Copperhead

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY WAS FIXED AS THE day of Jefferson Davis’s formal inauguration as President of the Confederate States of America. He had been inaugurated once before, in Montgomery, Alabama, but that ceremony had only made Davis into the President of a provisional government. Now, hallowed by election and properly installed in the Confederacy’s new capital, he would be inaugurated a second time. The choice of Washington’s birthday as the date of this second ceremony was intended to invest the occasion with a symbolic dignity, but the auspicious day brought nothing but miserable and incessant rains which drove the huge crowd gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square to shelter beneath a host of umbrellas so densely packed that it seemed as if the speech-makers orated to a spread of glistening black lumps. The drumming of the rain on carriage roofs and tightly stretched umbrella skins was so loud that no one except the platform party could hear any of the orations, prayers, or even the solemn presidential oath of office. After taking the oath President Davis invoked God’s help to the South’s just cause, his prayer punctuated by the sneezing and coughing of the dignitaries around him. Gray February clouds scudded low over the city, darkening everything except the new battle flags of the Confederate’s eastern army. The flag, which was hanging on staffs behind the platform and from every rooftop within sight of Capitol Square, was a fine red banner, slashed with a blue St. Andrew’s cross on which were sewn thirteen stars to represent the eleven rebellious states as well as Kentucky and Missouri, whose loyalty both sides claimed. Southerners who looked for auguries were pleased that thirteen states founded this new country, just as thirteen had founded a different country eighty-six years before, though some in the crowd perceived the number as unlucky, just as they perceived the drenching rain as an omen of ill fortune for the newly inaugurated president.

After the ceremony a procession of bedraggled notables hurried along Twelfth Street to attend a reception in the Brockenborough House on Clay Street which had been leased by the government to serve as the presidential mansion. The house was soon crowded with dripping people who draped wet coats on the twin statues of Comedy and Tragedy that graced the entrance hall, then edged their way from one room to another to appraise and criticize the new President’s taste in furniture and pictures. The President’s slaves had placed protective covers over the expensive carpets in the reception rooms, but the visitors wanted to inspect the patterns and pulled the cotton sheets aside, and soon the beautifully patterned carpets were trodden filthy with muddy boots, while the twin arrays of peacock feathers on the mantel of the ladies’ drawing room were ravaged by people wanting souvenirs of the day. The President himself stood frowning beside the white marble fireplace in the state dining room and assured everyone who offered him congratulations that he conceived of the day’s ceremony as a most solemn occasion and his presidency as a mighty heavy duty. Some army musicians were supposed to be entertaining the guests, but the crowd was so tightly pressed that the violinist did not even have room to draw his bow, and so the soldiers retired to the kitchen where the cooks regaled them with good Madeira wine and cold jellied chicken.

Colonel Washington Faulconer, resplendent in an elegant Confederate uniform that was made even more dashing by the black sling supporting his right arm, congratulated the President, then went through the small fuss of not being able to shake hands with his wounded right arm and offering his left instead.

President Davis finally managed a limp, awkward handshake, then muttered that he was honored by Faulconer’s presence on this solemn occasion which was ushering in these days of heavy duty.

“Heavy duties call for great men, Mr. President,” Washington Faulconer responded, “which means we are fortunate indeed in you.”

Davis’s thin mouth twitched to acknowledge the compliment. He had a piercing headache that made him seem even more remote and cold than usual. “I do regret,” he said stiffly, “that you did not feel able to accept the duty of commissioner.”

“Though I certainly saved myself some inconvenience thereby, Mr. President,” Faulconer responded lightly, before realizing that in war all men were supposed to welcome inconvenience, even if that inconvenience did mean being kidnapped by the U.S. Navy from the comfortable staterooms of a British mail ship. The two commissioners had now been released, thus saving the North from battling the British as well as the Confederacy, but their arrival in Europe had not fetched good news. France would not support the South unless the British made the first move, and the British would not intervene unless the South gave clear signs of being able to win the war without outside help, which all added up to meaningless nonsense. The President, reflecting on the diplomatic failure, had concluded that the wrong men had been chosen as commissioners. Slidell and Mason were raw-mannered and blunt men, accustomed to the homespun texture of American politics, but hardly slippery enough for the sly chanceries of a suspicious Europe. A more elegant commissioner, the President now believed, might have achieved a greater success.

