Charleston (38 page)

At that same hour the President of the Confederacy was far from Richmond, touring the war front. He'd gone first to Tennessee, to settle differences between two of his generals, Bragg and Longstreet. From there he traveled on to north Georgia, Alabama, and his home state of Mississippi. In early November his private train brought him to Savannah, then South Carolina.

Jefferson Davis hadn't visited Charleston since attending Calhoun's funeral, nor had his popularity increased there. If anything, the opposite was true; a substantial and vocal anti-Davis faction existed in every state of the Confederacy. Beauregard's disaffection was well known, and the animus of Robert Barnwell Rhett, publisher of the
Mercury,
was constantly on view in the columns of his newspaper. Rhett had never gotten over his rejection for a cabinet post. He characterized Davis as “perverse and incompetent,” not to say “vindictive, arrogant, and egotistical.” Because of Davis's West Point credentials and military experience in Mexico, Rhett said he thought himself a better strategist than his generals, including Lee.

Artillery on the Neck fired salvos to salute the presidential train when it was still a good way off. A friendly depot crowd, largely white, waved handkerchiefs and placards with messages of welcome. The November air was cool, ripe with autumn smoke and the eternal stink of the mudflats.

When the President stepped down from his car, General Beauregard greeted him with formal politeness. He joined
Davis in an open carriage, the first of four in a procession guarded by cavalry and followed by a German band blaring “Dixie's Land.” Few remembered that the South's anthem was written as a Northern minstrel tune, or that Lincoln Republicans had marched to it in the campaign of 1860.

The carriages traveled slowly south along Meeting. Large crowds shouted and clapped. Bunting and flags decorated buildings even in the burnt district. The carriages arrived at Broad and Meeting. At least a thousand people waited under garlands of laurel strung above the intersection. Alex was in the crowd with her brother and Marion Marburg. She drew hostile looks from a few who recognized her.

Alex had only seen pictures of Jefferson Davis. In person she found him unimpressive. He was a pale, cadaverous man with a tuft of chin whiskers, a high forehead, and fair hair going gray. His black suit was ordinary and looked cheap. She'd read that he was a veritable museum of maladies: neuralgia, malaria, an ulcerated cornea, and heaven knew what else. When the President turned his head to acknowledge one section of the crowd, sunshine striking his left eye made it glisten like a milky marble.

Davis spoke from the courthouse steps. Beauregard stood stiff and resplendent behind him; the double row of buttons on his cadet-gray tunic shone. He stared at the back of Davis's head as the President began his address.

Davis commended Charleston's military defenders, and its citizens, for resisting the enemy onslaught. He praised Maj. Stephen Elliott, commandant of Fort Sumter, who stood next to Beauregard, his military chapeau under his arm. The general was frowning at the sky.

“Charleston must not and I believe will not be taken by the enemy.” Applause. “Were it to prove otherwise, I trust yours will be the glory that I desired for my town of Vicksburg upon her surrender. I wished for the whole to be left a mass of rubble.” A hush then; he was speaking of the end. The unthinkable.

“Alas, it did not happen. Charleston's fate must be different. If there should be a tragic outcome to your struggle,
you face a choice. Will you leave Charleston naked prey for Yankee spoilers, or a heap of ruins?”

A man shouted, “Ruins.” A woman near the courthouse steps echoed it. “Ruins.” Soon the crowd was clapping and chanting.
“Ruins, ruins, ruins, ruins.”
Alex didn't join in, nor did her companions.

At the conclusion of the speech the crowd disbanded and the President moved to his carriage. General Beauregard said good-bye and left with his aide, presumably to attend to duties. Marion said, “The general looked daggers at Davis, did you notice?”

“Davis didn't recognize Beauregard by name,” Ham said. “Just that one reference to ‘our commanding general.' I imagine the rift between the two just became a chasm.”

The German band serenaded the carriage as it rolled away to King Street. Davis would stay at the home of former governor Aiken while inspecting Charleston's defenses. A well-publicized banquet was scheduled for the evening, courtesy of Palmetto Traders. Guests would enjoy boned turkey stuffed with truffles, baked and fried local oysters, tomatoes and peppers and other scarce vegetables, and quantities of Madeira “assured to be more than fifty years old.” Mr. Folsey Lark and his partner, Mr. Gibbes Bell, had been mentioned along with the menu in every newspaper but the
Mercury,
which printed nothing about the event. Marion planned to attend the banquet with Esther. Ham wasn't invited.

