Jacob's Ladder (41 page)

MASTER ABRAHAM'S SERMON

A
NALASTON
I
SLAND
, D
ISTRICT
OF
C
OLUMBIA
N
OVEMBER
23, 1863

CAPTAIN FESSENDEN SAID,
“I know it isn't much.”

Jesse looked around the filthy barracks. “That's right.”

“You won't be here long. As soon as the regiment is filled, we join the army. We'll have training and drill before you meet the rebels.”

“That'll be a comfort,” Jesse said.

“And you must call all officers ‘sir.' ”

“Yes, sir,” Jesse said too promptly.

Eight ex-contrabands, now soldiers, tested cots or poked the ashes in the cold iron stove. “Look here, Burns,” Fessenden said. “These men look up to you and will take their cue from you. If you promote discipline they will be good soldiers—if not, you'll answer to me. The 23rd U.S. Colored Troops is going to be the best damn regiment in the Army of the Potomac!”

“Yes, sir,” Jesse said again.

Fessenden searched Jesse's dark eyes with his own blue ones before nodding decisively. “Very well. I appoint you sergeant in charge.” He rubbed his hands together. “Send a foraging party for firewood.”

“What about food and blankets? It'll be cold tonight.”

“Sir.”

“Sir. I'll get the hang of it directly. It's like calling a man ‘Master': it seems to matter more to ‘Master' than it does to you, but once you get the hang of it, it ain't so hard.”

The captain smiled, “Sometimes I feel sorry for those rebel slaveholders. Was I them, I'd have freed you years ago.”

Jesse nodded solemnly. “That would have been best.”

“I'll see to blankets and rations. Tomorrow morning, Lieutenant Seibel and I will be here for reveille, six
A.M.
, and morning drill. We'll try you as second sergeant.” The officer's eagerness glowed in the dim room. “You'll be left guide. First sergeant is right guide, and you'll line up on him. In battle, you wheel to the left and fix your eye on some feature—fence post, tree, rock, something directly in front of you—and start for it, regular step or double-quick. If you don't march straight, the regiment will bunch together, or spread until we're too thin. When you march, that's all you concentrate on, being a living guidepost so we can march straight and hit 'em hard. You get shot, the fourth sergeant will take your place. Sometimes at drill the fourth sergeant will take your place so he'll know what to do if you get shot.”

“What if I don't get shot?” Jesse asked.

“Maybe you'll get promoted to first sergeant and right guide. That's a bigger job.”

“What if I don't get shot doing that?”

“Aren't any colored officers. You started high on the ladder—just one rung from the top.”

“Had my heart set on bein' a general one day,” Jesse said.

Fessenden orated, “One day your people will attain their full potential, and it is men like you and me who are laying the foundation stones for the sublime towers that are to be built.” He searched Jesse's impassive face. “How am I to know when you people are joking?”

“Looks like we both got some figuring to do.”

When the captain left, Jesse said, “I been made driver. It stinks in here. You two get these shutters open. You three go on into the woods and get us some firewood. Clement Smallwood, you're in charge of them. I expect this ground's been picked clean, so look sharp. It'll be dark before long, and if you don't find some wood we gonna be cold. Git. Rest of you I want cleanin' up this hut. I don't know whether it was white soldiers here before us or colored, but they surely were dirty.”

Clement Smallwood was a rangy redhead with yellowish skin. “What about you, Jesse? What you gonna do?”

“I'm the driver. Now git.”

It didn't take long to clean, sweep, and air the hut, and the men were finished well before dark. “Push them cots back from the stove,” Jesse said. “We got to have a place for gatherings.”

Shadrach Bolden—he was young, powerfully built, and full of complaints—said, “I wish I hadn't signed my X, Jesse. I wish tomorrow morning would see me back totin' sandbags.”

“If you was totin' sandbags you'd be wishing you with us. You weren't any great shakes with sandbags; maybe you can do better totin' a gun.”

“When we get our guns?”

“I'm just the driver. I ain't the master.”

Clement Smallwood's detail returned after dark with a small load of broken branches. “We ain't the first wood party to glean these woods,” he said.

“Won't be last neither. Don't burn that newspaper!” he warned the boy filling the stove. “Give it here. Use bark. Why you think God put bark on trees if it wasn't to light fires?”

Jesse uncrumpled the paper.

“What it say, Jesse? Bet it don't say how the 23rd Colored is gonna whip Johnny Reb.”

“Yeah, read it, Jesse. Maybe we forget how hungry we are.”

“Don't expect this is the first night of your life you went hungry,” Jesse said. “Bring that candle stub over here. I'll read to you. White children learn to read. It ain't fittin' that a colored man can't do what a child does.”

“I too slow to learn how to read,” Shadrach Bolden said.

Jesse looked at him.

“Many times I been told how slow I am. I got marks on my back for bein' one slow nigger.”

Jesse said, “I got marks too. Hurts every time it rains. And I ain't slow.”

The
Cincinnati Inquirer
was dated two days previous. “Somethin' here about a speech Master Abraham gave. Newspaper say ‘it was a perfect thing in every respect' ”

“Ain't too many perfect things,” Clement Smallwood said. “Young girl's titties, ham gravy, drink of white liquor after you been sweatin' all day . . .”

“Shut your mouth,” Jesse said. “Master Abraham was speaking at a cemetery.”

