The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  HORATIO SEYMOUR ELECTED PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES!

  In slightly smaller letters, a subhead proclaimed,

  Black Republicans Repudiated at Polls.

  Caudell took a deep breath. “So they turned him out, did they?”

  “Looks that way,” Liles agreed cheerfully.

  The more of the story Caudell read, the more misleading that subhead looked. He’d already known the election was very tight; with most of the results in at last, it looked close as a Minié ball cracking by one’s head. Lincoln, in fact, had taken twelve states to Seymour’s ten; McClellan won tiny, conservative Delaware and his home state of New Jersey, while Fremont prevailed only in radical Kansas. But Seymour won the states that counted: among them, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania gave him 80 of his 138 electoral votes, while Lincoln garnered 83, McClellan 10, and Fremont but 3. Out of more than four million votes cast, Seymour led Lincoln by only thirty-three thousand.

  Liles had been reading the papers, too. He remarked, “Can’t see how even the damnfool Yankees came so close to electing that stinking Republican twice. Wasn’t oncet enough for ‘em? He’d just go an’ start a war with somebody else.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Liles.” Caudell thought back to that mad morning when he’d ended up on the White House lawn. Like almost all North Carolina, he’d despised Lincoln, who’d won not a single vote in the state in 1860. But the man who came out to talk to the army that had defeated his own deserved more respect than the South had given him. “I don’t know,” Caudell repeated. “There was something about him—”

  “Bosh,” the storekeeper said positively. “Now this here Seymour, might could be he’ll keep the niggers in line, much as a Yankee can, anyways. If’n he manages that, reckon we’ll get on with him all right. Hope so, I truly do.”

  “So do I, Mr. Liles.” Caudell looked down to the newspaper again. Accounts of the Northern elections took up most of the front page. In the lower right-hand corner, though, was a story about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s continuing war against the remnants of the colored Union regiments in the Mississippi valley. Of late, they’d been reduced to guerrilla raids rather than standup battles, but Forrest had bagged a whole band near Catahoula, Louisiana, and hanged all thirty-one men. Caudell showed Raeford Liles the article. “We’re having enough trouble keeping our own niggers in line.”

  “I seen that story.” Liles took off his glasses, polished them on his apron, set them back in place. “You ask me, that’s just what niggers in arms is askin’ for, an’ I ain’t sorry to see ‘em get it. An’ if Hit-’em-Again Forrest hits ‘em a few more licks like that one there, God damn me if’n I wouldn’t be right pleased to see him President oncet Jefferson Davis steps down.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about that,” Caudell said slowly. The Confederate Presidential elections were still almost three years away. That seemed like a very long time, but really wasn’t, not when Caudell had been thinking only a few weeks before about the onset of the twentieth century. After a pause, he went on, “First man I’d care to see in Richmond, if he wants the job, is General Lee.”

  “He wouldn’t be bad either, I suppose,” Liles admitted.

  “Not bad?” To any man who had served in the Army of Northern Virginia, faint praise for Robert E. Lee was not nearly praise enough. “There’s not a man in the Confederate States who’d be better, and that’s counting Hit-’em-Again Forrest, too.”

  “Mmm…might could be you’re right, Nate. But I do hear tell he’s too soft on niggers.”

  “I don’t think so,” Caudell said. Though he’d settled back as best he could into his prewar way of life, some of the things he’d seen while on active duty refused to go away: Georgie Ballentine, running off because the Rivington men wouldn’t trust him with a rifle; the colored troops at Bealeton, holding their ground under murderous fire until flesh would stand no more… “This whole business of niggers isn’t as simple as it looks.”

  “Bosh!” Raeford Liles said. “Only thing wrong with niggers, aside from they’s lazy, is they costs too much. I was thinkin’ maybe I’d buy me a buck one o’ these days, help around this place some. But Lord Jesus, the money it takes! Now that cotton’s movin’ again, the cost of prime hands done went through the roof-planters is biddin’ against each other so as they can harvest the most crops. Poor storekeeper like me can’t stay with ‘em.”

