Authors: Thomas Fleming

When This Cruel War Is Over (20 page)

BOOK: When This Cruel War Is Over

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“You leave her to me,” Gabriel Todd said. “Go catch your boat.”

SABRINA,
A SMALL WHITE STERN-WHEELER, steamed energetically down the Ohio River's channel, ignoring the sandbanks spreading from either shore. The sand meant “La Belle Riviere” was going into one of her midsummer funks. As the drought continued, the water level had dropped so low, the big two-stack side-wheelers had to proceed with caution, if at all. Paul Stapleton stood in the prow, savoring the breath of fresh air
Sabrina's
progress stirred from the overpowering humidity.

It was not only the heat that made Paul uncomfortable. He was wearing a dark blue civilian suit. It was the first time he had appeared in public without a uniform since he entered West Point eight years ago. He felt shorn of his chosen identityânot a bad thing, perhaps, for a man in the espionage business.

He had attended the court-martials General Carrington had decreed for Sergeant Moses Washington and the deserter Garner. They went precisely as the general wished. His two staff colonels sat with Gentry on the three-man board and voted with one voice. Paul testified in Washington's defense but the colonels were unmoved. Ignoring Gentry's vote for acquittal, they reduced Moses to private, fined him six months' pay, and sentenced him to fourteen days in jail on bread and water. As for the hapless Garner, he was condemned to death by the same 2â1 vote in less than five minutes.

Back at The Grange, Paul found a letter from Janet Todd, delivered by Adam Jameson's younger brother, Robin. A talkative young man, he told Paul about General
Burbridge's raid and his brother's narrow escape. Janet's letter was a combination of love and intrigue, with the emphasis on the latter. Word had arrived from Chicago, Janet wrote, proposing a date for the Sons of Liberty rising far earlier than they had anticipated. It was imperative that they leave for Richmond immediately to obtain the money to buy rifles in New York. She wanted Paul to meet her in Cincinnati the day after tomorrow.

Portray yourself as an unemployed actor,
she wrote.
It's worked nicely for me on my previous trips. I'm traveling as Janet Carew.

Paul had sent Robin on his way with a scribbled note, confirming the rendezvous. That night after dinner he had coolly informed Gentry that Janet was going to Richmond to confer with the Confederacy's leaders and she wanted him to come with her. Gentry muttered about leaving a semi-invalid, Captain Otis, in charge of the troop without the support of Sergeant Washington. But he could hardly object to Paul's acceptance of Janet's invitation.

Paul could see Gentry was uneasy about Major Stapleton's loyalty. Minutes before he left for the Keyport dock, the colonel showed him a telegram from Abraham Lincoln granting a stay of execution to the deserter Garner. Gentry said this virtually guaranteed a pardon. The colonel clearly hoped Lincoln's leniency would make an impression on Paul.

Beside Paul on the prow of the
Sabrina
stood a short potbellied Union Army captain named Wallace whom he had met at dinner. Wallace had entertained him with stories of his travails as a paymaster for the federal troops stationed in Tennessee. All his money had to travel over the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which was under constant attack by Confederate guerrillas. Twice in recent months he had cowered in the bushes while the Confederates made off with several hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks. The government's
inability to provide safe transit for him and his cash had convinced Captain Wallace that the war was unwinnable.

Wallace despised Lincolnâ“the Illinois baboon” was among his kinder epithetsâand had worked hard to win this year's Republican nomination for Salmon P. Chase, the dignified deep-browed secretary of the treasury, who was from Ohio. But the Lincoln forces had what Chase lackedâmoney. The hundreds of millions the government was pouring into war contracts had won Lincoln a legion of loyal businessmen who were eager to finance his campaign. Simon Cameron, the Republican boss of Pennsylvania, had used business money to “buy up” the entire Pennsylvania legislature, Captain Wallace claimed. They had backed Lincoln in a public letter and Chase's candidacy had gone into a swoon. Captain Wallace's dream of becoming assistant paymaster of the forces with a big office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington had gone with itâalong with his hopes of a Union victory.

