Notes

Caudell was not the only man who remembered. Several other veterans
whooped in gleeful derision at his cry.
Isaac Cockrell flinched but quickly gathered himself. "My friends," he said
yet again, and this time was able to go on from there: "My friends, we're
here tonight to show we all want Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the next
President of our Confederate States of America."
Forrest's Trees raised a cheer. So did a good many men and women in the
crowd; the women, of course, could not vote, but they enjoyed a rousing
political spectacle no less than their husbands and brothers, fathers and
sons. But Caudell's was not the only voice that shouted "No!"-far from it.
To drown out then-opponents, the Trees started singing the "Bedford
Forrest Quickstep" again. Henry Pleasants knew the answer to that. "Lee!"
he boomed, making his voice as deep as he could.
"Lee! Lee! Lee!" Caudell joined the one-word chant. So did the other Lee
men-most of them veterans like him. Their cry rose to rival the bawled-out
"Quickstep."
Raeford Liles was singing Forrest's anthem at the top of his lungs. He saw
that Caudell belonged to the other camp. "You look like no thin' but a stupid
damn tree frog, Nate, hunchin' up your shoulders every time you chirp out
'Lee!' "
"I 'd sooner look like a tree frog than have the brains of one," Caudell
retorted. Liles stuck out his tongue. Caudell said, "Who looks froggy now?"
Having launched into his speech, Mayor Cockrell kept on with it through
the hubbub, though for some time no one except perhaps the Trees up on
the platform with him could hear a word he was saying. Just as well,
Caudell thought. But gradually, backers of Forrest and Lee both quieted
down enough to get bits Page 258
of the mayor's speech: "Do you want your niggers taken away from you? If
you do, vote for Lee, sure enough. Vote for Forrest, though, and your
children'11 still keep 'em, and your grandchildren, too."
"What niggers?" a heckler yelled from the back of the crowd. "I ain't got no
niggers. Most of us ain't got no niggers-ain't got the money for it. How
many niggers you got, Cockrell?" That hit home hard enough to make the
mayor draw back a pace. He owned about half a dozen Negroes, which,
while it did not make him a planter, certainly established him as well-to-do.
He rallied gamely, though: "Even if you don't own any niggers, do you want
them free to work for low wages, lower than a white man would take?"
The heckler-Caudell suddenly grinned, recognizing Demp-sey Eure's voicewould
not be stilled: "Can't hardly work for less'n I make, farmin' the place
I farm."
Cockrell's argument might have carried more force in a bigger town, a place
where more people did in fact work for wages. But Nash County was
overwhelmingly rural, even by the standards of North Carolina. Tied to the
soil as they were, its people had scant experience with wages of any sort,
high or low.
Seeing their speaker falter, Forrest's Trees started singing again. By then
their torches were guttering out, letting the square return to night. Caudell
and the other Lee backers answered the "Quickstep" with their own call.
Both groups, though, were running out of steam. By ones and twos, people
began drifting away. Sometimes, in low voices, they carried on their
arguments. Sometimes, away from the heat of the rally, they found
themselves able to laugh at how stirred they'd gotten.
Caudell said, "It's still early spring. We'll all be done to a turn if this kind of
thing keeps up till November."
"Keeps life from getting dull, doesn't it?" Pleasants answered as he walked
back toward the stable to get his horse.
"I suppose so." Caudell walked on another few steps with his friend, then
added wistfully, "I remember when life was dull, or I thought it was,
anyway. You know what? Looking back, it doesn't seem so bad." Lee had
been waiting for the knock on the door of the suite at the Powhatan House.
He got up and opened the door. "Senator Brown!" he said, extending his
hand."Thank you for doing me the honor of coming here."
"The honor is mine, sir." Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi was a
strikingly handsome man in his early fifties, with dark wavy hair worn
rather long, and bushy side-whiskers that reached down to the line of his
jaw. His suit was of the most stylish cut (a good deal more so than Lee's);
his patent leather shoes gleamed in the gaslight.
"Do please sit down," Lee said, waving him to a chair. Brown sank back
into the soft cushions, crossed his legs, lay one arm on the velvet arm of the
seat. He seemed the picture of ease; Lee envied him his ability to relax so
completely. "You are perhaps curious as to why I asked if you would see me
today."
