When This Cruel War Is Over Read online

Both North and South had been stunned by this unexpected stance. Both sides piously promised to respect the declaration—and promptly broke their word in the name of military necessity. Gabriel Todd soon found neutrality an impossible chimera. Once the Union regiments routed the Southern army and set up a military dictatorship in Kentucky, he lost all sympathy for Lincoln and his government. A Democrat like his father and grandfather, Colonel Todd saw the moralizing industrializing Republicans of the upper Midwest and New England as destroyers of the personal liberty and independence every follower of Thomas Jefferson held dear.

  Gabriel Todd did not object when his sons decided to join the Confederate Army. But they had died like too many young Kentuckians, uncertain of the country for which they fought. John Randolph Todd’s letters from Alabama, where he had married the daughter of a cotton planter with ten thousand acres and over five hundred slaves, were a litany of disillusion. As a Kentuckian, he had little in common with the radical secessionists of the Deep South, who talked of conquering the North and enslaving the white factory workers. Yet he had become an officer in the regiment his pugnacious fatherin-law had raised. John had died two years ago in that explosion of blood and death called Shiloh. His younger brother, Andrew, had died in General John Hunt Morgan’s ruinous cavalry foray into Indiana last year.

  Death. More than once, Janet had to remind herself that her brothers had succumbed to its terrible finality. They were not away at college or on an extended vacation or living elsewhere with a wife. At times the knowledge seemed to be an effluvia rising in her throat, cutting off her breath. She struggled to remember them as if they were alive.

  Thoughtful, earnest Jack, with his love of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry and Charles Dickens’s prose. Although he was six years older than Janet, he had always treated her with respect, encouraging her to read good books and discussing politics with her as if she were an adult. He confessed to her that his sojourn at Yale had convinced him slavery had to be eliminated eventually.

  Ebullient, hot-tempered Andy, three years younger, had encouraged Janet’s tomboyish tendencies at first, then sternly tried to eliminate them when she reached her teens. He wanted his “little sister” to marry well, he said—and he even had his eye on the man she might attract, if she concentrated on becoming a Southern belle. Andy never failed to bring her an expensive present—a new pocketbook or a half-dozen pairs of English stockings—if he had a good weekend at the Lexington races.

  Janet trembled. It was hopeless. Memory could not give her brothers even a half-life in its feeble world. They were dead. Vanished. As if they had never existed, except for those tombstones, which Gabriel Todd had insisted on raising, even though both were buried far away. Janet stood there, thinking of the hundreds of other plantations and thousands of more modest homes where Southern parents and sisters and wives mourned their dead in the same anguished way, struggling to keep them alive in memory’s pathetic glow. Recently the Louisville Journal had estimated the South had lost 150,000 men, the North 300,000—and the slaughter continued unabated, devouring lives like a monstrous, insatiable Moloch.

  Gabriel Todd sat in the gazebo most of the day, steadily consuming a quart of bourbon to dull the pain of his lost sons and an almost lost war. By dinnertime he was often incapable of carrying on a conversation. But at this hour of the morning, he was reasonably coherent.

  “Janet!” he called. “Give your ancient father a kiss for old times’ sake.”

  She strolled into the gazebo and kissed him on the lips. He clutched her against him and she breathed his unwashed body odor and the sweetly sour smell of the bourbon on his breath. Why did her mind record these realistic details? It was so unfeminine. Somewhere in the creative process God had become confused and given Janet Todd a man’s brain and a woman’s body. “Tell me some good news,” he said as he released her. Janet smiled and recited:

  “‘Report of fashion in proud Italy

  Whose manner still our tardy apish nation

  limps after in base imitation.’”

  An answering smile brought Gabriel Todd’s wide creased face aglow. He responded to those lines from Shakespeare’s Richard II with another quotation from the same play:

  “‘For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

  The man who mocks at it and sets it light.’”

  Janet smiled and replied:

  “‘Teach thy necessity to reason thus

  There is no virtue like necessity.’”

