“The men may be disturbed. They remember well that Grant commanded the enemy when we were routed at Missionary Ridge.”
“Grant is not invincible. We beat him badly on the first day at Shiloh, you will recall.”
“True. But he beat us the second day.”
They continued to move from one regiment to another. Watching the men of one of the Mississippi regiments go through their drill, Cleburne found himself thinking of the years he had spent as an enlisted man in the British Army, before he had come to America. Although the discipline he had learned from that experience had served him well as an infantry officer, the memories were bitter ones. His regiment had been posted in Ireland and he had served essentially as a soldier in an army of occupation, keeping down his own people. He was happy when a new question from Hardee roused him from such unpleasant thoughts.
“Do you think Grant will be a more formidable adversary than Sherman?”
Cleburne thought for a moment, happy as always to be asked his opinion by his commander. “I believe so, yes. Grant proved during the Vicksburg Campaign that he is a brilliant and unorthodox commander. Whatever else we can say about him, Grant has certainly demonstrated in his recent battles in Virginia that he is a ruthless man who is not afraid to employ the sheer weight of numbers to achieve victory, no matter how many of his men get killed in the process.”
“Rather more blunt than Sherman, I think. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes. If Sherman is like a French rapier, Grant is more like a Scottish claymore.”
Hardee laughed. “A fine analogy, Patrick!”
Cleburne’s eyes narrowed in confusion. He hadn’t been attempting humor.
Hardee went on. “In any case, as we again have the Chattahoochee River between us and the enemy, we can hopefully prevent the Yankees from coming any closer to Atlanta than they already are.”
“Sherman got across the Chattahoochee without too much trouble. Why should Grant not be able to accomplish the same feat?”
“A fair question,” Hardee replied.
They had finished passing by Lowrey’s Brigade and had begun walking past Granbury’s troops from Texas. Cleburne noticed that they were not as well turned out as the men from Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. They also were not as good at drill, but they carried themselves with a much greater air of confidence. Indeed, they seemed to swagger with bravado even as they stood completely still. Cleburne wasn’t surprised. Texas was the frontier, where violence was more common and where men were expected to defend themselves against any and all comers.
He looked at the stern, sturdy men with a sense of wonder in his eyes. Their uniforms contained scarcely a hint that they had once been clean and gray, and many of the men looked as though they had not shaved in months. Still, he thought they looked more impressive than the finest gentleman in London. These troops had left their blood on countless battlefields over the past year, holding every position they defended and capturing every position they attacked.
He recognized James McFadden, the soldier who had captured George Thomas on the battlefield of Peachtree Creek. Now wearing the uniform of a lieutenant and having exchanged his Enfield for a pistol and sword, he seemed to be doing well.
“Best brigade in your division,” Hardee said admirably.
“Best brigade in the army,” Cleburne replied.
“The Orphan Brigade might disagree with you. So might Cockrell’s Missourians.”
Cleburne nodded, acknowledging Hardee’s point. In truth, though, rating units in such an arbitrary manner made little sense. They were not racehorses, after all. The important thing was that everyone did their duty.
As they filed past the last ranks of Granbury’s Texans, they turned and looked back. The division stretched out perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men had patiently waited until their commanders had completed their inspection of the entire division, remaining steadily at attention. Now they exchanged final salutes with the officers of Granbury’s Brigade and moved to mount their horses, which had been held by staff officers for them at the end of the line. As they rode away, they could hear shouted orders from the officers directing their men to fall out and resume whatever chores they had been doing before the inspection had begun.
“Join me for lunch, Patrick?”
“Of course.”
The two men began to ride together back toward Hardee’s headquarters. As they left the troops behind, Hardee brought up the inevitable subject.
“I’m afraid Johnston will want to discuss the newspaper rumors about your old proposal at this meeting, Patrick.”
Cleburne nodded. “I assumed so.”
“General Cooper is on his way from Richmond,” Hardee said. “Apparently he is going to conduct some sort of investigation. I imagine that he intends to interview us both regarding the circumstances of when and how your proposal was made.” Samuel Cooper held the dual positions of Adjutant General and Inspector General of the Confederate Army.
“I feel like a Christian about to be fed to the lions,” Cleburne said.
“Cooper is an honest man,” Hardee said reassuringly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You did nothing against the law or against the regulations of the army. The President just wants to be able to say that he looked into the matter.”
“I do not fear prosecution by the courts,” Cleburne replied. “It is the newspapers I’m worried about. In their pages, I am already being crucified.”
Over the past few days, at Cleburne’s request, Major Benham had forwarded to him copies of most of the major newspapers of the Confederacy. To his intense disappointment, not a single one had defended the proposal. In fact, most of the editorial writers had bitterly denounced the proposal and called for Cleburne’s head. Only a few had acknowledged Cleburne’s patriotism and military record, but even those had still dismissed his idea as horribly misguided and ill-timed.
Cleburne knew that he had broken no law by making his unprecedented proposal. But he also knew that this didn’t matter. The very public that had only recently lionized him as the hero of Ringgold Gap and Peachtree Creek was now turning furiously against him. Cleburne knew that President Davis wouldn’t hesitate to exile him to some obscure command where he would quickly be forgotten.
