The Last Full Measure
Jack Campbell
Subterranean Press • 2013
The Last Full Measure Copyright © 2013
by John G. Hemry.
All rights reserved.
Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2013 by David Palumbo.
All rights reserved.
Print interior design Copyright © 2013
by Desert Isle Design, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Ebook ISBN
978-1-59606-569-7
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
www.subterraneanpress.com
“The next prisoner is Mr. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois.”
Professor Joshua Chamberlain turned his head with careful movements so as not to excite the soldiers holding weapons at the back of the small, windowless courtroom. He sat on the end of a bench along with others arrested for offenses against national security, watching as a tall, gangly and rather unattractive man on the other end of the bench rose up like an ungainly stork coming to its feet.
The bailiff, a sergeant, faced the row of hooded military officers sitting at the front of the courtroom. “The prisoner awaits sentencing.”
Before the judges could speak, Mr. Lincoln did. “The prisoner would greatly appreciate being told the charges against him.”
After a pause, one of the judges spoke, his voice muffled by the hood he wore to conceal his identity. “You are charged with being a threat to the security of the United States of America. You have stirred up opposition to the government, you have encouraged those who would weaken and destroy us, and you have sought to undermine the strength of this great nation. I assume you will not dare to deny those charges?”
“I am to be given the opportunity to plead?” Lincoln said, speaking lightly despite the stern tone of the judge and despite the guards focusing their attention on him. “That is one of the precepts upon which this nation was founded, is it not? As is the right to a fair trial. As is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Have any of you, by chance, heard of this thing called liberty?”
“Do not presume to ask us questions! Do you have no answer for the charges against you?”
Lincoln shrugged with an unassuming manner, as if he were in a normal courtroom and addressing a jury of his peers. “You are like the man who planted a crop of wheat and then demanded to know why corn had not grown in his fields. You blame me for opposition to the government? Look no further than yourselves. These are your actions, and as the good book says, as ye sow so shall ye reap. You blame my words for the weaknesses that strike at the very foundation of our people? I did not create those weaknesses. Neither did you, but your acts perpetuate them. The monstrous injustice of slavery gnaws at the timbers of our Republic, not only in the South but also the North and the West. Our entire house trembles because slavery makes slaves of all who labor, and a small group of men enjoys a large proportion of the fruits.”
Another judge spoke, his voice harsh. “We are the most free and most happy country this world has ever known. We are free because our strength and our vigilance keep us free.”
Lincoln shook his head slowly and sorrowfully. “Gentlemen, you seem to believe that you are our strength, that our liberty is guarded by frowning battlements. Our reliance is not in such things. It is in our love of liberty. A liberty that you, sir, have placed in chains such as those that I and these other unfortunates now wear.”
Chamberlain listened in amazement, moved by Lincoln’s words despite his own fears of what fate the tribunal might soon assign Chamberlain himself. I have never heard the issues set forth so plainly, even though the plight of the indentured factory workers of the North creates ever more unrest even in states which are technically free of slavery.
“You see!” the second judge insisted to his comrades, pointing an accusing finger at the tall, ungraceful figure of Lincoln. “This is how he arouses the masses! This is why the northern states threaten rebellion and revolt! This is why the southern states must deal with agitators attempting to incite the slaves against their moral and proper state of benevolent servitude!”
Lincoln smiled, but this time his voice held a sharp edge. “If you wish to argue the virtues of slavery, perhaps you would care to have it tried on you personally?”
“I have heard enough. Death?” the third judge asked.
“Not until he and his words are forgotten! We don’t need any more martyrs!”
“Rendition to Fortress Monroe,” the first judge said. “The Merrimac is leaving for Hampton Roads tomorrow with other prisoners. They will have plenty of room for this Lincoln.”
“Indefinite detention,” the second judge added. “To be kept solitary so that he might no longer communicate to others his lies about the motives and wisdom of our founders.”
A wise man would have sat silently as Lincoln was taken from the courtroom. Chamberlain knew that. Only by staying silent would Chamberlain have a chance to avoid drawing too much attention to himself in a place where the hooded officers served as judge and jury. But perhaps it was asking too much of a professor of rhetoric to remain silent under such circumstances, after having heard such words.
Chamberlain stood up, a strange crawling sensation arising between his shoulders as he heard a sound behind him and imagined a rifle barrel aimed at his back. “Our greatest founder, George Washington, would never have approved of this. I have read his papers.”
The first judge halted a motion toward the bailiff aimed at silencing the prisoner and instead gazed at Chamberlain. “How did you gain access to the papers of the First President and Founder?”
“Is it not more important what I read there? That Washington did not become president as our histories read because he was installed by the military and the great land owners. He was instead elected by popular vote. So was John Adams and so was Jefferson!”
The second judge sounded amused. “And Jefferson’s Co-President? Aaron Burr? Are you claiming that he was elected by popular vote as well?”
