Legacy (9 page)

Jared Starr had given his son Simon in his death- bed letter in 1787: 'Fashion a strong new govern- ment, but protect Virginia's interests.' Ah, but what were 'Virginia's interests'? He had begun to think the the time might be at hand when Virginia should join with Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania as the four powerful states of the Union and forget sentimental and romantic attachments to the South: Sensible Vir- ginians like my brother see that their interests are best protected by giving their slaves freedom, right now. They want no part of the Dred Scott Decision. But Virginia is tied to the other Southern states by bonds of iron, and so I suppose we must help them fight their battles defending slavery. Since Greer and the other Northerners will never allow slavery to move west, war becomes inescapable. And then what do I do? In March 1861 he went on leave to his home in Virginia, where he spent happy days with his wife and children, son Malcolm and daughter Emily. He found his neighbours uneasy about the civil war that loomed, but none who even considered fighting on the Northern side. His brother, now the master of a prosperous plantation on which freed slaves worked effectively, summarized local thought: 'It will be war to defend a way of life. Virginian planters against Northern factory own- ers.'His brother always spoke as if Virginia alone would bear the military burden, but even though he disliked the arrogant way in which Carolina and Georgia men handled the slavery issue, he felt that Virginia must help them fight their battle, and Hugh agreed. Both the spring idyll in Virginia and the intel- lectual uncertainty, about the forthcoming war

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vanished when shocking word reached the Starr plantation: 'President Lincoln offered Colonel Lee command of all Federal forces, and Lee refused. Said he respected the Union, but his heart was with Virginia.' 'What's it all meanT Hugh asked, and his infor- mant said: 'Lee's to be general of the Southern armies.' 'Then it's warT 'Don't see how it can be avoided.' That aftE;r- noon Hugh rode to Richmond, where he was com- missioned Lieutenant Colonel Starr, Army of the Confederacy, and when the war came, he welcomed it. During the next four years he served as Lee's right-hand, sharing, both the exciting early vic- tories and the trailing defeats. His loyalty to Robert E. Lee duplicated Simon Starr's loyalty to Alexander Hamilton, and Lee in turn gave repeated evidence of his high regard for Starr's reliability, promoting him to full colonel, then to brigadier general. Between battles, there were painful moments when it was clear that even Lee was beginning to wonder if the South could ever win against the vast Northern superiority in men and equipment, but more distressing were those night doubts which Hugh could share with no one: I wonder if the South deserves to win? I wonder if we aren't backing the wrong forces in history? He could not believe that he and his brother

were wrong in freeing their slaves, and when his personal servant Hannibal asked permission to accompany him on one campaign, he saw confir- mation of what he had often suspected in the past: 'He's capable of anything, that Hannibal.' But he

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did not go so far as to accept the abolitionist pro- paganda. 'Most of the Negroes aren't worth much,' he said, 'but the good ones can be excep- tional.' Yet when he inspected the free village that his brother had established for the former Starr slaves, he found it at least as well tended as vil- lages occupied by lower-class whites. As the War Between the States ground pain- fully toward certain defeat for the South, General Starr felt contradictory and agonizing emotions: My heart bleeds for General Lee. Like him, I weep for Virginia. But I'm also glad the Union is to be preserved. Northern men like General Greer are too good to lose. And then a most powerful thought possessed him, clear as the sound of a bugle on the morning of battle: Twenty years from now you won't be able to tell South from North. In things that matter, that is.

Hugh Starr stood resolutely beside General Lee during the fatal last weeks of the Confederacy, participated in the surrender at Appomattox, and then turned his attention to mending the stricken fortunes of Virginia, and this brought our family right back into the heart of the Constitution, which had treated Hugh so poorly in its gross failure to solve the slavery problem at the time of Dred Scott. In rapid-fire order the victorious Northern Con- gress passed three amendments, which should have gone into effect as early as 1820. The Thir- teenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth awarded blacks the civil rights that Dred Scott denied them, while the Fifteenth said simply that no citizen should be denied the right to vote because of ,race, colour or previous condition of servitude.'

