"What a bully show!" Roosevelt exclaimed. "Enemies they may be, but they are splendid men." He raised his Winchester to his shoulder and tried at very long range to pot some of those splendid men.
Unlike the luckless lancers, the British infantry fired as they advanced; their breechloaders made reloading on the move, which had been next to impossible during the War of Secession, quick and easy. A cloud of smoke rose above them, thicker and thicker with every forward stride they took.
Smoke rose from the trenches where the bluecoats crouched, too. Englishmen began falling. Their comrades filled their places. No doubt Americans were falling, too, but Roosevelt couldn't sec that. What he could see was the red British wave flowing forward, steady and resistless as the tide. The redcoats drew within four hundred yards of the frontmost entrenchment, within three hundred . . .
"They're going to break in!" Roosevelt cried in bitter pain.
And then, through the din of the rifles, he heard a sound like none he'd ever known before, a fierce, explosive snarl that might have been a giant clearing his throat, and clearing it, and clearing it. ... Amazing puffs of smoke blossomed in the center of the U.S. front line. "The Gatlings!" Karl Jobst yelled, somewhere between astonishment and ecstasy.
Roosevelt had no words, only awe. In what seemed the twinkling of an eye and was perhaps two or three minutes of actual time, those steadfast British lines abruptly ceased to exist, in much the same way as a slab of ice will rot when hot water pours over it. For the first half of that time, the infantry kept trying to go forward in the face of fire unlike anything they'd ever met or imagined. They dropped and dropped and dropped. Not one of them got within a hundred yards of the trench. After that, the foot soldiers, those of them still on their feet, realized the thing could not be done. They also realized they were dead men if they didn't get out of range of the terrible stream of bullets pouring from the Gatling guns.
It was not a retreat. Custer had led a retreat. It was a rout, a panic-stricken flight, a stampede. The British, surely, were as steady in the face of familiar danger as any men ever born. In the face of the snarling unknown, they broke. Some of them—Roosevelt took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes to be sure he was seeing straight— threw away their rifles to run the faster.
He spent only a little while luxuriating in amazement. Then he started thinking like a soldier again. "After them!" he shouted. "After them, by jingo! They thought they'd run over us like a train, did they? Well, they've just been train-wrecked, boys. Now we haul away the rubbish."
Now his men, cheering as if their throats would burst, pressed hard upon the fleeing foe. The British horse, which had been screening an advance, suddenly had to try to screen a broken army falling back. The enemy's field guns fired a few rounds of canister before the men of the Unauthorized Regiment, coming at them from three directions at once, overran them and killed their crews.
"Captured guns," Lieutenant Jobst said cheerfully. "That's the true measure of victory. Has been as long as cannons have gone to war."
"After them!" Roosevelt shouted. "We don't want to let even a single one get away. No, maybe one, to tell his pals up in Canada what it means to invade the United States." He fired at an English cavalryman and knocked him out of the saddle. "Easy as shooting prong-horns!" he exulted.
North over the prairie went the pursuit, as it had gone south the day before. The troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment took rifles away from slightly wounded or exhausted Englishmen they passed and rode on after the main body. Roosevelt didn't think he had enough men to beat them, but they were so shaken he intended to try if he got the chance. They might all throw down their guns and give up at a show of force.
And then, from behind, he heard not one but several buglers blowing Halt. His men looked at one another in surprise, but most, obedient to the training he'd drilled into them, reined in. "No!" he raged. "God damn it, no! I didn't order that! I'll kill the idiot who ordered that. We've got 'em licked to a faretheewell."
"Halt!" a great voice shouted: George Custer, who must have almost killed his horse catching up to Roosevelt's men. To Roosevelt's amazement, tears streaked Custer's cheeks, not just tears of grief but tears of fury. To his further amazement, Custer reeked of whiskey from twenty feet away. "Halt, damn it to fucking hell!" he shouted again.
"What's wrong, sir?" Roosevelt demanded.
"Wrong? I'll show you what's wrong!" Custer waved a sheet of paper. "What's wrong is, a cease-fire with the English sons of bitches went into effect yesterday, only we didn't know it. We just licked the boots off the shitty limeys, we just got my brother killed, in a battle we never should have fought, and now we have to let what's left of the bastards go home. I haven't had a drink of liquor, save for medicinal purposes, in almost twenty years—not since before I married Libbie. Do you wonder, Roosevelt, do you wonder that I got myself lit up riding after you?"
"No, sir," Roosevelt said, and then, "Hell, no, sir." After a moment, he added, "Is anything left in your bottle, sir?"