Chamberlain swallowed, his throat dry at the taunting tone of the judge. They were playing with him, letting his own words condemn him. Well, so be it. The tribunals convicted all who came before them so any hope of release had always been illusory. “Burr was elected Vice-President. It was the price for that, for demanding the authority to deal with a military officer corps packed with Federalist party supporters by President Adams, that led to this. Burr dismissed every Federalist from the officer ranks, replacing them with Democratic Republican loyalists, and every administration after followed the example not of Washington but of Adams and Burr. That is what turned our Republic into a sham. The military of the United States has become a tool and an instrument of partisan politics. It does not serve the people, it serves those whose power and wealth control the government.”
“We are free,” the first judge said. “Free because those who would defame our history and the motives of those who protect us are punished for their crimes. Forty years agricultural service,” he finished.
Forty years on one of the plantations, laboring in conditions at least as bad as those suffered by the negro slaves. His odds of surviving the sentence were very small, but that was the intent of the judges.
Chamberlain was grabbed by one of the guards and marched out along with Lincoln. The two men stood side by side for a moment as their guards received orders, the tall man from Illinois gazing somberly down the hallway. “Thank you for your courage, sir,” Lincoln said in a soft voice. “I do not know what our lot may be, whether destruction or a rebirth of liberty. But whatever our fate, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
Then the guards had prodded Chamberl
ain in one direction while Lincoln was led off in another.
It was 1863. The fate of the Republic had taken an ugly turn just over two score years ago when its military had fully become an arm of politics. Now, Chamberlain reflected bitterly, his own fate had been changed for the next forty years by the curiosity which had led him to seek the truth about the early years of his nation, and by his inability to keep his mouth shut in the face of injustice.
Except for an occasional thump with a rifle butt or sharp prod with the point of bayonet, Chamberlain’s guards paid him little attention as he was ushered into a holding pen crowded with those in a mix of garb. “They’ll not dress us as convicts?” someone asked in a broad Midwestern accent.
“No,” another person carrying Boston in his every word replied. “Uniforms cost money. We’ll wear what we were arrested in, and die in rags.”
“No talking!” a pompous man in a Navy officer’s uniform announced. The uniform was immaculate, unmarred by any actual service at sea, and bore a political party badge on the left breast.
“The military took an oath to the Constitution once,” Chamberlain said. “Not to their parties or to their leaders. To the Constitution.”
“Silence!” the officer bellowed, his words this time reinforced by a group of soldiers who waded into the holding cell, yanking out prisoners.
Chamberlain found himself led to a platform where a prison train awaited. He was shoved inside one of the cars, pushed into an aisle seat, and menaced with a bayonet poised near his nose as his right leg was shackled to the left leg of a man already seated next to the window.
His new companion wore a military uniform like those of the guards, but one from which all insignia, badges and rank had been stripped. He was older than Chamberlain, with a courtly air despite the indignity of his current position.
Despite an urge to speak to his companion in misery, Chamberlain managed to keep quiet this time as the guards roamed the aisle of the car. More prisoners were brought in and chained to their seatmates until the car was full.
When he had been brought to this confinement facility Chamberlain had himself been hooded, unable to tell what time of day it was. Now he saw the sun halfway down the sky. He had eaten nothing for at least a day and a half, but there were no signs of provisions aboard this train.
At least he could appreciate the irony of an until-recently professor from Bowdoin College looking forward to arrival at a plantation, doomed to hard labor in the fields, in the hopes that he would finally be fed something.
Once everyone had been chained and the car was full, the haste of the loading and shackling was replaced by inactivity. Guards and prisoners sat waiting as the afternoon wore away and it grew hotter inside the train. No one told them anything and nothing appeared to be going on.
The sun had sunk toward the horizon when the shouts of orders sounded, rousing Chamberlain from a drowse born of heat, lack of food and exhaustion. The train jerked into motion, rumbling out of the facility and heading south.
As the prison train rolled across the Potomac river in the last rays of the setting sun, Chamberlain gazed through the bars of the window next to his companion. The view was a restricted one, but he could see lights springing to life on one of the forts surrounding Washington, DC. The lights, and the cannon they served, pointed both outward and inward, protecting and menacing the capital in equal measure. The image epitomized the United States, Chamberlain thought, a supposedly free land held in thrall by those who were charged to protect it, those jailors themselves answering to a few powerful men rather than to the will of the people.
What if Jefferson had chosen to handle things differently? If he had controlled Burr, and responded to Adams’ partisan packing of the military officer corps in some non-partisan manner? Would the country be different today, more like that which Washington had championed by example?
Would people like Lincoln, and me, be prisoners? Would our generals still all come from the ranks of the wealthy and our wealthy all come from the ranks of our generals? Would slavery still dominate the economies of not only the south but of all other portions of the country?
