On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  Dirty, bloodied, many without their weapons, they dragged along by twos and threes, their units broken and scattered. Some of them pushed their way into President’s Park and lay down to rest under the dripping trees. Though Margaret rejoiced in the Confederate victory, the aftermath wasn’t pretty. You might celebrate a wartime triumph, but how could you celebrate the death and injury that went with it?

  She trudged home at half past seven, tumbled into bed, and woke before noon. Returning to the Avenue, she heard angry men and women blaming Scott and McDowell for the defeat, or the West Point officer clique, or the three-month militiamen who ran. She walked to the Long Bridge and watched a dozen Confederate prisoners march into the city under guard. Women and children flung stones, spat on them. “Kill the traitors!”

  “Where are they going?” Margaret asked a corporal marching with the captured rebels.

  “Prison. The Old Capitol.” The soldier looked as frightened as the prisoners. The screaming was incessant.

  “Hang them!”

  “Shoot them down!”

  Then came the ambulances, twenty of them, forty, fifty, in a long, slow procession. Crude two-wheeled affairs with canvas side curtains, they rocked back and forth, jolting in and out of potholes. Every bump and lurch made the unseen wounded cry out. The chorus of pain finally drove Margaret back to her town house. In her dreams that night the ambulances rolled on, stretching for miles to the horizon. She woke dry-throated, the images fading, but not the awful screaming.

  18

  July 1861

  Lon rode the B&O in a downpour, unable to sleep. Finally, on the other side of the streaked glass, white Army tents appeared along the right-of-way. From the end of the car the conductor announced, “Beverly, Ohio. The stop is Beverly.”

  Lon climbed down to the depot platform. Even in the middle of the night the little village on the Columbus–Parkersburg line blazed with lights. Three days ago, less than twenty-four hours after the disaster at Bull Run, the secretary of war had telegraphed General McClellan, summoning him to Washington to command the Department of the Potomac in place of the disgraced McDowell. McClellan’s star was high after his successes at Grafton, Philippi, Rich Mountain, Corrick’s Ford. The roads and rivers and railways of western Virginia were safely in Union hands, a base from which the eastern part of the state could be attacked.

  The rainy air helped revive Lon. He slogged through the mud, asked questions, dodged the charging horses of Army couriers. In a complex of wedge tents, he found a disheveled officer to whom he’d been directed.

  “Lieutenant Jeter? I’m supposed to see the general.”

  “General’s got no time for civilians. He’s due out of Wheeling in the morning. A special train’s taking him to Washington, you know.” He said that as though Lon were some backwoods idiot.

  Testy, Lon said, “I know all about it. The general sent for me. Take a look.” He handed his note to the lieutenant.

  “Major Allen of Cincinnati? Never heard of him.”

  “The general knows him. Damn it, I’m telling you he sent for me.”

  With a look that called him a liar, the lieutenant left the tent. Rain dripped on the canvas. From the pocket of his bedraggled coat Lon pulled a bottle of vegetable tonic and a chunk of hard biscuit, the remains of last night’s meal. Shortly the lieutenant returned, looking cross.

  “Hanged if you aren’t right. He’ll give you ten minutes. Follow me.”

  Major General McClellan had a large wall tent to himself. He stood up behind a field desk papered with memoranda, reports, yellow telegraph flimsies. An ambrotype on a small easel dominated the clutter—his pretty wife, Ellen.

  “Mr. Price. Greetings. I remember you from Chicago.” McClellan shook with a powerful grip. Lon marveled at the man’s alertness and vigor at half past four in the morning.

  George McClellan wasn’t tall, yet everything about him seemed formidable, heroic. His auburn hair was combed, his reddish brown mustache and imperial trimmed. On his blue wool blouse there were no shoulder straps; no indications of rank at all. No wonder that at thirty-five, McClellan was already something of a god to his men.

  The general pointed to a camp chair. Lon sank down gratefully. “Bit hectic, this past week,” the general began.

  “I’m sure that’s true, sir. Congratulations on your new appointment.”

