Notes

do to frighten Mollie Bean, who wasn't frightened at Gettysburg ? That
seemed unwise; not only was Hardie Page 269
half again his size, he was also carrying a repeater. But if Piet Hardie
backed Nathan Bedford Forrest, it was, as Liles had said, another reason to
favor Robert E. Lee.
The town square filled rapidly. Most of the people there took no special
notice of the Rivington men; some, mostly men of an age to be veterans,
came up and talked with them in a friendly way about the AK-47s. Caudell
knew the South might have lost the war without them. He couldn't make
himself like the Rivington men even so.
To the bang of a drum, the Trees called out, "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again!
Forrest! Forrest!" A couple of men went up to the platform and sat down on
the front edge, rifles across their knees. A plump man whose name had
escaped Caudell went up there too, and launched into a speech of his own.
Finally one of the Rivington men turned around and glared at him. After a
few seconds, the glare got through. The plump man said, "And now, my
friends, without further ado, the man you've been waiting for"-"And waiting
for," Liles put in sourly-"the next President of the Confederate States of
America, Nathan Bedford Forrest!"
The Trees redoubled their chant, but the shouts of the crowd all but
drowned them out. Forrest bounded up onto the platform. He stood there for
a moment, letting the cheers wash over him. He was a bigger man than
Caudell had expected, and had more presence. Like Lee, he was impossible
to ignore, or to take lightly.
He raised both hands, lowered them again. The noise in the square went
down with them. Into the quiet he had caused, Forrest said, "Thank you all,
for coming here to listen to me today." His accent was unpolished, but his
voice was smoother than Caudell would have guessed. Smooth or not,
though, it carried.
He went on, "In Richmond, they think they can pass on the Presidency like
it was a farm going from father to son. In Richmond, they think it's a matter
betwixt gentlemen." He loaded the word with scorn.
"Are they right, the gentlemen up in Richmond?"
"No!" people shouted back. Caudell kept silent. So did Rae-ford Liles, but
they were in the minority. Forrest stalked back and forth across the
platform. He was by no means a classic speaker, but he was effective all the
same. The farther into his speech he went, the louder and more booming his
voice became. Soon it was easy to imagine him roaring out orders through
the din of battle, and easy to imagine men jumping to obey.
"Up in Richmond," Forrest cried, "Mr. Robert E. Lee says he knows better'n
you what to do with your property. Hear me now, people, it's not for me to
say freein' slaves is always a bad thing. I freed plenty o' my own, and they
went through the war with me as my teamsters."
His bodyguards from Rivington did not care to hear that. Rivington men,
Caudell knew, generally didn't care to hear anything about easing
restrictions on blacks. The one who had glared down the plump functionary
turned his stare on Forrest. But the former cavalry general was made of
sterner stuff and ignored that warning gaze.
In any case, he did not keep the Rivington men worrying long: "If you want
to free your niggers, that your business. But if the government goes an' tells
you you've got to free your niggers-hell's bells, gentlemen, am I right or am
I wrong, but didn't we fight a war with a government that wanted to tell us
that?" This time, the roar from the crowd was " Yes!" and this time, Raeford
Liles roared along with the rest. Page 270
Caudell did not roar "Yes!" He was not inclined to heckle, though, either, as
he'd heckled Isaac Cockrell. That had nothing to do with the men with rifles
who sat on the platform; the thought that rifles might be turned on a heckler
simply never entered his mind. But Forrest, unlike Cockrell, had to be taken
seriously.
As seemed to be his way no matter what he did, he returned to the relentless
attack: "My friends, I give you that Robert E. Lee helped the Confederate
States get free of the Yankees, and I tip my hat to him on account of it. But
before Robert E. Lee ever fit for the Confederacy, the Yankees wanted to
make him their commander-and he almost took on the job. When he did
decide to stick with his state, Virginia made him a general straight off.
That's a rugged way to fight a war, by God, isn't it?" The men in the crowd
laughed appreciatively. Warming to his subject, Forrest went on, "Me, I
started the fight as a private. I wanted to get right in-couldn't wait to get
right in. My friend Senator Wigfall, our next Vice President"-he paused for
applause-"helped fix up the surrender of Fort Sumter back when Robert E.