  “Everything is dear these days.” Caudell’s smile went from sympathetic to wicked. “That goes for things in this store, too, you know.”

  “Will you listen to the whippersnapper!” Liles raised aggrieved eyes to heaven. “Do I look like a man doin’ any more’n just scrapin‘ by?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes. You want to talk about just scraping by, you try living on a schoolteacher’s salary for a while.”

  “No, thank you,” the storekeeper said at once. “My pa, he learned me to read and write and cipher back before you were born. I got nothin’ against you in particular, Nate, you know that, but that’s the way it ought to be, you ask me. I’m not nearly sure it’s the state’s business to go schoolin’ folks. It’s liable to set all sort o’ silly ideas loose.”

  “Times are more complicated than they used to be,” Caudell said, “and more ideas are running around loose than there used to be: what with the telegraph and the railroad and the steamship, it sort of has to be that way. People ought to know enough to be able to deal with them.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so.” Raeford Liles sighed. “Things were sure enough simpler when I was a boy, and that’s a fact.”

  Caudell suspected every generation ever born had said that, and also suspected that, when he was old and gray, he would look back fondly on the days before the Confederate States gained their freedom. But Raeford Liles’s lifetime had seen an uncommon amount of change, and the next years would see more. And one in four adult white men in North Carolina could not read or write. “Not everybody has a father willing to work as hard as yours, Mr. Liles. We ought to give some of the others a hand.”

  “The hand’s in my pocket, takin’ out taxes,” Liles complained. Then he brightened. “Could be worse, I reckon. If them damn Yankees had won, likely they’d try taxin’ me to school niggers.” He laughed at the very idea. So did Nate Caudell.

  * XI *

  The three Federal peace commissioners filed glumly into the Confederate Cabinet room. Lee, Judah Benjamin, and Alexander Stephens rose to greet them. Lee kept his expression sober as he sat, to avoid even the appearance of gloating.

  “The people of the North have spoken,” Benjamin observed. His voice was suave, but that served only to plant the barb more deeply.

  “Oh, go to the devil,” Edwin Stanton snarled. The Secretary of War looked tired and drained and sounded bitter.

  “I admired President Lincoln’s statement of concession,” Lee said, trying still to soften the moment. “He was wise to urge your country to unite behind the new leaders the citizens chose: ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all.’ The phrase deserves to live.”

  “Lincoln deserved to win,” Stanton retorted. “I’d sooner see Horatio Seymour making phrases for the ages.”

  “So he may,” Alexander Stephens said. “Come next March 4, he will have his chance. I wonder whom he will name as his representatives in these discussions.”

  “Perhaps no one,” William H. Seward said. The Confederate commissioners leaned forward in their chairs as the U.S. Secretary of State continued, “Perhaps we shall succeed in resolving all outstanding issues between us before President Seymour is inaugurated.”

  “Lincoln could have resolved them at any time up to this point,” Lee said. “Indeed, his dilatory approach to these negotiations has upon occasion disappointed me.”

  “It also cost him twenty-two electoral votes, as both Kentucky and Missouri favored Seymour,” Judah Benjamin added.

  “Even if they’d both gone Confederate, it wouldn’t have been enough to turn the election, worse luck,” Ben
Butler said after a quick calculation.

  “As may be.” Seward waved a hand to put an end to side issues. “President Lincoln has directed me to inform you gentlemen that he is now willing to abide by the results of elections in the two disputed states, upon the model advanced by General Lee, and suggests as the date for said elections Tuesday, June 6, 1865. He also suggests that we fix ninety million in specie as the amount of composition due the Confederate States, half of said amount to be paid before March 4, the other half within thirty days after the elections in Kentucky and Missouri.”

  “Well,” Judah P. Benjamin said. Lee glanced over at the Confederate Secretary of State with considerable respect—again, he had guessed which way events would go. “Well,” Benjamin said again, as if gathering himself. Finally he managed something more coherent: “Most constructive, gentlemen. I hope you will forgive us if we request an adjournment until tomorrow so that we may consult with President Davis.”

