In the first postwar election, Thomas Byrd had canvassed for his mentor Alexander Stuart, and when the congressman-elect went to Washington City to be sworn in, Thomas had accompanied him. Like Stuart, the Southern congressmen who traveled to Washington City in December 1865 were moderates who had opposed secession.
During his campaign, Stuart had asserted that “Virginia still has rights under the Constitution of the United States, which have only been suspended during the abortive effort to sever her connection with the United States, and it is my duty to try and have those rights recognized and respected.”
THOMAS BYRD HAD been in an ill humor after he returned from Wash-ington City, and Samuel had hoped this outing might raise his spirits. Unfortunately, Thomas had seen Eben Barnwell as a living symbol of Virginia’s humiliation. Now he asked about Barnwell’s regiment.
“I left military affairs to bolder men. If I have a knack, it is for commerce.”
“Will we have commerce in Virginia?”
“Yes, sir.” Eben’s broad gesture directed everyone’s attention to commerce’s glories. “If you cannot find opportunity in Virginia, you cannot cast a shadow in the noonday sun.”
In the United States House of Representatives, on December 4, 1865, the clerk of the House had called roll without naming any of the duly elected Southern congressman seated before him. The radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens lounged in his seat, legs crossed.
One brave Democrat protested the roll call. “If Mr. Maynard is not loyal, who is loyal? During the darkest period of the war when he was an exile from Tennessee, his eloquent voice urged my state to discharge its whole duty to the Union; and yet here are honorable gentlemen who will not permit him to be heard, though he holds in his hand a certificate of election from the governor of Tennessee. Neither has the clerk read the names of members from Virginia. By what right has the Virginia delegation been excluded?”
The clerk replied, “If it is the desire of the House, I will give the reasons.”
Thaddeus Stevens glittered with revenge. “The House knows it all and don’t want the reasons.”
As one by one Southern congressmen rose from their seats and left the chamber, Thaddeus Stevens never uncrossed his legs.
Walking behind Alexander Stuart, burning with humiliation, Thomas Byrd would have reignited the War if he could have, and now he said as much to William Mahone.
“The War is ended,” General Mahone said. “We lost the War. We needn’t enjoy our circumstances, but we must accept them as they are.”
PAULINE BYRD’S SKIN had been ruddied in the warm mineral bath and her customary tautness slackened. She seemed lazier and more languorous than a young Christian virgin should.
Eben bowed to Samuel Gatewood. “Sir,” he announced, “if Miss Byrd would consent to promenade, I would be grateful for your permission.”
After her wordless appeal to Cousin Molly failed, Pauline Gatewood accepted Eben Barnwell’s arm and the couple strolled down the garden lane beside the brook that gave Warm Springs its name. The brook steamed in the cool morning air.
MAHONE TURNED TO Thomas. “You were instrumental in Mr. Stuart’s election.”
“You are well informed, sir.”
“Had the Southern congressmen been seated, they would have combined with congressional Democrats to thwart Mr. Stevens’s legislation.”
“Under the United States Constitution—”
“I am no lawyer, sir, I am a railroad man. If recent events have proven nothing more, they have shown that our revered Constitution is no protection against power; that powerful men like Congressman Stevens can bend that Constitution to their purposes and, while idealists fill the ether with dolorous howls, judgeships and postmaster’s positions are filled with Stevens’s supporters. Now tell me, young Byrd. How does Alexander Stuart stand on railroad consolidation?”
ON THIS COOL SPRING morning, Eben’s future arrived in a rush. Vaguely, Eben had thought he’d one day wed, one day own a house, one day rear a family. When he’d envisioned that prospect, his wife’s eyes (he could see nothing but her eyes) were entirely approving and his child adored him.
Eben was tongue-tied while Pauline chattered inconsequentially about forsythia, laurel, and the lilacs, whose scent was as sensual as languorous women are thought to be. “Would that every flower was tended as these.” Pauline touched a rhododendron. Its tiny buds were potent as red-tipped bomblets. “Alas, our flowers take second place after useful vegetables. As my grandmother oft reminds me”—Pauline imitated Abigail’s tone—“ ‘You cannot eat flowers, dear.’ Mr. Barnwell, don’t you wish we could?”