"Not a drop," Custer answered. "Not a single fucking drop." "Too bad," Roosevelt said. "In that case, I'll just have to find my own."
****
Frederick Douglass got off the train in Rochester. His wife and son were the only black faces on the platform. Anna Douglass burst into tears when she saw him. Lewis folded him into a hard, muscular embrace. "Good to have you home, Father," he said. "Let me take your bag there."
"Thank you, my boy," Douglass said. "Believe you me, it is very, very good to be home again." He gave Anna a gentle kiss, then stood up tall and straight before her. "As you see, my dear, I have come through all of it unscathed."
"Don't sound so proud of yourself," she said sharply. "I reckon that was the Lord's doin', a whole lot more'n it was yours."
He looked down at the planks of the platform floor. "Since I cannot possibly argue with you, I shall not even try. The Lord took me through the valley of the shadow of death, but He chose to let me walk out the other side safe. For that, I can only praise His name."
Anna nodded, satisfied. Lewis Douglass asked the question his father had known he would ask: "What was it like, sir, coming up before Stonewall Jackson?" A frown twisted his strong features; he laughed ruefully. "If working with you on the newspaper hasn't yet taught me the futility of asking what something is like and then expecting to feel the answer as did the man who had the experience, I don't suppose it ever will."
"If it hasn't yet taught me that futility, why should it have done so with you?" Douglass returned. "What was it like? It was frightening." He held up a hand before his son or wife could speak. "Not in the way you think, either. It was frightening because I found myself in the presence of a man both formidable and, I judge, good, but one who believes deep in his heart in things utterly antithetical to those in which I believe, and who reasons with unfailing logic from his false premises." He shivered. "It was, in every sense of the word, alarming."
They all walked out toward the carriage, Anna on Frederick's arm. As Lewis put the last suitcase behind the seat, he remarked, "You have said before that it is possible for a slaveholder to be a good man."
"Yes." Douglass helped his wife up, then climbed aboard himself and sat beside her. "It is possible," he went on as Lewis took the reins. "It is possible, but it is not easy. Jackson . . . surprised me."
"1 reckon you surprised him, too." Anna patted her husband's arm.
"I hope I did. I rather think I did," Douglass said. "And I have what may be great news: in Chicago, I heard that the Confederates are—no, may be—planning to manumit their bondsmen once the war, now suspended, is truly ended, this being a quid pro quo in return for their allies' assistance against the United States."
"Wonderful news, if true," Lewis said. "We've heard the like now and again down through the years, though, and nothing ever came of it. Who told you this time, Father? Lincoln?"
"No, John Hay," Douglass answered. "Since he was minister to the Confederate States, he should
know whereof he speaks. Lincoln had other concerns." He let out a bitter sigh. "Lincoln has had other concerns than the Negro before, which I say though he is and has always been my friend. In the summer of 1862, he drafted a proclamation emancipating all slaves within the territory of the Confederate States, then waited for a U.S. victory to issue it, lest it be seen as a measure of desperation rather than one of policy. The victory never came, and, when our straits indeed grew desperate, he let that paper languish, having been convinced it was by then too late to do any good. I shall go to my grave convinced he was mistaken."
"Of course he was, Father," Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. "In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard."
"The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons," Douglass answered. "Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you'll remember, the fight to emancipate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough."
"That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too," Lewis said, "but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy."
Frederick Douglass let out a hoarse whoop of laughter. "You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army's worth—no, a nation's worth—of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them."
"And that's a right good thing, too," Anna Douglass said, "on account of the only thing we would do with 'cm is shoot our own selves in the leg."
Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. "Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We arc under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us. We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack."
"We have now twice gone unprepared to war," Douglass said. "May God grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it."
When the carriage reached the street on which Douglass lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he'd shown before Douglass left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.
Seeing Douglass, he whizzed close to the carriage. "Welcome back!" he shouted. "Welcome home!"
"Thank you, son," Douglass answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Douglass wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: "Thank you." To Daniel, he wasn't a Negro, or, at least, wasn't first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Douglass, that was as it should be.
Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Douglass and Anna had lived so long. "Here we are, Father." He grinned and tipped his cap. "Cab fare, fifty cents."
Douglass gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, "It's the best ride I've had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too."
"All right, since you put it that way." Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. "Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn't so steady as I wish it were."
"See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?" Frederick Douglass kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, "My dear, how are you?"
"As the good Lord meant me to be," she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, "Pretty soon I'll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world."
"Good," Douglass said. "I'm sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him."
Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Douglass stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food—all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.
"Are you glad to be back?" Anna asked slyly.