  McClellan smiled in a pensive way. “It’s flattering to think you’re called upon to save the nation, which is what some of the papers are saying. I have no intention of becoming a military dictator such as they had in the Roman empire. But my assignment’s clear. There’s a rabble in Washington calling itself an army. I’m to whip them into something worthy of that name. What happened last Sunday was a disgrace. I hold Scott rather than McDowell responsible. If you’re charitable, General Scott is simply too old. If you’re not, he’s incompetent. But you’ve come a long way, Mr. Price. Let’s get to business.”

  “Major Allen asked that I speak to you.”

  “About your resignation.”

  “Yes, sir. After I returned from western Virginia—”

  “You and your colleague broke the ring of thieves making off with our supplies. A day after you got back to Cincinnati, you quit, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. I quit in order to enlist and fight. I hope I don’t sound pretentious, but I believe in this war. My father was a preacher. He worked for the Underground Railroad. He thought Negroes should be free.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s commendable. Personally, however, I wouldn’t give you ten rusty nails for the right to entertain black people in my home. I can’t imagine they’d want to come there, either. This war is being fought to preserve the Union.” Lon would have argued but it wasn’t the time or place.

  “Major Allen says you’re a top man. One of his best. He doesn’t want to lose you. I appreciate your desire to serve, but you should realize that if you’re with the major, you’re already in the Army.”

  “Sir?” Lon said, puzzled.

  “As soon as practicable I intend to bring Major Allen and his entire organization to the capital, to perform the same intelligence work for me and my staff that you have been doing in Cincinnati.” Lon was stunned. McClellan continued, “You won’t drill, you won’t carry a rifle or wear a uniform, but you’ll be a soldier, with an indispensable task. How can we fight the rebs if we don’t know where they are? How many men they have? How they’re deployed? We need trained agents to ferret out answers to those questions. You’ll see your share of battle and danger, of that I’m confident. And you’ll be serving your country as fully as any man marching in the infantry.”

  McClellan stood again; time had run out.

  “I recommend that you change your mind, Mr. Price. Change your mind and withdraw your resignation.”

  Lon was dazzled by the opportunity McClellan put before him. He thought suddenly of Margaret and hardly hesitated.

  “Put that way, General—I will.”

  “Then this was time well spent. Find Lieutenant Jeter, have him set you up in the officers’ mess. The train for Columbus won’t pass through till half-past seven.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, General.”

  McClellan tossed off a casual gesture, part salute, part friendly wave. He was already back to work at the field desk.

  Lon went out into the rain. He and McClellan obviously didn’t think the same way about slavery, but that didn’t matter. Serving with Pinkerton in the new capacity McClellan had described, he could fulfill his promise to his father.

  Over the eastern hills watery gray light was breaking. Lon felt more alert and cheerful than he had since leaving Cincinnati.

  In a beer garden in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati’s German district, Lon told Sledge about his interview. Sledge said, “Glad we’ll still be partners.” He wiped away a foam mustache and waved his empty stein at a passing waiter. In another part of the garden, four men in lederhosen played a schottische. Lon and Sledge had both drunk more bee
r than was good for them. Under glowing paper lanterns, with paper flowers brightening the white trellises around them, the war hardly seemed to exist.

  “I know why you did it,” Sledge said as new steins arrived.

  “To fight for the Union, and the end of slavery.”

  “Sure, sure. A glorious crusade for Gentleman Lon. Listen. I’m not the smartest boyo, but I know this. The work we do now is dirty work, and it’ll be the same where we’re going. I know you don’t believe that, but one day you will. You will. Prosit.”

  They drank in silence. Sledge belched so loudly, other patrons stared. “Meantime, boyo, let’s have a good time. Knock some heads, meet some girls—oh, I forgot. For you there’s only one. In Washington. That’s why you changed your mind.”

  Lon’s red face was a silent confession.

  19

  August 1861

  Pinkerton’s men and women moved to Washington quietly. They hid away in obscure rooming houses around town. Lon and Sledge rented from an Irish widow on K Street, under assumed names. The boss hardly needed such excessive caution. The city was focused on the man he idolized, the dashing commander in charge of the force renamed the Army of the Potomac.