At once—although he had never previously imagined himself a flower eater—Eben became a devotee. “Indeed. Indeed I do. I suppose you garden a great deal?”
“If I removed my gloves, Mr. Barnwell, you would remark the coarse hands of a laborer. I am not what I seem.”
Eben blurted, “To me, you seem beautiful!”
“Kind Mr. Barnwell. I am a plain girl, with the plainest ambitions.”
“I shall be very wealthy,” Eben blurted. “Presuming the natural increase of my fortune, I shall, one day, be someone to be reckoned with.”
“Are you not presently someone to be reckoned with?” Pauline asked. “I do not mean to smile, sir, but having a fortune is beyond my expectations. Grandfather hopes to persuade General Mahone to buy our crossties. With the General’s order in hand, he could reopen our mill. There are plenty of willing hands, negro and white. Nobody’s got a cent, except the carpetbaggers . . . Oh, dear!” Her blush would have melted a sterner heart than Eben’s.
“Miss Pauline, am I a fool? Am I unaware what some Virginians call us?”
“I . . . It is fearfully rude . . .”
“If I were to call this lilac an orange, would that make it an orange?” Eben gestured at the hotel. “If I were to call the Warm Springs Hotel a shack, would it become one?” As Eben’s rhetoric mounted, his gestures expanded. “If I were to call General Mahone a coward, would that officer show the white flag? . . . Miss Byrd, you smile at me!”
“Mr. Barnwell, I cannot help myself. Forgive me! Please, weren’t you about to render another comparison?”
He grinned, “As ridiculous as the others?”
“Sir! I did not say so.”
“Miss Byrd, are you always so sharp-tongued?”
“No, sir. Present company has whetted my wit.”
“Miss Byrd, may I ask you a personal question?”
Pauline pouted. “If you must.”
Eben had the bit in his teeth. “Miss Byrd, what are your ambitions? What do you desire?”
“Me? Why—what every girl wants: marriage, children, a home. Love, if I am blessed with it. I do wish to be good. During the War, I wore my knees out praying. Dear Mr. Barnwell, don’t be frightened. Young women are not just like young men, you know!”
“I didn’t mean . . .”
“You are a Christian, sir? Then you must understand my wish to be good. You, sir; don’t you hope to be good?”
He took her hand. “If you wish it of me.”
She extracted her hand. “You grant me far too much authority, Mr. Barnwell.”
“I am no thinker, dear Miss Byrd. The furnishings of my mind are spare and shabby—like a boardinghouse.” Eben meant to expand his metaphor by describing the worn stair runner, the overflowing spittoons, and the stink of cooked cabbage, but caught himself in time. He coughed. “I am no thinker, but I am a doer—like General Mahone. Whatever the hazards, Mahone will combine his railroads.”
“If you say so,” Pauline said. “In our Virginia experience the bravest, most steadfast human will was inadequate. My grandfather, Samuel, believes we are suffering God’s punishment.”
“With due respect to Mr. Gatewood, miss, I think a disproportion in capital did more to win the War than any defect in Confederate morality. Capital is a great lever. With enough capital judiciously applied, you can shift the world.”
??
?You would know better than I about that, sir,” Pauline said. “I am a plain girl.” Her smile, Eben noticed happily, was anything but.
COUSIN MOLLY SET her knitting aside. “Ah, the young people return. Mr. Barnwell seems pleasant enough.” Directing her eyes to General Mahone, Molly added, “For a yankee.”
“Barnwell is energetic.” He turned to Thomas. “How does Stuart stand on negro suffrage?”
“With every patriotic Virginian.”
“I believe ‘patriotic Virginians’ are divided on that issue.”
“Sir, I believe, with Mr. Stuart, that one day the negro may rise to equality with the white, but presently his illiteracy and poverty make him unfit to decide his own course, let alone the course of his betters.”
