House Divided (57 page)

“He was unwilling to be ranked in his own territory,” he commented. “In his place, I would no doubt feel as he does.” After a moment he added: “If I were there and our strike failed, the blame would have been mine; but General Jackson would not fear blame for what he thought a promising move. Evidently he did not agree with my suggestion.” He shook his head. “It is a pity, all the same. The Valley is our sally port. Through it we can hit them where they're tender. Well, another time, another time.”

Of this matter, for the moment, no more was said. Longstreet had lost his old readiness for speech. To casual conversation he listened sometimes so inattentively that Trav thought Cinda was right in believing him a little deaf. When he did speak, however, in direction to his own officers, or in response to a question from General Johnston, it was firmly and positively. He seemed always completely sure of his own mind. One day Trav referred to this.

“Why, yes,” Longstreet agreed. “That is true. I am sure of myself.”
A faint hint of the old twinkle showed in his eyes. “A man, a man in authority, should be sure of himself. There's no advantage in knowing a thing unless you know you know it. I've been told that I am slow; but I believe in taking time to make up my mind. Once a man forms an opinion, it's hard for him to change it. It becomes his property, and his instinct is to defend it, not to question it and test it. So the wise man is slow to make up his mind because he knows that once he has done so it will be hard for him to change.” He almost smiled. “Take McClellan now. He's decided to attack Richmond by the way of the Peninsula. If we make a move to threaten Washington, Lincoln will order McClellan to change his plans; and McClellan will be as distracted as a chicken with its neck wrung, making up his mind all over again.” He said after a moment: “And we should try to do just that. Certainly we should do something! The longer we delay, the greater the odds against us.”

The odds were already heavy enough. Regiments and companies were below their full strength; many furloughed men had not returned to duty; the hospitals were crowded, and there was a shortage of weapons so acute that even now, after almost a year of war, to arm some regiments with pikes instead of guns was seriously proposed. When the dark news of Shiloh came, Longstreet commented:

“That's 'Lys Grant again. If he were in McClellan's place he'd be in Richmond before summer. McClellan has a hundred thousand men on the Peninsula right now, and Magruder hasn't twenty thousand to hold him.”

 

Magruder cried for reinforcements, and orders came for Longstreet to start his division toward the Peninsula. As the march began, Longstreet himself went with General Johnston and General Smith to Richmond to meet the President in council; and on the move Trav stayed one night at Cinda's. He found her troubled by the dangers in the wind and angry at the fainthearts who were ready to despair.

“People are scurrying away, pretending it's just to escape the hot term,” she told him. “But if you ask me, they're just plain scared, running off to hide in the mountains, or going south.” She laughed shortly. “But I'm a fine one to talk! I'm scared myself! The only way I can get to sleep at night is to start thinking how I hate and despise
Abe Lincoln. It's like counting sheep! I get so mad I forget to be scared.”

“Faunt goes into a rage at the thought of him.”

“How is he?”

“Well, he's pretty shaky. Tony tried to stand up for Lincoln, and Faunt got pretty red, but Brett quieted him down.”

“What in the world got into Tony?” She was suddenly as flushed as Faunt had been that day at Great Oak. “If he ever tried that here, I'd order him out of the house.”

“Oh, he just said something about South Caronna secessionists being as bad as Massachusetts abolitionists.”

She nodded reluctantly. “Seceding was idiotic, of course; but that white trash in Washington had no right to try to stop us.” She added: “Trav, Mr. Fleming writes from the Plains that someone is setting fire to houses and corn cribs and barns around Camden.”

“The negroes?”

“Mr. Fleming says not; says it's the sand hill tackeys. Speaking of white trash made me think of it. No, Mr. Fleming says our people at the Plains would fight for us, if we gave them guns.”

Trav laughed grimly. “We haven't enough guns for our soldiers.”

“We don't dare arm the negroes anyway. Travis, why should they be loyal while we fight to keep them slaves?”

“I suppose it's their nature to—love their masters. Like dogs.”