That left Wallace with only one reason for staying interested in the warâmoney. He talked at length about how much a man could make if he borrowed enough to buy a few hundred bales of cotton in Mississippi or northern Louisiana for 20 cents a pound and sold it in New York for $1.90 a pound. “I could name you a half-dozen Union generals who've gotten rich doing it,” Wallace said, with a fine show of righteous indignation.

The captain was one more proof, if Paul needed it, of the moral bankruptcy of Lincoln's war. Paul escaped him into that recurrent source of wonder, the western landscape. As they approached Cincinnati, majestic hills receded and advanced, here glowing with green pasturage, there crested and ribbed by beeches that seemed transplanted from a world of giants. But Paul
had begun to think too many of the current inhabitants were moral pygmies.

Finally the city loomed out of the twilight like a fairy metropolis, myriad eyes blinking welcome. In Paul's mind only one welcome was relevant: Janet Todd's. The uneasiness he had felt since Adam Jameson blundered into their lives persisted. Paul still wanted proofâor at least evidenceâthat there was no calculation in Janet's love. At the same time he was uncomfortably aware that he might be asking the impossible.

As Paul descended the gangplank beside Captain Wallace, he found his nose assailed by an overwhelming odor. It permeated the smoky humid twilight. “What in God's name is that stink?” he asked. “It's worse than an army camp.”

“Hogs,” Wallace said. “Millions of hogs in a state of transit from hoggish nature to boots, saddles, sausages and ham. Slaughterin' hogs for the Union Army is makin' Cincinnati richâand smelly.”

The captain offered to share a hack to the Gibson House, the hotel to which Janet had directed Paul. As they jogged through the busy streets, Wallace wondered where Paul was going and why. He tried out his unemployed actor's routine on the captain, who immediately wanted to know if Paul had ever performed with John Wilkes Booth. Wallace considered Booth the best actor in America.

Paul said he had never had the privilege of sharing a bill with Booth, who like his father, Junius, and brother Edwin, was a luminary of the American stage. “You might find some work here in Cincinnati,” Wallace said, disappointed by Paul's lack of celebrity. “We've got six theaters goin' full blast.”

The Gibson House was an imposing brick pile. Paul gave Wallace a half-dollar as his share of the cab ride and the captain went on to army headquarters to pick up
his next cargo of cash for the troops in Tennessee. Paul signed the register as Robert Nash and wrote “actor on tour” in the column where an address was requested. “Has my sister, Mrs. Carew, arrived?” he asked.

The toothless gray-haired clerk peered at the guest list. “Nope.”

“Give her the room next to mine,” he said.

“I'm afraid I need cash in advance. That's our policy with actors,” the clerk said.

Paul paid him six dollars for the two rooms. He bought a copy of the Cincinnati
Gazene,
one of the West's most influential Republican newspapers, and the Democratic Cannelton, Indiana
Reporter
and read them in the hall bathtub while he soaked off the perspiration of his journey. The
Gazette
had supported Chase against Lincoln and remained convinced that the president could win neither reelection in November nor the war. It described Sherman as hopelessly bogged down before Atlanta and Grant as mired in blood and mud before Richmond.

Far more space was given to Horace Greeley, the editor of the Republican New York
Tribune
, who had gone to Niagara Falls to see if peace could be negotiated with Confederate “commissioners” in Canada. The results were zero. The southerners demanded recognition of Confederate independence and Lincoln insisted on restoration of the Union and the abandonment of slavery. The paper lamented Lincoln's unwillingness to offer a solution to the diplomatic deadlock.

The Cannelton
Reporter
did far more than lament Lincoln's intransigence. They quoted from a statement the Confederate commissioners in Canada had given the Associated Press. The Southerners accused Lincoln of sabotaging the peace negotiations by setting conditions he knew were unacceptable. They called on the voters of the North, “appalled by the illimitable vistas of private misery and public calamity” that Lincoln's policy of endless war unveiled, “to vindicate the outraged civilization
of their country” by kicking him out of office.

