The President's Daughter (64 page)

Charlotte and I lay quietly, listening to the noises of the celebration which reached us from Market Square.

“This stupendous, this outrageous, cruel war will surely be over one day, but I may not live to see it. … Perhaps I'll see Beverly before you do, and will give him your love.”

“Charlotte . . . what do you mean? What is this insanity? Of course you'll live to see the end of this war!”

“If God so chooses, I suppose. I, who have always been so fastidious in life, hate the idea of rotting inside with a tumor. No. Don't say it, Harriet. The doctors have given me six months to a year. I haven't told Andrew— my devoted Andrew. I haven't told the children. I've told only you, Harriet. And you must keep my secret. Promise me. I've told you because you know I tell you everything; I could never lie to you or conceal anything from you. We are sisters.”

Secrets. My own cancerous lie closed my throat as I gathered Charlotte into my arms. My friend. My sister. My mentor.

“The love we bear one another will outlast my death and this war. I hope only that our grandchildren will grow up to marry,” said Charlotte.

Tell me who has died, who has married, who has hanged himself because he cannot marry. …

And outside, the guns would not stop. Nor would my lips unseal, except to pray for Charlotte's survival.

Victory was just a matter of time, everyone proclaimed. But the Confederacy remained as erect and defiant in defeat and deprivation as ever, and it was to break their spirit that Sherman set out on his march from Atlanta that September. He had expelled the civilian population from Atlanta in retaliation for the Confederate Army having burned the city down in their retreat rather than have it fall into his hands intact. Then he unleashed sixty-two thousand hardened Union veterans to march from Atlanta to the sea, living off the land, cutting a swath through the heart of Georgia, slicing the Confederacy in two, to advance on the rear of Robert E. Lee's army. He would, insisted Sherman, demonstrate to the world that Jefferson Davis could not resist the overwhelming power of the North.

“I can make the march and I can make Georgia howl,” he had said. “War
is cruelty and you cannot refine it. We cannot change the hearts of these people of the South, but we can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations will pass away before they will appeal to it again.”

And I reveled in this vow of Sherman's. I wanted the pain of Beverly's assassination to be engraved in every southern woman's heart, as it was in mine. And since I was a southern woman, I knew how to do it: with a cruelty equivalent to that which had been perpetuated on their slave population. They had made war on black people—men, women, and children—and now we would make the same kind of war on them; young and old, rich and poor, men and women, civilian and soldier—all would feel the hard hand of war just as we had felt the hard hand of slavery.

I stood in the middle of Charlotte's Prussian blue bedroom and lavished my personal blessings on Sherman's vengeance and thought how the women of the South would hate us, hate us with the same burning blood that flowed in my own veins—the best in Virginia.

IN THE FIELD NEAR NEW MARKET HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA

SEPTEMBER
30, 1864

My dearest wife Mary McCoy,

You can be proud that in the flash of dawn, your husband was in the column of three thousand colored soldiers in close column by divisions, right in front, with guns at right-shoulder arms, that charged New Market Heights. Seems damned strange to be toting a gun so close to home, Mary, but hadn't I told myself that maybe I could kill for my freedom in this war?

We had to take New Market Heights, which faces Richmond. It is the key to the Seceshes' right flank on the north side of the James River. It is a redoubt built on the top of a hill of some considerable elevation, then running down into a marsh. In that marsh was a brook. Then rising again to a plain, which gently rolled away toward the river.

General Butler told us “that work must be taken by the weight of your column: no shot must be fired.” And to prevent us from firing, he had the caps taken from the nipples of our guns. He then said, “Your cry when you charge must be ‘Remember Fort Pillow!' “ How could anyone forget, I asked myself. Three hundred black soldiers had been murdered by the Confeds after Fort Pillow had surrendered, just like the Confeds had promised: a felon's death for slave insurrection. If taken alive, we would be shot. Our white officers were to be put to death as well, for inciting Negroes and mulattoes to rebellion. Never mind that
they
were the Rebs and traitors, and
we
were United States soldiers. And the Seceshes murdered
the black women and children of the fort as well, executed the wounded, and buried some Negroes alive. Just like the good old slavery days, I tell you.

