The Guns of the South

* 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—seasoned, 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.

Lee, Stephens, and Benjamin made the by-now-familiar trip to Jefferson Davis’s office once more. The President heard them out, read through the paper, then turned it sideways, as if scrutinizing it from a new angle might reveal some hidden pitfall. Not seeming to turn one up, he asked his commissioners, “You gentlemen are inclined to agree to these terms?”

“We are,” Lee said firmly. The Vice President and Secretary of State echoed him.

“Let it be so, then,” Davis said. He looked down at the paper again, set a hand over his eyes. His fingers were long and thin and pale, the fingers of a violinist or a concert pianist. “I never dreamt, when I first ascended to this position, that the road to peace would be so long or require so many sacrifices. But I thank God we have successfully traversed that road to its promised end.”

Lee also briefly bent his head in a thankful prayer. When he raised it again, he asked, “Will you also post me to the disputed states as Lincoln suggests, Mr. President?”

Davis pursed his thin lips…My only concern there is that Lincoln has, throughout his administration, demonstrated himself to be a politician with few scruples when it comes to reaching his ends. Our interests in Kentucky and Missouri might be better served by someone of, ah, similarly elastic principle.”

“If he intended chicanery, he would have proposed as his own nominee there someone other than General Grant, who is not himself a political man,” Lee said. “Nor would he have set the date for the election three months after the end of his own term. And finally, a bold man indeed would be required to plot deceit when the White House now lies within range of Confederate artillery.”

“All cogent points, especially the last,” Davis admitted. “I am to infer, then, that you desire the position?”

“Yes, so long as you believe I can properly fill it,” Lee said. “The proposal, after all, was mine; I should like to help bring it to fruition.”

The President leaned forward, extended his hand to Lee. “On to Kentucky, then, and to Missouri.”

“Kentucky?” Mary Custis Lee’s voice betrayed her dismay. “Missouri?”

“You need not say them as if they were the ends of the earth, my dear Mary.” Lee essayed a small joke. “Texas, now, Texas is the end of the earth.”

The joke fell flat. “With the war over, I had hoped you would be able to stay here in Richmond with me and with the rest of your family,” his wife said.

You’d hoped, in other words, that I’d be able to carry on my soldiering from behind a desk, Lee thought. But the thought brought no anger with it. How could Mary be blamed for wishing they might stay together? Gently, he said, “True, the war is over, but I still wear my country’s uniform.” He touched the sleeve of his gray coat. “You knew that when you married me, all those years ago; you’ve always managed very well.”

“Oh, indeed, very well,” she said bitterly. Where he had touched his coat, she set her hand on the arm of the wheeled chair that confined her.

Lee flinched, as he would not have under enemy fire. Mary had not been a cripple during earlier separations; the war had cost her what was left of her health. He offered what comfort he could: “I am not going into battle, only to oversee peaceful elections. And I shall be back in Richmond for the summer.”

“Another half a year, gone forever.”

He pulled a dining room chair close, sat in it so he could talk without looking down at her. “For better or worse, my dear, I am a soldier, as you have known these many years; the idea is not one to which you must suddenly accustom yourself. And I have my duty and shall not turn aside from it.”

“Not even for those who love you,” his wife said. He bent his head and did not answer; it was, after all, the truth. Mary Lee sighed. “As you say, Robert, I know I am a soldier’s wife. Sometimes, though, as in these past few months’ peace, it is pleasant to try to forget.”

“Dear Mary, we have no peace, only an armistice which may be broken at any time, should the United States—or ourselves—find that advantageous. If heaven grant, I hope to help forge a true peace, a lasting peace. Were anything less in my mind, I assure you that I should not have accepted this posting.”

“So you say. So you may even believe.” His wife’s voice remained sharp, but the anger had gone from her face, leaving behind only resignation. “I am still of the opinion that, if Jefferson Davis commanded you to campaign in hell to fetch a coal to light his cookstove, you would make your good-byes to me as you always do and set off without any thought past the fact that you had been ordered.”

“Maybe I would.” Lee thought about it. He started to laugh. “Likely I would, I suppose. I trust I would return with that coal, though, or at least give Old Nick a fight for it worth his remembering.”

That at last won him a smile from Mary. “I’m certain you would.” One of the lamps in the dining room flickered and went out, filling the chamber with shadows and the odor of cooling oil. Mary asked, “How late has it gotten to be?”

“Half past ten,” Lee answered after a look at his pocket watch.

“Late enough,” she declared. “Will you assist me upstairs?”

“Of course. Let me go up with a light first.” He rooted through a sideboard drawer until he found a candle, which he lit at a lamp that still burned. He took it up to their bedroom, where he lit two more with it, then quickly went downstairs again. The house was very still; his daughters and Julia had already gone to bed. The wheels of Mary’s chair rumbled over the floorboards as he pushed her to the stairway.

Leaning some on the banister and more on him, she made her way to the second floor. He steered her to the bedroom. She sat down on the bed while he took out a nightdress, held it up for her approval. “Yes, that will do,” she said. He helped her out of the confining, tight-waisted dress and petticoats she wore during the day. From long practice, he dealt with her clothes as readily as with his own. “Thank you,” she told him. “I’ll miss your touch when you’re gone.”

“Will you?” he said. At that moment, as much by chance as anything else, his hand happened to lie on her left breast. It was not, in the abstract, a breast to kindle passions; the years and a succession of hungry babes had had their way with it. But his wife’s flesh remained dear to him. Their long separations made each return seem like a new honeymoon. Of itself, something in his voice changed. “Shall I blowout the candles?”

She understood him; after thirty-three years of marriage, she generally understood him. “If you think you will be able to get that nightdress onto me into the dark,” she answered.

“I expect I shall,” he said. He got up and blew out two of the three candles, then paused thoughtfully, took a nightshirt from its drawer, and set it on his bed. The room plunged into blackness as he blew out the last light.

