The Last Confederate

by Gilbert, Morris

  Mark spoke quietly and soberly, telling of the confusion that gripped both armies, and a hush fell over the room. Finally he got to the death of General Bee.

  “General Bee’s brigade was broken by Burnside, and moved back to the Henry House. I had been sent by Colonel Barton to find General Beauregard, but the air was so thick with lead, I couldn’t get through. General Bee rode by, his loping black hair fluttering. There were about two thousand of our men trapped in a little ravine below the woods. Everything was in confusion. Nobody knew which way to go. I caught up to General Bee to ask if he knew where General Beauregard was, and he said he didn’t.”

  Mark paused, then raised a hand to touch his forehead. When he looked out at the audience, his eyes were sad. “General Bee tried to stop the men from running. He stood up in his stirrups and waved his sword—then he saw Jackson’s brigade at the top of the ravine. General Bee called out: ‘Look, men, there’s Jackson’s brigade! It’s standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians!’.”

  A burst of applause broke the silence, and most of the crowd jumped to their feet, faces aglow with pride and admiration. But when they sat down, Mark said, “Jackson’s brigade saved the day, but right after that, a ball knocked General Bee out of the saddle. He died before we could move him off the battlefield.”

  Mark sat down, and Jefferson Davis stood to his feet and said, “I think we must now pray for our brave wounded—and for the families of those who paid the supreme sacrifice for their country. Chaplain Butler, will you lead us, please?”

  A tall, strong-faced man with a shock of black hair prayed, and then the dignitaries at the head table left the room, while others stayed to talk. Davis would have left also if he had felt free, but he sat beside his grandfather, who was having an animated conversation with Stephen Mallory about their time of service together.

  Soon only a very few remained. Davis fidgeted in his chair, bored and wishing to leave. His eyes swept the room and he saw Belle Winslow approaching with a group of officers around her. “You must meet my cousin Davis,” she said with a smile, and as he rose she detached herself from the arms of two of the officers and introduced the men: “Major Lee, Lieutenant Wickham, Lieutenant Beauchamp, and my brother, Lieutenant Mark Winslow . . .” She named off others in the group; then she turned to her cousin. “Davis has just come back to this country after getting his degree at Oxford.”

  “I understand your home is in Washington, sir,” Beau remarked, smiling slightly. “I would imagine you feel rather uncomfortable here with all us rebels.”

  “I must admit, it is a little thick for a Northerner, Lieutenant,” Davis acknowledged.

  “We are glad to have you, Mr. Winslow,” Major Lee added, his manner indicating to his junior officers that they were to be courteous to the Yankee. “I know your brother Lowell. We were very close at the Point.”

  “He has spoken of you often, Major,” Davis returned.

  “I’m told you’re a writer, sir,” Wickham said. “Did you come here to gather local color?”

  “No, sir. I came with my grandfather. He’s the writer, actually.”

  Major Lee hesitated. “Would it be imposing on you, Mr. Winslow, if I asked about England’s feelings—concerning the South, I mean?”

  Everyone was listening carefully, so Davis gave them as accurate a report as he could, ending by saying, “So there is much sympathy for your cause, Major Lee—but there are many who are opposed to slavery, and would not be in favor of coming to your aid.”

  “Ah, Captain Winslow,” Lee said, turning to the older man, “we are putting your grandson through a painful interview. Perhaps we might have your views? How will our victory at Bull Run affect your people? Will they give up?”

  Captain Winslow shook his head. “Would you give up, Major Lee, if you had been defeated? I think not.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle. “If I may be permitted one observation as an outsider, I think your victory may do you much harm.”

  “How so, sir?” Beauchamp demanded sharply.

  “I have been a sailor for many years, some of them in hard battles at sea—and it always seemed to me that winning the first victory of a war tended to make us overconfident.”

  “Why, that’s exactly what Stonewall Jackson said!” Mark exclaimed. “Others wanted to go on and take Washington, but Jackson said, ‘This will be a costly victory for us. We will be overconfident.’.”

