Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “They tell me,” General Early said as he dismounted at Clay’s temporary headquarters, “that I’m about to set forth on an undertakin’ of some magnitude, and I would feel more secure if I could have as one of my adjutants a man like you.” Before Clay could respond, Early added: “You havin’ that sizable plantation out there, I presume you know how to ride.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would you take it kindly if I were to ask General Lee to transfer you to my command?”

  “Any Virginian would be proud to ride with you, sir—I especially. I’ve some scores to settle with Butcher Grant.”

  “You’re the man I want,” the general said, and in that informal way Jubal Clay was seconded to Jubal Early. Together they set forth on one of the great adventures of the Civil War, nothing less than an attempt to swing over into the Shenandoah Valley far to the west, gallop up that natural highway, reach almost to the Pennsylvania border, capture Harper’s Ferry, and then swing sharply southeast in a mad attempt to capture Washington itself. Seven days after General Grant retreated from Cold Harbor, his tail between his legs, Clay was riding north with General Early to catch a train that would carry them to a pass through the low Virginia mountains. There they would dismount, ride through the hills and reach the Shenandoah, where large units of Confederate cavalry were waiting to start their daring dash north.

  Then came the days of glory! Following the tracks of the great Stonewall Jackson, who in 1862 had rampaged up and down this valley, confounding the Union forces sent to destroy him, Early’s troops marched into historic Winchester, capital of the Shenandoah, in majestic style one sunny afternoon when the entire population came out to cheer. In front, leading trim ranks of cavalry—“Handsome men in handsome uniforms riding handsome horses,” one country editor wrote—came General Early, astride a white horse and resplendent in a uniform famous throughout the South: huge white felt hat adorned with a long snow-white turkey feather, a white coat made of a heavy imported fabric that reached to his ankles, fine boots, highly polished, and a natty gray uniform decorated with medals.

  His foot soldiers were presentable, for although their uniforms were nondescript and some were tattered, they were clean from the washing given them by the women who followed such large troop movements, but as they marched, the people of Winchester unhappily noticed that many of the soldiers were boys not much past fifteen, and that an appalling number were barefoot.

  The armed might of the parade left such a powerful impression on the watchers that a newspaper reported: “That army could proudly march through the Pearly Gates or storm the portals of Hell,” but when the troops bivouacked at dusk, women from Winchester came bringing shoes they had taken from their menfolk.

  North of Winchester, Colonel Clay was given the job of leading a work force to dynamite and otherwise destroy the track and bridges of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a line so helpful to Northern troops moving back and forth that it was known as “Grant’s cavalry.” With cheers and poundings on the back, the Confederates watched as one bridge after another of the hated line twisted upward and fell back in ruins.

  As the men tramped over the ground that Stonewall’s men had traversed, sucking up vitality from each memorable step they took, they did more. They roared far north of Washington, captured Harper’s Ferry and swung east to do battle with the Union general, Lew Wallace, whom they defeated roundly. On July 10, a month after Cold Harbor, the two Jubals, victorious in a score of battles and skirmishes, actually invaded Washington itself. True, it had been done through the backdoor, the extreme northwest corner, but it was a foothold and Clay went to bed believing that when they marched out of the city they would be taking Abraham Lincoln with them as prisoner and that the war would be over. The vision was not extreme, for earlier that afternoon when Clay had directed his sharpshooters to knock off Union troops manning a fort near the Confederate lines, his men had focused their attention and their sights on the Union soldiers, ignoring the tall civilian who stood with them. It had been President Lincoln, come to see personally whether or not his troops could hold off this bold thrust of General Early. Clay and Lincoln had been no more than thirty yards apart.

