Notes

give a choicer target than a man on foot? That was true before; what with
the coming of the repeater, it's doubly so these days."
"Many others did likewise, both among the enemy and our own horse
soldiers," Lee said, thinking of Jeb Stuart. "How do you account for your
greater success with the tactic?"
"From what I've seen, sir, most of 'em did it because circumstances forced it
on 'em. Me, I aimed to fight my men so from the start. I drove 'em hard, too,
and always stayed up at the very front of the pack. With all the guns my
own escort party carried, I used it to plug any holes or to break through
when I saw the chance." Forrest grinned again. "Worked right well, too."
"There I cannot disagree," Lee said thoughtfully. "Should we style your
men dragoons, then?"
"General Lee, I don't care what you call them, and they don't care what you
call them. But when you do call them, they fight like wildcats with
rattlesnake fangs, and that I do care about. Will you pass me the sweet
potatoes, sir?"
Lee watched the way Julia acted around Forrest. She was a good enough
servant not to ignore him altogether, but she plainly wanted to. Yet even
when she was busy at the opposite end of the table, her eyes, big and
fearful, kept sliding toward him. He must have seemed the bogeyman
incarnate to her; Negroes had been using his name to frighten their children
ever since the Fort Pillow massacre, and his Page 235
campaigns against the black soldiers left behind in the Mississippi valley
when Union forces abandoned Confederate soil only made his reputation
the more fearsome.
He knew it, too. Every so often, when he spied Julia watching him, he
would raise an eyebrow or bare his teeth for a moment. He never did
anything overt enough for Lee to call him on it, but Julia finally dropped a
silver ladle, picked it up, and fled as ignominiously as the luckless Federal
general Sturgis, whom Forrest had smashed though outnumbered better than
two to one. Chuckling, Forrest said,
"Sturgis moaned to one of his colonels, 'For God's sake, if Mr. Forrest will
let me alone, I will let him alone.' But I wouldn't let him alone; I aimed to
whip him out of his boots, and I did it." Mildred Lee rose from her chair. "If
you men are going to fight your battles across the tablecloth, I will leave
you to your sport."
"If you stay, we won't fight them," Forrest said quickly.
Hard-bitten as he was, he could also be charming, especially to women.
But Mildred shook her head. "No, I should only spoil your fun, for you
know you'd still wish to, and Father did not bring you home so he could
listen to me. He can do that any night, after all."
"He can do that any night, after all, when he is in Richmond," Mary Custis
Lee said, an edge to her voice. Lee sighed silently. Even after nine months
without straying from the capital, his wife had not forgiven him his long trip
to Kentucky and Missouri. Mildred turned and left the room, followed by
Agnes and Mary; Lee's eldest daughter wheeled Mary Custis Lee ahead of
her.
"Well." Lee rose, took a cigar case off a cabinet shelf, offered Forrest a
smoke. Forrest shook his head. "I never got the habit, but you go on
yourself."
"I don't use them, either, I keep them for guests." Lee put the case away,
then asked, "Did you also come to Richmond to see the men from America
Will Break?"
"What if I did?" Forrest said. "Those repeaters of theirs made my men five
times the fighters they would have been without them." He gave Lee a
measuring stare. "By all accounts, we'd have lost the war without their aid."
"By all accounts indeed." Lee studied Nathan Bedford Forrest in return.
Cautiously, he said, "Am I to infer that the accounts you mentioned include
the one given by the Rivington men themselves?"
"Just so. I gather you've also heard this account?" Forrest waited for Lee to
nod, then said softly, almost to himself, "I wondered if I was the only one
they'd told. Well, no matter." He gathered himself. "Do you believe what
they say, sir?"
"Or do I find it fantastic, you mean? I can imagine nothing more fantastic
than men traveling in time as if by railroad." Forrest started to say
something; Lee held up a hand. "But I believe nonetheless. Any madman
may claim to come from the future, but madmen do not commonly carry
proof for their assertions. Their artifacts convince more strongly than their
words."
"My thought exactly, General Lee." Forrest drew in a long, relieved breath.
"But with the artifacts comes the tale, and the tale they tell of the history
ahead makes me believe more what I already thought: that the South is the
last and brightest hope of the white race, and if we ever turn loose of the
niggers here, they'll Page 236
ruin everything everywhere."