  Janet and her father had been playing this quotation game for over a decade. Shakespeare was another of Gabriel Todd’s literary passions. On their summer trips north, they had never failed to stop in New York to see a performance by one of the great actors of the day, such as Edwin Booth in Macbeth. More than once they had gone down the river to Louisville to see a traveling troupe perform Romeo and Juliet or The Merchant of Venice.

  With no warning, Janet’s mind lurched out of control. Shocking words rampaged through it. Has Richard II become your favorite play because it’s about a man who thought he was a king and slowly discovered he was a noble fool?

  No! That thought was not only unworthy; it was untrue. Gabriel Todd had done his utmost to undo the blunder of declaring Kentucky neutral. He had helped to create this conspiracy to win the war with an uprising by the Democrats of the West. He had taken the idea to his old friend from Mexican War days, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, in Richmond. Colonel Todd had persuaded the members of the Kentucky delegation in the Confederate Congress to support it. He had recruited his own daughter to become the movement’s courier.

  “I’ve written to Adam Jameson,” Janet said. “He seems to be in command of Morgan’s cavalry at the moment. I told him this time we’ll have the money and the guns waiting for our volunteers.”

  “Good, good.”

  Hopemont’s butler, stooped, big-nosed old Joseph, appeared with a bottle of bourbon and a frosted glass of cracked ice on a tray. He put them on the folding table beside Gabriel Todd and departed without a word. Her father poured a hefty splash into the glass and sipped it reflectively.

  “I want to end this filthy war as soon as possible. I want to see you here, with children at your skirts, before I die. You’ll have five thousand acres in your name. I’m not pleading Adam Jameson’s case if he doesn’t stir your feelings, but—”

  Janet turned away, a gesture that made it clear she had no interest in the subject. “I’m not sure what you’ll get for dinner,” she said. “Lillibet’s taken to her bed again.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish you hadn’t sold Maybelle, Father.”

  “I thought it was for the best, Janet,” he said. “I was tryin’ to put temptation out of reach of your brothers. She was just too seductive. I’ve been in too many houses where the father has to watch his mulatto grandchildren pickin’ his corn or servin’ his supper.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  Was he also putting temptation out of his own way? Janet wondered. Jack Todd had been married and gone to Alabama when Maybelle was sold in 1861. Her brother Andy made no secret (to Janet, at least) of finding less than respectable women in Louisville and Cincinnati.

  Incredible, the way the mind—at least her mind—thrust such ugly questions to the forefront. Would she have cared if her father took Maybelle for his mistress? Her skin was a creamy brown, suggesting that somewhere in the past a male Todd had enjoyed her grandmother or great-grandmother. More than one rumor about slave mistresses was whispered behind fans at Kentucky parties.

  “You women don’t realize how fortunate you are, not bein’ subject to such … such …”

  As if he personified the unmentionable subject Gabriel Todd was trying to simultaneously evade and describe, Major Paul Stapleton leaped into vivid life in Janet’s head. He was standing on the ferry dock, smiling in a curiously confident way. His short-brimmed officer’s kepi was tilted forward on his head, suggesting a recklessness that the smile reinforced. The strong-boned sunburned fac
e was dominated by eyes that could go from oval innocence to knowing slits in an instant, an epitome of his disconcerting blend of boyishness and maturity. He had his hands on his hips, suggesting a certain impatience with her. Yet his smile suggested he was sure she would satisfy his unspoken desires, sooner or later.

  It may be sooner than you think, Major.

  There it was again, that rebellious mind of hers, asserting a brazen indifference to conventional morality. Janet walked to the door of the gazebo and said, “Where the devil is Lucy? She promised me she was going to run all the way to the post office.”

  Two

  STANDING ON THE EDGE OF the sun-scorched courthouse square in Keyport, Indiana, twenty-five-year-old Major Paul Stapleton struggled to control his wandering thoughts. A temperature of 106 degrees was turning his blue U.S. Army uniform into a sweat-soaked mess. In his head he was stripping off this symbol of his commitment to a life of discipline and duty and plunging into the wide, cool waters of the Ohio River, a few hundred yards away at the foot of Keyport’s jagged bluffs.