  But the Union generals reacted too swiftly, and threw into the defense of Washington too many fresh troops for even Jubal Early to think of actually capturing the city. He had to withdraw lest he lose his cavalry and from the first encampment on the retreat, Clay wrote to his wife:

  Darling Zeph,

  We’ve had an unbroken chain of victories. You’d have been proud of me on horseback with General Early. We reached Washington and threw a fearful scare into the Union government, and then I led an excursion into Pennsylvania, where I invested the important town of Chambersburg. I warned them that they must pay indemnity for the savage manner in which they burned the homes of peaceful citizens favorable to our cause. I demanded $25,000 of them, and when they insolently refused to pay, I burned the town.

  His wife never received the letter, for when he left his command at Cold Harbor to ride with General Early, word passed among the Union solders: “Clay was responsible for those shells filled with chain and pointed stakes that wounded so many of our men.” They said also: “And who shot at us when we tried to rescue our dying men? Clay.” As they withdrew from the field where they had lost so many in so few minutes, a rage consumed them and when someone learned that Clay owned the plantation they were passing, infuriated soldiers, ignoring commands from their own officers, dashed down the line and torched it.

  Zephania and her fourteen-year-old daughter were in the house when the Union men fired through the windows. The girl ran out of the house as soon as the flames started, but her mother stubbornly refused to do so, remaining behind to gather precious bits she could not bear to lose. Disoriented, she even tried to move the piano to protect it from the spreading fire, so that when she finally did run for the door, there was no escape route and she perished.

  Her husband, now retreating from his foray into Washington and his burning of Chambersburg, had to be constantly on the move, so that no mail reached him with news from home. The cause of this haste was the arrival in the Shenandoah of a brilliant young cavalryman as commander of the Union forces. Phil Sheridan’s rise from volunteer to general had been spectacular, and his great good luck in battle was proverbial. One of his first acts in the Valley was to pin Early’s army down in Winchester, the city that had welcomed the Confederates only a few weeks before. At that time Early had been on his way north to stunning victories: now he was in retreat, seeking to preserve the life of his army and of himself.

  Sheridan proved relentless, a determined, dogged killer, and when the fierce battle ended, Early had lost 40 percent of his army; Union losses had been heavy, too, but there was this profound difference: The Northern states could provide an endless supply of new recruits; the South had been drained. And Northern troops marched in bright new shoes designed especially for military use; many of Jubal Early’s fifteen- and sixteen-year-old soldiers marched barefoot.

  Then in quick succession came a chain of crushing defeats, with Phil Sheridan outsmarting Early repeatedly. The retreat ended one night with the two Jubals eating meager uncooked rations in the deserted schoolhouse of a small village where they could not escape reviewing the bleak situation of their beloved Confederacy. The general said: “We can still win. If we can move our troops down to help Lee defend Richmond, we can exhaust Grant. He’s not much of a general, stand and punch.” And Clay, his hatred for Grant intensifying with each battle lost, cried: “Isn’t there some way we can strike at him direct?” and Early said grimly: “If we can make him come at us, as we did at Cold Harbor, we can wear him down.” Clenching his fist, he repeated: “Wear him down! Wear him down!” But each man knew that it was their armies that were being worn down, although neither would admit it.

  As they sat in near darkness, an aide delivered a batch of mail to the two officers, and when Clay sorted he found to his surprise that Zephania had no
t written, but one of the other letters from a neighbor explained why: “It is my sad duty to inform you that Union renegades burned Newfields to the ground. Zephania died in this blaze, but not your daughter, Grace, who is safe with us.”

  Dumbly he passed the letter along to the general, who read it in silence. Early had never married and believed that men fought best when not encumbered with wives. Repeatedly he refused his officers permission to leave ranks long enough to marry: “Do that when peace comes and your wife can stay with you,” but out of respect for Clay’s feelings he did not voice this opinion now.

  “I’ve lost it all,” Clay said more to himself than to Early. “My sons, my wife, my plantation.” Such shattering loss was too much: “Oh, God!” he cried, beating his forehead with both hands. “This is unfair! Where is there reason in such accumulation of sorrows?”

