Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Oh, yes,” replied Miss Slater, nodding and offering a small, mysterious smile. She said nothing more.

  Before long they arrived in Surrattsville, but Junior told them to wait in the carriage until he had taken a look around the tavern. He soon returned, his expression grim. “Howell has been arrested,” he said in an undertone. “Federal detectives seized him at the tavern last night on suspicion of rebel activities.”

  Mary gasped, but Miss Slater merely nodded thoughtfully. “I must continue on to Richmond, and I cannot travel without an escort.”

  “Certainly not. I’ll escort you.”

  “Junior—” Mary began, but a look from her son silenced her. He returned to the tavern to make discreet inquires, and when he returned twenty minutes later, he brought with him a trusted neighbor, a staunch Confederate who had agreed to take Junior and Miss Slater to the next stop on the route and to return the rented team and carriage to Howard’s Stables on time the next day, the better to avoid raising suspicions. When Junior asked Mary if she would be willing to take the public stagecoach back to the capital after completing her business, she readily agreed, proud to do her bit without complaint, though it was a very small sacrifice compared to all that Junior, Miss Slater, and poor Mr. Howell gave to the Cause.

  Mary arrived home late that afternoon, and the next morning, as Louis was leaving for church, she asked him to stop by the National Hotel and tell Mr. Booth she needed to see him at once. Louis delivered the message, but Mr. Booth did not come by until later that day, and he was greatly displeased when she told him that Junior had escorted Miss Slater to Richmond in Mr. Howell’s place and might not return for a week or more. “I need him here,” he snapped, glowering. “We all must be in place and ready when the opportunity we have so long awaited presents itself.”

  “Miss Slater’s work is essential,” said Mary, taken aback. “My son could not simply abandon her in Surrattsville. At any rate, Mr. Lincoln is not even in Washington. I read in the papers that he and his wife and a party of companions departed yesterday for General Grant’s headquarters at City Point in Virginia. The mission cannot possibly be undertaken without him, so John will miss nothing.”

  “Lincoln may return at any time, and your son may miss everything.”

  “I’m truly very sorry, Mr. Booth,” she said, bristling, “but there was nothing to be done. Miss Slater required an escort, and there was no one else.”

  Mr. Booth nodded, but he was obviously not appeased. “Tell him to come see me the moment he returns.”

  Mary agreed, and as Mr. Booth strode out the front door, she turned away with a sigh to discover Louis watching her silently from the top of the stairs. “Goodness,” she said, pressing a hand to her heart, wondering how much he had overheard. “You startled me.”

  He studied her for a moment, expressionless. “My apologies, Mrs. Surratt.” Inclining his head politely, he withdrew to his room.

  Unsettled, Mary felt a sudden wave of relief that Junior had contrived evidence against Louis, just in case.

  She prayed they would never need to use it.

  • • •

  On the last day of March, a knock sounded upon the front door, and Mary answered to discover two police detectives on the landing.

  “Are you the proprietress of this boardinghouse?” the first asked.

  “I am,” she said, offering him a polite nod.

  “And you are the mother of John Hamilton Surratt?”

  “I am that too.”

  “May we speak with your son, madam?” the second asked gruffly.

  “I’m sorry, but he isn’t home.”

  “Where is he?” asked the first.

  “He’s off supervising the spring planting at our farm in Maryland.”

  “When will he return?”

  “Soon, I hope.” She sighed forlornly. “His sister and I do miss him terribly while he’s away.”

  “Mrs. Surratt,” the second detective said, his voice sharp with exasperation and annoyance, “you can desist with the sighs and sad looks. We know about your son’s previous arrest, and we know he’s fallen back into his rebel ways.”

  “How could you possibly know something that isn’t true?”

  “So you mean to say that if we rode out to your family farm in Surrattsville, right now, we would find John Surratt there, toiling in the fields?”

  “Whether you could find him, I couldn’t possibly know, but he is there.”

