Heaven and Hell (42 page)

"Bullshit. You're a traitor. You're a disgrace to the uniform you refuse to wear. If Grierson didn't coddle you, I'd have you up for that.

You and those niggers, too. Look at them--scruffy as a bunch of Sicilian banditti."

Charles stepped up in the stirrup. "Goodbye. General."

In Leaven worth City, C Company took the laundresses into a wagon.

Beyond the town they passed through a belt of farms whose rich black soil already showed green shoots. The whitewashed houses and outbuildings had an air of age and permanence, though probably not one
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was over ten years old.

By choice, the company veered away from the railroad and the parallel line of telegraph poles. A wind rose, whipping the branches of the budding hickories and buttonwoods, willows and elms. Across soft hills hidden by thousands of swaying sunflowers, through gleaming creeks where the wild strawberry grew, sheltered by a cathedral of sky, cleaving an ocean of grass, colors and guidon streaming, C Company rode west.

Charles carried a score of memories of Willa--and a hurt. He hummed the little tune she'd written down for him. He'd packed the music carefully in the folds of his gypsy robe. This morning he found the melody inexplicably sad, so he stopped humming and rode in silence for a while.

The invigorating air and the sunlit country gradually eased his melancholy.

In a baritone voice not much better than a monotone, he sang to himself, one of the sweet sad songs he'd first heard when he lazed outside the Mont Royal praise house, the slave chapel, of a Sunday when he was small and trouble-prone and didn't understand the world around him, or the suffering the song expressed.

"I'm rolliri, I'm rollin',

I'm a-rollin' through this unfriendly world ..."

Hook cantered up beside him.

"I'm rollin', I'm rollin'

Through this unfriendly world."

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"Where'd you learn coon songs, Charlie?"

"It isn't a coon song, it's a hymn. A slave hymn."

"You surely give it a cheerful lilt. Glad to see you feeling good fora change."

Charles smiled and kept his thoughts to himself.

The heel of military dictatorship crushes our prostrate state. Its bayonets enforce the new gospel of lust and
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racial mingling. . . . Among us there come the blue

clad missionaries of wrath, with vast new powers to

kindle hate and sow the seeds of damnation. . . . Waving their Bible spotted with sin, and their Constitution

stained with crime and political chicanery, they preach but one sermon, Radicalism. . . . Better that we should welcome the Anti-Christ himself than these emissaries of Hell.

Editorial in The Ashley Thunderbolt

spring 1867

MADELINES JOURNAL

April, i86j. The Congress has seized control. Last month's Reconstruction Act carved the 10 unrepentant states into 5 military

districts. The two Carolinas comprise the Second District. Stanton appoints the military governors. Ours at Charleston is miserable old Gen. Sickles. We shall not be part of the Union again until there is a new convention of black as well as white voters, a new state gov't. assuring black suffrage, and passage of the 14th Amend.

The Thunderbolt and even the better Democratic papers are shrill, not to say violent, denouncing all of it.

Such events seem removed from the day-to-day affairs of Mont Royal. Two sizable rice crops last year brought a slim profit, almost all of which I paid to Dawkins's bank to reduce our debt.

Bank now absolutely rigid about late payments. They are not tolerated.

.

. . Yankee speculators are descending like the Biblical locusts.

They float bond issues for railroad lines that will never be built, snap up land on sale day at 8 cents on the dollar, start new businesses in the wreckage of bankrupt ones that once gave livelihoods to local people. An unexpected letter from Cooper, very brief and curt, warned me against investing in such schemes, as

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he suspects most are crooked. In this case I will heed what he says. I can't tell the honest Yankee from the vulture.

. . . Today the freedman Steven said that he will leave, taking his wife and J children. Saddening; he is a dependable, steady worker. But the emigration agent whose wagon is parked at Getty's''s
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store swayed him with a promise of $i2/mo., guaranteed, plus a cabin, garden plot and a weekly ration of a peck of meal, 2 lbs. bacon, one pt. molasses, and firewood--all this to be delivered to him somewhere in Florida. We have a second plague in these emigration men from other states. They come here knowing our freedmen have never gotten over the falsity of the cruel rumor of "40 acres & a mule" in '65. When I asked Steven to stay, he replied with a fair question--could I pay him real wages, instead of merely marking down sums to his credit in my ledger?