Useless, idle conjecture. It did not happen, and here I sit in chains.
As the noise of the train became loud enough to cover conversation, the older man seated next to Chamberlain finally spoke. His stripped uniform no longer offered clues to his origin, but his accent identified the man as being from one of the southern states. “Enjoy the sights, sir. There is little to be seen of the world when stooping over the crops in a plantation’s fields.”
“I never thought I would be regretting not being sentenced to imprisonment in Fortress Monroe,” Chamberlain admitted.
“While confinement and labor at Fortress Monroe may not be as openly brutal as a plantation, you would not be enjoying pic-nics there, sir, and though the fort is almost surrounded by water, none of that can be seen from the cells.”
Chamberlain managed a small, brief smile. “Irony is our constant companion in the so-called land of liberty, sir. What brings a military officer to this state, for so I judge you to be? What was your offense?”
“A former officer,” the other corrected, his mouth twisting at the words. “I refused an unlawful order, one which would have required me to violate the Constitution. After a brief show-trial for treason in front of the hooded judges of one of the military tribunals, here I sit beside you, bound for servitude for the crimes of believing in liberty and in the Republic.”
They had both kept their voices low so they wouldn’t be heard far over the rumble of the train, but one of the soldiers standing guard at the end of their car gave Chamberlain a hard look. Chamberlain pretended to stare out the barred window again for a while. As the train proceeded south and west into Virginia the buildings of Washington had given way to thickly forested land on either side of the rail line, the dark masses of trees only occasionally yielding begrudgingly to a clearing holding a building or a small town whose lights revealed little.
Finally, as the guard’s attention wandered, Chamberlain’s new companion spoke again. “And your offense, sir?”
“I conducted research,” Chamberlain admitted. “I gained access to the papers of George Washington, and to histories from the period immediately after our country was founded, and learned that General Washington was not installed as President by the army as our schools are required to teach, but instead rejected such an authority and only became president as a result of open, fair and free elections.”
“Treasonous sentiments, indeed,” his companion murmured. “Were you foolish enough to tell others?”
“I was. And one of them, it seems, reported that I was a danger.”
The former officer eyed Chamberlain. “Are you a danger?”
“Only to oppression. Only to lies. Those who rule our country are betraying everything for which our forefathers fought,” Chamberlain declared in a whisper. “Others in the north talk of revolt, but I hoped to change the country by words, by argument and the appeal to truth. Perhaps fighting is all we have left, though there’s little chance of that once we are chain-ganged into servitude.”
“Perhaps. But do not forget that the negroes have risen more than once. You have not heard? A free press would have reported it and accurate histories recorded it, but not when the government claims secrecy for anything that might embarrass it. No, sir, the slaves of this country have not accepted their fate meekly, and if they can still resist, so can we.” His companion looked up as two of the soldier guards marched down the center aisle of the rail car.
One of the guards leveled the bayonet on the end of his rifle until it aimed between Chamberlain’s eyes. “Orders are to remain quiet!”
Speaking had only brought him trouble. Wisdom once more dictated silence. But a man can only stay silent for so long. Chamberlain glared at the guard. “Whose orders? By what right does any man order silence when the Constitution of the United States of America grants the right of free speech to all??
??
The guard looked startled by both the defiance and the question, but then an overweight officer in a new and ill-fitting uniform pushed up beside him and gave Chamberlain a contemptuous look. “We are defending this country against those who would threaten it, and that includes such as you who have been tried and found guilty. Remain silent or—”
“Tried?” Chamberlain cried. He knew from the man’s appearance that the officer was another political hack recently appointed to the military based on his loyalty to party rather than to country or constitution. “Before a panel of hooded officers, with no lawyer permitted me, with no chance to view the evidence made against me, and no right to speak on my own behalf? Those who founded this country would be sickened by those who claim to act for the Republic but are worse in their actions than any agent of King George III ever aspired to be!”
The officer’s face reddened. “I am a major in the Army of the United States and I will not tolerate such disrespect!”
Chamberlain’s companion laughed softly. “Major?” he drawled. “From the looks of you, two days ago you were rounding up mandatory contributions for politicians. You’re no soldier. You wouldn’t have lasted one minute at West Point. But I would have dearly enjoyed dealing with you there.”
This time the major’s face grew so dark it seemed to purple, but before he could speak the brakes squealed and everyone was thrown forward as the train lurched to a screaming halt. The major and the guards were still disentangling themselves when the door at the front of the car banged open and another soldier looked in. “Tree across the track! A big one! The colonel says to send two men from each car to help clear it!”
Grumbling, the major told off two of the guards and sent them out, then stomped grandly to the front of the car and vented his wrath on the remaining guards until the door to the car swung open again.
The major turned his head to snarl at the latest arrival, but instead paled as a pistol barrel touched his nose.