Alex walked with her brother and the banker as far as City Market, then left them. She wanted to think about what needed to be done at Bell's Bridge.

She strolled east to Church Street, then turned south again, past a work crew filling a shell crater. She didn't notice a large coach stopped opposite St. Philip's until she was almost upon it. The coach, shiny black with three glass windows on each side, was a conveyance of someone wealthy. She'd seen similar ones in Washington; they cost $500 to $1,000.

A Negro held the horse's headstall and watched the sky as though expecting a fatal round to come whizzing in at any moment. Alex greeted him with a nod and a smile. Inside the
iron fence of the burying ground someone was speaking. She recognized Ouida, kneeling beside a Spartan grave, a rectangle of brick with a small marble slab laid in the middle.

Ouida's enormous hooped skirt, white once, was yellowed by time. So were her white mesh gloves and a white half-veil that reached the tip of her nose. Springy English curls, long out of fashion, dangled below her ears. Scarlet lip rouge and an excess of face powder gave her a grotesque, clownlike look. Rimless oval pince-nez lay against a round chain holder pinned to her bodice.

Alex spoke softly to the driver. “I know that lady. I knew her husband too. Did they bring his remains back from Virginia?”

“No, missus, he's buried up there someplace. That grave belongs to Mr. Calhoun.”

“John Calhoun?”

“Yes'm. Mistress comes here least once a month.”

Dogs yapped in the distance. Clearly vexed, Ouida shook her finger at the unresponsive person under the sod. Alex shivered and started away.

“Cousin? Is that you?”

Ouida came out the gate sideways, her immense hoops tilted up to ease the passage. She pulled a fine gold chain from the holder on her bosom, set the pince-nez in place. Her watery blue eyes enlarged behind the lenses. “I hardly expected to find you still in Charleston.”

“I have things to occupy me.” Alex spoke carefully, pleasantly, so as not to excite or antagonize her cousin. “I was very sorry to learn of Dr. Hayward's passing.”

“He doesn't deserve sympathy,” Ouida said with a toss of her curls. “He tried to help a Yankee and God punished him. The Yankees are devils. Lincoln is Satan.”

“Ouida, I think it would be best if we didn't discuss—”

“I fear the Yankees have my son a prisoner. I've not heard from him in months. Every Yankee should burn in hell. They brought all this misery on us.”

Alex couldn't help a retort. “The Yankees aren't solely responsible for the war. Charleston fired the first shot.”

“And all you can do is gloat over what's happening to us.”

“Look here, Ouida. I feel sorry for everyone in
Charleston, including you. No sane person wishes suffering on others.”

“You make me sick with your piety. How dare you come back to taunt and insult us.”

“I'm doing neither. This is my home as much as it is yours. I came back because my mother was ill.”

“She deserved to die. She raised a Yankee whore.”

Alex slapped her, then instantly wished she could roll back time and cancel the mistake. Ouida touched her powdered cheek. “I can have you charged with assault.”

Sorrow melted Alex's anger. “Oh, Ouida. Haven't you vented enough hatred for one lifetime?”

“No, not yet. Mr. Calhoun says you and your kind must never be forgiven. You want to destroy the South with your insufferable righteousness. He told me that today.” Ouida's high, hectoring voice attracted attention from passersby. The Negro driver, torn between mortification and fright, looked wildly up and down Church Street.

Ouida picked up her skirts and swept to the coach. The driver jumped to the box, jerked the whip from its socket, and flicked the croup of the horse.

That evening Alex described the encounter to Ham. “You called her unbalanced. If she talks to someone who's been dead since 1850, she's more than that. She's a madwoman.”

“Yes, that fact is widely recognized but largely unspoken. Ouida's wealth and position protect her. Best to avoid her.”

“I fully intend to do so. My God, Ham, how many enemies do we have in this town?”

“Many more than I'd like. Care to change your mind about the school?”

A Union round crashed in the distance. “No. People like Folsey and Ouida don't own Charleston. It's our city as well as theirs. I won't run.”

