The Guns of the South

*IX*

Robert E. Lee rode Traveller up Twelfth Street toward President Davis’s residence: up in the most literal sense of the word, for the Greek Revival mansion stood on the tip of Shockoe Hill, north and east of Capitol Square.

Jefferson Davis met him in front of the gray building that, despite its color, had come to be known as the Confederate White House. Lee dismounted. Traveller swung his head down and began to crop the grass beside the walkway.

“Good morning. Good to see you, General,” Davis said as the two men shook hands. The President turned his head, called, “Jim! Come and see to General Lee’s horse.” All at once, he looked nonplused, an unfamiliar expression for that stern countenance to bear. “That’s twice I’ve done that this month alone, and it was January when Jim ran off, and Mrs. Davis’s maid with him.” He raised his voice again: “Moses!” A plump black man came out of the mansion, took competent charge of Traveller.

Lee followed Davis to the porch. The black-painted iron banister was rough under the palm of his right hand as he climbed the stairs. “Come into the parlor,” the President urged, standing aside so Lee could precede him.

Another slave brought in a tray of coffee, rolls, and butter. Lee broke a roll, but sniffed at the butter before he began to spread it. He set down the knife. “I believe I shall have it plain today,” he said.

Davis also sniffed at the butter dish. He made a sour face. “I’m sorry, General. Impossible to keep it fresh in this climate.”

“I know; I’ve found that, too. It’s of no consequence, I assure you.” Lee ate the roll, drank a cup of coffee. By the taste, the brew had some of the real bean in it; with the armistice, commerce was beginning to revive. But he also noted the sharp flavor of roasted chicory root. Times were still far from easy. He leaned forward in his seat. “How can I help you today, Mr. President?”

Davis fiddled with the black silk cravat under his wing collar. He leaned forward too, set his half-empty coffee cup on his knee. “Despite the armistice between ourselves and the United States, General, many points of disagreement obviously remain, the most urgent of them being precisely where our northern boundary shall rest.”

“Yes, that is a pressing concern,” Lee said.

“Indeed.” Davis smiled thinly at the understatement. “Mr. Lincoln and I have agreed to appoint commissioners to settle the matter amicably, if that proves at all possible.” The smile disappeared. “I sent commissioners to Washington from Montgomery before the war began, to settle our points of difference with the Federal government. Not only did he then refuse formally to treat with them, he and Secretary of State Seward led them to believe all would be peacefully resolved, when in fact they were planning the resupply and reinforcement of Fort Sumter. This time, I expect no such games.”

“I should hope not,” Lee said.

“And that is why I bade you join me here today,” Davis went on: “to ask if you would be kind enough to serve as one of my commissioners. Your colleagues would be Mr. Stephens and Mr. Benjamin. I want to have one military man as a member of the commission, and a man in whose judgment I may implicitly rely.”

“I am honored by the trust you repose in me, Mr. President, and pleased to serve in any capacity in which you think I might be of assistance to the nation,” Lee said. “Has President Lincoln also appointed commissioners?”

“He has,” Davis said. His mouth tightened, and he did not seem pleased about going on.

Finally Lee had to prompt him:. “Who are they?”

“Mr. Seward; Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War.” Davis stopped again. He got the last name out from between clenched teeth: “For his third commissioner, Lincoln has had the infernal gall to propose Ben Butler.”

“Has he?” Lee said, dismayed. “It is” an insult.”

“It is indeed,” Davis said. Butler, an accomplished lawyer and Democratic politician before the war, had turned into the worst sort of political general once fighting broke out. In Virginia, he had started the practice of treating escaped Southern slaves as contraband of war. As Federal proconsul of New Orleans, he had insulted the city’s women and made himself so loathed that the Confederacy vowed to hang him without trial if he was captured. Sighing, the President went on, “I wish we’d caught him as he was retreating from Bermuda Hundred. Then, if we’d found enough rope to go round his fat neck, we’d have been rid of him for good. But with the war ended, Lincoln has conferred diplomatic immunity upon him, and molesting him would only rouse fresh hostilities—with the onus of guilt for them upon us.”

Lee sighed, too. “Your reasoning is cogent, as always. Very well, Ben Butler it shall be. Are we to go to Washington, or will the Federal commissioners come here?”

“The latter,” Davis answered. “As we were the victors, theirs is the obligation to acknowledge that victory by visiting us. The telegraph will keep them adequately connected to Mr. Lincoln. Moreover, I entertain the hope that Butler will lack the courage to reenter a nation he has done so much to defile, thereby removing from us the requirement of treating with him.” By the doleful tone in his voice, he found that unlikely.

So did Lee. Though uncertain how much courage Butler possessed, he knew the man was long on effrontery. He asked, “When will the two gentlemen and Mr. Butler arrive?”

Davis smiled at his choice of words. “In three days’ time. I’ve arranged for them to stay at the Powhatan House and for an armed guard to ensure nothing unfortunate befalls Mr. Butler: the forms must be observed, after all. Your discussions themselves will take place in the Cabinet room, which, being but one floor below my own offices, will enable me to quickly form a judgment as to any disputed points.”

“Very good, Mr. President,” Lee said, nodding. Davis was a man to keep a close eye on everything that was done in his administration. Lee went on, “Mr. Benjamin must be pleased to have more activity in his sphere these days than was formerly the case.”

“Oh, indeed,” Davis said. “Along with the European powers, the Emperor Maximilian has sent a minister from the city of Mexico, and Dom Pedro of Brazil has also extended to us his nation’s recognition. As our social institutions are so like those of Brazil, I find that last recognition long overdue, but I shall take no public notice of the delay.”

“Have you specific instructions for the adjustments we are to seek from the United States?” Lee asked.

“I did not object to the armistice terms you proposed to Lincoln—as a starting point for our discussions. As to how much more than that starting point the Federals prove willing to yield, well, General, on that we shall have to await events. The. Rivington men, who have always been uncommonly well informed, seem to be under the impression that they may well surrender both Kentucky and Missouri, as well as specie payments to serve as an indemnity for what they worked upon our country, which, after all, bore the brunt of the recent fighting.”

“Kentucky and Missouri? That was not the impression Mr.

Lincoln created in me. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Lee frowned. He wondered how much—he wondered just what—the Rivington men had told Jefferson Davis. Though dealing with his own President, he felt the need to be circumspect in finding out. He said, “The Rivington men know a great many things, Mr. President, but they do not know everything there is to know.”

“I sometimes wonder.” Davis fell silent. He cocked his head slightly to one side, as if studying Lee. Then he murmured four words: “Two oh one four.”

Lee grinned in genuine admiration; it was all he could do to keep from clapping his hands. Had he not learned the secret of America Will Break, the numbers would have been meaningless to him. As it was…”So, Mr. President, they have also told you they’re from a time yet to come and given proofs you find convincing?”

“They have.” Jefferson Davis’s features were too stern, too disciplined, to be very expressive, but a tiny widening of his eyes, an easing of the tension that pulled, as if with purse strings, at the corners of his mouth, showed his relief. “I wondered if I was the only one to whom they’d entrusted their secret.”

“So did I,” Lee admitted. “I am glad to learn otherwise. But did they not tell you, sir, that while they came from the future, it was a future wherein the Federals overcame us, a future they traveled back here to prevent?”

