Harvard Yard (48 page)

Though Theodore continued to live in the house and was, in effect, the host for the day, it was the eldest of the siblings, the Long-Legged Napoleon, who took the chair at their grandfather’s desk, opposite the portrait of Reverend Abraham, his Bible, and Great-Aunt Lydia, and delivered his annual invocation about aristocracy borne of good breeding, good learning, good faith, and hardheaded business sense.

He then described the impact of war on family investments: “The demand for uniforms will be of great benefit to textiles, and the need to move men and matériel will serve our railroad holdings.”

“Assuming,” said Heywood, “that the war lasts long enough.”

“There seems little doubt of that,” said Theodore.

“Then we can look forward to a positive balance sheet for 1861,” said Heywood.

Dorothy glared at him. “You are your father’s son. But I’d prefer not to talk about profits. We should be discussing ways to assuage the suffering of the troops.”

“No,” said Douglass.

And all heads turned. None could remember Douglass ever contradicting his mother in public, least of all his mother.

“No to what, Douglass,” she said, her calm seemingly unruffled.

“No to the assuagement of suffering. We must
increase
the suffering of the enemy, even if it means enduring the worst hardships ourselves.”

“Ourselves?” Dorothy folded her hands on her lap. She had worked hard to control her fears since Fort Sumter. “I pray you speak figuratively.”

He looked straight at her and said, “I am my father’s son, too. Amos Warren died fighting for free soil in Kansas. I shall fight for free soil in America. I’ve enlisted.”

“Well done,” said Theodore.

“Damn fool,” said Heywood.

And Dorothy fainted dead away.

As the guests arrived after that most somber commencement, word passed that Douglass was to be commissioned second lieutenant in the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry, already known as the Harvard Regiment, since so many of its officers had been at the college: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.; J. J. Lowell; Will Putnam; Norwood Hallowell; Paul Revere; Samuel Bunting’s nephew Jason; the Pratt cousins, Artemus II and Francis—twenty-two Harvard officers in all, plus half a dozen medical personnel.

When Louis Agassiz heard the news at the punch bowl, he cried out, “Oh, no. Not another bright young man.”

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz told her husband to quiet himself.

“They are going into a meat grinder,” said Agassiz, shaking his great head. “We shall lose so many.”

As if to answer Agassiz, Amelia Fleming urged everyone in the parlor to join in a toast, “To a young hero.” Then, in front of everyone, she kissed Douglass on the cheek.

Dorothy thought that she would faint again.

Douglass turned crimson with embarrassment.

Heywood sat in a corner and turned a brighter crimson with anger.

A few days later, Heywood went to the State House and spoke with Henry Lee, chief recruiting officer in Massachusetts. He asked that Lee assign him to the Harvard Regiment. “For it is time to do my duty.”

Lee said, “I’ll tell you what I told your cousin: You can’t prove yourself until you’re in the field. But you descend from a man who fought on April nineteenth and marched with Washington. That’s the kind of breeding we’re looking for.”

In truth, it was not duty or patriotism that drove Heywood. But if Amelia wished for a young man in uniform, he would wear one.

On a Sunday in late August, a train came out of Boston to Camp Meigs in Readville, a gridiron of tents on the dusty plain between the Neponset River and the Blue Hills. The train carried the governor, his aides, and the families of many of those young Harvard officers.

Dorothy Wedge Warren and several of the other mothers had made a white silk banner. On one side was the Massachusetts coat of arms, on the other, the Latin words
Fide et constantia,
faith and constancy.

That afternoon, the regiment proudly carried the banner as they passed in review before their loved ones.

“Who could believe,” said Theodore as the drums beat and the dust rose, “that in six short weeks our boys have been turned into officers.”

“And who could believe,” said George Jr., “that those Irish hod carriers and stevedores could learn to keep step.”

“Let us hope that they fight as well as they march,” said Samuel Bunting, who had come to see his nephew.

“I think they all look smashing,” said Amelia, who had come out with her family.

“Pray that they smash the Rebels,” said Uncle Theodore.