  Frowning, the first detective handed her his card. “Tell your son to call on me as soon as he returns.”

  Heart pounding, Mary took the card. The detectives exchanged significant glances when they observed how her hand trembled.

  • • •

  Neither Junior nor Mr. Lincoln had returned to Washington City by the afternoon of April 3, when Mary, Anna, and several other ladies of the household, sewing and chatting in the sunny formal sitting room, had their conversation drowned out by the cacophony of passing artillery. They paused, shook their heads, and sighed in amusement or exasperation as they waited for the noise to fade. They had grown accustomed to such disruptions, for the Yankees seized any opportunity to loudly celebrate a victory, no matter how insignificant. When the sound did not diminish, but instead swelled with the addition of whistles and shouts and cheers, the ladies exchanged looks of bewilderment, and Anna and Nora darted to the window.

  “What’s going on out there?” asked Mary, suddenly afraid to see for herself. The celebration signified dreadful news for the Confederacy, but how bad, she dared not guess.

  After one long look Anna turned away from the window, stricken, but Nora leaned forward eagerly, bracing her arms on the sill. “The artillery is a salute to celebrate a new military victory, I assume, but as for the shouts and whistles—” Nora’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open as she took in the scene. “Oh, my. People are rushing from their houses and shops and are filling the streets, and they’re tossing their hats in the air and waving handkerchiefs and—oh my goodness, they’re embracing and kissing and crying for joy!”

  Anna inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders before returning to the window. “Excuse me, sir,” she called to someone on the sidewalk below. “What’s going on? What’s the news?”

  “Petersburg and Richmond have fallen,” a man shouted in reply, his voice nearly lost in the din. “General Grant’s army has taken the Confederate capital!”

  Nora shrieked with delight and flung her arms around Anna, who stood frozen in her embrace, pale and wide-eyed. “Praise be to God,” said Eliza, setting her sewing aside and hurrying to the window. The other ladies quickly joined them, laughing and crying and embracing, all save Mary, who sat silent and still in her chair, though inside, unseen, she moaned in anguish and tore her hair.

  Richmond had fallen. The Yankees had taken the city. And Junior— Mary could scarcely breathe. Junior must have been taken too.

  “Come on,” Nora cried, releasing Anna, tears streaming down her face, her expression rapturous as she beckoned the ladies to follow her outside. “We can’t stay indoors at such a time. Come along!”

  Delirious with joy, the ladies did not notice that two of their number stayed behind as they hurried off to join the celebration. When the door slammed shut behind them, the reverberations jolted Anna from her paralysis. With a heart-wrenching sob, she ran to Mary, sank down beside her chair, and buried her face in her arms upon her mother’s lap.

  Later, all Mary remembered of that long, dreadful, disquieting afternoon was the harshness of the light, the grating quality of the music, the jittery chattering of fireworks, the bone-shaking thunder of distant cannon. Elsewhere, she knew, down the street or around the corner, other Washington households had plunged into mourning too, but they could not seek out one another for comfort, not that day, when to grieve was to commit treason. Mary sought comfort in her rosary and t
ried to resign herself to God’s will, although she was too heartsick and bewildered to make any sense of it.

  It was nearly twilight before the ladies and some of the gentlemen—James Holohan and Louis, their resident Unionists—returned for the dinner Mary and Anna had kept warm for them. “You should’ve joined us in celebration rather than staying behind to cook for us,” protested Eliza.

  Mary could not bring herself to lie and say she was sorry to have missed the revelry. “Isn’t a good, hot meal more suitable for a celebration?” she said, keeping her voice steady.

  Unwittingly hurtful, the ladies described the jubilant celebration Mary and Anna had missed—how they had linked arms as they had joined the impromptu parade of citizens filling the streets of the Union capital, how their hearts had overflowed with joy to see their happiness reflected in the faces of the people they passed, clerks and shopkeepers and housemaids and waiters whose businesses had declared a holiday so that all might join in the rejoicing. Residents had draped patriotic banners and bunting from their windows, and bands had gathered on street corners and parks to play spirited marches and merry jigs.

