The Guns of the South Read online

  If anything, praise from Joe Johnston was liable to make the President suspicious about the new rifles; if Johnston said it looked like rain, Davis would expect a drought, and the lack of affinity was mutual. Lee said quickly, “For once, Mr. President, I would say the reports are, if anything, understated. The repeaters are robust, they are reasonably accurate with adequate range, and they and their ammunition appear to be available in quantities sufficient to permit us to take the field with them. When spring comes, I intend to do so.”

  “They improve our prospects by so much, then?” Seddon asked.

  “They do indeed, sir,” Lee said. “The Federals have always had more weight than we, could they but effectively bring it to bear. These repeaters go far toward righting the balance. Without them, our chances were become rather bleak. In saying this, I know I catch neither of you gentlemen by surprise.”

  “No, indeed,” Davis said. “I am most pleased to hear this news from you, General, for some of the counsel I have had from others approaches desperation.” He rose from his desk, strode over to close the door that led out to the hallway. As he turned back, he went on, “What I tell you now, gentlemen, must not leave this room. Do you understand?”

  “Certainly, Mr. President,” said Seddon, who usually said yes to whatever Jefferson Davis wanted. Lee bent his head to show he also agreed.

  “Very well, then, I shall hold you to that promise,” Davis said. “To give you the full import of the remedies which have been contemplated out of anxiety for our future, let me tell you that last month I received a memorial from General Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee”

  “Ah, that,” Seddon said. “Yes, that needs to stay under the rose.” He was familiar with the memorial, then.

  “Cleburne is an able officer,” Lee said. “He fought well in the Chattanooga campaign, by all accounts.”

  “As may be. He stirred up a fight of his own, among the generals of his army. You see, in his memorial, he proposed freeing and arming some portion of our Negroes, to use them as soldiers against the Yankees.”

  “Many might say, what point to the Confederacy, then?” Seddon remarked. “What point to our revolution?”

  Lee’s brows came together as he thought. At last he said, “The Federals let some of their Negroes put on the blue uniform. They will surely take away ours if we are defeated. Would it not be better to preserve our independence by whatever means we may, and measure the cost to our social institutions once that independence is guaranteed? Fighting for their freedom, Negroes might well make good soldiers.”

  “Put that way, it might be so,” Seddon said. “Still, the agitation and controversy which must spring from the presentation of such views by officers high in the public confidence are to be deeply deprecated.”

  “I agree. We cannot afford such controversy now,” Davis said…Cleburne’s memorial is a counsel of the last ditch. At the last ditch, I would consider it—at the last ditch, I would consider any course that promised to stay our subjugation by the tyranny in Washington. What I hope, however, General Lee, is that, newly armed as we shall be, we succeed in keeping ourselves from that last ditch., and thus preserve our institutions unblemished by unwelcome change.”

  “I hope so, too, Mr. President,” Lee said. “It may be so. That our prospects are better with these repeating carbines than they would be without them cannot be denied. Whether they will bring us victory—God alone can answer that. I shall do my best to foster that victory, as will your other commanders.” That was as much as Lee felt he could say. He wished Davis would trust General Johnston further, wished the two of them could compose their quarrel. He was not, however, in a position to suggest it. Both proud, touchy men would surely take it wrong.

  Davis said, “General, am I to understand that these amazing rifles spring from Rivington, North Carolina? I had not thought of Rivington as a center of manufacture. Indeed”—he smiled frostily—”up until this past month I had not thought of Rivington at all.”

  “I’d never heard of the place, either,” Seddon put in.

  “Nor had I,” Lee said. “Since it was brought to my attention, my staff officers and I have inquired about it of train crews and soldiers who pass through the place. Their reports only leave me more puzzled, for it has not the appearance of a manufacturing town: no smelting works, no forges, no factories. There has lately been a good deal of building there, but of homes and warehouses, not the sort of buildings required to produce rifles, cartridges, or powder. Moreover—Mr. President, have you had the opportunity to examine these rifles for yourself?”

  “Not yet, no,” Davis said.