And Washington Faulconer was certainly an impressive man. He had flaxen hair and a frank, honest face that almost glowed with handsomeness. He had broad shoulders, a trim waist, and one of the greatest fortunes in all Virginia; a fortune so large that he had raised a regiment with his own money and then equipped it to a standard equal to the best in either army, and rumor claimed that he could have repeated that generosity a dozen times over and still not have felt the pinch. He was, by any man’s standard, a fortunate and striking man, and President Davis once again felt irritation that Faulconer had turned down diplomatic office to pursue his dream of leading a brigade into battle. “I’m sorry to see you’re not recovered, Faulconer.” The President gestured at the black sling.

“Some small loss of dexterity, Mr. President, but not sufficient to prevent me from wielding a sword in my country’s defense,” Faulconer said modestly, though in truth his arm was entirely mended and he wore the sling only to give an impression of heroism. The black sling was especially inspiring to women, an effect that was made more convenient by the absence from Richmond of Faulconer’s wife, who lived an invalid’s nervous existence on the family’s country estate. “And I trust the sword will be so employed soon,” Faulconer added in a heavy hint that he wanted the President’s support for his appointment as a brigadier.

“I suspect we shall all soon be fully employed in our various duties,” the cadaverous President answered vaguely. He wished his wife would come and help him deal with these eager people who wanted more enthusiasm than he felt able to give. Varina was so good with small talk, while on these social occasions the President felt the words shrivel on his tongue. Was Lincoln similarly afflicted by office seekers? Davis wondered. Or did his fellow President have a greater ease of manner with importunate strangers? A familiar face suddenly appeared beside Faulconer, a man who smiled and nodded at the President, demanding recognition. Davis scrabbled for the man’s name which, thankfully, came in the very nick of time. “Mr. Delaney,” the President greeted the newcomer unenthusiastically. Belvedere Delaney was a lawyer and gossip whom Davis did not remember inviting to this reception, but who had typically come anyway.

“Mr. President.” Delaney inclined his head in recognition of Jefferson’s high office. The Richmond lawyer was a small, plump, smiling man whose bland exterior concealed a mind as sharp as a serpent’s tooth. “Allow me to extend my sincere felicitations on your inauguration.”

“A solemn occasion, Delaney, leading to heavy duties.”

“As the weather seems to intimate, Mr. President,” Delaney said, appearing to take an unholy glee in the day’s damp character. “And now, sir, if I might, I have come to request Colonel Faulconer’s attention. You cannot monopolize the company of our Confederate heroes all day, sir.”

Davis nodded his grateful assent for Delaney to take Faulconer away, though the release only permitted a plump congressman to heartily congratulate his fellow Mississippian on being inaugurated as the Confederacy’s first President.

“It is a heavy duty and solemn responsibility,” the President murmured.

The Mississippi Congressman gave Jefferson Davis’s shoulder a mighty slap. “Heavy duty be damned, Jeff,” the Congressman bellowed in his President’s ear. “Just send our boys north to cut the nuts clean off old Abe Lincoln.”

“I must leave strategy to the generals.” The President tried to move the Congressman on and accept the more limpid good wishes of an Episcopalian clergyman instead.

“Hell, Jeff, you know as much ’bout war as any of our fine soldier boys.” The Congressman hawked a tobacco-rich gob toward a spittoon. The stream of brown spittle missed, spattering instead on the rain-soaked hoop skirt of the clergyman’s wife. “Time we settled those chicken-shit Yankees once and forever,” the Congressman opined happily, then offered the new President a pull on his flask. “Finest rot-skull whiskey this side of the Tennessee River, Jeff. One slug will cure whatever ails you!”

“You’re demanding my company, Delaney?” Faulconer was irritated that the short, sly lawyer had taken him away from the President.

“It ain’t me who wants you, Faulconer, but Daniels, and when Daniels calls, a man does best to respond,” Delaney said.

“Daniels!” Faulconer said in astonishment, for John Daniels was one of the most powerful and reclusive men in Richmond. He was also famously ugly and foulmouthed, but important because it was Daniels who decided what causes and men the powerful Richmond Examiner would support. He lived alone with two savage dogs that it was his pleasure to make fight while he cackled from the vantage point of a high barber’s chair. He was no mean fighter himself; he had twice faced his enemies on the Richmond dueling ground in Bloody Run and had survived both fights with his malevolent reputation enhanced. He was also regarded by many southerners as a first-rate political theorist, and his pamphlet, “The Nigger Question,” was widely admired by all those who saw no need to modify the institution of slavery. Now, it seemed, the formidable John Daniels waited for Faulconer on the elevated back porch of the new Executive Mansion where, horsewhip in hand, he stared moodily at the rain.