  It was this conviction that an unreasonable God had punished him too much and too unfairly that drove Jubal Clay into an intimate friendship with General Jubal Early when the latter was similarly abused in a crushing letter from Robert E. Lee informing him that Early’s army was being taken from him and given to a subordinate. The letter, dated 30 March 1865, when the world was falling apart, contained phrases that scalded the grizzled fighter.

  I deem a change of commanders in your department necessary.… Your reverses in the Valley have, I fear, impaired your influence, both with the people and the soldiers.… I have felt that I could not oppose what seems to be the current of opinion.… I must find a commander who would be more likely to inspire the soldiers with confidence … thanking you for the courage and devotion you have ever manifested, I am your obedient servant,

  R. E. Lee, General

  The disconsolate pair, united by their hatred for General Grant and their determination to see the Northern forces humbled, staggered toward Richmond for a final defiance. General Early, no longer displaying his white hat with its turkey feather and his long coat, received a minor appointment to which Clay also reported so as to remain close to a man he increasingly admired. Jubal Early was a fighter, a man of honor, and for him to be abused by his own government because the North had the capacity to throw hordes of fresh troops against him was unfair and scandalous.

  But Clay also clung to his general for a more personal reason. The linchpins of his life had shattered: He had lost his beloved wife, his stalwart sons, his home and now his national cause. All had vanished, except his daughter, who was adrift, and he had nothing except his honor and his determination to help Jubal Early fight somewhere, somehow. But he was relying upon a weak support, for Early was as bereft as he. But the general still retained an indestructible loyalty to the cause, for when General Lee surrendered the Confederate cause at Appomattox in April of 1865, Early and Clay refused to concede that the war was over. Rejecting the generous offer of parole that the North extended to Southern officers, they said bold and loud: “We’re still at war. We’ll never surrender to Butcher Grant,” and when they refused to take the pledge of allegiance to what they called the Northern government, they became hunted fugitives. In the garb of petty farmers they sneaked out of Virginia and, wandering the backroads and living off the charity of Southern patriots, they crept down through the Carolinas and Georgia and westward through Alabama and Mississippi and into Louisiana, where they hoped to join the army of Confederate general Kirby Smith, who was still fighting. But as they entered the state they heard the sad news: “The general, he held out as long as possible, last one in the field. But when the North threw an entire army in to catch him, he had to surrender. War’s over, but we gave ’em a good fight for it, didn’t we?” and Early grunted: “We did.”

  When the men asked: “Where you soldiers goin’ now?” Early said: “Texas. They know how to fight down there,” but the Louisiana men said: “War’s over there, too. It’s over all through the South. You’d better go home. Where is it?”

  “We got no home,” Early said. “Used to be Virginia, but it’s gone,” and the two Jubals drifted into Texas. One evening as they camped along the Brazos River a local doctor who had acquired one of the newfangled cameras asked permission to take their pictures: “You’re Confederate exiles, aren’t you?” When Early said: “I guess you could call us that,” the doctor posed them against the trunk of a Southern oak. The photograph found its way into a Texas historical society’s collection and in the 1930s when someone was looking through the photos, now brown along the edges, he cried to the librarian: “This has got to be Jubal Early! He came through here,” and there the fugitive stood: fifty years old, bearded, flowing cap gone, small one in place atop his balding head, Mexican-type cotton pants held up with a rope, cotton shirt, linen duster as a coat, and in his right hand a long white walking stick to aid him with his rheumatism. Beside him, in similar garb minus the linen duster and the little hat, stood Jubal Clay, lower jaw thrust out as if he dared General Grant to intrude. It’s the only photograph of the two Jubals during their self-enforced exile, and it had, as court papers prove, an unintended consequence.

  The doctor, proud of the fine work done by his new camera, posted the photograph on the wall of his waiting room, where it was seen by a man with a sharp eye: “Hello! They could be the fugitives that Northern officer is looking for,” and when the man from Vermont who had the job of bringing federal law into the State of Texas—a carpetbagger, if you will—saw the photograph of General Early he cried: “That’s them!” Eager to grab the reward that had been posted for the fugitives, he called upon the commanding officer of the Northern troops occupying that part of Texas and urged him to capture the Confederates.

