American Gothic (2 page)

2

A Man of Qualities

D
URING THE CIVIL War, the St. Charles was New Orleans’s finest hotel, a sprawling complex with beds for a thousand people, occupying an entire city block. Newspaper advertisements called it “a city within four walls, where prosperous guests and contented employees alike benefit from its splendid environments. Scientifically constructed, embodying the utmost in sanitation, ventilation, safety, and conveniences.”

General Benjamin F. Butler was a man who appreciated conveniences. The city’s new military governor seized the St. Charles to serve as his headquarters.

On any given morning, including Sundays, the St. Charles lobby was a seething mass of human odds and ends, the bad company that assembles, like infection in an untreated wound, where calamity creates the opportunity for profit. Politicians, soldiers, traders, government men, and carpetbaggers jostled cheek by jowl in the noisy room. They smoked, chewed, joked, and played cards, passing time as each awaited an appointment, preferment, order, or contract. The wealth of the Deep South was up for grabs, and the sovereign power administering the division of spoils was doing business out of the St. Charles Hotel.

The pair of privates detailed to escort Nathaniel Peregrine trailed him into the hotel. Peregrine surveyed the claustrophobic scene, his mouth set in a grim line.

On a bench beside the front desk, a doctor examined a soldier’s wounded eye. The bandage, filthy and crusted with dried blood, was on the floor at the soldier’s feet. Peregrine spotted O’Rourke’s sandy-haired head on the far side of the lobby. The captain sat in an elevated chair, having his boots shined. Seeming to sense Peregrine’s arrival, O’Rourke looked over the top of the newspaper held in his hands, which were red-knuckled, a fighter’s hands. He climbed down from his perch, flipped the little black boy with the boot brush a penny, and began to shoulder his way through the crowd.

“Cigar, General?”

Peregrine shook his head at the florid-faced man in a beaver top hat who had stepped in front of him. But the man in the top hat ignored the refusal, pushing a cigar into Peregrine’s breast pocket. “For later, then,” he said, and offered his card. “Mordecai Johnstone, purveyor of the finest-quality army-issue provisions.”

“I’m not a quartermaster, Mr. Jones,” Peregrine said, handing back the card. “I don’t have anything to do with buying supplies.”

“I’m just here to make friends, General,” Johnstone said, touching his hat as Peregrine stepped around him. “Hang me for a toad, sir, but I’m the sort of fellow who just plain likes people.”

“Perhaps we shall be friends then,” Peregrine said, walking away, his escorts close behind.

O’Rourke saluted as he came up. “That’ll be all, boys,” he said, dismissing the privates.

“Am I under arrest, Captain?” Peregrine asked.

“No, General.”

“I ought to be.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but there is no crime in a gentleman indulging himself in a bit of sport from time to time.”

“Like hell.”

“There are allowances to be made, General. Your grievous wounds. The tragedy of your family, sir.”

Peregrine looked away.

“We are all fate’s playthings, sir,” Captain O’Rourke said.

“That’s a reassuring thought, Seamus.”

“Begging your pardon, General. General Butler is expecting you.”

“I don’t want to keep him waiting,” Peregrine said. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

“Aye,” Captain O’Rourke said. “Luck to ye, sir.”

Butler did not look up as Peregrine stood at attention before what had until recently been the hotel manager’s desk.

The military governor was a bullet-headed man, with small, sad eyes looking out from between heavy lids, with deep bags below. He wore his hair long on the sides and in back, a fringe around a bald pate, a droopy mustache disguising a weak mouth. Before the war, Butler had been a criminal lawyer and legislator in Massachusetts. He was a political general, lacking either McClellan’s style or Sherman’s dash, his army commission the handiwork of supporters in Washington. Peregrine would have predicted—correctly, as it would turn out later during the inept Bermuda Hundred campaign—that Butler would prove a poor leader of men in battle. Operators like Butler were better suited for duty in the rear echelon than upon the killing fields of Virginia. Butler made no secret of his plans to run again for office after the war, trading up his general’s stars for a governorship.

