Copperhead Page 8

  And in the White House a president wept for the death of Senator Baker, his dear friend, while the rebel South, seeing the hand of God in this victory by the waters, gave thanks.

  The leaves turned and dropped, blowing gold and scarlet across the new graves at Ball’s Bluff. In November the rebel troops moved away from the river, going to winter quarters nearer Richmond where the newspapers warned of the swelling northern ranks. Major-General McClellan, the Young Napoleon, was said to be training his burgeoning army to a peak of military perfection. The small fight at Ball’s Bluff might have filled northern churches with mourners, but the North consoled itself with the thought that their revenge lay in the hands of McClellan’s superbly equipped army, which, come the springtime, would descend on the South like a righteous thunderbolt.

  The North’s navy did not wait for spring. In South Carolina, off Hilton Head, the warships blasted their way into Port Royal Sound and landing parties stormed the forts that guarded Beaufort Harbor. The North’s navy was blockading and dominating the southern coast and though the southern newspapers tried to diminish the defeat at Port Royal, the news provoked cheers and singing in the Confederacy’s slave quarters. There was more celebration when Charleston was almost destroyed by fire—a visitation from the angel of revenge, the northern preachers said—and the same preachers cheered when they learned that a Yankee warship, defying the laws of the sea, had stopped a British mail ship and removed the two Confederate commissioners sent from Richmond to negotiate treaties with the European powers. Some southerners also cheered that news, declaring that the snub to Britain would surely bring the Royal Navy to the American coast, and by December Richmond’s jubilant newspapers were reporting that redcoat battalions were landing in Canada to reinforce the permanent garrison in case the United States chose to fight Britain rather than return the two kidnapped commissioners.

  Snow fell in the Blue Ridge Mountains, covering the grave of Truslow’s wife and cutting off the roads to the western part of Virginia that had defied Richmond by seceding from the state and joining the Union. Washington celebrated the defection, declaring it to be the beginning of the Confederacy’s dissolution. More troops marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and so out to the training camps in occupied northern Virginia where the Young Napoleon honed their skills. Each day new guns arrived on trains from the northern foundries to be parked in giant rows in fields close to the Capitol Building that gleamed white in the winter sun beneath the spidery scaffolding of its unfinished dome. One good hard push, the northern newspapers claimed, and the Confederacy would collapse like a dead, rotted tree.

  The rebel capital felt no such confidence. The winter had brought nothing but bad news and worse weather. Snow had come early, the cold was bitter, and the Yankee noose seemed to be tightening. That prospect of imminent northern victory at least cheered Adam Faulconer who, two weeks before Christmas, rode his horse down from the city to the stone quay at Rockett’s Landing. The wind was chopping the river into short, hard, gray waves and whistling in the tarred rigging of the truce ship which sailed once a week from the Confederate capital. The ship would journey down the James River and under the high guns of the rebel fort on Drewry’s Bluff and so through the low, salt-marsh fringed meanders to the river’s confluence with the Appomattox and from there eastward along a broad, shallow fairway until, seventy miles from Richmond, it reached the Hampton Roads and turned north to the quays of Fort Monroe. The fort, though on Virginia soil, had been held by Union forces since before the war’s beginning and there, under its flag of truce, the boat discharged captured northerners who were being exchanged for rebel prisoners released by the North.

  The cold winter wind was stinging Rockett’s Landing with snatches of thin rain and souring the quay with the smell of the foundries that belched their sulfurous coalsmoke along the riverbank. The rain and smoke turned everything greasy; the stones of the quay, the metal bollards, the lines berthing the ship, and even the thin, ill-fitting uniforms of the thirty men who waited beside the gangplank. The waiting men were northern officers who had been captured at Manassas and who, after nearly five months in captivity, were being exchanged for rebel officers captured in General McClellan’s campaign in what now styled itself the state of West Virginia. The prisoners’ faces were pale after their confinement in Castle Lightning, a factory building which stood on Cary Street next to the two big storage tanks that held the gas supply for the city’s street lighting. The clothes of the released prisoners hung loose, evidence of the weight they had lost during their confinement in the commandeered factory.

