The Dominion's Dilemma: The United States of British America (73 page)

       Savage drained his beer and signaled for two more. “Brigade-strength; still sounds strange hearing that. I mean, we’ve studied brigade and division organization, dreamed about leading corps.  After all these years in our miniature little army, just never expected to be discussing it so casually, so matter-of-fact…”

      Judge took a deep pull from his own beer. “We’ll be doing more than discussing them. Organizing and training are to officially begin at Carlisle Barracks September 15
^th
, though I hear old Wool’s on his way there now. Apparently, the Pennsylvania troops are already shaping up there.” He sighed. “I’d wondered if the people up North would even respond to our call for volunteers…”

       “Oh, they’re responding, Colonel Judge. Haven’t you read the Boston and Philadelphia papers? “It’s “On to Richmond!’”

      “’On to Richmond?’ By God, Billy, they have to give us a chance to whip an army together!  We can’t possibly be ready to fight before late fall. Otherwise, we’d just be leading an armed mob…”

      Savage’s look was half-grin, half-grimace. “Don’t believe we’ll have that long, Colonel. Wilder tells me the South has a slogan, too. It’s ‘On to Georgetown!’ Apparently, it offends their Southern sense of honor that
our
capital is situated in
their
country…”

      “What?”

      Savage laughed as his friend choked on his beer. “Didn’t you know? They’re claiming all the land south of the Mason-Dixon line.”

        Colonel Judge shook his head. “The bastards
are
crazy. I hear they claimed Kentucky and Missouri were in this
confederacy
of theirs, even though Clay and Benton and most of the rest of the Congressional delegations have remained loyal. Same with Maryland.”

       “That may be true, Brian, but the Southerners haven’t let facts get in the way since this whole thing commenced. They get one soldier, one Congressman and they claim the state. Hear they’ve invited Quebec to join them, too.”

       “Now that
is
insane.” Judge shook his head again as a grin broke out. “Come to think on it, they’re welcome to those damn Frogs. God knows, they’re more trouble than they’re worth…”

      “That they are, Colonel. Apparently, General Scott thinks so, too. Rumor is, his contingency plan calls for the British to keep Quebec quiet.”

        Judge looked thoughtful. “Is that a fact? Well, good thing. We’re gonna need every last one of Matty Van’s 30,000 volunteers down here. The Southerners may be insane, but they can fight. Harper’s Ferry proved that.”

        Savage took a deep chug on his newly arrived brew. “I think we already knew they possessed the ability, Colonel Judge. What the Ferry proved was the will.”

___________

The White House

Richmond, Virginia

September 1, 1833

10 a.m.:

    John C. Calhoun’s leadership style, his enemies in the North would say, inaccurately, was autocratic. In this, as in so much else about the man, their estimate was slightly off kilter. And in many ways, it was this misconception that had led to the present situation.

     For although Calhoun’s leadership style was forceful---he simply believed he instinctively knew what was best for his beloved South---he recognized and practiced the key leadership principle of delegation.  While it was from his fertile brain that much of the concepts of states rights and nullification had first sprung, he had delegated responsibility for espousing much of those doctrines to others. It was Senator Troup who was known as the “Hercules of States Rights”, after all, while Representative McDuffie had drafted the address to the Dominion from the South Carolina Nullification Convention back in ’31.

       Calhoun practiced the art of delegation in putting together the CSA government. Nowhere was this more evident than in his startling selection of a Secretary of War. While the usual suspects---Mangum, Edward Hayne---were bandied about, Calhoun reached into the ranks of the old USBAA and plucked the obscure former Chief Engineer, Charles Gratiot of Missouri, to head the Department. The President wanted a War Secretary who would build the Confederacy its armies, but not interfere once the men were in the field. Who better than this very early West Point graduate who had built his career exclusively in the Corps of Engineers, administering the USBAA’s massive program of river, harbor, road and fortification construction?

       Now Calhoun and Secretary Gratiot were debating the selection of the commanding officer for the force Gratiot was constructing to meet Scott’s anticipated drive on Richmond.