Davis nodded; his wide, thin mouth narrowed again. “Yes, and of many evils that would arise there. Thaddeus Stevens.” He spoke the abolitionist’s name as if it were a curse. “If nothing else, they have kept that evil from overfalling us, for which alone we should be in their debt.”

“All true, Mr. President. They helped me greatly by their foreknowledge of the course Grant’s thrust into the Wilderness would take. But once I and others began to act upon that foreknowledge and change what would have been, the world grew apart from what they knew. Andries Rhoodie said as much to me; they now see through a glass, darkly, even as other men. They cannot know, then, it seems to me, upon what terms Mr. Lincoln’s commissioners will settle with us.”

Davis reached up to stroke the graying tuft of hair under his chin. “I see the point you are making, General. It is well taken. Nevertheless, they remain astute men, and their considered judgments worthy of our closest attention.”

“Certainly, sir.” Again choosing his words carefully, Lee added,” Any group within our confederation which found itself possessed of such power as the Rivington men enjoy would be worthy of our closest attention.”

“Lest they seek to dominate it, you mean?” Davis said. Lee nodded. So did the President, rather grimly. “That thought has crossed my mind, often in the small hours when I would be better off asleep. When the North remained our chiefest foe, it was a little worry. Now it is a larger one. I am glad to find that a man of your quality shares it. I gain confidence that, at need, I shall be able to pass on the burden to someone already familiar with it.”

“Sir?” Lee said, not quite catching the President’s drift.

Davis’s eyes bored into his. “You know that under the terms of the Constitution of the Confederate States, I am limited to a single six-year term. After the 1867 elections, our nation must have at its head someone able to rise above faction and lead us all. I can think of no one more likely than you to meet that requirement and, additionally, to meet whatever challenge the Rivington men may present. I chose you as a commissioner not only for your undoubted and unmatched abilities, but also to help keep you in the public eye between now and our election day. One thing I have learned is that the people forget too soon.”

“You are serious,” Lee said slowly. He had not been so startled since the day when General McClellan, relying on a captured set of Confederate orders, abandoned his usual indolence and broke through the South Mountain gap to force the battle of Sharpsburg. This surprise was almost as disagreeable as the other had been. “I have never taken an interest in politics, Mr. President, nor ever cared to.”

“I was trained as a soldier myself, as you know perfectly well. I would ten—a hundred—times rather have commanded troops in the field than spent my days wrangling with a recalcitrant Congress over the minutiae of legislation whose urgency in the situation in which we found ourselves should have been apparent to anyone this side of raving idiocy, a state to which I frequently thought Congress was striving to reduce me. But I remained where fate and duty placed me, and I entertain no doubt that, come the time, you will do the same.”

“May that cup pass from me,” Lee said.

“You know what passed with Him who first made that prayer, and how, when the hour came, He drank the cup to the dregs.” The President smiled his thin, wintry smile. “We’ve known each other better than half our lives, since the West Point days when we were youths learning to be soldiers—and to be men. Now that we are become what once we aspired to be, how may we fail to recognize that which is required of us?”

“Give me battle, any day,” Lee said.

“Battle you shall have, even if it be battle without flags or cannon. That, if nothing else, this office holds.”

Lee still shook his head. Davis did not press him further. The President was not always an adroit politician; his own passionately clear view of affairs made him have trouble compromising with those who held differing opinions. But Lee knew Davis had hooked him as neatly as if he were a crappie in a gravel-bottomed stream. Just as a crappie would go for a worm, so Lee leaped high when his duty was invoked. Oh, but the hook was barbed, barbed. “I think I should sooner face the frying pan than the Presidency,” he muttered.

“Of course,” Davis said, taking the privilege of the last word, “for the Presidency is the fire.”

With a screech of iron against iron, a deep-throated bellow from the steam whistle, and a series of jerks as cars came together as closely as their couplings would allow, the southbound train pulled to a halt. Nate Caudell wiped his face with his sleeve. With the windows shut, the passenger car was a stinking sweatbox. With them open, so much smoke poured in that all the soldiers would have taken on the look of a traveling blackface minstrel show.

A brakeman stuck his head into the compartment, shouted, “Rivington! Alf out for Rivington! Half an hour layover.”

Mollie Bean got to her feet. “This here’s where I leave.”

“Good luck to you, Melvin.” “Y’all take care now, you hear?” “We uns will miss you.” Whether she was called Melvin or not, her disguise could not have held up much longer, not from the way the Castalia Invincibles hugged her as she walked to the front of the car.

Caudell got off at Rivington too, though he intended to board again, for he was traveling through to Rocky Mount. He told himself he just wanted to stretch his legs and to get a look at the town from which the marvelous Confederate repeaters had sprung, but somehow he was not surprised to end up walking beside Mollie.

“I’m sorry you chose to stop here,” he said after a little while.

“On account of what I’m likely to be doin’, you mean?” she asked. He felt himself reddening, but had to nod. Mollie sighed. “Readin’ and cipherin’ or no, I couldn’t set on anything else that seemed promisin’, if you know what I mean.” She looked up at him. “Or was you maybe thinkin’ of takin’ me along with you?”

Caudell had thought of it, more than once. Being with Mollie as a soldier, as a companion, made him think differently about her—and in many ways more of her—than any other woman he’d known. But…she was still a whore. He could not make himself forget that. “Mollie, I—” he said, and could not go on.

“Never mind, Nate.” She set a hand on his arm. “I shouldn’t’ve asked you. I know how things are. I just hoped—Oh, shitfire.” The more she sounded like a soldier, the harder the time he had remembering she was anything else. She forced animation into her voice: “Will you look at this place? Don’t hardly seem like the same town I left two years ago.”

Caudell looked. The train tracks ran down the middle of what passed for Rivington’s main street. The train station was of familiar Southern type, with clapboard walls, an eight-foot roof overhang on either side to keep off the rain, and unloading doors for freight and passengers. But everything was freshly painted and almost preternaturally clean; two Negroes with long-handled mops went around swabbing off soot as Caudell watched. Several others picked up trash and tossed it into sheet-metal bins. He’d never seen anything like that before anywhere.

Just west of the station stood a row of warehouses that were plainly new: the pine boards from which they’d been built were a bright, unweathered straw color. Sentries wearing the motley green-brown that was the uniform of the Rivington men and carrying AK-47s walked a beat around the warehouses. They looked alert and dangerous, and measured Caudell with their eyes when he glanced their way. They did not seem much impressed, which irritated him. What sort of action had they been through?

“Never seen them before,” Mollie said; Caudell wondered if she meant the warehouses or their arrogant guards. She pointed to the corduroyed road that ran west from the new buildings until it disappeared into the pine woods that grew almost to the edge of town. “That there’s new, too. Wonder where it goes? Never knew anybody to live out that way.”

“Fancy road to go nowhere,” Caudell said; corduroying was expensive.

“Have to ask at the Excelsior.” Mollie nodded toward a rather shabby hotel a few doors down from the station. It hadn’t been repainted any time recently. Neither had the general store, the Baptist church, or the blacksmith’s shop nearby. They seemed reassuringly normal. But beyond them was another hotel that. dwarfed the old Excelsior. It was smaller than the Powhatan in Richmond, but not much. In bold red letters above the doorway, its sign said NOTAHILTON. “What’s a Notahilton?” Mollie said, her eyes wide. “That’s new since I left. So are the bank and the church by it.”