“Nathaniel,” he said at last, signing his name to a paper with a flourish. He did not return Peregrine’s salute but handed him the document he had just finished composing.

General Order Number 28 was being issued, the document declared, in response to the uncivilized manner in which the women of New Orleans treated Union soldiers.

Peregrine read:
Hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her trade
.

“What do you think the rebs will say about that?”

“It will offend their Southern sense of chivalry to have you ordering Union soldiers to treat their women like common prostitutes if they insult us,” Peregrine said.

“To hell with Southern chivalry. Do you know what they call me behind my back, Nathaniel? ‘Spoons’ Butler. Of all the infernal cheek.
Spoons!
The gossips say I confiscated the silver from the Crescent City’s homes and churches to line my own pockets. You know that I gave no such order. If liberties were taken, then it’s no more than what the traitors deserved. The eight hundred thousand dollars I confiscated from the Dutch consulate—tongues are wagging over that, of course—was being held in escrow to purchase rebel war supplies. You know I’m not averse to taking stern measures when they are warranted. The fellow I hanged for hauling down the Union flag at the Mint, for example. How do these people expect me to react to such a provocation?”

Butler took the proclamation out of Peregrine’s hands and bellowed for the lieutenant manning the desk outside the office. He handed him General Order Number 28 and ordered it be posted throughout the city without delay.

“They can hate me all they want,” he said to Peregrine, “but they’ll damned well obey me.”

Butler came around his desk toward a pair of leather club chairs arranged on either side of a smoking stand. He lowered himself into a seat and indicated to Peregrine to accommodate himself in the other. Butler lit a cigar and puffed quietly for nearly a minute, meditating on the cloud of blue smoke swirling in the air. Peregrine studied a map of the city opposite his chair. The cigar Mordecai Johnstone had given him stayed in the pocket of his jacket. His head was beginning to ache. It was not a cigar he craved, but a pipe.

“That was a rum business last night at the Chinaman’s,” Butler said at last.

“Yes, sir. I want you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with those people getting hurt.”

“Of course you didn’t. You’re a Union officer, and a highly decorated one at that. The idea that you could sully your hands with crime is unthinkable.”

Peregrine felt his face redden.

“Did you find and arrest that strange woman?”

“Woman?” Butler’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know anything about a woman. The Chinaman is the one responsible for those foul deeds.”

“Yu didn’t hurt anybody.”

“He damned well did. Five people he murdered, two of them defenseless women. And worse than that, he came this close to murdering my most-decorated brigadier general.”

“I’m afraid a mistake has been made, General Butler.”

“No mistake,” Butler said, underlining each word with a slashing movement of his cigar. “It’s all in the report. You can read it, if you want. I have taken care that
your
name is not mentioned. Once his clients were rendered insensible with drugs, the Chinaman strangled them one by one. The motive, it seems, was theft.”

“But they weren’t strangled, sir,” Peregrine argued. “The puncture wounds in their necks—”

“There were no wounds,” Butler said, cutting him off. “None whatsoever. You’re lucky you got out alive. If Captain O’Rourke hadn’t come looking for you, your body would be in a pine box right now, on a train home for burial, killed by that murdering yellow bastard.”

“My God,” Peregrine said.

“Buck up, son,” Butler said, misinterpreting Peregrine’s frustration. “You’ve survived close scrapes before and will do so again. You need to save your luck to use against the real enemy, not some yellow-skinned, squint-eyed hophead.”

“I saw the wounds, General Butler. Here—in the neck, a pair of punctures as if made by some beast’s teeth.”

“Nathaniel, stop. That is an order. There were no wounds. Ask O’Rourke.”

Peregrine opened his mouth, but the look Butler gave him led him to shut it again, as Butler glared like a minor devil through a mephitic exhalation of blue smoke.

“You weren’t in any condition, Nathaniel, to know what you did or didn’t see last night. No doubt you also saw purple-spotted elephants dancing about. Not even a bourbon-drooling, cousin-marrying, backwoods Southern judge would consider the testimony of a witness who was insensate from the effects of smoking opium at the time of the crime. We gave the Chinaman a drumhead trial—which was more than he had coming, if you ask me—and hanged him at dawn. I’ve ordered all the hop joints in the city closed. This sort of thing will not happen again on Benjamin F. Butler’s watch.”