"Call me-intrigued." Brown's dark eyes, shadowed in their sockets, revealed
very little. He was a veteran politician, having served in the Mississippi
state legislature, in the U.S. Congress, and as a U.S. senator alongside
Jefferson Davis until his state left the Union. He'd also fought as a
Confederate captain before he was chosen for the new nation's Senate.
Page 259
Lee said, "My purpose is not to keep you in suspense, sir. I want to ask if
you will serve as my Vice-Presidential candidate for the forthcoming
elections."
Brown's relaxation dropped from him like a cloak. He leaned forward in his
seat, said softly, "I thought it might be so. Even to be considered as your
running mate does me more credit than I deserve-"
"Not at all, sir."
But Brown had not finished. "-Yet before I say yea or nay, there are certain
matters concerning which I must satisfy myself. " He waited to see how Lee
would take that.
Lee was delighted. "If my views are in any way unclear to you, I would not
have you blindly embrace them. Ask what you will."
"Thank you, sir." Brown dipped his head. "In one way, your invitation to me
is surprising, for I perceived you as being President Davis's chosen
successor and, as you may know, the President and I have not always been
in complete accord." That was an understatement. While willing to do
whatever proved necessary to win the war, Brown had consistently
maintained war powers resided with the Confederate Congress, not with the
President. He obviously remembered the angry exchanges he'd had with
Davis.
"Had it not been for the President's urging, I should not have sought the
Presidency; that I admit," Lee said. "I could hardly deny it-I was never
struck with political ambition, nor do I feel it now to any great degree. But
if you doubt I am my own man, then I thank you for your time here today
and apologize for having inconvenienced you. I will discuss the position
with someone else."
"No need," Brown said quickly, holding up a hand; he had political
ambition. "You are quite clear; indeed, the fact that you have asked me says
a great deal for your independence from Davis in and of itself. But the next
question cuts to the bone: what precisely is your stand on the Negro and his
place in our society?"
"I do not believe we can successfully keep him in bonds forever, and so I
feel we must begin the process of lifting those bonds as quickly as is
practicable, lest he tear them off himself and, in so doing, work far more
harm upon us. If you find that position untenable, sir, the door is but a few
steps away." Brown did not get up and leave. But he did not sing hosannas
in praise of Lee's generosity, either. He said, "Let me quote for you article
one, section nine, clause four of the Constitution of the Confederate States:
'No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right
of property in Negro slaves shall be passed.' "
"I am familiar with the clause," Lee said. "That it is an impediment to what
I propose, I cannot deny. Let me ask you a question in return, if I may." He
waited for Brown to nod before continuing: "Suppose the war, instead of
turning in our favor in 1864, had taken a downhill course, as it might well
have done without our troops' being newly armed with repeaters. Would
you then have favored giving weapons to and emancipating certain of our
slaves in order to preserve our republic, the Constitution notwithstanding?"
"In such a crisis, I would," Brown said after only a brief pause for thought.
"Saving the nation is to me more important than any temporary damage to
the Constitution, which can be made good later if the nation survives."
"Fair enough. I submit to you, then, that the Negro as slave presents us with
a continuing crisis, even if Page 260
one less imminent than the prospect of forfeiting the Second American
Revolution. The time to deal with it is before it becomes imminent, lest we
be forced to act in haste and perhaps desperation." Brown pondered that,
then startled Lee by throwing back his head and laughing. At Lee's
quizzical look, he explained rather sheepishly, "I marvel that I am sitting
here listening to you at all, let alone carefully considering your ideas, when
in the U.S. Congress I called for opening California to slavery, by force of
arms if necessary, and for the annexation to the United States of Cuba and
the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Potosf to serve for the planting and
spreading of slavery."
"Yet here you sit," Lee said. From Brown's words and votes in the
Confederate Senate, he had gathered that the man was moderate on the
question of the Negro. He had not thought to go back and learn what Brown
had said as a U.S. congressman and senator. That, evidently, had been an
oversight on his part. He wondered why the man did not rise up on his hind
legs and storm out, as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Andries Rhoodie had
before him in like circumstances.
"Here I sit," Brown agreed. He laughed again. "Circumstances alter cases.