And so, with all that in the minds of the men, knowing no quarter was to be given us, that capture meant death, the order was given to march forward. We marched forward steadily, as if on parade, went down the hill across the marsh. And as we waded into the brook, we came within range of the enemy, who opened fire upon us. We broke a little then, and our column wavered. Oh, it was a moment of most intense anxiety, but we re-formed when we reached firm ground, marched steadily on in closed ranks under the enemy's fire until the head of the column reached the first line of abatis, some one hundred and fifty yards from the Seceshes' works. Then the axmen ran forward to cut away at the wooden defenses while a thousand Rebel soldiers concentrated their artillery and poured heavy canister fire from the redoubt down upon the head of the column, hardly wider than a clerk's desk. All the axmen went down under murderous fire. Other strong hands grasped the axes in their stead and cut away at the abatis. Again at double-quick, we moved forward to within fifty yards of the fort, there to meet still another line of abatis. The column halted and there was the very fire of hell pouring down upon us. The abatis resisted, and the head of the column seemed literally to melt away under the rain of shot and shell. The flags of the leading regiment went down, but a brave black boy seized the colors. They were up again and waved over the storm of the battle. Again the axmen fell; with our bare hands we seized the heavy sharpened trees one by one and dragged them away, and the column rushed forward, and with a shout which still rings in my ear, we went over the redoubt like a flash and the Rebs never stopped running for four miles. They knew what any black soldier would do to any Reb prisoner after Fort Pillow. In the track of that charging column, in a space not wider than six feet and three hundred feet long, lay the bodies of 543 colored men. Old General Butler came up from the rear on horseback and rode amongst them, guiding his horse this way and that way lest he profane with his mount's hoofs what seemed, to everyone still alive, the sacred dead.

But I'm alive, Mary McCoy. I refuse to die in this war. And I pray only that God spares our sons in their battles.

Brigadier General Butler's Brigade

Forty-fifth U.S. Colored Troops

Army of the James

Your loving husband,

Madison Hemings

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

DECEMBER
23, 1864

Dear Mother,

This is probably the last letter you will receive from me before the end of the war. Beverly's death has ignited in me a terrible lust for revenge. Our orders are to “destroy all we cannot eat, steal their niggers, burn their cotton and gins, spill their sorghum, melt their railroad rails, and generally raise hell.” If we didn't have a reason before, just before Thanksgiving several prisoners who had escaped from Andersonville arrived within our midst. They had nothing but rags on their backs. Emaciated and starving, these prisoners of war wept at the sight of food and the American flag. Oh, Mother, the men howled with rage at the thought of tens of thousands of their comrades perishing in that pigsty in the midst of barns busting with grain and food; our goal now is to liberate that prison camp by Easter.

It is a terrible thing to destroy the sustenance of thousands of people, and I am sorely pressed to see it; however, nothing can end this war but some demonstration of the Confederacy's helplessness. This Union must be sustained at any cost, and to do this we must war upon and destroy the Rebels—cut off their supplies, destroy their communications, and produce among the people of Georgia a thorough conviction of the personal misery which attends war. If the terror and grief of Sherman's march shall help to paralyze the husbands and fathers who are fighting us, it is mercy in the end. It seems that some Georgians said to General Sherman, “Why don't you go over to South Carolina and serve them this way? They started it.” But General Sherman had intended to do that all along. So now we are marching sixty thousand strong through South Carolina to crush Lee's army, but also to wreak God's vengeance on South Carolina. We wreck their farms and factories. We burn their plantations and kill their cattle. The people's very will to resist must be devastated. We're making something called “Sherman's neckties” out of what's left of their railroads. We heat the rails over a bonfire of wooden ties and twist the iron around the nearest tree. I almost tremble at their fate, Mother. But this is where treason began, and, by God, this is where it shall end! Our purpose is to whip them, humble them, stalk them to their innermost recesses and put perfect fear and dread in them. And in sorrow and pity we will do that.