"If all the Rivington men say is true, that may be a justifiable conclusion,"
Lee said. Maybe that belief explained some of Forrest's savage conduct in
his war against the blacks, although, as he'd said himself, he'd had no use
for Negroes-save as a source of income-even before the Rivington men
came to help the Confederacy win its independence. Lee went on, "Yet all
the trend of the nineteenth century makes me wonder. The nations of
Europe almost unanimously find chattel slavery abhorrent, and us on
account of it; most of the South American republics have abandoned it;
even brutal Russia has freed its serfs. The trend in history seems to be ever
toward more liberty, not less."
"Are you saying you believe the Negroes ought to be freed, sir, after the war
we fit to keep them slaves?" Forrest's voice remained low and polite, but
took on an unmistakable note of warning; his rather sallow complexion
turned a shade redder.
"We fought the war, as you say, to ensure we would be the only ones with
the right to either preserve our institutions or change them, and we have
won that right," Lee answered. "Not only the opinions of the outside world
but also the course of the war and of your own gallant efforts after our
armistice with the United States have compelled me to alter somewhat my
view of the black man."
"Not me mine, by God," Forrest growled. "At Fort Pillow, we killed five
hundred niggers for a loss of twenty of our own; the Mississippi ran red for
two hundred yards with their blood. That ought to show Negro soldiers
cannot cope with Southerners-in other words, that they deserve to be just
what and where they are."
"They fought well enough at Bealeton, and elsewhere against the Army of
Northern Virginia in our advance on Washington City," Lee said: "no worse
than their equally inexperienced white counterparts, at any rate. And in your
campaigns in the lands formerly under Federal occupation, have you found
them such easy prey as you did at Fort Pillow?"
He purposely did not mention the stories that said most of the Negroes at
Fort Pillow had been slain after they surrendered. Forrest bristled even so.
"Even a rat will fight, if you push him into a corner," he said
contemptuously.
"But if you don't, he will not," Lee replied. "The Negroes could quietly
have returned to their bonds, at no danger to themselves. That they chose
what most of them must have known to be a futile fight-all the more so, as
your men were armed with repeaters-must, I believe, provoke the
contemplation of any thoughtful man."
"Their grandfathers fit when they were in Africa, too, I expect," Forrest said
with a shrug: "fit and lost, or they'd not have been caught and shipped over
here. The ones I fit after the armistice? They were better than those
worthless, hapless niggers at Fort Pillow, that I grant you. But that they fit
'well enough'? I deny it, sir, or I'd not have licked them over and over
again."
"There our opinions differ," Lee said. Forrest inclined his head to show he
agreed with that much, if with nothing else Lee had said. Lee persisted, "I
do not feel the views of the rest of the world may be ignored with safety for
our state, nor do I think we can take the Negro's lack of manliness as much
for granted as before. Sooner than see the Confederacy eternally plagued
with revolt and insurrection, should we not begin a program of-"
"Just one damned minute, sir," Forrest broke in. Lee blinked; he was not
used to being interrupted, let alone so rudely. Forrest sprang up from his
chair and thrust his face, now quite red, up against Lee's. Page 237
"General Lee, you're high-born, you're high-minded, you might as well be a
saint carved out of marble, and everybody says you'll be President as soon
as Jeff Davis steps down. But if you are talking in any way, shape, or size
about making people free niggers, sir, I will fight you with every ounce of
strength in my body. And I won't be alone, sir, I promise you that. I won't be
alone." Lee rose, too. He wondered if Forrest would lay hands on him. The
cavalry officer was some years his junior, but Lee promised him a nasty
surprise if he struck first. He also wondered if Forrest would challenge him.
He did not consider Forrest a gentleman, but the Tennesseean no doubt
thought of himself as one... and was no doubt very quick with a pistol. But
he had offered Forrest no personal insult: if anything, the reverse was true.
The two men glared at each other at closer than arm's length for some little
while. Lee battled down his own rage, said tightly, "General Forrest, I no
longer find you an agreeable guest here, nor will you be welcome at my
home again."
Forrest snapped his fingers-left-handed; he had also eaten that way. "See
how much I 'd care to come back. I 'd just as soon eat at Thaddeus Stevens's
house. The men of America Will Break may have saved the South from his
tender mercies, but I see we can grow our own crop of Judases." He spun
on his heel and stomped away, his boots crashing on the wood floor, then
slammed the door so violently that the flame in every lamp and candle in
the dining room jumped. Lee listened to his furious footsteps receding
down the walk. He slammed the iron gate that gave onto the street with a
loud metallic clang. Several women exclaimed upstairs. Lee walked to the
bottom of the stairway and called, "It's perfectly all right, my dears. General
Forrest chose to leave a bit sooner than he thought he might, that's all." But
it wasn't all right, and he knew it. Till now, his only enemies had been men
his professional duty called him to oppose: Mexicans, western Indians, John
Brown, soldiers and officers of the United States. Now he had a personal
foe, and a dangerous one. He blew a long breath out through his mustache.