"Oh, maybe just a bit," he answered. They laughed again.
Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. "I've put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That's settled for you." He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem solved, he moved on to a greater one: "Where do we go from here?"
"How do you mean that?" Frederick Douglass asked. "I myself am going upstairs before long, to find out if I still remember what sleeping in my own bed feels like. If, however you mean Where does the colored man go from here? or Where do the United States go from here?—well, those questions require a little more thought. Only a little, you understand."
"I had suspected they might." Lewis chuckled without much mirth. "Any quick answers, before I see to the horses and the carriage?"
"You let your father rest," Anna said with a touch of asperity. "He hasn't had hisself an easy time of it."
Nothing could have been better calculated to make Douglass say, "I will answer—a horseback guess, before Lewis goes back to the horses. As I said before, the lot of the colored man in the Confederate States may improve, though to what degree I cannot now guess. The lot of the colored man in our own country? I see no great change on the horizon, though I wish I did. We shall have to go on working state by state for laws asserting our rights, for the national government, having finally broken our chains, can go no further without another Constitutional amendment, and you know as well as I how likely that is."
"Un-," Lewis said wryly. "All right, that's not a bad summation for us. Can you do as well for the country?"
"No one can guess where the country goes from here," Douglass said, shaking his massive head. "We shall have to see what the full effect upon us is of this defeat. Lincoln believes the white labourer will be pressed down until he is no better off than the Negro—but Lincoln, being white, cannot fully grasp all the vicissitudes of being black. Ben Butler, if I understand him rightly, feels the national government needs to organize us down to our shoelaces, to make certain we are never again caught short by our enemies. Whether the national government can do that, whether it will do that, whether it should do that—if I could read a crystal ball, I would wear a turban on my head, not a derby."
"What does President Blaine think?" Lewis asked. "Did you get any hint of that in Chicago?"
"No," Douglass answered. "Surprisingly little was said of him at that meeting. Perhaps that was because he is sure to fail of reelection when his term is up, perhaps because he has not clearly shown he has any thoughts to speak of past unwavering hostility toward the Confederate States, and he has bought only disrepute on that policy."
"More Democrats," Lewis said with a sigh.
"More Democrats," Frederick Douglass agreed, as mournfully.
Anna said, "You was right the first time, Frederick. Now go on upstairs and get yourself some rest. You can do that your own self, and do it this here minute. The rest of it'll still be here when you get up."
"She's right, Father," Lewis said.
"She generally is," Douglass answered. He headed for the stairway.
****
Under flag of truce, General Thomas Jackson approached the line where his men had halted the Army of Ohio's push into Louisville.
His guards looked jumpy, even though no guns had barked
for several days. "Do you really trust the damnyankees, sir?" one of them asked.
"They fought honorably," Jackson answered. "If I was not afraid to come up here while the fighting raged, why should I fear doing so with the cease-fire in place?"
"I don't like it," the guard said, stubborn still. His eyes flicked now here, now there. "Lordy, they made a hell of a mess out of this here place, didn't they?" He paused a moment in thought. " 'Course, we helped, I reckon."
A call came from within the U.S. lines: "That you, General Jackson?"
"Yes, it is I," Jackson replied. To his ear, the U.S. accent was sharp and harsh and unpleasant.
"Come ahead, General," the Yankee said. "General Willcox is here waiting for you."
"Come I shall," Jackson said. He picked his way over broken bricks and charred boards. Here in the center of Louisville, nothing but rubble remained. The only walls to be seen were those U.S. and C.S. soldiers had erected from bits of that rubble. None of the graceful architecture that had made Louisville such a pleasant place before the war survived.
And President Longstreet, Jackson thought, is willing to let the United States off without a half-dime's indemnity. His mouth tightened. Christian charity was all very well, but what point to charity toward those who deserved it not?
A couple of men in blue uniforms showed themselves. They stood up a little warily; for a long time, showing any part of your body was an invitation to a sharpshooter to drive a hole through it. One of them said, "If you'd been here a few days ago, Stonewall—"
"No doubt my men would say the same to you, young fellow," Jackson answered. He wasn't so severe as he might have been; that was soldier's banter from the Yankee, not out-and-out hatred.
A trim young captain in tunic and trousers far too clean and neat for him to have served at the front line came up out of a trench and nodded. "I'm Oliver Richardson, General Jackson—General Willcox's adjutant. If you'll be so good as to come with me, sir . . ."
When Jackson saw Willcox, he stabbed out a forefinger at him. "I remember you, sir!" he exclaimed. "Unless I'm much mistaken, you were in the West Point class of the year following mine—class of '47, are you not?"
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