The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “Indeed,” said George, “wonderful to know the Framers’ thoughts on slavery.”

  “They saw slavery as an existing fact,” snapped Chamberlain, “and they decided that a relative wrong would be done by its immediate abolition.”

  “They were men of wisdom, then,” said Professor Edwards.

  “But,” said Chamberlain, “there’s no doubt that their intent was to limit slavery, not extend it. They hoped that in time, we would wipe the blot off the shield. The time has come.”

  Professor Edwards gave a laugh, as if emotions were running too high at his table. “Perhaps young Amory can find the annotated draft and write a theme on it.”

  “YOU REDEEMED YOURSELF,” said Cordelia as she walked George to the door.

  “Your father thinks I made it all up,” said George.

  She put a hand on his arm. “We should find it together and prove him wrong.”

  “It might just confuse people.”

  “Confuse them?” She took her hand away.

  “I’ve sat in Millbridge boardrooms and Bowdoin dining rooms, and I’ve seen how people of good faith contend over the Constitution we have. Showing them an early draft might just cause more contention.”

  “Or bring greater certainty as to the thoughts of the New Englanders who are the conscience of the nation,” she said. “We should be very great heroes if we uncovered it.”

  “A lark,” he said. “That’s all it would be.”

  She laughed. “A lark to entertain us and save the nation.”

  He kissed her hand again and stepped out into the cold dark. And he realized, as he hurried back to his chamber in Massachusetts Hall, that he had seldom been happier.

  HAPPINESS LASTED A week, until he saw Cordelia after Sunday service.

  They talked while her father stopped in the doorway to compliment the minister. And Cordelia informed George that her father had enrolled her in Mrs. Finley’s Finishing School for Young Ladies in Boston.

  George, who was seldom so direct, said, “Defy him.”

  “My father is a formidable man.” She kept smiling, for they were standing in the sunlight, in as public a place as could be found in a small college town, and all who passed offered them a glance, a nod, a smile.

  “Is he more formidable than our”—George hesitated to say love—”affection?”

  “Affection?” She looked into his eyes, her smile still in place. “I have known my father all my life, George. I have known you barely half a year.”

  This was not an answer to satisfy a romantic young man.

  “What about finding the lost Constitution together?” he asked.

  “As you said, a lark.” Seeing the anger in his expression, she added, “If our affection is strong, separation can strengthen it further. If not, we’ll know.”

  They were not the first young people to be pulled apart by a parent or two, nor the first to find other pursuits once they were.

  BY SPRING, GEORGE was thinking less of Cordelia and more of his future.

  Several of his mates were enlisting, but he was planning to enter the University of Heidelberg, there to read for a masters in philosophy. When he was informed by the Heidelberg administration that he needed a letter of recommendation from a professor, he could think of only one.

  So he found Chamberlain striding across the campus on a hot July afternoon. Two more weeks of classes remained.

  “Recommendation?” said Chamberlain. “What about a commission, instead?”

  “Commission?”

  “Lincoln is calling for three hundred thousand volunteers. I’ve been to Augusta to see Governor Washburn and offer my services.”

  “But sir,” said George, “I thought you were heading for Europe, too.”

  “Europe was there before Caesar invaded Gaul. It can wait. The future of our country cannot.”

  “But the faculty expects—”

  “I’m to be made lieutenant colonel of a new regiment, Maine’s twentieth.” Chamberlain spoke as calmly as if he were discussing new textbooks. “Ten companies, a hundred men to the company.”

  “But President Woods expects you—”

  “The petty struggles between Unitarians and Congregationalists at a New England college are nothing as compared to the struggles of the nation. The governor agrees. He thinks it would be good to have a Unitarian minister’s son among the officers. So do I. You should be able to raise a company from your father’s congregation alone.”

  “But—”

  “You say your grandfather lost a first draft of the Constitution. Here’s your chance to save the final draft.” Chamberlain went with eyes front, as if he were on a mission rather than just walking home. “You can impress that girl, too.”

