Copperhead

Adam’s duty this day was to make certain that only those prisoners whose names had been agreed between the two armies were released, but that duty had been simply discharged by a roll call and head count, and once those duties were done he had sought James’s company and asked to talk with him privately. James, naturally enough, assumed Adam wanted to talk about his brother. “There is no chance, you think, that Nate could change sides?” James asked Adam wistfully.

Adam did not like to answer directly. In truth he was bitterly disappointed with his friend Nathaniel Starbuck, who, he believed, was embracing war like a lover. Nate, Adam believed, had abandoned God, and the best he could hope for was that God had not abandoned Nate Starbuck, but Adam did not want to state that harsh judgment, and so he tried to find some shard of redeeming goodness that would buoy James’s hopes for his younger brother. “He told me he attends prayer meeting regularly,” he answered lamely.

“That’s good! That’s very good!” James sounded unusually animated, then he frowned as he scratched his belly. Like every other prisoner held in Castle Lightning he had become lousy. At first he had found the infestation terribly shaming, but time had accustomed him to lice.

“But what will Nate do in the future?” Adam asked, then answered his own question by shaking his head. “I don’t know. If my father resumes command of the Legion, then I think Nate will be forced to look for other employment. My father, you understand, is not fond of Nate.”

James jumped in alarm as a sudden eruption of steam hissed loudly from a locomotive on the nearby York River Railroad. The machine jetted another huge gout of steam, then its enormous driving wheels screamed shrilly as they tried to find some traction on the wet and gleaming steel rails. An overseer bellowed orders at a pair of slaves who ran forward to scatter handfuls of sand under the spinning wheels. The locomotive at last found some purchase and jerked forward, clashing and banging a long train of boxcars. A great gust of choking, acrid smoke wafted over Adam and James. The locomotive’s fuel was resinous pinewood that left a thick tar on the rim of the potlike chimney.

“I had a particular reason for seeing you today,” Adam said clumsily when the locomotive’s noise had abated.

“To say farewell?” James suggested with an awkward misunderstanding. One of his shoe soles had come loose and flapped as he walked, making him stumble occasionally.

“I have to be frank,” Adam said nervously, then fell silent as the two men skirted a rusting pile of wet anchor chain. “The war,” Adam finally explained himself, “must be brought to a conclusion.”

“Oh, indeed,” James said fervently. “Indeed, yes. It is my prayerful hope.”

“I cannot describe to you,” Adam said with an equal fervor, “what tribulation the war is already bringing to the South. I dread to think of such iniquities being visited on the North.”

“Amen,” James said, though he had no real idea what Adam was talking about. In prison it had sometimes seemed as if the Confederacy were winning the war, an impression that had been heightened when the disconsolate prisoners from Ball’s Bluff had arrived.

“If the war continues,” Adam said, “then it will degrade us all. We shall be a mockery to Europe; we shall lose whatever moral authority we possess in the world.” He shook his head as if he had not managed to express himself properly. Beyond the quay the train was picking up speed, its boxcar wheels clattering over the rail joints and the locomotive’s smoke showing white against the gray clouds. A guard jumped onto the platform of the moving caboose and went inside out of the cold wind. “The war is wrong!” Adam finally blurted out. “It is against God’s purpose. I’ve been praying on this matter and I beg you to understand me.”

“I do understand you,” James said, but he could say no more because he did not want to offend his new friend by saying that the only way God’s purpose could be fulfilled was by the Confederacy’s defeat, and though Adam might be voicing sentiments very close to James’s heart, he was still wearing a uniform of rebel gray. It was all very confusing, James thought. Some of the northern prisoners in Castle Lightning had openly boasted of their adultery, they had been blasphemers and mockers, lovers of liquor and of gambling, Sabbath-breakers and libertines; men whom James had deemed to be of the crudest stamp and vilest character, yet they were soldiers who fought for the North while this pained and prayerful man Adam was a rebel.

Then, to James’s astonishment, Adam proved that supposition wrong. “What is necessary,” Adam said, “and I beg for your confidence in this matter, is for the North to gain a swift and crushing victory. Only thereby can this war be halted. Do you believe me?”