Otelia Mahone grimaced. “Isn’t this morning too glorious for politics? Don’t we have enough of politics at home? Night and day, Billy. Night and day.”
Mahone inclined his head. “My apologies, dear.”
Sallie drew Duncan from his chair. “Dearest, let us promenade. I wish to be courted afresh.”
General Mahone raised a hand. “A moment, Major?”
Cousin Molly persisted, “General, please tell more about Mr. Barn-well. I conclude our Pauline approves of the young man.”
Mahone paused for thought. “In ’65 the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio owned two serviceable locomotives and four cars. Our bridges had been destroyed and much of our track. We paid workers with bacon and cornmeal. There was no money to be had in Virginia and Northern financiers favored railroads they could control. Young Mr. Barnwell promised to sell A.M.&O. bonds. Mr. Barnwell had no credentials, but he was the only applicant for that job and he paid his own expenses.” General Mahone steepled his fingers. “In February, our James River bridge was completed. Despite a disappointing wheat harvest, we have met operating expenses, are paying cash wages, and making our interest payments. Mr. Barnwell’s sale of A.M.&O. securities has made everything possible.”
Cousin Molly smiled. “You have answered me more entirely than I deserved, General. I merely wished to know Mr. Barnwell’s antecedents.”
A redwing blackbird sang and industrious bees tended the flowers. The sun dipped behind a cloud. “Antecedents? I believe he has none. I believe the girl who marries Eben Barnwell will be well provided for.” Mahone abandoned Molly for Duncan. “What do you think of our prospects, Major?”
“General?”
“We’ve laid forty-three thousand new crossties on the south side.”
Gatewood Senior heard his cue. “General—”
But Mahone stilled him with a gesture. “We’ve reconstructed two turntables, rebuilt seven locomotives, and purchased three miles of new iron rails. Major, I remember you as a resourceful and imaginative officer. I have need of such a man.”
Duncan said, “Sir, I am a planter now.”
“Sallie,” General Mahone inquired, “do you think your husband will be satisfied with that occupation? War was the most dreadful thing I have ever endured and I pray to never know another. But the War elevated us. Major, I am building a railroad and would drive you mercilessly. Northern railroads covet our routes and our traffic.” After a moment of Duncan’s silence, the General turned to his father. “What was your price per thousand?”
“Why,” Samuel stuttered, “they . . . they . . . five hundred dollars, at the railhead. Only five hundred dollars, sir.”
“The planter’s joys and triumphs are quieter than the soldier’s, sir,” Sallie said. “His is a work of patience and courage too. Some find a terrible beauty in brave men charging enemy guns. But beauty can be well-sown rows of green wheat emerging through warm soil. My husband’s honest coat, sir, bears no insignia.”
Mahone’s smile dismissed Sallie. “Major, you will need to move to Norfolk. At present, Norfolk is our terminus.”
CHAPTER 8
ADDRESS FROM THE COLORED CITIZENS OF VIRGINIA TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
Fellow citizens:
The undersigned have been appointed a committee, by a public meeting of the colored citizens of Virginia, held June 5th, 1866, in the First African Baptist Church, Richmond, Va., to lay before you a few considerations touching the present position of the colored population of the southern States generally, and with reference to their claim for equal suffrage in particular.
We do not come before the people of the United States asking an impossibility; we simply ask that a Christian and enlightened people shall concede to us those privileges of full citizenship, which not only are our undisputed right, but are indispensable to that elevation and prosperity of our people, which must be the desire of every patriot.
The legal recognition of these rights of the free colored population, in the past, by State legislation, or even by the Judiciary and Congress of the United States, was wholly inconsistent with the existence of slavery; but now that slavery has been crushed, with the rebellion sprung from it, on what pretexts can disabilities be perpetuated that were imposed only to protect an institution which has, thank God, passed away forever?