  The men shivered as they waited for permission to board the truce boat. Most carried small sacks holding what few possessions they had managed to preserve during their imprisonment: a comb, a few coins, a Bible, some letters from home. They were cold, but the thought of their imminent release cheered them and they teased each other about their reception at Fort Monroe, inventing ever more lavish meals that would be served in the officers’ quarters. They dreamed of lobster and beefsteak, of turtle and oyster soup, of ice cream and apple butter, of venison steak with cranberries, of duck and orange sauce, of glasses of Madeira and flagons of wine, but above all they dreamed of coffee, of real, good, strong coffee.

  One prisoner dreamed of no such things, but instead paced with Adam Faulconer up and down the quay. Major James Starbuck was a tall man with a face that had once been fleshy, but now looked pouchy. He was still a young man, but his demeanor, his perpetual frown, and his thinning hair made him look old far beyond his years. He had once boasted a very fine beard, though even that had lost its luster in Castle Lightning’s damp interior. James had been a rising Boston lawyer before the war and then a trusted aide to Irvin McDowell, the General who had lost the battle at Manassas, and now, on his way back north, James did not know what was to become of him.

  Adam’s duty this day was to make certain that only those prisoners whose names had been agreed between the two armies were released, but that duty had been simply discharged by a roll call and head count, and once those duties were done he had sought James’s company and asked to talk with him privately. James, naturally enough, assumed Adam wanted to talk about his brother. “There is no chance, you think, that Nate could change sides?” James asked Adam wistfully.

  Adam did not like to answer directly. In truth he was bitterly disappointed with his friend Nathaniel Starbuck, who, he believed, was embracing war like a lover. Nate, Adam believed, had abandoned God, and the best he could hope for was that God had not abandoned Nate Starbuck, but Adam did not want to state that harsh judgment, and so he tried to find some shard of redeeming goodness that would buoy James’s hopes for his younger brother. “He told me he attends prayer meeting regularly,” he answered lamely.

  “That’s good! That’s very good!” James sounded unusually animated, then he frowned as he scratched his belly. Like every other prisoner held in Castle Lightning he had become lousy. At first he had found the infestation terribly shaming, but time had accustomed him to lice.

  “But what will Nate do in the future?” Adam asked, then answered his own question by shaking his head. “I don’t know. If my father resumes command of the Legion, then I think Nate will be forced to look for other employment. My father, you understand, is not fond of Nate.”

  James jumped in alarm as a sudden eruption of steam hissed loudly from a locomotive on the nearby York River Railroad. The machine jetted another huge gout of steam, then its enormous driving wheels screamed shrilly as they tried to find some traction on the wet and gleaming steel rails. An overseer bellowed orders at a pair of slaves who ran forward to scatter handfuls of sand under the spinning wheels. The locomotive at last found some purchase and jerked forward, clashing and banging a long train of boxcars. A great gust of choking, acrid smoke wafted over Adam and James. The locomotive’s fuel was resinous pinewood that left a thick tar on the rim of the potlike chimney.

  “I had a particular reason for seeing you today,” Adam sai
d clumsily when the locomotive’s noise had abated.

  “To say farewell?” James suggested with an awkward misunderstanding. One of his shoe soles had come loose and flapped as he walked, making him stumble occasionally.

  “I have to be frank,” Adam said nervously, then fell silent as the two men skirted a rusting pile of wet anchor chain. “The war,” Adam finally explained himself, “must be brought to a conclusion.”

  “Oh, indeed,” James said fervently. “Indeed, yes. It is my prayerful hope.”

  “I cannot describe to you,” Adam said with an equal fervor, “what tribulation the war is already bringing to the South. I dread to think of such iniquities being visited on the North.”

  “Amen,” James said, though he had no real idea what Adam was talking about. In prison it had sometimes seemed as if the Confederacy were winning the war, an impression that had been heightened when the disconsolate prisoners from Ball’s Bluff had arrived.