  Crowds had massed outside the homes and offices of illustrious men of government and had demanded they appear and make speeches. Secretary of War Stanton was one of those who consented, and according to Eliza and Nora, in his remarks he had thanked God, President Lincoln, and all the generals and all their troops. He had asked Providence to teach them to be humble in the midst of triumph, virtuous in their hour of victory, and to help the Union secure the foundation of their country, blood-soaked though it had become, so that the nation would endure forever.

  When Vice President Andrew Johnson had emerged from the War Department to address the people, however, he had adopted a far less conciliatory tone. The high cost of the war in lives and treasure demanded vengeance against those who had started it, he had said grimly, and as for those Southern firebrand instigators, “I would arrest them, I would try them, I would convict them, I would hang them.” He would grant mercy to the masses, he had added, but wanted “halters for the leaders.” He had spoken with grave sincerity and sobriety, Nora said, not shouting, not angry, but deadly serious.

  It was Secretary Stanton who had ordered the eight-hundred-gun salute that had shaken the city, three hundred booms for the fall of Petersburg, five hundred for Richmond.

  “Yes,” murmured Mary. “We heard them.”

  They had heard, but had not understood the significance, and it tore Mary’s heart to know.

  After supper, as night descended on the victorious capital, Mary remained below, saying the rosary and praying for Junior, fighting back tears. Depleted of prayers, she found herself drawn to the window, and gazing outside, she glimpsed in the flickering gaslight bands of young men merry and boisterous with drink, their arms flung over one another’s shoulders as they staggered along, singing and proclaiming the glory of President Lincoln, General Grant, and the Union Army.

  One solitary figure caught her eye as it trudged across the street, moving to the left and then to the right to avoid the passing clusters of drunken revelers, but always, it seemed, on a course toward the boardinghouse. The stride was familiar but the young man wore his hat pulled down low and it was too dark to distinguish his features or his clothing—but then he was at the doorstep and crossing the threshold and then he was there, standing in her kitchen, his disgruntled frown giving way to astonishment as she flung her arms around him and cried out his name and wept upon his shoulder.

  “Ma?” Junior said, wrapping his arms around her. “What the devil is going on?”

  “You’re alive,” she choked out. “Praise God, you’re alive and safe and home again!”

  “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” He patted her on the back, alarmed. “Ma, please, calm yourself. What’s the matter? Have there been riots in the city?”

  She laughed shakily, a shrill note of madness in the sound. “Only of the most cruelly joyful kind.”

  “What is it, then? What’s Grant gone and done now? I assume all this fuss is for some little hill he’s taken or stream forded, anything to hearten the ignorant masses.”

  She pulled back and studied his face, his dear, beloved face. “You don’t know? Richmond has fallen.”

  He stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Junior,” she said, “did you hear me? Richmond has fallen. General Grant has taken the city.”

  “But that’s impossible. I was just there. I left not two days ago. The city was holding fast.”

  “I tell you, it’s true. That’s the reason for this merciless, unrelenting celebration.” The tears she had struggled to hold back throughout that long, terrible day began to slip down her cheeks. “You must know what this means. The Confederate government is either captured or in flight. It is only a matter of time before the remnants are swept up and forced to concede defeat, and the war will end, in failure and in degradation!”

  “No.” Junior set his jaw and turned away. “No.”

  “Junior,” she cried as he took the stairs two at a time. She hurried after him, up to the third-floor bedroom he shared with Louis, and burst in to find her son standing in the middle of the room, chest heaving, confronting his friend, who looked up at him in astonishment and alarm from his seat on the bed.

  “It can’t be true,” Junior was saying. “It can’t be.”

  “But it is, John,” Louis replied, earnest. “I was at the War Department earlier today and I know this is no mere rumor. Richmond has been taken. Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet evacuated the city this morning by train and the defending troops retreated. The rebels set fire to tobacco warehouses, stores of liquor, and railroad bridges as they fled, and a significant portion of the city is engulfed in flames.”