  Belle took Davis’s arm and smiled sweetly at the others. “I have a few questions to ask my cousin, if you gentlemen will excuse us.”

  Davis followed her out of the main dining room into a small parlor used by guests. She sat down and patted the space beside her. “Sit down, Davis.”

  He followed her instructions, saying, “I think I saw a jealous fire in the eyes of several hot-headed young Confederate officers, Miss Belle. Are you trying to get me killed in a duel?”

  “Oh, Davis, you are foolish!” she laughed, then arched her eyebrows and leaned against him. “Would you fight a duel for a little southern girl?”

  “I couldn’t hit that wall with a pistol,” he answered. “Anyway, Grandfather and I are leaving day after tomorrow, so I won’t have time to cut the lieutenants out of your favor.”

  “Do you have to go?” she pouted. “If you’d stay just a little longer, you’d learn the truth about this war.”

  “Don’t try to make a Confederate out of me, Miss Belle,” he replied quickly, his face suddenly sober. “I’m going back to England just as soon as Father permits it. My life is there.”

  She stared at him a moment, and when she spoke her voice was edged in anger. “But this is your country!”

  “Not really.” He saw the bewilderment in her eyes, and added, “I think after this war, there’ll be nothing left of what I liked best about this country. No, I’ll probably take citizenship in England as soon as possible.”

  Belle stared at him, then rose to her feet, her face set. “I don’t understand a man who won’t fight for his country.” With that she spun on her heels and left the room. She was immediately met by the two lieutenants. No doubt they were waiting in the wings for her! Davis thought wryly.

  He went directly to his room instead of returning to the table. When his grandfather came in, Davis asked, “How much more work do you have on the book?”

  “Ready to go back home?” the captain responded quietly. “I guess the little rebel girl gave you a bad time.”

  “Oh yes, but it isn’t that. I . . .” He hesitated. “I want to go back to England.”

  “Yes, I know. But are you sure that’s what you really want, Davis?”

  “I know what I don’t want—and that’s to get mixed up in this crazy war.”

  They said little more to each other, and two days later Sky accompanied them to the railway station, with Thad driving. As they stepped down from the carriage, Captain Winslow walked around to Thad’s side. “Boy, where are you from?” he demanded, staring up into his face.

  Thad’s eyes shifted to Sky, who stood there waiting for the boy’s answer, and finally said reluctantly, “New York.”

  “Oh?” The captain studied Thad’s thin, dark face as a jeweler might study a stone he was about to cut. “I lived in New York once, after I retired from the Navy.” He stood there so long that Davis nudged him. “We’d better get on the train, Grandfather.”

  “All right.” The men moved away, and Thad waited for his employer to return. As they made their way back to the hotel, Sky said, “Captain Winslow is a smart man, Thad. He thinks he recognizes you.” When Thad remained silent, Sky added, “Anytime you want to tell me anything, Thad, I’ll listen—and I mean anything.”

  Thad nodded glumly. “Yes, sir, I’ll remember.”

  Sky knew he had come up against a locked door, so he changed the subject. “Tell me about the farm.” As Thad spoke enthusiastically about crops and field hands, Sky half listened, for his mind kept drifting back to Thad’s first appearance. Toby had said
the boy was asking for “the Winslow place.” Since then Sky had grown to love the boy, and the secrecy troubled him, but right now he could do no more.

  It’ll be up to Thad to tell me whatever it is.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CAMP MEETING

  The year 1861 closed with a harvest that exceeded anything ever seen in Virginia. Cotton bales were stacked like fortress walls on every dock, waiting shipment to England, and the corncribs were overflowing. The ground had been a cornucopia, pouring forth its riches, and Sky Winslow should have been rejoicing. Instead, as he walked over the stripped fields with Sut Franklin and Thad, he was discouraged.

  “Best we ever did!” Franklin nodded. “I never seen cotton grow like this—and the bugs musta gone somewhere else, ’cause they shore didn’t hit us like usual.”