  “If the war continues,” Adam said, “then it will degrade us all. We shall be a mockery to Europe; we shall lose whatever moral authority we possess in the world.” He shook his head as if he had not managed to express himself properly. Beyond the quay the train was picking up speed, its boxcar wheels clattering over the rail joints and the locomotive’s smoke showing white against the gray clouds. A guard jumped onto the platform of the moving caboose and went inside out of the cold wind. “The war is wrong!” Adam finally blurted out. “It is against God’s purpose. I’ve been praying on this matter and I beg you to understand me.”

  “I do understand you,” James said, but he could say no more because he did not want to offend his new friend by saying that the only way God’s purpose could be fulfilled was by the Confederacy’s defeat, and though Adam might be voicing sentiments very close to James’s heart, he was still wearing a uniform of rebel gray. It was all very confusing, James thought. Some of the northern prisoners in Castle Lightning had openly boasted of their adultery, they had been blasphemers and mockers, lovers of liquor and of gambling, Sabbath-breakers and libertines; men whom James had deemed to be of the crudest stamp and vilest character, yet they were soldiers who fought for the North while this pained and prayerful man Adam was a rebel.

  Then, to James’s astonishment, Adam proved that supposition wrong. “What is necessary,” Adam said, “and I beg for your confidence in this matter, is for the North to gain a swift and crushing victory. Only thereby can this war be halted. Do you believe me?”

  “I do, I do. Of course.” James felt overwhelmed by Adam’s sentiments. He stopped and looked down into the younger man’s face, oblivious to a bell that had begun ringing to summon the prisoner aboard the truce ship. “And I join my prayers to yours,” James said sanctimoniously.

  “It will take more than prayers now,” Adam said, and he took from his pocket an India-paper Bible that he handed to James. “I am asking you to take this back to the North. Hidden behind the endpapers is a full list of our army’s units, their strength as of this week, and their present positions in Virginia.” Adam was being modest. Into the makeshift slipcase made by the Bible’s leather cover he had crammed every detail concerning the Confederate defenses in northern Virginia. He had listed the ration strengths of every brigade in the rebel army, and discussed the possibility of conscription being adopted by the Richmond government in the spring. His staff job had enabled Adam to reveal the weekly total of newly manufactured artillery reaching the army from the Richmond foundries, and to betray how many of the cannons facing the northern pickets from the rebel redoubts around Centreville and Manassas were fakes. He had sketched the Richmond defenses, warning that the ring of earth forts and ditches was still under construction and that every passing month would render the obstacles more formidable. He told the North of the new ironclad ship being secretly built in the Norfolk dockyard, and of the forts which protected the river approaches to Richmond. Adam had included all that he possibly could, describing the South’s strengths and weaknesses, but always urging the North that one strong attack would surely crumble secession like a house of cards.

  Adam desperately hoped this one inclusive betrayal would be sufficient to end the war, yet he was sensible enough to know that whoever received this letter might well demand more information. Now, pacing the greasy quay in the cold rain, Adam told James precisely how a message could reach him from the North. Adam had worked hard on his scheme, attempting to foresee every liability that might reveal his identity to the southern authorities, and he knew that the greatest danger would be posed by northern messages coming south. “Which is why I’d rather you never contacted me,” he warned James, “but if you must, then I beg you never to use my name on the letters.”

  “Of course.” James closed his cold hands over the Bible’s leather cover, guiltily aware of an unseemly happiness. It was right and proper that he should be glad of Adam’s espousal of the North’s cause, yet he felt it shameful that he should see in that espousal an advantage for himself, for he was guiltily aware that the letter concealed in the Bible could well assist his military career. Instead of returning North as the humbled aide of a failed general, he was suddenly the carrier of northern victory. His prayers had been answered a hundredfold.

  “If necessary I can send you more information,” Adam went on, “but only to you. Not to anyone else. I cannot trust anyone else.” Both sides were riddled with informers who would betray anyone for the price of a bottle of whiskey, but Adam was certain he could trust this Boston lawyer who was as pious and godly a man as any in either army. “Will you give me your Christian word that you will keep my identity secret?”

  “Of course,” James said, still dazed by this stroke of good fortune.

  “I mean a secret from everyone,” Adam insisted. “If you reveal my identity to General McClellan I have no faith he will not tell someone else, and that someone else could be my ruin. Promise me this. No one but you and I must ever know.”