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General Starr achieved notoriety, not always of a favourable kind, by standing forth as a Virginia defender of these amendments: 'Long overdue. About eighty years.' He visited various cities throughout the South, assuring men and women who were sometimes close to despair that the car- petbaggers from the North would soon be gone, that the disqualifications which dogged former Confederate leaders like himself would soon be lifted, and that devising new patterns for living with black folk would be the constructive task for the next two decades. 'That Virginia will rise again to the preeminent position she enjoyed in 1830, 1 have no doubt. We have the laws now and the men and women of ability. Let's get on with it.' In the evenings he met with veterans who wanted to know what it had been like serving with Robert E. Lee, and after describing this battle or that, he ended: 'We all have a chance to serve with him again. He's work- ing to rebuild the South and we must assist him.'

RQ

Emily Starr 1858-1932

Early Sunday morning our phone jangled. It was Zack: 'Can I come overT and when he arrived from church he accepted a glass of cider and began questioning me: 'You got everything lined up? Your head screwed on tightT When I assured him I'd been reviewing family records, he said: 'Good. I'm sure I can save your neck. I don't think they can lay a hand on you. Not in that uniform, with those family heroes and your own three or four tiers of medals.' He concluded with a bit of advice: 'Take it easy today. Listen to Mozart. Stay relaxed. Because tomorrow you'll need all your smarts.'And he was about to leave me to my somnolence when Nancy broke in with a question which had begun to gnaw at her as she reviewed my family history. 'Tell me, Zack. You're a lawyer who under- stands these things. Why, in the entire Constitu- tion that governs our nation and in all the reports of the debates, are women never once mentioned? Slaves are and mules and soldiers and judges, but never a woman. Were we considered of no signifi- cance in a new land which needed all the babies it could getT He sat down again, for her question interested him. 'Well,' he said, 'the men who wrote the

Constitution were influenced by European law. They had to be. What other law did they knowT 'But why the indifference to womenT 'Because of French law, mostly. An ancient con- cept called feme covert - an old idea, old spell- ing - denoted a covered woman, a married woman whose only legal rights were those under the pro- tection of her husband. Out of the goodness of his heart, her all-wise, all-just husband with his superior wisdom could be relied upon to look after her property, her money and her civil rights.' 'How generous,'Nancy said. 'The principle of feme covert surfaced at its ugli- est when a loving husband claimed, and got, the right to manage the huge dowry a merchant's daughter often brought to their marriage. I believe a lot of wealthy wives died mysteriously in those circumstances.' 'Do you believe in the principle of feme covertV 'No, but the fathers of the Constitution did, more or less.' He snapped his fingers as a completely new idea struck his agile mind: 'Never thought of it before. I read the other day that an outrageous number of the founders had two wives, and quite a few had three. In those days of miserable medicine, child-bearing women were expendable. A man expected to have two or three wives. They were dif- ferent from men, obviously more fragile. Men had to look after them, make decisions for them.' In her traditional way, Nancy now asked some abrupt questions: 'You'd sort of like it if the old days came back, wouldn't youT 'When I lose a case to a brilliant woman lawyer, I sure do.' 'Why did you divorce PamelaT

'She wanted to find herself. Runs a bookstore in Bethesda.' 'In other words, she didn't buy the legal theories of our Founding fathersT 'Don't make it too complex. She fell in love with the owner of the store, who borrowed a slug of money from her. She'll lose every nickel, as any man who inspected the guy's profit-and-loss state- ment could have predicted.' Somewhat edgy, he turned to me: 'I'll pick you up at eight tomorrow.' Wanting to thank him for his generous help, and also to apologize for Nancy's bluntness, I accompanied him to his car, and in our driveway he gave me the encouragement he knew I needed: 'Things look real solid, Norm. Stay limber.' When I returned to the house, I realized that staying loose wasn't going to be as easy as Zack had made it sound, because Nancy immediately confronted me: 'That talk about the attitude of the Founding Fathers toward women makes me more interested than ever in the grand old lady of your clan.' And we spent the next few hours discussing General Hugh Starr's gangling daughter.

