How Few Remain (80 page)

“Of course he was, Father,” Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. “In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard.”

“The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons,” Douglass answered. “Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you’ll remember, the fight to emancipate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough.”

“That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too,” Lewis said, “but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy.”

Frederick Douglass let out a hoarse whoop of laughter. “You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army’s worth—no, a nation’s worth—of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them.”

“And that’s a right good thing, too,” Anna Douglass said, “on account of the only thing we would do with ’em is shoot our own selves in the leg.”

Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. “Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We are under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us.

We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack.”

“We have now twice gone unprepared to war,” Douglass said. “May God grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it.”

When the carriage reached the street on which Douglass lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he’d shown before Douglass left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.

Seeing Douglass, he whizzed close to the carriage. “Welcome back!” he shouted. “Welcome home!”

“Thank you, son,” Douglass answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Douglass wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: “Thank you.” To Daniel, he wasn’t a Negro, or, at least, wasn’t first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Douglass, that was as it should be.

Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Douglass and Anna had lived so long. “Here we are, Father.” He grinned and tipped his cap. “Cab fare, fifty cents.”

Douglass gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, “It’s the best ride I’ve had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too.”

“All right, since you put it that way.” Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. “Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn’t so steady as I wish it were.”

“See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?” Frederick Douglass kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, “My dear, how are you?”

“As the good Lord meant me to be,” she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, “Pretty soon I’ll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world.”

“Good,” Douglass said. “I’m sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him.”

Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Douglass stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food—all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.

“Are you glad to be back?” Anna asked slyly.

“Oh, maybe just a bit,” he answered. They laughed again.

Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. “I’ve put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That’s settled for you.” He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem solved, he moved on to a greater one: “Where do we go from here?”

“How do you mean that?” Frederick Douglass asked. “I myself am going upstairs before long, to find out if I still remember what sleeping in my own bed feels like. If, however you mean
Where does the colored man go from here?
or
Where do the United States go from here?
—well, those questions require a little more thought. Only a little, you understand.”

“I had suspected they might.” Lewis chuckled without much mirth. “Any quick answers, before I see to the horses and the carriage?”

“You let your father rest,” Anna said with a touch of asperity. “He hasn’t had hisself an easy time of it.”

Nothing could have been better calculated to make Douglass say, “I will answer—a horseback guess, before Lewis goes back to the horses. As I said before, the lot of the colored man in the Confederate States may improve, though to what degree I cannot now guess. The lot of the colored man in our own country? I see no great change on the horizon, though I wish I did. We shall have to go on working state by state for laws asserting our rights, for the national government, having finally broken our chains, can go no further without another Constitutional amendment, and you know as well as I how likely that is.”

“Un-,” Lewis said wryly. “All right, that’s not a bad summation for us. Can you do as well for the country?”

“No one can guess where the country goes from here,” Douglass said, shaking his massive head. “We shall have to see what
the full effect upon us is of this defeat. Lincoln believes the white laborer will be pressed down until he is no better off than the Negro—but Lincoln, being white, cannot fully grasp all the vicissitudes of being black. Ben Butler, if I understand him rightly, feels the national government needs to organize us down to our shoelaces, to make certain we are never again caught short by our enemies. Whether the national government can do that, whether it will do that, whether it should do that—if I could read a crystal ball, I would wear a turban on my head, not a derby.”

“What does President Blaine think?” Lewis asked. “Did you get any hint of that in Chicago?”

“No,” Douglass answered. “Surprisingly little was said of him at that meeting. Perhaps that was because he is sure to fail of reelection when his term is up, perhaps because he has not clearly shown he has any thoughts to speak of past unwavering hostility toward the Confederate States, and he has bought only disrepute on that policy.”

“More Democrats,” Lewis said with a sigh.

“More Democrats,” Frederick Douglass agreed, as mournfully.

Anna said, “You was right the first time, Frederick. Now go on upstairs and get yourself some rest. You can do that your own self, and do it this here minute. The rest of it’ll still be here when you get up.”

“She’s right, Father,” Lewis said.

“She generally is,” Douglass answered. He headed for the stairway.

    Under flag of truce, General Thomas Jackson approached the line where his men had halted the Army of Ohio’s push into Louisville. His guards looked jumpy, even though no guns had barked for several days. “Do you really trust the damnyankees, sir?” one of them asked.

“They fought honorably,” Jackson answered. “If I was not afraid to come up here while the fighting raged, why should I fear doing so with the cease-fire in place?”

“I don’t like it,” the guard said, stubborn still. His eyes flicked now here, now there. “Lordy, they made a hell of a mess out of this here place, didn’t they?” He paused a moment in thought. “‘Course, we helped, I reckon.”

A call came from within the U.S. lines: “That you, General Jackson?”

“Yes, it is I,” Jackson replied. To his ear, the U.S. accent was sharp and harsh and unpleasant.

“Come ahead, General,” the Yankee said. “General Willcox is here waiting for you.”