Afterwards, he felt the sharp twinge in his chest that came with exertion. He reached over to the nightstand for the bottle of little pills from the Rivington men. He put one under his tongue. The pain faded. The bottle did not rattle as he put it back; he remembered it had been all but empty. As sleep took him, he reminded himself to get more nitroglycerine from them before he set out on his travels. Their arrogance was disagreeable, but their abilities helped justify it.

As the crow flies, Louisville is about 460 miles from Richmond. Lee was no crow. He had to take the railroad, which made his journey almost twice as long. The Virginia and Tennessee train squealed and skidded along tracks slick with winter ice as it fought its way down to Chattanooga. That journey alone was as long as the crow’s flight to Louisville. In the bad weather, it took three days. Lee was glad to layover for a couple of days and recover his strength.

“I wish some ingenious Southerner—or even Yankee, come to that—would invent a railroad car in which it was possible to lie down and get some decent sleep,” he said to Charles Marshall. Sitting bolt upright all the way from Richmond had left him sorer than he would have been from the same amount of time in the saddle.

Major Marshall was younger and sprier, but the journey had taken its toll on him, too. He nodded as vigorously as the crick in his neck would allow. “We have smoking cars and dining cars and cars with washrooms. Why not sleeping cars? They’d let a man ride the rails as the rails could be ridden, rather than his being forced to pause every few hundred miles or perish.”

A white man drove Lee and Marshall from the railway station to a hotel. Their locomotive chugged off to the train shed, a long stone and brick building with a curious curved roof and a half-story lengthwise arcade, mostly devoted to windows, poised atop that.

Two more whites at the hotel manhandled the luggage into the lobby. Lee watched them with more than a little curiosity; in a Southern town, he would have expected slaves to do the hauling. The driver noticed his repeated glances. “Ain’t many niggers left hereabouts,” he said. “Most of’ em went north with the Yankees when they pulled out, and the ones that’s left, they’re still actin‘ like they was free—eeemancipated, they calls it, an, they won’t work less’n you pay ‘em. A lot of folks, they’d sooner give cash money to whites.”

“You haven’t tried forcing them back into bondage?” Marshall asked. He’d accompanied Lee because, being a lawyer, he was the most politically astute of the general’s aides.

“A couple men what tried that, they ended up dead, and their niggers run off to join the bandits in the hills,” the driver answered morosely. “Makes some folks reckon it’s more trouble’n it’s worth, less’n Hit-’em-Again Forrest’s got his army in town.”

“Once a man has been some while free, it’s hard to take that from him again, even with an army at one’s back,” Lee said. The driver gave him an odd look but finally decided to nod.

From Chattanooga, the railroad crossed the Tennessee River at Bridgeport and swung down briefly into Alabama. At Stevenson, Lee and Marshall switched to a Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad train for the trip northwest to the capital of Tennessee. The farther north and west they got, the longer the land had lain under Federal hands…and the fewer Negroes they saw. Lee wondered how many lurked in the bare-branched forests, clutching Springfields and wondering if this particular train was worth attacking.

Sometimes, when the train would stop at a town, Lee got off and walked about for a few minutes. Whenever he did, men in worn coats of gray or butternut came up to shake his hand or just to stare at him. It made him uneasy. He wondered how politicians so easily went out to press their constituents’ flesh. Then he wondered how, if the Confederate Presidency came his way, he would manage himself.

From Nashville’s station and train shed—which, by contrast to Chattanooga’s, were solid and square, with crenelated walls and with towers at each corner—he rode north into Kentucky. The Stars and Stripes still flew there, not the Stainless Banner. Kentucky’s own blue flag was also prominently displayed, as if to show that the people there thought of their own homes first, ahead of both nations competing for their allegiance. To Lee, who had chosen Virginia over the United States, that was as it should be.

Men in pieces of Confederate uniform still came to see him at every stop. But so did men who wore blue coats: Kentucky’s sons had fought on both sides in the war, more of them, in fact, for the Union than the Confederacy (the North, after all, had held the state through almost the whole of the war). The Federals seemed as curious about him as did their brothers and cousins who had fought for the South.

“You rebs gonna invade us again if we vote to stay in the U.S. of A?” a fellow wearing corporal’s stripes on a blue coat asked at Bowling Green, where Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston had made his headquarters back in the days when the war was young.

Lee shook his head; he tried to put Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at Shiloh, out of his mind. “No, sir, we shall not: we intend to abide by the results of that vote, whatever it may be, so long as it be free and fair.”

“Reckon you can’t say plainer’n that,” the ex-corporal remarked. “I heard tell you was a devil of a fightin’ man, but I never heard you was a liar.”

At Munfordsville, another thirty or forty miles up the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, two groups of former soldiers, one in gray, the other wearing blue, approached Lee at the same time. They glared at each other. Some of them carried pistols on their belts; they all wore knives. Lee was about to turn and go back into his coach, in the hope that that would end the confrontation. Then one of the bluecoats surprised him by starting to laugh.

“Tell us all what amuses you, sir,” Lee said cordially, including himself, the veterans in gray, and the other ex-Federals with a broad wave.

The Union man carried himself like a young officer. He spoke like one, too: “I just happened to remember our lovely state’s motto, General Lee.”

“Which is?” Lee asked, wondering what a motto could have to do with anything.

Then, with relish, the bluecoat quoted it: “‘United we stand, divided we fall.’” He waved too, encompassing the rival groups at the train station and, by extension, all the disunited groups in a most disunited state.

Lee laughed, loud and long. The ex-Confederates followed his lead, as he’d thought they might. Then the men who had fought for the North laughed, too. After that, whatever trouble there might have been evaporated. He chatted with both groups until it was time for the train to pullout. Then, as he turned to leave, he said, “See, here you are, my friends—fraternizing again.”

The men chuckled. One of them, a lean, muscular fellow in ragged butternut, said, “You officers wasn’t supposed to know about that.”