1 wanted to lie; could not. I answered truthfully, so he is going.

. . . Mrs. Annie Weeks in a quarrel with Foote's Cassandra at the Summerton crossing. Annie, who is mixed blood, very light and delicately featured, attacked and hit Cassandra because of some fancied slight. Cassandra is full-blooded Negro. I have heard of this kind of animosity before. A mulatto can sometimes "pass,"

so will not associate with true blacks. They in turn hate the mulatto's

"uppity" ways. I wonder if there is any end to the rancor caused by the war?

. . . The Jolly clan, the squatters, have stayed on. We occasionally hear of a mule, corn meal, or a woman taken at gunpoint by "Captain" Jack and his oafish brothers. They do not discriminate! They prey equally on both races. Am terrified of them, esp. the eldest, who boasts of "slaying niggers for sport" in the massacre at Ft. Pillow, Tenn.

Prudence spoke last night of her unhappiness over the state of the school. . . .

"Madeline, I now have fourteen pupils working with alphabet and primer, two almost ready to advance to the Second Reader, and Pride is in the second arithmetic series. I want to buy a geography for him, and slates for the rest. We have just three slates for all, not nearly enough."

Head down and pensive, Madeline walked beside the schoolteacher on the shore of the Ashley. The spring twilight was settling.

hazy and full of shrill night-bird cries. The familiar vista of star-specked water with dense forest beyond usually soothed her. Tonight was different.

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"I can't give you any answer but the one you've heard before,"

she said. "There's no money."

For once the plump teacher seemed to lose her Christian patience.

"Your friend George Hazard has it to spare."

Stopping, Madeline said sharply, "Prudence, I have made it clear that I won't beg from Orry's best friend. If we can't survive by our own wits and initiative, we deserve to fail."

"That may be noble, but it does very little to further someone's education."

"I'm sorry you're angry. Perhaps I'm wrong, but those are my views. I'll do all I can to supply what you need as soon as we sell the first rice crop."

"Bother. I see nothing wrong in asking a small donation from a very rich man who--"

"No," Madeline said, though she wondered bitterly how she could ever fulfill, the dream of building a new Mont Royal when she couldn't buy even the smallest necessities for its school. "We'll find some other way, I promise."

Prudence gave Madeline a bleak look. The two women returned to the whitewashed house in silence. It was an hour before they made up.

Madeline spoke first, though Prudence was clearly just as eager. Even so, Madeline felt the emptiness of her promise as she lay in bed that night, sleepless with worry.

Who against all hope believed in hope. Prudence might still be that sort of person. She was not.

30

Late on a showery Saturday in that same month, a horse-drawn cab j took Virgilia to a small brick house on South B Street, behind the

Capitol. She looked matronly, and somber in contrast to the color in the front yard, where snowy blossoms shed by two dogwoods dusted deep yellow daffodils. A mock orange tree sweetened the air in a way that was appropriate to a season of renewed hope.

Virgilia's face was drawn, even severe. She rang the bell and exchanged a warm embrace with Lydia Smith, the housekeeper. She followed
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Lydia to the parlor, where her friend waited with silver tea things.

"Thad--" She caught her breath. He looked white, far older than when she last saw him, months ago. He rose from his chair with great effort.

Lydia tied back draperies to let in more of the gray light, but that did nothing to improve Stevens's appearance. The housekeeper excused herself. Stevens sat down again. Over the patter of rain, Virgilia heard his labored breathing.

"Sorry to have taken so long to accept your invitation," she said.

"I usually work every Saturday. Today Miss Tiverton's nephew drove down from Baltimore for a visit. He excused me for the afternoon."

"How is the old woman? You've been her companion for--how long now?"

"Ten months." Virgilia added cream to her hot tea and sipped.

"Her ninetieth birthday falls next Tuesday. Physically, she has tremendous stamina. But her mind--" A shrug said the rest.

