House Divided (24 page)

Quickly the group dissolved. Brett, observing that Edmund Ruffin rose with some difficulty, offered him an arm; but the old man put it aside.

“I am strong enough, sir,” he said, his tones ringing. “I have an appointment with history. The Palmetto Guards have accepted me as one of them; have accorded me the honor of firing the opening gun. Till I have done that, Mr. Dewain, mine is the strength of ten thousand.”

Brett said a sorrowful good night to Mr. Petigru and returned to Cinda, walking slowly through the crowded streets, hearing excited voices everywhere. He had no more hope of peace; the issue, finally, was joined. He told her what had happened.

“Oh, why are they such idiots?” she cried.

“Don't forget,” he urged, “that however mistaken, these men are sincerely convinced that honor and loyalty—as well as self-interest—demand that the South insist upon its rights.”

“But—being so sly, doing things in such devious ways, attacking Sumter to make the North attack us to make Virginia join the Confederacy!”

He said gravely: “Unless I'm wrong, this man Lincoln is as sincere as they—and as shrewd. He's tricked them into opening hostilities. Edmund Ruffin counts on firing the shot that will rally all the border states to join the Confederacy; but that first shot will also rally the North behind Mr. Lincoln. And with the North behind him, he will never let us go.”

She nodded wretchedly. “There was a time when I'd have said we'd make him let us go, but I'm not so warlike as I was, Brett Dewain.”

 

Next day Charleston hummed like a hive of angry bees. Tuesday, Roger Pryor arrived in town; and he too lodged at the Charleston Hotel where Brett and Cinda were staying. The Virginia Congressman had long been an avowed advocate of secession; and when the rumor of his presence spread, a great throng gathered in front of the hotel, solidly filling the street, shouting for him to show himself. He came out at last on the balcony at the mezzanine level, and standing between two of the tremendous columns just outside the window where Brett and Cinda were listening, he spoke to the intent and cheering crowd.

Virginia would be with them, he promised. “Give the old lady time! She's a little rheumatic!” He won their confident laughter. “But as sure as tomorrow's sun, once the first gun is fired, Virginia will be in the Southern Confederacy in an hour by a Shrewsbury clock!”

Cinda, when he was done and the crowd dispersed, clung to Brett's arm. “But at least, Brett Dewain, they haven't yet fired that shot. Perhaps they won't.”

“They will,” he said. “Roger Pryor and his like will keep the pressure on the Government. They'll have their way in the end.”

Wednesday, Cinda was left long alone, and she kept her room, shutting her ears to the steady murmur of excited voices in the streets. Thursday Brett came to tell her that President Davis had directed General Beauregard to demand the surrender of the Fort. “They've sent a note to Major Anderson. He asked time to shape his reply; has till eight o'clock to yield.”

“What if he doesn't?”

“Then the batteries will open.” He added in a dry tone, “Old Mr. Ruffin will have his great hour.”

He left her almost at once and when he returned it was to say that Major Anderson had declined to surrender. “But he says they'll be starved into it in a few days more.”

“Will we wait?”

“They're demanding he fix an hour when he will yield the Fort. Colonel Chesnut and Captain Lee have gone out to him again—Roger Pryor went with them—and they have authority to act upon his reply.”

“Then they can order the guns to fire?”

“If his answer does not satisfy them.” He said in a wry tone: “And of course no answer Major Anderson can make will satisfy Mr. Pryor.” He drew a deep breath. “The town's wild,” he said. “People heard that Major Anderson must give his answer at eight o'clock, and everyone crowded down to the Battery to see the bombardment begin, climbed up on roof tops, jammed the wharves and the ships tied up alongside. I've just come from there.” It was almost midnight. “They were still waiting. I suppose they won't have to wait much longer.”

She wished him to stay with her, but he shook his head. “I have to be—I want to hear the word.”

“Will you come back to me?”

“I'll come when I can.”

But it was gray dawn before he returned, and already the town was shaken by the first thudding of the guns, and the streets were full of clamor and of outcry, the pound of running feet, the rumble of wagons, the shouts of jubilant men. When he came to their room, Cinda lay face down across the bed, her hands pressed to her ears. Without speaking he sat down beside her, and feeling the bed yield she turned and lay looking up at him.

“The guns have begun,” she whispered. He nodded, and she asked quietly: “How many months, how many years, Brett Dewain, before they will be stilled?”

“God knows.” He added: “Everyone is down along the Battery, watching the spectacle. Do you want to see? You could go up on the roof here.”

She shook her head. “Oh no, no!” And she added wretchedly: “I
know I'm absurd, as though shutting my eyes and ears could make any difference!” And she said, looking up at him, “Brett Dewain, I think you've changed already. There's something new in your eyes. Something serene. I think you're even happier.” She smiled up at him. “I feel shy with you now, Mr. Dewain. As though you were a stranger by my bed. Yet a beloved stranger.”