The
Reporter'
s editorial page took Lincoln to task in equally ferocious terms. They said Negro emancipation was the real stumbling block to peace. The South was ready to accept political reunion but never with four million free blacks at their throats. “Tens of thousands of white men must yet bite the dust to allay the Negro mania of the president,” the Democratic editorialist declared.

There were moments when a man could almost feel sorry for Lincoln. Most of his own party seemed to despise him as much as the Democrats did. He had the impossible task of satisfying the vengeful abolitionists of New England and the upper Midwest, the wavering moderate Republicans like Greeley in New York and the other middle states and millions of instinctively hostile Democrats. Was it possible that Lincoln was as much a victim of this war as everyone else?

The president's clemency for the deserter Garner gnawed at Paul's mind. It was not the gesture of a cold-blooded mass murderer. But the war Lincoln had unleashed on America was mass murder. Perhaps he too secretly yearned for a way to stop it. Maybe he would almost welcome a truce, forced on him by a western confederacy.

Back in his room, Paul was half-dressed when a hand knocked on the door. “I'll be there directly!” he said. He pulled on his pants and rushed to the door, barefoot.

Janet stood there, smiling. She was wearing a flowered green bonnet and a darker green traveling suit. The curve of her breasts was visible beneath the suit coat. “How clever of you to adopt me as your sister,” she said.

He drew her into the room, kicked shut the door, and kissed her for a long tender minute. “I've been thinking of nothing but you,” he said.

“You've had time to take a bath,” she replied, gazing past him at the damp towel on the floor. “I can't wait to imitate your pristine example.”

They agreed to meet in her room in a half hour. He found her lying on the bed in a lacy peignoir. She was on her right side, her head resting on her arm. An oil lamp on the bed table cast a soft glow on her dark hair. “This time you don't even have to undress me,” she said.

Paul was surprised to discover he did not like this blasÃ© invitation. Was it Cincinnati's hoggy stench, which wafted through the open windows, an unromantic contrast to the air of the dell beside the Ohio? No, there was an element of willfulness in this unadorned offer that struck him as inappropriate and even disturbing. Did she feel haste was somehow necessary to reassure herself as well as him? Was she trying to conceal a lack of genuine feeling?

Something even more disturbing caromed through Paul's head as he forced a smile and began to unknot his tie. In New Orleans, on his never-to-be-forgotten visit to his brother Charlie, when he walked into his first bordello bedroom, the woman had been waiting for him in much the same position and state of undress. He could see her as vividly as he now saw Janet. Celeste. Satiny tan skin, gleaming dark hair, a ruby in her ear.

For a moment Paul almost cursed himself and Charlie for that memory. Was this what the preachers meant by the wages of sin? Did he really think Janet Todd was a whore?

Of course not. But he still felt the need to retreat a few paces, to perform some of the arabesques of the lover. He wanted to experience a certain resistanceâand transform that resistance into surrender. He wanted to go from hinted negation to unmistakable affirmation. None of these things were possible if he merely stripped off his clothes andâ

He banned the word that leaped from his soldier's vocabulary. “I know what I'd like to do first,” he said.

“What?” she asked, a flicker of irritation compressing her lips. It reminded Paul of the way his mother expressed
annoyance when she did not get her own way. But he had learned to ignore those signals.

“Order some champagne.”

“A nice idea. But I hate to spend the little money we have on luxuriesâ”

“I'm paying for it. I'm loaded with Mr. Lincoln's greenbacks. There's practically nothing to spend them on in Keyport. Colonel Gentry's refused to take a cent for my room and boardâ”

He rang the room service bell. A moment later a green-uniformed bucktoothed boy of about fourteen was at the door. “Bring up a bottle of MoÃ«t et Chandon,” Paul said.

“What's that, mister?” the kid asked.

“Champagne. French Champagne.”

BOOK: When This Cruel War Is Over

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