The General had two children, a son, Malcolm, born two years before the Dred Scott Decision, and a daughter, Emily, born a year after. Malcolm, who became my great-grandfather, was an extremely stuffy type who went to Princeton and spent his vacation visiting one grand house after another in Philadelphia, Long Island and points north, looking for an heiress. He found none. And then, miraculously, an heiress wealthier than any he had dared hope for came seeking him. General Benjamin Greer of the Vermont Rifles,

who had performed so gallantly in support of Gen- eral Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, had come to Washington on one of his periodic visits, and, as always, he wanted to spend one evening with his old friend from West Point and Bleeding Kansas days. He and General Starr, fortunately, had never faced each other in battle, but their careers were so similar, Greer as an aide to Grant, Starr with Lee, that they had much to talk about. This meeting was unusual in that Greer brought with him his attractive niece Anne, daughter of his older brother, a man who had moved to New Hampshire after the war to start a textile mill which had prospered wondrously. 'The other Greers,' Beni amin called them in public; in private he ppofited from their good fortune and, in grati tude, had helped his nephews and nieces see aspects of American life they might otherwise have missed. 'You'll like the Starrs,' he had coached Anne before their arrival in Washington. 'Solid people. One son, one daughter and a father that General Lee called "my faithful right arm." ' It was a tempestuous courtship - it seemed to the two generals that both the young people fell in love at the same instant - and it rocketed to a Washington marriage graced by generals, sena- tors and a cadre of New England textile millionaires. Anne was' regal as she posed that week in a white outfit while a young Sargent painted her You can see her in the museum in Philadelphia, a woman of unforgettable beauty, but also of great

austerity. Women of wealth are apt to be like that. She was so magnificent - that's really the only word - that she quite overshadowed poor Emily,

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and the discrepancy was so visible that the Gen- eral knew he wouldn't have an easy time finding a husband for his daughter. She was taller than he thought a woman should be, gaunter than required, and quite graceless in a gawky way. I never saw her, but the history books are filled with photographs of her, tall and militant, swing- ing her pocketbook at policemen or being carted away to one or another of the four jails that housed her. That came later, of course, because in the 1870s, all three members of her family - the Gen- eral, Malcolm, Anne - were busy devising tricks to trap a young man. Apart from his house in Washington, the General had almost no funds, but Anne did, and the family exhibited an aura of wealth which attracted several young men who would otherwise never have looked at Emily, let alone court her. Warfare had made the General a good judge of men, while Anne had had her own experiences with fortune hunters, so between them they sent scattering several young fellows who would have brought her only grief. They were not so lucky with a chap named Nicky Poland, who had acquired at Amherst a social polish to which Anne said 'he was not really entitled.' He had little money of his own, a vague kind of job in New York, and two good suits which he interchanged for maximum effect. He was such a charmer that in 1881, when Emily was twenty- three, he came frighteningly close -,to persuading her to elope with him to a town in Maryland that arranged swift marriages with no questions. Emily, eager to take herself off the ageing hands of her father, and persuaded that young Nicky had sufficient funds to support her, was about to

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flee Washington for a life of happiness. However, she confided her plans to her sister-in-law, who required only a few minutes to summon a family conclave, to which Nicky was invited. There in a sunny room, tea and biscuits were served, with little silver spoons for the marmalade, a delicacy young Poland had not tasted before. General Starr, tall and straight and almost funereal in his bleak presentation of facts, informed Nicky that the two Starr men had practically no money, that Emily had less, and that they were all living off the generosity of Anne Greer Starr. Before Poland could react to this appalling news, Anne made a little speech, which has come down in our family from father to daughter: 'Mr Poland, what the General has just said is true. The obvious wealth in this family comes all from my father and me. Emily here has not a penny, nor will she ever get a penny if she elopes with you. Now, hadn't you better leave this house and Washington, taking this envelope with youT Anne never told anyone what was in that envel- ope, but if it was money, it was sufficient to get Nicky Poland out of the room and out of Wash- ington, too. Now, to save Emily's self-respect, the family felt it obligatory to find her a replacement, and since the two Starr men showed no skill at that task the burden fell on Anne, who brought to the Starr home one eligible young man after another, none of whom returned voluntarily, for at twenty-four,