“I do, I do. Of course.” James felt overwhelmed by Adam’s sentiments. He stopped and looked down into the younger man’s face, oblivious to a bell that had begun ringing to summon the prisoner aboard the truce ship. “And I join my prayers to yours,” James said sanctimoniously.

“It will take more than prayers now,” Adam said, and he took from his pocket an India-paper Bible that he handed to James. “I am asking you to take this back to the North. Hidden behind the endpapers is a full list of our army’s units, their strength as of this week, and their present positions in Virginia.” Adam was being modest. Into the makeshift slipcase made by the Bible’s leather cover he had crammed every detail concerning the Confederate defenses in northern Virginia. He had listed the ration strengths of every brigade in the rebel army, and discussed the possibility of conscription being adopted by the Richmond government in the spring. His staff job had enabled Adam to reveal the weekly total of newly manufactured artillery reaching the army from the Richmond foundries, and to betray how many of the cannons facing the northern pickets from the rebel redoubts around Centreville and Manassas were fakes. He had sketched the Richmond defenses, warning that the ring of earth forts and ditches was still under construction and that every passing month would render the obstacles more formidable. He told the North of the new ironclad ship being secretly built in the Norfolk dockyard, and of the forts which protected the river approaches to Richmond. Adam had included all that he possibly could, describing the South’s strengths and weaknesses, but always urging the North that one strong attack would surely crumble secession like a house of cards.

Adam desperately hoped this one inclusive betrayal would be sufficient to end the war, yet he was sensible enough to know that whoever received this letter might well demand more information. Now, pacing the greasy quay in the cold rain, Adam told James precisely how a message could reach him from the North. Adam had worked hard on his scheme, attempting to foresee every liability that might reveal his identity to the southern authorities, and he knew that the greatest danger would be posed by northern messages coming south. “Which is why I’d rather you never contacted me,” he warned James, “but if you must, then I beg you never to use my name on the letters.”

“Of course.” James closed his cold hands over the Bible’s leather cover, guiltily aware of an unseemly happiness. It was right and proper that he should be glad of Adam’s espousal of the North’s cause, yet he felt it shameful that he should see in that espousal an advantage for himself, for he was guiltily aware that the letter concealed in the Bible could well assist his military career. Instead of returning North as the humbled aide of a failed general, he was suddenly the carrier of northern victory. His prayers had been answered a hundredfold.

“If necessary I can send you more information,” Adam went on, “but only to you. Not to anyone else. I cannot trust anyone else.” Both sides were riddled with informers who would betray anyone for the price of a bottle of whiskey, but Adam was certain he could trust this Boston lawyer who was as pious and godly a man as any in either army. “Will you give me your Christian word that you will keep my identity secret?”

“Of course,” James said, still dazed by this stroke of good fortune.

“I mean a secret from everyone,” Adam insisted. “If you reveal my identity to General McClellan I have no faith he will not tell someone else, and that someone else could be my ruin. Promise me this. No one but you and I must ever know.”

James nodded again. “I promise.” He turned as the ship’s bell rang again. His fellow prisoners were climbing the gangway, but still James made no move to join them. Instead he delved into an inside pocket of his faded, dirty jacket and brought out an oilcloth-covered packet. The oilcloth was loosely wrapped and James let it fall away to reveal a small, much-thumbed pocket Bible with a worn cover. “Will you give this to Nate? Ask him to read it?”

“With pleasure.” Adam took the thick Bible and watched as James wrapped his new Scriptures in the patch of oilcloth.

“And tell him,” James added in a heartfelt voice, “that if he returns north I will do my best to reconcile him to Father and Mother.”

“Of course,” Adam said, though he could not imagine Starbuck responding to his brother’s generosity.

“You want to stay here, mister?” a sailor called to James from the ship.

“Remember your promise,” Adam said. “Tell no one who gave you that letter.”

“You can trust me,” James assured Adam. “I’ll tell no one.”

“God bless you.” Adam felt a sudden great warmth for this good, clumsy man who was so obviously a brother in Christ. “And God bless the United States.”

“Amen to that,” James responded, then held out his hand. “I shall pray for you.”

“Thank you,” Adam said, and he shook James’s hand before walking the northerner to the waiting ship.

