How Few Remain (15 page)

“Yes, Your Excellency. I understand.” Jackson glanced toward the map on the wall to his right. “As soon as the wires inform our forces that the United States have been so misguided as to declare war on us, we shall strike them a blow that—”

“Wait,” President Longstreet said, and Jackson obediently halted. Longstreet looked over at the map, too. “General, I must make one thing clear beyond any possibility of misunderstanding: regardless of the existence of a declaration of war on the part of the United States, they, not we, must strike the first blow in the ensuing conflict. Must, I say, sir.
Must.”

Jackson’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Mr. President, do I have to remind you how rash it is to yield the enemy the initiative, even for a moment? Had General Lee been content to stand on the defensive, I fear we should have been defeated in the War of Secession.” To cap his point, he essayed a small joke: “Were this one of the United States, sir, you might even find yourself a Republican these days.”

“From which fate, God deliver me,” Longstreet said. “General Jackson, I do not deny for a moment the general applicability of the rule you state. But other factors militate against it in this particular instance. Do you remember how artfully Abe Lincoln maneuvered us into firing the first shots at Fort Sumter, thereby putting us in the wrong in the eyes of the world?”

“It came right in the end,” Jackson said.

“So it did, but it made our task more difficult.” Longstreet plucked at his beard. “I want us to appear unmistakably as the wronged party in the eyes of the world over this affair, General. Is that sufficiently clear, or must I explain myself further?”

Instead of asking for further explanation, Jackson went into one of his intense studies. He was unsure how long he remained in it: not too long, for President Longstreet didn’t seem annoyed. “I believe I understand, sir. You particularly desire us to appear the wronged party in the eyes of Britain and France.”

“Just so.” Longstreet nodded. “We must show them we have done everything in our power to remain at peace with the United States, and that the United States thrust war on us nonetheless.”

Jackson made a sour face. “This despite Britain’s having sent soldiers to Canada to reinforce the Dominion’s own army? This despite France’s having pledged support for Maximilian, who is her creature? This despite both nations’ having moved naval forces in both the Atlantic and Pacific to stations from which they might more readily confront the United States? This despite its being in the obvious interest of both Britain and France to take the USA down a peg? This despite most of the money Maximilian receives from the sale of Chihuahua and Sonora’s going straight to the bankers in London and Paris? All these things are true, and yet we are still required not merely to show ourselves wronged, but to show ourselves blatantly wronged? Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I have trouble seeing any justice there.”

“Objectively speaking, General, so do I,” Longstreet said. “The problem we face—and an all but insuperable problem it has shown itself to be—is that Britain and France do not and cannot view support for us as objectively as we should like. If they
can
find a reason not to move in conceit with us, they
will
find it and take advantage of it.”

“They are our allies,” Jackson said. “They have been our allies. They gain by remaining our allies. Why would they be so foolish?”

Longstreet looked at him without replying. It was almost a pitying look, the sort of look a mathematics instructor gave a scholar who could not for the life of him prove the Pythagorean theorem. It was a look that said,
This is why I am the president of the Confederate States and you remain nothing more than a soldier
. Jackson had never wanted to be anything more than a soldier. As a soldier, he could remain an honest man, and a godly one. He was unsure how much either word applied to James Longstreet these days. Longstreet, odds were, would die wealthy. What would become of him after that was another question.

And getting that sort of look from anyone, godly or not,
rankled. The look said all the pieces lay in front of him, if only he would see them. After a moment, he did. “They deprecate property in Negro slaves to that great a degree, sir?”

“They do,” Longstreet said. “They have my pledge to move an amendment to the Constitution requiring manumission and to support the amendment and as far as possible to anticipate it through legislative and executive action—and still they hesitate, not believing I can accomplish what I have promised.”

Jackson, who did not think it should be accomplished, said, “I do not see you manumitting your own slaves, Mr. President.”

Now Longstreet’s look was a frank and unmistakable glare. Jackson bore up under it, as he had borne up under worse, and from men he reckoned better. He realized, belatedly, that he had been less than diplomatic. That did not bother him, either: he
was
less than diplomatic. But then Longstreet said, “General, on the successful conclusion of this war, I intend to set at liberty all of the Negroes now my property. I shall at that time urge other members of the executive branch of the government as a whole to do likewise, and hope my example will be emulated by private citizens as well.”