When we were part of the United States, we had to seek to extend slavery
wherever we might to balance the corresponding expansion of the Northern
States and our consequent loss of power within the U.S. But now we are no
longer within the U.S. and may act as we deem best, without fear it will
weaken us before our political foes."
"That is most sensibly spoken, sir," Lee said with admiration. "Then you are
with me?"
"I have not said so," Brown answered sharply. "I concede there may be
circumstances under which some form of emancipation is justified. We
must, however, offer the voters a program they can stomach, or all this fine
talk is so much moonshine. How do you propose to go about setting the
niggers free?"
"In a word, gradually," Lee said. "I have, I hope you will believe, given this
a good deal of thought. I do not and shall not propose confiscatory
legislation. I understand that would be politically impracticable."
"I hope you do," Brown said. "If you don't get elected, nothing else
matters." Again Lee longed for the clean, well-defined world of the soldier,
where compromise had to be made only with weather and terrain and what
the enemy would allow, not with one^ own principles. But the politician
who could bring home half a loaf counted himself ahead of the game.
"I do not wish slavery to become the sole issue in this campaign," Lee said.
"Many others are of no small urgency: our relations with the United Slates,
the still deplorable state of our finances, and our posture relative to
Maximilian and the Mexican insurgents, to name just a few. We have yet
even to establish a Supreme Court. On none of these matters has Forrest
expressed a position; he owns but one drum to beat."
"A good point, and one we can tax him with. But none of those, save maybe
what we do about the United States, will make people sweat. They'll get up
in arms over the nigger question. You still need to answer me about that."
"So I do," Lee said. "As I see it, as a beginning we need ID encourage
emancipation in every way possible and to prepare freedmen to learn useful
trades. During the war, several of our states relaxed their laws against
slaves' learning to read and write. I would extend that relaxation throughout
the Confederacy. For the next step, I would propose a law allowing a slave,
or anyone else on behalf of that slave, to pay for his release at the price for
which he had been sold or was valued by a competent Page 261
appraiser, the owner not having the privilege of refusing said price." Albert
Gallatin Brown pursed his lips. "You might get by with that, not least
because it is so much less radical than what hotheads on the other side say
you want."
"I have not finished," Lee warned. Brown sat back and composed himself to
listen further. "If a slave or someone who wished to buy his freedom could
not pay the whole price at once, I would let them pay one sixth, the master
again being compelled to accept, to give the slave one day to work for
himself each week, another free day being added for each sixth paid, until
the slave's labor is entirely his own."
"That goes farther, but is again reasonable, and certainly not confiscatory,"
Brown said.
"The plan is modeled after one proposed but unfortunately not accepted
some years ago in the Empire of Brazil," Lee said. "Since I became
convinced of the necessity of this change, I have sought intently for ways to
facilitate it. My former aide Charles Marshall, whose training is in the law,
recently brought the Brazilian proposal to my notice. To it I would add a
couple of additional features."
"Which are?" Brown asked.
"First, I would take a small percentage of the property tax paid into the
Treasury on slaves each year and use it to establish an emancipation fund to
free or begin freeing as many Negroes as this revenue would permit. And
second, I would propose a law to the effect that all Negroes born after a
certain date should be reckoned freebom, though owing service to their
mothers' masters for the first twenty-one years of their lives, in which time
they should also be prepared to live free. I have in mind, you see, not to
murder slavery, but to let it peacefully die of old age."
"Ten years ago, in Charleston or Mobile or Vicksburg, they'd have hanged
you from a lamp post for putting forward a scheme like that," Brown
remarked. He ran a finger along the bottom edge of a side-whisker as he
thought. Finally he said, "We've all seen a great many surprising things
these past ten years, haven't we? All right, General Lee, I'm with you."
"Splendid!" Lee stuck out his hand. "Sir, we are confederates." Brown's
gaze suddenly turned inward. "Not just confederates," he said quietly, "but
Confederates." Lee could hear the capital letter falling into place. Brown
went on, "I think you've just named our party."
"Confederates." Lee tasted the word on his tongue. He said it again, firmly,
and nodded. "Confederates we are."
The fiddler and banjo player swung from "Ye Cavaliers of Dixie" to
"Stonewall Jackson's Way" to
"Mister, Here's Your Mule." Hearing the old war songs again took Nate
Caudell back to campfires and sore feet and the smell of powder. Nothing
made a man feel so intensely alive as knowing he might not be alive much
longer.
