Jessie

by Judy Alter

  John was weary when he came home to me—an old man before his time. The Civil War—and the Mountain Department—had been the chance on which he had pinned his hopes for the future, the crisis that would reinstate him in governmental favor. He did not need public favor—he already had that—but he was constantly defeated and turned aside by the government he chose to serve. The war was over for John long before Appomattox.

  "We have lost our personal life," I told him. "Everything about us has been consumed by this war. It is time for us to take back our own lives. Let's go to Black Point, John. We can be happy there."

  He stared at me, his eyes almost glazed with disappointment. "We can't go to Black Point," he said haltingly. "The government has taken it over for military purposes."

  "The government..." Visions of my beloved house danced before my eyes, and I felt faint. "They can't just take property that is ours."

  He spoke slowly, with great reluctance. "It wasn't exactly ours. It seems we never had clear title." Then, almost desperately, "I'm trying, Jessie. I've started a petition in the courts to have it returned, but those things move slowly." He shook his head reluctantly. But then he rose and came to me, wrapped his arms around me. "Jessie, publish that damn book. We've worried about the government long enough. Let them worry about us now."

  The Story of the Guard was published in time for Christmas in the year 1862.

  "He is weary of all the strife, and I worry about him," I wrote Starr King. "It is hard to believe that a man with such vision has been so continually thwarted by the administration, but I have hopes that he will respond by taking his interests in a different direction. Meantime, the continual failure of the northern army is bitter justification for John. We would both rather it were not so." I never told Starr that Black Point was no longer ours—I couldn't bear writing the words, and for months I carried on the pretense that we would return soon.

  Frank and Charley came to me one day after we were settled again in New York. They rarely saw their father. He rode horseback in Central Park, he took fencing lessons, and he closeted himself in his library, though even I did not know what he was doing. And if I was curious, the boys were even more so.

  "Mother," Charley said formally, as though reciting a speech he had rehearsed, "Father is home from the war for good, isn't he?"

  "Yes, dear, he is," I answered, looking from one earnest face to the other.

  "Is he a hero?" Frank asked intently.

  Suddenly I knew what this was about. They'd heard rumors about their father at school from playmates; maybe they'd even overheard careless adults—rumors that said John had failed at two commands in the war. I put an arm around each pair of thin shoulders and drew the boys to me.

  "Of course he is a hero. His name stands for freedom to many, many people, and he has been a loyal soldier—and a courageous one."

  "Didn't he lose a battle?" Charley pressed.

  "Well, he didn't defeat Stonewall Jackson, if that's what you mean. But he was the only Union officer to chase Jackson and to make him turn and run. That's quite an accomplishment."

  "What else?" Frank asked impatiently.

  "He was the first to make people realize what this war is about, boys. He had the courage to say that we're fighting to free slaves. That was very brave."

  "Did it get him in trouble?" Charley seemed to have a need for placing blame.

  "In a sense," I said. "Your father lost a lot in this war, and we must all understand that. He and I both have family and friends who are committed to the Confederate cause, and now they no longer speak to us. Your father used his private funds, and his army pay, to care for the wounded, to order supplies, to do those things the government couldn't—"

  "Or wouldn't," Charley interrupted, and I wondered just how much adult business this child was privy to.

  "We cannot know what goes on in the government," I said, "and so we can't criticize." I prayed silently that God would forgive me for telling my children something that I myself did not believe.

  "We still have our gold mine, though," Frank said confidently. "We're rich!"

  "We have it, Frank, but it's much smaller, and I don't think we should consider ourselves rich. We have..." My voice faltered. "We don't have Black Point anymore." Tears began to well up in my eyes, despite my best efforts.

  Frank began to howl, while Charley said indignantly, "Nobody can take Black Point from us. It's ours! It's our home!"

  I hugged them closer and, bowing my head, began to cry in earnest, while Frank continued to howl and Charley patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, saying, "It'll be all right, Mother. It will be."

  With that talk it came home to me how much the war had cost us—and I did not think only of friends and property and money.

  The war went from bad to worse for the North. We grew used to seeing hollow-eyed men, sometimes missing a leg or an arm, on the streets of the city. But we never grew used to the daily casualty lists, which seemed to grow longer and longer. The Union defeat at Gettysburg in 1863 seemed to demoralize many, and the cry was for peace at any cost.

  John came to me one night as I was making my toilette, preparing to retire. He startled me, for he seldom entered my bedroom those days, keeping to himself in his library until long after I had retired, and usually sleeping on a daybed in his dressing room. Now he put his hands on my shoulders, ran them gently down my arms, and bent to kiss the top of my head, burying his face in my hair as he used to do when we were younger. I said nothing but simply waited.

  At length he raised his head and spoke. "There is a movement afoot to nominate me for President again."

  The elections of 1864 were but months away, as I well knew, but I had thought John through with politics, a finality that gave me both relief and an ever-present sense of loss. Now that little glimmer of hope sparked in me again. Could the White House, would it ever really, be ours? Just as quickly reality took over, and I knew that John could not survive another campaign. "And?"

