“The same. The English newspapers receive reports from both North and South, and they know very well that the South has never had the vast resources of men that McClellan claimed faced him.”
“And their opinion of Grant?”
“Respect, but little liking. He is not a man we can easily understand. He is too serious a fellow for English tastes, you know. The soldiers admire him, and the politicians know exactly what he is and what he will do, but he is not a figure of bravado. The newspapers would far rather have a swaggering fool like Cardigan than a polite Christian gentleman of Grant’s ilk. ‘Cardigan the Fearless’, would you believe – an idiot who destroyed his own command in an act of stupidity because he lacked the moral courage to question an obviously mistaken order!”
There were a number of that sort in the States, Shafer said. Mostly they were cavalry officers, in the nature of things, they tending to leave thinking to their horses, who were commonly of greater intellectual ability.
“There are exceptions of course. I believe Pickett who led the great and disastrous charge for the South at Gettysburg was a foot soldier. Any damned fool could have seen that the task was impossible! We sat behind stone walls and earth banks and rested our rifles for better aim and simply slaughtered them – men charging up an open slope with insufficient artillery in support.”
“We read of it in England. The correspondents all said it was very brave, apart from just one or two who commented that it was very foolish as well.”
Louise had not read the despatches from the battlefield, her parents believing that young misses' understanding should be protected from such horrors.
They ate their steaks and enjoyed the sweet dishes that followed and then sat in the lounge with a full glass to talk more.
“What next for you, Major Shafer?”
“Probably the West, ma’am. I doubt I will find the men I require and so it will be back to the home State to rebuild, and probably to go out to the Indian wars. There has been much butchery of the settlers out on the Plains, I am told. Atrocity, as well. It is impossible to live at peace with the tribes, so they must go.”
“Go, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am. Further to the west, if they wish; six feet under if they prefer. While they are in the habit of slaughtering our people then there is little choice. If they will not go one way, they must go the other.”
It seemed unbelievably brutal to Louise. She heard the proposal to destroy the whole of a people and could hardly comprehend it – Major Shafer seemed to be a pleasant, God-fearing sort of gentleman, but he wished to massacre thousands.
Dick was familiar with the Western opinion of the Indian, and he had heard of the killings of settlers in the North West and of the rape and enslavement of their women and children. There seemed to him to be no prospect of co-existence after that, and no possibility that the settlers would leave. There was no alternative that he could see, especially in time of war. The Federal government might eventually police the new lands, but it would require tens of thousands of men to do it, and those men were too busy dying against the Confederacy. In another age, there might have been another answer; for now, the only possibility was to kill those who fought and to expel those who did not.
He made a comment to that effect and Shafer agreed; there was neither time nor money to take more civilised action.
Louise was not at all convinced; she did know that she found less and less liking for the country.
They dined with the Wellands on the following evening; it was a far more Anglicised affair, one that Louise was almost at home with.
They were not the only guests. Three other army officers and their wives sat to table and a civilised banker and his lady as well. They wore proper dress and made polite conversation before the meal commenced. The food was edible, as well, a change from the everlasting beefsteak in its charred form.
There was really only one topic of conversation, Louise slowly realised: money and how best to make it.
The war was boring; it was over, finished, done with, the sole concern being to mop up the last armies and perhaps to punish the warmongers of the Southern plantations. The West was for peasants, and a good thing too, it got them out of the way. The matter of the moment was Reconstruction.
“We must make good the damage done by this conflict, Mrs Welland! We must rebuild the South, make it anew, and, dare I say it, far better, ma’am!”
The banker led the applause for that statement.
“The railroads must be re-laid. Their tracks are almost all destroyed, their locomotives worn out, their carriages destroyed. They must be built almost from the very beginning. That will demand Northern capital and knowhow, for the Southerners made a very poor fist of it in the first instance. Their canals and rivers have been permitted to go to rack and ruin and almost all of their steamboats are lost, both on the coast and inland. Their few shipyards lie in rack and ruin. They must be made good by Northern enterprise.”
The speaker had been a small man of business in New Hampshire before taking to arms as a major in his local regiment. He had seen combat and was now a brigadier. He would spend the rest of his days using that hard-fought rank to its best advantage and making himself into a very big man of business on its back. The railroads were to be his first route towards his millions.
The other military men were concerned with the harbours of the South and its coastal commerce, particularly along the Gulf where there would be much trade with the great new, revitalised Texas. The banker rather thought he would have much to offer in the creation of an efficient organisation of the finances and functions of one of the rebuilt States, Virginia, probably.
“There will need be a Highways Department, and probably an Education Commission, at very minimum. They will have to raise taxes and spend their money wisely, and will need aid to set up a proper office for each purpose.”
Only Colonel Welland seemed to have no plans for the future, and his lady was very discreetly quiet about her intentions.
“What of you, Sir Richard? Have you the intention of becoming involved in the South?”