When the musicians played "Dixie," that remembered intensity-cherished
all the more now that it was gone-filled him too full to let him keep on
singing as he had been doing. From somewhere deep inside him, a rebel
yell clawed its way up his throat and out between his teeth. It was not a
sound that properly belonged in the sleepy, peaceful Nashville town square,
but he did not care. He had to let it loose or burst.
Nor was his the only yell that ripped through the afternoon. Most of the
men in the crowd-almost all the Page 262
men under forty-five in the crowd-were veterans of the Second American
Revolution, and most of them, by their faces, by their shouts, were as
caught up in their memories as he was. A hat sailed through the air, then
another.
The last sweet notes of "Dixie" died away. The banjo man and fiddler got
down from the flag-draped platform. George Lewis climbed up onto it.
Caudell found himself coming to attention and had to fight back a sudden,
sharp order to the people around him to straighten their ranks. Then he saw
a good many other men, especially those who had fought in the Castalia
Invincibles under Captain Lewis, were also squaring their shoulders and
bringing their feet together.
But Lewis was not wearing a captain's three bars these days, only the wing
collar and cravat that befit a prosperous civilian and legislator. The collar fit
snugly, too; he had to have gained twenty or thirty pounds in his time down
in Raleigh. Noticing that made Caudell smile; anyone who hadn't put on
weight since his army days wasn't half trying.
Lewis said, "My friends, I don't even know that we needed to get together
here today. So many of us marched under Marse Robert, fought under
Marse Robert-we all know what he's like. Is there anybody here from the
Army of Northern Virginia who's such a big fool that he doesn't aim to vote
for Robert E. Lee come November?"
"No!" Caudell shouted. So did most of the men around him. Carried away
by the moment, several women called "No!" too.
But most was not all. Just as Caudell had heckled Isaac Cock-rell at the
Forrest rally, so now someone bellowed, "I ain't gonna vote for nobody who
wants to take my niggers away!" Cockrell had tried to go on as if no one
were harassing him. George Lewis met his challenger head-on. Peering into
the crowd to see who had shouted at him, he said, "Jonas Perry, you are a
big fool." That raised a laugh. Lewis went on, "For one thing, everybody
here knows those three niggers of yours don't do a lick of work anyway, so
they'd be no great loss to you." The laugh got louder; whenever he was in
town, Perry spent most of his time complaining about how lazy his slaves
were. Lewis grew serious:
"Anyhow, Lee doesn't aim to take away anybody's niggers. That's a damned
lie."
"He don't want us to keep 'em no more, neither," Jonas Perry yelled back.
"How we gonna get our crops in without 'em? You, Mr. Big Assemblyman
George Lewis, sir, you got a lot more niggers'n me. How you aim to get
your crops in without 'em?"
Lewis hesitated. The crowd muttered. Caudell started to worry. If a rally
went wrong, a lot of votes could go wrong, too. He looked around. Like
him, a lot of people stood tensely, waiting to hear what George Lewis
would say. Along with the whites, he also saw several colored men and
women in the square. They were not part of the rally; they had work to do.
But whatever they were doing, they had their heads turned toward the
platform on which some of them had been sold. All at once, Caudell
realized the election in which they could not take part mattered more to
them than to him or George Lewis or any white man. He would merely be
dissatisfied with the results if Lee lost, while they would have any hope of
liberty dashed for at least six years.
Almost too late, Lewis answered Jonas Perry: "Jonas, if I said I liked the
whole of Lee's plan, I'd be a liar. But the way I look at it is this: Sometimes
holding on to a thing just for the sake of holding on to it gets to be more
trouble than it's worth. Bedford Forrest did everything he could to whip the
niggers in arms and make them stop fighting, but you still read about bushwhackings
and murders in Louisiana and Arkansas and Mississippi in the
papers all the time. And Tennessee-the Yankees sat on Tennessee for Page
263
two years and turned every nigger in the state loose, near enough. There's
not a prayer of getting them all back with their proper masters there. Hell's
bells, man, you know half the free niggers, and then some right here in
North Carolina were slaves before the Yankees came down on the coast I'm
not asking you to like it I'm asking you if it's true. Is it?"
"Yes, but-" Perry said.