Copperhead

The Mississippi Congressman gave Jefferson Davis’s shoulder a mighty slap. “Heavy duty be damned, Jeff,” the Congressman bellowed in his President’s ear. “Just send our boys north to cut the nuts clean off old Abe Lincoln.”

“I must leave strategy to the generals.” The President tried to move the Congressman on and accept the more limpid good wishes of an Episcopalian clergyman instead.

“Hell, Jeff, you know as much ’bout war as any of our fine soldier boys.” The Congressman hawked a tobacco-rich gob toward a spittoon. The stream of brown spittle missed, spattering instead on the rain-soaked hoop skirt of the clergyman’s wife. “Time we settled those chicken-shit Yankees once and forever,” the Congressman opined happily, then offered the new President a pull on his flask. “Finest rot-skull whiskey this side of the Tennessee River, Jeff. One slug will cure whatever ails you!”

“You’re demanding my company, Delaney?” Faulconer was irritated that the short, sly lawyer had taken him away from the President.

“It ain’t me who wants you, Faulconer, but Daniels, and when Daniels calls, a man does best to respond,” Delaney said.

“Daniels!” Faulconer said in astonishment, for John Daniels was one of the most powerful and reclusive men in Richmond. He was also famously ugly and foulmouthed, but important because it was Daniels who decided what causes and men the powerful Richmond Examiner would support. He lived alone with two savage dogs that it was his pleasure to make fight while he cackled from the vantage point of a high barber’s chair. He was no mean fighter himself; he had twice faced his enemies on the Richmond dueling ground in Bloody Run and had survived both fights with his malevolent reputation enhanced. He was also regarded by many southerners as a first-rate political theorist, and his pamphlet, “The Nigger Question,” was widely admired by all those who saw no need to modify the institution of slavery. Now, it seemed, the formidable John Daniels waited for Faulconer on the elevated back porch of the new Executive Mansion where, horsewhip in hand, he stared moodily at the rain.

He gave Faulconer a sideways glance, then flicked his whip toward the water dripping off the bare trees. “Is this weather an augury for our new President, Faulconer?” Daniels asked in his grating, hard voice, eschewing any more formal greeting.

“I hope not, Daniels. You’re well, I trust?”

“And what do you think of our new President, Faulconer?” Daniels ignored Faulconer’s courtesy.

“I think we are fortunate in such a man.”

“You sound like an editorial writer on the Sentinel. Fortunate! My God, Faulconer, the old U.S. Congress was full of mudsills like Davis. I’ve seen better men drop out the backside of a hog. He impresses you with his gravity, does he? Oh, he’s grave, I’ll grant you that, because there’s nothing alive inside him, nothing but notions of dignity and honor and statesmanship. It ain’t notions we need, Faulconer, but action. We need men to go and kill Yankees. We need to soak the North in Yankee blood, not make fine speeches from high platforms. If speeches won battles we’d be marching through Maine by now on our way to taking Canada. Did you know Joe Johnston was in Richmond two days ago?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Know what Johnston calls you, Faulconer?” Daniels asked in his unpleasant voice. It did not matter to Daniels that Faulconer was one of the South’s richest men, so rich that he could have bought the Examiner a dozen times over; Daniels knew his own power, and that power was the ability to mold public opinion in the South. That same power gave him the right to lounge in the President’s wicker rocking chair with his shabby boots up on the President’s back rail while Faulconer, in his gaudy colonel’s uniform, stood beside him like a supplicant. “He calls you the hero of Manassas,” Daniels said sourly. “What do you say to that?”

“I’m most grateful,” Faulconer said. In truth the soubriquet was a mistake, for General Johnston had never discovered that it was not Faulconer who had led the Legion against the North’s surprise flank attack at Manassas, but the unsung Thaddeus Bird, nor had Johnston ever learned that Bird had made that decision in deliberate disobedience of Faulconer’s orders. Instead, like so many other folk in the Confederacy, Johnston was convinced that in Washington Faulconer the South had a brilliant and fitting hero.

That belief had been carefully nurtured by Washington Faulconer himself. The Colonel had spent the months since Manassas lecturing on the battle in halls and theaters from Fredericksburg to Charleston. He told his audiences a tale of disaster averted and victory snatched from certain defeat, and his tale was given drama and color by a small group of wounded musicians who played patriotic songs and, at the more dramatic moments of the narration, played imitation bugle calls that gave the audience the impression that ghostly armies maneuvered just outside the lecture hall’s dark windows. Then, as the story reached its climax and the whole fate of the Confederacy hung in history’s balance, Faulconer would pause and a snare drum would rattle a suggestion of musketry and a bass drum crash the echoes of distant cannon fire before Faulconer told of the heroism that had saved the day. Then the applause would ring out to drown the drummers’ simulated gunfire. Southern heroism had defeated dull-witted Yankee might, and Faulconer would smile modestly as the cheers surrounded him.