“Damned if I know what a Notahilton is,” Caudell answered. “Shall we wander over and find out?”

“Wouldn’t want you to miss your train, Nate. Fellow said half an hour.”

“Just because he said it doesn’t make it so. Half an hour train time is usually an hour and a half if you’re not railroading.” Despite his confident words, Caudell glanced back toward the train. The local Negroes certainly seemed more diligent than the ordinary run of slaves. He supposed he oughtn’t to have been surprised; if the Rivington men worked niggers hard in the army, they would hardly let them slack at home.

But his eyes opened wide at the vim with which a crew of four black men hauled wood from a covered rick and tossed it into the tender, at the care with which another slave, this one hardly more than a boy, oiled the trucks under each car. In his experience, most niggers would not have bothered to lift the oil can as they went from one car to the next: they would let a stream of oil spill onto the ground, though it had cost a dollar and a half a gallon even before the war. This Negro wasted not a drop; few white mechanics would have been so fussy.

Caudell stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. One hand closed on his pay warrant. He took it out. “I know what I can do fast, though: turn this into money. Let’s try your new bank instead of the Notahilton.”

“I got one of them, too,” Mollie said. “Let’s go.”

FIRST RIVINGTON BANK proclaimed the gilded sign above the entrance. Three clerks waited behind a high counter. A guard stood inside. He nodded politely to Caudell and Mollie. Caudell nodded back, also politely: the guard carried a repeater with the safety off and wore green-brown. He looked like a combat soldier.

“How can I help you gentlemen?” asked the clerk whom Caudell and Mollie approached. He had an accent like Benny Lang’s. Caudell passed him the warrant. “Forty dollars? Yes, sir, with pleasure.” He opened a drawer on his side of the counter, took out two big gold coins, a tiny gold dollar, two silver dimes, and a large copper cent, then passed them across the polished marble. “Here you are.”

Caudell gaped at the coins. “Gold?” he said, his voice a startled croak.

“Yes, sir, of course,” the clerk said patiently. “Forty dollars is 990 grains, or two ounces thirty grains. These are one ounce apiece.” He picked up the big coins, let them ring sweetly against the counter. They were like no coins Caudell had seen before, with the profile of a bearded man on one side and an antelope on the other, but below the antelope were magic words: 1 oz. GOLD, .999 FINE. The clerk went on, “Thirty grains of gold comes to $1.21, which is your balance here.”

“I—never expected gold at all,” Caudell said. “Just banknotes.” No matter how big a lie that .999 FINE was, he had to come out ahead on this deal. He also abruptly understood why the First Rivington Bank needed a guard with an AK-47.

The clerk frowned at him. “This is Rivington, sir. We deal properly here, especially to soldiers.” His eyes dared Caudell to challenge him. All at once, Caudell was convinced his gold was the real thing. He scooped it up.

“Pay me, too.” Mollie passed the Rivington man her warrant.

“Twenty-six dollars, Private, makes 643-½ grains, which is…” The clerk thought for a moment.” A trifle more than an ounce and a third.” He took out another of those one-ounce coins, another one smaller but otherwise identical—”Here is a quarter-ounce piece. “—a gold dollar, three quarters, and, after another pause for thought, a one-cent piece. “That should do it.”

Mollie and Caudell both shook their heads in disbelief as they left the bank. “Gold,” Mollie whispered. “I got me a bit of a stake.”

“Me, too,” Caudell said. Rivington men might trade gold dollars for Confederate dollars one for one, but no one else did. Forty dollars in gold would take him a long way. “Let’s go spend some of it, and have ourselves a drink at that Notahilton.”

“That sounds right good to me,” Mollie said. But just then, the steam whistle let go with a blast that rang through the town. “Oh, goddam.” She kicked at the dirt, began to turn away.

“I guess they mean that half an hour after all,” Caudell said regretfully. Then he had an inspiration: “Tell you what, Mollie: one of these days soon, you go on into that Notahilton, find out what it’s like. Then you write me a letter and tell me about it. I’ll write back; I promise I will. That way we can stay friends, even if we’re far apart.”

“Write a letter?” Mollie looked more frightened than she ever had, marching into battle. “Nate, you learned me some readin’, but writin’—”

“You can do it. I know you can. In fact, I’ll write you first, so you’ll know where I am; I’m not sure whether I’m going to stay in Nashville or head on up to Castalia. And I expect to hear back from you, do you understand?” He did his best to sound like a first sergeant.

“I don’t know, Nate. Well, maybe if you do write first, I can try and answer you back. If you do.” If you don’t want to forget you ever knew me the minute that train rolls out of here, he read in her eyes. He wondered how many lies she had heard over the years, and from how many men.

“I’ll write,” he promised. The train whistle wailed a second warning. Caudell scowled. “They did mean it.” He hugged Mollie hard. It would not have seemed out of place to an onlooker even had she been only a fellow soldier. Through her shirt, though, her small firm breasts pressed against him. She hugged him, too. “Good luck to you,” he said.

“To you, too, Nate.” The whistle wailed again. Mollie pushed him away. “Go on. You don’t want to miss it.”

He knew she was right. He turned and trotted toward the train. He didn’t look back until just before he climbed aboard. Mollie was walking, not to the Notahilton, but into the old Excelsior. He shook his head, stared down at the dirty parquet floor of the passenger car. The train jerked, began to roll. Very soon, the bulk of the station hid the hotel from sight—very soon, but not soon enough.

“Rocky Mount!” the brakeman yelled as the train wheezed to a stop. “One-hour layover. Rocky Mount!”

Caudell climbed to his feet. Allison High stood too, held out his hand. “I wish you well, Nate, and that’s a fact,” he said.

“Thank you, Allison, and the same to you.” Caudell walked to the front of the car, shaking a few more hands as he went, Allison High sat back down; he wouldn’t get off until Wilson, down in the next county.

Caudell jumped down. Leaving the train for the last time made leaving the army seem real. He looked around, Save for the sign that told what town it belonged to, the station might have been cut from the same mold as Rivington’s: cut from that mold, and then left out in the rain for eighty or a hundred years. It was weather-beaten; two of the windows had empty panes; the decorative wooden latticework that edged the roof was broken in half a dozen places.

He looked north toward the mound on the far side of the falls of the Tar River, where Rocky Mount had first begun to grow. He had a clearer view than he really wanted; the year before, Federal raiders had burnt most of the cotton mills and cotton and tobacco warehouses that stood between the vain station and the older part of town. Here a wall stood, there a few charred timbers. The odor of burnt tobacco still hung in the air.

Off to one side lay the fine house that belonged to Benjamin Battle, who owned the mills. Somehow, it had escaped the flames. Seeing that, Caudell clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Them as has, gits,” he muttered to himself. He seldom let such uncouth Southernisms pass his lips, but nothing more refined seemed appropriate.

He walked over to the station. The stationmaster, a tall, thin, dour fellow in his sixties, peered out at him through one of the glassless panes. They had a few seconds’ staring contest before the stationmaster unwillingly said, “He’p you, so’jer?”

“When’s the next stage for Nashville?” Caudell asked.

Now the stationmaster smiled, exposing pink gums and a few yellowed stubs of teeth. “Just set out an hour or so ago,” he said with malicious satisfaction. “Ain’t gonna be another one fo’ two days, might could be three.”