In the spring of 1863 Richard Riddle and Cal Bell hoped for parole from Fort Delaware under the cartel for general exchange of Union and Confederate prisoners. It was a man-for-man exchange, with tables of equivalencies for different ranks. Richard, a captain, was worth six privates, Cal, a second lieutenant, three.

In May their hopes were dashed. Largely at the instigation of Lincoln's secretary of war, Mr. Stanton, the cartel collapsed. Stanton and General Grant objected to continually resupplying the Confederacy with men likely to violate parole and return to the fight.

During the summer all Confederate officers in the North were loaded on the cars and moved to Johnson's Island Military Prison in Sandusky Bay, a mile from the shore of Lake Erie. A Union sloop continually patrolled in the bay with guns trained on the prison.

“Well, here we are again,” soldiers liked to say when confronted with a circumstance no different from their last. The expression was never more relevant than when the two South Carolinians arrived at the prison compound. The same fierce winds blew through gaps in the barracks walls. The same Lincoln hirelings guarded the deadline. The same putrid rations—wormy bread, beans, occasionally some pickled pork—were distributed at noon, one meal every twenty-four hours. The same chinch bugs and grayback lice deviled unwashed flesh. The same sinks overflowed with waste and bred plump wharf rats. Prisoners caught the rats, skinned, and roasted them. Richard was damned if he'd eat rat. Cal said it was passable fare.

By this time Richard and Cal were no longer fresh fish but salt fish—prison veterans. On their second night at Johnson's Island muggers from the next barracks swarmed in to raid for possessions. It was a curiosity of prison life that guards often overlooked knives belonging to inmates. Richard kept a six-inch folding Bowie hidden in his pocket. One of the muggers got a feel of it, buried in his thigh. The raid ended abruptly.

Cards and dice helped pass the time. Richard never gambled. Surviving day to day was enough of a gambling game for any man. You wagered your stamina against smallpox, and pneumonia, and typhoid fever. If you lost, the good men who'd organized the prisoner YMCA carried your corpse away.

Northern winter closed down. The wind howled. The temperature stayed below zero for days. A wood-burning stove in each barracks did little to alleviate suffering at twenty below. Prisoners hacked up chairs and legs of bunks and fed the pieces to the stove. At night, when Richard put his canteen under his head for a pillow, the contents froze.

Thick ice on the bay drove the guard sloop away and encouraged escape attempts. Richard was asked to join one in late December. Wary of the leader's intelligence, he declined. It was well he did; three of the four who scaled the wall and fled across the lake came back in chains, hands and feet frozen. One died in the prison hospital. The leader had perished when his pursuers put two bullets in his back. They left him for the fish when the ice melted.

Richard had seen snow in Columbia, but never in such heavy quantities as fell on Johnson's Island in the winter of 1863–1864. He engaged in a new sport, snowball fights. His bones creaked, but his ferocity and his throwing arm quickly raised him to the rank of commander of the Blue Army. It took the field against the Red Army in exchanges of icy missiles that lasted two and three hours, until the warriors fell back, too cold and exhausted to continue.

A sadistic guard observed Richard and Cal's friendship,
accused them of being lovers. Both of them considered it an insult to their honor. Southern men could be friends without that kind of thing, although there was plenty of it in the prison. Strange whispers and groans often disturbed the night.

Richard sharpened his folding Bowie on a borrowed whetstone. One bitter February morning the offending guard was found stiff in the snow with his startled eyes bulging and his throat slashed.

Questioned, Richard said he and Cal had played cards until dawn. Others in their barracks swore to it. Richard and Cal were spared transfers to an eight-room death house where convicted prisoners lived with a sixty-four-pound iron ball on a six-foot ankle chain until they were hung.

Richard went back to carving miniature soldiers. Cal was much better at whittling. His canoes and little sailing ships rigged with sticks and thread sold well as souvenirs in Sandusky shops. The money was returned to the prisoners by the fair-minded prison commandant. Cal spent his on whiskey smuggled in by the guards. He drank steadily, a sip at a time, from first light until dark. Richard hated to see it.

Richard lived for an end to the war and a return to his native state and his wife, Loretta. Then, God willing, he'd never have to look at another Yankee face, never have to speak to a Yankee or do business with one. He'd go home hating Yankees. Cal just wanted to go home to some better whiskey.