. Benjamin of the cabinet faded away before Jefferson Davis was captured at Irwinsville on May 10. The others were heading for Florida, hoping to outrun and outlast their pursuers.

  Hawks and Bridgeford were among the small band of ex-navy men who accompanied Paymaster James A. Semple on the final leg of the journey to nowhere in particular. In their charge were a couple of wagons, containing the remnants of the navy’s supplies and rations. The paymaster was a legend in the military for the resourcefulness of his scrounging. In Danville, he was even lending supplies to some of the army personnel. Hawks wondered if he’d ever taste real coffee again. The concoction of mashed peanuts that they were drinking went by the name of coffee, but the taste wouldn’t fool a lap baby. The stuff was hot, and that was about all you could say for it. The food alone would make a man desert, never mind the hopelessness of a lost war. Going home meant meat without maggots, fresh eggs and vegetables, and maybe a dash of salt again.

  “We have little enough to show for serving our country,” said Bridgeford as they rode along beside the wagon. His horse was a bag of bones covered with skin; its head drooped with exhaustion under the weight of its rider. “I have a few silver coins and a Confederate penny given to me by Admiral Semmes, a ragged coat, some scars, and the rank of lieutenant in a defeated army. It isn’t much of a start for my career as a civilian.”

  “It makes me no never mind,” said Hawks. “I was a farmer before; reckon I will be again. All I lost was time.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you any that you gave four years of your life for nothing?”

  “Wish we coulda won,” shrugged Hawks. “But there’s a lot gave more than I did. General Jackson did. The boys I joined up with-most of them won’t be going back at all.”

  Tom Bridgeford slowed his horse to let the wagon go ahead of them. “That’s war for you. Nobody wins but the politicians. Why, I bet as soon as the ink is dry on the peace treaties, the career officers will be worming their way back into the Union Army, and the politicians will be trying to get appointed to offices under whatever govenment is running things. It’s the rest of us who’ll be out of luck, broke in health and nothing to show for it.”

  “They made us officers,” Hawks pointed out. “My folks will be mighty proud of that.”

  “Well, my folks are dead,” said Bridgeford. “In an epidemic that happened thanks to this war, and the way I see it, the noble Confederacy still owes me a considerable debt of gratitude.”

  Gabriel Hawks smiled at his friend. “You want them to make you a general, Tom?”

  Bridgeford eased his horse close to Hawks’s plug mare. Looking about him to see that no one was watching, he leaned over and whispered, “Do you know what’s in that middle wagon, Gabriel Hawks?”

  The bantam farmer from the Blue Ridge shook his head. “Blankets, maybe. Hardtack?”

  “Think again. I looked this morning before we started rolling. The whole Confederate treasury went with us on the train when we left Danville. And when the group disbanded in Little Washington, they paid the soldiers, and then they divided up the rest of the money. Mr. Semple carried off about eighty bars of gold bullion in that wagon.”

  Hawks paled and glanced at the covered wagon. It was battered and muddy; it didn’t look like a rolling treasure chest. “But that gold is government money, Tom.”

  “What government? Lee surrendered, and those men we’ve been escorting for a month are headed for the ends of the earth. You want to turn it over to the Yankee government so maybe they can pay their soldiers to come burn some more of our farms?”

  “I’m no thief,” said Hawks. They rode on in silence for a couple of minutes while he mulled it over. “I can’t think of anybody that ought to have that money, though.” Bridgeford said nothing. “Still, I wouldn’t kill nobody for it,” said Hawks.

  “Reckon I wouldn’t either,” said Bridgeford, cantering ahead.

  They didn’t say any more about it that day. They just kept heading southeast, trying to outrun the enemy and avoid the bands of raiders who prowled the undefended roads. When DeBruhl was shot by bushwhackers and Glover’s cough got so bad he couldn’t sit up anymore, there were only six of them. Doyle, the dark-eyed youth from Alabama, slipped away to go home, and Semple took the others to go scouting and foraging, leaving his two lieutenants in a clump of woods to guard the wagons. At dusk they hadn’t returned, so Hawks and Bridgeford took turns standing guard all night. They dared not risk a campfire.

  When the sky turned clabbered with daylight, Hawks, who hadn’t been asleep, got up and put his ragged blanket back in the wagon. “You there, Tom?” he called softly.

  From the shadows of the pines, Bridgeford emerged, his rifle balanced in the crook of his arm. Even the crickets were quiet. He turned to look out at the white ribbon of road, still and silent in the graying light. “They’re not coming back,” he said.

  Hawks turned to look at the wagon. He licked his lips and shivered a little from the night air. “They should have been here by now.”

  “I guess we ought to move on out of here before whoever got them finds us,” said Bridgeford. He looked for a long time at the tarp-covered wagon they had guarded through the night. “I don’t think it would be wise to take that along,” he said at last. “If Mr. Semple does come back, he’d hunt us down for sure if we made off with the wagon, and even if he didn’t catch us, we’d attract too much attention. I don’t have a mind to fight it out with bushwhackers along these roads, even for a ton of gold.”

  Hawks nodded. “It’s more money than we’d need in a lifetime, and it would seem foolish to die after we done lived through the war.”

  Bridgeford began to saddle his horse. “I haven’t
seen Semple so much as look at the gold since we left Little Washington. I don’t reckon he’d miss half a dozen bars. At least, not in time to catch us.”

  He burrowed in under the tarp and lifted out a brick of Confederate gold, dull in the dawn grayness. “It’s heavy, right enough,” he said, handing it to Hawks. “I make it twenty pounds. Thirty, perhaps. We could put them in our haversacks, if we got rid of some provisions. I think my horse could bear the weight of three of them if I let him take his time on the journey.”

  “Three of them would be a deal of money,” said Hawks. “But if we turned up with blocks of gold, somebody’d hang us sure. Leastways they’d confiscate it, wouldn’t they?”

  “They would if they caught us with it anytime soon. We must see to it that they don’t. Hide it in a safe place for a while. Years, if need be, till things in the country cool down again.” As he spoke, Bridgeford was lifting out bars of gold. Three for Hawks; three for himself. He put the bricks in his haversack, leaving on the ground the half a canteen he’d used as a dinner plate, some hardtack, and a cast-iron frying pan. “Once the country cools down a bit from this war, we can go back for our buried gold and figure out a way to cash it in. There’s jewelers in Wilmington that might help me out with that. We’d better get going, though, before it gets to be full day. I’d hate to lose my newfound fortune to Mr. Semple now.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Hawks, looking away down the empty white road.

  Bridgeford hoisted himself into the saddle and trotted off toward the woods. “Our separate ways, Hawks,” he said. “And may the good Lord take a liking to you.”

  Edinburgh

  Dear Bill,

  So now you have helped Dad move out of the house. How charming. I’m glad to see that you’re making yourself useful. I wouldn’t want our parents (who will have been married for twenty-nine years this August) to have any difficulties in dissolving their marriage and destroying our family. But why stop with that? Since you’re being so helpful, couldn’t you introduce him to a couple of stewardesses? Or rent him a room in a sorority? I’ve tried to write Dad myself, but I always end up tearing up the letter. I just get so furious that the letter becomes a stream of invective (not unlike the ones you’ve been receiving, only less restrained), and even I realize that if I mailed them they would only make matters worse.