The gangplank was heaved inboard and the warps cast off. James stood at the rail, the new Bible clutched tight in his hands. As the last warp dropped away and the boat perceptibly moved into the river’s current, the freed prisoners cheered. The sidewheels began to turn, their great paddles churning the greasy water white. The motion of the paddles made the released prisoners cheer again, all but James, who stood silent and apart. A plume of dirty smoke sagged from the ship’s tall funnel to blow across the river.

Adam watched as the ship dropped past the navy yard, its progress helped by a cold, wind-fretted current. He gave James a last wave, then looked down at the pocket Bible to see that its margins were smothered in tightly written notes. It was the Bible of a man who wrestled with God’s will, the Bible of a good man. Adam closed and held the book tightly, as though he could take strength from the word of God, and then he turned and limped back toward his tethered horse. The wind gusted fresh and cold, but Adam felt an immense calm because he had done the right thing. He had chosen the course of peace, and by so doing he would bring nothing but blessings on his country; it would be one country again, North and South, united in God’s purpose.

Adam rode toward the city. Behind him the truce boat splashed and smoked its way around the bend and so headed south carrying its cargo of treachery and peace.

PART TWO

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY WAS FIXED AS THE day of Jefferson Davis’s formal inauguration as President of the Confederate States of America. He had been inaugurated once before, in Montgomery, Alabama, but that ceremony had only made Davis into the President of a provisional government. Now, hallowed by election and properly installed in the Confederacy’s new capital, he would be inaugurated a second time. The choice of Washington’s birthday as the date of this second ceremony was intended to invest the occasion with a symbolic dignity, but the auspicious day brought nothing but miserable and incessant rains which drove the huge crowd gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square to shelter beneath a host of umbrellas so densely packed that it seemed as if the speech-makers orated to a spread of glistening black lumps. The drumming of the rain on carriage roofs and tightly stretched umbrella skins was so loud that no one except the platform party could hear any of the orations, prayers, or even the solemn presidential oath of office. After taking the oath President Davis invoked God’s help to the South’s just cause, his prayer punctuated by the sneezing and coughing of the dignitaries around him. Gray February clouds scudded low over the city, darkening everything except the new battle flags of the Confederate’s eastern army. The flag, which was hanging on staffs behind the platform and from every rooftop within sight of Capitol Square, was a fine red banner, slashed with a blue St. Andrew’s cross on which were sewn thirteen stars to represent the eleven rebellious states as well as Kentucky and Missouri, whose loyalty both sides claimed. Southerners who looked for auguries were pleased that thirteen states founded this new country, just as thirteen had founded a different country eighty-six years before, though some in the crowd perceived the number as unlucky, just as they perceived the drenching rain as an omen of ill fortune for the newly inaugurated president.

After the ceremony a procession of bedraggled notables hurried along Twelfth Street to attend a reception in the Brockenborough House on Clay Street which had been leased by the government to serve as the presidential mansion. The house was soon crowded with dripping people who draped wet coats on the twin statues of Comedy and Tragedy that graced the entrance hall, then edged their way from one room to another to appraise and criticize the new President’s taste in furniture and pictures. The President’s slaves had placed protective covers over the expensive carpets in the reception rooms, but the visitors wanted to inspect the patterns and pulled the cotton sheets aside, and soon the beautifully patterned carpets were trodden filthy with muddy boots, while the twin arrays of peacock feathers on the mantel of the ladies’ drawing room were ravaged by people wanting souvenirs of the day. The President himself stood frowning beside the white marble fireplace in the state dining room and assured everyone who offered him congratulations that he conceived of the day’s ceremony as a most solemn occasion and his presidency as a mighty heavy duty. Some army musicians were supposed to be entertaining the guests, but the crowd was so tightly pressed that the violinist did not even have room to draw his bow, and so the soldiers retired to the kitchen where the cooks regaled them with good Madeira wine and cold jellied chicken.

Colonel Washington Faulconer, resplendent in an elegant Confederate uniform that was made even more dashing by the black sling supporting his right arm, congratulated the President, then went through the small fuss of not being able to shake hands with his wounded right arm and offering his left instead.

