How Few Remain (65 page)

Captain Richardson looked mischievous. “You’ll notice, friends, Douglass says nothing of whether the Rebs changed their minds about him.” He spoke lightly, so the words would be taken for a joke, but Douglass did not think he was joking. By the snide laughs that rose around the table, neither did a good many members of Willcox’s staff.

“In fact, I believe they did,” Douglass answered. “We shall never love one another. We may now know a certain respect previously lacking.” He laughed a laugh of his own. “I cannot deny that General Jackson treated me far more respectfully than the Rebel soldiers who first took hold of me.” He chuckled again. That rib didn’t seem to be broken after all. He didn’t know why not.

Down at the far end of the table, someone said, “They didn’t worry about the Antichrist, I’ll bet. They likely thought they’d nabbed Old Scratch himself.” That got another laugh, this time one in which Douglass felt he could join. That major down there wasn’t far wrong.

Colonel Schlieffen changed the subject, saying, “These”—he groped for the English word—”these doves are very good eating. And we have them often, so they must common be. Very good.” He sucked the meat off a leg bone.

“Not doves, Colonel.” Oliver Richardson enjoyed showing off how much he knew, though this was something any American schoolboy could have told the German military attaché. “They’re passenger pigeons, and yes, they are very common in this part of the country.”

“Not so common as they used to be,” General Willcox said. “When I was a lad in Michigan, the flocks would darken the sky, as the Persians’ arrows are said to have done at Thermopylae against the Greeks. Swarms of that size are no longer seen: fewer forests here in the Midwest where the birds can rear their young than in the old days, I suppose. But, as Captain Richardson says, they do remain common.”

“And, as Colonel Schlieffen says, they do remain very good eating.” Douglass had reduced the two he’d taken to a pile of bones. He hooked another bird off the tray and devoured it, too.

Schlieffen said, “I am glad, Mr. Douglass, you here again to see, and to know that you are safe after being captured. I will not much longer with the Army of the Ohio stay, I think. I have learned much here, and am sorry to have to go, but I think it is for the best.”

“I’ll miss you, Colonel,” Douglass said, and meant it. Like most Europeans he’d met, Schlieffen was far more prepared to accept him simply as a man, and not as a black man, than the common run of Americans. “But, if you’re still learning things here, why go?”

“I believe,” Schlieffen replied after a perceptible pause for thought, “that what new things I may learn by staying will be small next to the knowledge I have already gained.”

Douglass needed a moment to figure out why the German had taken such pains with his answer. Then he saw: Schlieffen was saying he didn’t expect the Army of the Ohio to accomplish much more than it had already done. He didn’t expect U.S. soldiers to break through the Confederate entrenchments ringing them and to rampage across Kentucky. Had he thought they could manage something like that, he might have stayed to watch them do it.

And, in saying the Army of the Ohio was unlikely to accomplish anything more, he was also saying that army had failed. It still did not hold all of Louisville; its flanking maneuver had been costly but had not dislodged the Rebels. Even if it did eventually dislodge the Rebels from Louisville, it surely could not launch any triumphal progress through Kentucky thereafter. Since triumph was what Blaine and Willcox had purposed, anything less meant defeat.

No wonder Schlieffen was so careful not to offend. His departure passed judgment on the campaign and on those who ran it.

Richardson said, “Whether he reckons you’re the Antichrist or not, Mr. Douglass”—he was smooth when he wanted to be, smooth enough to use a title in public, no matter how hypocritically—”I’m surprised old Stonewall up and let you go instead of keeping you to trade for a Reb or something.”

Douglass shrugged. “Had the decision been his, I do not know what he would have done with me—or to me. Had the decision been his, I gather he did not know what he would have done. He referred it to President Longstreet, however, who ordered my release. Having received the order, Jackson not only obeyed but treated me quite handsomely.”

Better than you deserved
, Richardson’s face said.

Orlando Willcox sighed. “Longstreet was more astute than I had thought he would be. By releasing you so promptly and with such good treatment, he enabled the Confederate States to escape the odium that would have fallen on them had they sought to punish you for your views and actions over the years.”

