When This Cruel War Is Over (32 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

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“I have no idea,” Gentry said. “Do you, Major Stapleton?”
“No,” Stapleton said. Gentry thought he sounded uncomfortable, telling that lie.
“They could have bought them in New York and shipped them out here. The country is awash in guns,” Gentry said. “The federal government can't keep track of them all.”
Yancey worked all afternoon and into the night on the wounded. There were several amputations, including the captured Son of Liberty's shattered leg. He was from nearby Cannelton. His name was Theodore Stearns. He died about an hour after the operation. Yancey said amputees sometimes died from the shock.
Or the grief of it,
Gentry thought.
The idea of a crippled future.
The next morning, Gentry pondered the coffins of eight dead Germans recruited from distant Europe to die in Lincoln's war. Somehow that had meaning for him. A world war fought to free America from the stain of slavery. But most Americans did not think slavery was a stain. The majority party, the Democrats, said it was
perfectly all right. It was in the Constitution, wasn't it? If it was good enough for Washington and Jefferson, what's wrong with it now? Was this new birth of freedom Abe Lincoln had proclaimed at Gettysburg worth dying for, a year later? Theodore Stearns and his friends apparently did not think so.
Major Stapleton joined him for the funeral service. Gentry read sonorous words from his mother's Episcopal prayer book. Sergeant Schultz wept. Gentry thought Major Stapleton looked downcast. They buried the Germans in the Gentry family graveyard about a half mile from the main house, beside the two blacks who had died in the earlier ambush.
After dinner, Gentry retreated to his cellar office to write a telegram to Lincoln describing the ambush:
This demonstrates how serious the situation is. Again,
I
urge you to detach ten thousand veteran troops and get them here as soon as possible
. He had just finished putting this into code when Dorothy Schreiber called, “Colonel, Mrs. Jameson is here!”
Once more he greeted Amelia at the foot of the stairs. In his office, she asked him for a drink of water. From an embroidered bag on her wrist she took two folded pieces of paper. “Here is what you want, I suspect,” she said.
She withdrew it from his reaching hand. “First I must extract another promise. If Adam is captured, he will
not
be executed as a guerrilla. He will be treated as a prisoner of war.”
“Agreed,” Gentry said.
Amelia handed him the paper. He spread it on the desk:
The date of the Sons of Liberty attack is August 28. The Rogers Jameson brigade will cross the Ohio late that night to occupy Keyport and join regiments from Hunter County for a march on Indianapolis.
They expect to have at least 10,000 men. Rose Hill is the rendezvous point.
The names of Rogers' colonels are:
George Mooney
Henry Travis
Arthur Haliburton
Luke Bowman
The Kentucky commanding general is Gabriel Todd. His chief of staff is Colonel Paul Stapleton. Rogers is a brigadier general. The soldiers will be met in Keyport by Judge Joshua Bullitt with a month's pay in greenbacks for every man. Judge Bullitt is coming from Canada with the money on the Cleveland and Great Western Railroad. money on the Cleveland and Great Western Railroad.
“Thank you, Amelia. You've done a brave thing. A good thing, I hope.”
“Why don't I feel good? I feel soiled. I think I'll always feel soiled.”
“Amelia. Don't say that.”
“I will say it, Henry. I think you should know it. You above all.”
He sat there in the silence, listening to Amelia's footsteps on the stairs. All these years she had known about his longing. All these years she had nurtured the possibility in her heart that someday somehow she might satisfy it. Now she was telling him that hope, that possibility, was gone forever.
With a sigh Colonel Gentry tore up the telegram to President Lincoln and sent another one to Major General Stephen Burbridge in Louisville.
All's well. Additional information will follow in code. I will await your early reply.
Gentry telegraphed another coded copy of Amelia's letter to General Henry Carrington in Indianapolis. He had no doubt that he and Burbridge would take the credit for defeating the Sons of Liberty. Gentry wanted
it that way. He would not accept a medal from Lincoln if he offered one. You do not want a medal for doing something you will be ashamed of for the rest of your life.
We're doing it the hard way, Abe.
IN THE HOT CLAUSTROPHOBIC DARKNESS of his room under the Gentry eaves, Paul Stapleton tossed in his bed. He kept seeing the dead Germans in their blue Union uniforms, killed by the Spencer repeating rifles he had bought in New York. He kept seeing the wounded blacks, murdered at Saltville because they too were wearing Union blue. He kept seeing Jeff Tyler in his grave outside Atlanta, the bloody gray uniform his shroud.
Above all he saw Janet Todd beside him in his bed. His love for her had achieved ultimate crystallization in his soul. The way she clenched her small hands when she disagreed with him, the stubborn way she bowed her dark head when he argued with her, the straight-backed way she sat in chairs and rose with an abrupt decisive motion, the mournful light that filled her blue eyes when she talked of the war, everything stirred overwhelming desire. He had no one to blame but himself, of course. He had cultivated this process; he had submitted eagerly to the growth of this exquisite mixture of pain and pleasure. He had wanted a love that was more intense than ordinary affection. Now it was destroying him.