“Oh, we did,” said the former Federal who’d known about Kentucky’s motto, thus confirming Lee’s impression of him. He added,” Sometimes we knew when to look the other way, too,” which drew more chuckles.

“If we fraternized even in the midst of war, as we did, surely we shall contrive to get along with one another now that peace is here,” Lee said. Without waiting for an answer, he returned to the train. As it jerked into motion, he looked out the window at the men who had so recently fought each other. They went on talking together, amiably enough. Lee took that to be a good omen.

Louisville, on the southern bank of the Ohio, was a big city. Before the war, it had held 68,000 people to Richmond’s 38,000, though becoming a national capital was swelling the latter town these days. As Lee got down from the train, a man jumped in front of him, pencil and notebook poised. “Fred Darby, Louisville Journal, General Lee,” the fellow said rapidly. “How does it feel, sir, to enter a town Confederate armies never succeeded in reaching?”

“I am not here as a conqueror,” Lee said. “That the United States and Confederate States went to war once was disastrous; a second conflict would be catastrophic. Rather than fight again, the two nations have agreed the justest course is to let the citizens of Kentucky and Missouri choose which nation they prefer. My role here, like General Grant’s, is to serve as an arbiter of that process, to ensure that it takes place without coercion of any sort.”

“What do you think Kentucky ought to do with its niggers, General?” Darby said.

That question again, Lee thought. Wherever he went, it went with him. “That is for your people to decide,” he answered. “Negroes may be either slave or free in both the U.S.A. and the C.S.A.”

“We’d have to be a slave state if we voted for the South, wouldn’t we?”

“So the Confederate Constitution states, yes,” Lee admitted reluctantly.

“Does that mean the niggers who were freed here during the war—and there were a lot of ‘em—would have to go back to being slaves?” the reporter asked.

“By no means,” Lee said, firmly this time. “Again, barring legislation from Richmond”—he thought of Congressman Oldham—”that would be a matter for your own legislature. As I am sure you are aware”—though sure of no such thing, he was unfailingly polite—”there are free Negroes in every state of the Confederacy, many thousands of them in some states.”

Darby scribbled in his notebook. “General Lee, let me also ask you—”

“If you please, sir, not now,” Lee said, holding up a hand. “Having just arrived after some days of travel, I would prefer not to be interviewed here in the train station. I expect to remain in Kentucky and Missouri until June. Surely we shall speak again.” The reporter started to ask his question anyhow; Lee shook his head. Charles Marshall came up beside him, his face stern. Darby finally seemed to get the message. With a half-disappointed, half-angry scowl, he hurried away.

“The nerve of the damned Yankee,” Marshall grumbled. “President Davis would have no business interrogating you so, let alone some brash reporter.”

“He is but doing his job, Major, as we do ours.” Lee grinned wryly. “I will admit to not being sorry he is now doing it somewhere else.”

In the ride to the Galt House on the corner of Second and Main, Louisville seemed very much a northern city, in that the vast majority of the people on the streets were white. Of the few Negroes Lee saw, several wore the remnants of Union uniforms. A couple of them turned to stare—and to glare—at his gray coat, and Charles Marshall’s.

General Grant was standing in the hotel lobby when Lee came in. He walked over to shake Lee’s hand. “One glance at the map and I knew I would beat you here, sir,” he said. “The railroad line from Washington to Louisville is much more direct than that from Richmond. I would have arrived sooner still if all the line of the Baltimore and Ohio ran north of the Potomac. But even so, I got in day before yesterday.”

“As you say, General, you enjoyed the shorter route.” Lee hesitated, then added, “I must say, sir, that I am happier to be meeting you again in this fashion than I was during the late war.”

“I’m a great deal happier to see you like this, that’s certain,” Grant said, puffing smoke from his cigar, “and ever so much better here than in the melancholy circumstances that surrounded us at Washington. Shall we dine together? Lieutenant Colonel Porter, my aide, is here with me. I hope he might join us.”

“Of course, if I may bring Major Marshall here,” Lee answered. He waited for Grant to nod, then continued, “Perhaps you will give us an hour in which to freshen ourselves? If it suits you, we shall meet you here at”—he glanced at a clock on the wall; its pendulum swung away the seconds—”half-past seven.”

“Very good, sir,” Grant said. They shook hands and went their separate ways.

Grant’s aide, Horace Porter, was a tough-looking fellow in his late twenties, with dark, wavy hair, stem eyes set in a forward-thrusting face, and a sweeping mustache set above a narrow strip of chin beard. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen,” he said when Lee and Marshall came down from their second-floor rooms. “As we are on neutral ground here, shall we proceed to the dining room together?”

“An admirable suggestion,” Lee said with a smile.

Once seated, Grant said, “I have often stayed at the Galt House; my wife and I both have relatives in and close by Louisville. In summer, the terrapins from the Ohio are very fine here, but at this time of year we’d best stick to beef and potatoes.” His dinner companions accepted the suggestion. When the roast arrived, Grant cut a piece for himself but sent it back to the kitchen for more thorough cooking. “I can’t abide bloody meat,” he explained, “or blood of any sort, come to that.”

“An odd quirk for a general,” Lee said.

Grant chuckled in self-deprecation. “So it is, but I expect we all have our crotchets.” The colored waiter brought back his beef. It was black on the outside and gray on the inside. It had to be as tough as shoe leather, and taste like it, too, but he ate it with every sign of enjoyment.

Porter drank two glasses of whiskey; Lee and Marshall shared a bottle of wine. Despite rumors about Grant’s tippling, he stuck to coffee. Once the main course and the plum pudding that followed had been cleared away, Lee said, “General, if I may make so bold as to enquire, how do you view your role and that of your men here?”

Grant paused for thought before he answered. He had a pokerplayer’s face, one that revealed nothing unintended. “More that of policeman than soldier, I believe: to keep either side from doing too much in the way of smuggling rifles, to keep this a political fight and not a new outbreak of civil war, and to keep the election as honest as may be. And you, sir?”