  He shook his head wearily. "I don't know. The war is a massacre. It makes no sense to use our boys as so much cannon fodder, and Lincoln can't come up with a general he trusts or a plan he'll follow for more than a week. There's no organization behind this war."

  I was thoughtful for a long time, weighing the possibilities—and the consequences. Ultimately, I did not think John was the one to run: he had been defeated too many times, and it had taken the spirit from him. The very droop of his shoulders now as he talked with me testified to that. "I think," I said slowly, "that you should step aside... as long as Lincoln is not the choice of the party."

  He stiffened a little, and I saw that some deep part of him, like that hidden spark in me, still longed for the presidency. Ah, John, I thought, let us be practical now that life has shown us so many times that we are its pawns.

  "I must think about it more." He turned to leave and then changed his mind. "Jessie, if I did go for it, would I... have your support?" He stood like a forlorn child, asking to be loved.

  I rose to go to him, my arms open. "Of course, my darling. You know that I will fight whatever battle I have to for you."

  "Ah, Jessie," he said, wrapping his arms around me. "Why am I so lucky?"

  John stayed in my room that night, and we lay close together, holding each other like two frightened children. But there was no passion between us—we were both too world-weary, a feeling that goes far beyond tired, and I was aware that we had not yet left politics and the national good behind us in favor of finding our own personal lives. I could not help the tears that ran silently down my cheeks.

  * * *

  Over the next days it came to me that a presidential campaign was not at all what I wanted. Nor in truth was the presidency appealing. More than anything I wanted back my life at Black Point.

  As though fate had been waiting for me to reach that decision, it dealt me a blow so severe that I almost gave way under it. Word came from San Francisco that Starr King had died of diphtheria complicated by
pneumonia.

  I sat in the parlor, motionless, the cursed letter dangling from my hand, my face frozen. John, coming downstairs for his midday meal, found me there.

  "Jessie?"

  I could only nod toward the letter.

  He came and took the letter, then straightened to read it, glancing at me once or twice as he read. "I'm sorry," he said softly, putting the letter back in my lap. "I know that he was very important to you."

  I nodded but could not speak.

  After a long silence, during which John stood rather awkwardly in front of me, he asked, "Jessie? Were you... in love with him?"

  I shook my head. "No," I finally managed to mutter, "but I could have been, had it not been for you." I paused. "You and I," I said slowly, "have had our ups and downs... and there are times I am desperately lonely for the companionship of a man—even the adoration. But beyond that, I know that I love you."

  "You mean, in a way, that, yes, you were in love with him, but you refused to acknowledge it... or act upon it?"

  "I guess so," I said.

  He knelt by me. "Jessie, I am always telling you how lucky I am. Now I'm telling you that I will try to live up to the loyalty you've shown me. Come, let's go to the table. The children are waiting for us."

  "You go without me," I said, and he did. Once he was gone, great, silent sobs rose in my throat. I had lost not the man who loved me but perhaps the man who understood me best and who, unlike either Father or John, treasured me for myself and not for what I did for him. With Starr King I had been Jessie—not Senator Benton's daughter or General Frémont's wife.

  * * *

  John did not run for President. "The Democrats will put up McClellan," he told me one night at dinner while Lily listened intently. These days she knew almost as much about politics as I and was almost as ardent.

  "McClellan!" I said scornfully. "His wife wears the Confederate colors!" I never could forget her outfit at the Lincoln's disastrous gala.

  "That's not the worst of it," John said dryly. "McClellan will end the war without abolishing slavery."

  "Father," Lily said righteously, "you must run. We can't let that happen."

  My heart sank. I saw no alternative, no way that would work either for us or for the country. John should not run—I was more and more convinced of that—but we could not let the country elect a "peace at any price" President like McClellan. That left Lincoln—and I could not stomach the idea of another four years of his administration.

  Lincoln was the Republican nominee. It was widely rumored that he had promised John another command—a promise made out of guilt, I thought—in turn for his withdrawal from the election. It was a question so potentially explosive that I never asked John, though in my heart I wanted to believe it was not true. Once he did say to me, "I did what I had to do for the safety of the Republican party. I could not put personal or political considerations before the supreme object of crushing the Confederacy." He looked at me earnestly. "Jessie, we must win this war."

  I could not argue that point at all.

  Montgomery Blair was dismissed from the Cabinet within days of Lincoln's renomination—the Missouri delegates to the convention had pressed for a reorganization of the Cabinet. And a pro-Blair faction, sent to the convention, was excluded by the Credentials Committee. The House of Blair had come tumbling down. Could that have been part of John's bargain with Lincoln? The thought gnawed at me, but I never asked.

  We waited in New York almost a year for the new command, which never came. John still worked in his study and still spent long hours fencing. He and Lily had taken to going for frequent horseback rides through Central Park, and I rejoiced to see them become companions. I busied myself with charities and longed for Starr King and his reassuring words. Life went on, though I had the feeling always of living in suspended animation.