Not that Faulconer had ever actually claimed to be the hero of Manassas, but his account of the fight did not specifically deny the accolade. If asked what he had done personally, Faulconer would refuse to answer, claiming that modesty was becoming to a warrior, but then he would touch his right arm in its black sling and he would see the men straighten their backs with respect and the women look at him with a melting regard. He had become accustomed to the adulation; indeed, he had been making the speech for so long now that he had come to believe in his own heroism, and that belief made his memory of the Legion’s rejection of him on the night of Manassas hard to bear.

“Were you a hero?” Daniels now asked Faulconer directly.

“Every man at Manassas was a hero,” Faulconer replied sententiously.

Daniels cackled at Faulconer’s answer. “He should have been a lawyer like you, eh, Delaney? He knows how to make words mean nothing!”

Belvedere Delaney had been cleaning his fingernails, but now offered the editor a swift, humorless smile. Delaney was a fastidious, witty, clever man whom Faulconer did not wholly trust. The lawyer was presently in Confederate uniform, though quite what his martial duties entailed, Faulconer could not guess. It was also rumored that Delaney was the owner of Mrs. Richardson’s famous brothel on Marshall Street and of the even more exclusive house of assignation on Franklin Street. If true, then the collected gossip of the two brothels doubtless provided Delaney with damaging knowledge about a good number of the Confederacy’s leaders, and doubtless the sly lawyer passed all that pillow talk on to the scowling, diseased, twisted-looking Daniels.

“We need heroes, Faulconer,” Daniels now said. He stared sourly down at the flooded paths and muddy vegetable beds of the soaking garden. A wisp of smoke twisted up from the presidential smokehouse where a dozen Virginia hams were being cured. “You heard about Henry and Donelson?”

“Indeed,” Faulconer said. In Tennessee Forts Donelson and Henry had been captured and now it looked as if Nashville must fall, while in the east the Yankee navy had again struck from the sea; this time to capture Roanoke Island in North Carolina.

“And what would you say, Faulconer”—Daniels shot an unfriendly look at the handsome Virginian—“if I were to tell you that Johnston is about to abandon Centreville and Manassas?”

“He can’t be!” Faulconer was genuinely aghast at the news. Too many acres of northern Virginia were already under enemy occupation, and yielding more of the state’s sacred turf without a fight appalled Faulconer.

“But he is.” Daniels paused to light a long black cheroot. He spat the cheroot’s tip over the railing, then blew smoke into the rain. “He’s decided to pull back behind the Rappahannock. He claims we can defend ourselves better there than in Centreville. No one’s announced the decision yet, it’s supposed to be a secret, which means Johnston knows, Davis knows, you and I know, and half the goddamn Yankees probably know too. And can you guess what Davis proposes doing about it, Faulconer?”

“I trust he’ll fight the decision,” Faulconer said.

“Fight?” Daniels mocked the word. “Jeff Davis doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He just listens to Granny Lee. Caution! Caution! Caution! Instead of fighting, Faulconer, Davis proposes that a week tomorrow we should all have a day of prayer and fasting. Can you believe that? We are to starve ourselves so that Almighty God will take note of our plight. Well, Jeff Davis can tighten his belt, but I’ll be damned if I shall. I shall give a feast that day. You’ll join me, Delaney?”

“With enormous pleasure, John,” Delaney said, then glanced around as the door at the end of the verandah opened. A small boy, maybe four or five years old and carrying a hoop, appeared on the porch. The boy smiled at the strangers.

“Nurse says I can play here,” the boy, whom Washington Faulconer guessed was the President’s oldest son, explained himself.

Daniels shot a venomous look at the child. “You want a whipping, boy? If not, then get the hell out of here, now!”

The boy fled in tears as the editor turned back to Faulconer. “Not only are we withdrawing from Centreville, Faulconer, but as there isn’t sufficient time to remove the army’s supplies from the railhead at Manassas, we are torching them! Can you credit it? We spend months stocking the army with food and ammunition and at the very first breath of spring we decide to burn every damn shred of material and then scuttle like frightened women behind the nearest river. What we need, Faulconer, are generals with balls. Generals with flair. Generals not afraid to fight. Read this.” He took from his vest pocket a folded sheet of paper that he tossed toward Faulconer. The Colonel needed to grovel on the porch’s rush matting to retrieve the folded sheet, which proved to be the galley proof of a proposed editorial for the Richmond Examiner.