Lee’s glass still held a little wine. He raised it in salute to Grant. “We shall get on capitally, sir. I could not have hoped to combine accuracy and succinctness so.”

“We would do well to cooperate if we hope to maintain the fragile peace here and especially in Missouri,” Porter said; his flat Pennsylvania accent—his father was a former governor of the state—contrasted with both Grant’s western speech and the soft Virginia tones of the Confederate officers. “Both states already hold enough rifles, and to spare, to break out in fresh fighting even were no new weapons smuggled across any borders.”

“Quite true,” Lee said, remembering blue coats and gray at Munfordsville. “Having spent so much time at war, we soldiers deserve a spell as peacemakers and peacekeepers, would you not agree?”

“I’d toast you, sir, if I had strong drink before me,” Grant said.

“I am pleased to accept the spirit of the toast without the spirits,” Lee said. Charles Marshall raised an eyebrow, Horace Porter snorted and then tried to pretend he hadn’t, and Grant chuckled, just as if, less than a year earlier, the four men hadn’t done their best to slaughter one another’s armies. It was, in fact, a most convivial evening.

A sunbeam stealing through the window woke Lee up. He left his nightcap on when he got out of bed; the fire in the fireplace had died during the night, and the room was almost as cold as his rent outside Orange Court House had been the winter before. After a good, satisfying stretch, he walked over to the sideboard where his uniform hung.

Everything happened at once then. A rifle roared. The window by which he was standing blew in, showering him with splinters of glass. A bullet buzzed past his head and smacked into the opposite wall.

He instinctively ducked, though even as he did so, he knew the motion was useless. He made himself straighten, ran the two steps to the window. By the sound, the rifle had been a Springfield; whoever was firing would need time to reload, time in which he could duck. Only later did he think two gunmen might have waited outside.

The outer air was even colder than that in his room. He stuck out his head, looked up and down the street. A man was running away, fast as he could go. A couple of other people pursued him, but only a couple—the hour was too early for many people to be out and about. A rifle lay against the front wall of the bakery that lay opposite the Galt House on Second Street.

Charles Marshall pounded on the door. “General Lee! Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you, Major.” Lee let his aide in to prove it. On his way back to the bed, he started to hop. “No, not quite, I fear; I seem to have cut my foot on some of this glass. A maid will have to sweep it up.”

“You have some in your beard, too,” Marshall said. Lee ran his fingers through it. Sure enough, glittering shards fell down the front of his nightshirt. Marshall’s voice rose with outrage as the full import of the situation sank in: “Someone tried to kill you, sir!”

“So it would appear,” Lee said. By then, the hall outside his door was full of staring, chattering people, among them a popeyed Horace Porter. He spoke to them: “I am grateful for your concern, my friends, but, as you see, I remain uninjured. Major, would you be so kind as to shut that, so I can get properly dressed?”

Marshall obeyed, although, to Lee’s secret annoyance, he stayed inside himself. “Who could want to harm you, sir?” he asked as Lee buttoned his trousers.

“There are undoubtedly a goodly number of Northern men who have little cause to love me,” Lee replied. As he pulled on his boots, he reflected that some men from the South also failed to look on him with affection. But no. An assassin from the Rivington men would have used an AK-47 at close range, not a Springfield—and with the automatic fire from an AK-47 would have been far more likely to accomplish what he’d set out to do.

Charles Marshall put his head out the window. He whistled softly. “At that range, you were very lucky, sir.” He paused, looked out toward where the rifle lay. His tone turned musing. “Or perhaps, from the position this murderer took, the reflection of the sun against the glass here helped throw off his aim.”

“Let me see.” Lee also gauged the angle. “Yes, it could well be so—but that is also luck of a sort, is it not?” Shouts came from the direction in which his assailant had fled. He turned his head that way. Of themselves, his eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens, Major, they seem to have caught him. Quick work there.” He drew back so his aide could have a look.

Behind his spectacles, Marshall’s eyebrows also rose. “It’s a nigger, by God!” he exclaimed.

“Is it?” Lee displaced Marshall again. Sure enough, the man being dragged along in the middle of the crowd was black. He saw Lee looking at him, started to shout something. One of his captors hit him just then, so his words were lost.

Lee left the window and went out into the hall, which was still crowded with people but not the mad crush it had been a few minutes before. General Grant caught his eye. “I hear you were shot at,” Grant said. Lee nodded. Grant’s mouth shaped a thin smile. “Not how I’d care to be awakened for breakfast. As long as you’re up, though, shall we go have some?”

“An excellent suggestion,” Lee said, liking the way the Federal general made no undue fuss about the incident—but then, Grant had earned a reputation for coolness under fire.

Breakfast, however, proved next to impossible. Lacking Grant’s sangfroid, a stream of local dignitaries—mayor, sheriff, lieutenant governor of Kentucky, along with a couple of others whose names and titles Lee failed to catch—came up to him and expostulated over the horror of what had just happened, how he should not deem it in any way an expression of how true and honest Kentuckians felt about him or the Confederacy, and on and on. The excited locals all but rent their garments. Lee answered as patiently as he could. Meanwhile, his ham and eggs sat on the plate in front of him, untouched and getting colder by the minute.

The officials ignored Grant, who drank cup after cup of black coffee, sliced up a cucumber, dipped the slices into vinegar, and ate them one after another, methodically, until they were all gone. It was not the sort of breakfast for which Lee would have cared, but at least Grant got to eat it.

When what seemed like the seven-hundredth uninvited guest approached the table, even Lee’s glacial patience started to slip. His hand tightened on the fork he had finally managed to pick up, as if he intended to stick it into this importunate fellow instead of his ham. But the man proved to have news worth hearing: “Found out why that crazy nigger took a shot at you, General.”

“Ah?” Lee’s grip on the fork relaxed. “Tell me, sir.” Interest also sparked in Grant’s eyes.

“He was yellin’ an’ cussin’ and carryin’ on about how if you hadn’t gone and took Washington City, the Federals would’ve won the war and set all the niggers down South free.”