Lee, that gentleman up in Richmond, was still a colonel in the army of the
U.S. of A. If you all want some Bobbie-come-lately, I reckon you can vote
for Lee. But if you want men who were with the Confederate States of
America from the git-go, you'll stick with Wigfall and me. I thank you
kindly for listening to me today." He bowed and got down from the
platform.
The drum began to beat again. Forrest's Trees chanted, "Hit 'em again! Hit
'em again!" One of the Rivington men raised his AK-47 to his shoulder and
fired a short burst into the air. Caudell saw the muzzle flash, but hardly
heard the report through the thunderous cheers of the people around him.
The band struck up the "Bedford Forrest Quickstep," and then a minstrel
tune, one Caudell didn't know. He turned to Raeford Liles, asked, "What's
that?"
"It's called, 'I'm Coming to My Dixie Home.' It's a nigger talkin' about life
up North," Liles answered. He sang a few bars: "I'd rather work de cotton
patch, And the on corn and bacon, Dan lib up Norf on good white bread, Of
Abolition makin'.' I got the sheet music back at the store, if you ever want
to take a look at it."
"That's all right," Caudell said quickly: trust Liles not to miss a chance to
try to sell him something. Just then, the noise around them redoubled.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was plunging into the crowd, shaking men's hands
and bowing over those that belonged to ladies. People surged toward him
from all over the square. Caudell didn't particularly care to meet him, but
was swept along by the tide. Forrest's big hand almost swallowed up his.
"Will you vote for me, sir?" Looking up at that strong, determined face,
Caudell had to work to make himself shake his head. "No, sir, don't reckon
so now. I fought under General Lee, and I'll stick by him." Behind Forrest, a
bodyguard who had plunged after him-and whom he was ignoring-scowled
at Caudell. Caudell waited for the famous Forrest temper to explode. But
the ex-general only nodded and said, "Good to find a man who's loyal and
not ashamed to say so. You might"-as a rustic would, he pronounced it
mought-"change your mind. I hope you do." He turned to Raeford Liles.
"What about you, sir?"
"I might could vote your way," the storekeeper allowed. "I was leanin' that
way, but I'd care for you more if the Rivington men cared for you less."
Now Forrest showed anger. "Any man who wants to keep the right of
property in niggers is a Patriot, by Page 271
God. If that's you, you're with me, same as they are. And if it ain't, be
damned to you." He spun away as if Liles had ceased to exist.
"He doesn't leave much room for doubt, does he?" Caudell said after they
had finally got free of the crowd and headed back toward the buggy.
"No." Liles still looked like a man who'd bitten into something sour. "That'll
hurt him, too."
"Good," Caudell said. He waited for the storekeeper to argue with him, but
Liles just kept walking. No sooner had Robert E. Lee ventured outside the
Powhatan House to enjoy the brisk fall air than reporters swooped down on
him like stooping hawks. He nodded to them, unsurprised; they had become
familiar over the past few months. By unspoken agreement, they let him
alone as long as he was within the hotel, but he became fair game the
moment his foot hit the sidewalk.
"Mr. Quincy, you were here half a step ahead of the rest, I believe," Lee
said to the man from the Richmond Whig.
"Thank you, General." Virgil Quincy poised pencil over pad. "If I may ask,
why have you chosen to remain here in Virginia while Bedford Forrest
travels all over the country, speaking, it seems, at every town big enough to
boast a railroad station?"
"General Forrest is, of course, free to conduct his campaign in any fashion
that suits him." Lee had learned to speak slowly enough to let the reporters
take down his words. "I might add a point which sometimes seems in
danger of being forgotten: that is to say, I also enjoy the same freedom. The
entire Confederacy surely knows where I stand on the issues of the day;
perhaps General Forrest still feels the need to make his ideas more widely
accessible to the voters."
Quincy twirled a waxed mustache between thumb and forefinger as he
considered his next question.
"How do you feel about Forrest's questioning your initial loyalty to the
Confederate cause?"
"I prefer to allow my contributions to that cause to speak for themselves. If
they do not make it plain where my loyalty lay, nothing I can say will do
so." For public consumption, Lee kept his fury tightly bottled. He was used
to newspapers sniping at him from time to time. But to have his loyalty
impugned by a man he had admired until their differing views created a
chasm between them, and for no better purpose than political advantagethat
was hard to bear. He had not imagined Forrest would stoop so low,
which, if anything, but served to illuminate his own political naivete'. Virgil
Quincy took a step back; Lee's rule was to allow each reporter two
questions. Edwin Helper of the Richmond Dispatch approached in Quincy's
place. "To change the subject, if I may, sir, what do you think of the war just
begun by the United States against England over the Canadas?"