Butler reached inside his jacket as he spoke and withdrew a folded paper, which he unfolded with great drama.

“This is a telegram from the War Department. It says”—he paused a beat for effect—“that Halleck is putting you forward for the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at Antietam.”

Peregrine’s face began to burn again. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Nathaniel. If you hadn’t held your men together when A. P. Hill finally attacked to pull Lee’s chestnuts out of the fire, it would have turned into a rout. The Union can’t afford many more battlefield fiascos if we’re going to put down this damned insurrection. I suspect President Lincoln himself gave Halleck the idea about putting you forward for recognition. I understand you and the president are old friends.”

“That’s hardly the case. I don’t even remember the president visiting me in the field hospital. I was out of my head from blood loss.”

Butler turned sideways in his chair and regarded Peregrine closely, his small, shrewd eyes shining. “The Union needs heroes, Nathaniel. People imagined the war would be over in three months, and now here it is dragging into its third year. The authorities in New York are worried that there will be draft riots if Mr. Lincoln orders up any more conscripts, as he certainly must do.”

Butler pushed his head forward on his neck, like a snapping turtle contemplating a minnow with unblinking eyes.

“You need to pull yourself together, Nathaniel. You’re too valuable a man to the cause for me to have to hang you. Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear as a bell, sir.”

Butler puffed thoughtfully on his cigar, his manner softening, the need to threaten past.

“I know you are grieving for your family, Nathaniel, but you need to swallow your grief before it consumes you. You are certain to ruin your health as well as your career if you continue on this path. It’s time you did some hard thinking about your situation after the war, my boy. An educated and handsome young fellow, with a battlefield promotion to brigadier general and a chest loaded with gleaming medals, will have excellent prospects once we whip the rebs. This war isn’t going to last forever, you know. We need to make the most of our opportunities. But a word to the wise, Nathaniel: Don’t hitch your star to your friend Mr. Lincoln. He can’t possibly win reelection in 1864. The way the war has gone, the voters are certain to send him back to Springfield to practice law.”

“Have you considered my request for transfer to a battlefield unit, sir?”

“Ha ha!” Butler leaned over and slapped Peregrine’s knee. “You
are
an ambitious young man. But you have not fully recovered from your wounds.”

“I am fit enough.”

Butler squinted at him through the smoke. “Your skin has an unhealthy pallor.”

“Yes, from being penned up in this infernal city of traitors.”

“Don’t think your prospects to kill rebs will be limited by serving under me, Nathaniel. I’m promised a command in Virginia as soon as Banks can relieve me. If you remain on my staff, I can promise you all the fighting you can stand.”

“Begging your pardon, General, but I am anxious to get back into the field as soon as possible. Sitting in this rebel city with little to meaningfully occupy my time is doing me no good.”

“I will give the matter consideration,” Butler said. “The War Department would have to agree. They won’t be anxious to send one of our most decorated heroes back in harm’s way.”

“My job is killing rebels, sir.”

“And you’ve proven you are very good at it. Now, Nathaniel, regarding the other unpleasant matter…”

Butler reached for the ashtray to unburden his cigar of a precariously long ash.

“You are hardly the first officer to develop an unhealthy friendship with the poppy while recovering from wounds. I am a worldly man. I understand that men must have their vices. But in a civil society, it is necessary for government to define the limits of what will be tolerated. We are a nation of laws, Nathaniel. That is why we will win this war. We have right on our side. We are doing the Lord’s work, fighting to free the slaves from bondage, although what we will do with them after the war remains to be seen.” His voice fell slightly. “Confidentially, I question whether it is healthy for the races to mingle. Perhaps the best answer is to repatriate the Africans to the Dark Continent.”

“My wounds cause me little pain now,” Peregrine said. “I no longer need the medicine. I can wean myself from it.”

“I know you can, son. Get a grip on yourself and you’ll pull through. You must put the past behind you and look to tomorrow. A man of your qualities has a very bright future indeed.”