  George quick-stepped to keep up. “I know nothing of soldiering, sir.”

  “Neither do I. But I’ve always been interested in military matters, and what I don’t know, I’ll learn.” Chamberlain reached the edge of the campus and stopped.

  A few horses and carts were clopping by on Maine Street. A lazy breeze made the maple leaves turn a time or two.

  Chamberlain looked across at his little house. His children were playing in the yard. His wife was stepping out the door with a tray in her hands. He watched them a moment, then fixed George with a gaze as resolute as a Maine rock. “This war must be ended, George, ended with a swift and strong hand. Every man ought to come forward.”

  Just then, Chamberlain’s wife spied them and called out, “Tea, Lawrence, tea and ginger nuts, for you and George, too.”

  And Chamberlain whispered, “Every man, no matter what he gives up.”

  And his intensity struck something in George Amory that his own father had not touched in a lifetime of Sunday sermons.

  George had always been expected to follow the family path, but he had never been challenged to find his own truth. The dutiful son might fulfill a destiny preordained in divinity school or textile mill. But a young man answering the call to do what was right might achieve something great.

  George heard lines from Arnold: “Resolve to be thyself; and know that he / Who finds himself loses his misery.” And he was taken by the belief that he, too, had been called.

  That would be better reason to go to war than a talk with Cordelia Edwards.

  SHE HAD RETURNED from Boston for the summer.

  George had left a calling card at her home, and she had responded with a note inviting him for tea but warning him that she had “met a young Harvard man in Boston” and could only promise George her “sisterly affection.”

  Though he had not seen her in more than six months and had corresponded with her only occasionally, George had been struck by a bolt of jealousy.

  The day that he called on her, Brunswick was covered in humid clouds and the kind of salt-tinged stickiness that afflicted even the most northerly New England coast in the doldrums of summer. But Cordelia seemed cool and perfectly calm. She had been taught well at her finishing school.

  She received his news with polite enthusiasm. “A second lieutenant? You’ll wear a blue coat with brass buttons and shoulder bars. How stylish.”

  “Is that what your father would say?” George could not resist a dig at the man he blamed for sending her to Boston, where she had met her “young Harvard man.”

  “Now, George, Father and I don’t agree on everything. But—”

  “I suppose my uniform will make me more fascinating the next time I’m invited to dinner.” That, he knew, sounded too petulant.

  She seemed to ignore it. “Did you ever find that lost Constitution?”

  “As you told me, a lark. Besides, I’ve been too busy.”

  “You shall be even busier saving the Constitution. You shall have my prayers.”

  He finished his tea. “Hard to imagine the South standing for long against another three hundred thousand men.”

  “And you certainly wouldn’t want to miss the excitement. This will be your chance to do something extraordinary.”r />
  Again he fell back on petulance, feeling more angry than he had a right to. “Say something fascinating. Do something extraordinary. Will any of it earn your—?”

  “Affection?” She tried to keep the hurt from her voice, but it was there. “I shall always have affection for you, no matter how far I travel with Edward Atkinson of Harvard.”

  He thought he saw a tear in her eye. It would give him hope through all the horrors ahead.

  IN PORTLAND, GEORGE’S father proclaimed himself proud, a rare occurrence. His mother put on a brave face when her son stepped into the pulpit the following Sunday and called for recruits.

  George told the congregation that he brought not only a call to arms but a call to faith as well. He did not sound especially inspiring to himself or the audience, but he promised a federal bounty of eighty-five dollars to every enlistee. This attracted a dozen young men, who came into the parish office to sign up after the services.

  First in line were the Hoyts, two gangly brothers in their twenties who preferred fighting, even with each other, to keeping shop for their uncle.

  After them came Jonathan Corley, a sullen, weather-scarred fisherman who said he was enlisting because he had nothing to do since putting a hook through his hand on his last trip to the Grand Banks.