“I suspect there may be some truth in that,” Lee said. “No doubt General Grant will concur.”

“No doubt at all,” Grant said promptly, and Lee remembered first how much the Federal commander had wanted to go on fighting and then what the outcome of that fight would have been without the intervention of the Rivington men. Grant continued, “That does not give that Negro or anyone else the right to go shooting at General Lee now, though. For better or worse, the war is over.”

“What will they do with him?” Lee asked.

“Try him and hang him, I expect,” the Kentuckian answered with a shrug. “Oh, he said one other thing, General Lee: he said you must own a rabbit’s foot off a rabbit caught in a graveyard at midnight, or else he never would have missed you.”

“Morning sun is a likelier reason than anything from the black of night,” said Lee, who had no such charm. He explained how the would-be assassin had picked a poor spot from which to fire.

The Kentuckian laughed. “Ain’t that just like a fool nigger’?” He made as if to clap Lee on the back for his escape, but thought better of it; Lee was not a man to inspire casual familiarity from strangers. Leaving his gesture awkwardly half-completed, the fellow departed. Lee’s breakfast was ruined, but he ate it anyhow. A bad breakfast was far preferable to the prospect of no breakfast at all, ever again.

During the next few months, Lee traveled all through Kentucky and Missouri. He ran up more miles, faster, than he ever had on campaign, but then, but for that one Negro, no one was shooting at him now.

Grant traveled even farther, especially in Missouri. Missouri had no direct train connections with Kentucky, Tennessee, or Arkansas—Lee had to travel by coach from Columbus, Kentucky, to Ironton, Missouri, where the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad reconnected him with the rail network. Grant, on the other hand, could reach St. Louis—where he had once lived—quickly and easily by way of the Ohio and Mississippi across Indiana and Illinois, and made several trips there.

Lee was pleased at how well both sides held to their pledges of keeping soldiers out of the disputed states. That did not mean no one invaded Kentucky and Missouri, however. Every politician, Northern and Southern, who could stand on a stump and put one word after another, or ten thousand after another ten, flooded into the two states to tell their people just why they should choose the United States or the Confederacy.

Listening to a pro-Confederate orator thunder abuse at the North at a torchlight rally one night in Frankfort, Charles Marshall made a sour face and said,” Anyone can tell he spent the war safely far away from the firing lines. Had he ever faced the Yankees in battle, he would own far more respect for their manhood than he currently displays.”

“How right you are,” Lee replied, as appalled as his aide at the oratory: the speaker had just called the Northerners cold-blooded, fat-faced, nigger-loving moneygrubbers. Lee went on, “I confess to a certain amount of embarrassment at representing the same nation as does this eloquent fellow.” To emphasize his distaste, he turned half away from the shouting, gesticulating man up on the platform.

“I know what you mean, sir…, But Marshall, as if drawn by some horrid fascination, kept watching the orator. Red light from the torches flickered off his spectacle lenses. “Even if he wins votes, he also sows hatred.”

“Just so,” Lee said. “For example, have you seen this?” He took out a pamphlet and handed it to Marshall.

His aide held it close to his face so he could read it in the torchlight. “ ‘What Miscegenation Is! And What You May Expect if Kentucky Votes Union,”, he quoted. He gave the pamphlet a bemused look. “The cover is—striking.”

“That is one word which may truthfully apply to it,” Lee admitted. The pamphlet showed a black man, his nose and lips grotesquely exaggerated, embracing a white woman and tilting her face up for a kiss. “We are, fortunately, not responsible for this document: you will note the learned lawyer Mr. Seaman had it printed in New York.”

“By the look of the thing, the learned Mr. Seaman, merely by existing, besmirches the legal profession.” Marshall held the pamphlet between thumb and forefinger, as if to minimize his contact with it.” Are the contents as lurid as the cover?”

“Easily,” Lee said. “And many of our speakers, though it did not originate with us, distribute it broadside, as a warning against what may come should the Republicans gain the upper hand again. It may perhaps be effective, but I find it repugnant.”

“The Yankees have hardly been kind in what they say about us,” Marshall said. “Can we afford to indulge such scruples?”

Lee merely looked at him until he hung his head. “I am disappointed in you, Major. Can we afford not to indulge them? Regardless of whether we ultimately find ourselves in possession of Kentucky and Missouri, we shall have to live with ourselves—and with the United States—afterwards. Poisoning the air with lies will not make matters easier.”

“You view these matters from a higher plane than I have reached,” Marshall said, still sounding ashamed. “You truly would not mind if the disputed states chose the Union over us, would you, sir?”

“I hope they see the Confederacy’s merits, as I have,” Lee replied after some thought. “But I would sooner see them go willingly with those people than unwillingly with us. That, after all, is the principle upon which we formed our nation, and for which we fought so long and hard. That—not this.” He took the pamphlet from Charles Marshall, let it fall, and ground it beneath his boot heel.

Major Marshall thrust a telegram into Lee’s hands. “You must see this directly, sir.”

“Thank you, Major.” Lee unfolded the flimsy paper. The words on it leaped out at him:

14 MARCH 1865. u.s. LIEUTENANT ADAM SLEMMER CAPTURED TWO MEN WITH A HORSE TRAIN OF AK-47s AND CARTRIDGES THIS DATE TOMPKINSVILLE KENTUCKY. PLEASE ADVISE. RICHARD INGOM, CAPTAIN, C,S.A. ELECTION OBSERVERS.

Lee wadded up the telegram and flung it against the wall. “Those goddamned fools,” he ground out—who else would be running repeaters but the men from Rivington? His head tossed like an angry stallion’s. “Do they think they are lords of the earth, to arrogate to themselves the authority for such an action? Where the devil is Tompkinsville, Major?”

“Just north of the Tennessee border, sir, southeast of Bowling Green. It’s not on any railroad line.” Marshall must have expected and prepared for the question, for he answered as quickly and certainly as if Lee had enquired about the location of Richmond.