  On the Kentucky shore, the imaginative major picked his way over the twisted roots of gigantic cottonwood trees exposed by the Ohio’s recurring floods. Soon he was on the upper front porch of Hopemont, the most splendid mansion in Daviess County. Through the open French doors he watched a slim black maid slip a chemise over dark-haired Janet Todd’s head, flounce it over her breasts and draw it slowly down her sturdy body.

  The vision flung Paul back to that boyhood day in Washington, D.C., when he passed the half-open door of his mother’s bedroom and saw her dressing for one of her famous salons. Her Negro maid had been pulling a chemise down Caroline Kemble Stapleton’s body in the same slow sensuous way. The smile on his mother’s face had been strangely contented, as if the mere act of dressing created an inexplicable happiness.

  How exotic women were, with their layers of clothes and their oblique elusive emotions. Janet was not as beautiful as his regal mother. Few women were. But Paul was certain Caroline Stapleton would like her, if things advanced to the point where introductions became necessary. They shared a readiness to confront the world with strong opinions. Five minutes with them made it clear that you were in the company of women who emanated pride and self-confidence.

  Caroline Stapleton’s approval of Janet Todd was important to the major. Although he was far from a momma’s boy, Paul tried to avoid quarrels with his formidable mother. His oldest brother, Jonathan, and she quarreled about everything, from his choice of a wife to his Republican politics. For thirty years, membership in the Democratic Party had been as fundamental to the Stapleton family’s consciousness as pride in their distinguished bloodline. More than once, Paul had heard his mother refer to Jonathan as “the apostate.”

  In an hour Paul would be greeting Janet Todd at the Ohio River ferry dock. Who knows how they might celebrate independence before the national holiday expired? In Janet’s swift striding walk and quick imperious gestures Paul sensed a wildness that stirred similar vibrations in his own flesh. Marrying a soldier in the middle of a war made no sense—especially if he was wearing a uniform that stirred negative vibrations in the woman’s heart. But if the woman discovered the soldier had decided to leave this rear area for one of the fighting fronts, pledging an affection that might grow permanent when the war’s acrimony ended—and exchanging proof of that affection—was more than a possibility. Paul had heard enough stories around army campfires to make him hopeful. War repealed all sorts of moral laws.

  On the rickety wooden platform local carpenters had constructed before the yellow brick courthouse, an earnest, tired-looking Union colonel named Lawson Schreiber was making a speech: “Our country’s future is still at risk, gentlemen. This rebellion remains as formidable, yea, as awesome, as Satan! I’ve come home here to the county that our president, Abraham Lincoln, honored with his youthful presence to renew the strength of our regiment. I want two hundred volunteers! Don’t let the rest of Indiana hear that Hunter County was forced to resort to the draft!”

  The regimental band burst into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The colonel’s shapely sixteen-year-old daughter, Dorothy Schreiber, began trilling the words:

  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of

  the coming of the Lord;

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of

  wrath are stored.”

  Dorothy’s voice faltered when she realized not a single person in the crowd was singing with her. The song, written by a New England woman named Howe, was not popular in southern Indiana. Into the square marched a company of the depleted Second Indiana Volunteers, locally known as “Lincoln’s Own.” The president had spent his young manhood on nearby Pigeon Creek, working at a variety of hardscrabble jobs, before moving on to fortune and fame in Illinois. The Volunteers’ blue uniforms were threadbare, and there was little enthusiasm on their faces after three years of hard fighting. At the head of the paltry column, two privates carried a large banner with Lincoln’s bearded face on a red background.

  Beside Major Stapleton, diminutive Dr. Walter Yancey swigged from a flask and said, “Old Abe on a field of blood. Seems about right, don’t you think, Major?” Dr. Yancey’s mouth was a wry zero in the middle of his scraggly brown beard. He had at least twenty South Carolina relatives in the Confederate Army.

  “Will Colonel Schreiber raise two hundred men?” Paul asked.