“Damnation,” Caudell said. The stationmaster’s smile got wider. Caudell wanted to knock out the teeth he had left. He’d done some huge number of dozen-mile hikes in the army, and plenty worse than that, but the thought of returning to civilian life with one was less than appetizing. He turned away from the window. The stationmaster chuckled till he started to cough. Caudell hoped he’d choke.

Another train, this one coming up from the south, let its whistle squeal as it pulled into Rocky Mount. Caudell walked over to the east side of the station to have a look at who was coming in. A few small boys and old men joined him. Idlers, he thought. For the moment, he was an idler himself.

He gaped at the skeletal faces pressed against coach windows, at the rags and tatters that covered those emaciated bodies. Who were these victims of disaster, and how could his fellow spectators take the sight of them so calmly? Then an old man remarked, “Mo’ Yankee prisoners headin’ home,” and Caudell noticed that most of the train passengers’ rags were, or might once have been, blue.

He shook his head in mute, horrified sympathy. The men of the Army of Northern Virginia had gone hungry. The memory of that hunger would stay with him an his life. But these men had starved. Now he understood the difference. He also felt ashamed that his country could have let them suffer so. But with everything scarce, was it any wonder the Confederacy had seen to its own first?

Only a couple of men got off the train to stretch their legs; perhaps only a couple of men had the strength to do so. One of them spied Caudell. The man looked in better shape than most of his comrades; even his uniform was hardly more ragged than the first sergeant’s. “Hello, Johnny Reb,” he said with a nod and a grin. “How’re they hangin’?”

“Hello,” Caudell answered, rather more hesitantly. Casting about for something more to add to that, he asked, “Where’d they catch you, Yank?”

“Bealeton, just this past spring,” the Federal said. He jerked a thumb back toward the train. “Otherwise I’d look more like these poor devils.”

“Bealeton?” Caudell exclaimed. “I was there, in Hill’s corps.”

“Were you? We fought some of Hill’s men. Matter of fact, I was leading the 48th Pennsylvania there, in the IX Corps. I’m Henry Pleasants. I am—I used to be, I guess I mean—a lieutenant colonel.” Pleasants tapped the silver oak leaf on his left shoulder strap; the right strap was missing. He stuck out his hand.

Caudell shook it, gave his own name. He said, “We went up against IX Corps troops, but they were niggers. They fought better than I thought they might, but we chewed ‘em up pretty good.”

“That would have been Ferrero’s division,” Pleasants said. “They were all colored troops. I was under Brigadier General Potter.” He shook his head ruefully. He was somewhere not far from Caudell’s age, with dark hair, very fair, pale skin, and a scraggly beard that looked new. He went on, “Worse luck for the country, you chewed up the whole Army of the Potomac pretty good, you and those damned repeaters of yours.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s worse luck for the country,” Caudell retorted.

“No, I don’t suppose you would.” Pleasants chuckled. He seemed a man well able to take care of himself under any circumstances. “And since your side won, the history books won’t say that, either. But I do. It’s too damn bad. So there.”

Caudell laughed. He found himself liking this cheerfully defiant Northerner. “Tell you what, Yank—suppose I buy you a drink and we can argue about what’s good and what’s bad?”

“For a drink, Mr. First Sergeant Nate Caudell, sir, I’ll argue or not, just as you please. Where shall we go?”

Caudell thought about asking the sour stationmaster, decided not to bother. “We’ll find a place.” His confidence was soon rewarded. Of the three or four rebuilt buildings by the station, two proved to be taverns. He waved his new friend toward the cleaner-looking one.

Pleasants glanced back toward the train, which did not seem likely to go anywhere any time soon. He ran a hand through his hair. “Damned if I see. how you people ever managed to get from here to there. I’ve been on three different gauges of track since I set out from Andersonville, your locomotives are all fixing to die, and your tracks and beds are wearing out even though they’re on flat, easy ground. Disgraceful, if you ask me.”

“We manage,” Caudell said shortly. He eyed the Northern man. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“Damn well ought to.” It was amazing how well Pleasants could preen in such a shabby uniform. “I was a railroad engineer for years before I went into mining instead. But to hell with that. Are we going to stand out here gabbing all afternoon, or will you buy me that drink?”

When Caudell set his two silver dimes in front of the taverner, they bought him a quart jug. One drink turned into several. The whiskey hit Caudell hard; he’d stayed mostly sober in the army. He stared owlishly across the rickety table at Pleasants. “Why the devil do you want to go back North at all, Henry? You Yankees, you have engineers of this and engineers of that coming out of your ears. You stay down here, you could write your own ticket. Not much mining in this part of the state, but the railroads are crying for somebody who knows what he’s doing.”

Pleasants stared back for a little while before he answered; he was feeling his load, too. “You know, Nate, that’s tempting, it truly is. But I have me a train to catch.” He got up and wobbled toward the door. Caudell followed. They took a couple of steps in the direction of the station before they noticed the train was gone—possibly long gone, by the way the sun had become a sullen red ball just above the horizon. “It’s an omen, that’s what it is,” Pleasants declared. “Here I’m meant to be.” He struck a pose, staggered, and reeled into Caudell. They both laughed, then went back to the tavern.

The fellow who ran the place admitted he had rooms above the bar. For a gold dollar, Caudell got use of one of those rooms, a promise of breakfast, his two dimes back, and ten dollars in Confederate paper. He also got a thin tallow candle, hardly more than a taper, in a pewter holder to light his way up the stairs.

The room had only one bed, and that none too wide. Neither man cared. Caudell set the candle on the window while they undressed, then blew it out. Straw hissed and whispered as he and Pleasants lay down. Next thing he knew, it was morning.

He used the chamber pot, splashed water from the nightstand pitcher on his face and hands. Pleasants, who was still in bed, looked up at him accusingly. “You, sir, snore.”

“Sorry.” Caudell splashed himself again. The water was pleasantly cool, and took the edge off the ache behind his eyes. If Pleasants was similarly afflicted, a night spent with a bed companion who snored must have been grim. “Sorry,” he repeated, more sincerely this time.

A big plate of ham and grits and corn bread and honey further eased their pain. Pleasants was whistling as he went outside. He pointed back to the train station. “This miserable excuse for a railroad is the Wilmington and Weldon, am I right?” By his tone, he knew perfectly well he was right.

Caudell started to be offended. The Wilmington and Weldon, and its continuation up to Petersburg, had been a Confederate lifeline, carrying supplies from the blockade-runners at the port up to the Army of Northern Virginia—and sending rifles, ammunition, and desiccated meals from Rivington as well. From necessity, it had received such care as the South could give. Then he remembered his one short trip down to Manassas Junction on a line recently Northern. By Pleasants’s standards, this was a miserable excuse for a railroad.

Pleasants went on, “Then I suppose I have to I make my way to Wilmington to hire on, That would be—hmm—a hundred miles, maybe a hundred ten.” He seemed to have consulted a map he kept in his head.

“Here.” Caudell gave him the change from the night before. “This will help you get there, Henry. The South needs more men like you than it has.”

Pleasants took the money: “The South needs more men like you, too, Nate,” he said soberly. “I’ll pay you back every cent of this, I promise.” He clapped him on the shoulder.

“Don’t fret over it,” Caudell said, his voice gruff with embarrassment.