“I wish I could believe that! But anyway it's not the negroes who've set the red cock crowing in the barns. Mr. Fleming says the tackeys are excited by all the talk about conscription, claiming they'll be made to fight the war while we get the benefit. The newspapers down there are stirring up poor against rich, printing editorials about us riding around in carriages while the wives of poor soldiers trudge along on foot! Why shouldn't people use carriages if they have them, I'd like to know?”

“Well, I'd rather see the horses hitched to my wagons,” Trav admitted, and added jestingly: “But I'll let you and Mama keep your carriages a while.”

 

He rode away next day, following his trains toward Yorktown. Longstreet that evening rejoined his division on the march, and Trav,
knowing the big man better every day, thought something had angered him. He was not surprised when at the first opportunity the General unburdened himself. He had been present when President Davis, General Lee, George Randolph, General Johnston, and General Smith discussed the situation confronting the Confederacy. Johnston thought the Peninsula indefensible; he wished to fall back to Richmond, stand on the defensive. “He'd abandon Norfolk, sink the
Merrimac,
open the James River to McClellan's gunboats, wait, wait, wait, let McClellan play his own game.” Longstreet's tone was bitter.

Trav, thinking of his mother at Great Oak, asked: “Will they do that?”

“Not yet, at least. General Lee was for a delaying action on the Yorktown line to give us more time; and President Davis agreed with him.” Trav nodded with relief at this postponement of the inevitable, and Longstreet added: “I like Lee. Johnston had his back hair up like an angry dog—he and Davis will never work together—but General Lee gentled him, calmed him.”

“Did you offer any suggestion?”

Longstreet made a harsh sound. “I said nothing till an opinion was asked; then remarked that McClellan was deliberate, careful, slow. Before I could go on, President Davis interrupted me to praise McClellan to the skies. Obviously he wanted no proposal from me, so I made none.” He added strongly: “Yet if we reinforced Jackson and threatened Washington, Lincoln would whistle McClellan home. The whole spring campaign against us would collapse.”

Trav made no comment, and Longstreet repeated: “Yes, I was impressed by General Lee. His present position, keeping peace between President Davis and General Johnston, is a difficult one; but I believe he feels that with time to get ready we can beat McClellan here! I'd like to see him in command.” His heavy fist clenched. “By the Almighty, Currain, it would be a satisfaction to have a leader who expected and sought victories.” After a moment he added thoughtfully: “It's true Lee did nothing in Western Virginia; but in Mexico he knew how to find a way to win battles. I don't believe he has forgotten. I feel great, controlled strength in Lee. And—President Davis believes in him.” The big man said with a strong vehemence: “We need a head, Currain. We need men and arms, of course; but the conscription
act will surely pass, this week. That will keep in the army the men we have, and bring many more. It will end this whole question of twelve-months men going home when their terms expire. Yes, we'll manage for men. But, Currain, most of all we need a head! General Lee says every man in the South should be compelled to grow food or to fight! I tell you, General Lee is a man!”

 

When they were settled in their new position on the Yorktown line, Trav's duties gave him leisure for daily rides to Great Oak. He made the most of these opportunities for the week or ten days before Vesta's wedding. Faunt worried him. A persistent cough was presumably a relic of his illness; but also Faunt was more easily disturbed than Trav had ever seen him. When Trav spoke of the confusion in the encampment at Yorktown, where company and regimental elections were just now being held, Faunt said bitterly:

“You can be sure they won't elect good men. They want officers who ask favors, instead of giving orders.” He seemed to quote. “‘Officers who can remember, sir, that they are addressing not slaves but gentlemen!'” Trav, seeing the other's burning eyes, tried to turn the talk to harmless things, but Faunt persisted. “Oh, I've seen them. The Blues, the new company, came down the end of March. The men I know best haven't been exchanged yet, but I've ridden over to see them. They're at Gloucester Point now. I'd like to be with them, but I'm weak as a kitten still. But Trav, they say the elections are ruining the army. New officers are no good, and the ones who are defeated resign and go home, so it's a loss both ways.”

“Conscription will bring them back,” Trav suggested; but Faunt said harshly:

“The Government can't conscript gentlemen!” A bit of coughing silenced him, and Trav watched him with concern.

