House Divided (25 page)

It was inevitable that just now such a man should be afire with a happy intoxication, drunk with the certainty that war was imminent. “Father's convinced of it,” he told Faunt. “I've tried to send him home—he has a bad cold, next door to pneumonia—but he won't be moved.” Jennings Wise had been recently elected Captain of the Blues; and he said: “See here, sir, you'll want a share in the fun that's coming. If you join the Blues I'll promise you action.”

Faunt smiled. “I haven't thought so far ahead. Where is your father? I'd like to pay my respects.”

“At the Exchange,” Jennings told him. “He'll be glad to see you. But don't forget the Blues when the time comes. If you wait too long we may not have room for you. A week from now we'll be off for Washington!” He laughed in audacious certainty. “Why sir, in sixty days our flag will fly over the White House. We'll establish the capital of the Confederacy there.”

Faunt did not dissent. Youth would always nurse its dreams. Yet he found the former Governor as ready for battle as his son. When Faunt reached his room, a number of gentlemen were with the Governor, deep in conversation. There were some thoughtful suggestions that Virginia might still remain neutral; but Governor Wise, through spasms of coughing, brushed them aside.

“Ridiculous, gentlemen; ridiculous! Even assuming that that was our desire, here's the North on one side of us, the South on the other, like two dogs each eager to get at the other's throat. We're the fence between. Even if we wished to keep them apart, we couldn't do it. No, either Virginia will fight with Jeff Davis or she'll fight with Lincoln. That's certain!”

“Suppose she chose to fight with Lincoln?”

“Sir,” the Governor retorted, his deep-set eyes blazing, “if Virginia did that I would renounce my loyalty to her—and so would every other honorable man—and offer my sword to the Confederacy.”

The talk ran on, visitors came and went. Ex-President Tyler appeared; and Faunt and the others heard his opinion that the attack on Sumter would lead to the secession of Virginia.

“And Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina—all will follow us,” the former chief executive predicted. “But I believe that if we stand firm, no general war need ensue.”

Governor Wise, his deeply cleft chin jutting defiantly, instantly dissented. He was a spare man, so lean that he seemed taller than he was; his cheeks were sunken, his skin yellow. There was no moderation in him, no halfway between right and wrong; and in private conversation or in public utterances his passionate certainties sometimes thinned his tones to an almost feminine slenderness. Those who did not know him might at such times suspect he was intoxicated; but actually
cold water was his only potation, tobacco his only vice. As he spoke now the corners of his mouth were stained.

“No, sir!” he cried. “No sir, you are wrong. The North has gone too far to withdraw. They've been made drunk with abolitionist doctrine. Garrison and his like, this Black Republican clown from Illinois,
Uncle Tom,
Helper's book—sixty-eight Republican Congressmen, you remember, recommended that atrocious and bloodthirsty production to the attention of their followers—all these influences have moved them to maniacal frenzy. Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad! The North had warning enough during the campaign that to elect this gangling Illinois ruffian would be taken as a declaration of war; but they persisted in their folly. They elected a sectional administration, the first this nation has ever seen. In ten Southern states Abe Lincoln got not a single vote!” He threw up his hands, his fists clenched. “The crime is on their heads!”

“There need not be war,” President Tyler urged. “Mr. Lincoln is a self-confessed coward, skulking into Washington in disguise, delivering his inaugural from behind a hedge of bayonets. If the South presents a steady and united front, his fears will restrain him, and he will restrain his followers.”

“He wants war,” the Governor insisted. “When he sent a fleet to provision Sumter, it was a deliberate move to provoke us into action. Mark my word, that fleet will make no effort to relieve the Fort. They will allow Sumter to fall; and then Lincoln will call us aggressors and the North will follow him to war.”

“The Northerners are not a warlike people,” President Tyler urged. “In our last war with England, South Carolina alone furnished more soldiers than all New England; the South furnished almost twice as many as the whole North. In the Mexican war all New England sent only a thousand men. Lincoln will find few ready to take up the sword. Governor, you heard me say a month ago in the Convention that Virginia should present an ultimatum, demand guarantees. To do so now, in concert with our sister states, will still serve.”

