The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  “We in turn were perpetually amazed at the United States’ determination to expend so much in treasure and lives to try to restore by force the allegiance the people of the South were no longer willing to give voluntarily.”

  “That’s over now, it appears, for better or for worse. If you visit me in St. Louis under flag of truce, General, be sure I shall gladly receive you.” Grant rose. “Now I hope you will excuse me. I find I haven’t the stomach for supper, not when I am forced to watch yet another state wrenched away from the Union.”

  Lee also stood, shook hands with Grant. He said, “Kentucky was not ‘wrenched’; it went of its own free will.”

  “Small consolation,” Grant said, and left the table. Instead of going upstairs to his room, he walked over to the bar and began to drink. Though he had stayed sober until the day of the election, he was still on his bar stool when Lee went upstairs, and still on it, drunk, asleep, when Lee came down for breakfast the next morning.

  “Shall I wake him?” Charles Marshall asked, eyeing Grant’s slumped form with distaste.

  “Let him be, Major,” Lee said. Marshall gave him a curious look. He almost added, There but for the grace of God go I, but at the last moment kept silent. Not for the first time, he wondered how his life would have gone after a surrender at Richmond. Not well, he suspected: who would care about the high general of the losing side?

  George McClellan should have considered that before he ran his bootless race for President, Lee thought. But then, McClellan’s timing was generally bad. His own humor quite re.: stored by that snide thought, Lee sat down to wait for a breakfast menu.

  * XII *

  The summer sun beat down on Nashville’s main square. The maples that grew along Washington and Alston streets gave some shade, but could do nothing to cut the heat or the oppressive humidity. When a buggy rattled west down Washington, it kicked up so much dust that it reminded Nate Caudell of his marching days in the army. But despite the beastly weather, a good-sized crowd had assembled in front of the Nash County courthouse.

  “What’s going on?” Caudell asked a man who looked about to melt in frock coat, vest, cravat, and stovepipe.

  “The nigger auction starts at noon,” the fellow answered.

  “Is that today?” Caudell, who could no more afford a slave than he could a private railroad coach and a locomotive to haul it, skirted the edges of the gathering and started into Raeford Liles’s general store. The front door was locked. Caudell scratched his head—but for Sunday, Liles never closed the place. Then he saw the storekeeper among the men waiting for the auction to start. Liles was serious about wanting a servant, then.

  Caudell recognized several other potential buyers, among them George Lewis; his former captain had been elected to the state legislature, and lately spent more time down in Raleigh than in Nash County. Lewis saw Caudell, too, and waved to him. Caudell waved back. He had to check himself from coming to attention and saluting.

  But the crowd held a good many strangers; too. Caudell heard the soft accents of Alabama and Mississippi, while a couple of men spoke with a Texas twang he remembered from the army. His ears also caught another accent, one that made his head whip around. Sure enough, there stood three Rivington men, talking among themselves. Despite the coming of peace, they still preferred the splotched, muddy-looking clothes they’d worn in camp and into battle. They looked more comfortable in them than most of the Southern gentlemen did in their more formal attire.

  The courthouse clock struck twelve. Men with watches took them out to check them against the clock. A minute or so later, the bells of the Baptist church announced the coming of noon. After another brief delay, the bells of the Methodist church, which was farther down Alston Street, also declared the hour. Caudell wondered which clock was right, and whether anyone of them was. It didn’t really matter, not to him; who but a railroad man like Henry Pleasants needed to know the time exact to the minute?

  Despite its announced starting time, the slave auction showed no sign of getting under way, By the way they chatted and smoked and dipped snuff, few of the would-be buyers had expected that it would. But the Rivington men began to fidget. One of them pointedly looked at his wrist—Caudell saw he wore a tiny watch there, held on with a leather strap. A few minutes later, the Rivington man looked at his wristwatch again. When nothing happened after a third such irritated glance, the man shouted, “What the bleeding hell are we waiting for?”

  His impatience set off the crowd like a percussion cap igniting the charge of a Springfield cartridge. In an instant, a dozen men were yelling for things to get moving. If he’d kept quiet, they likely would have stood around another hour without complaining.