“We can get to Bowling Green quickly, then. We’ll hire horses there and ride for Tompkinsville. Telegraph ahead to Captain Ingom that we are on our way, and on no account to allow rifles or prisoners to proceed until we arrive.”

“I’ll head directly for the telegraph office, sir.” Marshall hurried away.

Two days later, the two gray-clad men reined in their blowing horses in front of Tompkinsville’s only hotel. Lee felt his years as he dismounted; he hadn’t ridden so hard for so long since his Indian-fighting days in the west. He was not surprised to see General Grant leaning against one of the columns of the hotel’s false front. Touching the brim of his hat to Grant, he said, “The stableman at Bowling Green told me you’d got there before us, sir.”

“I wish I could have done as well at Bealeton, sir,” Grant replied; by the sound of his voice, he would be mentally refighting his battles against Lee the rest of his life. He went on, “I’ve not been here long myself—no more than a couple of hours.”

“Then you will already have spoken to your Lieutenant Slemmer.”

“So I have. Seems he and his companion, Lieutenant James Porter, were riding a bit south of here when they came upon two men leading several heavily loaded horses. Becoming suspicious, they got the drop on the men and forced them to reveal what the loads were: your pestiferous repeaters and ammunition for same. They brought the men and horses here to Tompkinsville, where your Captain Ingom, who happened to be in town, was fully acquainted with the situation.”

“Generous of you,” Lee said; had Ingom not seen the Northern men bringing in their prisoners, he suspected he would never have heard of the incident. But that was what the observers were for: to make sure both sides played by the rules to which they’d agreed—rules that frowned on gun running. Lee asked, “Have you yet questioned these men?”

“No, sir. When Captain Ingom told me he had notified you and you were on your way, I decided to wait until you got here. The men and horses are under guard at the livery stable down the street. Will you join me?”

Lee inclined his head. “By all means. And let me express my thanks for your scrupulous observance of the proprieties obtaining in this matter.”

“Anything else would only cause more trouble, I thought,” Grant said.

In the stable, a Federal lieutenant held an army Colt revolver on two men sitting glumly in the hay. Sure enough, they both wore the mottled caps, coats, and trousers of the Rivington men. “On your feet, you,” the lieutenant barked. His captives made no move to obey until they saw Lee and Grant. Then they stood, slowly, as if to show they would have done the same thing without being ordered.

One of them swept off his plain, ugly cap in a gesture that made it seem a cavalier’s plumed chapeau. “General Lee,” he said, bowing. “Allow me to present my comrade, Willem van Pelt.”

“Mr. de Buys.” That smooth bow, so like Jeb Stuart’s, brought the Rivington man’s name back to Lee.

“You know this fellow?” Grant’s voice was suddenly hard and suspicious.

“To my mortification, I do.” Ignoring the proffered introduction, Lee growled, “What the devil are you doing here, Mr. de Buys?”

Konrad de Buys’s eyes were wide and innocent. A catamount’s eyes were innocent, too, just before it sprang. Lee wondered how the Northern soldiers had got the drop on a warrior of his quality. The Rivington man said, “We were just coming up to sell a few guns, General, sporting guns, you might say. Is anything wrong with that?”

“Is anything wrong with pouring oil on a fire?” Lee retorted. De Buys still looked innocent. His comrade, Willem van Pelt, was big and stolid and seemed stupid; Lee would have bet that was as much a façade as de Buys’s innocence.

“To whom were you going to sell these rifles?” Grant asked.

“Oh, there are always buyers,” de Buys said airily.

“No doubt,” Lee said. He could picture the sort of men de Buys had in mind-raiders to sweep down on little towns before the election, or on the day, and to make sure the folk there voted the right way. He turned to Grant. “Will you step outside with me for a moment, sir?” They stayed outside longer than a moment. When they returned, Lee said, “Mr. de Buys, General Grant here has graciously agreed to buy every one of your repeaters, and their accompanying cartridges.”

That got through the fronts both Rivington men held up as shields against the world. Willem van Pelt spoke for the first time: “No way we’ll sell to his bloody sort.”

“Oh, but gentlemen, he will give you a finer price than you could hope to receive from anyone else,” Lee said.

Grant nodded. “That’s right.” He reached into a trouser pocket, took out a silver dollar, and tossed it at Konrad de Buys’s feet. “There you go, for the lot of ‘em.”

An angry flush mounted de Buys’s cheeks. “Be damned to your dollar, and to you, too.”

“You’d best take it,” Grant told him. “With it, you and your friend there can ride back to Tennessee. Without it, you go North under guard for more questions—a lot more.”

Willem van Pelt worked his jaw and tensed, as if to make some sort of move. The Federal lieutenant, an alert young man, swung his revolver toward the Rivington man. “Easy, Willem,” Konrad de Buys said, setting a hand on van Pelt’s arm. He swung his hunting cat’s gaze toward Lee. “So you’d sooner work with the Yankees than with us, eh, General? We’ll remember that, I promise you.”

“The United States have business in Kentucky and Missouri till June, and have handsomely kept their agreements with us. You, sir, do not belong here, not if you are running guns. Now get your horses and go, and count yourselves lucky to have that opportunity.” Lee turned to Grant. “Perhaps your lieutenants will ride with them a ways, to ensure that they do cross the border.” Then, to de Buys, in tones of palpable warning: “You personally and your colleagues shall be held responsible for the safety of the two Federals.”

Grant chuckled: “It seems you needn’t fret over that, General, not when my lads captured these fellows in the first place.”

“They never would have, if they hadn’t come on us when I was in the bushes with my pants around my ankles,” Konrad de Buys growled. Grant’s chuckle turned into a laugh.

Lee laughed, too, but was inclined to believe the Rivington man. With or without their marvelous repeaters, his kind were uncommonly dangerous, and de Buys himself more so than most. “Remember what I told you,” Lee said sternly, and was relieved to see both Rivington men give grudging nods.