“You’re worried about being removed from command,” Hardee said, reading his mind. It was not a question, but a statement.
Cleburne nodded.
“You shouldn’t be,” Hardee said. “They cannot remove you at such a delicate time, with Grant soon to renew the Union offensive against Atlanta. And rest assured, if they try to remove you, I myself will resign in protest.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
“Have you discussed the matter with your officers?”
“Yes. I have spoken with every brigade and regimental commander and all report that the men continue to have complete confidence in my leadership.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, although I imagine it will dismay Walker. Have you heard from Susan?”
Cleburne shook his head. “Her last letter arrived just before the story got into the newspapers. She knows all about my proposal. I told her about it before I asked her to marry me. She said that she agreed with me entirely. Still, I know she will be greatly upset. Many of her friends are married to large plantation owners. It will cause trouble, to be sure.”
“She loves you very much. You need not fear anything on that score.”
“I know. But I hate the idea of her being troubled on account of my own politics.”
Hardee chuckled. “You’ll make a good husband, Patrick.”
“I pray so. My anxiety over that question has caused me greater unease these past few months than any concerns I have had regarding the war.”
“I understand how you feel. After all, I am a recently married man myself.”
Cleburne turned in his saddle and looked hard at Hardee. “Do you ever fear leaving Mary a widow?”
Hardee’s eyebrows went up. “A morbid quest
ion, my friend. Even in the middle of a war. But the answer is yes. I’d be lying if I denied it. So many of the senior commanders on both sides in this war have been killed. Even the commanders of armies are not immune from the bullets, as poor old Albert Sidney Johnston found out back at Shiloh.”
“The thought preys on my mind sometimes,” Cleburne admitted.
“You are not afraid of death,” Hardee said emphatically. “You are a man without fear, near as I can tell.”
“I don’t think I fear death, no. But I worry about the sadness my death would bring to Susan.”
“Worrying about it does no good. We have been in more fights than I care to remember. How many bullets have passed so near our heads that our ears could feel the air move? How many tore holes in our jackets? Did any of these bullets miss us because we were worried about them? No, not one. They just missed us. Simple as that.”
“God’s will be done,” Cleburne said simply. He was comfortable in his quiet Episcopalian faith.
“Truth, indeed,” Hardee agreed. “Even if we don’t understand it very well. But I will venture to say that it was obviously God’s will that brought you and Susan together. Having done so, it would make no sense for Him to tear you apart from one another.”
*****
August 28, Evening
“Cooper should arrive in Atlanta tomorrow,” Bragg said, flipping through a stack of papers in his hands.
“And his instructions are clear?”
“I told him precisely what you told me to tell him. He is to interview all officers who were present at the January meeting, compile a full account of exactly what happened then and after, and inquire into what each officer thought of Cleburne’s proposal. He will then write up a comprehensive report for you.”
“Good, very good,” Davis said, nodding. “An ideal assignment for a man of Cooper’s talents.” Davis actually considered Cooper’s investigation entirely irrelevant, for he had learned of Cleburne’s proposal within weeks of when it had been made and felt no particular need for additional information about it. Nevertheless, with dozens of newspapers clamoring for Cleburne’s head and half of Congress up in arms, it was imperative that he be seen as doing something. Cooper’s investigation would be useless, but at least it provided the appearance of action.
“We should begin considering what actions we shall take based on whatever Cooper’s investigation reveals.”
“My hope is that the whole matter will soon blow over. I don’t want to lose the services of Cleburne. With Grant again commanding the enemy forces in the West, fighting will surely resume very soon. I want Cleburne at the head of his division, with both the army and the people focused on the need to defeat the Yankees.”
“That is what concerns me,” Bragg said sourly. “Suppose Cooper’s investigation finds that Cleburne is an active abolitionist? The men of his division will surely throw down their weapons and refuse to fight under such a commander. Suppose Cooper finds that Hardee and Johnston share Cleburne’s abolitionist views? The other officers of the Army of Tennessee will refuse to follow their orders. General Hood tells me that the other corps and division commanders, Hardee aside, were already disillusioned with Johnston because of his support of Cleburne’s proposal, or at least his refusal to denounce it.”
“Well, we must wait and see what Cooper finds. Perhaps with the resumption of fighting, the newspapers will find other stories to write about. Now, what else?”
Bragg looked down at his papers. “Something rather disturbing, unfortunately. A group of soldiers from Forrest’s command who were taken prisoner at Franklin and subsequently escaped are giving an account of Forrest’s death that, to say the least, raises a number of questions.”
“What kind of questions?” Davis asked impatiently.
“They are saying that General Forrest did not die in combat, but was killed by negro soldiers after he had been taken prisoner.”
A look of horror crossed the President’s face. “They killed him in cold blood after they captured him?”
“It would seem so, Mr. President. Not only that, but according to one eyewitness, he was hanged like a common criminal rather than shot, with white officers standing by and making no effort to intervene.”