Faunt asked curiously: “Sir, what guarantees can protect us?”

The other turned to him. “Why, they are simple, Mr. Currain; and yet they are the minimum which we must have. This vulgarian from the barbaric West seeks to destroy us by guile and treachery; he gives
us smiles and promises, and so he lulls us to sleep while he orders home the Pacific and the Mediterranean fleets to close our ports, and brings the nation's soldiers from their western duties to form hostile ranks along our borders, to encircle us, shut us off from the world, stifle us. He denies us any expansion of slave territory, hems us in our narrow land, proposes to destroy us. He will garrison Fort Washington and Fortress Monroe; and once that is done, a single armed vessel can close the James and the York and your own Rappahannock, Mr. Currain; can overnight shut us off from all commerce with the world.

“So we must demand, must insist—while negotiations are continued —upon the
status quo;
no more soldiers to Fortress Monroe, to Fort Washington, to Washington City, to Harper's Ferry. Our firm stand will hold Maryland, will win New Jersey; and I have high hopes of Pennsylvania, of New York. They are our natural allies against this slave-lover from the West. They like him no better than we. A bold, united South can win three or four of the free states; can recapture control of the Government.” The old gentleman rose, afire with his own words. “We can recapture the control which the Cotton States by their impetuosity threw away. Publicly I can never criticize the course taken by South Carolina and the others; but to you gentlemen I can say that had they retained their representation in Congress, they could have prevented the appropriation of a single dollar to support Mr. Lincoln's warlike plans. They acted honorably—but not wisely.

“But we can still rule. The exchanges of the world, the clothing and commerce of the world, the wealth of the North, all these are based on cotton. Self-interest will be our ally. We need only stand firm, demand security, command respect. In their secret closets they will count the cost, foresee the bankruptcy which without the South and its cotton they inevitably face, and come humbly to seek again our friendship.”

He finished, his voice ringing, and Faunt nodded, not in assent yet respectfully. But Governor Wise shook his head. “Sir, I cannot agree with you. This has gone beyond the point where Northern cupidity can restrain Northern aggression. Cotton is a weapon, yes; but here is a better one.” He crossed the room to the corner where a musket with fixed bayonet leaned, and took it in his hands. “This, in the
hands of the brave; this musket, this bayonet, these are worth all your cotton!”

Faunt asked: “Have we arms?”

“Enough,” the Governor assured him. “John Floyd, before he resigned, sent a hundred thousand muskets from Northern armories to those in the South. But it is not the weapons which will bring victory to our cause; it is the men! Let our brave men march into the North and the rabble there will scatter like chickens before the hawk. Northerners have no taste for battle.” A sudden passion rang in his shrill tones. “But what brave man waits for some magic to put a weapon in his hand? The man who will not fight unless he has a Minié or a percussion musket is a coward and a renegade. Let him get a spear, or a lance; let him take a lesson from John Brown, make his own sword or his knife from old iron or from a piece of carriage spring. If the enemy's gun outreaches his, why, let him reduce the distance between them. Meet him foot to foot with cold steel and strike home!”

 

There was a blaze of deadly energy in the Governor's eyes, and Faunt thought of Jennings Wise and of the many like him in the South, young men habitually ready to fight at a word or a sidelong look. Yes, Southern men would fight. It was their habit, almost their pastime. Not only men like the Governor's son but even the humblest farmer or the most miserable poor white was ready at a real or imagined affront to turn to the pistol, the knife, the gouging ring for satisfaction.

From what sprang this universal Southern readiness for deadly combat? Walking back to the Spottswood through the crowded streets he tried to understand. What was this South of which he was a part? What was its mind, its heart? Long after he was abed he lay wakeful, seeking an answer to that question. His thoughts returned to the paths they had followed earlier in the day. The aristocracy of wealth of which he was a part, an aristocracy based not so much upon birth as upon two or three or four generations of successful exploitation of land and slaves, founded by progenitors who had distinguished themselves primarily by an ability to face frontier conditions and master them; this aristocracy, acquiring leisure, had also acquired power and having acquired power and leisure and wealth it had created the gentle way of life which was his world.