“Probably not, sir. I have been asked to show some interest in Canada and besides that am in process of building a naval shipyard in England. It would seem that the French have stolen a march on the British when it comes to the ironclad steam ship of war; that sad state of affairs is to be remedied!”
“England is to build its Monitors, one presumes, Sir Richard.”
“No, ma’am. We are to build ocean-going ships. Frigates in the first instance and then what will be called ‘battleships’ – steamers, heavily armoured and carrying at least two great turrets, each with a pair of guns and set fore and aft so that they may fire a four-gun broadside. They will be equipped with smaller guns as well as the ten-inchers of the turrets. I have word of explosive shells as well. The aim, as must be obvious, is that they shall be able to cross the Atlantic, coaling say in Cork and then in Halifax in Canada. They will be able as well to sail to Cape Town and then to Bombay. We are to protect all of our colonies, sir, and that will demand a large navy and new ships as they are invented. Naval shipyards have a certainty of a busy future, sir.”
They applauded his forethought. It was inevitable, they said, that America would build a great navy eventually, steam-powered and ironclad, but probably based more on the Pacific Ocean than the Atlantic.
"Trade with China in the first instance, Sir Richard, and then to take a degree of control of some of the richer lands - the Philippines, for example. England has taken a hold on India and Africa and is strong in South America. Our colonies must lie in the Great South Sea, sir."
"Not in Mexico?"
"No, I think not, Sir Richard." The banker was almost regretful as he pointed out that Mexico's population was just a little too advanced to allow for a profitable colony. The Mexicans would fight, and with more than spears and flintlock muskets. They would be at least as great a menace as the Afghans had been to England.
"
Better to leave the Mexicans to rot in peace, Sir Richard. They are incapable of developing a modern state, probably because of their religion - priest-ridden and primitive!"
"Rather like the back hills people of the States, eh, sir?"
It was not a popular comment.
"Ours is a God-fearing nation, Sir Richard. I believe the same can hardly be said of England?"
"No, sir. There has only been one Census attempted of church-going in England and Wales, and that found that more than one half of the population has never been inside the doors of a church or chapel. I am told, how reliably I do not know, that all of the churches in the whole country could seat barely one person in ten at the same moment. Cromwell very successfully destroyed the religious impulse in the ordinary man, sir. Of course, in addition, a great many of those who first settled the States were religious enthusiasts who chose to run away from England."
The Americans regarded this as rather flippant; surely, they said, the leading figures of British Society and Government made much of their religious convictions.
"They do indeed, sir! They are very good at saying the proper words, especially where there are newspapermen present. The reality, I believe, is rather different."
Mrs Welland judged it wise to change the topic of conversation. She inquired of the state of Europe - she had heard much of the Prussians and of their intention to create a place called Germany.
Dick knew only a little - which was more knowledge than the others at table possessed.
"It is to be a single and unified country, or so I believe, ma'am. They are to build on the changes Napoleon made half a century ago and finally extirpate the great mass of tiny states that so hold the German people back. One is told that they are seeking a number of wars to achieve this aim - nothing like a foreign war to unify a people. The Danes were first, to tidy up the business of Schleswig and Holstein; then will come the Austrians in order to show who is the leader of the German-speaking peoples, and to put the fear of Prussia into the Russians; finally, they will probably push the French into aggression against them. France has broken the various German borders a dozen times in the last two centuries; she is an untrustworthy, expansionist, imperialist country and will be far the better for being slapped down. It will be interesting to see if the new country, when it is formed, is capable of emulating Wellington's achievements."
"Do you believe that it will, Sir Richard?"
"The industries of the areas around the Ruhr, north of the Rhine, are said to be growing and will soon rival those of England and America. It is industry that wins wars, I believe, Mrs Welland."
The soldiers reluctantly agreed while the banker was convinced that brave boys would prevail despite the state of the weapons they possessed.
"A breech-loading rifle is worth a dozen boys with muskets, sir."
Colonel Welland made his sole contribution to the conversation with that remark. He had eaten very little and drank hardly at all; he was said to be convalescent but Dick thought him to have one foot in the grave. He was not a man who would live many more years, he suspected. That, to an extent, made him a very useful husband for a lady with business interests.
The womenfolk withdrew from the table and conversation among the men turned to the progress of the war. There was agreement that the end was now inevitable. Lee and Davis were condemned as criminal for refusing to offer surrender - all they could do was kill soldiers, and more of their own than of the North.
"Why do they not, gentlemen? From an English viewpoint their behaviour is incomprehensible."
"They hope, Sir Richard. Perhaps Lincoln will not be re-elected. Perhaps the cotton manufacturers of Europe will force an advantageous peace. Perhaps they will even yet win a great victory, for one pure-bred Southern boy is worth ten of the mongrels of the North."
"Fools!"
"I will drink to that, Sir Richard!"
The banker suggested that the leadership of the South might be suffering from that grandeur of despair that was said to have affected many of the warriors of old.
"They may wish to die on a burning pyre, the whole of the South to perish with them. Better dead than defeated, perhaps."