  Thad said little. He could tell by his employer’s face that he was unhappy. Finally, Franklin got his orders from Winslow and left the two walking alone through the fields. The cotton stalks were like ghosts, with shreds of white clinging to their skeleton arms, stirring in the sharp breeze. The keening of the wind added to the illusion, for it sounded to Thad like the cry of tiny phantoms calling from the ground.

  “I wish winter was over,” he said, breaking the silence. “Seems like the earth is dead, don’t it, Mr. Winslow. I like spring plowing and putting the seed in the ground—then waiting for the first little blades to come up.” He kicked at a stalk, snapping it off, and added, “This is the part of farming I don’t like.”

  “It’s all part of it, Thad,” Sky told him. “Land has to lie fallow and rest up for the next year.”

  “I can hardly wait. I’ll be a lot more help than I was this year. I sure was ignorant, wasn’t I? Didn’t know one end of a mule from another!”

  Winslow smiled and nodded. “You’ve learned more in a year than anyone I ever saw, Thad. I don’t think there’s a square foot on Belle Maison you don’t know. You’re just a natural-born farmer—which I’m not.” The deep lines that had creased Sky Winslow’s face deepened and he grunted, “I’m just a dumb Indian who should never have left the high country!”

  Thad hesitated, for Winslow rarely revealed himself. Finally he asked, “Is something wrong, Mr. Winslow? Are your boys all right?”

  “Oh, Mark and Tom are well. No action at all—which puzzles me. I thought this war would be in full swing by now, but it’s almost like the Union’s gone to sleep.”

  Since Bull Run there had been nearly no action inland, just a few skirmishes in Missouri. McCulloch had whipped Lyon at a place called Wilson’s Creek, and later had been killed at Pea Ridge while leading a force that included Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indians.

  But there had been much action in coastal waters, for in April, as expected, Lincoln had ordered the blockade of the entire southern coast. At first it was almost totally ineffective, with blockade runners slipping through the thin lines almost at will, but as the U.S. Navy was built up by northern shipyards, the net had tightened. The blockade runners still got through, and one successful trip was enough to make the owner rich enough to retire, but it was getting more difficult all the time.

  Sky had watched as the Confederate empire was built, but he was unhappy with what he saw. “Best year for cotton anyone ever saw,” he said to Thad. “But what good does it do sitting on the wharf? We need guns, not cotton.”

  Thad had listened much to the speeches that flowed like wine on the streets of Richmond. Now he decided to share his thoughts with his employer. “Mr. Winslow, it looks to me like we ought to forget about cotton next year.”

  Winslow stopped in his tracks. “How’s that, Thad?”

  Embarrassed at his own audacity, Thad shrugged. “‘Course I don’t know anything about this war, and like you say, there’s enough cotton to make shirts for the world! But what are the soldiers going to eat next year? Can’t eat cotton—and neither can we. I mentioned to Sut that we ought to plant food crops, and he just said, ‘This is cotton country.’ Well, I guess it’s corn country, too, far as that goes. And we could sell corn here in Virginia.”

  “And what would you do, Thad, if you had your way?”

  “Aw, Mr. Winslow, you’re funnin’ me! But if it was me, I’d plant corn and buy up all the brood sows and yearlings I could find. Later I’d sell the corn, and the pigs, and the cattle. But that’s just my Yankee ideas.”

  Sky snapped his jaws shut and said with some vehemence, “That’s more sense than I heard from the Confederate Congress in a whole year—or from any of these planters! All they can think is cotton!” He mused over Thad’s idea, and a smile split his dark face. “Thad, I’ve been trying to decide what to do, and everybody else around here will think I’m crazy; but you and I are going to have the biggest cornfields in Virginia come spring. You get Toby to teach you all he knows about pigs and cattle, because he knows more about critters than any man in this state, white or black!”

  They had now reached the house, and Winslow grew more thoughtful. “There’s another aspect of this plantation you ought to know about, Thad. I want you to learn to keep books.”

  “Why, I’m no scholar, Mr. Winslow!”

  “Don’t have to be a scholar to know that most of our troubles are tied up with slaves. I don’t mean the right and wrong of that. I mean that it takes an army of slaves to raise cotton, and they’re expensive. But you take corn—why, it won’t take half as many field hands to raise enough corn to put us in the black.”