"I deprecate war in general," Lee replied. "As to this war in particular, I
would be less than truthful if I said I was sorry to see so many U.S. troops
drawn hundreds of miles to the north of our frontier." He smiled; several
reporters chuckled. He added, "Even with the accession of Kentucky to the
Confederacy, the United States are a larger, more populous nation than the
C.S.A. The implications to be drawn from that should be clear to the
observer."
"They're not quite clear to me," Helper said. "What do you think our course
ought to be?"
"To continue the scrupulous neutrality President Davis has proclaimed and
is observing," Lee answered at Page 272
once. "Any other course involves us in risks which should not be run."
Senator Wigfall was shouting for a Southern invasion to seize the slave
states remaining in the U.S.A. while that country was otherwise engaged.
Some fire-eaters shouted right along with him. Others, though,
remembering how England's not-so-scrupulous neutrality had almost ruined
the Confederacy during the war, were all for allying with the United States
against her.
"Should we not at least demand concessions from the U.S.A. as the price of
our neutrality? " asked Rex Van Lew of the Richmond Examiner.
Lee shook his head. "They are our brothers. Though we no longer live in
the same house with them, having grown up to enjoy one of our own,
putting demands upon brothers strikes me as a bad business, and one which
cannot fail to bring resentment."
"He's right about that, by God," Virgil Quincy said. "IVe yet to hear the end
of the time I asked my brother for fifty dollars, and it was back before the
war."
The reporters laughed. Lee walked down Broad Street with the
newpapermen trailing along behind him. Van Lew said, "What is your
opinion of General Forrest's actively campaigning for a whole year in his
quest to defeat you?"
"I admire his energy without wishing to employ mine to similar purpose,"
Lee said. "I also doubt the benefit, either to the nation or to the electorate,
of repeating oneself so often. Now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I
should like to get in something of a constitutional." He increased his pace.
The reporters were decades younger than he-he would be sixty-one come
January-but several of them began puffing as they hurried to keep up.
Rex Van Lew had used up his allotted questions, but asked another one
anyhow: "How will you feel when the election is over, sir?"
"Relieved," Lee answered promptly.
"Win or lose?" three reporters asked at the same time.
"Win or lose," he said. "Relieved at least of suspense if I win, relieved of
responsibility if I lose. While I hope and expect to win, the prospect of quiet
retirement is by no means altogether unattractive, I assure you."
He walked on. Three years before, the Army of Northern Virginia had
paraded in triumph down this very street. Now most of those soldiers were
long since back at their peacetime trades. That, he thought, was as it should
be. He blinked, then smiled-he even had a peacetime trade of his own,
though he'd never expected to turn politician.
"What's funny, General?" Edwin Helper asked.
"Life; or, if you'd like, the fortunes of war," Lee said. In Capitol Square,
George Washington in bronze pointed ahead, urging on invisible followers,
or perhaps the country as a whole. Lee gravely tipped his hat to his wife's
adoptive ancestor, then went on with his constitutional.
Nate Caudell gauged the creeping shadows in the classroom. He put down
his chalk. "That's enough for now. We'll pick it up again after dinner."
Several students let out barely suppressed cheers and grabbed for the bags
and old newspapers in which they'd brought their noontime meals. For that
matter, his Page 273
stomach was growling, too.
He wolfed his ham and corn bread, gulped from a canteen full of cold
coffee. Then he hurried over to the town square. Extra flags flew above the
courthouse; a long line of men snaked in through the front door. Unfamiliar
buggies and wagons, horses and mules, were hitched everywhere-farmers
from half the county were in town to vote today.
A lot of them were men he'd known in the army but seldom saw these days.
He waved to Dempsey Eure, who was just tying his horse in a narrow space
between two buggies. They got into line together.
"Patriot or Confederate?" Caudell asked. Since Eure had heckled Mayor
Cockrell at the Forrest rally, he thought he knew what answer to expect.
Sure enough, the ex-sergeant said, "I'm voting Confederate. I followed
Marse Robert into Washington City, so I don't reckon I'll run away from
him now. How about you, Nate?"