“I shall fret over it. By what you said, you’ll be in these parts for a while, in Nashville or—what was the name of the other town?—Castalia, that was it. I expect the postmaster will be able to track you down. You’ll hear from me, sir.” He started for the station.

Caudell went with him. Not long after Pleasants bought his ticket, a southbound train chugged into the station. More discharged Confederate soldiers got off, but none from Caudell’s company. Some stared at the warm good-bye one of their kind gave an obvious Yankee, but no one said anything about it.

Caudell decided to walk to Nashville after all. He had only the pair of one-ounce gold coins from Rivington in his pockets, and doubted a stage driver would be able to make change for his passage. Almost easier, he thought, to be honestly poor.

The walk, at his own speed instead of to the tap of a drum, was pleasant enough. Tobacco alternated with corn in the fields by the side of the road, along with forests of pine and maple. Squirrels wearing Confederate gray chattered in the branches of the trees. Caudell closed his eyes, stopped in the middle of the road. He had gone faraway, done things dark and terrible, things he’d never imagined when he set out for Raleigh to be a soldier; seen the marvels—and behind the marvels—of two nations’ capitals. Now he was home, and safe. The realization soaked into him, Warm as the sun that beat down on his head. He never wanted to leave Nash County again.

He walked on. After another mile or so, he passed a gang of blacks weeding in a tobacco field. They did not notice him; Their heads were down, intent on the work. Hoes rose and fell, rose and fell, not quickly but at a steady pace that would finish the job soon enough to keep the overseer contented—the eternal pace of the silver.

He’d grown used to faster rhythms. He also remembered, from his dealings with the Rivington men and from what he’d seen in Rivington itself, that slaves could be made to work to those rhythms. But why bother? Things got done, either way. Slowing down was part of coming home, too.

And as for slowing down, he would have screamed at the Castalia Invincibles for ambling along as he was doing. He did not get to Nashville until late afternoon. Maples and myrtles lined and shaded the road, which took the name First Street for its short journey through the town. Though born and raised in Castalia, Caudell had spent most of his adult life here: the county seat and the surrounding farms boasted enough children to keep a teacher busy.

But how small the place looked, now that he was seeing it with his traveled eyes! A well-thrown stone would fly from one end of Nashville to the other. Not even a hotel: what point to one, since the railroad had passed the town by. Old Raeford Liles ran the post office as part of his general store on the corner of First and Washington. The post office…Caudell remembered a promise he had made. He walked in. A bell above the door jingled.

The grocer looked up over the rims of his half-glasses. A grin split his whiskery, wrinkled face. “Good to have ye back with us, Nate! Tell me what the war was like.”

Filthy, boring, hungry, terrifying past any nightmare. How to explain all that to the eagerly waiting old man, to show him the stuff from which his imagined glory was distilled? At his first bump against it, Caudell saw the problem was as impossible as squaring the circle. “Another time, Mr. Liles,” he said gently. “For now, have you any writing paper?”

“Matter of fact, I do,” the storekeeper answered. “Got in some a few months back, and it don’t move what you’d call quick. Even got envelopes, if you need one.” He looked over his glasses at Caudell again, this time slyly. “You find yourself a sweetheart up in Virginny?”

“No.” Caudell shook his head at the very idea, no matter how many times he’d bedded Mollie Bean. Comrade, friend, bed partner—all that, certainly. But sweetheart? If she’d been his sweetheart, he told himself, he’d have brought her to Nashville. He borrowed a pencil to write her a note that said where he was.

“Got money to pay, or we gonna have to do some kind of swap?” By his tone, Raeford Liles expected the latter. His reading glasses magnified his eyes. They got bigger still when Caudell took out one of his one-ounce gold coins. He rang it on the counter, bit it, weighed it in an apothecary’s balance. “Goddam, it’s real,” he remarked when he was satisfied at last. “Gonna have to dig some to change it. It’d be, hmm, close on twenty gold dollars, eh? Call it nineteen and three bits, if that’s all right with you.”

Caudell had already made the calculation. “Square enough, Mr. Liles.”

“All right. Don’t you go away. I got to retreat to the plunder room.” The grocer shuffled into the back of the store, where he remained for some time. He emerged at last with a gold eagle and enough silver to make up the other nine dollars and change. “Wouldn’t give this for them ass-wipes the gov’ment calls money, but you give me straight goods, you get straight goods back.”

“Thanks.” Caudell shoved two silver half-dimes back toward him. “I’ll have a postage stamp, too, if you please.” While Liles got it, he wrote Mollie Bean’s name on the envelope, sealed the note inside. Lilies smiled knowingly when he saw the addressee. Caudell had been sure he would, but somehow it annoyed him less than he’d expected.

“Gentlemen.” Robert E. Lee bowed as he entered the Cabinet room on the second floor of the former U.S. customhouse.

“General Lee.” His fellow Southern commissioners both rose from their seats to return the compliment. Lee was struck by how odd they looked, standing side by side. Vice President Stephens was short, gaunt, gray, and sober-looking, Secretary of State Benjamin tall, portly, dark-haired, though a year older than Stephens and only four years younger than Lee, and wearing his usual bland smile, a smile that claimed he knew more about matters of state than any other three people living.

He said, “Join us, General. Our Federal counterparts, as you see, are not yet arrived.” Lee took a seat, leaned back against green baize. Note paper, pen, and inkwell waited his use, but he wished he’d thought to ask that a map be brought to the Cabinet room.

A Confederate captain, commander of the armed guard assigned to the Federal peace commissioners, strode into the Cabinet room. “The honorable William H. Seward, U.S. Secretary of State,” he announced. “The honorable Edwin M. Stanton, U.S. Secretary of War.” Polite neutrality left his voice; scorn replaced it. “Major General Benjamin F. Butler.”

The three Northern men came in. Lee, Benjamin, and Stephens rose to greet them. As they had decided beforehand, the Confederate commissioners bowed to Lincoln’s emissaries, then sat down again, thus avoiding the issue of whether or not to shake hands with Ben Butler.

One of Seward’s eyebrows rose slightly as he bowed in return, but he made no comment. Though a New Yorker, he looked hewn from New England granite—most especially the majestic promontory of his nose, which dominated his long, thin, clean-shaven face. Stanton was younger, shorter, stouter, with a thick, curly beard and a look of driving energy. He made Lee think more of the high-priced lawyer he had been than the Cabinet member he was now.

Ben Butler came last, the uniform of a Union major general still stretched over his short, corpulent frame. With his mustache curling down over each corner of his lips, he reminded Lee of nothing so much as a sagging walrus. His wattled jowls sagged, the sacks under his eyes—sacks as big and dark as carpetbags—sagged onto his cheeks, which also sagged themselves; the fringe of hair that wreathed his bald crown sagged greasily onto his neck. Even his eyelids sagged. But the eyes they half-concealed were sharp and dark and full of calculation. He was no soldier—he’d proved that in several fights—but he was not the buffoon he looked, either. Before the war, he’d been an even fancier lawyer than Stanton.

The Federal commissioners sat down across the mahogany table from their Southern hosts. After a couple of minutes of chitchat meant to be polite—but during which the three Confederates managed to avoid speaking directly to Butler—Seward said, “Gentlemen, shall we attempt to repair the unpleasantness that lies between our two governments?”

“Had you acknowledged from the outset that this land contained two governments, sir, all the unpleasantness, as you call it, would have been avoided,” Alexander Stephens pointed out. Like his body, his voice was light and thin.