He could feel the difference. He did not care for it.
Nate Caudell wiped sweat from his forehead, paused to rest a moment in
the shade of a willow tree. His chuckle was half amused, half chagrined.
Henry Pleasants's new farm was only five miles or so up the road from
Nashville toward Castalia, and here he'd started breathing hard before it
came into sight. In the army, a five-mile march wouldn't have been worth
complaining about. "I'm getting lazy and soft," he said out loud.
He pushed on. Before long, he came to a split-rail fence. As soon as he
turned into the lane that led to the farmhouse, a white man who was hoeing
a vegetable garden enclosed by another fence turned and let out a loud
halloo to announce his arrival. The fellow's voice had an Irish lilt to it;
when he turned back toward Caudell, his pale, freckled face looked vaguely
familiar.
"Good day," Caudell said, lifting his hat. "Have I seen you somewhere
before?"
"Faith, sir, I don't think so. John Moring I am, and I Ve spent most of me
time till now down by Raleigh-saving a spell in the army, that is."
"That's where-" Caudell began, and then stopped. Moring hadn't been in his
company, and had disappeared from the Forty-Seventh North Carolina not
long after Gettysburg. But that was almost three years ago now, and no one
these days was making any effort to track down deserters. Caudell
shrugged.
"Never mind. Is Mr. Pleasants at home?"
Page 238
"You're Nate Caudell, are ye not? Aye, he's here, sir. Where else would he
be?" Caudell lifted his hat again, walked on down the lane. He passed a
stable with a cattle pen beside it, jumped over a tiny stream, then went by a
corncrib and a woodpile. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the pigpen by
the corncrib, but beyond it stood the farmhouse, in the middle of a large,
irregular yard where chickens and turkeys scratched.
Henry Pleasants came out onto the house's covered porch just as Caudell
got to the end of the yard. He waved to his friend and hurried over to greet
him. Barnyard fowl scattered, clucking and gobbling indignantly. "Hello,
Nate," he said, pumping Caudell's hand. He waved out to the fields that
stretched back from the house. "Crop should be all right, God willing,
though weVe had less rain than I 'd hoped for."
"Good." Caudell looked at the fields, too, and back at the cow bam and
pigpen, then at the farmhouse itself, a two-story whitewashed clapboard
building with a timbered roof and a tall brick chimney-no planter's mansion
this, but no hovel, either. "It all looks very fine, Henry. I'm happy for you."
"I still need a man with a good head for figures, Nate, to keep me from
having to do my own bookkeeping," Pleasants said. "You know I'd pay you
better than your schoolteaching does." He'd made that offer the last time
Caudell came to the farm, too. As he had then, Caudell shook his head. "I
like teaching school, Henry. It's not a line of work you get into for the
money. And besides, I'd sooner be your friend than your hired man."
"The one wouldn't leave out the other, Nate. You know that."
"All right, but no thank you all the same." Caudell knew nothing of the sort.
As a teacher, he worked for wages but was largely free in what he did and
how he did it. That suited his independent nature far better than sitting at a
ledger with Henry Pleasants looking over his shoulder ever could. A black
man carrying a jar of whiskey and two glasses came out of the farmhouse.
"Thank you, Israel," Pleasants said.
"I knew I hadn't seen you around the general store lately, Israel," Caudell
said. "When did you start working for Henry here?"
"Two-three weeks ago, sun," the Negro answered. "Mistuh Pleasants, he
pay as good as Mistuh Liles, an' he got mo' books to read, too. Now I
learned how, I surely do love to read, suh, that I do. Mistuh Liles, he fuss
some when I go, but it weren't like he own me."
"Only trouble I have with Israel is getting his nose out of a book when I
need him for something," Pleasants said. "If I can teach him ciphering,
maybe I'll make him my bookkeeper, Nate, since you don't want the job."
He spoke jocularly, but then turned and gave Israel a careful once-over.
"Maybe I will at that, by God. I wonder if he could learn? Israel, do you
want to try to learn arithmetic? If you can do it, it would mean more money
for you."