It must not be forgotten that it is the general assumption in the South, that the effects of the immortal Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln go no further than the emancipation of the negroes then in slavery and cannot touch the slave codes which having passed before the act of secession are presumed to have lost none of their vitality. By these laws, in many of the southern States it is still a crime for colored men to learn or be taught to read, and their children are doomed to ignorance; there is no provision for ensuring the legality of our marriages; we have no right to hold real estate; the public streets and the exercise of our ordinary occupations are forbidden us unless we can produce passes from our employers, or licenses from certain officials. In some States the whole free negro population is legally liable to exile from the place of its birth, for no crime but that of color. We have no means of making or enforcing contracts of any description; we have no right to testify before the courts in any case where a white man is party to the suit; we are taxed without representation, and so far as legal safeguards are concerned, we are defenseless before our enemies. While this is our position as regards our legal status before the State laws, we are more unfortunately situated as regards our late masters. The people of the North have heard little or nothing of the blasphemous and horrible theories formally propounded for the defense and glorification of human slavery, in the press, the pulpit, and legislatures of the southern States; but though they may have forgotten them, let them be assured that these doctrines have by no means faded from the minds of the people of the South; they cling to these delusions and only hug them the closer for their recent defeat. Worse than all, they have returned to their homes with all their old pride and contempt for the negro transformed into bitter hate for the new-made freeman, who aspires to the exercise of his new-found rights, and who has been fighting for the suppression of their rebellion.
Fellow citizens, the performance of a simple act of justice on your part will reverse all this; we ask for no expensive aid from military forces: give us the suffrage and you may rely upon us to secure justice for ourselves and to keep the State forever in the Union.
It is hardly necessary here to refute any of the slanders with which our enemies seek to prove our unfitness for the exercise of the right of suffrage. It is true that many of our people are ignorant, but for that these very men are responsible, and decency should prevent their use of such an argument. But if our people are ignorant, no people were ever more orderly and obedient to the laws; and no people ever displayed greater earnestness in the acquisition of knowledge. If anyone doubts how fast the ignorance, which has hitherto cursed our people, is disappearing ’mid the light of freedom, let him visit the colored schools of this city and neighborhood in which between two and three thousand pupils are being taught. There, in the evening after the labors of the day, hundreds of our adult population, from budding manhood to hoary age, toil with intensest eagerness, to acquire the
invaluable arts of reading and writing and the rudimentary branches of knowledge.
In concluding this address, we would now make a last appeal to our fellow citizens of all classes throughout the country. Every Christian and humane man must feel that our demands are just; we have shown you that their concession is to us necessary, and for you expedient. We are Americans. We know no other country. We love the land of our birth and our fathers, we thank God for the glorious prospect before our country, and we believe that if we obey His laws He will yet enthrone her high o’er all the nations of this earth, in glory, wealth, and happiness; but this exalted state can never be reached if injustice, ingratitude, and oppression of the helpless mark the national conduct, treasuring up God’s wrath for a day of reckoning. The path of justice is ever the safe and pleasant way, and the words of Eternal Wisdom have declared that the nation shall be established only by righteousness and upholden by mercy. With these reflections we leave our case in the hands of God, and to the consideration of our countrymen.
Signed on behalf of the colored people of Virginia
JUNE 26TH, 1866
Dr. T. Baynes, Chairman of Committee
COMMITTEE:
Lewis Lindsey
J. D. Harris
Jesse Burns
William A. Hodges
ADVISORS:
Rev. Fields Cook, First African Baptist Church, Richmond
Rev. James Whitestone, Catherine Street Baptist Church
Mr. Charles Chepstow, Publisher, The New Nation
CHAPTER 9
THE COCINERO
I wintered with prospectors, Carl Shurtz and a blond man, Matheson, in a dugout by the Wind River. They laid with me in turn, but after they ran out of tobacco, Matheson said I belonged to him only, so Shurtz stabbed him in the heart and put his body out for the Real Dogs. Carl Shurtz’s Testament was written in a language I could not read, but when I held it between my hands and prayed to Lord JesuChrist, I dreamed less.