  James nodded again. “I promise.” He turned as the ship’s bell rang again. His fellow prisoners were climbing the gangway, but still James made no move to join them. Instead he delved into an inside pocket of his faded, dirty jacket and brought out an oilcloth-covered packet. The oilcloth was loosely wrapped and James let it fall away to reveal a small, much-thumbed pocket Bible with a worn cover. “Will you give this to Nate? Ask him to read it?”

  “With pleasure.” Adam took the thick Bible and watched as James wrapped his new Scriptures in the patch of oilcloth.

  “And tell him,” James added in a heartfelt voice, “that if he returns north I will do my best to reconcile him to Father and Mother.”

  “Of course,” Adam said, though he could not imagine Starbuck responding to his brother’s generosity.

  “You want to stay here, mister?” a sailor called to James from the ship.

  “Remember your promise,” Adam said. “Tell no one who gave you that letter.”

  “You can trust me,” James assured Adam. “I’ll tell no one.”

  “God bless you.” Adam felt a sudden great warmth for this good, clumsy man who was so obviously a brother in Christ. “And God bless the United States.”

  “Amen to that,” James responded, then held out his hand. “I shall pray for you.”

  “Thank you,” Adam said, and he shook James’s hand before walking the northerner to the waiting ship.

  The gangplank was heaved inboard and the warps cast off. James stood at the rail, the new Bible clutched tight in his hands. As the last warp dropped away and the boat perceptibly moved into the river’s current, the freed prisoners cheered. The sidewheels began to turn, their great paddles churning the greasy water white. The motion of the paddles made the released prisoners cheer again, all but James, who stood silent and apart. A plume of dirty smoke sagged from the ship’s tall funnel to blow across the river.

  Adam watched as the ship dropped past the navy yard, its progress helped by a cold, wind-fretted current. He gave James a last wave, then loo
ked down at the pocket Bible to see that its margins were smothered in tightly written notes. It was the Bible of a man who wrestled with God’s will, the Bible of a good man. Adam closed and held the book tightly, as though he could take strength from the word of God, and then he turned and limped back toward his tethered horse. The wind gusted fresh and cold, but Adam felt an immense calm because he had done the right thing. He had chosen the course of peace, and by so doing he would bring nothing but blessings on his country; it would be one country again, North and South, united in God’s purpose.

  Adam rode toward the city. Behind him the truce boat splashed and smoked its way around the bend and so headed south carrying its cargo of treachery and peace.

  PART TWO

  GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY WAS FIXED AS THE day of Jefferson Davis’s formal inauguration as President of the Confederate States of America. He had been inaugurated once before, in Montgomery, Alabama, but that ceremony had only made Davis into the President of a provisional government. Now, hallowed by election and properly installed in the Confederacy’s new capital, he would be inaugurated a second time. The choice of Washington’s birthday as the date of this second ceremony was intended to invest the occasion with a symbolic dignity, but the auspicious day brought nothing but miserable and incessant rains which drove the huge crowd gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square to shelter beneath a host of umbrellas so densely packed that it seemed as if the speech-makers orated to a spread of glistening black lumps. The drumming of the rain on carriage roofs and tightly stretched umbrella skins was so loud that no one except the platform party could hear any of the orations, prayers, or even the solemn presidential oath of office. After taking the oath President Davis invoked God’s help to the South’s just cause, his prayer punctuated by the sneezing and coughing of the dignitaries around him. Gray February clouds scudded low over the city, darkening everything except the new battle flags of the Confederate’s eastern army. The flag, which was hanging on staffs behind the platform and from every rooftop within sight of Capitol Square, was a fine red banner, slashed with a blue St. Andrew’s cross on which were sewn thirteen stars to represent the eleven rebellious states as well as Kentucky and Missouri, whose loyalty both sides claimed. Southerners who looked for auguries were pleased that thirteen states founded this new country, just as thirteen had founded a different country eighty-six years before, though some in the crowd perceived the number as unlucky, just as they perceived the drenching rain as an omen of ill fortune for the newly inaugurated president.