“You are in earnest in this matter, sir,” Jackson said in no small surprise.

“I am,” Longstreet said. “I can look ahead and see the twentieth century, with machines performing much of the labor now done by swarms of niggers. What will those swarms do then? Work in factories at no wages, and depress the wages of white men? Become a drain on their present owners’ purses? If we do not keep abreast of the times, they will smash us into the dust. And yet I see you have trouble believing me, and so do the illustrious ministers and governments of our allies. Thus our need to be irrefutably in the right in our dispute with the USA.”

“Very well, sir,” Jackson said. “You have made both the issues involved here and your own resolve pertaining to them clearer in my mind than had previously been the case. It shall, of course, be as you say. Until the Yankees are the first to cry haro, we shall not let slip the dogs of war.”

“By Godfrey, General, I didn’t know they had you teaching English literature there at the Virginia Military Institute,” Longstreet exclaimed. Both men laughed, more at ease with each other than they usually were. Jackson rose to go. Longstreet rose with him, came round the desk, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait,”
the president told him. “Wait until the Yankees hit us first—and then hit ’em hard.”

Jackson’s pale eyes glowed. “Yes, sir!”

    On the parade ground at Fort Dodge, Kansas, Colonel George Custer walked curiously around the two newfangled weapons that had just arrived. “I’ve heard of these Gatling guns before,” he remarked to his brother, “but I’ve never set eyes on one till now. The way I hear it, Gatling invented them about the time the … dashed Rebs were getting up into Pennsylvania, and he’s been trying to sell them to the Army ever since. I wonder if I ought to be glad he finally turned the trick.”

Major Tom Custer was giving the guns a dubious once-over, too. “Looks like a Springfield was unfaithful with a cannon, and then went and had sextuplets.”

“I thought I was the writer in the family,” Custer said with jealousy mostly mock. The description fit. Six rifle-caliber barrels were mounted in a long brass body on a carriage that could have carried a field piece. A separate ammunition limber like that which went with a field piece accompanied the Gatling, too. A crew of five served the weapons. Custer rounded on the artillery sergeant in charge of one gun.
“How
many rounds a minute do you say this thing can spit, Buckley?”

“Sir, when everything is going the way it ought to, about two hundred,” the sergeant answered.

“When everything is going the way it ought to,” Custer echoed. “And how often is that?” He didn’t really want an answer. Scowling, he went on, “Too many gadgets in the world already, if anyone wants to know. We should still be fighting with sabers—then we could tell who the real men are.”

His brother pointed to the blockhouses at each corner of the fort. “If we mount these opposite each other, Autie, we could rake the plain around the fort if the Kiowas come calling—or if the Confederates do.”

“Maybe,” Custer said. Fort Dodge was on highest alert, awaiting a report that President Blaine’s declaration of War on the CSA had passed both houses of Congress. Custer scowled. “Wouldn’t put it past either the redskins or the Rebs to sneak up here and do us dirt while we’re still supposed to be at peace.”

Sergeant Buckley said, “Sir, give me good horses for my teams
and I’ll keep up with any cavalry you like. That’s what these guns are for.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Custer said, careless of wounding the Gatling gunner’s pride. “For now, we’ll leave these white elephants right where they are. Maybe we’ll come up with a notion for getting some good out of them.” By the way he spoke, he didn’t believe it for a minute.

Sentries paced the walkways on the walls of Fort Dqdge, dull routine most days but vitally urgent now. They stared out over the prairie in all four directions. If those on the south-facing wall were particularly alert, Custer did not see how he could blame them. He worried, though he did his best not to show it. Against the Kiowas, the fort would stand forever. What a battery of Confederate horse artillery might do to the walls, though, was something else again.

He stalked back toward his quarters. He had a suite of rooms in Fort Dodge, where his troopers made do with a footlocker and a straw tick on an iron bed with wooden slats in the barracks. From the walls of his parlors, the heads of a buffalo, two antelopes, and a coyote stared at him with glass eyes. He’d shot all the animals and mounted all the heads, too; practice had made him a fine taxidermist.