“Come I shall,” Jackson said. He picked his way over broken bricks and charred boards. Here in the center of Louisville, nothing but rubble remained. The only walls to be seen were those U.S. and C.S. soldiers had erected from bits of that rubble. None of the graceful architecture that had made Louisville such a pleasant place before the war survived.

And President Longstreet
, Jackson thought,
is willing to let the United States off without a half-dime’s indemnity
. His mouth tightened. Christian charity was all very well, but what point to charity toward those who deserved it not?

A couple of men in blue uniforms showed themselves. They stood up a little warily; for a long time, showing any part of your body was an invitation to a sharpshooter to drive a hole through it. One of them said, “If you’d been here a few days ago, Stonewall—”

“No doubt my men would say the same to you, young fellow,” Jackson answered. He wasn’t so severe as he might have been; that was soldier’s banter from the Yankee, not out-and-out hatred.

A trim young captain in tunic and trousers far too clean and neat for him to have served at the front line came up out of a trench and nodded. “I’m Oliver Richardson, General Jackson—General Willcox’s adjutant. If you’ll be so good as to come with me, sir …”

When Jackson saw Willcox, he stabbed out a forefinger at him. “I remember you, sir!” he exclaimed. “Unless I’m much mistaken, you were in the West Point class of the year following mine—class of ‘47, are you not?”

“That’s it, sure enough,” Orlando Willcox answered. “And I went into the Artillery, just as you did.” He let out a rheumy chuckle. “We were all on the same side once, we old-timers. Another few years, sir, and no men in your country or mine who served with one another before the War of Secession will be left.”

“You’re right, General,” Jackson said. “We are now separate, and grow more separate every day—despite, I might add, the ill-advised efforts of the United States to exert a nonexistent influence upon our peaceful domestic affairs.” Remembering the cease-fire, he held up a hand. “But let that go. It is behind us, God
grant forever. Your men here fought most valiantly. You have every reason to be proud of them.”

“The same holds of yours,” Willcox said.

He paused, perhaps waiting for Jackson to praise his generalship so he could again return the compliment. Jackson had not so much diplomacy in him. “To business,” he said. “I am charged by President Longstreet to inquire of you when you intend to abandon these lines and withdraw all forces of the Army of the Ohio from the soil of the Confederate States.”

“I cannot answer that at the present time, General Jackson,” Willcox replied. “I have as yet been given no orders on the subject. Absent such orders, what choice have I but to hold the men in place?”

“Sir, I mean no disrespect to you or to your government, but this is not entirely satisfactory.” If that wasn’t an understatement, Jackson had never uttered one. “The United States requested the present cease-fire, presumably because you felt yourselves to be at a disadvantage. This being so, I must tell you that we shall not indefinitely tolerate your occupying territory that has belonged to our nation since the close of the War of Secession.”

“Come with me, General,” Orlando Willcox said, and began to walk away from the gathered men of both sides. When his adjutant started to come, too, he waved the young captain back.

Taking that as a hint, Jackson also motioned for the soldiers who had accompanied him inside the U.S. lines to hold their places. He followed the commander of the Army of the Ohio till they were out of earshot of their subordinates. Willcox stopped then, his boots scrunching on broken bricks. Jackson halted beside him. Quietly, the Confederate general-in-chief asked, “How now, sir?”

“How now?” Willcox said, also in a low voice but with unmistakable anger. “How now? I shall tell you how now, General. Getting any orders out of Washington City—excuse me, out of Philadelphia; I spoke from force of habit—is a miracle comparable to that which our Savior worked with the loaves and fishes. Getting orders in a timely fashion would be a miracle comparable to the Resurrection. I say
would be
rather than
is
, for I have seen no timely orders.”

“This is not as it should be,” Jackson said, and tried to decide whether that was a bigger understatement than the one he’d made a moment before.

“Some such conception had already formed in my mind, yes,” Willcox said. Jackson did not remember any sardonic streak in him, but they’d had little to do with each other for more than thirty years, and nothing to do with each other for more than twenty. Maybe Willcox had changed. Maybe, on the other hand, he’d just been tried beyond endurance.

“What am I to tell my president, then?” Jackson asked. “He will suspect your government of having asked for this cease-fire so you could strengthen your position here, not as a prelude to abandoning it.” Longstreet would certainly suspect that. Longstreet and suspicion were made for each other.

General Willcox spread his hands. “This is not the case. The cease-fire requested was on all fronts, against all enemies. What point to making such a request for the purpose of fortifying one relatively small position from which, you must be able to see as well as I, we have no prospect for large or rapid advance?”

“That is so,” Jackson admitted. But then he felt he had to qualify his words: “I say it is so in my own person, you understand. How the president will view the matter when I report to him remains to be seen.”

“Of course, General.” Willcox’s laughter was bitter. “The responsibility for war and peace and, in the broad sense, for the conduct of the war lies with the civilian branches of government. Who, though, who takes the blame when their plans go awry? Do they blame themselves? Have you ever seen them blame themselves?”