"That is what happens when you are brought up on a diet of Sir Walter Scott, gentlemen! Tennyson, as well! Romantic twaddle rather than hard reality - and tens of thousands have died for it."
The brigadier ventured to disagree.
"There is a place for the hero in war, surely, Sir Richard. You have shown that on occasion, one believes."
The banker was unaware of Dick's martial glory and was educated by the military men, who valued still the achievements of the individual in this war of faceless masses charging against hidden guns.
"Ah! I did not know that, Sir Richard. You have, it would seem, shown that there is a need for great leaders."
"A need? Possibly, sir - I had rather say that on occasion a man is left with no other course than to stand his ground. To do so is more a recognition of necessity than of heroism."
"To an extent, one must agree, Sir Richard. Necessity is part of the military life. There is, however, the question of how great the extent can be - I seem to remember that a gentleman known as the Sharps Kid made a reputation for himself just before the war, and that, I believe, was in great part a matter of choice!"
Dick met the eye of the colonel who had spoken; he did not recognise him and could not remember his name, was sure they had never met. That suggested that Mrs Welland had given him the information in discussion elsewhere; he wondered just what the dear girl was up to.
"Not entirely, sir. Bloody Kansas left few choices on occasion, and one might argue that the defence of one's personal honour is a matter of exigency. If a man stands, one for one, with a gun in his hand then there is no time for debate... or not that I ever found."
"Were you indeed that young man, Sir Richard?"
"I was, sir. I believe I still may be in the eyes of the Western men - which may well be an argument, now that I am wed, for returning to a quieter life in England."
The four gentlemen, all Easterners, tended to agree - the West was too rambunctious for their taste. Colonel Welland gave no opinion at all, other than to glance at the clock and suggest, in a cracked little voice, that they should join the ladies.
They drank tea, being in a genteel parlour and hence following English styles, and made a little of conversation. Louise as junior female present although possessing a title - which had much impressed the American ladies - was begged to sit to the piano. There had to be music - all had read of the correct behaviour to be followed after dinner in Society - and there were no unmarried maidens to display their accomplishments.
There was sheet music available, but a glance showed it to be camp-fire songs, very patriotic, no doubt, but not quite in Louise's style. She preferred in the circumstances to play from memory, quickly losing herself in a favourite Mendelssohn sonata and then maintaining the light mood with a pair of Hummel's fantasy pieces. She had practiced little in the previous month and was unwilling to venture into Beethoven without very recent rehearsal. Her audience was impressed, some of them delighted by the music, most merely overawed by the achievement.
"You are most accomplished, Lady Burke!"
"I have loved to play since first I was tall enough to climb onto the piano stool, sir. This is a very fine instrument as well, Mrs Welland, which adds much to one's pleasure."
She did not add that the services of a tuner would have made it finer still - politesse made its demands.
"You must return to play again for us all, Lady Burke - a regular musical soiree!"
Louise much regretted that would hardly be possible - she understood from Sir Richard that they were to travel to Niagara and then probably to Chicago and points West in the immediate future.
They made their farewells, Mrs Welland decorously at the side of her husband and reminding Dick that they were to meet in the office in the morning.
"Mrs Welland is a very fine la
dy, Sir Richard. She would not find herself out of place in London, I believe."
"She did take a look at England last year, in fact, my dear. She is a businesswoman - and there is no place for such a being in London, I fear. It is difficult often for a lady in Washington, but female money-making is far more acceptable here than in London. She runs the firm of Parsons and Burke - her maiden name being Parsons - and will I suspect make an offer to me tomorrow, which I am much inclined to accept. I do not know whether I am to stay in the States, but I have reason to suspect that I may do better elsewhere. What say you?"
"I would not wish to live in Washington, sir. An unpleasant town, I fear. It is too soon to make a judgement of the whole country."
"'One swallow doth not a summer make', my dear. I agree with you. One must not judge the whole of a great nation by one unfortunate aspect of its existence. As well to say that England might be condemned by the existence of the slum towns of the industrial parts... although, in fact, thinking on the matter, they are a sad indictment of the country. Be that as it may, we must suspend judgement, it would seem."
Mrs Welland had a lawyer at her side when they met in the morning.
"Not in pursuance of a dispute, Sir Richard! Mr Halfpenny is to explain our proposals to you in clear form. I am no expert in the proprieties of company law, and your knowledge must be expected to be of the English code, which may, for all I know, differ from the American."
It seemed very reasonable to Dick; he concentrated hard, clearing his mind and readying himself for any little disadvantageous provisos that might crop up.
"You have proposed, Sir Richard, that Parsons and Burke should be floated on the New York Exchange and that you should sell off your forty-nine percent of the shares."
"I have, sir."
"Was you to do so, Sir Richard, then it might be expected that the share price would become immediately depressed, which would not be to your advantage and which would also reflect badly upon the company if it wished to take a bank loan, for example."
An Uncertain Peace (The Making of a Man Series, Book 3) Page 9