They and the Federals rode south from Tompkinsville that afternoon. Grant stayed in town to await the lieutenants’ return, so he and they could start the repeaters on their journey northwards. Lee and Marshall set off for Bowling Green. As they rode out of Tompkinsville, Marshall said,” Are you sure it is expedient, sir, just to give some dozens of repeaters to the Yankees like that?”

“Did I believe they had none, Major, I assure you I should never have done so,” Lee answered. “But they surely possess samples a-plenty, whether seized from prisoners or taken from beside corpses, as our men used to take Springfields to replace the smoothbore muskets they’d been issued. And by ceding the guns, I kept the Rivington men out of Northern hands. As they know about a good many things besides AK-47s, I count them as more important than the rifles.”

“Ah. Put that way, I see your point.” Marshall ran a hand through his wavy blond hair. “They do sometimes seem all but omniscient, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Lee said shortly. That was what worried him about the men of America Will Break. After a moment, he added, “Omniscient they are not, however, for I can think of one thing they surely do not know.”

“What’s that, sir?” Marshall sounded genuinely curious.

“Not to meddle in our politics.” Lee booted his hired horse into a trot. Marshall matched him to keep up. They rode some time in silence.

People argued even as they filed into the Louisville park. It was Good Friday. Under other circumstances, many of them would have been in church. But church would be there Easter Sunday, and the Sunday after that, and the year after that. They might never hear a President—or rather, a recent ex-President—of the United States again.

U.S. flags flew at all four comers of the speakers’ platform. They still displayed thirty-six stars, though eleven states had left the Union for good and two more were wavering. Some of the people in the crowd waved the old banner, too. But others carried one of the several versions of the Confederate flag. Already the rival factionalists were beginning to push and shove each other.

Charles Marshall’s spectacles lent him a supercilious air as he stood at the edge of the swelling throng. Perhaps that was no accident, for his voice held a definite sniff: “Considering where he took his country, Lincoln has considerable nerve to show his face in Kentucky and urge it to follow his lead.”

“Lincoln has considerable nerve,” Lee said, “and this is, after all, his birth state. But I question his political wisdom in coming here—Seymour and McClellan both outpolled him in this state, Seymour by an enormous margin, so how can he hope to sway any substantial number of voters?”

A year before, he would never have thought to make such political calculations. His life had been simpler then, his only problem the straightforward one of beating back the Army of the Potomac when it began to move. With all his soul, he longed for those simpler days, but he knew it would take another war to bring them back, and that was too high a price to pay.

Marshall started to say something, but his words were lost in the peculiar roar, half cheer and half hiss, that went up from the crowd. It reminded Lee of a locomotive with a bad boiler. The man who produced that frightening mixture of hate and adulation stood on the platform, unmistakably tall and unmistakably lean, and waited for the tumult to ebb. At last, it did.

“Americans!” Lincoln said, and with a single word drew all attention to himself, for no one, whether staunch Union man or backer of the Confederacy, denied himself that proud title. Lincoln used it again: “Americans, surely you know I should rather have given up an my life’s blood sooner than see my beloved nation tom in two.”

“We can fix that for you, by God!” a heckler yelled, and a savage chorus of jeers arose.

Lincoln spoke through them: “Both sides in the late conflict spoke the same tongue, prayed to the same God. That He chose to grant victory to the South is a fact I can but strive to accept, understand it though I do not, for the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. I bear no animus against the men I still believe my brethren, nor have I ever.”

“It don’t work both ways!” the leather-lunged heckler shouted. Lee thought the fellow wrong, though during the simpler days of the war he would have agreed with him. Lincoln truly saw one nation rather than a federation of sovereign states, and acted on that belief, misguided and mistaken though Lee believed he was.

Now he continued, “You have rejected me, as well you might have, seeing how I failed to preserve the Union I swore to protect and defend. But I am only one small man. Do with me as you see fit; it will be no less than I deserve. But I pray you, men of Kentucky, with an my heart and an my soul and all my mind—do not reject the United States of America.”

More catcalls rang out, along with scattered cheers. Lincoln ignored both; Lee had the odd feeling that he was talking to himself up there on the platform, talking to himself yet at the same time desperately hoping others would hear: “Important principles may—and must—be inflexible. We all declare for liberty, but we do not always mean the same thing by it. In the United States, liberty means each man may do as he pleases with himself and his labor; in the South, the same word means some would do as they please with other men and that which they produce. To the fox, stealing chickens from the farmer looks like liberty, but do you think the fowl agree?”

“Just like honest, backwoods Abe to talk about foxes and hencoops,” Charles Marshall said, a sneer in his voice. Lee started to nod, but thought better of it. Yes, the image was not one he could imagine hearing from Jefferson Davis’s lips, but it illuminated the point Lincoln had made just before more vividly than might many a polished phrase. And that point was far from a bad one. Lee had the uncomfortable feeling of being more in sympathy with his country’s foes than with such friends as the men of America Will Break.

Lincoln said, “Men of Kentucky, men of America, if you vote to go South, you vote to forget Washington and Patrick Henry, Jefferson and Nathan Hale, Jackson and John Paul Jones. Remember the nation your fathers joined, remember the nation so many of you fought so bravely to defend. God bless the United States of America!”

Some cheered; more, Lee thought, booed. He found no small irony in the fact that three of Lincoln’s “American” heroes, Washington, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson, had been slaveholding Virginians; Martha Washington’s blood ran in the veins of his own wife. And the South revered the Founding Fathers no less than the North; he remembered coming into Richmond on Washington’s birthday and finding the War Department closed. And for that matter, Washington on horseback appeared on the Great Seal of the Confederate States. This time, he had no sympathy for Lincoln’s claims.

The former U.S. President descended from the platform. Here and there, instead of dispersing, men held their ground and argued with one another, standing nose to nose while they shouted and waved their arms. But no riot followed Lincoln’s speech. Given the volatility of Louisville—of all Kentucky, and Missouri, too—Lee knew only relief over that.