“That may be true, but it’s moot now,” Stanton said. “Let’s deal with the situation as we have it, shall we? Otherwise useless recriminations will take up all our time and lead us nowhere. It was, if I may say so, useless recrimination on both sides which led to the breach between North and South.”

“You speak sensibly, Mr. Stanton,” Lee said. Stephens and Benjamin nodded. So did the other two Federals down from Washington City. He went on, “Our chief difficulty will be to keep the bitterness engendered by our Second American Revolution from poisoning further relations between the two countries which now comprise the territory formerly held by the United States of America.”

Butler said, “We have recognized your Confederacy’s independence, General Lee—recognized it at rifle point, I concede, but recognized it nonetheless.” He paused to draw in a wheezy breath. “Further, in exchange for your withdrawal only from our capital, we have removed our forces from the entire broad reach of territory under our control this past June, withdrawing to the line you yourself proposed, sir. I question the propriety of entering into these further negotiations for any purpose whatsoever.”

Judah Benjamin turned to Lee. “If I may, sir?” Lee raised one finger of his right hand as a sign for the Secretary of State to continue. Benjamin did, in the deep, rich tones of a trained orator: “Mr. Butler will surely be aware that, in a republic, soldiers have not the authority to set down final terms of peace. Nor did General Lee presume to do so. He merely arranged a halt to hostilities so that peace might afterwards be established: thus we are met here today.”

“So we find out how much you rebs can jew out of us, you mean,” Butler said coarsely.

A slow flush mounted to Benjamin’s cheeks. Lee was, outside of his profession, a peaceful man, but he knew that, had anyone touched his own honor so, he would have continued the conversation only through seconds. But Benjamin had risen to prominence despite a lifetime of such abuse. His voice was calm as he replied, “Mr. Butler will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in the forests of Saxony, mine were the princes of the earth.”

“Oh, bravo, Mr. Benjamin,” Stephens said softly. Edwin Stanton coughed and spluttered and looked away from Ben Butler. Even Seward’s craggy features found room for a small smile.

As for Butler, his countenance changed not a jot. It was as if he’d tried to anger Benjamin not out of hatred for his race, but solely to gain an edge in these talks. Studying him, Lee concluded that was exactly why he’d done it. No, not a buffoon, he decided. A dangerous man, the more so for being in complete control of himself

“Shall we continue?” Seward said after a moment. “Perhaps the simplest way would be to set forth the points remaining at issue between us, and then to seek to settle them one by one, not letting failure over anyone deter us from reaching agreement on such others as lend themselves to it.”

“A reasonable plan,” Alexander Stephens said. Where Butler had been personally inflammatory, the Confederate Vice President was politically so;, ‘There is, to begin with, the matter of Maryland—”

Edwin Stanton jerked as if stuck by a pin. His face turned red. “No, by God!” he shouted, pounding the table with his fist. “Maryland belongs to the Union, and we will fight again sooner than yield it. For one thing, with it goes Washington City.”

“We had Washington, sir,” Judah Benjamin interjected.

Stanton ignored him. “For another, despite any troubles we may have had there at the outset of the war, the people of Maryland stand foursquare behind the United States. They shall not willingly submit to your rule.”

Lee suspected that was true. “Maryland, My Maryland” notwithstanding, the Army of Northern Virginia had received scant aid or comfort from that state’s inhabitants in either the Sharpsburg campaign or the more recent invasion that had led to the capture of Washington. Despite some thousands of slaveowners, Maryland was in essence a Northern state. He said, “Let us set Maryland aside for the time being, merely noting now that its status has been questioned. Perhaps it may be included in some larger agreement solving the status of all disputed border states.”

“Very well, General. I did but raise the question,” Stephens said. “As Secretary Seward so wisely stated, we should proceed to settle what we can. There are, for example, the thirty-eight northwestern counties of Virginia which have been illegally included among the United States under the name West Virginia.”

“Illegally?” Seward raised a tufted eyebrow. “How can a nation founded on the principle of secession fail to acknowledge the applicability of the principle when employed against it? Surely you would not be branded hypocrites before the world?”

“Successful hypocrites seem to bear up under the opprobrium remarkably well,” Benjamin said, his habitual smile perhaps a hairsbreadth broader. “But let us continue to layout the territories whose possession remains at issue, or rather the states: we have not yet mentioned Kentucky or Missouri.”

Both sets of commissioners leaned forward. Both nations had strong claims to both states, though Federal forces were currently in possession of them. Ben Butler said, “Given the pleasant time your armies are having farther south in the valley of the Mississippi, it will be a long time before you see Missouri, Mr. Benjamin.” Now he addressed the Confederate Secretary of State as if completely indifferent to his religion.

He managed to be unpleasant nonetheless. Not all the Negro regiments the Federals had raised while occupying Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee had gone north with their white comrades upon the armistice. Some stayed to carry on the fight. Lincoln predicted as much, Lee remembered; he said it would take a war to return slavery to those parts.

“Bedford Forrest bas beaten the niggers at Sardis and Grenada,” Stephens said. “He is advancing on Grand Gulf now. I expect he will manage to hit ‘em again, as people say.” His laugh sounded like the wind ruffling dry grass.

But he did not ruffle Butler. “He may well defeat them in the field, orphaned as they be,” the fat political general admitted. “What then? Did you not recently call the territory north of the Rapidan ‘Mosby’s Confederacy’? You shall presently face the prospect of subduing a ‘Nigger Union’ down there, and may you have the same joy of putting it down as we did with Mosby.”

Obnoxious as Butler was, Lee began to see why, aside from his political connections, Lincoln had chosen him as a peace commissioner. Born with an eye toward his own advantage, he sought advantage for his country with a like single-mindedness.

Lee said, “Thus far, we appear to have more problems than solutions for them. Shall we continue to set them forth, so they all lay on the table at once?”

“We may as well,” Seward said, “though I hope we shan’t provoke ourselves into a new round of fighting because our difficulties appear insuperable.”

“The state of Texas borders both the Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory,” Alexander Stephens said significantly.

“Good luck sending another expedition to New Mexico,” Stanton replied. “We can bring men down from Colorado faster than you can get them across the West Texas desert. We showed you that two years ago.”

“You are likely to be right there, sir,” Lee said. Stanton, he noted, made no such claim for the Indian Territory north of Texas. The war there had not ended with the armistice, for the Indian tribes roused to battle by the Union and Confederacy could not be checked so easily by the Great White Fathers, commands. Only chaos ruled the Territory now.

“Are there any other territorial questions at issue between us?” Judah Benjamin asked.

Stanton said, “There had better not be, for we’ve gone from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande. Wherever we touch, we disagree.”

“So it would appear.” The Confederate Secretary of State’s smile never wavered. “That leaves the question of the amount of indemnity owed to us for the destruction U.S. forces wreaked upon our land. I would say”—which meant, as everyone at the table knew, that Jefferson Davis would say—”two hundred million dollars seems an equitable sum.”

“You may say it if you like,” Seward replied. “I gather that your constitution, derived as it is from our own, guarantees freedom of speech. Collecting what you claim is another matter altogether.”

“Hell will freeze over before you rebs see two hundred million dollars,” Stanton agreed.” A quarter of that sum would be extravagant.”