“Yes,” Douglass said, and let it go at that. Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.

From across the Ohio, artillery rumbled. “Confederate guns,”
Captain Richardson said, and grimaced. “We’ve done everything we could, but we never have been able to beat them down.”

“The long range of modern guns makes this hard,” Schlieffen said. “So we learned when we fought the French. When the guns you are shooting at are behind a hill or otherwise hidden out of sight, finding accurately the range is not easy.”

“True, true,” General Willcox said sadly. “During the War of Secession, you could see what you were shooting at, and what you could see, you could hit. Only twenty years ago, but how much has changed since.”

“We do use up a lot of ammunition feeling around for where the other fellow is, and that’s a fact,” Richardson said. “A good thing he’s doing the same with us, or we’d be in the soup.”

“Who learns first how to find the range to the enemy’s guns will a large advantage have in the war where this happens,” Schlieffen said.

Nods went up and down the table. Oliver Richardson said, “When they’re in sight, a rangefinder like the ones the Navy uses would do some good. But land isn’t flat, the way water is. Guns can hide almost anywhere, and shoot from behind hills, as you say, Colonel. I’d like to see the boys in the ironclads cope with that.”

The discussion grew technical. As far as Frederick Douglass was concerned, the discussion grew boring. Changing only the subject of the conversation and not its tone, the soldiers, hashing over the best ways to blow up their foes at enormous distances, might as readily have been steamboat engineers hashing over the best ways to wring a few extra horsepower out of a high-pressure engine.

Stifling a yawn, Douglass shifted in his seat. But before he could rise, General Willcox held up a forefinger. “Something I was meaning to ask you, sir,” the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. “What was it, now? Oh, yes, I have it: during your captivity, did you have any occasion to speak with men of your race held in servitude in the Confederate States?”

Douglass settled himself firmly once more. “No, General, I did not. I wish I had had such an occasion, but it was denied me. My captors went to such lengths to prevent me from having any intercourse with my own people that, until I was returned to this side of the fighting line, I had all my meals from the hands of white soldiers detailed for the task. Appreciating the irony of having
white servants at my beck and call perhaps more than the Confederate authorities would have done, I refrained from pointing it out to them, although I have every intention of prominently mentioning it in one of my future pieces on the experience.”

“They were so afraid you’d corrupt their niggers, eh?” Richardson said. He found himself in a predicament that must have been awkward for him: Douglass had seen how he despised Negroes, but he also despised the Confederate States of America. Juggling those two loathings had to keep him on his toes.

“If, Captain, by corrupting you mean instilling the desire for freedom into the heart of any
Negro”
—Douglass stressed the proper word—”upon whom I might have chanced, then I should say you are correct. Should you desire to construe the word in any other sense, I must respectfully ask that you choose another instead.”

“That is what I meant, close enough,” Richardson said. Douglass sighed a small sigh. No point to taking it further. None of the officers at the table, not even General Willcox, had noticed that Richardson had called Douglass’ brothers in bondage niggers—had, in effect, called him a nigger, too.

No. Colonel Schlieffen had noticed. The mournful eyes in that nondescript face held sympathy for Douglass. Schlieffen, of course, was a foreigner. None of the U.S. officers at the table had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Frederick Douglass wished that surprised him more. Had he really escaped from captivity after all, or only from the name of it and not from the thing itself?

    Brakes squealed, iron grinding against iron. Sparks flew up from the rails, putting General Thomas Jackson in mind of distant muzzle flashes seen by night. The train was a special, laid on by order of President Longstreet. No conductor came down the aisle shouting, “Richmond! All out for Richmond!” Jackson’s was the only Pullman behind the engine and tender.

Gaslights turned the Richmond and Danville Railroad depot bright as day. Under that yellowish light, a captain stood waiting. He sprang to attention when Jackson emerged from his car. “Sir, I have a carriage waiting for you right over yonder. You’re in less than half an hour later than you were scheduled to get here; President Longstreet will be waiting up for you.”