  When Lincoln issued his own Emancipation Proclamation, it was a bitter blow for John, made more so by Lincoln's telling a group of his supporters that "the pioneer in any movement is not generally the best man to carry that movement to a successful issue." John was, of course, the pioneer to whom he referred.

  In April of 1865 events happened with such rapidity that none of us could absorb their impact. On the third, Richmond fell to Union troops; on the ninth Lee surrendered at Appomattox, rendering us all speechless not with joy but with relief that the long contest and misery had been ended without loss of principle. And then, on the night of the fifteenth, came the tragedy that sent the nation reeling—Lincoln was shot as he watched a play at the Ford Theater.

  "I cannot believe it," I murmured to John as we sat staring at a dying fire in his library. The word had been telegraphed to us, and we sat praying for the slim chance of survival, though we knew in our hearts that it was not to be.

  "It is harder," John said, "to have been his enemy now than his supporter. I would have defeated him a thousand ways... but never this way."

  I reached for his hand. "The worst of it," I said, "and this is self-serving, is that I believe the truth will now never be told. There are facts about your assignments... and your dismissal... that will go to the grave with Lincoln."

  "Jessie, that doesn't matter. What matters is that a man who sincerely loved his country has been cut down by a fool. Lincoln's name will be written large in history. It will stand for freedom—you mark my words."

  To myself I said, But it is your name, John, that should be written that large in history, that should stand for freedom. I felt petty for my lingering resentment of a dying President—but that did not diminish my resentment.

  * * *

  We moved to a home on the Hudson River, a vast and magnificent estate that I called Pocaho. The house was of rough gray stone and commanded a view of the Catskills in one direction and Haverstraw Bay in the other. There were woods and acres of lawns, stables and boat docks. Inside the house we put all our treasures from California and some new things—Albert Bierstadt's painting of the Golden Gate, my piano, John's vast library, and, newly acquired, the library of the recently deceased geographer Humboldt.

  John rode his Irish hunter, Don Totoi, daily, usually accompanied by Lily on her thoroughbred. The boys, when they were not at school, spent their time sailing—Charley had a yacht—and I busied myself with charities, principally getting relief supplies to children in the South, and with entertaining. Life was sort of a perpetual vacation after the intensity of the presidential campaign and the war years. I, who had for years lived by my father's prescription of the active life, involved in politics and governmental affairs and the world of men, suddenly found myself living the life my mother had dreamed of—Pocaho reminded me of Cherry Grove, but without all that southernness.

  When Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked me to support women's suffrage, I refused, telling her that I did not believe in her cause. "Women," I wrote, "get slapped when they step beyond themselves, and I am weary of being slapped." I would never again give the world a chance to call me General Jessie. And when Susan B. Anthony wrote for support, I sent a generous check and my regrets that I could do no more. When they dedicated a statue to Father in St. Louis, I was there to pull the curtain off and wish that he could know in what esteem his city held him, but I made no speech. I had retired.

  Not that John was retired. Various legal entanglements—he had judged poorly when he'd entrusted shares in Las Mariposas to associates—kept him in court far too much of the time and cost him both legal fees and, eventually, most of his shares of the mine. He was gone a lot, spending almost more time in New York City and Washington than he did at Pocaho.

  Just as the 1850s had been the years of gold in California, the 1860s were the years of railroad expansion, and John saw that his long-held dream of a railroad from one coast to the other was about to materialize. He immediately plunged into the railroad business, ultimately investing heavily in the Memphis and El Paso Railroad.

  I watched all this from a distance. John and I were like two ships on a parallel course—al
ways in sight of each other but never quite touching. His interests were railroads and money; mine were maternal.

  "Lily, you haven't been off these grounds all week, except to ride with your father. Are you not a little lonely?"

  She had grown into a substantial but—I hated to say it—plain young woman, and she did little to improve her appearance. Try as I might, I could not interest her in fashionable clothes, let alone the hairdo of the day. And she did not have the bright-chestnut hair that had once made me so proud—hers was simply plain brown.

  Now she faced me across some sewing she held in her lap. "I am perfectly content to stay at home, Mother. I prefer it. Parties and visiting and the like... they make me uncomfortable."

  "But you will never meet a young man staying here!" I exclaimed, the words unfortunately out of my mouth before I thought of their effect.

  "I do not need to meet a young man, Mother. I have no interest in it. Besides, you fill the house with people." Expressionless, she turned back to her sewing.

  I shrugged. There were always people at Pocaho, always an extra place set at the table for whoever should drop in, but they were not interesting people in the sense that my visitors at Black Point had been. I still longed for Starr King and Bret Harte but had to make do mostly with people who had too much money and too much time and knew not what to do with either. I didn't tell Lily that, if forced to honesty, I would admit I would not want her to marry any of the men who came to Pocaho those days. Instead I asked, "But don't you want to marry and have a family?" It was unthinkable to me that she did not.

  "No," she said simply, "I don't."

  "Lily," I said almost desperately, my hands twisting in my lap, "I cannot imagine life without your father. I cannot imagine going through life alone. He has been everything to me."