  “Among other things, they bear truly astonishing gunsmiths, marks. Some proclaim themselves to have been manufactured in the People’s Republic of China, a part of that country no one has been able to locate in any atlas. Others say they were made in Yugoslavia, a country which appears in no atlas. And still others are marked in what, after some effort, we determined to be Russian. I have learned they were made in the SSSR, but what the SSSR may be, I cannot tell you. It is, I confess, a considerable puzzlement.”

  “By what you are telling us, Rivington seems more likely a transshipment point than one where the weapons are actually made,” Seddon said.

  “So it does.” Lee looked toward the Secretary of War in some surprise. Why couldn’t Seddon make such cogent suggestions more often? Or was it cogent? Lee went on, “From where could the rifles be transshipped? Granted, Rivington is on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, but the blockade runners are not bringing them in at Wilmington. They seem to originate directly at Rivington, coming, I cannot tell you how, from these unknown places I have mentioned, and travel from Rivington to us and, I gather, to other armies.”

  “You have interrogated the railroad workers and our soldiers, you say,” Jefferson Davis said. “Have you not also questioned the men of Rivington, the ones who are with your army as instructors?”

  “Mr. President, I have, but I confess only circumspectly,” Lee said. “They turn aside all significant queries; they are as closemouthed a band of men as I have ever encountered. And without your order, I have been unwilling to do anything that might antagonize them, lest the stream of carbines dry up as suddenly as it began to flow.”

  Davis rubbed the smooth-shaven front of his chin, plucked at the beard that grew under his jaw.” I dislike our nation’s dependence upon any single small group, let alone one about which we know so little. Under the circumstances, though, General, I must reluctantly concur with your judgment.”

  “Perhaps we should send agents to this Rivington, to learn of it what we may—circumspectly, of course,” Seddon said.

  “A good plan. See to it,” Davis said. Seddon took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket. He leaned forward, made a note to himself on the President’s desk, and put away the paper.

  “Is there anything more, Mr. President?” Lee asked, hoping the Secretary of War would not forget until the next time he chanced to wear that waistcoat.

  “No, General, thank you very much. You may go; I know you’ll be eager to see your wife. Please convey my greetings to her. She and her ladies have been of material benefit to the soldiers of the Confederacy, and I would not have her believe herself unappreciated,” Davis said.

  Lee stood to go. “I will give her your exact words, Mr. President, as best I can remember them. I know she will be grateful to hear from you.” He nodded to Seddon. “I hope I see you again, sir.”

  It was full dark outside, and cloudy, with a feel of rain in the air. Lee put on his hat and buttoned the top buttons of his coat as he walked out to the waiting carriage. Luke looked up at the sound of his footsteps. The black man quickly stowed away a small flask. Lee pretended he had not seen it. If Luke wanted a nip against the nighttime cold, that was his affair. “Gwine home now, Marse Robert?” he asked as he got down to untie the team.

  “That’s right, Luke, to Mrs. Lee’s house.” It was hardly home. His proper home, Arlington,
lay just across the Potomac from Washington City. It had been in Federal hands since the beginning of the war. For the last two years, he had lived with the Army of Northern Virginia. Anywhere away from it, he felt like a visitor.

  “Have you there soon.” Luke returned to his seat. “It only be a couple blocks.”

  The horses snorted eagerly as they began to walk. They had been cold, too. The carriage clattered northwest along Bank Street, the lower boundary of Capitol Square. When Luke got to Ninth Street, he turned right. Half a block later, at the corner of Ninth and Franklin, he went left again, onto Franklin.

  Despite the holiday, lights burned at several windows of Mechanic’s Hall, which stood at the corner of Ninth and Franklin. Seddon no doubt had come from there: the building housed the War and Navy Departments. Before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, the convention that had taken Virginia out of the United States had met there, too.

  Past Mechanic’s Hall, Franklin Street was quiet and almost deserted. Two blocks away, on Broad Street, another train roared along between the depots of the Virginia Central and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac. Its racket was in marked contrast to the serenity that seemed to flow from every brick of the United Presbyterian Church on the corner of Eighth and Franklin.