He leaned down to kiss her; and they went together to the window to watch the passers in the street below, and stood there hand in hand. All that day the distant guns beat upon their ears. The night came on with heavy rain clouds threateningly low. Brett went to buy the
Courier
; and when he finished with it she picked it up, and once she read a sentence or two aloud.

“Listen to this, Brett Dewain. ‘A blow must be struck that will make the ears of every Republican fanatic tingle. We must transmit a heritage of rankling and undying hate to our children.' ”

“I know,” he agreed. “I read that. It's the way people are talking.”

“ ‘Undying hate,' ” she echoed, half to herself. “Do we want our children to go through life burning with undying hate? Hate's a poison, Brett Dewain. What sort of world can be made with undying hate as a foundation?” He came to take her in his arms, and she pleaded: “Oh, Brett Dewain, can't you find some word to comfort me?”

“No one who's still sane can find any comfort in what's happening down the harbor, Cinda.”

She nodded. “You'll stay with me, won't you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, there's nothing I can do. Yes, I'll stay with you.”

All that night the cannonade continued. Rain for a while muted the sound, and Cinda slept and woke again at dawn. Brett was asleep. Well, let him sleep while he could. She went to stand at the window, looking along the almost empty streets; and day came, and the dawn clouds thinned and blew away, and the sun shone bright and clear.

When a few hours later the Fort surrendered, the street below their windows was full of triumphant shouting: The throng laughed and cheered as though to welcome a happy holiday.

April, 1861

 

 

F
AUNT after that Christmas at Great Oak returned to Belle Vue jealous of every hour of his absence, as though already this loved spot were slipping away from him. The plantation was nearer the Potomac than the Rappahannock, on the gently rolling plateau north of the low ridge which ran the length of the Northern Neck. Faunt had never diligently worked his land. He had no overseer and he let his people take their own way, only insisting that they raise corn and small grains sufficient to feed themselves and the horses and mules, the cattle and the hogs. This year he did no more than usual, but he sometimes rode for hours. Occasionally Anne Tudor joined him, though more often he was alone with his thoughts. From a modest height of land near the house he could see the Potomac and the sweep of field and forest in Maryland beyond, receding into the distance, broken by no hills or mountains worth the name; and through a notch in the ridge behind him he could see some high ground south of the Rappahannock. He sometimes walked to this hilltop to sit there for an hour at a time, finding peace and beauty and content.

Yet to him, through the newspapers or by the occasional report of some visitor, came the distant grumbling thunder of debate and discussion which gave warning of nearing storm. The Virginia Convention elected in February was by a count of delegates two to one against secession; yet for weeks they reached no decision. The seceding states sent emissaries to urge that Virginia withdraw from the Union; and Faunt read some of their speeches. Fulton Anderson of Mississippi, Henry Benning of Georgia, John Preston of South Carolina; the words of each fell into the same pattern. The Republican party was committed
to the abolition of slavery, and now the Republicans had elected Lincoln and would control the national government. Therefore, since only by doing so could they keep their slaves, the Gulf States had seceded. Thus said each man, and each orator in turn offered Virginia the leadership of the Confederacy if she would but join the seceding states.

Mr. Benning's speech was in some passages so ridiculous that it made Faunt smile as he read. “Separation from the North,” said Mr. Benning, “was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of slavery.” And he went on to describe what abolition would mean: suffrage for the Negro, and therefore Negro government; inevitable white resistance to that Negro rule; a call from the Negroes to the general government for support against that white resistance; the extermination or expulsion of all Southern white men, and the forced mating of white women to Negroes; the descent of the whole South under black control into a howling wilderness. “And then,” concluded Mr. Benning, the Republican North “will take possession of our territory and exterminate the blacks. Thus the end will be that the Yankees will walk our soil as sole lord, having exterminated both us and our slaves. That is what abolition in the Cotton States would be.” He went on to picture the happy results of secession; the establishment of customs guards, supported by the army, along the frontier; domination not only of the North but of Europe by withholding cotton or exporting it as a reward for good behavior; separation of the North into fragments by fortifying Virginia's wedge of territory between Ohio and Pennsylvania ...

Faunt at length ceased to find Mr. Benning's nonsense amusing. After all, the man was Georgia's accredited emissary to the Convention; he had been heard, and presumably with attention and respect. You could not laugh him aside. Dining that evening with Judge Tudor and Anne, Faunt read aloud some portions of the speech; till the Judge almost exploded.

“The man's either a fool or a scoundrel.”

