The Dominion's Dilemma: The United States of British America (90 page)

     “And General, I must report that discipline is not what it should be, I had problems…”

     Taylor nodded. “With ‘free-lancing.’ Yes, so I have heard. Something about communication, too, I understand…”

      He turned to Johnston and the others. “Well gentlemen, it appears to be a consensus. We will limit our pursuit to cavalry; Colonel Mason and his men are already over the Run with orders to make the Yankees’ retreat as uncomfortable as possible. Meanwhile, we will consolidate our position here, see to the wounded and refit as necessary.”

    He turned to Jefferson Davis. “Major, you will prepare a preliminary report for President Calhoun. Once I’ve approved it, you will hand-deliver it yourself.”
And knowing
Calhoun, he’ll make a production out of promoting you on
the spot…

     General Taylor looked back at his commanders. “I expect we’ll see General Gaines and the Secretary of War in the morning.  I half expected them by now…”

       A.S. Johnston smiled. “Richmond must be full of rumors. I wonder how many of the good citizens have spotted Yankees coming up Shockoe Hill by now?”

       Twiggs joined in the laughter: “They’ll see plenty of Yankees in the next few days. We’ve bagged a lot of prisoners. I hope General Gaines is ready to put them up, show them some real Southern hospitality…” He slapped his hat against his leg and shook his head in embarrassment. “…Damnation, General Taylor! In the heat of the battle, it completely slipped my mind! Second Mississippi reports it took a significant prisoner. I ordered him delivered to your headquarters on Henry Hill, but you must have left before he arrived.” He paused to draw out the surprise: “Apparently my Mississippians captured the Yankee Corps Commander himself, Brig. Gen. John Wool…”

        Twiggs grinned as A.S. Johnston himself led a chorus of Rebel Yells.  

        Taylor, however, did not join in the merriment. “Indeed, General Twiggs. Let’s hope the War Department has provided for these prisoners we’ve collected, including General Wool, if indeed we have him...

      “And let’s hope the Department has contingency plans for maintaining this army in the field. Because it is now certain we will be out here for some time. Perhaps until next spring…”

___________

Hill Northwest of

Warrenton Pike near Centerville

November 4, 1833, 1:30 a.m.:

   The deluge had slowed and steadied, a cold soaking rain that unequivocally proclaimed the changing of the seasons. Maj. Luke Beaufort, in a blue tarpaulin issued him years before by the USBAA, sat his horse on a wooded hill and watched the spectacle of the Dominion Army in retreat. He was still pondering the gruesome scene he had come across over two hours ago.

     His orders from Colonel Mason, the Cavalry Corps commander, had been clear enough: harass the line of retreat; cut off small bodies of stragglers and capture any wagon trains or even single wagons. The CS Army, especially after this all-day battle, was dangerously short of military supplies, from arms and ammunition to medical to cooking utensils. His command had standing orders to ‘appropriate’ anything they could drag back…

        That portion of Mason’s orders was at root-cause of the calamity.

       B Troop of his 1
^st
Virginia had come across a small wagon train parked off the road leading west from the Pike.  That had been around 8 p.m.  There were no guards, so Lieutenant Wright ordered his men to take possession.  As a detachment of dismounted troopers came up close, they were fired on from at least two of the four wagons. Infuriated on seeing their friends fall from ambush, the rest of the Troop charged. Within minutes all four wagons were overturned and ablaze, their occupants shot, slashed or run down.

     “There was no stoppin’ the boys, Sir,” the Lieutenant had explained when Beaufort arrived on the scene. “Looked for all the world like an unarmed train, carryin’ wounded and such, but then they opened up on us. Soon as the detachment went down, we charged…”

      What made the damn fools think they could drive off a full troop of cavalry? Maybe
in the rain and twilight, they mistook it for a small patrol. Or maybe they panicked…

    
At any rate, the train
had
been carrying wounded. Some of those lying now in the mud were obviously casualties of the day’s fighting, the lost limbs testament to heavier fire than B Troop could muster.
The poor bastards who are still alive now probably won’t be,  come morning…

     Lieutenant Wright left the Major’s side and walked among the dead and wounded Dominions, pointing out the unarmed and the patients the wagons had been transporting. He kicked at bodies clothed in bloodied white coats, doctors and nurses, of course. There were teamsters dead in the harnesses of their teams. Suddenly, the Lieutenant paused and knelt to pull some sort of chain from around the neck of a corpse whose blue uniform was devoid of insignia. The Lieutenant examined his find as he brought it to Luke.

