1862 (55 page)

On his return from the battlefield and coupled with the fact that the Confederate threat was over, they had wed as quickly as possible. A minister who understood the meaning of wartime haste had presided. Former sergeant Fromm had been the best man while Winfield Scott had given away the bride. The maid of honor had been Bridget Conlin.

President Lincoln declined to attend the reception, but he sent a card and a vase. Grant sent a box of cigars and Rebecca wondered out loud if she was supposed to smoke them, too, It turned out that Grant’s gift of cigars was a joke, He and Julia had also sent a painting of a Midwestern landscape by Winslow Homer and hoped it would grace their new home.

A number of important people had also sent their best wishes, Winfield Scott’s star was again on the ascendancy, and Nathan Hunter was Winfield Scott’s protégé.

It didn’t hurt that Nathan was considered a hero, His stand against the Confederates had made him famous, Skeptics, Nathan among them, wondered if his part in the fight had been all that decisive. Meade was moving up behind him and Thomas’s men were arriving on his right, either of which would have doomed the Confederate thrust. He did concede that he had prevented bloody and destructive fighting in the streets of Washington itself,

Rebecca hooked her arm in Nathan’s and they looked out the window towards the Potomac. “Must you go again? Seems you are always leaving me.”

“At least this time the guns aren’t firing.”

A truce had been in effect for more than a week and appeared to be holding. The Confederacy had asked for peace commissioners to discuss an honorable end to the hostilities, and Lincoln had determined to send Scott on what would likely be the last great effort of his life, Nathan would assist Scott.

The response from Richmond showed that the choice of Scott had been inspired. He had commanded Lee and many others in the Mexican War and, as a result, still had the respect of a number of the South’s leaders, That he’d held for the Union was not counted against him, He had done what honor had demanded of him,

“Will you succeed?” she asked,

“We have to. Of course, I think we’re more than halfway there. The fact that Lee is in favor of peace is very vital to it.”

Lee. minus a leg but otherwise recovering well, had made his opinions known. Enough blood had been shed. Between the North and the combined Anglo-Confederate armies, more than seventy thousand had been killed or maimed in the campaign into Pennsylvania and the fighting around Washington. The appalling numbers had sated just about everyone’s lust for blood, Longstreet and Jackson had joined the growing chorus for peace.

“It still galls me,” Rebecca said, “to realize that men and women who are slaves may yet die as slaves, and that numbers unborn will emerge into slavery. However,” she sighed, “I can see the advantage in the compromise. It will guarantee freedom, only just not yet.”

Lincoln had proposed a phasing out of the institution of slavery in the Confederate states. It would be a five-year program during which federal money would be used to purchase the slaves from their current owners and make an attempt to educate and otherwise prepare the slaves to function in a free world, The abolitionists wanted the slaves freed now, which would have continued the war. and others in Congress had opposed the use of government money to end the evil. Lincoln had prevailed by convincing them that such a use of Union resources would not only be bloodless, but would be far, far cheaper than the cost of continuing the war. Freeing four million slaves at an average cost of two hundred dollars each would leave the United States a debtor nation, but such a condition would only be temporary, The resources of the combined United States were so great that the debt would be paid quickly.

When Grant, Thomas, Sherman, Farragut, and other war heroes had spoken out in favor of Lincoln’s five-year proposal, it had finally carried, Ironically, there was virtually no opposition to the idea of granting total amnesty to all who had taken up arms in the rebellion, “Are you sure no one knows it was you who ordered Harwell to shoot Lee?” Rebecca asked.

Nathan thought for a moment of the poor boy dangling lifeless in the tree. Billy Harwell was celebrated by the North as a hero and condemned as a sneaking coward in the South. Congress had awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor, which showed that the victors are the ones who write history, not the losers, Billy Harwell’s ruined and wasted life was another good reason for ending the war.

As to Nathan’s direct involvement in the shooting, it was his and Rebecca’s secret. Billy was dead, and so, too, was Captain Melcher, who had bled to death from his wounds. Lee would survive to an honorable old age. and that was all that mattered. It was also thought that Lee would be part of the Confederate peace commission.

Popular interest was now focused on the treason trial of the actor John Wilkes Booth. He stood accused of having led the Confederate snipers in their attempt to kill Lincoln at Fort Stephens, and of convincing Stanton that a Confederate force was on the southern side of the Potomac instead of the north, Booth’s treachery had almost handed the South an incredible triumph. He would hang for his efforts. Strangely, his pending demise evoked no outcries of sympathy from the South. Booth’s acts were cowardly and dastardly.

As he had done so many times. Nathan checked his pocket watch. The train was scheduled to leave in less than an hour, and both he and General Scott would be on it in the comfort of Nathan’s private car. In what was yet another good sign, the rail lines between Washington and Richmond were open and repaired. In addition, intelligence sources said that the Confederate army was gradually melting away, with the soldiers going home to their destitute families and their crops, When the brave rebel soldier called it quits. Nathan thought, it was over, Or should be.

“We will succeed,” Nathan repeated. “General Scott says we owe it to both the living and the dead to succeed, and Mr. Lincoln is going to dedicate a cemetery for both Union and Confederate dead out near Gaithersburg, He will say that we cannot let their efforts have been in vain, No, we will succeed,”

Rebecca smiled, The new year of 1863 was but an infant, as was the life she hoped was growing in her womb, It would be a very good year, Eighteen sixty-two had begun with the nation in peril. More personally, both she and Nathan had begun the year wounded in both mind and spirit. Now the nation was on the verge of coming back together, and, again personally, both she and Nathan had healed, She never worried about her scars, and Nathan had admitted that he had no idea where his cane was.

Neither, it appeared, needed crutches any longer.

   
Robert Conroy
is a semi-retired business and economic history teacher living in suburban Detroit.