"I likes to learn, suh, an' I likes money might well. You want to show me,
reckon I try."
"You're a hard worker, Israel. Maybe you will learn. If you do, you can keep
books for a lot of people in town, too, you know, not just for me," Pleasants
said. "Keep at it and you'll end up with a fine house of your own one day."
Page 239
Caudell almost smiled at that, but at the last minute kept his face straight. It
could happen. Thanks to the war, things were looser these days than they
ever had been. A free Negro sensible enough to stay out of trouble might
come a long way without a lot of people noticing.
"You want to show me, suh, reckon I try," Israel repeated. "I got no place
better to go than here, looks like. I's jus' glad I didn't head No'th when the
bluecoats sail away. By what the papers say, it's rougher bein' a nigger up
there than down here-they hangs you to a lamp post jus' fb' walkin' down
the street."
"You might be right, Israel, though I "m embarrassed to admit it," Pleasants
said. Caudell nodded. "White men up North blame Negroes for the war,
seems like." Savage antiblack riots had convulsed New York and
Philadelphia within days of each other, as if word of one triggered the next.
In Washington, Confederate pickets across the Potomac watched Federal
troops battle arsonists intent on burning down the colored part of town. And
along the Ohio River, white men with guns turned away slaves Seeing
across from Kentucky, saying, "This ain't your country"-and opened fire if
the Negroes would not go back. Southern papers reported every atrocity,
every upheaval in the United States in loving detail, as if to warn blacks
they could expect no warm reception if they ran away. Israel heaved a long
sigh. "Ain't easy bein' a nigger, no matter where you is." That, Caudell
thought, was no doubt true. Israel set down the whiskey jar and went back
into the house. Caudell swigged from his glass. He coughed, got it down.
The fire in his throat turned to warmth in his belly, warmth that spread
through him. Pleas-ants raised his glass. "Here's to a free-labor farm."
"A free-labor farm," Caudell echoed. He drank again; the warmth
intensified. He looked around. The impression he'd had as he walked up to
the farmhouse persisted. "A free-labor farm that's doing right well for
itself."
"If the weather stays close to decent and prices hold up, I'll get by,"
Pleasants answered. He was new to farming, but seemed to have already
picked up the man of the land's ingrained aversion to sounding too
optimistic. He went on, "By what the papers say, weather's even worse
farther south and west. I hate to see anyone else hurt, but it may help me."
"How many hands do you have working for you?" "Seven men-three free
blacks, two Irishmen-" "I saw one of them in your vegetable patch."
Caudell lowered his voice. "Maybe you ought to know he ran off from my
regiment."
"Who, John? Did he?" Pleasants frowned. "I'll keep a close eye on him,
then, though he's given me no trouble so far. Anyway, I also have a couple
of local white men here, and Tom-he's one of the blacks-bought his wife
Hattie free a couple of years ago, and she does the cooking for us." As if the
words were a cue, a long, unmelodious horn blast sounded from the back of
the house. Pleasants grinned. "There's dinner now. Come on, Nate."
Dinner-fried ham, sweet potatoes, and corn bread-was served outdoors, in
back of the house behind the kitchen. Hattie, a very large, very brown
woman, seemed personally offended unless everyone who ate from her
table stuffed himself until incapable of moving. Caudell was more than
willing to oblige her. Happily replete, he leaned back on his bench and
joined in the byplay between Pleasants and the farm hands.
Besides John Moring, Caudell also knew Bill Wells, who had joined his
company not long before the last year's campaign started. Wells had been
only eighteen then; twenty now, he still looked years younger. Page 240
"You better not send me out to fill canteens, Mr. First Sergeant, sir," he said
with a grin.
"I'll let Henry here give you your fatigues now," Caudell retorted, which
made Wells duck as if a bullet had cracked past him.
Hattie's husband Tom, Israel, and the other colored man, whose name was
Joseph, sat together. They were quieter than the whites, and took little part
in the banter that flew around the rest of the table-though at liberty, free
Negroes had to be leery about taking liberties. But when Israel started
boasting about how he was going to learn arithmetic, Tom raised an
eyebrow and said, "If you de man who do my pay, Israel, I gwine count it
twice when I gits it, an' that a fac'."
" You couldn 't even count it oncet, nigger," Israel said loftily. "Marse
Henry, I know he pay me right," Tom said. "You-" His pause carried a
world of meaning.