  A man in a suit of exaggeratedly dandyish cut hurried out of the courthouse and sprang up onto the platform that had been hastily built in front of it. Pausing only to spit tobacco juice into the dust, he said, “We’ll commence shortly, gentlemen, I promise. And when you see the fine niggers Josiah A. Beard has to sell”—he preened slightly, to show one and all he was the Josiah A. Beard in question—”you’ll be glad you waited, I promise you will.” His broad, beaming face radiated candor. Caudell distrusted him on sight.

  He kept up a bright stream of talk for another few minutes. The Rivington men quickly started looking impatient again. Before they started a new round of shouts, though, a black man came out of the courthouse and up to stand beside Josiah Beard. The auctioneer said, “Here we are, gentlemen, the first on the list, a fine field hand and laborer, a Negro named Columbus, aged thirty-two years.”

  “Let’s see him,” one of the Texas men called.

  Beard turned to Columbus. “Strip off,” he said curtly. The black man pulled his coarse cotton shirt over his head, stepped out of his trousers. “Turn around,” the auctioneer told him. Columbus obeyed. Beard raised his voice, spoke to the audience: “Now you see him. Not a mark on his back, as you’ll note for yourselves. He’s tractable as well as willing. He’s a genuine cotton nigger, by God! Look at his toes, at his fingers. Look at those legs! If you have got the right soil, buy him and put your trust in Providence, my friends. He’s as good for ten bales as I am for a julep at eleven o’clock. So what am I bid for this fine buck nigger?”

  The bidding started at five hundred dollars and rose rapidly. The Texas man who’d asked to see all of Columbus ended up buying him for $1,450. Even with prices still high, that was a goodly sum, but he seemed unperturbed. “I could sell him in Houston tomorrow and make four hundred back,” he declared to anyone who cared to listen. “Niggers is still mighty dear anywheres in the trans-Mississippi.”

  Another black mounted to the stand. “Second on the list,” Beard said.” An excellent field hand and laborer, gentlemen, named Dock, a Negro aged twenty-six years.” Without waiting for a customer’s request, he added,” Strip off, Dock.”

  “Yassuh.” Dock’s Negro patois was thick as molasses. He shed his shirt and trousers, turned before he was told to do so. His back, like Columbus’s, had never known the lash, but an ugly scar seamed the inside of his left thigh, about six inches below his genitals.

  Josiah Beard once more started to extol the slave’s docility. Before he was well begun, George Lewis called, “Hold on, there! You, boy! Where did you get that bullet wound?”

  Dock’s head lifted. He looked straight at Lewis. “Got this heah outside o’ Water Proof, Louziana, las’ yeah, f’um dat Bedford Forrest. He done cotched me, but my three frens, they gits away.”

  The auctioneer did his best to pretend Dock had never been a soldier in arms against the Confederacy. Bidding was slow all the same, and petered out just past eight hundred dollars. One of the Rivington men bought the slave. He paid gold, which did a little to restore Josiah Beard’s spirits.

  As Dock came down from the platform toward him, the Rivington man told him, “You do your work and we’ll get on fine, boy. Just don’t put on airs because you used to carry a rifle. I can lick you any way you name: bare hands, axes, whips,
guns, any way at all. Any time you want to try, you tell me, but you have your grave picked out beforehand. Do you understand me?”

  “You don’t need to lick me none, masser—you gots de law wid you,” Dock said. But before he answered, he measured his new owner with his eyes, saw that the Rivington man meant exactly what he said and could back it up without the law. He nodded, more man to man than slave to master, but respectfully nonetheless.

  Caudell thought the Negro sensible to submit—if he was submitting and not shamming. If he was shamming, he’d likely regret it. Caudell had seen that the Rivington men were uncommon fighters.

  More slaves went up on the block. Some did have scarred backs. A couple of them showed the marks of bullets. One black, when questioned, said he’d belonged to the 30th Connecticut and had taken his wound at Bealeton. That made Caudell frown, for Lee had ordered captured Negroes treated like any other prisoners. Someone had seen a profit in disobeying.