“I'd rather think him plain scoundrel,” Faunt remarked. “Fools, if they have the gift of tongues, are much the more dangerous.” He added reluctantly: “Mr. Anderson's speech, and Mr. Preston's, were respectable enough. Of course they both say their states seceded to
prevent the abolition of slavery, but Mr. Anderson said something that struck me; that Northerners have been taught to believe we are inferior to them in morality and civilization. It occurs to me that we've been taught the same thing about the North.”

“To be sure, to be sure,” the Judge agreed. “And I'm afraid these long years of mutual recriminations and abuse have built up a tension only war can ease.”

“I sometimes suspect,” Faunt suggested, “that it's because we secretly know ourselves wrong that we defend ourselves so vehemently.”

The other reluctantly assented. “Yes, I suppose that's true. Wrong about slavery, and wrong to secede. Yet perhaps it's as well to settle that point once and for all. As long as the right of secession is admitted, the Union can never be accepted as permanent.”

Anne said surprisingly: “It's like a girl getting married and always thinking that if she doesn't like it she can go home to her mama. Till she gets over that idea, she never becomes a good wife.”

Faunt smiled affectionately. “It's a pity, Judge Tudor, that we can't all see as clearly as Anne. Yet—didn't New York when she ratified the Constitution reserve the right to secede?”

“I believe so. And of course Massachusetts used secession as a threat in the Louisiana controversy, and again when Texas sought statehood.”

“Will Mr. Lincoln use force against the seceding states?”

The Judge strongly shook his head. “No authority to do so rests in the executive. The Constitutional Convention expressly refused to grant it. President Buchanan, yes, and even the New York
Tribune
have admitted that there is no coercive power. Lincoln himself in his inaugural disclaimed such power. No, sir, there will be no coercion.”

Faunt hoped the other was right. That Black Republican in the White House was not to be trusted. He would make himself a dictator if he could. But Congress would tie his hands. Certainly in Congress and in the North there was no readiness to follow Lincoln to war.

Yet suppose the South took arms? What then? The Convention in Richmond, under the leadership of Governor Letcher, still stood firm against secession; but against that firmness an outcry everywhere began to rise. Faunt decided to go to watch events at close range. The first week of April was steadily rainy, so he delayed; but the rains persisted till he would wait no longer. He went to the hidden chapel to make
his farewells. Always before now he could say in his whispering good-bys: “I will return, my dear. I will return.” But today he could not surely make this promise. In the times ahead, no man setting out upon a journey could be sure of journey's end.

He lingered, reluctant and sorrowing; and the rain beat hard and pitiless on the roof of rifted slabs above his head. But at last he returned to the house where Zeke had his horse ready. He rode through a downpour to Port Conway and ferried across the swollen river to Port Royal and took the river road to Fredericksburg. He would leave his horse there and travel on the cars to Richmond.

He had not realized the seriousness of this flood. Every little creek was out of its banks, and at Fredericksburg the raging river had wrecked the railroad bridge. Also, in the region around the headwaters of the Mattapony on the way to Richmond, the tracks were reported under water, with many lesser bridges gone; so he could only wait, a day and then another. But when the first cars started through to Richmond, he was aboard.

In Fredericksburg he had listened much and spoken little, weighing the rising clamor for secession; and on the cars he heard all around him voices truculent and boastful, cursing the laggard Convention and damning Governor Letcher for his stand. Faunt while he listened watched the passing scene outside the windows; the receding waters of the flood, the sedge and pine which overran the old fields, the impoverished farms, the occasional mansion dimly seen through screening woodlands. Tobacco was a crop that paid rich dividends, but it left exhausted lands. Like a vice, it gave brief feverish pleasure yet exacted a high price in the end.

Here before his eyes poverty now dwelt everywhere; and between the world of which he was a part, wealthy, mannered, leisurely, and the world inhabited by these wretched men and women whom he saw from the windows of the train there was a wide gulf. In his small house at Belle Vue he lived alone, surrounded by devoted servants. Even in that slack-kept establishment, if he wished to dine, fine damask and delicate china and gleaming silver were spread on the rich mahogany; the most delicious viands, the choicest wines were set before him. If he wished to read, his shelves were stocked with all the treasures of the world's literature, and every worth-while periodical of
the day lay there at hand. If he wished to ride abroad, his stables held sleek-groomed horses; if he would drive, his carriage made. by Mr. Brewster of New York was ready for his use. He had—unless it was the old loneliness, the heart-weariness of life without Betty and their baby who died so long ago—no want he could not satisfy.

But how many were there in Virginia who lived thus graciously? And suppose war came? Virginia would be the battle ground. The storm about to break would destroy this fine world of which he and his like were all a part, this Virginia. Anywhere in the Tidewater, in the Piedmont, on the South Side, he could count on riding up to a hospitable doorway and finding a welcome from old friends, or from friends of old friends. But how many were they? In Richmond there were thirty-five thousand people; but how many of those thousands lived as he did, in soft and gentle ways? A hundred? Five hundred? Hardly more. In all of Virginia how many? A thousand? Five thousand? Not many, certainly.