  Thad stared at him. “You’d sell your slaves?”

  At that moment Sky Winslow let his guard down in a way he never had since moving from Oregon to Virginia. “Thad,” he said soberly, “if I had my way, I’d set every last one of them free. Before God I would! Robert E. Lee said the same thing to me at the Chestnut House the other night.” He noted the startled look on Thad’s face, and snorted, “Why, boy, do you think I like slavery? I hate the idea, but I got caught in it when I bought this place. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have gone into another line of work—but it’s too late now.”

  “I didn’t know you felt like that, sir,” Thad said. “I feel the same way, only I don’t own any slaves—and I’m from the North.”

  “You’d be surprised how many Southerners feel as I do, but this war exploded in our faces like a bomb, and now we’ve got to fight a war over a cause we don’t really believe in.” He shook his head and turned to go, saying, “Keep this under your hat, Thad. But keep on thinking about next year. I like the idea.”

  Thad left and stopped by his bunk to pick up the shotgun Winslow let him use. All the family loved quail, and with the older boys gone he was the hunter, along with Dan. He had taken to hunting, for he liked the outdoors, and had developed into the best shot on the place. He took the gun, stuffed his pockets with loads, and went outside to untie Rufus. The animal, the best bird dog on the place, was delighted. He knew at once what was ahead and took off, running with his nose to the ground, sweeping back and forth.

  “Thad! I want to go with you!”

  Pet came flying out the kitchen door and ran to join him. The whole family had come from Richmond for a two-week vacation at Belle Maison, and Pet had gone wild with relief. She had pestered Thad to death with requests to ride, to fish, to hunt—and since there was little work to do, the two had been in the woods constantly.

  “You’ve got to let me have every other shot,” she announced with a nod.

  “It’ll take too long to get enough birds!” he protested. But as usual she had her way. He knew where every covey on the plantation was located, and led her to the first one. Rufus found the place at once, and went on a point. When Thad and Pet advanced, the dog kept still as a rock, even when the covey left the earth with a miniature thunder of wings. Thad took his time and knocked two birds down with the two loads of the shotgun. “Wish this thing would shoot ten times!” he exclaimed as Rufus broke his point and went to retrieve the birds, one at a time.

  The next covey
was a quarter of a mile away. This time he let Pet load the gun, and when she knocked down two birds, she squealed with joy and ran to get them herself, which insulted Rufus. Bringing them back, held gingerly in both hands, she was not so happy, for they were bloody and looked very frail. “I love to shoot, but I hate hunting,” she moaned.

  “You don’t hate to eat what’s shot,” he remarked callously.

  They took turns until they had enough to feed everyone, then walked silently back to the house. Thin skeins of clouds were racing low on the horizon, and the smell of cold weather was in the air.

  “Know what today is?” Pet asked, breaking into Thad’s thoughts.

  “The fifteenth of November.”

  “And what day is that?”

  He looked at her, puzzled. “Why, it’s just another day to me.”

  “No, it’s not.” She stopped and he paused to face her as she smiled up at him. “It’s your birthday.”

  “Why, my birthday is next month!”

  “What day?”

  “The twenty-fourth.”

  “What a rotten day for a birthday!” she grimaced. “Too close to Christmas. You’d never get much on either day.”

  “To tell the truth, Pet, I never got much on either day,” Thad grinned. “What’s this about today being my birthday?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “It’s your birthday, Thad! You’re one year old today—because it was on this day a year ago that you first came to us.”

  He realized she was right, and shook his head in wonder. “You know, that’s true, Pet! I hadn’t really kept up with the days.” He looked at her with a smile. “I remember the first time I saw you. I was burning up with fever, and I kept seeing this vision of an angel.”

  “And it was only me?” she teased. “I’ll always remember my first look at you. You were thin as a rail and your eyes looked big as moons in your face. I don’t think you weighed much more than I did! And Dr. Wright said he didn’t think you’d live, and I remember sneaking off to my room and praying for you not to die.”