  The Rivington men bought most of the slaves with bullet wounds, and got them cheap. The ones they didn’t buy, the Texans did. Caudell suspected they would try to unload their purchases on fellow westerners who were desperate for labor and who might not recognize a bullet scar when they saw one.

  “Seventeenth on the list,” Josiah Beard said presently.” A fine tanner and bricklayer, named Westly, a griffe aged twenty-four years.” Westly, who stood beside him, was slightly lighter of skin than most who had preceded him; griffes carried one part white blood to three black.

  The bidding was brisk. Raeford Liles raised his hand again and again. Caudell understood why: a slave with two such desirable skills as tanning and bricklaying would quickly be able to learn what he needed to help out at a general store, and would make Liles extra money when he rented him out around town.

  But when the griffe’s price edged toward two thousand dollars, Liles dropped out with a frustrated snarl of disgust. A Rivington man and a fellow from Alabama or Mississippi bid against each other like a couple of men holding flushes in a poker game. Finally the man from the deep South gave up. “Sold for $1,950,” Josiah Beard shouted.

  “Masser, you lets me keep some o’ my pay when you rents me, I works extra hard for you,” Westly said as his new owner came up to take him off the block.

  The Rivington man laughed at him. “Who said anything about renting you, kaffir? You are going to work for me and for nobody else.” The griffe’s face fell, but he had no choice save going with the man who had bought him.

  More field hands were sold, and then a prime bricklayer and mason, a black man named Anderson. The auctioneer beamed like the rising sun as the Negro’s price soared up and up. Again Raeford Liles bid, again he had to drop out. The fellow from the deep South who had bid on Westly ended up buying Anderson for $2,700 when the Rivington man who had been bidding against him abruptly quit. He did not look altogether happy as he went up to pay Josiah Beard. Caudell did not blame him. As someone in the crowd remarked, “Hellfire, you can buy yourself a Congressman for cheaper’n $2,700.”

  After Beard disposed of an the male slaves on his list, he sold several women, some field hands like the men, others Cooks and seamstresses. “Here’s a Negro named Louisa,” he caned as yet another wench climbed up beside him. “She’s twenty-one years old, a number-one cook, and a prime breeder. Tell the gentlemen how many little niggers you’ve already had, Louisa.”

  “I’s had fo’, suh,” she answered.

  “She’s good for many more, too,” the auctioneer declared, “and every one pure profit to her owner. And she’s a good-tempered wench, too.” He turned her around, pulled down the top of her dress to display her clear back. She fetched Josiah Beard almost as much as Anderson had, and looked smug when the Texan who had bought her led her away. Some Negroes, Caudell knew, took pride in the high prices they brought. It made more than a little sense: an owner with a large investment in his animate property was likely to treat it better.

  The slave trader looked out at his audience. A smile stole across his face. “Now, gentlemen, as the piece de resistance, I have to display for you a mulatto wench named Josephine, nineteen years old, and a fine hand with a needle.”

  Caudell caught his breath as Josephine climbed up onto the platform beside Beard. He let it out again in a sudden, sharp cough. So did most of the men who saw her. She was worth every bit of that vocal admiration, and more. She might have had a trace of Indian blood as well as white and Negro; her cheekbones, her slightly slanted eyes, and the piquant arch of her nose argued for it. Her skin, perfectly smooth, was the precise color of coffee with cream.

  “I’d like a piece o’ that, resistance or no resistance,” a man close by Caudell said hoarsely. The schoolteacher found himself nodding. The slave girl was simply stunning.

  Instead of simply showing Josephine’s back, as he had with the other wenches, the auctioneer unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the boards. She was bare under it. The coughs from the crowd doubled and doubled again. Her breasts, Caudell thought, would just fill a man’s hand; their small nipples made him think of sweet chocolate. Josiah Beard turned her around. She was as perfect from behind as from the front.

  “Put your dress back on,” the auctioneer told her. As she stooped to obey, he called out, “Now, gentlemen, what am I bid?”