"The same," Caudell said. "He ought to have an easy time of it here and in
Virginia, where so many served under him. Out farther west, though, they
know about him but they don't really know him, if you know what I mean.
And they do know Forrest out there."
"That's why they vote-to see what happens," Eure said.
"Yup." Caudell looked his friend over, smiled as he saw something familiar.
"You still wear a feather in your hat, do you? How are you getting along?"
"I get by," Dempsey Eure said with a shrug. "Married Lemon Strickland's
sister Lucy not long after I got home, you know. We got ourselves a boy
two years old, an' she's in the family way again. How times does get onbefore
too long, suppose I'll be sendin' Wiley to that school of yours. You
fix him so he knows more'n his old man, you hear?"
"If he's anything like his old man, he'll do fine," Caudell said. He noticed
Eure hadn't really said anything about his fortunes except I get by. He didn't
push for more; come to that, he couldn't have said more himself.
The line advanced. Caudell blinked as he went from sunshine into the
gloom inside the courthouse. Mayor Cockrell and Cornelius Joyner, the
justice of the peace, sat behind a stout wooden table. "Here's the roll, Nate,"
Joyner said when Caudell came up to him. "Sign your name on the line." He
pointed to show where.
Caudell signed. Quite a lot of men had already voted. Most had signed their
names, but for a depressingly large number of voters, only an X, witnessed
by mayor and justice of the peace, appeared in the signature column of the
register. Isaac Cockrell handed Caudell a ballot and a much-sharpened stub
of pencil.
He voted for Lee and for Albert Gallatin Brown without hesitation, then
went on through the rest of his choices. Sion Rogra, he saw, was running for
Congress and billing himself a Confederate. Caudell voted for him. He
might have done so even if Rogers ran as a Patriot, for he'd been the 47th
North Carolina's first colonel until he resigned his commission early in
1863 to become Attorney General of North Carolina.
When Caudell was done, he folded his ballot and returned it to Cornelius
Joyner, who slid it through the slot of a wooden box with an impressively
stout padlock. "Nathaniel N. Caudell has voted," the justice of Page 274
the peace intoned, his voice loud and deep enough to make Caudell proud
of having done his civic duty.
"Wait a minute," Mayor Cockrell exclaimed when Caudell started to walk
out with the pencil. "You bring that back right now, you hear? We're startin'
to run low on 'em." Red-faced, Caudell returned the little stub.
Meanwhile, Judge Joyner announced to the world that Dempsey Eure had
exercised his franchise. Eure's eyes were twinkling as he left the courthouse
with Caudell. "You should've told him to buy a substitute for his damn
pencil, Nate," he said. "That was you back this spring, wasn't it? Sure
sounded like you if it wasn't."
"It was me, all right," Caudell said. "Good thing his honor's ears aren't as
good as yours." The clock above the courthouse chimed one. "I Ve got to
get back to the schoolhouse, Dempsey, before they burn it down. By God,
it's good to see you."
"And you." Dempsey Eure thumped him on the back. "I wondered if they'd
have to get us back into butternut before we met up again."
"It would take a good deal to get me back into uniform, and that's a fact,"
Caudell said. His friend laughed and nodded. He went on, "I really do have
to get back." He hurried on down Alston Street while Dempsey Eure went
to reclaim his horse.
When he walked into the schoolroom again, one of the little boys there
called, "Who won the election, teacher?"
Through the snorts and giggles of the older pupils, Caudell-who had to
smile himself-gravely answered,
"We won't know for a few days yet, Willie. They have to count all the votes
and send the count to Richmond, which takes a while. Now, class, who can
tell me all twelve Confederate states and their capitals?" Hands shot into the
air.
As he had in the Gait House in Louisville, so Lee now sat in the dining
room of the Powhatan House in Richmond with telegrams piled so high on
the table in front of him that he could hardly get to, let alone enjoy, his plate
of smothered chicken. He knew now that he'd been foolish to order his
favorite dish on a night when he couldn't give it his full attention.
A boy brought in a new set of returns. Since Lee had knife in one hand and
fork in the other-he did manage a distracted bite every now and then-Albert
Gallatin Brown took the telegrams. As he read them, his face fell. "Forrest
and Wigfall remain ahead of us in Louisiana."
"That is unfortunate," Lee said-blurrily, as his mouth was full. He chewed,
swallowed, and resumed, sounding like himself again: "I had hoped to carry