A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (13 page)

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1:28 PM, OCTOBER 21, 1863

The president's private secretary, John Nicolay, pointed upstairs to the
parlor where Lincoln received visitors. Sharpe had become almost a
member of the White House staff, which was quite aware of his standing
in Lincoln's opinion. To Sharpe's amazement, he had found himself going from a staff colonel in a field army to a trusted advisor and confidant
of the president. Lincoln had added the stars of a brigadier general to
emphasize his favor. It was all an enormous compliment from the man
who was always on the scent of good advice.

Sharpe was walking down the hallway to Lincoln's parlor when the
door burst open and Senator Benjamin Wade, one of the hardest of the
Hard War Republicans, strode out, his face red with anger. He barely
mumbled an apology as he brushed past Sharpe.

Sharpe poked his head into the parlor. Lincoln was sitting at his
desk, leaning back in his swivel chair with a look of mirth on his face.
"I fear I have made Senator Wade my enemy for life," he said. "He was
just here now, urging me to dismiss Grant, and in response to something
he said, I answered, 'Senator, that reminds me of a story.' I had not even
got one foot in the story when he said, 'It is with you all story, story! You
are letting this country go to hell with your stories, sir! You are not more
than a mile away from it this minute."'

"What did you answer?" Sharpe asked.

"I asked good-naturedly if that was not just about the distance from
here to the Senate Chamber. He was very angry, and grabbed up his hat
and went off."'

Wade, like so many of the movers and shakers, missed the powerful
didactic purpose of Lincoln's storytelling. His cabinet had come around
to it, though the pompous did find it trying, but he also used storytelling to let a man down easily or sooth a ruffled feeling. He was as much
at home telling stories to the workers at the Washington Navy Yard
and the troops in the field as he was to his cabinet and the members of
Congress and the endless stream of politicians and generals that flowed
through his parlor. And he has the same ability to convulse a crowed of
sunburned infantry as the most refined aristos of the Northeast with the
same, often bawdy, story.

A raconteur like Sharpe was not alarmed. He knew that a good
line was apt to have a delayed effect. "I wouldn't worry too much about
Senator Wade, sir."

"Oh, I know. He's a good man under that stuffed shirt. He'll chew
on my comment and come around. He won't let it come between us and
our great work. That reminds me of a famous politician from Illinois,
recently deceased, whose undeniable merit was blemished by an overweening vanity. If he had known how big a funeral he would have had,
he would have died years ago."2

Sharpe had a good laugh, and then traded just as good a story. Lincoln batted back an even better one. Sharpe waited for Lincoln to bring
up the reason for calling him over, and that was soon coming.

"Sharpe, did I ever tell you about the lectures I used to give on the
wonders of American invention?"

Sharpe knew he was now playing straight man and answered on
cue, intrigued by what would come next. "No, sir, I don't think you did."

Lincoln's eyes twinkled, "Well, if I do say so, I gave a pretty good
lecture on the marvels rolling out of the brains in this country and
abroad. I used to talk about the enthusiasm for invention that would
infect a certain sort of fellow something powerful. I said of this type, 'He
has a great passion-a perfect rage-for the new. His horror is for all that
is old, particularly Old Fog; and if there be anything old which he can
endure, it is only old whiskey and old tobacco.'3

"Well, Sharpe, I've been thinking that these wars we have got ourselves into require just that sort of fellow. If we are to survive, we have
to have that perfect rage for the new. Old Fog just keeps us even with the
enemy. Ripley was 'Old Fog' in the flesh, you know. Called everything new 'new-fangled gimcracks' and gave me a devil of a time getting those
repeaters into the hands of the troops, not to mention my coffee mill gun.
Replacing him last month as chief of ordnance for the Army was just a
start.

"I figure, Sharpe, that the enemy might get that perfect rage for
those new-(angled gimcracks, too. Now that would just tear things. As I
see it, invention gives us an advantage with our monitors and repeaters,
not to mention the balloons. But, Sharpe, Britain is called the 'Workshop
of the World' for good reason. Why, their factories, forges, and arsenals
have kept the Confederates in the field for two years without causing
one British soldier or sailor to do without so much as a hardtack. Throw
in the French, too. They can even fight a war on our doorstep without
anyone in Paris doing without milk in his coffee. And they can do this by
just being Old Fog.

"Take niter for example. We need it to make gunpowder, and
they've got it in India, or most of it. And we can't buy it now. And with
their blockade, we can't buy it from the new sources in Chile either.
Luckily, I had Pete Dupont quietly buy up so much we have eight million pounds in reserve, but that will only last for one year or less. But to
hedge our bets, I had a fellow named Isaac Diller working on a substitute
based on chlorate. Well, I've spent a fortune on it, and he gets a very
good powder, but they just can't grain it.4 We had a demonstration a
few days ago, and all I can say is 'small potatoes and few in a hill.' What
a bust!"

Lincoln was walking around the room now as he spoke, his hands
clutching his lapels. "Of course, we could do what the Rebels are doing
and work through every cave and dung heap for niter, but that would
be a drop in the bucket. Pete Dupont tells me, though, his chemists are
working on something called guncotton, but that will still require niter.
Now if we could only figure out a way to make niter here at home."

Sharpe wondered what Lincoln was up to. He had fingers in more
pies than even Lincoln knew, but munitions production was not one
of them.