“We may not have to wait for the devil to get chilblains, nor anywhere near so long,” Benjamin said silkily. “Today is September 5, after all. In two months, you Northerners will hold your Presidential election. Would Mr. Lincoln not like to have a treaty of peace to present to the people before November 8?”

The three Federal commissioners looked glumly across the table at him. Defeat had turned Northern politics even more chaotic than they had been in the then-United States during the four-cornered Presidential race of 1860. Lee’s seizure of Washington had delayed the Republican convention in Baltimore, but when it finally convened, it renominated Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin…whereupon the radical Republicans seceded—both Northern papers and the Richmond Dispatch used the word, with perhaps different flavors of irony attached to it—from the party and put forward as their candidate John c. Fremont, who as general in Missouri had tried to emancipate that state’s slaves in 1861, only to see his order overruled by Lincoln. They chose Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to run with him; Johnson still stubbornly refused to admit that his state no longer acknowledged the authority of Washington, D.C.

The Democrats were in no better condition. Meeting in Chicago, they had just finished choosing Governor Horatio Seymour of New York as their Presidential candidate, with Clement Vallandigham of Ohio for a running mate. And General McClellan, disappointed at failing to gain the nomination, was vowing that he, like Fremont, would mount an independent campaign. That second split gave Lincoln a ray of hope, but only a faint one.

Judah Benjamin rubbed it in: “Perhaps we should wait to see how your patron fares come November, gentlemen. A Democratic administration might well prove more reasonable.” Any administration with Vallandigham in it was likely to be reasonable from a Southern point of view; he had favored accommodation with the Confederacy even when its prospects looked blackest.

But Ben Butler said,” No matter what happens in the election, I remind you that Abraham Lincoln ‘Shall remain President of the United States until March 4 proximo.”

“A point well taken,” Lee said. Though reluctant to agree with Butler on anything, he found a half-year’s delay unconscionable. “The sooner peace comes, the better for all, North and South alike.”

“A man bolder than I would be required to presume to disagree with General Lee,” Alexander Stephens said. “Let us continue, then.” Lee could not tell what went on behind Judah Benjamin’s smiling mask. But Benjamin did not say no.

Secretary of State Seward said, “Having set forth the areas where we disagree, I think we would be hard-pressed to do much more today. In any case, I should like to telegraph a statement of your position to President Lincoln, and to receive his instructions before proceeding further. May I propose that we adjourn, to meet again on Wednesday the seventh?”

Lee found both Stephens and Benjamin looking at him. It should not have been that way; the other two commissioners outranked him by virtue of their places in the civil government. But they were looking at him. He would not show annoyance in front of the men from the United States. “That seems satisfactory to me,” he said, adding, “We shall also have to consult with our President as to our future course.”

“Simple enough for you,” Stanton said. “We, though, are like dogs tethered by a wire leash.” His voice had a rumble in it that made it sound like a growl. Lee smiled at the conceit.

Butler said, “Better dogs tethered by a wire leash than a dog running loose from a wire leash, as Forrest did last June.”

“I trust the gentlemen in this room will not permit General Butler’s opinion to go beyond it,” Lee said quickly. Butler was no gentleman; he’d made that plain by his every action during the war, and again by his slur aimed at Judah P. Benjamin. But Nathan Bedford Forrest, by all accounts, was no gentleman either. If he heard what Butler had called him, he would not bother with the niceties of a formal challenge. He would simply Shoot Butler down…like a dog.

The Federal commissioners rose, bowed their way out. When they were gone, Alexander Stephens said, “If you will forgive me, General, Mr. Secretary, I shall leave the consultation in your no doubt capable hands. The President and I, while always preserving our respect for each other, have not been in agreement often enough of late for us to find it easy to speak together without friction. Good day to you both; I shall see you on Wednesday.” Getting out of his chair took a struggle, but he managed, and walked out of the Cabinet room.

Benjamin and Lee walked up the flight of stairs to Jefferson Davis’s office. “Ironic, is it not,” the Secretary of State said, “that four years ago Benjamin Butler did everything in his power to gain Davis the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. I wonder where we should all be today had he succeeded.”

“Somewhere other than here, is my guess,” Lee answered, admiring the dispassionate way in which Benjamin spoke of the man who had insulted him. He also wondered if Benjamin knew the true origins of the Rivington men; his own thoughts, since the day when Andries Rhoodie set forth those origins to him, had frequently dwelt on the mutability of history. Before he could find a way to ask that would Cover him if the answer was no, he and the Secretary of State reached the President’s door.

Davis listened to their report, then said,” About as I expected. Maryland would cost us another war to win, and would make the United States our eternal enemy even if we took it. Likewise Virginia’s departed counties.” He did not mention the troubles Lee had had in what was now West Virginia early in the war. Every Confederate general there had come to grief.

“I think we will win the Indian Territory in the end, for whatever it may prove to be worth,” Benjamin said.

“As to what, who can say? Kentucky was worth little when I was born there.” Davis frowned. “I should like to gain possession of New Mexico, and Arizona and California with it. A railroad across the continent will surely come soon, and I would have it come on a southern route. But again, that will prove difficult. The Federals currently hold the land, and we should be hard-pressed either to conquer it or, given the present unfortunate state of the Treasury, to buy it from them even if they were willing to sell. Perhaps we shall be able to make arrangements with the Emperor Maximilian for a route from Texas to the Pacific coast of Mexico.”

“Better that a transcontinental railroad should lie entire within our own territory,” Benjamin said.

“Not if we have to fight to make a thousand-mile stretch of that territory our own,” Lee replied. “Stanton had the right of it earlier today; our logistics are poor, and we have as yet few repeaters in the Trans-Mississippi. Besides which, no war with the United States would remain confined to the western frontier.”

Jefferson Davis sighed. “I fear you are probably right, sir. And even with the repeaters, we desperately need to restore ourselves before we contemplate further combat. Very well; if we cannot talk the Federals out of New Mexico and Arizona, we shall have to go on without them. The same cannot be said of Kentucky and Missouri.”

“The United States will not yield them,” Lee warned. “Lincoln said as much when I was in Washington City, and his commissioners were not only firm but also vehement on the subject this afternoon.”

“I shall not tamely yield them to the North, either,” Davis said. “With them, we should be a match for and independent of the United States in all respects. Without them, the balance of power would tilt the other way. We should find especially valuable the manufactories which have sprung up in Louisville and elsewhere along the Ohio. I reluctantly infer from the war that we may not remain a nation made up solely of agriculturalists, lest in a future conflict the United States overwhelm us with their numbers and their industries.”

“We have the Rivington men to set against their factories,” Benjamin said. “But for the Rivington men, I gather we should have been overwhelmed.” He does know, then, Lee thought.

Davis said, “The Rivington men are with us but not of us. Against the day when their purposes and ours might diverge, I would have the Confederate States capable of proving a match for and independent of them, as well as of the North.”

“That seems a wise precaution,” Benjamin agreed.

Davis was not really interested in the Rivington men at the moment; the talks with the United States were his principal concern. He pulled the conversation back toward those talks; “How did the Federals take the demand for two hundred million?”

“Noisily,” Benjamin answered, which made the President laugh. The Secretary of State went on, “Stanton claimed a fourth of that would be—extravagant was the word he used.”