  The two Jubals would have been taken had not a Negro working as cleaner for the soldiers heard the orders and scurried out the back to the shack in which the two men were hiding. He knew they were Confederates, and he also suspected that they had come from his home state of Virginia, so he did not wish to see them taken by Northerners: “You best be headin’ outa here, elsen they cotch you.” By the time the Federals reached the area where the photograph had been taken, the two men were on their way to the port of Galveston, where they caught a steamer that smuggled them out of the United States to the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and finally Cuba, where Early heard exciting news: “Mexico is in turmoil. Emperor Maximilian needs all the help he can get. He’d welcome a trained soldier like you, a general to boot.” Early made a snap decision: “Clay, off we go to Mexico. Sooner or later they’ll have to fight the United States again, and I want to help them when they do.” Using what skimpy funds remained from gifts sympathetic Southerners had given him, he bought a big broad-brimmed hat and had a tailor make him a copy of his famous ankle-length white coat: “I will land in Mexico as a real general.” But he was not able to persuade his partner to join him.

  “I like Mexico,” Clay said. “I see it as a country with a glowing future, but I have a daughter somewhere near Richmond, and I must care for her,” so the two Jubals parted at shipside in a Cuban port, the general heading for Mexico, the colonel back to the risk of capture in the States. Theirs had been an adventure in Southern patriotism, and they made their farewells with dignity and mutual respect.

  But General Early’s invitation to Clay that he join him in Mexico had a mesmerizing effect on the Virginian, for as he worked his way carefully north from Texas to avoid capture, he began to have visions of that silver mine in Toledo, and the lonelier he became, a fugitive hunted on all sides, the more the mine became an obsession: “A man could find refuge there.…” And: “If a man found himself without a home, he could work in a mine and build himself a life.” But he took no steps to convert that dream into reality, for Virginia called powerfully to him.

  Clay’s experiences in his defeated Southland were not pleasant. Landing at Savannah, he made his way quietly and in disguise through Georgia and the Carolinas and into Virginia, at whose threshold he bowed his head in sorrow. As one who had obviously been a soldier who had helped defend the Confederacy, no questions were asked an
d he was helped by all who met him. In time he was back at Cold Harbor, where he surveyed the battlefield on which he had once played a significant role. Then he trudged the distance to where Newfields plantation had once stood, and there in grief, which swept over him like the fever of an ague, he could see in the ruins his wife, Zephania, as she went about her duties; he could hear the boys at play; he could visualize his daughter in a pinafore, and the house slaves at their chores. All gone, a way of life never to be recovered. From that moment of utter despair, Jubal Clay became a new human being, no longer a Southern planter, no longer a Confederate colonel. Instead, at forty-three, he became a man with ties only to his daughter—and even that cord would soon be brutally cut.

  Making his way back to Richmond, he slipped undetected into his club, now fallen on hard times but still populated by his old business and military friends, who gave him a robust welcome when they discovered who he was: “Tell us about Cold Harbor and the defeat you slapped on Grant. How about General Early’s gallant campaign up the Shenandoah? What happened to Early when he went into hiding after Appomattox?” They were surprised and pleased to learn that Clay had remained loyal to Early until the general had escaped to Mexico.

  Hearing of Early’s latest action, all the members wanted to speak, for each had known some planter friend who had refused to remain in the new United States, where they were forbidden to own slaves and where their gracious way of life had been destroyed. A few had fled to Canada, but most had gone south to Mexico, which they called “a land where freedom is still respected.”

  “Did you hear that Jake Tomlin has decided to take the jump south?”

  “I can believe it. His friend Adams sent back a heartening letter. Land for almost nothing. And thousands of Indians eager to work for almost nothing.”

  “Did you know that Henry Bailey has moved his cotton handling office to Veracruz? Shipping to the same customers in Liverpool, but now it’s Mexican cotton.”