  Lee smiled and shifted forward in his seat as the carriage rolled past the church. The house Mary Custis Lee was renting lay halfway down the same block, on the opposite side of the street.

  “Yours is the middle house, am I right, Marse Robert?” Luke said.

  “Yes, and thank you, Luke.” Lee descended from the carriage before it had quite stopped. Luke flicked the whip over the horses. As they began to move faster again, he reached down for the flask he had put away. He swallowed and sighed with pleasure.

  The house across the street from 707 Franklin had in front of it a young maple in a planter painted with chevrons. “As you were, Sergeant,” Lee told it, smiling slightly. He opened the gate to the cast-iron fence in front 707 Franklin, hurried up the short walk to the porch. There he paused to wipe the mud from the unpaved street off his boots before he knocked on the door.

  He heard footsteps inside. The door opened. Lamplight spilled onto the porch. Silhouetted by it, Agnes Lee peered out. “Father!” she exclaimed, and threw herself into his arms.

  “Hello, my precious little Agnes,” he said. “You must be careful with your knitting needles there behind my back, lest you do me an injury worse than any those people have yet managed to inflict on me.”

  She looked up at him with a doubtful smile. All her smiles were doubtful these days, and had been since her sister Annie died a year and a half before; she and Annie had been almost as close as twins. After he kissed her on the cheek, she pulled herself free and called, “Mother, Mary, Mildred—Father’s here!”

  Mildred came rushing up first. “Precious life,” he said indulgently as he hugged her. “And how is my pet this evening?”

  “Father,” she said, in the tone of voice any eighteen-year-old uses when her elderly and obviously decrepit parent presumes to allude to the unfortunate fact that she was once much younger than her present peak of maturity.

  Lee did not mind; his youngest child was his pet, regardless of what she thought of the matter. “How is Custis Morgan?” he asked her.

  “He’s happy and fat,” she answered. “Acorns are easier to come by than human provender.”

  “Such a happy, fat squirrel had best not be seen in camp,” he teased, “lest he exit the stage in a stewpot-bound blaze of glory.” She made a face at him. He shook his head in mock reproof.

  His eldest daughter came into the front hall a moment later, pushing his wife ahead of her in a wheeled chair. “Hello, Mary,” he called to them both. Mary his daughter bore a strong resemblance to his wife, though her hair was darker than Mary Custis Lee’s had been when she was young.

  He took three quick steps to his wife, bent a little so he could clasp her hand in his. “How are you, my dear Mary?” he asked her. She stayed in her chair most of the time; rheumatism had so crippled her that she could hardly walk.

  “You didn’t write to let us know you were coming,” she said, a little sharply. Even when she’d been young and pretty and well—more than half a lifetime ago, Lee thought with some surprise, he could call up in his mind the picture of her then as easily as if it had been day before yesterday—her temper was uncertain. Years as an invalid had done nothing to soften her.

  He said, “I was summoned down to confer with the President, and took the first train south. A letter could hardly have outrun me, so here I am, my own messenger. I am glad to see you—glad to see you all. Your hands, I note, dear Mary, are not too poorly for you to knit.” He pointed to the yarn, needles, and half-finished sock that lay in her lap.

  “When I can no. longer knit, you may lay me in my grave, for I’ll be utterly useless then,” she answered. She’d loved to ply the needles since she was a girl. Now she went on, “Since you are here, you may take the next bundle back with you for the men. Between our daughters and me, we’ve finished nearly four dozen pairs since we last sent them. And with them in your hands, the count should be right when they reach camp.”

  “Times are hard for everyone,” Lee said. “If a railroad man is needy enough to filch a pair of socks, I dare say he requires them as badly as any of my soldiers.”

  His eldest daughter said, “Mrs. Chesnut visited not long ago and said we were so busy we reminded her of an industrial school.” Mary tossed her head to show what she thought of the blue-blooded South Carolina woman. At the same age, her mother would have done the same thing.