Your obedient and loving son,

Madison Wellington

Christmas 1864. Lucinda brought Beverly's twins and her new babe in arms to Anamacora permanently. I had insisted that Perez, Roxanne, and John William would be safer (although there was no danger in her staying in Philadelphia) and more comfortable there. Beverly's death weighed heavily on everyone's spirits, but Sinclair, who had been the last to see him alive, was the most despondent. Beverly's death seemed to have triggered a latent melancholy in Sinclair that alarmed both Lucinda, his wife, and me. It seemed to us even more morbid than the long, never-ending, ever-inconclusive war. Everyone was sick of the war, and many were saying so. There was defeatist talk and talk of peace without the abolition of slavery, an idea so perverse and so obscene after the loss of so many lives that even the President was obliged to declare, “I hope this mighty scourge of war may pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, so it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' “

It was another cold winter like 1856, and the conservatory windows were opaque with hoar and ice. On the Delaware, dark figures skirted the thick ice, and frosty laughter added to the mist that had enshrouded all of Philadelphia's waterways and canals. Spidery snowflakes had begun to fall, and clung like lace mittens to the windowpanes. The air was so frozen it resonated like chimes, and against the whiteness surrounding us, we could only embrace once more the glittering green fir tree and the crackling fire which cast us all in bronze. Despite everything, we tried to make a joyful Christmas for the children. Maurice was back from Missouri, where he had fought against General Price and his “allies,” the Quantrill gang, at Pilot Knob. Thor was home from Camp Rapidan, and Madison was about to return with Maurice to active duty in Georgia under General Sheridan. We had a war marriage to celebrate as well, for Maria had fallen in love with one of her professors at the medical college, Zachariah Battle. Zachariah had served on the western front, had been wounded at Battle Creek, and was mustered out of the army in September. He had begun teaching at the Jefferson Medical School Hospital, which Maria attended for courses in biology. They had met in the hallway, and it had been love at first sight. Zachariah, brilliant and somber, soon joined the husbands of Lividia and Tabitha in running the now-sprawling Wellington enterprises, which included petroleum and railroads, shipping and coal mines, as well as drugs, medicines, and medical research.

At the beginning of the war petroleum had been discovered in western Pennsylvania. During the war it was soon recognized that it could serve as
a substitute for the ever scarce whale oil used in lamps and street lights. Through the railroads we became the principal carriers of the black gold to its markets. Philadelphia also became a storage and refining center. Wellington Drugs benefited from the petroleum boom as a refiner and manufacturer of petroleum products, including a famous patent medicine, and as a storage center and transporter.

The Wellingtons had grown very rich, but the war had made hundreds of millionaires. The demands of war had boosted the northern economy to new heights of productivity.

Lincoln's annual address to Congress had only confirmed what every prosperous merchant farmer and businessman already knew. The people's purpose in maintaining the integrity of the Union was never more firm nor more unanimous. Our resources were unexhausted, and we believed them to be inexhaustible. With 671 warships, our navy was the largest in the world. With a million men in uniform, our army was the largest and best equipped that had ever existed. And despite the deaths of three hundred thousand soldiers, immigration and natural increase continually made up the loss. We had more men now than when the war began. We were gaining strength every day. We could maintain this contest indefinitely.

I thought of the deep waters closing over my white family in the South. There was no money in the Confederate treasury, there was no food to feed the army, and there were no troops to oppose General Sherman as he closed in on Savannah. Sherman's latest telegram to Lincoln had read: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and about 25,000 bales of cotton.” To which Lincoln had responded: “Many thanks to you for your great success. Taking into account the work of General Thomas, those who sat in darkness, see a great light.”