  McClellan did his best to stay visible, to raise the morale and improve the fighting readiness of the three-year volunteers arriving to replace the ninety-day men. He operated from headquarters at Nineteenth and the Avenue, a house rented from a Navy officer. It had no mess. He and his staff took meals at an I Street café run by a popular mulatto caterer. McClellan worked at headquarters mostly at night. Several times when Lon had business in the building and passed the open door of McClellan’s office, he saw the President, usually in a shiny black suit and leather slippers, telling law stories to the fastidiously dressed general, or listening to theories of training and strategy.

  McClellan spent his twelve-and fourteen-hour days charging somewhere on his big bay horse Dan Webster, astride the kind of saddle he’d seen in the Crimea and recommended the Army adopt; the Army had named it after him. He set a hard pace for staff officers and the dragoon guards who rode with him. He inspected every one of the forty-eight defensive forts, redoubts, and batteries ringing the city. He galloped across the Potomac to visit the encampments that sprawled from Arlington down to Alexandria. Beauregard was still at Manassas. Pinkerton said the general feared an attack on Washington, but McClellan’s good cheer and élan hid that from the rank and file. Soldiers waved their caps and holloed to “Little Mac” or “General George” when he rode by. He rose in his stirrups and waved his cap to salute them.

  He wasn’t so popular with a minority that tasted his discipline. His patrols swept the streets of drunken or abusive soldiers. Offenders were bucked and gagged, or forced to stand on a barrel for hours holding a sack of bricks. These public displays were meant to discourage others inclined to err.

  Every patriotic citizen wanted McClellan’s photograph. He posed in Mathew Brady’s studio on the Avenue. The most popular print showed him with his right hand inside his jacket, a pose much favored by senior officers. The papers and the public began calling him Young Napoleon.

  Pinkerton sent Tim Webster and Hattie Lawton back to Baltimore, where the secret societies were reappearing. Pryce Lewis was in Washington, along with several other operatives. One was Sam Bridgeman, a Virginian whose air of gentility belied coarse habits. He picked his nose in public and spat wherever he pleased, though he’d successfully played a footman on a daring reconnaissance mission in Virginia in the summer. Pryce Lewis had been with him, posing as an English lord out to see America. Lon didn’t like Sam Bridgeman.

  One night in the Ebbitt Grill, Lon was drinking with some of his colleagues at the mahogany bar. Since Parkersburg he’d acquired a taste for sour mash whiskey. It was stronger and faster than beer for dulling bad memories such as the moment Sledge’s bullet blew the giant’s head to pieces in Parkersburg.

  An operative named Frank Ellis brought up the situation in Maryland. Secession was still discussed, but less fervently because of the threat of armed intervention by Federal troops. Sam Bridgeman bragged that he’d broken up one of the Baltimore secret societies.

  “Knights of Liberty. There was a lot of shooting. A seditious bastard named Miller died on the spot. I don’t know if it was my bullet, but I like to think so.”

  Bridgeman pushed away from the bar and spat brown tobacco juice on the floor. Standing on Bridgeman’s left, Lon concentrated on his empty glass. Miller. That was the girl’s name. From Baltimore.

  He didn’t like to admit that Sledge might be right about their work. He just hoped a lot of dirt wouldn’t rub off on him.

  Later that night he walked to the town house in Franklin Square. Lamps burned on the lower floor. Another lamp moved in the foyer, lighting up the fanlight glass like a firefly passing. She was there.

  How could he see her? If he tried, would she slam the door in his face? Cuss him out for a Yankee? It was worth the risk.

  Pinkerton gave him no opportunity. McClellan wanted to know the strength of Beauregard’s army. Pinkerton sent Lon, Sledge, and Sam Bridgeman into the enormous tent city over in Virginia. Everyone who fled across Confederate lines—deserters, refugees, slaves—was to be questioned. Pinkerton chose Lon to interrogate contrabands, as runaway slaves were called. He said he gave Lon the assignment because he knew Lon had sympathy and concern for the Negroes.