It was the guns, the mixture of the guns and love, that was ruining his sleep. It was the image of the 15,000 repeating rifles flooding into Kentucky and Indiana. Those linseed-oiled stocks and gleaming rust-blued barrels and seven-shot magazines were transforming this amateur rebellion into a continental-size nightmare.
The ambush of the overconfident Germans was a
graphic glimpse of what Spencers could do. The shootup had been Rogers Jameson's idea. He had not bothered to tell Gabriel Todd or Paul Stapleton about it. That was the way Jameson operated—with minimal regard for rank or courtesy. Paul suspected Jameson was concealing grandiose ambitions to become the president of the western confederacy, a man who would sit down as an equal with Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis to work out the destiny of North America. He saw himself as a latter-day version of his famous ancestor, George Rogers Clark. Already Jameson talked about the “Revolution of 1864” as if it were his personal invention.
Paul sensed that Gabriel Todd realized he had created a potential monster in Rogers Jameson but did not know what to do about him. Colonel Todd's mind tended to operate in the abstract. Collisions with reality were difficult for him. More often than not, he retreated to his bottle. Paul had not met the other leaders of the Sons of Liberty, Dr. William Bowles, Judge Joshua Bullitt, and an Indiana lawyer named Lambdin Milligan, but he suspected they were similar to Todd. Abstract thinkers with only minimal ability to lead men.
That was how revolutions developed. The abstract thinkers started them and the men of action finished them. Rogers Jameson was not an elevated example of a man of action. George Washington he was not; nor was he even Andrew Jackson. Jameson's ego was much larger than his brain. But a large ego can take a man quite a distance, when it was backed by 15,000 repeating rifles in the hands of infuriated young Democrats.
While pretending to ride out with Janet Todd to enjoy her company as a lover, Paul had been doing his duty as Gabriel Todd's chief of staff. They had visited the colonels of Sons of Liberty regiments along both sides of the Ohio, where their numbers were thickest. All had told him with wide-eyed enthusiasm how the Spencers
had increased the ardor and confidence of their men. Janet would inform these excited gentleman that Colonel Stapleton (his Sons of Liberty rank) had been instrumental in obtaining the rifles.
Paul saw what she was trying to do. Janet wanted to build up him and her father as counterweights to Rogers and Adam Jameson if the western confederacy became embroiled in an internal power struggle. For the moment, that remained secondary to the rising hope that the rebellion would succeed. A coded message from Richmond reassured them that Judge Bullitt was arriving from Canada with a million dollars to pay the troops. That news too brought exultation to the lips of the regimental officers.
A number of the colonels were former Union Army officers who had resigned when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. They knew how to handle troops in a battle. They talked confidently of flank attacks and skirmish lines. They nodded knowledgeably when Paul traced their routes of march on a map of Indiana. Meanwhile, the calendar peeled inexorably toward August 28, the night they would gather for the rising the next day.
Other actors were moving into place. Confederate veterans were infiltrating Chicago with suitcases full of Greek fire grenades. Two Sons of Liberty regiments were supposedly inside the city, ready to support them. Chicago would be full of other Democrats, there for the national convention. They could be counted upon to back the Sons when they liberated the Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, just outside the city, and took over the metropolis.
At breakfast in the morning, Henry Gentry regarded Paul with a contrite expression. “Major Stapleton,” he said. “I can see you're not sleeping well. I wonder if Lucy should give you back your bedroom.”
“No thank you,” Paul replied. “I'm perfectly contented with the room. It's quiet. I'm sure the heat will break soon.”
“I've been told this spell is likely to hold until the end of August,” Gentry said. “Unless there's some sort of big battle in our vicinity. I've heard that often brings on a thunderstorm. Has that been your experience, Major?”
“I've heard it mentioned by old soldiers. But I haven't experienced it,” Paul replied.
Gentry's smile was much too self-satisfied. Paul was sure the colonel knew exactly what he was doing in Kentucky. “How is Mrs. Todd?” Gentry asked.
“She's much better. Though the family is greatly distressed. All their field hands have run away.”
“What a shame. Have they joined the Union Army?”
“They don't seem to know where they've gone.”
“It must be exasperating. The sort of thing that might drive a man to desperate measures.”
“Like hiring free men and paying them decent wages?” Dorothy Schreiber said. Her experience with Lucy had turned her into something close to an abolitionist.
“That might be a desperate measure if you have to mortgage your property to pay the wages,” Gentry said. “The next time you visit, Major Stapleton, I hope you'll tell Gabriel Todd I'd be happy to loan him any amount he needs until he readjusts things.”
Paul could easily imagine Gabriel Todd's reaction to the idea of putting his property in the hands of Henry Gentry's lawyers. Was the colonel toying with all of them? For a moment Paul's sense of solidarity with the Todds ignited.
“I'm serious,” Gentry said. “When the war ends, I plan to open a bank here in Keyport. Its sole purpose will be to help friends and relations like the Todds cope with the change from slave to free labor.”
“I think their land should be confiscated and distributed to their slaves in part payment for generations of unpaid labor,” Dorothy said.