Marshall in his wake, he strode through the thinning crowd toward Lincoln. He was a tall man himself, and Lincoln, especially after resuming the stovepipe hat he had shed while speaking, possibly the tallest man in the park. The ex-President was easy to keep in sight.

Lincoln soon spotted Lee. He waited for him to come up. “Mr. President,” Lee said, inclining his head.

“Not anymore,” Lincoln said. “And we both know whose fault that is, don’t we?”

The Rivington men’s, Lee thought. Without them, from what they’d said, Lincoln would still be President, and President of a nation intent on taking vengeance on the unsuccessfully seceded Southern states. Yet he did not sound bitter; he seemed wryly amused, as if talking of the world’s vagaries with a friend. Try as he would, Lee could not see in this elongated, homely man the ogre Andries Rhoodie had described.

But all that was by the way. Lincoln dwelt in the White House no more, and the nightmare future would not come to pass. Lee asked, “What do you plan to do now, sir?”

“Till the election, I aim to go through Kentucky and Missouri like Satan going up and down in the world, and do everything I can to hold ‘em in the Union,” Lincoln said, and poked more fun at himself by adding, “Not that some of the people in both states don’t already figure me for the devil, I expect. After that…” His voice trailed away.” After that, I suppose I’ll go home to Springfield, practice law, and get old. When I was younger, I never thought I’d escape obscurity, so going back to it should be easy enough. Maybe one day, when all this fuss has died down, I’ll write a book about how everything would have turned out for the best if it hadn’t been for Bobbie Lee.”

“You will, I hope, forgive me, sir, for holding the opinion that these matters have turned out for the best,” Lee said.

“You don’t need my forgiveness, General, though you’re polite to ask for it. Even under your Southern constitution, every man may hold what opinions he likes, eh? Candide believed to the end that this was the best of all possible worlds.” Lincoln let out a wry laugh. “What does what I think matter, anyhow? I’m going back into the shadows. But you, General, your future stretches out ahead lit with torches and paved with gold.”

“Hardly that, sir,” Lee said.

“No? Where else for the noblest Virginian of them all but at the head of—of his country?” Lincoln’s mouth twisted. Even now, going on a year after the South had won its independence, acknowledging the Confederacy pained him.

Lee also wondered whether he meant the crib from Shakespeare as compliment or sarcasm. He answered, “I am proud to serve my state and my nation in whatever capacity they choose for me.”

Lincoln looked down at him. As always; he found that disconcerting; he was used to holding the high ground in conversation. “Serving a country is all very well, General, but when the time comes, will you be able to lead it in the direction you know it must go?” He did not wait for a reply, but touched a finger to the brim of his hat and departed.

Charles Marshall stared after him. “How could the North have been so misguided as to elect that man its President?” He mimed a couple of steps’ worth of Lincoln’s loose-jointed gait.

“He is peculiar-looking, to himself, I understand, not least. But he knows the proper questions to ask.” Lee also watched Lincoln until he disappeared behind some willows with their full skirts of new spring leaves. The proper question indeed: if he said slavery might possibly have to end one day, who in the South would listen to him?

“Sorry to disturb your supper, General Lee, sir,” a messenger boy said, dumping a tall pile of telegrams onto Lee’s table in the Galt House dining room.

“It’s all right, son.” Lee raised an eyebrow in humorous resignation. Already telegrams leaned in drunken profusion against a platter of stuffed duck, against a bowl of peas, a gravy boat, wineglasses; already they covered the bread and hid the relish trays from sight. Lee went on, “It’s plain I’ll be reading more than eating for yet another night.”

The messenger boy probably did not hear that last sentence; he was hurrying back to the telegraph office for a new load of messages. General Grant said, “When you’re done with those, sir, if you’d be kind enough to pass them my way—”

“Certainly.” Lee went through the sheaf one by one, occasionally pausing to cut another bite from the slice of saddle of mutton in front of him. Behind him, a small colored boy with a large peacock fan stirred the still, muggy air that went with June evenings in Louisville. “Not too hard, there,” Lee warned him as the papers on the table shifted. “You don’t want to blow them into the soup, now do you?” The little slave giggled and shook his head.

Lee finished the pile. “No great irregularities here,” he told Grant.

The Federal general was also going through a stack. “Nor in mine, it seems.” He reached bottom just after Lee did. “Shall we exchange prisoners?”

In return for the reports the Federal election inspectors had sent to Grant, Lee gave him the latest set of messages he himself had received from the Confederate inspectors. As Grant said, the vote had on the whole proceeded smoothly. Some precincts from the south and west of Missouri had yet to report. Lee suspected no one in those parts had voted; regardless of armistices, regardless of Federal occupation troops, the civil war there went on. But the area was thinly populated anyhow. Even had all its votes gone for the Confederacy, the state as a whole would have remained in the Union.

Kentucky was another matter. Grant acknowledged as much when he said, “In the coming week, General Lee, I shall shift my headquarters to St. Louis, so as to maintain them within the territory of the United States.”

“You may even find it more congenial than Louisville, from your previous acquaintance with the city,” Lee said.

“I doubt it.” Grant’s face never gave away much, but his voice turned bleak. “I was out of the army—on the beach, you might say—while I was there, so my memories are not entirely happy ones. And, as you may understand, sir, I cannot rejoice at Kentucky’s having voted itself out of the Union to which I owe everything I have in this world.”

“I respect the sincerity of your sentiments; no, further—I admire it. I hope you will understand that the people of Kentucky are equally sincere in theirs.” By close to four to three, Kentucky’s voters had chosen to cast their lot with the South.

Grant said, “I recognize it, but I own to having a great deal of difficulty admiring it. To speak frankly, I believe the Southern cause one of the worst for which people ever took up arms, and one for which there was not the least excuse. That you fought so long and valiantly for such a patently bad cause has always been a wonder to me.”

“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.