“He was a major general in the Confederate Army! If he was captured, he was entitled to be treated as a prisoner-of-war!”
“I know, Mr. President. I certainly contrast the Yankee treatment of Forrest with our own treatment of General Thomas. Though he is a despicable man who betrayed his state, we have treated him with all the respect to which he is entitled under the rules of warfare.”
Through the cloud created by his anger, an uncomfortable truth intruded upon Davis’s mind. The men of Forrest’s command had been accused of carrying out a massacre of black Union soldiers when they had captured Fort Pillow in February. Though the details were unclear to Davis, the Yankee newspapers had repeated the story so often and embellished it so much that it was now being taken for the gospel truth. Forrest’s own report had not helped matters, for in it he had all but bragged about how his men had shot down the black soldiers after they had surrendered.
Fort Pillow was not the only place where Confederate soldiers had massacred black troops, Davis knew. It had happened during the Battle of the Crater not even a month before. It had happened in February after the victory in the Battle of Olustee down in Florida. Almost certainly, it would happen again before the war was over.
Davis blamed the Yankees. In his mind, by setting the slaves at liberty and making them into soldiers, the forces of Abraham Lincoln were inflaming the unavoidable tensions that existed between whites and blacks, which the institution of slavery had previously kept in check. Indeed, the Yankees were violating a tenet of natural law which Davis believed had been decreed by God Himself. His mind refused to entertain any other possibility.
“Please send a telegram to General Johnston. Ask him to send a message to General Grant under a flag of truce describing the reports and demanding an explanation.”
Bragg nodded. “I will do so immediately, sir.”
“I will not allow myself to be distracted by what may be a false report. We must verify the information before we decide upon a course of action.”
“And if the reports prove true? What shall be our course of action?”
“I confess that I do not know. But we cannot allow the execution of one of our generals to go unpunished.”
*****
August 29, Noon
Marble looked around in astonishment. The fact that he had expected it made it no less wondrous, for he doubted he had ever seen so many people crammed into a single building all at once. More than ten thousand people had crowded into the Wigwam, an enormous two-story wooden arena that had been built four years earlier to accommodate the 1860 Republican convention that had nominated Lincoln. The fact that it was now being used by the opposition party to nominate Lincoln’s opponent struck Marble as a fine example of poetic justice.
Marble looked up and down the endless rows of people, who were chanting and cheering various slogans. A brass band down on the stage was playing patriotic tunes, although Marble noticed with satisfaction that they never played The Battle Hymn of the Republic or any other song which might have been construed as supporting abolitionism. Red, white, and blue bunting hung everywhere. Many people waved small American flags, and larger signs held aloft identified each state delegation. The noise and bustle was deafening.
Marble sat with the New York delegation, by far the largest at the convention. He wasn’t quite sure in which capacity he was attending the event. On the one hand, he considered himself a journalist there to cover the event for the New York World. But he also knew he was a major player at the convention, exerting an influence on events that was matched by only a handful of other men who had come to Chicago. Finally, there remained a part of him that simply considered himself a good American citizen, doing his civic duty by representing his state at the national convent
ion of his chosen political party, just as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted him to do.
Down on the stage, Governor Horatio Seymour began pounding the gavel loudly, trying to hush the enormous mass of humanity that filled the Wigwam to the breaking point. The music of the brass band abruptly ceased. Gradually, after a long pounding and many shushes from hundreds of people, a sufficient level of quiet descended to allow Seymour to begin.
“Having been duly selected as presiding officer by the Democratic National Committee, I, Governor Horatio Seymour of the State of New York, do hereby declare the 1864 Democratic National Convention open!”
These words, rather mundane to Marble’s ears, brought the crowd to its feet again in a roaring cheer. Marble frowned. At this rate, it would take the convention hours to accomplish even the most simple task. The notepaper on his lap had yet to receive a single scratch from his pen, as nothing worth noting had yet taken place.
Seymour went on to make what Marble thought was a fairly solid speech. Much of it was essentially a eulogy for Clement Vallandigham, who Seymour held up as a martyr cut down by the wickedness of the Lincoln administration for trying to restore the Union through peace rather than war. Marble certainly had respected Vallandigham in his own way and was sorry that he had been killed. But as he looked over the crowd in the Wigwam and saw many people wiping away tears as they listened to Seymour tout Vallandigham’s virtues, Marble considered it all faintly ridiculous.
Having eulogized Vallandigham for rather longer than Marble thought proper, Governor Seymour went on to castigate the Lincoln administration for its unconstitutional abuse of power, its incompetence in managing the war, the enormous casualties that had been suffered in Virginia and Georgia, and every other sin, real or imagined, that the Democrats had been able to craft into rhetorical language.
The crowd cheered at virtually every sentence. Marble could see that they were worked up, that they were determined to win the election, and that they would be willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve victory when the time came. When the convention was over, they would disperse to their home states and spread the Democratic gospel of a cessation of fighting and the opening of negotiations. Their words would spread across the length and breadth of the Union.
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