  “I don’t care what Mary Boykin Chesnut thinks of us,” Mary Custis Lee declared. “It would be altogether improper for me to lead in any entertainments of the social sort when the men you lead are all half-starved, and when you yourself live like a monk in that tent of yours.”

  “President Davis’s opinion of you is rather higher than Mrs. Chesnut’s.” Lee passed on Davis’s compliment. “Tell me, then, whose approbation would you sooner have?”

  “Yours,” his wife said.

  He stooped to kiss her cheek. However her body troubled her, she was loyal to him to the bone, and he to her. They were part of each other. After more than thirty-two years of marriage, he had trouble imagining things being otherwise.

  “Julia, turn down the second bed in Mother’s room, please,” Agnes called. The black woman started up the stairs.

  Lee said, “That’s thoughtful of you, but I don’t plan on turning in quite yet. I should like to sit up awhile and listen to the doings of the city from the lot of you. If you can stand to hear me, I may even go on a bit about affairs at camp.”

  “I’m going to go hide Custis Morgan, so you don’t take him back to Orange Court House with the socks,” Mildred said. “What’s your daughter’s happiness, set against the prospect of squirrel stew for your men?”

  Chuckling, Lee told her, “Your pet is safe from me, precious life. He would not go far enough, divided among hungry soldiers, to be worth absconding with. If the Scriptures spoke of the miracle of loaves and squirrels, though, instead of loaves and fishes—”

  Everyone laughed at that, even Agnes, briefly. Mary Custis Lee said, “Let’s go back into the parlor, then, and talk.” The wheels of her chair squeaked as Mary turned her around.

  “I don’t want to talk about squirrels anymore,” Mildred said.

  “Then we shan’t,” Lee promised.

  The women’s needles clicked busily as they resumed their interrupted knitting. The war touched them in Richmond almost as hard as it did him with the Army of Northern Virginia. One of the stories Lee’s eldest daughter told was of the mass escape of Federal officers from Libby Prison less than two weeks before. Over a hundred men had got loose, and fewer than half of them were rounded up again.

  “Our own soldiers suffer in Northern prison camps,” Lee said, “though the North has more to spare for captives than do we. The Nort
h has more to spare for everyone.” He sighed. “I have said that, thought that, wrestled with that for too long. I wish this war had never come; it wastes both sides.”

  “I said as much when it began,” his wife observed.

  “I know you did, nor did I disagree with you. I wanted no flag but the Star-Spangled Banner, no song besides ‘Hail Columbia.’ But once here, the thing must be fought through.” He hesitated, then continued: “It may even—may, I say—have seen a turn in our favor.”

  The knitting needles stopped. His wife and daughters all looked at him. He had always done his best to sound hopeful in his letters and to act so when he saw them, but he was not one to be falsely or blindly optimistic, and they knew it. His daughter Mary asked, “From where has this good news come?”

  “From Rivington, North Carolina, as a matter of fact,” Lee said. The name of the place meant no more to his family than it had to him a month before. He quickly told the story of the new repeaters and the curiously accented men who supplied them, finishing, “We cannot outnumber the Federals; if we outshoot them, though, that may serve as well.”

  His daughters seemed more interested in his account of the strangers and their gear than in details of the carbines. Mildred said, “I wonder if those are the same men as the ones who not long ago rented a whole floor in the building across from Mechanic’s Hall.”

  “Why do you say that, precious life?” Lee asked.

  “Any time anyone pays his bills in gold these days, word gets around, and by what you said, these—what did your lieutenant call them?—these all-over-spots fellows appear to have an unmatched supply of it. And if I were selling guns to the War Department instead of making socks, I should like my offices close by theirs.”

  “None of which necessarily proves a thing,” he said. Mildred’s lively features started to cloud up, but he went on, “Still, I think you may well be right. It could do with some looking into, perhaps.”

  “Why, Father?” Agnes scratched her head. Her hair, now tightly done up with pins, came closest of all his children’s to matching the rich yellow that had been her mother’s. “Why?” she asked again. “From all you’ve said, these men from Rivington mean us nothing but good.”