The editorial was pure balm to Faulconer’s soul. It declared that the time had come for bold action. The spring would surely bring an enemy onslaught of unparalleled severity and the Confederacy would only survive if it met that onslaught with bravery and imagination. The South would never prevail by timidity, and certainly not by digging trenches such as those with which General Robert Lee seemed intent upon surrounding Richmond. The Confederacy, the editorial proclaimed, would be established by men of daring and vision, not by the efforts of drainage engineers. The writer grudgingly allowed that the Confederacy’s present leaders were well-meaning men, but they were hidebound in their ideas and the time had surely come to appoint new officers to high position. One such man was Colonel Washington Faulconer, who had been unemployed since Manassas. Let such a man loose on the North, the article concluded, and the war would be over by summer. Faulconer read the editorial a second time and pondered whether he should go to Shaffers this very afternoon and order the extra braid for his sleeves and the gilded wreaths that would surround the stars on his collar wings. Brigadier General Faulconer! The rank, he decided, sat well on him.

Daniels took the editorial back. “The question is, Faulconer, do we publish this?”

“Your decision, Daniels, not mine,” Faulconer said modestly, hiding his elation as he shielded a cigar from the wind and struck a light. He wondered if publication would offend too many senior officers, then realized he dared not express such a timid reservation to Daniels or else the editorial would be changed to recommend that some other man be given a brigade.

“But are you our man?” Daniels growled.

“If you mean, would I attack and attack and go on attacking, yes. If you mean, would I abandon Manassas? No. If you mean, would I employ good men to dig drainage ditches around Richmond? Never!”

Daniels was silent after Faulconer’s ringing declaration. Indeed he was silent for so long that Washington Faulconer began to feel rather foolish, but then the small, black-bearded editor spoke again. “Do you know the size of McClellan’s army?” He asked the question without turning to look at Faulconer.

“Not precisely, no.”

“We know, but we don’t print the figure in the newspaper because if we did we might just cause people to despair.” Daniels twitched the long whip as his voice rumbled just a little louder than the seething and incessant rain. “The Young Napoleon, Faulconer, has over a hundred and fifty thousand men. He has fifteen thousand horses, and more than two hundred and fifty guns. Big guns, Faulconer, slaughtering guns, the finest guns that the northern foundries can pour, and they’re lined up wheel to heavy wheel to grind our poor southern boys into bloody ruin. And how many poor southern boys do we have? Seventy thousand? Eighty? And when do their enlistments run out? June? July?” Most of the southern army had volunteered for just one year’s service, and when that year was over the survivors expected to go home. “We’ll have to conscript men, Faulconer,” Daniels went on, “unless we beat this so-called genius McClellan in the spring.”

“The nation will never stand for conscription,” Faulconer said sternly.

“The nation, Colonel, will damn well stand for whatever brings us victory,” Daniels said harshly, “but will you lead those conscripted men, Faulconer? That’s the proper question now. Are you my man? Should the Examiner support you? After all, you’re not the most experienced officer, are you now?”

“I can bring new ideas,” Faulconer suggested modestly. “New blood.”

“But a new and inexperienced brigadier will need a good and experienced second-in-command. Ain’t that right, Colonel?” Daniels looked malevolently up at Faulconer as he spoke.

Faulconer smiled happily. “I should expect my son Adam to serve with me. He’s on Johnston’s staff now, so he has the experience, and there isn’t a more capable or honest man in Virginia.” Faulconer’s sudden sincerity and warmth were palpable. He was desperately fond of his son, not just with a father’s love, but also out of a gratified pride in Adam’s undoubted virtues. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Faulconer that Adam was his one undoubted success, the achievement that justified the rest of his life. Now he turned smilingly to the lawyer. “You can vouch for Adam’s character, can’t you, Delaney?”

But Belvedere Delaney did not respond. He just stared down into the sopping garden.

Daniels hissed in a dubious breath, then shook his ugly head warningly. “Don’t like it, Faulconer. Don’t like it one goddamn little bit. Stinks of favoritism to me. Of nepotism! Is that the word, Delaney?”

“Nepotism is the very word, Daniels,” Delaney confirmed, not looking at Faulconer, whose face was like that of a small boy struck brutally hard.

“The Examiner could never stand for nepotism, Faulconer,” Daniels said in his grating voice, then he threw a curt gesture toward Delaney, who obediently opened the verandah’s central door to admit onto the porch a gaunt and ragged creature dressed in a wet, threadbare uniform that made the newcomer shiver in the day’s raw cold. The man was in his early middle age and looked as though life had served him ill. He had a coarse black beard streaked with gray, sunken eyes, and a tic in his scarred cheek. He was evidently suffering from a cold for he cuffed his dripping nose, then wiped his sleeve on his ragged beard that was crusted with flakes of dried tobacco juice. “Johnny!” this unprepossessing creature greeted Daniels familiarly.

“Faulconer?” Daniels looked up at the Colonel. “This is Major Griffin Swynyard.”

Swynyard gave Faulconer a brisk nod, then held out his left hand, which, Faulconer saw, was missing its three middle fingers. The two men made an awkward handshake. The spasm in Swynyard’s right cheek gave his face a curiously indignant look.