  George looked at the bandaged hand. “Can you hold a gun?”

  “Damn clumsy haulin’ a line just now.” Corley inspected the hand as if for the first time. “Easier pullin’ a trigger, I guess.”

  George had practiced puffing out his chest in the mirror. It seemed like something a lieutenant would do. He did it and sighed. “On that basis you’d go to war?”

  “On that basis, when Lincoln calls for three hundred thousand more next year, I’ll have a year behind me.”

  George laughed. “Next year, this war will be over.”

  “Right,” said one of the Hoyts. “We’ll see to it.”

  The old fisherman—old to the rest of them at thirty-five—simply smiled, as if time spent on the rolling sea had given him knowledge that other men lacked. George looked at the leathered face, at the gaps in the teeth, and thought of a death’s head.

  Then Corley asked, “What about you, Lieutentant? You got city hands. Rich boy’s hands. What’s your basis for goin’ to war?”

  George puffed his buttons again. “As Colonel Chamberlain says, ‘I’ve always been interested in military matters, and what I don’t know, I’ll learn.’ “

  “Just so long as you don’t learn over my dead body.”

  George knew that every eye was on him and that his next words would color him for the whole regiment. He dipped his pen and held it out. “Sign your name or make your mark, if you’re man enough. But once you do, remember that you’ve had your last bit of insubordination.”

  “I’m man enough.” Jonathan Corley took the pen. “The question is, are you?”

  GEORGE BROUGHT FIFTEEN men into the regiment, and the Twentieth mustered at Camp Mason, outside Portland.

  There were shopkeeps and fishermen, loggers and boatwrights, one lawyer and two grade-school teachers. Some were down-on-their-luckers who joined because their towns added a hundred dollars to the federal bounty. Others joined because their neighbors had and they could not look like slackers. And some joined because, like Chamberlain, they believed it was time for every man to step forward and defend the Union, though men of that class grew harder to find as the war ground into a second year.

  New uniforms and three weeks of drilling did little to make them a fighting force or a pretty picture for the parade ground. They marched with sticks on their shoulders because new muskets were sent to the front. Their band could not play in tune, but it did not matter because they could not keep in step. And if they could not master a simple left-right-left, how much harder would it be to learn the commands that might save them in battle?

  “Some soldiers, eh, Lieutenant?” said Sergeant Enos Turlock.

  “Some soldiers.” George found that after a few weeks his speech was assuming the cadence of those he commanded. He had always sought to speak like a college man. But in listening to these laconic men, he had come to appreciate the impact of three words instead of four, two instead of three.

  “Glad there’s no fightin’ today, sir.”

  “Glad. Yes.”

  “Gladder ’n hell.” Turlock was no military man, but he had been a boss in the logging camps, so he had the habit of command and the presence. One look at the short legs supporting that ax-strengthened torso, or one dose of his red-faced invective, and no soldier would consider anything but obedience.

  George said, “Plenty of fighting in Virginia.”

  “Fightin’ but not much winnin’, sir.”

  “We’ll change that.”

  “Not without guns.” Turlock kept his eyes on the company scuffling past until he could take no more if it. “O’Rourke! You march like a three-legged dog. Mind your feet.”

  “Mindin’ the feet ain’t hard,” said the soldier. “It’s mindin’ where to put ’em.”

  “No back talk,” shouted Turlock.

  “No, sir.” Corley looked at them as he paraded past. “Can’t have back talk. Can’t even have guns. Just have to keep marchin’.”

  “I need to flog that Corley,” Turlock said to George. “But he’s right. We need to get some guns.”

  “Just get them ready to march.” Colonel Chamberlain came up behind them. He had shaved his side whiskers and grown a mustache that drooped down around his mouth. The mustache, the forage cap and uniform, the rank and responsibilities had given the grave Chamberlain an air of even deeper gravity.

