The President's Daughter (62 page)

No one had left. It was as if everyone sensed that something extraordinary would happen this night. At twelve midnight a sepulchral figure, impossibly tall, dark-skinned, hollow-eyed, with a thick head of hair that had been black three years ago but was now streaked with gray, as was his short, full beard and even his eyebrows, appeared. A melancholy gaze took in the laughing assembly and suddenly a lot of us felt foolish. Beside him was Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady, in bright, expensive red velvet.

The band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” Business, everyone wondered, or malice? Had the President come in person to fire Meade? The couple strode slowly into the room as the dancers parted as if for royalty, the starkness and somberness of the President contrasting with the almost hysterical colorful-ness of the ball and of Mrs. Lincoln's dress. He stopped and greeted one person after another, chatting, even smiling occasionally. It was the first time I had ever had a chance to see the Tycoon, as they called him, up close.

“The sly fox,” said Sarah. “Look how polite and cheerful he's being to Meade. I wager in two weeks Meade will be out and Grant will be general-in-chief of the armies. Actually, the Tycoon has no choice. The Confederacy has produced half a dozen first-rate generals, while the Union has only Grant. A million-man army and no commander. No wonder we're still losing this war.”

“We're winning it, Sarah,” said someone on her left.

“Yes, but at what cost?” interrupted Beverly. Beverly had changed greatly. It wasn't just the aging, or the deep circles under his eyes or his thick blond hair, which was already thinning. There was, even in the walk, a deep, resentful exhaustion, as if his fight against death and destruction, having been so in vain, were now also despicable.

“Perhaps you're right, Mother. What is the use of patching up a man only to send him back to the lines where the
next
time, I'll have less work to do because he'll be dead.”

I looked at Beverly in surprise. There was so much bitterness in his voice.

“Mother, even you, with what you have seen, cannot imagine the reality of this war. It has changed, I believe, the American character. We used to think that individual life was sacred . . .”

“Well, Mr. President,” said General Meade, his voice carrying to us from the next group of people, “we can't do these little tricks without losses.”

I stared into Beverly's light gray eyes, and a shiver of anticipation ran down my spine. The President passed close enough to me for me to touch him.

“Rather than preserve the Union by surrendering the principles of the Declaration, I'd prefer to be assassinated on the spot.” The light twang of Lincoln's Kentucky accent left the color of tall sun-bronzed grass as he passed.

And, as if illuminated by a burst of light, I suddenly knew why this celebration of Washington's birthday reminded me of the Montpelier ball, why all evening I had had the impression that I was standing outside with the orderlies, looking in. Inside was lily-white. Even the servants were white. There was no black leg in a shiny boot; there were no double stars on a black shoulder, no glistening sword around a black waist. There were no black officers in the army of the United States. Outside, black orderlies waited patiently for their captains and lieutenants, their majors and colonels, just as I, Harriet, had waited outside with the other slaves for our masters back home. Nothing had changed. No black hand helped steer the destiny of the Union, no black hand was asked—yet how could one deny that a black hand had commenced this second American Revolution as surely as a black hand had rocked the cradle of Thomas Jefferson's children.

All of them, I realized, even Lincoln, danced to a tune they didn't know the words of. So typical of WHITE PEOPLE.

“Nothing in the world is the same now as it used to be—not the war, or the army, or us . . . or, or that matter, this colored man himself we're fighting for,” rose Beverly's voice above the music.

A wave of anguish and love swept over me as I reached up and embraced Beverly. My white sons were in harm's way, facing all God's dangers, freeing the mother they had never known. The war had rendered Sinclair, Beverly, and Madison as vulnerable as any slave. They were no safer any more than if they trod Mulberry Row. The war had thrust my whole life's creation, my white family, back into the same dangerous, uncertain world of slavery I had fought so hard to escape. The war had murdered Thomas Jefferson's grandson,
who had been free and white. What would I do if the war took another? Or all?

I wondered if God was finished with Thomas Jefferson. Or his daughter. I swore on the heads of my surviving children that if God took another grandson, I would go back to Monticello with the victorious Union Army and dance on Thomas Jefferson's grave and curse the day I was born. I would never forgive him or Him, so help me. I swore by God, who had denied me justice, and by the Almighty, who had filled me with bitterness, so long as there was any life in me and God's breath in my nostrils, I would not abandon my claim to him, I would never give up: so long as I lived, I would not change.

Dawn broke through the dark snow clouds, and pink washed the high vaulted sky, as the last gang of women piled into the last ambulances, their cashmere shawls pulled over their heads, their hoop skirts making half moons as crinolines smashed against the sides of the carts. And light flurries began to fall both north and south of the Rapidan.

CAMP RAPIDAN

MAY
4, 1864

Dear Mother,

We are breaking camp. The dogwood blossoms flutter in the breeze like flocks of white butterflies, alight on the trees lining the road south. The regiments are falling into line, cannon-topped wagons creak along the road, a colored regiment is singing “We Are Coming, Father Lincoln, Three Hundred Thousand More.” In effect, we are a hundred thousand marching to meet our opposite number on the other side of the river.

I thank God President Lincoln has finally named Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union armies. At last, a leader to fight and die for.

God bless you. And God bless General Grant.

Beverly Wellington

On June tenth, Lincoln once again addressed the Sanitary Commission in Philadelphia: “We accepted this war for the worthy object of restoring the national authority over the national domain, and the war will end when that object is attained. General Grant has said that he is going to smash Rebel lines if it takes all summer.” (Cheers and flag-waving.) “I say we are going to smash Rebel lines if it takes three years more.”

“Lincoln had better reiterate his war objects,” whispered Sarah, “before people begin to think he is stubbornly carrying on this war not to reestablish
the Union, but for black abolition. The North wants peace and many want peace, with ‘the Union as it was' and amnesty for the South.”

“Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion,” continued the President, “a full one hundred thousand have crossed our line as contraband and are now in the United States military service, about one-half of which actually bear arms in the ranks, thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good or better soldiers as any. No servile insurrection or tendency to violence or cruelty has marked the measures of emancipation and arming the blacks.”

“The story of Greeley's meeting with the Rebels at Niagara Falls has gotten out,” whispered Sarah, “and though Jeff Davis's condition for ending the war of dis-union and independence is as irreducible as Lincoln's for union, the newspapers have caught on to Lincoln's second condition, emancipation, as the real stumbling block to peace. They are saying that tens of thousands of white men must yet bite the dust to allay the negromania and negrophilia of the President: public sentiment is only reacting to our want of military success and the impression that we
can
have peace with union if we would, but that the President is fighting not for union but the abolition of slavery.”

The President's voice rose and fell as if in answer to Sarah's complaint: “I deny I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is and will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But human power cannot subdue this rebellion without using the emancipation, as I have done. Some 130,000 black sailors and soldiers are fighting for the Union. If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—as I have said before, even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept.”

The same day, I received two letters from Beverly.

IN CAMP, BERMUDA HUNDRED, VIRGINIA

MAY
26, 1864

Dear Mother,

Fitzhugh Lee's famous chivalry, as well as his cavalry division, were badly worsted last Tuesday against Negro troops from the garrison at Wilson's Landing. The battle began at 12:30
P.M
. and ended at six o'clock when chivalry retired, disgusted and defeated. Lee's men dismounted far in the rear and fought as infantry. They drove in the pickets and skirmishes to the entrenchments, and several times made valiant and foolhardy charges
upon our works. To make an assault, it was necessary to traverse an “open” in front of our position, up to the very edge of a deep and impassable ravine. The Rebels with deafening yells made furious onsets, but the Negroes did not flinch, and the mad assailants, discomforted, turned and took to cover with their shrunken ranks. The Rebel fighting was very wicked; it showed that Lee's heart was bent on annihilating Negroes at any cost. Assaults on the center having failed, the Rebels tried first the left and then the right flank, with no greater success ... the Negro lines held.

We all acknowledge here the solid qualities which the colored men engaged in this fight have exhibited. Even officers who have hitherto felt no confidence in them are compelled to express themselves mistaken. I thought you would like to know this, since you were such a defender of their right to fight.

Your most tender and obedient son,

Bev'ly

JUNE
2, 1864

Mother,

I have not had a moment to write for nearly a week. It has been fight, fight, fight. Every day there is combat and every day the hospital is again filled. For four days now, we have been operating upon men wounded in one battle which lasted only about two hours; but the wounds were more serious than those from former engagements. I am heartsick over it all. If the Confederates lost in each fight the same number as we, there would be more chance for us; but their loss is about one man to our five, from the fact that they never leave their earthworks, whereas our men are obliged to charge even when there is not the slightest chance of taking them. Several times after capturing their works, our troops were not reinforced and had to evacuate immediately, with great loss. These men are becoming discouraged, but there is plenty of fight in them yet.

Your faithful son,

B.W.

COLD HARBOR

JUNE
4

Dearest Mother, mine,

Hundreds of soldiers are pinning slips of paper with their names and addresses on their uniforms so that their bodies can be identified after the battle. The Rebels fight from trenches which are intricate, zigzagged lines
within lines, lines protecting flanks of lines, lines built to enfilade opposing lines—works within works, and works without works. The Union was driven out by the Seceshes at the cost of eight colonels and 2,500 other casualties. In all, we Yankees suffered 7,000 casualties. Lee has lost 20 of 57 infantry corps commanders of his divisions and brigades. The men feel at present a great horror and dread of attacking earthworks again.

As I told you at the ball, we are no longer the same men, this is no longer the same army. This seven-week campaign has been another way to fight a war: brutal and intense guerrilla warfare, wanton destruction of civilian property, brutalized women and children, 65,000 northern boys killed, wounded, or missing since May 4.

For thirty days it has been but one funeral procession past me, and it has been too much, Mother! Too much!

Ever remember, with the tenderest of sentiments, he who knows no earthly happiness equal to that of being your beloved son,

Beverly Wellington

HOSPITAL NEAR PETERSBURG

JUNE
20, 1864

Mother,

Our division is relieved from duty in the front line, where it has fought ever since the campaign commenced. Toward noon yesterday, weary, I suppose, of the inaction, a Confederate sharpshooter challenged one of our men to single combat. Lieutenant Jefferson, a fine fellow, standing at least six feet two in his stockings, accepted the challenge, and they commenced what to both of them was sport. Jefferson's great size was so unusual that his opponent had the advantage, and how our men tried to make him give way to a smaller man. But no! He would not listen and became very excited as his successes multiplied, and when darkness stopped the dueling, he remained unscathed while every opponent had fallen victim to his aim.

The lieutenant was so exhilarated that he claimed, with much bluster, to have a charmed life, and said nothing would kill him, and he would prove it in the morning. We officers used every argument to convince him of the foolhardiness of such a course, and assured him of the certainty of his death. But the man seemed crazed with faith in his nine lives. When we left him, he was simply waiting, as best he could, for daylight to begin dueling again.

To our surprise and happiness, the same performance as the day before occurred until a young Confederate lieutenant, who was already aiming at our man, yelled across the redoubt, “What's your name, Yankee? I want to know who I'm shootin' at.” And our man said, “Jefferson, John Wayles.” And the duelist said, “Darn! My name's Jefferson, Peter Field.
We're probably gawd damned triple first kissin' cousins.” And they both lowered their guns, laughing. Then came a tremendous cheer from the Confederate and the Union lines and praises for the Jeffersons' pluck and skill and common sense.