On these frequent homecomings Trav delighted in the children. Peter was ten years old, a lively boy tremendously excited by great events preparing, hearing every day the sporadic cannonade at Yorktown, riding abroad to watch the soldiers marching or in their camps. Lucy was no longer a child, now at thirteen already wearing a sweet maturity, grave and quiet yet holding toward her father an unreserved affection which she did not hesitate to show. Trav found happiness
with them, and with Faunt, too, but not with Enid. She made her distaste for his presence pitilessly clear. Once or twice he sought to win her to tenderness, but she met his affectionate advances with contempt. “For Heaven's sake don't try to be playful, Trav. You remind me of a capering elephant!”

His mother, in another way, equally defeated him. Trav wished to persuade Mrs. Currain to go to Richmond for Vesta's wedding; since, if she went, Cinda would keep her there and thus avoid the wrench that a forced departure from Great Oak would be. But Mrs. Currain could not be persuaded.

“I'm much too settled in my ways to go visiting,” she declared. “Let Vesta bring her young man here to see me after they're married.”

She was immovable, and when the time came, she stayed at Great Oak, and Enid in some baffling petulance elected to stay with her. The shift of the army from Northern Virginia to the Peninsula had brought Burr and Julian and Rollin and Tommy Cloyd to the camps between Williamsburg and Yorktown; and Trav and Faunt joined them for the ride to Richmond; and Burr was pleased because the First Virginia Cavalry had elected Fitz Lee colonel. “He's as good as Stuart,” he said confidently. “They're always together whenever they can be.” He laughed. “At West Point Colonel Lee always signed his name F. Lee, so they called him ‘The Flea', and the nickname fits him. I expect he'll keep us jumping.” And Burr added: “He's a great beau, too. They say he has a pocketful of rings ladies have given him.”

“That's once when electing officers worked well, then,” Trav suggested, and Burr agreed.

“Yes, there's no one any better than Fitz Lee.”

They were all in festive humor that day, sharing Tommy's happiness, laughing at remembered incidents of the winter which had now yielded to the seductions of the flooding spring; and Julian was the most voluble of them all. “Winter seemed pretty hard at the time,” he admitted. “But up north we could keep our huts clean, at least. When we came down here they put us in huts where some Louisiana men had spent the winter, and next day we were all scratching!” He laughed. “The Louisiana trash used to have louse races and bet on the winner. They'd put their vermin on pieces of canvas and the first one over the edge took the money. They had one race where each man
put his louse on a tin plate, and one man heated his plate, so he won all the bets. We burned down the huts to get rid of the lice, as soon as the weather cleared, but I still itch!”

“I've found a few on myself,” Burr admitted. “But don't tell Mama. She'd be scandalized!”

“Gosh, I won't tell anyone,” Julian assured him. “I'm not bragging about it!” He told them about the famous battle of the frogs. A young officer, in the nervous hours of the night, heard splashing in the river, and thought the Yanks were coming. He ordered his men to open fire, and sent for reinforcements, and staged a lively skirmish till older heads checked the firing and a Yankee called derisively through the darkness: “Well, Rebs, how many frogs did ye kill with all that shootin'?”

Julian told them too how Colonel McKinney, who had been a professor at the academy in Charlotte, one day walked along the top of the wall of sandbags at Dam No. 2 in defiance of Yankee sharpshooters till a bullet crashed into his head. “You feel kind of naked,” Julian declared, “with the Yankee balloons up in the air all day looking right down at you, seeing every move you make.”

They found Brett and Tony in Richmond before them, and after the first hubbub of their arrival quieted, Brett drew Trav aside to speak of Great Oak, and Faunt and Tony followed them. “We'll hold Yorktown till McClellan is ready to attack,” Trav said. “But he's getting siege guns into position, and we'll withdraw before he can use them. General Longstreet promises to let me know in time to get Mama away; but if we want to take anything out of the house we ought to do it now.”

The big house was full of treasures that could not be left behind, and they made their plans to save what could be moved. Brett, since the Howitzers were now on duty in North Carolina and he must rejoin them, could not go to Great Oak; but Tony and Faunt would ride down Monday morning, and presumably Cinda and Tilda would want to go with them. These four would begin sorting and packing while Trav at Longstreet's headquarters waited to warn them when the army's retreat was to begin.