  “But I’ve just come from Richmond and the government was still seated,” Junior shot back, shaking with anger. “I saw Jeff Davis and Judah Benjamin and they said Richmond would never be surrendered!”

  Utterly bewildered, Louis fumbled for a reply, but Mary leapt forward and seized her son by the arm. “No, Junior,” she murmured. “Silence. Calm yourself.”

  He turned to her with a jerk, a wild light in his eyes, but she discerned no recognition there. Then, swiftly, he grew calm. He staggered backward, and it was all Mary could do to keep him on his feet. “He’s had too much to drink,” she said to Louis, who stared at them both, dumbfounded. “He’s gone quite mad from it—his father always did—but it will pass. He won’t remember a word of this in the morning and you must try to forget it too, or he couldn’t bear the shame.”

  Louis nodded. At that moment Anna came racing up the stairs, and with her help Mary was able to stagger downstairs with Junior and put him into her own bed.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said, his voice strangely flat. “Richmond, fallen. It can’t be.”

  “It is,” Mary said shortly, struggling to remove his boots. “Now, you aren’t really drunk, just upset, but no more than I or your sister. Compose yourself and let’s figure out what to do.”

  Junior needed but a few moments to collect his scattered thoughts, steel himself, and sit up on the edge of the bed. Anna hurried off to make tea, and by the time she returned with the tray, Mary and Junior had agreed that they need not abandon all hope quite yet. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were in flight, but perhaps they intended to retreat into the Deep South or Texas and reorganize the government out of reach of the Yankee armies. General Lee still controlled his forces in Virginia, as General Johnston did in North Carolina. If those valiant men had not yet given up the fight, neither should the Surratts.

  It was certain, however, that Junior could not remain in Washington, for the two detectives would surely come looking for him again. While in Richmond, Junior had received a new assignment that obliged him to travel to Montreal, carrying dispatches to General Edwin G. Lee and escorting Miss Slater, who
had traveled with him to Washington on the Leonardtown stage and had taken a room at the Metropolitan Hotel. The fall of Richmond made carrying out their orders all the more urgent.

  After a brief, intense debate, Mary and Junior agreed that he should take no chances but should leave the boardinghouse and check into the Metropolitan Hotel for the night. In the morning, he and Miss Slater would depart on the first train to New York, and from there arrange transport to Montreal.

  Mary grieved to part from her son again so soon, but she knew it was for the best. Surely it would be a relief in the days to come to know that he was safely out of Yankee reach in Canada.

  • • •

  One day of wretched news followed another. Mary could hardly endure her lodgers’ cheerful amazement when reports came to Washington that President Lincoln had entered Richmond early on the morning of April 4, while flames of the fires the fleeing Confederates had set to destroy precious stores of cotton, tobacco, and liquor still flickered among the ruins. A group of colored workmen had recognized the president from a distance as he approached and—according to the fawning Yankee reporter—they had shouted, “Glory, hallelujah,” and had fallen to their knees to kiss his feet.

  “Please don’t kneel to me,” an embarrassed President Lincoln had urged them, or so the stories told. “You must kneel only to God and thank Him for your freedom.”

  Escorted through the streets by a squadron of Yankee cavalry, Mr. Lincoln had continued on to the Confederate Executive Mansion, where he had explored the offices strewn with documents and records and had sat at Jefferson Davis’s desk, taking a glass of water as refreshment while his officers shared a bottle of whiskey they had found in the cellar. Later he had gone on a carriage tour to see “what was left of Richmond,” and rode out to Broad Street to visit an encampment of colored soldiers, and from thence to inspect the abandoned and ransacked Capitol Building. Gazing up at the statue of the revered Virginian George Washington in Capitol Square, Mr. Lincoln was said to have remarked, “Washington is looking at me and pointing to Jeff Davis.”