  “He’ll be lucky to raise twenty,” said Andrew Conway, the burly black-mustached editor of the local Democratic newspaper, the Keyport Record. “Old Abe has sort of lost his appeal hereabouts.” Conway was wearing a black-and-white checked suit and a derby set at a cocky angle. The son of a Kentucky congressman, he had crossed the Ohio to become the Democratic boss of Hunter County.

  Having grown up in Washington, D.C., and urban New Jersey, Major Stapleton often felt like a foreigner in southern Indiana. The name Stapleton, his late father’s fame as a Democratic Party spokesman in the U.S. Senate before the war, carried no weight here. The local folk were complacently unimpressed by big names or big cities east or west. Their world was rooted in the dark loamy soil of the Ohio Valley and they were well satisfied with it.

  Paul had tried to tell himself to be satisfied with it too. He had come here under orders from a Union Army major general who happened to be his brother. Major Stapleton had survived two serious wounds in the savage battles of the war’s first two slaughterous years. General Jonathan Stapleton said Paul had earned the right to remain out of the line of fire for the rest of the contest.

  “One of us has to stay alive,” Jonathan said, silencing Paul’s attempt to protest his exile. There were no other heirs to the millions of dollars that Stapleton-owned factories, railroads, and banks were piling up in New Jersey’s booming wartime economy. But the argument carried less and less weight with Paul as his health improved and newspapers reported West Point classmates like George Armstrong Custer winning fame on the battlefield. He was already at work on a letter to the adjutant general of the army, asking for reassignment.

  Dr. Yancey passed his flask to Andrew Conway; he offered it to Paul, who declined it with a brief shake of his head. A lot of homemade Kentucky and Indiana bourbon was going from hand to hand among the three hundred men standing in clusters on the hot cobblestones. About two-thirds were Democrats like Conway and Yancey, the rest Republicans. Almost every man was carrying a gun.

  Several recent recruiting rallies in southern Indiana had degenerated into shoot-outs. Major Stapleton was determined not to let this happen in Keyport. The square was surrounded by the 100 members of Troop A of the Twentieth Indiana Cavalry. On their belts hung billy clubs and Colt pistols. Paul had trained them in the art and science of breaking up a riot before it started. All he needed to do was nod to Sergeant Moses Washington, six feet, two inches tall, with a face like a thundercloud, and they would wade into the crowd, clubs at the ready, pistols even more so.

  Jagged white pain lanced through Major St
apleton’s forehead. His Gettysburg wound was about to tell him something: Jesus Christ, Paul, you’d think that Confederate bullet went through your brain. Can’t you see your wonderful troopers are more likely to start a riot than stop one? Can’t you see the color of their goddamn faces?

  Almost as if he were a secret partner of the wound, Dr. Yancey completed this bitter mental trajectory: “If I were you, Major, I’d request another hundred men. You may find yourself fightin’ for your life in a month or two. Tell Lincoln to make them white, this time.”

  Major Stapleton’s eyes roved the impassive black faces of his troopers. “My boys are good soldiers, Doctor Yancey. I’ve seen to that. They haven’t so much as raided a henhouse since they arrived.”

  “Each one of them could be the reincarnation of Achilles. But they’re niggers, Major. Don’t you see how inappropriate—to use the mildest word I know—it is for them to be policin’ white men?”

  “I don’t see what their color has to do with it,” Major Stapleton said. “They’re American soldiers. Every one of them was born in this country. Would you prefer a troop of Germans? Or Irish? Then you’d really have something to complain about.”

  Flashes of white pain tore through Major Stapleton’s head. How long can you keep lying this way, Paulie? the Gettysburg wound asked.

  I’m not lying. I’m stating U.S. government policy, Major Stapleton replied.

  Of course he saw what the color of his troopers had to do with it. But he had to deny it. He was a servant of the federal government. He had spent four years at the United States Military Academy imbibing the West Pointer’s creed—duty, honor, country. The war had taught him that duty required a certain amount of somewhat dishonorable lying to sustain the country. Since Gettysburg, however, he had found it impossible to lie to himself. The Confederate bullet seemed to have opened his head to ruthless infusions of honesty.