  “He won’t get more from us,” Stanton said gruffly. By his tightly clenched jaw, he regretted Richmond’s getting so much.

  “No, not from you, certainly.” By stopping there, Alexander Stephens let the Federal commissioners worry about just how much Horatio Seymour might surrender to the South.

  Lee broke in: “As Secretary Benjamin has said, this is a matter that requires the President’s decision. Shall we meet here again tomorrow at our usual hour?”

  The men from the United States left the Confederate Cabinet room. Their feet dragged across the carpet. To Lee, they seemed more like beaten men now than when they had first begun these negotiations: even their own countrymen had repudiated their policies.

  The Confederate commissioners went up to Jefferson Davis’s office. This time, Alexander Stephens accompanied his colleagues. Davis looked up from the papers on his desk. “Something of importance has occurred for you to be here so soon,” he said. When he saw Stephens, his eyes widened. “Something of importance has occurred for you to be here at all, sir.”

  “Something has indeed, Mr. President.” Stephens told of Seward’s concession.

  “Ninety million?” Davis plucked at the hair under his chin, as he did when thinking hard. “We have no hope of wringing more from Lincoln; of that I am sure. But from Seymour, who knows what we might get? Both border states, perhaps, without the necessity of military action or the risks of the ballot box.”

  “I think that highly likely, Mr. President,” Stephens said. “Vallandigham might as well speak our counsel straight into Seymour’s ear.” Judah Benjamin nodded.

  Davis turned to Lee, who stood in silence. “May I hear your opinion, General?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Lee paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts. “Whether or not we may hope for more from President-elect Seymour than from President Lincoln strikes me as moot. The United States have accepted a proposal we ourselves advanced. How can we honorably impose further conditions upon them now? Let us have peace, sir; let us accept the composition they offer; let the voters of the two states at issue choose under which flag they would sooner live.”

  “You feel strongly about this,” Davis said.

  “I do, sir; as the proposal involved was originally mine, I feel it touched upon my own honor as well as that of the nation.” Lee took a deep breath. “If you seek to impose further conditions upon the United States, I shall have no choice but to tender my resignation from the Army of the Confederate States of America.”

  Almost, he hoped Jefferson Davis would force him to resign. When he’d left the U.S. Army in 1861, he’d wanted nothing more than to go home and plant corn. And he had had enough of war, war on a scale beyond any he’d imagined, in the Second American Revolution to last him the rest of his life.

  Judah Benjamin essayed a chuckle. “You cannot be serious, sir.”

  “Try me,” Lee said. Benjamin’s habitual smile contracted.

  “We could squeeze the Federals for more,” Davis said. But he was talking to himself rather than to Lee; having known Lee for upwards of thirty-five years, he knew also that Lee would keep his promise. Still to himself, the President continued, “But that would make the next war inevitable, a prospect I confess I do not relish.” He looked to Benjamin and Alexander Stephens. “Does General Lee’s resolve impress you as it does me?”

  “General Lee’s resolve has always impressed me,” Stephens said.

  “Let us accept the terms offered, then, and may almighty God grant that they prove best for our country,” Davis said.

  Lee, Benjamin, and Stephens spoke together: “Amen.”

  “I have the honor to inform you that President Davis accepts in all its particulars the proposal you put forward yesterday,” Lee said when the U.S. commissioners returned to the Confederate Cabinet room the next morning.

  “In all its particulars?” Edwin Stanton stared.” As simple as that? You’re not going to try and squeeze more out of us?” Unwittingly, he used the same word as had Jefferson Davis.

  “As simple as that.” Lee repeated what he had said to the Confederate President the day before: “Let us have peace, sir.”

  “President Lincoln predicted you would say as much,” William Seward said. “To my embarrassment, I must confess I disagreed with him. Sometimes, however, one is happier to be proved wrong than right.”

  “I also find myself surprised,” Ben Butler said. Lee believed that; Butler was not the sort to settle for less than the most he could get. The politician-turned-general went on, “Even with acceptance of these terms by both sides, certain practical details remain to be settled.”