A raccoon stared at him from the back of the sofa. It was holding an egg in its handlike paws. The cook, a redheaded Irish girl named Sal, came running in from the kitchen and glared first at the animal and then at Custer. “That is the thievingest creature I’ve ever seen, and why you keep it I cannot be guessing,” she snapped.

“Stonewall? He’s a fine fellow.” Custer’s voice held more indulgence then he commonly showed his men. He’d raised the raccoon from an orphaned pup, and it had been with him longer than Sal. He couldn’t keep cooks. They kept marrying soldiers or local civilians—and, if they were pretty, as Sal was, Libbie made a point of introducing them to every male around. Custer was friendly toward women other than his wife. Libbie sometimes thought he was too friendly.

Drawn by Sal’s complaint about the coon, she came out of the bedroom: a short, plump, dark-eyed woman close to Custer’s age. No matter how friendly he was to other women—and he was as friendly as he could get away with—he loved her unreservedly.

Now she advanced on the raccoon. “Give me the egg, Stonewall,” she said, in tones that might have sent a regiment into battle. She was as firm of will as her husband; he sometimes wondered uneasily if she wasn’t the smarter of the two of them.

Stonewall, however, instead of surrendering the egg, devoured it. Sal cursed the animal with fury and fluency. Custer laughed at the raccoon and at the cook both. Libbie scowled impartially at beast, servant, and husband. She did not care to have her will thwarted, even by a raccoon.

“Get back to work, Sal,” she snapped. Still muttering, the Irish girl returned to the kitchen. Custer watched her hips work as she walked. Libbie watched him watching. “Have to find her a man,” she muttered.

“What’s that, dear?” Custer asked, recalled to himself.

“Nothing at all, Autie,” his wife answered sweetly. “What do you think of those new guns that came in earlier this morning?”

“Not much,” he said, and was about to go into detail—Libbie loved details of any sort—when an orderly burst into his quarters and thrust a telegram at him. He unfolded it and read it out loud: “‘As of this date, state of war exists between United States, Confederate States. Prosecute with all vigor. Victory shall be ours. Rosecrans.’ “He let out a war whoop a Kiowa would have been proud to claim, then ran out into the parade ground, shouting for the trumpeters to blow Assembly. The men rushed to form up from their drills and fatigues, excitement on their faces—most of them guessed what the unusual summons meant.

When Custer read the telegram to the assembled force, the men cheered. Loudest were the shouts from the officers and the veteran sergeants and corporals: men who remembered the War of Secession and wanted revenge for it. “We’ll kick the Rebs from here to the Rio Grande!” Tom Custer yelled. Then he remembered the annexation of Sonora and Chihuahua that had brought on the war. “And after that, we’ll kick ’em another fifty miles!”

“That’s right!” Custer said. “Nobody casts scorn on the United States of America! Nobody, do you hear me? I’ve waited almost twenty years for this moment to come, and at last it’s here.” His voice quivered with emotion. More cheers rose. “For now, dismissed. Soon, we start getting our own back.”

Buzzing with talk, the men returned to their duties. Tom walked up to his brother. “Autie,” he said, “I’ve got an idea how
to get some real use out of those Gatling guns. If it’s war, all the better.”

Custer sent the weapons a mistrustful look. “I don’t think they’re good for much, myself. If you want to try to convince me I’m wrong, go ahead.”

Tom talked for ten minutes straight, illustrating his scheme with gestures and with sketches in the dust of the parade ground. Finishing, he said, “And, of course, I’ll command the party. It’s my notion; my neck is the one that should be on the line.”

He spoke altogether matter-of-factly. George Custer, as brave a man as any, recognized a braver in his brother. He said, “No, I’ll lead it. I won’t send someone out with an untried weapon while I stay home safe. Lieutenant Colonel Crowninshield will do a perfectly fine job commanding the regiment while I’m gone. We’ll leave at sunrise tomorrow.”

Tom Custer’s grin was enormous. “Yes, sir, Autie, sir!”

“Pick a dozen men to go with us,” Custer said. “Oh, and make certain those guns have good horses pulling them, and the limbers, too. We’ll see how they do as they head down toward the border. If they can’t keep up, they’re useless.”