But he and such as he were not the South; they were only a few individuals among millions. What was the distinctive characteristic of Southern men as a result of which the meanest one of them was ready to protect what he considered his honor with his life?

He arrived slowly at an understanding that contented him. Here was the significant fact. In the South, only slaves had masters. A man—a white man—no matter how abject his condition, rarely worked for hire. There were a few hired overseers, yes; but even they were masters of the slaves they directed. There were a few clerks, keepers of books, vendors of merchandise; yes, but they were in numbers insignificant. The South was not, like the North, a land of factories, where thousands of white men spent long days in monotonous toil and found sometimes even their homes and their scant leisure and the smallest details of their lives controlled and commanded by their employers. When such labor was needed in the tobacco factories here in Virginia, slaves were hired from their owners; yes, and treated with as much or with more consideration than the white serfs in Northern industry. The South was not a region of towns and crowded cities. There might be thirty-five thousand people in Richmond, but more than half of them were Negroes; and probably only New Orleans and Charleston in the whole South were more populous than Richmond. Faunt doubted whether any other city than these three had as many as five thousand white inhabitants. Southern men, whether wealthy or desperately poor, lived on the soil; and on their few starved acres and in their rude hovels or cabins, even the meanest of them were still their own masters. They admired and cultivated not wealth in any form but individual qualities: strength, no matter how that strength was used; courage, no matter how it was demonstrated; capacity, even though it were only the capacity to drink more fiery liquor than other men; valor, even though it were demonstrated only by follies committed without a count of consequences; dignity, even in rags. If you knew in your heart that no man could challenge you and make his challenge good, why then you were master of yourself and of the world.

And always you knew, too, that no matter how low your estate, that of the slave was lower. No man could call himself your master. You
yourself were of the master race, free to claim your share of the general authority to which your white skin entitled you.

To such men servility was impossible, surrender inconceivable, defeat a ridiculous absurdity. From such men would the soldiers of the South be recruited; from men who were deeply sure that no man could overcome them. How could such men be beaten? True, you could kill them; but in no other way could you compel them to submission.

And hundreds of thousands of such Southern men were ready now to meet the North's challenge. Faunt felt in himself a high pride because of such men, whether great or humble, he was one. Before he slept he knew that he would go next day to Jennings Wise, to accept his part in that which was to come.

 

Faunt's decision would not at once be put into effect. When he came down to breakfast he saw, back toward him, a heavy-shouldered, slightly stooping, instantly familiar figure; and he moved to Trav's side, touched his brother's arm. Trav turned and their hands struck, and Faunt asked:

“What brought you to Richmond? Is Mama well?”

“Yes, yes.” Around them excited voices sounded, and they drew a little aside to talk apart. “But Enid and I brought Hetty up. Her eye, the one Vigil hurt, is worse.” Faunt heard the concern in Trav's slow tones. “We wanted Dr. Little to try if he can heal it.”

“I'm grieved to hear that.” Seeing the baby at Great Oak since the accident, the hurt eye always terribly inflamed and often swollen and so painful that Hetty was forever whimpering with misery, Faunt had felt a deep sorrow for her. He forgot now any thought of going today to Captain Wise. “Command me, Trav. Where is Enid?”

“In our rooms, with Baby. And we brought April.” Trav smiled sadly. “We had to. The old woman seldom lets Hetty out of her arms.” He added: “Enid's pretty upset. Baby seems to get worse all the time.”

Faunt went with Trav to their rooms. Enid, seeing at first only Trav at the door, cried querulously: “Oh, so you're back, are you? Well, it's high time! Leaving me—” But then as she discovered Faunt, with an instant change of tone: “Oh, Cousin Faunt, it's so
good to see you! We're all just desperate! I don't know what to do!” From the next room came the baby's fretful wails. “She's been like that for days and days now. I hear her all night, can't sleep; and if I doze off I hear her in my sleep.” Her tears were brimming and she came into his arms, her arms tightening around him. “Oh, do tell us what to do?”