       Edmund Gaines was certainly a candidate. The acting chief-of-staff had demonstrated organizational and tactical skill---and surprising daring---in putting together the Harper’s Ferry and Fortress Monroe operations. But, at age 55, he was somewhat old to lead men into the fight. Better that he remain in Richmond as the CSA’s chief war planner.

       David Twiggs, 43, was obviously a prime candidate. He had volunteered during the Louisiana campaign and had served ever since, including action against the Seminoles in Florida and other tribes in the West. Calhoun and Gratiot were grateful that he had turned over Monroe with a minimum of bloodshed; yet, there was something somehow distasteful and dishonorable about his ‘midnight’ action. No, Twiggs would receive his general’s commission and a command, but it would be a subordinate one…

      Rumor had it that Zach Taylor was on his way from New Orleans. If it were true---and Calhoun had sent messengers south in several directions to find him---
there
was the commander they were seeking! Taylor might be somewhat unorthodox---there might be ‘spit’ but there was clearly no ‘polish’ to him---but he was a magnificent soldier who had been leading men into combat since his days fighting Techumseh.

      Yes, they agreed, Taylor would be offered the top command, with Twiggs under him. They had some time yet; their already active spy network in Georgetown reliably told them that the target date for organizing the enemy force up in Pennsylvania was still two weeks away. That should be enough time to ascertain if Taylor was with them. If not, they’d revisit the issue. Meanwhile, Gratiot and Gaines would go about building up the CSA’s own forces.

     The chief emerging issue was the shortage of other identifiable qualified senior officers. The younger officer recruits were magnificent. This Albert Sidney Johnston had already proved himself in combat, while Gratiot himself had been talking up Robert Lee for weeks. Major Beaufort appeared to have the makings of a cavalry commander, while Joseph Johnston seemed to know his way around artillery. All, of course, were West Pointers; there’d be more, Calhoun and his War Secretary agreed. Still, they could use some slightly more mature professional officers. The word was that British half-pay officers were applying for posts in the USBAA. That’s a resource the Confederacy wouldn’t be able to mine, they agreed. Thus far, only this Capt. Harry Bassett had resigned his commission and offered his services. That was to be expected, of course; after all, the man was married to the daughter of the Governor of Mississippi!

     Well, there were bound to be some adequate officers among the state regiments. But it would take a fight to highlight them.

      And, if there’s one thing both sides agreed on, it was that one big fight is all it will take to decide this issue…

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Latoure Townhouse

Georgetown, D.C.

September 13, 1833

10 a.m.:

      Lucille had watched them march in over the past month with a growing sense of rage.  

      First, the regulars from Ft. McHenry under an impossibly tall and lanky officer that Thomas had innocently later identified as a Major Judge. Then, the young cadets from West Point led by their commandant and another officer. Tom had remarked that the commandant, Colonel Thayer, was to be Scott’s chief-of-staff. The second officer apparently was the grim William Worth, who she had informed Richmond---via a surprisingly easy secret correspondence---was currently the ‘tactical’ commander---whatever that meant---of the Georgetown defenses.

      The regulars she could tolerate; even the cadets, since she had been informed that scores of Southern-born West Pointers had resigned and were pouring into Richmond.

      But now these tough-looking men! The 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Ohio were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, led by a tall, solidly built, terrifying-looking officer. Rumors in the city had another Ohio regiment, one from Indiana and some Illinois volunteers not far behind!

       These were the Black Hawk War veterans, Tom had helpfully explained the previous evening, battle-hardened troops who would go right into the defenses as their combat experience negated any need for the training camps now opening at Carlisle Barracks.

       “We can all rest easier now,” he said. “The Reb threat to Georgetown, if they were planning anything anyway, is over for now. In fact, we’ll be sending reconnaissance parties into Virginia any day now.”

       ‘Reconnaissance parties’, he carefully explained, were well-armed scouting patrols looking for any signs of Rebel activity.