“Which means the United States might pay that fourth, or more,” Davis said. “Even fifty million in specie would be more backing than our paper now enjoys, and would greatly boost confidence in that paper’s value, which in turn would help bring prices down to a more realistic level. Gentlemen, I rely on you to wring as large a sum from the Northern coffers as you may.”

“We shall, Mr. President,” Lee said.

“I have perfect faith in your abilities—and also in those of Mr. Stephens, though we are often at odds with each other,” Jefferson Davis said: almost a mirror image of the words the Vice President had used to describe their relationship. Davis continued, “Now I must needs return to these other matters of state, particularly this latest note from the British minister regarding our prospective participation in the naval patrol off the African coast to interdict the slave trade. You have seen it, Mr. Benjamin?”

“Yes, sir,” Benjamin said.

“I do not care for its tone. Having recognized us, the British ought to use us with the politeness they grant to any other nation. Our Constitution forbids the importation of slaves from Africa, which should suffice to satisfy them but evidently does not. In any case, we, unlike the United States, have not the naval force to permit us to comply with the Ashburton treaty, a fact of which the minister cannot be unaware, but with which he chooses to bait us.” Davis’s lip curled in scorn.

Judah Benjamin said, “The nations of Europe continue to abhor our policy, try as we will to convince them we cannot do otherwise. Mr. Mason has written from London that Her Majesty’s government might well have been willing to extend us recognition two years ago, were it not for the continuation of slavery among us: so Lord Russell assured him, at any rate. M. Thouvenel, the French foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments to Mr. Slidell in Paris.”

Slavery, Lee thought. In the end, the outside world’s view of the Confederate States of America was colored almost exclusively by its response to the South’s peculiar institution. Never mind that the U.S. Constitution was a revocable compact between independent states, never mind that the North had consistently used its numerical majority to force through Congress tariffs that worked only to ruin the South. So long as black men were bought and sold, all the high ideals of the Confederacy would be ignored.

President Davis said, “The ‘free’ factory worker in Manchester or Paris—yes, in Boston as well—is free only to starve. As Mr. Hammond of South Carolina put it so pungently in the chambers of the U.S. Senate a few years ago, every society rests upon a mudsill of brute labor, from which the edifice of civilization arises. We are but more open and honest about the nature of our mudsill than other nations, which gladly exploit a worker’s labor but, when he can no longer provide it, cast him aside like a used sheet of foolscap.”

Nothing but the truth there, Lee thought—but also nothing that would convince anyone who already opposed slavery, as did the vast majority of countries and individual men and women outside the Confederate States. Diffidently, he said, “Mr. President, now that we are no longer at war with the United States, would it not be possible to fit out a single naval vessel for duty off the African coast? The symbolic value of such a gesture would, it seems to me, far outweigh the cost it would entail.”

Davis’s eyes flashed. Lee read Et tu. Brute? in them. Then calculation replaced anger. Judah Benjamin said, “If that be feasible, Mr. President, it would go some way toward accommodating us to the usages of the leading powers.”

“And how far did those powers go toward accommodating us before we assured our own independence?” Davis said, his voice bitter with remembered slight. “Not a single step, as I recall: confident in their strength, they despised us, Britain chief among them. And now they expect us to forget? Not likely, sir, by God!”

“In no way do I advise you to forget, sir,” Benjamin said. “I merely concur with General Lee in suggesting that we demonstrate acquiescence where we may, against a time when we are in a position to be able to give concrete evidence pf our displeasure.”

Davis drummed the fingers of his right hand on his desk. “Very well, sir. Enquire of Mr. Mallory at the Navy Department as to the practicability of doing as General Lee suggested, then prepare a memorandum detailing for me his response. If the thing can be done, I shall communicate to the British our willingness to do it. There are times, I confess, when I believe our lives would have been simpler had no Negroes ever been imported to these shores. But then we should only have required some other mudsill upon which to build our society.”

“Futile to pretend now that the black man is no part of our Confederacy,” Lee said. “And as he is such a part, we shall have to define his place in our nation.”

“One reason we fought the late war was to define the black man’s place in our nation, or rather to preserve our previous definition of his place,” Benjamin said. “Do you now feel that definition to be inadequate?”

“Preserving it may yet prove more expensive than we can afford,” Lee said. “Thanks to the Federals, the Negroes of parts of Virginia, the Carolina coast, Tennessee, and the Mississippi valley have had a year, two, three, to accustom themselves to the idea of being free men and women. General Forrest may—General Forrest had better—defeat their armed bands in the field. But can he at the point of a bayonet restore their previous habit of servility?”

For some time, none of the three men in President Davis’s office spoke. Davis scowled at Lee’s words; even Benjamin’s customary smile slipped. Lee himself felt rather surprised, for what he’d said took him farther than he’d consciously intended to go. But a smoldering slave insurrection, no doubt aided and abetted from the United States, was every Southern man’s worst nightmare.

He glanced toward Jefferson Davis. “Tell me, sir: If, earlier in the war, you found us forced to the choice between returning to the United States with all our institutions guaranteed by law and carrying on as an independent nation at the cost of freeing our Negroes, which would you have done?”

“When the delegates of the Southern states met in Montgomery, General, we made a nation,” Davis said firmly; Lee gave him credit for not hesitating. “To preserve that nation, I would at need have taken any steps required, up to and including carrying on a guerrilla war in the mountains and valleys of the interior against Federals occupying an our settled places. Any steps required, sir, any at all.”

Lee nodded thoughtfully; no one who once met President Davis could doubt that, when he said a thing, he meant it. “I am relieved it did not come to that, Mr. President.” He stroked his gray beard. “I fear I am too old to have taken up the bushwhacker’s trade.”

“As am I, but at need I should have learned it,” Davis said.

“Where now?” Judah Benjamin asked. “Shall Forrest continue unchecked with fire and the sword, or will you offer the Negroes in arms against us an amnesty during which they may peacefully return to our fold?”

“As what? As free men?” Davis shook his head. “That would create more troubles than it solves, by offering our Negroes incentive to rise up against us and, once risen, to continue their insurrection in the hope of so impressing us by their spirit that we yield them what they seek. No, let them first see that fire and the sword remain our exclusive province and that they may not hope to stand against us. Once they grow convinced of that, a show of leniency is likelier to produce the results we desire.”

“As you think best, Mr. President,” Benjamin replied.

Jefferson Davis turned to Lee. “How say you, sir?”

“I say that the prospect of armed Negroes stubbornly resisting so able an officer as General Forrest, and the performance of the colored regiments which confronted the Army of Northern Virginia, trouble me profoundly,” Lee answered. “That the one group shall be defeated, as the other was, is hardly open to doubt. But if the Negro makes a proper soldier, can he continue to make a proper slave?”

Davis tried to make light of what he’d said: “Don’t tell me you are turning abolitionist, sir?”

“That is not a word to use lightly to a Southern man, Mr. President,” Lee said, biting his lip. Thinking of General Cleburne’s memorial that had urged the arming and emancipation of certain black men, and also of General Hill’s loathing of the institution of slavery, he felt he had to add, “If I were, I should hardly be the only Confederate officer to hold such sentiments.” Davis’s mouth twisted, but after a few seconds he had to nod.

Judah Benjamin sighed loudly. “We left the United States not least in the hope that the Negro problem would vex us no further once we were free and independent. And yet we have it with us still, and now no one to blame for it but ourselves—and the Negro, of course.” That gnomic observation effectively ended the meeting.