  To Caudell’s surprise, the auction started slowly. After a moment, he understood: everyone knew how expensive she would be, and everyone was hesitant about risking his money. But Josephine’s price climbed steadily, past $1,500, past $2,000, past $2,500, past the $2,700 that had bought the skilled bricklayer and mason, past $3,000. Bidders dropped out one by one, with groans of regret.

  “Three thousand one hundred and fifty,” Josiah Beard said at length. “Do I hear $3,200?” He looked to the Alabama man who had stayed in the auction all the way. The man from the deep South stared hungrily at Josephine, but in the end he shook his head. The slave trader puffed out his lips in a small sigh. “Anyone else for $3,200?” No one spoke. “Thirty-one fifty once.” A pause. “Thirty-one fifty twice.” Beard clapped his hands together. “Sold for $3,150. Come forward, sir, come forward.”

  “Oh, I’m coming, never fear,” said the Rivington man who had just bought Josephine. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to show respect for someone who would pay so much for a chattel. The Rivington man reached into his knapsack, pulled out a paper-wrapped roll of gold coins, then another and another. “There’s a hundred and fifty ounces of gold,” he said, then opened yet another roll and counted out thirteen more. He passed the money to Beard, roll by roll and then coin by coin. When at last he was done, the slave trader had more than thirteen pounds of gold and a slightly sandbagged expression. Still matter-of-fact, the Rivington man said,” Along with the wench, you owe me eleven dollars.”

  “Yes, sir,” Josiah Beard said, not even questioning the calculation. He peeled the money from the fat roll of bills he had collected over the course of the afternoon. “Let me have your name, sir, if you please, for the bill of sale.”

  “I’m Piet Hardie. P-i-e-t H-a-r-d-i-e. Spell it right.”

  “Let me have it again, sir, to make sure I do.” Beard wrote, then straightened and turned to Josephine. “Go on, girl, go to him. He bought you—you’re his.”

  Moving with a grace that matched her beauty, Josephine descended from the auction block. Piet Hardie slipped an arm around her waist. She stood very straight, neither pulling away nor pressing herself against him. A collective sigh of envy went up from the crowd. The fellow from Alabama who had been the next-to-last bidder said, “Tell me, sir, what are you going to do with her now that you got her?”

  Hardie threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “What the bleeding hell do you think I’m going to do with her, sir? The same thing you’d have done if you’d bought her.”

  The Alabama man laughed, too, ruefully. Caudell happened to be watching Josephine’s face. It congealed like cooling fat. She must have hoped the Rivington man would differ from others
in more ways than his dress. Finding out so harshly that he did not could only be a cruel disappointment.

  “For a very reasonable price, gentlemen, I can supply shackles, to ensure that your animate property doesn’t become more animated than you’d care for.” Josiah Beard chortled at his own wit. Several men came up to purchase restraints.

  Caudell drifted away from the town square. For him, the slave auction had been nothing more than a way to pass part of a long Saturday afternoon. He could not even dream of owning a slave, especially in summer with his school closed. Tutoring, writing letters for illiterate townsfolk, and neatly transcribing county records gave him income sufficient to keep from starving, but not much more.

  George Lewis fell into step beside him. “How are you today, Nate?”

  “Well enough, thank you, sir.” Though captain no longer, Lewis was a big enough man in Nash County for Caudell to keep on giving him the title of respect. “I see you didn’t buy any niggers today.”

  “Didn’t plan to; I have enough for the tobacco acreage I grow—maybe even too many. More than anything else, I came to see what prices were like, in case I decide to sell a couple.”

  “Oh.” Caudell had known for a good many years now that he would never be a wealthy man. The knowledge no longer bothered him. Sometimes, as now, he derived a certain amusement from listening to the things wealthy men had to worry about. Do I have too many slaves for my land? Should I sell a few? No, that was a problem which would never trouble him.

  Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face. George Lewis clapped him on the back and said, “If you’re having trouble, Nate, you just let me know. I don’t aim to let anybody who served in my company do without so long as I can help it.”

  With stubborn pride, Caudell answered: “That’s right kind of you, but I’m doing well enough, sir.” Lewis raised a politely dubious eyebrow. “There’s plenty worse off than I am,” Caudell insisted.