  “Ah?” Alexander Stephens made a small interrogative noise. Lee tensed in his chair. If the “practical details” Butler set forth proved impractical, peace between United States and Confederate States might yet fall through.

  Butler said, “As the United States shall have to withdraw their troops from the two states contested between us, President Lincoln requests that Confederate forces simultaneously withdraw to a distance of at least twenty miles from the northern borders of Tennessee and Arkansas, so as to ensure that you do not attempt to seize the disputed territory by a coup de main.”

  Stephens and Judah Benjamin looked to Lee. This time it did not bother him, as the issue was a military one. He said, “I see no objection, so long as the Federal withdrawal continues as agreed. If it should falter, we shall do as seems best to us.”

  Butler nodded impatiently, as if that went without saying. To him, it probably did; he always looked out for his own interest first. He went on, “The President proposes leaving behind one thousand soldiers, five hundred in each state, to serve to guarantee the fairness of the election and the count.” He held up a hand to forestall objections. “He will undertake to furnish in advance a list of their names to whomever you may designate, and will accept a like number of Southern troops in Kentucky and Missouri for the same purpose, their names to be similarly provided to our designee.”

  The three Confederate commissioners leaned close to one another, murmured among themselves. At length, Alexander Stephens said, “Subject to the concurrence of President Davis, we agree. Is there more?”

  “Yes, one thing,” Butler said. “He proposes that each side send into the disputed states a single high-ranking official to serve as election commissioner, and to be fully empowered to act for his government in all matters pertaining to the elections. Such a person, obviously, must be acceptable to both sides.” Butler smiled, displaying for a moment yellowed teeth beneath his mustache. “I gather, therefore, that I am not to be considered as the Federal representative. President Lincoln directs me to say he would raise no objections were your government to name General Lee to this position.”

  “Me?” To his annoyance, Lee’s voice broke with surprise. “Why me? I am no politician, to properly oversee an election.”

  “That may be exactly why.” Stephens sent a suspicious look toward Ben Butler. “Perhaps Mr. Lincoln has in mind machinations which a man who is more—seasone
d, shall we say?—in politics might easily note and forestall, but which, because of General Lee’s probity, he might fail to detect?”

  Ben Butler threw back his head and laughed raucously. “If I were the one choosing the election commissioners, that’s just why I’d pick someone like Lee.” Lee bristled; to select someone for the express purpose of taking advantage of his honesty would be a Butler trick through and through. The fat lawyer continued, “It is not, however, President Lincoln’s intention, as witness his suggestion for General Lee’s Federal counterpart: he advances for your consideration the name of General U. S. Grant, whose political naïveté will be no secret to you.”

  Lee knew nothing of General Grant’s politics, whether naive or otherwise; his only concern for Grant had been as a soldier. He turned to Stephens and Benjamin, whose expertise lay in matters political. “He is certainly no radical Republican,” Judah Benjamin admitted, pursing his plump lips. “He might well be a shrewd choice, in fact, for Seymour, when he takes office, would be unlikely to replace him.”

  “As an opponent, he struck me as direct and forceful,” Lee said, “nor do I know of anything in his personal life which might disqualify him.” Actually, he had heard Grant drank to excess on occasion, but that was Lincoln’s worry, not his.

  “You are, then, willing to adhere to these conditions for the vote in Kentucky and Missouri?” Seward said.

  “We shall lay them before President Davis,” Lee said; after a glance at his colleagues, he continued, “adding as our opinion that he should look upon them favorably.” He looked at Benjamin and Stephens again; they nodded. They kept looking back at him, too. He needed a moment to figure out why. When he did, he sighed and said, “If the President is of the opinion that I am the proper man to represent the Confederacy in the two disputed states, I shall of course undertake that duty.”

  “Oh, capital,” Edwin Stanton said. Butler smiled his oleaginous smile. Seward unbent enough to dip his head in approval. Butler passed to the Confederate negotiators a written-out draft of Lincoln’s proposal. However murky his thoughts, his script was flowing and clear.