Dorothy glanced over her shoulder at Amelia. If there was anything good about her son’s enlistment, it was that he would soon pass from the girl’s orbit. In those dark days, a mother might not be able to save her son from putting on a soldier’s uniform, but she would do what she could to protect him from marrying before his time.

After the parade, the young officers mingled a final time with their families in a pavilion that had been set up on the edge of the grounds. Though the sides of the great tent were open to the breeze, it was hot under the canvas, and the dust from the field puffed in.

Dorothy did not care. She had not seen her son in six weeks. But she was shocked at how hard and angular his body seemed now that his shoulders were squared by lieutenant’s bars, and by how mature he seemed now that a mustache curled around the corners of his mouth.

He ran his hand over the mustache and said, “Do you like it, Mother?”

“Oh . . . I’m not the one to ask. Let some young lady answer that.” Dorothy gave a little laugh that they both knew was as false as the sentiment. “Now, then—”

But his eyes were lifting from her face and scanning the crowded tent.

“She’s over there, Douglass,” said Dorothy sharply, “behind you. She’s giving something to Heywood Wedge. Apparently, she is as drawn to his uniform as to yours.”

“Mother—”

“Oh, darling, enough of other people”—Dorothy threw her arms around him and tried not to cry—“I’m so worried . . . and so proud.”

“Father would have wanted me to do this, Mother.”

“Yes . . . yes. And he would have wanted you to have this.” From her handbag she withdrew a gold locket that she pressed into his hands and said, “I gave this to him when he went to Bleeding Kansas to fight slavery. It was all that came back of him.”

Douglass took the locket with awe. “‘From D. to A.’—from you to father—‘With All My Love, May God Keep You.’ He will, Mother. He will.”

“Open it, dear.”

There were two tiny clasps. Douglass fumbled with them, so his mother slipped the locket from his hand and pressed on one. The locket opened to reveal a miniature of the young and angelic Dorothy Wedge, her hair raven black, her skin the color of porcelain.

“Mother, you were . . . you
are
beautiful.”

She laughed as her eyes filled. “I
was
beautiful. Now . . . there’s another compartment, a secret compartment, where you’ll find a small sentiment from me.”

Douglass went to open it, but his mother put a hand on his. “Not now, dear. Not here. Not ever, unless I die before you return.”

“Mother, don’t say that.”

She put her hands on his arm. “Wear the locket. Protect the sentiment, because it shows my trust in you, which shows you my deepest love.”

“I know you love me, Mother.”

“And I knew Lydia loved me, but I never knew how much until she passed me a secret codicil in her will. It told of two gilt-edged envelopes and a small gift of majestic proportion. I transcribed the codicil and put it into the locket.”

Douglass laughed. “Mother, isn’t all this secrecy a bit silly?”

Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t know what the gift is, or where. I know only that Lydia trusted me. She wanted me to pass the information to a trusted heir, preferably female. If you have a daughter, pass it on to her. Once Harvard educates women, open the locket. If that never comes to pass, you are to open the locket one month before the Tercentenary.”

“Mother, I’m going off to war. What do I care about some distant tercentenary?”

“You should care because you’ll be there, Douglass, an old man, like Grandfather Caleb, tottering across the Yard at the head of the procession.”

Douglass slipped the locket around his neck. “I’ll be in my nineties, Mother.”

“But you
will
be there, Douglass.” She spoke with sudden ferocity, as if to convince herself and allay her fears. Then she pulled her son close to her breast. “You will be. You must be.”

Then the sound of a bugle burst through the din of conversation, and a sergeant announced that the officers had to return to their duties. A great gasp of sadness rose to the top of the pavilion and then seemed to boil back down on everyone. Mothers embraced their sons, while fathers stepped back bravely and stood stiffly.

Soon, Dorothy was swept along with the crowd, back to the carriages that would take them to the train. As she turned to wave a final time, she saw her son and Amelia embracing. Then Amelia handed Douglass a card that seemed to fill him with emotion. He brought it to his lips, as if to kiss it, then put it into his breast pocket.

Dorothy sat in the carriage and fixed her eyes on the largest of the rocky hills above them. And she told herself that her jealousy was no more than selfishness, that whatever had just passed between Douglass and Amelia was as timeless as the Blue Hills themselves. And then she began to cry.