"What do you do for her?"

"Sit with her, mostly. Keep her tidy. Clean her up when I must."

In response to Stevens's grimace, she said, "It isn't that bad. I had worse duty in the field hospitals during the war."

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"You're putting a good face on it. Now tell me how you really feel about it."

A weary sigh. "I hate it. The monotony is terrible. In the nurse corps, I got used to helping people recover, but Miss Tiverton will never recover. I'm nothing more than a caretaker. I suppose I can't be particular.

Jobs for single women are scarce. This was all I could find."

"Perhaps we can do something about that." He was about to say more, but his silver teaspoon slipped from his hand. He leaned down to pick it up, and suddenly clutched his back. He straightened slowly.

"My God, Virgilia, it's hell growing old."

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"You don't look well, Thad."

"The climate in this town aggravates my asthma. I have trouble breathing, and my head hurts most of the time. No doubt some of the headache comes from warring with that fool in the White House." Virgilia followed this struggle in the Star but felt far removed from it in Miss Tiverton's vast, silent house out in Georgetown.

The congressman leaned toward her, his wig slightly off center, as usual, and they fell to discussing recent events. She expressed her scorn for Secretary Seward's seven-million-dollar folly, the purchase from Russia of the worthless, icebound Alaskan territory. Stevens couldn't confirm or deny rumors that Jefferson Davis would soon be let out of Fortress Monroe, after payment of enormous bail, to await trial.

They soon came back to the struggle between the Congressional Republicans and the President. To further curb Mr. Johnson's power, bills had been passed prohibiting him from direct command of the Army.

Any orders now had to be transmitted by General Grant, who was more sympathetic to the Radicals; some were even saying he'd be their candidate for President a year hence. A second bill, the Tenure of Office Act, challenged the President even more directly. He couldn't remove any cabinet official without consent of the Senate.

"Our most pressing problem remains the South," Stevens went on. "Those damned aristocrats in the Dixie legislatures refuse to call the state conventions demanded by the Reconstruction Act. We've put through a second supplementary bill empowering the district military commanders to set up machinery for registering voters, so we can get on with the job. Johnson balks and argues and tries to thwart us at every step. He doesn't understand the fundamental issue."

"Which is--"

f "Equality. Equality! Every man has an equal right to justice, hon¦esty and fair play with every other man, and the law should secure him those rights. The same law that condemns or acquits an African should c°ndemn or acquit a white man. That's the law of God, and it ought to

be the law of the land, but those Southerners choke on the idea, and 274 ' HEAVEN AND HELL

Johnson repudiates it. And he is supposed to be on our side! I tell you, Virgilia--" he had grown so agitated he spilled tea from the cup he was holding--"I am pushed to desperation by that man. He is obstructionist to the point of being criminal. There is only one remedy."

"What's that?"

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"Depose him."

Her dark eyes widened in the watery gloom. "Do you mean impeach him?"

"Yes."

"On what grounds?"

The hawkish old face at last showed a smile. "Oh, we'll find those. Ben Butler and some others are searching. None too soon, either.

Andrew Johnson is the most dangerous president in the history of the republic."

Dangerous, or merely obstinate about yielding power to the Congress?

Virgilia didn't ask the question of her friend. She found herself surprisingly unconcerned about the whole matter. Prisoned in the Georgetown mansion caring for Miss Tiverton, she no longer felt any connection with important causes.

"All the key members of the Senate agree about impeachment,"

Stevens continued. "Sam Stout agrees--"

The sentence trailed off. He was probing. Calmly, she said, "I wouldn't know, Thad. I no longer see him."

"So I heard." There was a pause. "Sam feels his voting base is secure now. Consequently, he's announced his intention to divorce Emily and marry some music-hall tart."

"Her last name's Canary." It sounded like unimportant conversation.

But her hands trembled; the news had stunned her. "I wish him well." She really wished him in hell.

Stevens studied her. "You aren't at all content with your present situation, are you?"

"No. I'm not the crusader I was ten years ago, but as I said, 1