Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 (11 page)

“Everything. Also, do you have any information as to what role this house played in the Civil War?”

“Nothing much,” said Bill, who didn't have to consult his notes for that. He considered it the weakest link in his sales pitch. “I mean, Robert E. Lee didn't sleep here or anything. Of course, Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy, for about ten days in 1865 when nobody cared anymore. You know that song, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'? When Joan Baez sings that line about being on the Danville train, that's what she's talking about.”

“Country music seems to have been a vast educational resource for you,” said Huff. “I believe we were discussing this house during that time.”

“Oh, right. Well, as I said, it was here then, but it wasn't used for government business. I think that the Phillips family played host to some minor Confederate officials. People named—” He peeked at his card. “Miss Dabney wrote this out for me in case you turned out to be a history buff. Umm … here it is. A Mr. Micajah Clark, a Mr. Semple, and the postmaster general, a Mr. Reagan. Wonder if he's any relation?”

“I think not,” said Huff, looking singularly unamused. Bill got the impression, though, that there had been a flash of recognition in his cold eyes at the recital of that list of names.

They finished their tour in the antiquated kitchen, but John Huff did not seem dismayed by the lack of modern appliances or the faded
linoleum and drab green walls. “It's a big room,” Bill said lamely. “It has possibilities.”

“So does garbage,” muttered Nathan Kimball to himself.

“I've seen enough,” John Huff announced. “I'll be staying in town a few days. Perhaps you could recommend a hotel?”

“Sure,” said Bill. “There's the Stratford Inn, the Best Western on Highway 58—”

“Never mind. We'll look in the phone book. As I was saying, Kimball and I will be staying a few days. If at the end of that time we find that everything checks out—the appraisal, the survey, and so on—then I'll make your clients an offer for the house.”

“Did I mention their terms?” asked Bill, waiting for the deal to come crashing down as he spoke. “I'm afraid they're rather eccentric about business matters. They don't seem to trust banks. It's probably the result of having lived through the Depression, don't you think? Anyhow, they don't want to be bothered with financing.”

“I understand. If the details all check out, I'll be prepared to offer them a cashier's check for the full amount. I will, of course, expect a discount for cash.”

“I'll tell them,” Bill promised. “I expect you'll be meeting them at closing, so if there's anything else you'd like to know about the house, perhaps you can ask them then.”

John Huff nodded. “Well, there is one thing. Do you happen to know if there are any secret passages in the house?”

WASHINGTON, GEORGIA– MAY 5, 1865

G
ABRIEL
H
AWKS WAS
now a lieutenant in the army, but the honor of the field promotion paled somewhat when he considered how little competition remained for a position in the ranks of Confederate officers. After Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse on Palm Sunday, President Davis and the Confederate government had left Danville by train and proceeded to Greensboro, North Carolina, to confer with General Joseph E. Johnston and General P. G. Beauregard about the fate of the Cause.

Most of the lower ranks felt no need to wait for further advice about the outcome of the war. They were deserting from the train at every station, leaving their posts and their comrades, and slipping away to lose themselves in the tide of fugitives heading for home. Gabriel couldn't
say that he blamed them. How could anyone doubt that the war was lost in the face of the evidence of his own eyes? One of the soldiers who had been in the cabinet car was telling it all over about how he saw the secretary of the navy and the adjutant general passing a tin cup of coffee back and forth, for want of utensils, while the secretary of state himself was dipping his dinner out of a haversack of hard-boiled eggs. The soldier said they bore it all cheerfully, even joking about these sorry circumstances—and perhaps that was the worst sign of all. Surely the end was near.

Gabriel Hawks might have run, too. He was thinking about it as the train headed westward into Piedmont, North Carolina. He could follow the New River north and be back in Giles County before June. But then the navy's paymaster James Semple had made him a lieutenant, and he felt he ought to set an example for the rest. Bridgeford laughed at him, of course, but then they made him a lieutenant, too, so there they were, in ragged, ill-fitting uniforms scrounged from somewhere by Mr. Semple. They hoped they wore deserters' coats, not the leavings of dead men. Still, they were officers.

“The rise in pay delights me,” Bridgeford drawled. “Now it will only take us three months to save up our wages for a pound of butter.”

“That is, if they pay us at all.”

“True, Hawks. And well noted. But, hell, we may as well stick it out a while,” Bridgeford said, laughing. “Maybe Johnston can whip Sherman in Carolina. Maybe the damned Texans will march across the Mississippi and win the war for us yet. Then we'll be fixed for life.”

“You think they will?” Hawks had asked him, feeling a shiver of hope.

“No,” said Bridgeford. “But look out there.” He pointed to the rolling vista of cornstalks, brown and broken behind crumbling fences. “It's the same everywhere, Hawks.”

It
was
the same everywhere. Hawks knew that. The Yankees' General Sheridan had laid waste to most of Virginia. The Richmond paper had quoted a message that Sheridan sent to Lincoln: “If a crow were to fly across the Shenandoah Valley, he would have to take his rations with him.”

“And I've no family left,” Bridgeford went on. “I've grown accustomed to being hungry. What does it matter if we go or stay?”

So they had stayed, and when the train rumbled into Greensboro with only two hundred and fifty men aboard, Hawks and Bridgeford were still among that number. Some of the men joked that they'd just keep on riding the train to Mexico; they had been traveling on it for more than a week already. After a few days' wait in Greensboro, the train ride began again;
but this time the government officials were not aboard.