President Davis finally managed a limp, awkward handshake, then muttered that he was honored by Faulconer’s presence on this solemn occasion which was ushering in these days of heavy duty.

“Heavy duties call for great men, Mr. President,” Washington Faulconer responded, “which means we are fortunate indeed in you.”

Davis’s thin mouth twitched to acknowledge the compliment. He had a piercing headache that made him seem even more remote and cold than usual. “I do regret,” he said stiffly, “that you did not feel able to accept the duty of commissioner.”

“Though I certainly saved myself some inconvenience thereby, Mr. President,” Faulconer responded lightly, before realizing that in war all men were supposed to welcome inconvenience, even if that inconvenience did mean being kidnapped by the U.S. Navy from the comfortable staterooms of a British mail ship. The two commissioners had now been released, thus saving the North from battling the British as well as the Confederacy, but their arrival in Europe had not fetched good news. France would not support the South unless the British made the first move, and the British would not intervene unless the South gave clear signs of being able to win the war without outside help, which all added up to meaningless nonsense. The President, reflecting on the diplomatic failure, had concluded that the wrong men had been chosen as commissioners. Slidell and Mason were raw-mannered and blunt men, accustomed to the homespun texture of American politics, but hardly slippery enough for the sly chanceries of a suspicious Europe. A more elegant commissioner, the President now believed, might have achieved a greater success.

And Washington Faulconer was certainly an impressive man. He had flaxen hair and a frank, honest face that almost glowed with handsomeness. He had broad shoulders, a trim waist, and one of the greatest fortunes in all Virginia; a fortune so large that he had raised a regiment with his own money and then equipped it to a standard equal to the best in either army, and rumor claimed that he could have repeated that generosity a dozen times over and still not have felt the pinch. He was, by any man’s standard, a fortunate and striking man, and President Davis once again felt irritation that Faulconer had turned down diplomatic office to pursue his dream of leading a brigade into battle. “I’m sorry to see you’re not recovered, Faulconer.” The President gestured at the black sling.

“Some small loss of dexterity, Mr. President, but not sufficient to prevent me from wielding a sword in my country’s defense,” Faulconer said modestly, though in truth his arm was entirely mended and he wore the sling only to give an impression of heroism. The black sling was especially inspiring to women, an effect that was made more convenient by the absence from Richmond of Faulconer’s wife, who lived an invalid’s nervous existence on the family’s country estate. “And I trust the sword will be so employed soon,” Faulconer added in a heavy hint that he wanted the President’s support for his appointment as a brigadier.

“I suspect we shall all soon be fully employed in our various duties,” the cadaverous President answered vaguely. He wished his wife would come and help him deal with these eager people who wanted more enthusiasm than he felt able to give. Varina was so good with small talk, while on these social occasions the President felt the words shrivel on his tongue. Was Lincoln similarly afflicted by office seekers? Davis wondered. Or did his fellow President have a greater ease of manner with importunate strangers? A familiar face suddenly appeared beside Faulconer, a man who smiled and nodded at the President, demanding recognition. Davis scrabbled for the man’s name which, thankfully, came in the very nick of time. “Mr. Delaney,” the President greeted the newcomer unenthusiastically. Belvedere Delaney was a lawyer and gossip whom Davis did not remember inviting to this reception, but who had typically come anyway.

“Mr. President.” Delaney inclined his head in recognition of Jefferson’s high office. The Richmond lawyer was a small, plump, smiling man whose bland exterior concealed a mind as sharp as a serpent’s tooth. “Allow me to extend my sincere felicitations on your inauguration.”

“A solemn occasion, Delaney, leading to heavy duties.”

“As the weather seems to intimate, Mr. President,” Delaney said, appearing to take an unholy glee in the day’s damp character. “And now, sir, if I might, I have come to request Colonel Faulconer’s attention. You cannot monopolize the company of our Confederate heroes all day, sir.”

Davis nodded his grateful assent for Delaney to take Faulconer away, though the release only permitted a plump congressman to heartily congratulate his fellow Mississippian on being inaugurated as the Confederacy’s first President.

“It is a heavy duty and solemn responsibility,” the President murmured.