“The Emancipation Proclamation doesn't apply to Kentucky, Dorothy. They haven't seceded,” Paul said. “What would you say, Colonel Gentry, if the Todds used your money to buy more slaves?”
“Lincoln will abolish slavery throughout the Union soon after the war,” Gentry said. “With victory in his pocket, Abe will be an irresistible political force.”
“I wonder,” Paul said. “He certainly won't be popular in Kentucky. Or in Indiana, as far as I can see.”
“Well—he hasn't been reelected yet. And he hasn't won the war,” Gentry said in his irritating inconclusive way. Paul was again convinced that the colonel was toying with him.
The butler handed Gentry the morning newspapers. He subscribed to a half-dozen, including the anti-Lincoln New York
Herald
. On its front page was a shocking story. The
Herald
had gotten its hands on a letter that Henry Raymond, editor of the
New York Times
and chairman of the Republican National Committee, had written to Lincoln. Gentry read it aloud to the breakfast table:
“Republicans Throw In Towel.
“‘The tide is setting strongly against us,' writes Republican boss Henry Raymond to President Lincoln. ‘Congressman Washburne tells me that Illinois is certain to go Democratic. Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania predicts a similar verdict for his state. Governor Morton reports that nothing but the most strenuous efforts can carry Indiana. Here in New York, we expect the Republican ticket to lose by more than fifty thousand votes.
“‘Too many voters are complaining of the want of military successes. Others lament that we are not to
have peace in any event during your administration until slavery is abandoned. Nothing but the most resolute and decided action on the part of its friends can save the country from falling into hostile hands.'”
As Gentry finished reading this gloomy prophecy, his mother appeared in the doorway of the dining room. She sat down at the breakfast table and said, “I never had any confidence in that oversized lout Lincoln from the start. He was
common
as a boy and he's
common
as a man.”
“If I was a member of this supposedly revolutionary party I keep hearing about, the Sons of Liberty, I'd put away my guns and wait for the ballot box in November,” Gentry said. “Don't you agree, Major Stapleton?”
“It sounds reasonable. But people aren't in a reasonable mood, Colonel Gentry. Not after three years of war and Republican usurpation here in Indiana and across the river in Kentucky.”
“If only someone could talk sense to these people,” Gentry said.
Sure he was being needled, Paul's reply was curt: “Why don't you try it, Colonel? Don't you know who they are?”
“I have a name or two,” Gentry said. “Not enough to make a difference.”
“What a shame. We may have that epic battle yet. At least we can look forward to cooler weather after it.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” Gentry said.
That afternoon, Paul departed for Hopemont. There was no military reason to stay in Indiana. Sergeant Schultz and his men could handle the occasional deserter. There was no longer any danger of the Sons of Liberty staging another ambush. Paul had persuaded Gabriel Todd to forbid further experiments along that line.
As Paul mounted his horse on the Kentucky side of the ferry crossing, Moses Washington walked toward him in a well-pressed blue uniform. He looked rested
and healthy. Paul leaned from the saddle and shook hands with him.
“What brings you to Indiana?”
“I got a week leave,” Moses said. “I thought I'd pay that little girl Lucy a visit. I hear she's had a pretty hard time.”
“Very hard,” Paul said. “I've heard you had your troubles, too, up in western Virginia.”
“Yes, sir,” Moses replied. “Sure wish you'd been there, Major. Maybe you could have talked some sense to them officers.”
“I heard about the rebels shooting the wounded,” Paul said.
He did not want to say it. The words spoke themselves.
“Yes sir.”
“I'm glad you got away. Colonel Gentry told me about it. Did your pal Jones make it?”
“No sir. He got it in the belly goin' up the hill. Died before they could shoot him again.”
“You'll fight again another day, Moses. Maybe even the score.”
“I sure hope so, Major.”
“Good luck, Moses.”
“Same to you, Major.”
Paul shook hands again and rode on to Hopemont. All the way down the hot dusty road, the conversation reverberated in his brain.
You had to say it,
his Gettysburg wound mocked.
It
didn't mean anything,
Paul replied.
It was just two soldiers talking about a battle
.
Why doesn't Janet Todd ever mention it? She's never said a word about it since the day you told her. What does that mean?
I love her
, Paul replied.
It doesn't mean anything.
Dust settled in his throat. He swigged from his canteen. There was not the hint of a breeze. Birds perched disconsolately in the oaks and cottonwoods along the
way, too weary to sing. The road was empty. Only a handful of slaves were in the fields. There were stories in the newspapers about farm hands in Indiana dying of heat prostration.
At Hopemont, Janet met him with a kiss. But that was all he was going to receive. She had made it clear that she no longer relished furtive lovemaking in the middle of the night. She wanted a husband, not a lover, now. A husband who was her partner in victory.
“The last of the rifles have been distributed,” Janet said. “We're ready to march. Adam Jameson's men will start down from the mountains tomorrow. They'll be here in two days.”
“Good,” Paul said.
“Promise me you won't ask him anything about killing the wounded blacks.”
“I can't do that,” Paul said. Again, the words spoke themselves. “I promise not to shoot him. But I feel obligated to ask him for an explanation.”

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