“Who die? Somebody in Master Abraham's family?”

As he read ahead, Jesse lifted his hand for quiet. “No. Says here this was a cemetery where they buried Federal soldiers killed in July.”

Clement Smallwood hooted. “Them white men—they ain't slow! Wait so long as that, you ain't got so much to bury!”

Jesse said, “Says they had a battle in Pennsylvania last July and was just now dedicating the cemetery. Didn't say how long it took to bury the dead soldiers.”

“If they dedicatin' today, they was buryin' yesterday,” Clement Smallwood observed. “You know how that goes.”

Another new soldier said, “I heard about that fight. I was still with Master then—oh, Master was powerful bothered. Master say General Lee got whipped bad.”

“What them Confederates doin' in Pennsylvania?” Clement Smallwood asked.

“Gettin' whipped,” Jesse said.

Someone groaned, “Jesse, you readin' that newspaper or not?”

“This's Master Abraham's sermon. He says, ‘Four score and seven years ago . . .' ”

“When that?”

“That's a white man's way of saying four times twenty plus seven. How much is that?”

Men counted on their fingers, and Clement Smallwood's lips moved, “Eighty-seven?”

“That's right. So what year was eighty-seven years ago?”

Nobody got that right, so Jesse said, “It was in seventeen hundred and seventy-six. ‘. . . our fathers bro—' ”

“Slave trade still goin' on in them olden days,” Clement Smallwood observed.

Jesse brushed the distraction aside. “Master Abraham say, ‘In seventeen and seventy-six, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty . . .' ”

“What's a continent?”

“England is a continent,” Jesse ventured. “Spain, the United States, all continents.”

“What this ‘conceived in liberty'?” Clement Smallwood asked. “Do it mean what I think it do?”

“It don't.” Jesse was annoyed. “It doesn't mean bred. What would ‘bred in liberty' mean? It means settled, like when you say, ‘That mare is settled.' ‘In foal.' That's what it means.”

“How something be ‘settled' in liberty? When a stallion settle a mare there's more liberty than you can shake a stick at.” Clement Smallwood's grin asserted triumph over the forces of obscurantism.

Jesse ignored him. “Listen here, this is where it gets good. Master Abraham says, that ‘nation was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' ”

“How we equal?” Clement Smallwood objected. “We paid less'n white soldiers. We don't get to be officers. Let me see that newspaper, where it says about we being equal.”

“You can't read it,” Jesse said.

“Maybe we was equal back in seventeen and seventy-six and we got to be unequal after,” someone suggested.

The boy beside the fire didn't look up, but his voice was clear. “Back on my home plantation at Aldie, old Master liked to play preacher. Young Master ain't come home yet from hell-raisin' Saturday night, but every Sunday old Master sit us down and tell us how God intended us to be good servants and if we go against God, terrible things happen. Sometimes Master preach about being equal, how coloreds was equal to white men on account of we could get sick equal, way whites could, or old and frail just like them, and we could go to heaven or hell just like white masters could. Master prayed most of us would get to heaven so his family all be together and it'd be the same as down here—white men needed servants in heaven just like on earth.”

“I think Master Abraham means equal to be exactly the same as white men,” Jesse said slowly. “Exactly the same.” He paused for more questions, but didn't get any. “All right then, Master Abraham says, ‘Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure . . .' ”

“Jesse,” Shadrach Bolden asked, “what's a nation?”

“Federals and Confederates—they're nations.”

“How 'bout us coloreds?” Clement Smallwood asked. “How come we not a nation?”

“I don't rightly know. Listen here: it's pretty. ‘We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot concentrate . . . consecrate . . . we cannot hallow this ground . . .' ”

“What's ‘consecrate,' Jesse?”

“Don't reckon I know.”

“Maybe, Jesse, you slow like me,” Shadrach Bolden cackled.

“I'll ask the captain what it means. I'll learn what it means. Listen here what Master Abraham says. He says, ‘The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract . . .' ”

“Southerns too?” Clement Smallwood burst out. “Is he talkin' about the Federals or the Confederates?”

“Can't be talkin' about Confederates,” the boy from Aldie said. “Confederates fighting agin the government, not for it.”

“He didn't say that,” Clement Smallwood objected. “He say brave men living and dead who struggled here was the ones who consecrated it. Where they bury the Confederates, Jesse? They buried in that cemetery too? If they not buried, they be stinkin', sure.”

Someone chuckled.

“Hush your foolishness,” Jesse said. “He says, ‘The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but . . .' ”

Clement Smallwood could abide no more. Not one word. “Now what he mean by that? He President of the United States. He think nobody pay attention to what he say?”

“ ‘. . . but it can never forget what they did here . . .' ”

“What they did was get shot. Same like they got shot at Fredericksburg. Same like they got shot at Chancellorsville. Soldiers always getting shot. Fellows who was in this hut last week, some of them already shot. People gonna remember them? You and me get shot: think anybody gonna remember us? Folks got better things to do than worry about soldiers what got shot!” Clement Smallwood hugged himself in triumph.

Steadily, Jesse continued, “ ‘It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . .' ”

“He talkin' about more killin',” Shadrach Bolden said softly. “I do believe that what he talkin' about.”

“ ‘. . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion . . .' ”

The candle guttered, and Jesse turned the paper to catch the failing light. “ ‘. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom . . .' ”