  “Which I am sorry to say the general doesn’t share. I don’t know how he will treat any information we obtain from Negroes. That doesn’t relieve us of our obligation.”

  Lon set himself up in a wall tent in a camp near Baileys Crossroads. He spent the hot August days patiently asking questions of a procession of mostly illiterate black men who had risked their lives to escape their owners.

  The Negroes came shyly, often fearfully, into the tent. Usually they wore ragged clothing, or something not much better. They scraped their feet and knuckled their foreheads, and Lon grew angry all over again at the conditions in which these men had been forced to live since childhood.

  The tent stank of sweat, and of nearby latrine trenches. The contrabands sat on a stool in front of a table piled with reports to be handed to Pinkerton, who already had so many to handle, he said that he felt like a one-armed Polyphemus.

  Lon asked the same questions of each contraband. “How many men, how many white soldiers would you say are camped around Manassas Junction? A few? A lot?”

  “Thousands,” the contraband would answer with wide-eyed sincerity. Or, “More’n I could count.” Or, “Cap’n, they was all over the ground far as these old eyes could see.”

  “At Bull Run, the rebs brought in their black horse cavalry. It frightened a lot of the militia, so they ran. Did you see any cavalry? Did you count any black horses?”

  “Black horses everwhere,” they’d say. Or, “That’s all they got, sir, nothin’ but black horses.” Or, “Oh, my, must be a whole lot of black horses—how big’s a million?” They wanted to help, but routinely, when Lon laid aside the sheet headed “Plato” or “James” or “Amos,” there wasn’t a single useful answer on it.

  Then a different sort of man walked in. He was thin as a stick, dressed in clean drill trousers and a work shirt with the sleeves torn off. The gray wool on his head said he was older than he looked, which was about thirty.

  The man had a long jaw, a narrow face. Bushy eyebrows jutted over deeply recessed dark eyes. His skin was a beautiful golden color. Lon supposed he was a mixed-blood of the kind called high yellow.

  The man was too big for the stool. He hunched over and folded his hands on his knees, and instead of grinning at Lon, or repeatedly saying “sir” to show his eagerness to cooperate, he waited for Lon to begin the conversation.

  “It says on the roster that your name is Zachariah Chisolm.”

  “Says that because it is.”

  “My name is Alonzo Price.

  “All right.” No approval, no disapproval, just “all right,”
and silence.

  “Can you read, Zachariah?”

  “Some.”

  “Cipher?”

  “Enough to keep from being cheated.”

  “Where and when did you escape?”

  “From the camp of the Wade Hampton Legion, night before last. There was no moon. I figured I had a chance.”

  “The Hampton Legion of South Carolina?”

  “I was a house nigger for Captain Tyree Broom. He brung me up from Summerville to cook his meals an’ tend his clothes while he soldiered. Lots of us got brung up north by our masters.”

  “Was your master a kind man, or unkind?”

  “Mostly kind, but it don’t make no difference. He was master. Wasn’t too smart, though. He carried me most all the way to freedom and he didn’t think I’d go the last mile. I was just waiting for my chance. Night I left, Captain Broom drank too much claret wine an’ shot himself in the foot while he was cleaning his pistol. Caused a lot of excitement. After his friends hauled him off to the surgeon, I jumped.”

  Lon inked his quill and scratched a couple of lines on the sheet headed Chisolm, Z. “What can you tell me about the size and disposition of the Confederate army?”

  “Dispo what?”

  “Where the regiments are placed.”

  “Can’t tell you much. I don’t know how to reckon the size of Armies. There’s just a hell of a lot of soldiers. You give me a map, I ain’t sure I could draw an X to place the Hampton Legion.”

  “Some of the Negroes who’ve sat there have given me numbers. Large numbers.”

  “Well, sure, doesn’t surprise me. They want to please the white man. They fear if they give the white man the wrong answer, he’ll be mad with them and send ’em back. That’s why they make up things.”