     “Look at this Major,” he said quietly. “Know what that is?”

      Luke turned it over in his hand, then fingered the carving hanging from the chain. He glanced down at Wright. After Harper’s Ferry, he had attended a celebratory service at Monumental Church with the Lieutenant and knew him to be a fellow Episcopalian. He looked over at the body and then back down at Wright.

      “A rosary. Last thing I expected to find on this field. A dead Roman priest…”

___________

    Colonel Mason’s arrival caught Beaufort still in his reverie.

    “Well Major. Looks like we’ve done all we can. That’s regular infantry coming up the Pike now, the last of all of them. The whole Yankee army---or what’s left of it---is back on those heights.”

      “Will we be assaulting them, Colonel? Looks like that could be a pretty formidable position…”

       The Colonel, whose grandfather, George, had signed the Compact, shook his head. “Not any time soon, Major. We’re pretty beat up, too.” He turned his head and snorted.

       “Don’t expect to hear much of that ‘
one Southerner is worth 10 Yankees’
nonsense after this. We cut up their one corps pretty much, but the other one fought us to a standstill and then made a fighting retreat. And even on Matthews Hill there was some intense fighting.”

       “Then you don’t believe the war is over, that we’ve gained our independence after all this carnage?”

      “No, Major. This wasn’t like Waterloo, or Bosworth Field, or any of those other one-day battles that decided a war.” He paused and shook his head sadly. 

    “We won, but was it decisive? I doubt it… 

    “Maybe the politicians will think so. Maybe the Yankees will be so horrified at their losses that they’ll let us go in peace. Or maybe the Crown will make them, on account of this Syrian business President Calhoun gets so excited about…

      “Or, maybe, they’ll lick their wounds and wait till spring, after they’ve raised a new army and Scott is recovered. And when, maybe, the British Navy will be available to lend a hand…”

     Colonel Mason leaned down to pat his horse’s mane. “It is quite possible, Major, that between the storm and the stand the Yankees made below Stone Bridge, we have lost our best chance for independence. Or, at least, without a lot more…
carnage
.”

CALHOUN’S CONFEDERACY

CHAPTER ONE

The Residency

Georgetown, D.C.

November 4, 1833,

3:00 a.m.:

      Aaron Burr had intended to commandeer a squad of United States of British America Marines and ride out the Warrenton Pike yesterday afternoon. The Residency had received General Thayer’s message in midmorning that the Army’s movement across Bull Run had commenced, but nothing further. The squad was indeed sent but under the command of Captain Goodwin, the Governor-General expressly forbidding Colonel Burr to leave Georgetown.  Grumbling, the ancient adventurer stomped off to the Samples’ K Street townhouse. His intention: to resume his own campaign to advance his thus-far platonic relationship with its mistress to a more physical level.

     He was now awakened, in his own bed at The Residency, by a servant. Captain Goodwin was back. The Colonel hurriedly dressed and made his way quietly downstairs to the G-G’s office, where Martin Van Buren stood, short arms and tiny hands locked behind his back, staring out the window towards Arlington. Goodwin sat slumped, mud-covered and exhausted, in a chair.

     One look at the tough Marine’s tired face and angry eyes and Burr knew the battle had been lost. Goodwin nodded in recognition and acknowledgment but remained silent. Secretary of War Lewis Cass, whose wrinkled shirt and pants indicated he had been sleeping on the office couch, sat dejectedly, drinking a golden liquid from a crystal decanter embellished with the G-G’s seal.

      “We’ll wait for Frank. I’ve sent word across the street. No need for the Captain to continually reiterate his report.” The G-G remained staring out the window, the bitter words flowing softly over his left shoulder.

      “The Duke…?”

      “Whether His Grace hears the news now or in the morning will not significantly alter the situation.”