“Very well—take me to him,” Jackson said. Part of him—the frivolous part he’d been fighting all his life—wished the train had
been hours late, so Longstreet would have gone to bed and he would have been able to spend the night in the bosom of his family and to see the president in the morning. But duty came first. “The president would not have summoned me had he not reckoned the matter urgent. Let us go without delay.”

The captain saluted. “Yes, sir. If you’ll just follow me—” As he’d promised, the carriage waited just beyond the glow of the gaslights. He stood aside to let Jackson precede him up into it, then spoke to the old Negro holding the reins: “The president’s residence.”

“Yes, suh.” The driver tipped his top hat, clucked to the horses, and flicked the leather straps. The carriage began to roll. Every so often, Jackson saw men in uniform on the streets of Richmond. But he might well have done that in peacetime, too, here in the capital of his nation. From the spectacle that met his eyes, he could not have proved the Confederate States were at war.

“Did you have a good trip, sir?” the captain escorting him asked.

“Middling,” he replied. “As travel goes, it went well enough. I should be lying, however, if I said I was eager to leave Louisville with the fight unsettled.” He glared at the young officer as if it were his fault. As he’d hoped, that glare suppressed further questions until the carriage had rattled up Shockoe Hill to the presidential mansion.

“Good to see you, General,” G. Moxley Sorrel said, as if Jackson had come round from the War Department rather than from Louisville. “Go right in, sir. The president is waiting for you.”
That
was out of the ordinary. Jackson couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t had to cool his heels in the anteroom while Longstreet finished dealing with whoever was in his office ahead of the general-in-chief.

This time, Longstreet was going through papers when Jackson came in. “You made good time,” he said, rising to shake Jackson’s hand. “Sit down, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I shout for coffee?”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. Coffee would be most welcome.” As usual, Jackson sat rigidly erect, taking no notice of the chair’s soft, almost teasing efforts to seduce him into a more relaxed posture. Longstreet didn’t shout for coffee; he rang a bell. The steaming brew appeared with commendable promptness.
Jackson spooned sugar into his cup, sipped, nodded, and said, “And now, sir, may I inquire what was so urgent as to require removing me from the sight of my command without the battle’s end in sight?”

Longstreet drank some coffee, too, before asking, “Do you expect the Yankees to break through while you’re away?”

“I do not expect them to break through at all,” Jackson snapped. Longstreet only smiled at him. After a moment, he had the grace to look sheepish. “Very well, Your Excellency: I take your point. Perhaps my absence will not unduly imperil the front. Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless, I wanted you here, General.” Longstreet took a president’s privilege and overrode him. “Conferring by telegraph is far too cumbersome. Were the telephone improved to the point where I could remain in Richmond and you in Louisville, that might serve, but we must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now.”

“I do take the point, Mr. President, I assure you,” Jackson said. When Longstreet said
conferring
, he often meant
lecturing
. Like a lot of clever men, he enjoyed hearing himself talk. Jackson had not seen him anywhere near so happy when listening to someone else.

And the president kept right on talking. What came from his lips, though, was praise for Jackson, to which the Confederate general-in-chief was not averse to listening: “You did exactly the right thing when you wired me after Frederick Douglass fell into your hands. Next to holding the Yankees’ first assault at Louisville, sending that telegram may well prove your most important action in the entire campaign.”

“That’s very kind of you, Your Excellency, but surely you exaggerate,” Jackson said.

“I do not! In no particular do I overstate the case.” Longstreet began ticking off possibilities on his fingers. “Had the soldiers who captured him shot him on realizing who and what he was, we might have claimed he was killed in the fighting. Had they lynched him after realizing who and what he was—”

“A fate he nearly suffered,” Jackson broke in.

“I believe that.” Longstreet shuddered. “Had they done it, I should have had to punish them and publish to the world that they had done the infamous act without authorization from anyone
higher in rank. And had
you
hanged him, General”—the president of the CSA frowned most severely—”that would have been very bad. I don’t know how I could have repaired it.”