"Pete tells me that some Germans have been working on this
guncotton for twenty years, but they haven't been able to find out too
much." He looked over his reading glasses, perched on the end of his
nose. "Do you think you might he able to help him there?"

Sharpe grasped the thread immediately. "Of course, sir. But with
the blockade, it is a time-consuming process to get our agents out of the
country and to Europe. Our Irish friends, though, have a talent for slipping over the Canadian border and transforming themselves into loyal
subjects of the queen. I'll see what I can do."

Lincoln said, "I have plans for the Irish as well, but we'll talk of that
later." He looked away as if in lost in thought for a moment, then turned
back to Sharpe.

"You see, Sharpe, if we try to match Old Fog to Old Fog with the
British and French, we will lose hands down. That plays against our nature as a people. Our ancestors left Europe to get away from Old Fog for
God's sake. Now that the full weight of their power has fallen upon us,
we must rely on the strength of our nature, and avoid anything Old Fog
like the plague, excepting, of course, old whiskey and old tobacco.

"And then there's Doctor Johnson's famous observation that the
prospect of getting hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully. The British and French have done us a great favor in a way. They have swept
away the doubts and the opposition. The mind of the people is wonderfully concentrated. I tell you, Sharpe, when a New York Brahmin like
Theodore Roosevelt, who has avoided service in the war, begs me to
allow him to raise a regiment and pay for its equipment out of his own
pocket, our enemies have conjured a miracle."

Sharpe interrupted, "In all fairness, sir, I think the reason that Roosevelt did not join up before was his very Southern wife. Her brother is
the same James Bulloch, the Confederate agent in Britain who built Alabama. A younger brother serves on her still. His wife would have left him
if he had joined."

"You don't say! Well, I can sympathize. Mrs. Lincoln's brothers are
all in gray, too, but I'm a luckier man than Roosevelt. There's no way
Mrs. Lincoln would leave the White House." He winked at Sharpe.

His face grew long again as he picked up his earlier thread. "Of
course, the Copperhead treason has made the Midwest vomit equivocation up. It's a foolhardy man who speaks out against the war now. The
country is as united as it was the day after Sumter was fired upon, but
now it is steeled as well. The problem, Sharpe, is to make the best use of
this unity, for if we don't, it will just evaporate, and the enemy will grind
us down. And they can do it, too. With a British army in Albany and a French army marching on New Orleans, they could beat us before we
even figure out what we are doing."

He went over to the desk and picked up a rifle that had been leaning against its other side. "This is what I mean, this fine repeater built by
Chris Spencer." He cocked the piece in a smooth action. "I hear the boys
who have them say that you can load it on Sunday and fire all week.
And the Rebels are scared to death of them. It's too had that we don't
have tens of thousands of them now, but that's water under the bridge."

Sharpe spoke up, "I saw what the Sharps repeater did at Gettysburg, sir. A few companies of the Berdan's Sharpshooters laid the enemy
out by the hundreds."

"Just so, just so." Lincoln was pacing back and forth in front of
Sharpe faster now that he was worked up to the subject. "The problem is
that Spencer just can't make them fast enough. There are too many different repeaters being made, and he can't get the machines and men to
make them. That's why I've asked Andy Carnegie to look into working
this knot out of the string." Sharpe had met Carnegie several months
ago when he had come to Washington. Secretary of war representative
Charles Dana had introduced them, called him that "little Scotch devil,"
and recounted how at the very beginning of the war he had marshaled
the railroads to get reinforcements to Washington in the nick of time
to save the city and had worked out the plan for the nation's telegraph
systems to support the government. He was a man who could see to the
heart of any organizational problem, conceive a solution, and then find
the right men to execute it. He put a premium on initiative and good
judgment.

"That's why I want you and Charlie Dana and Gus Fox, and the
Army and Navy chiefs of ordnance, to work with him. The way I see it,
you ferret out anything useful going on in Europe and keep an ear open
if the enemy suddenly steps out of character and develops a passion for
the new."

PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND, 6:20 PM, OCTOBER 21, 1863

Crowds of well-wishers and families packed the docks along with the
county notables of Devon to give a rousing send-off to the 1st Devonshire Rifle Volunteers embarking for Ireland where they were to take
over the Dublin garrison duties of the recently departed 41st Foot. Although a Navy town, Plymouth had gone all out to take care of her
own county volunteers. Each man received a package with needle and
thread, writing paper, tins of sardines, bottles of jam, and a prayer book
as he boarded the ship.

Such scenes were being reenacted all over the British Isles as Britain mobilized for the American war. Britain's small regular army of two
hundred and twenty thousand had been spread around the world, with
barely seventy thousand men left in the British Isles. Already more than
twenty thousand of them had been sent to British North America, with
many more scheduled to go despite the winter seas. The next largest concentration of troops was the fifty thousand men in India, but the embers
of the Great Mutiny still glowed hot in British eyes, and the government
had determined that India would not be asked for a single man. The
jewel in the crown was the greatest source of Imperial wealth and could
not be risked. The Mediterranean garrisons held twelve thousand men,
and New Zealand and South Africa held five thousand each. Another
three thousand men garrisoned Hong Kong. Only limited numbers could
be drawn from these garrisons. The Maoris in New Zealand had only recently been subdued after desperate fighting, and depleting that garrison
would be imprudent.