But how many hundreds of thousands were there of these others: small planters with half a dozen or a dozen slaves, small farmers with one or two? Probably no more than fifty thousand men in Virginia owned any slaves at all. The rest were the yeoman farmers and the teeming poor whites, crowded into wretched hovels, living narrow lives, often hungry, often cold, unschooled, not even taught to read and write. How many thousands were like these men and women he saw today in the fields, in the doorways of their wretched homes, clustered at the stations. to see the cars go by? There were thousands of them, certainly, to every individual like himself; and between the heights where he dwelt and the gulf that was their world a deep chasm lay.

His eyes had never before been so fully open to the sordid poverty of the countryside he knew so well. A day's ride west, in Fauquier, and Loudoun, there were fertile valleys and thrifty farms; but here in the Tidewater the land was worked out. Yet he had always thought of the Tidewater as Virginia, and Virginia was the very flower of the South. Colonel Lee had said, in a letter which Custis Lee quoted to Faunt the other day, that if the Union were dissolved he would return to Virginia and share her miseries. Loyal to the Union, he was loyal first to Virginia; to this Virginia where atop a cauldron of men and
women lost in hopeless poverty and ignorance there floated a thin skimming of such men as he.

Was there any other place in the world today where so few lived richly, so many dwelt in abject poverty? Yet love for Virginia outweighed with Colonel Lee love for the Union; and in these shabby crowds at every station and here on the rattling, dingy train, packed with a gabbling throng, the aisle slippery with expectorated tobacco juice, a like love for Virginia shone in every eye, sounded in every voice. For Virginia, these men were ready to fight, quite possibly to die.

Was he as ready as they? Yes; no doubt of it. But he would be fighting to preserve the fine way of life which was the life he knew. For what would these others fight? For what gain?

Why, they had nothing to gain; but equally they had nothing to lose—no slaves, no property worth the name, no leisure, no gracious homes, nothing but their lives.

Yet they would offer their lives; no doubt of that. At Polecat Station someone in the car saw displayed a secession flag, and pointed it out, and hoarse shouts of high pride greeted the sight. Yes—they would fight—and die!

What impelled them to that self-immolation? What was this battle madness which moved them all? He would fight with his class, with his own kind, to preserve the world he loved; but for what would these others fight? To preserve what? Why should they wish to preserve their world as it was? For them, would not any change be gain?

No, clearly not; for in war there was no gain for anyone. In war there was no victory; in war there was only universal sorrow, loss of loved ones, loss of loved things, loss, loss, loss. Surely, surely somehow the catastrophe would be averted. Almost he reassured himself.

But in Richmond newsboys met the train with extras. The bombardment of Sumter had begun!

 

Faunt bought one of the papers and took it with him. He put up at the Spottswood, which was still fresh and new, and went at once to his room, feeling as he always did in crowds oppressed and ill at ease. He tried to read the paper; but even the advertisements had a warlike
flavor, offering for sale military manuals and textbooks and swords and guns and field glasses, and announcing the need for men of military education to serve as drill masters. The Convention had not yet acted, but clearly those first guns far away in South Carolina had set the pitch; the public mind was tuned for war.

Faunt laid the paper aside. For once he was not content to be alone. When he came down to the lobby, Jennings Wise crossed to greet him. Young Wise had returned from Paris and Berlin four years before, after a period of diplomatic service abroad; he had become an associate editor of the
Enquirer
in order to further his father's political career, and by so doing he had stepped into the bitter brawl of local politics. Many Tidewater men felt that Henry Wise had betrayed his class by supporting the demands of Western Virginia for the universal suffrage which would destroy the planter's dominance in state affairs; but his partial victory in that fight had lifted him to the Governor's chair, which he had yielded now to Governor Letcher. Jennings Wise, fighting his father's battles in the columns of the
Enquirer,
made a thousand enemies; but Faunt held for Governor Wise a high respect, and he liked the Governor's brilliant son. At once gallant—the fact that he remained a bachelor was a constant challenge to every belle in Richmond—and gentle, so that children loved him, Jennings Wise was also as ready as any bravo to receive a challenge or to send one. Any editor in the South had to be prepared to support his published utterances on the field of honor, so young Wise was not unique in this; but his encounters usually ended bloodlessly, and the fact that he himself more often than not received the enemy's fire and then withheld his own increased the love his friends felt for him. He was the complete pattern and perfection of the young Virginian, cultivated, courtly, recklessly brave, living by a high personal code, lending himself to no vices yet readily embracing the charming follies peculiar to his class.