  “Doin’ our best, Colonel,” said the sergeant. “Give ’em another week—”

  “Tomorrow,” said Chamberlain. “We march tomorrow … to the depot. Train to Boston, steamer down to the Chesapeake.”

  THREE MONTHS LATER, George Amory wondered how Americans could do this to each other.

  He shook his head to drive the thought away and held his cloak close to his body so that the sweat running down his flanks would not chill him. He could not close his eyes, for his men might notice, but if he kept them open, he could only conclude that he would be dead before dark.

  The Twentieth had stood for hours in the December sunshine, watching other divisions carry the attack. And what a glorious sight it had been … at the beginning.

  The troops marched through the town of Fredericksburg and onto the sloping plain. They went in columns of four that slithered like blue-clad serpents until they crossed a millrace in the middle of the field. Then they split right and left into brigade front—attack formation—etching a quarter-mile line across the landscape.

  From the far bank of the Rappahannock, where George and his regiment waited, the bursting of the Confederate shells in the air looked almost festive, as if the troops beneath them were part of a grand celebration. And a hundred yards behind the first brigade came a second, executing the same maneuvers, flags fluttering, muskets shouldered.

  Their objective was the road to Richmond, which ran beyond the top of the slope. But the road was protected by a stone wall, behind which waited thousands of Confederate infantry. On the steeper slopes behind the infantry was enough artillery to cover every inch of the field in exploding iron three times over.

  And yet the Federal troops climbed steadily, as if oblivious to the shell bursts tearing holes in their ranks. With each stride, with the traversing of each little bump and hillock in the field, their shouldered bayonets rose and fell like the teeth of a huge loom weaving the air with courage and folly both. Their courage, the general’s folly.

  By the time they came to within a hundred yards of the wall, enemy fire had cut their force by a quarter, but the ranks were still dressed and the colors still fluttered. They dropped down into a defile that offered a last bit of cover, then crested the last fold in the landscape, then stopped to volley.

  And a sheet of flame unfurled in their faces.

  That
was how it looked from a mile away, like a literal sheet, so tight-woven were the Confederates behind the wall—shoulder to shoulder, musket by musket, rank upon rank, like the warp and weft of a well-made fabric.

  That first brigade all but disappeared, then the next, then the one after that.

  But the generals had their plan, and another division was already going in, already forming brigade front, already etching itself, regiment by regiment, across the plain.

  For an hour, George watched … or tried not to.

  Lines from Tennyson stumbled through his head. “Theirs not to reason why….”

  Chamberlain stood with the regimental commander, Colonel Ames. Like their soldiers, they said little. But from time to time, Chamberlain pulled out a small notebook and wrote something down—a detail, perhaps, an observation, an emotion.

  George could not understand why. What was there of this worth remembering? And if their regiment went in, who among them would have consciousness for any memory when it was over? Surely St. Peter would not wish to hear this story.

  So George stood and waited and willed himself to keep his eyes open, though he feared that his men might see his tears welling at the sight of the slaughter. Then he thought he saw Chamberlain brush away a tear, and somehow it made him feel less alone.

  AFTER ANOTHER HOUR, the dead lay in clumps and bunches on the slope and in a growing heap before the wall. Whoever lived on that field seemed to be hugging the ground as if to keep from spinning off.

  Now they were calling for Griffin’s Division, Fifth Corps.

  George smoothed his Vandyke, tugged at his gauntlets, and looked over his shoulder. “Serg—” The word caught in his throat. He coughed it clear, but his voice was still strained: “Sergeant Turlock, form the company.”

  “Yes, sir,” shouted Turlock. “Company B! Fall in!”

  George gave Turlock a little nod of thanks and resolved to find his voice. And again he heard his favorite poem in his head. “Resolve to be thyself; and know that he / Who finds himself loses his misery.”

  Turlock gave George a firm salute, big enough so that every man in the company could see it and know who commanded.