       Lucille was now including that in her latest report to Richmond, along with the information that the vaunted and long-expected western volunteers had begun to arrive. The report would go to Jaine at Alexandria, carried by one of their Cranford ‘people’ along with other mail, newspapers and supplies. Jaine would then forward it to Richmond, using middle-aged married men from Alexandria Importing-Exporting who were not as yet needed by the Confederate Army. Even though Alexandria was technically in ‘enemy territory,’ a strange twilight attitude had been adopted by both sides: mail was exchanged and travel was unimpeded in the area between Georgetown’s Potomac-side defenses and the as-yet-undetermined (at least by the USBAA) Rebel picket line somewhere outside Richmond.

     Lucille and her cohorts, Jaine and Mary Lee, were taking full advantage of the situation to send a flood of raw information, rumor and gossip to the Confederate leadership. The pipeline had been brought to the CSA War Department’s attention by Major Beaufort, who had explained the allegiance of the Latoures (Mary Lee’s support was of course naturally assumed) to General Gaines. The General had been pleased and, secretly, amused to discover that among the pipeline’s unsuspecting sources was Scott’s own intelligence aide.

      Captain Wilder was sophisticated enough not to drop serious military secrets, even to Lucille. The identification of the various regiments and commanders pouring into Georgetown could not be kept under wraps for long in any case. But in inadvertently putting the pieces of the puzzle together for Lucille, he was speeding up the identification process that she was then hurrying down to Richmond.

       Tom was for the most part too busy and preoccupied with military matters to give much attention to his checkered romantic life. In any case, Candice was at Twin Peaks, supervising negotiations with the army for her prized horse herds. Lucille, whose interest in the crisis he found encouraging, had become more cordial as things worsened. He had begun dropping by the townhouse most evenings for a quick drink or supper. Naturally, or so he thought, their talk centered on the war…

      Lucille was folding her report to give to Sebastian when she remembered a last detail. The commander of the Ohio troops, that big, scary-looking officer, was one Col. Dennis Felton.

___________

Governor-General’s Office

The Residency

September 14, 1833, 12 p.m.:

    With the Georgetown defenses now overflowing---most of the troops had been placed north of the city, as Scott assumed any Rebel movement would come out of the Blue Ridge and down across Maryland---General Worth had departed for Carlisle, where Northern volunteer regiments continued to come in. Meanwhile, elements of the Regular Army were also converging on the Barracks, some from half-denuded Western posts. Others would eventually arrive from the South, where most coastal forts had been abandoned on Scott’s orders. As he had explained to the G-G and Wellington, “we can’t supply the coastal installations indefinitely. Not with half the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Squadron ordered to the Mediterranean. And I can use the troops up here, where the main fighting will be. We’ll stay at Key West and Mobile Harbor for now as they are in more isolated locations where CG brigs can reach them without being subject to fire. Anyway, I expect this to be over before any evacuation order could even reach them, much less be implemented.”

       Troop E in Arkansas were also a special case. “The Troop is essentially the only organized military unit in the territory. But they can’t hold on forever without resupply. So I’ve ordered them to march northwest toward Missouri, where they’ll be nearer supplies. I’d like to have them for the fight that’s coming, but they’re simply too far away to be counted on. If this thing is extended, we can build a western force around them later.”

       Seated behind Jackson’s old desk, Van Buren’s face paled: “Extended, General? You’ve led me to believe a single battle, our own Armageddon, will settle this.”

       The two warriors looked over the tiny G-G’s head at each other before Scott spoke. “Well, Mr. Governor, a decisive battle is certainly what we’re pointing for. However, there is always the possibility that the fight will be less than conclusive…”

       “I agree, General Scott.” The Duke was brisk but reassuring. “You see, Mr. Governor-General,” he said, turning to Van Buren, “one must always have a contingency plan to fall back on. General Scott is being prudent in planting the core of a western force near Missouri against the unlikely chance extended fighting might call for a contested march back into central Arkansas or Mississippi.”