A short distance away, Heywood was also watching Douglass and Amelia. He was still tingling from his talk with her, from her kiss on his cheek, and from the carte de visite she had given him, a beautiful photo of herself, preserved on cardboard, “so that you may carry it next to your heart,” she had said.

Now Heywood was seething, because Douglass had been the last to speak with her, to feel her breasts press against him, to kiss her. Heywood resolved to write to her every week. And if Douglass wrote every week, Heywood would write every day.

Neither Heywood nor Dorothy knew that the last words Douglass had spoken to Amelia were “Wait for me.” And Amelia had said that she would.

v

The morning mist burned away so that the sun beat down on bodies and broken cornstalks. Thousands were dead, and it was not yet nine o’clock.

They had fought for three hours, back and forth, north to south, in a cornfield where the Federal Twelfth Corps had been decimated and the Confederate left wing had been shattered. Then the fighting had broken off. The field had fallen silent, but for the cries and moans floating on the fetid breeze.

Now Sedgwick’s Division, Federal Second Corps, was coming up from Antietam Creek on the east, crossing the blasted cornfield, making for the woods to the west. Somewhere beyond, the Confederates had pulled back. And Sedgwick’s Division—fresh, rested, five thousand strong—meant to strike them.

They went by brigade front, three full brigades, each brigade stretched in a line some five hundred yards wide and two ranks deep. They went as if their generals knew the ground and were certain of their battlefield intelligence.

Lieutenant Douglass Wedge Warren marched with the Twentieth Massachusetts in the third brigade. Someday, he thought, some artist might paint their advance as a magnificent moment, paint it and put it on a calendar—banners fluttering, blue lines etching the landscape, bayonets glinting in the sun.

Why did bayonets always glint in the sun? he wondered. And why did artists never paint the blood that turned the corn furrows to red mud? Or the chunks of human flesh, splattered by artillery, squishing now under thousands of hobnailed boots? And what pigment could capture the cries of the wounded, who reached up from the corn stubble, calling for help, grabbing like ghosts at the cuffs of those who now had to step over them?

Douglass tried not to think about them. Better to think about doing his job. In every attack, he concentrated on putting each part of himself in place—speech calm, stride steady, posture erect. He was like a watchmaker putting springs and gears in alignment, in hope that the terror of the moment would hold no more power over him than the passage of time held over the watchmaker.

But so many had died . . . like Lowell and Franny Pratt at Fair Oaks. And so many had been wounded . . . some lightly, like Heywood, grazed by shrapnel at Malvern Hill, some terribly, like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., shot in the chest at Ball’s Bluff. So many . . . and yet they kept on . . . even Holmes, recuperated and promoted and back on the line.

Neither Captain Holmes nor Lieutenant Warren flinched when the Confederate batteries on the far side of the woods opened up. There was a distant report of cannon fire, the whistle of shells arcing in over the trees, and explosions among the ranks of blue.

The veterans kept moving ahead. But the green troops faltered, a few crouched, a few even fell to the ground in fright.

Douglass heard someone behind him say, “No use duckin’, lads. We’re a target as big as the town of Sharpsburg. Duck and you just may duck the wrong way.”

It was the voice of Dan Callahan, and it calmed Douglass to hear. Callahan had enlisted in the Twentieth because, he said, there were good officers in the Twentieth. The officers now said that there were good sergeants, too, like Callahan.

A shot exploded between the second and third brigades, sending up clods of dirt, sprays of corn, and metal fragments that flew out like shards from a broken platter. Three men in the forward brigade were struck, and the second brigade went slack in the middle.

“Dress that line!” shouted Heywood Wedge, motioning with his saber. “Dress it and keep it dressed!”

Where Douglass tried to lead by calm example, Heywood led with shouting discipline, but his men obeyed. Every officer had his own way.

And on they went, out of the cornfield, across the Hagerstown Pike, past the Dunker Church that looked like a little whitewashed cottage, and into the cool woods.

The underbrush was thin, the trees wide spaced, so the brigades kept their formation. To their left were outcroppings of rock catching the sunlight. Good shelter there, thought Douglass, but the fight would be up ahead, where the trees fell away.