Word had it that Joe Johnston was going to surrender his army, too. They'd all heard reports of what he'd told the government officials. One of the orderlies could tell it off by heart: “ ‘I shall expect to retain no man beyond the byroad or cow-path that leads to his home. My small force is melting away like snow before the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it.' ” The Confederacy had fallen with Robert E. Lee; only the politicians seemed ignorant of that fact. It was at last decided that Johnston would surrender his army, but political leaders would continue to retreat, perhaps to continue the fighting farther south, or failing that, to set up a government in exile in Mexico or in Europe.

On April 16 the presidential party disbanded to go their separate ways, some on horseback, some in wagons and ambulances, all heading south, and all with a few soldiers for escort. There was word that Stoneman's cavalry was combing the area in search of Jefferson Davis, and the officials believed that a scattering of several groups of fugitives would increase the president's chances of getting away. The train continued on as before, as an added decoy for the Union pursuers, now escorted by a mounted guard of Admiral Semmes's forces to fend off the enemy cavalry. Their protection was more
than a decoy for the opposition. The train in itself was well worth defending, for in one of its cars was the contents of the Confederate treasury: silver coin and gold bullion transported from Richmond with the evacuation of the government.

The tattered caravans wended their way south, following muddy roads past blackened chimneys and stubbled fields that would mean more hunger in the months to come. They stopped in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a week-long stay, where news of Lincoln's assassination reached President Davis, but there was no rejoicing over the passing of their old adversary. He was thought a fair man, and one whose death boded only ill for the Southern people. Word of Johnston's surrender was telegraphed to the anxious cabinet, and then a message from Johnston that the Union had denied Sherman permission to offer lenient terms of surrender. The flight was on again.

From Charlotte, North Carolina, the parties proceeded to Yorkville, South Carolina, with an escort of more than two hundred cavalry, troops escaping from Johnston's surrender. They scouted the area for enemy troops and escorted the cabinet to the Greenville Railroad, on which they traveled to Cokesville. The Union forces were in hot pursuit; Davis was roused in the middle of the night to flee from enemy
troops just ten miles from the town. Despite the fugitive nature of the government's journey, its progress was never secret. The opposing forces always knew where they were going, and at each stop, the townspeople met them with cheering crowds and offers of hospitality. But the goodwill of the citizens would not protect them from the wrath of the victors; a capture would mean prison or the gallows.

They fled to Abbeville, arriving there on the second of May, but they didn't stay long. While the Confederate cabinet was holding its last meeting at the home of Colonel Armistead Burt, the train pulled into the depot, still guarded by Semmes's forces, and a change in personnel was made. George Trenholm, the secretary of the treasury, had been left ill near the Catawba River, and now the president appointed Postmaster John H. Reagan acting treasurer of the Confederacy. Reagan took charge of the train and ordered the cavalry to proceed to Washington, Georgia, forty-five miles to the south. When it arrived, he relinquished the office of treasurer to Captain Micajah Clark, formerly chief clerk of Jefferson Davis's executive office. That transfer of authority was the last official signature affixed by the president to any document.

Hawks and Bridgeford knew nothing of these transactions of power. They accompanied the train on its southward procession, obeying
whatever orders were given. They knew, though, that the train could not be guarded safely much longer. And more men were anxious to leave the service of the dying nation. How foolish it would be to die in an eleventh-hour battle for a country that no longer existed.

At Washington, Georgia, General Breckinridge demanded that the treasurer pay his troops out of the remaining funds. The soldiers' paper money was worthless, and they would need money to make their way home, and so the quartermasters made out their payrolls and paid each man about twenty-six dollars in coin, enough perhaps to see them safely through.

Since the train was no longer a safe means of transportation, the forces disbanded one last time. Stephen Mallory, secretary of the navy, remained in Washington, Georgia, and Mr. Benjamin of the cabinet faded away before Jefferson Davis was captured at Irwinsville on May 10. The others were heading for Florida, hoping to outrun and outlast their pursuers.

Hawks and Bridgeford were among the small band of ex-navy men who accompanied Paymaster James A. Semple on the final leg of the journey to nowhere in particular. In their charge were a couple of wagons, containing the remnants of the navy's supplies and rations. The paymaster was a legend in the military for the resourcefulness of his scrounging. In Danville, he was even lending supplies to some of
the army personnel. Hawks wondered if he'd ever taste real coffee again. The concoction of mashed peanuts that they were drinking went by the name of coffee, but the taste wouldn't fool a lap baby. The stuff was hot, and that was about all you could say for it. The food alone would make a man desert, never mind the hopelessness of a lost war. Going home meant meat without maggots, fresh eggs and vegetables, and maybe a dash of salt again.

“We have little enough to show for serving our country,” said Bridgeford as they rode along beside the wagon. His horse was a bag of bones covered with skin; its head drooped with exhaustion under the weight of its rider. “I have a few silver coins and a Confederate penny given to me by Admiral Semmes, a ragged coat, some scars, and the rank of lieutenant in a defeated army. It isn't much of a start for my career as a civilian.”

“It makes me no never mind,” said Hawks. “I was a farmer before; reckon I will be again. All I lost was time.”

“Doesn't it bother you any that you gave four years of your life for nothing?”