      Five minutes later, after the still-yawning Blair appeared, the Captain expanded his original brief report to the G-G. Soon, the others, too, were all sipping whiskey from the G-G’s decanters…

___________

Richmond, Virginia

November 4, 1833, 12:00 p.m.:

     The city’s church bells began to ring at precisely high noon, one after another, starting with the big cast iron bell atop Monumental Church on Shockoe Hill.

      Rumors of all kinds had swept Richmond since messengers from Taylor’s army brought word yesterday morning that fighting had begun along Bull Run:

     “The Yankees are crossing the North Anna and will overrun the town by this afternoon!”

      “No, our boys have the Yankees trapped at Manassas!”

     “That’s nonsense. Zach Taylor has Van Buren under guard at The Residency and is negotiating with Wellington…I have it straight from the War Department!”

       “I tell you, Sir: Taylor’s been killed. General Twiggs has retreated to Culpepper Court House!”

      “You’re all wrong. We’ve won a great victory but the Royal Navy has landed a British army at Yorktown! Taylor’s turned our army around and is marching to meet them!”

      Arguing, worrying, praying, the citizens of the capital now descended on the Confederate White House, where President John C. Calhoun had reportedly been observed receiving his grim-faced Secretary of War, Charles Gratiot, and General Gaines in the pre-dawn.

      By 12:15, the streets surrounding the White House were filled. Men and women stood anxiously as far away as the Capitol Building itself, almost three blocks to the south. A cheer suddenly exploded from the front of the crowds as a broadly smiling President emerged out the front door and onto the landing atop the steps with a gaunt young officer whose tailored grey uniform was spattered with dried mud. Secretary Gratiot and the General followed, both also smiling, though not as broadly.

     “My fellow Southerners! This outstanding young officer has heroically ridden directly from Manassas with a message from General Taylor.” Calhoun paused theatrically as the crowd roared and Maj. Jefferson Davis looked sheepishly at his formerly black, now brown-spotted boots. The President put up his hands as if to call for silence, obviously relishing the moment.

     “We have met the invader along the banks of Bull Run, northwest of Manassas around the Warrenton Pike…” He paused again as word rippled back through the crowd.

      “The invader has been thrown back and was last evening in full retreat toward Georgeto…”

     The crowds erupted with joy, planter’s hats flying into the air, strangers hugging, Southern gentlemen sweeping staid---and flirtatious---women off their feet to hold them aloft by their waists. In the pandemonium, no one noticed the scattering of sad-eyed blank black faces in their midst.       

     Nor did anyone pay particular attention to the smiling, well-dressed, wiry gentleman with the planter’s hat perched over his jet-black hair standing alone near the mansion’s steps. If someone had, perhaps it would have been noted that his smile did not extend to his eyes. Even the curious half-blue, half-brown one… 

     Calhoun continued: “General Taylor reports that our army is in full control of the Bull Run fords and bridges and is across in strength. The pursuit of the retreating enemy is imminent.”

     As the wildly-cheering Richmonders surged forward to the bottom of the steps above which the Presidential party stood, Calhoun’s arm now around Davis’ shoulders, the quick, significant look that flashed from the War Secretary to General Gaines went unnoticed…

___________

    The rebellion that broke out in the southern portion of the British Empire’s North American possessions in the second half of 1833 stunned much of the western world,
though it was not a complete surprise to those who had kept tabs on the burgeoning
,
boisterous adolescent patchwork political entity established as a result of the Colonial Compact of 1776.

      The Compact, a desperate, last-second attempt to foil off an armed secession of the original 13 American colonies from the Empire, had succeeded because the ‘Continental Congress’ accepted the compromise plan coauthored by Edmund Burke and Benjamin Franklin. This Compact converted the unamalgamated colonies into a united “dominion”---a new concept for the British Empire---labeled the ‘United States of British America.’

         The compromise essentially granted the new ‘dominion’ home rule in domestic matters (under London oversight) and representation in Parliament. London retained control of foreign policy. Its right to impose taxation was also accepted by the new entity. While the Crown continued to establish and operate military bases, primarily naval stations, in the USBA, the Dominion fielded (and funded) its own army and coastal guard to ensure domestic security. The Compact also incorporated the Empire’s newly won Canadian territories, including the organized provinces of Quebec and Ontario, in the USBA.