He gave Faulconer a sideways glance, then flicked his whip toward the water dripping off the bare trees. “Is this weather an augury for our new President, Faulconer?” Daniels asked in his grating, hard voice, eschewing any more formal greeting.

“I hope not, Daniels. You’re well, I trust?”

“And what do you think of our new President, Faulconer?” Daniels ignored Faulconer’s courtesy.

“I think we are fortunate in such a man.”

“You sound like an editorial writer on the Sentinel. Fortunate! My God, Faulconer, the old U.S. Congress was full of mudsills like Davis. I’ve seen better men drop out the backside of a hog. He impresses you with his gravity, does he? Oh, he’s grave, I’ll grant you that, because there’s nothing alive inside him, nothing but notions of dignity and honor and statesmanship. It ain’t notions we need, Faulconer, but action. We need men to go and kill Yankees. We need to soak the North in Yankee blood, not make fine speeches from high platforms. If speeches won battles we’d be marching through Maine by now on our way to taking Canada. Did you know Joe Johnston was in Richmond two days ago?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Know what Johnston calls you, Faulconer?” Daniels asked in his unpleasant voice. It did not matter to Daniels that Faulconer was one of the South’s richest men, so rich that he could have bought the Examiner a dozen times over; Daniels knew his own power, and that power was the ability to mold public opinion in the South. That same power gave him the right to lounge in the President’s wicker rocking chair with his shabby boots up on the President’s back rail while Faulconer, in his gaudy colonel’s uniform, stood beside him like a supplicant. “He calls you the hero of Manassas,” Daniels said sourly. “What do you say to that?”

“I’m most grateful,” Faulconer said. In truth the soubriquet was a mistake, for General Johnston had never discovered that it was not Faulconer who had led the Legion against the North’s surprise flank attack at Manassas, but the unsung Thaddeus Bird, nor had Johnston ever learned that Bird had made that decision in deliberate disobedience of Faulconer’s orders. Instead, like so many other folk in the Confederacy, Johnston was convinced that in Washington Faulconer the South had a brilliant and fitting hero.

That belief had been carefully nurtured by Washington Faulconer himself. The Colonel had spent the months since Manassas lecturing on the battle in halls and theaters from Fredericksburg to Charleston. He told his audiences a tale of disaster averted and victory snatched from certain defeat, and his tale was given drama and color by a small group of wounded musicians who played patriotic songs and, at the more dramatic moments of the narration, played imitation bugle calls that gave the audience the impression that ghostly armies maneuvered just outside the lecture hall’s dark windows. Then, as the story reached its climax and the whole fate of the Confederacy hung in history’s balance, Faulconer would pause and a snare drum would rattle a suggestion of musketry and a bass drum crash the echoes of distant cannon fire before Faulconer told of the heroism that had saved the day. Then the applause would ring out to drown the drummers’ simulated gunfire. Southern heroism had defeated dull-witted Yankee might, and Faulconer would smile modestly as the cheers surrounded him.

Not that Faulconer had ever actually claimed to be the hero of Manassas, but his account of the fight did not specifically deny the accolade. If asked what he had done personally, Faulconer would refuse to answer, claiming that modesty was becoming to a warrior, but then he would touch his right arm in its black sling and he would see the men straighten their backs with respect and the women look at him with a melting regard. He had become accustomed to the adulation; indeed, he had been making the speech for so long now that he had come to believe in his own heroism, and that belief made his memory of the Legion’s rejection of him on the night of Manassas hard to bear.

“Were you a hero?” Daniels now asked Faulconer directly.

“Every man at Manassas was a hero,” Faulconer replied sententiously.

Daniels cackled at Faulconer’s answer. “He should have been a lawyer like you, eh, Delaney? He knows how to make words mean nothing!”

Belvedere Delaney had been cleaning his fingernails, but now offered the editor a swift, humorless smile. Delaney was a fastidious, witty, clever man whom Faulconer did not wholly trust. The lawyer was presently in Confederate uniform, though quite what his martial duties entailed, Faulconer could not guess. It was also rumored that Delaney was the owner of Mrs. Richardson’s famous brothel on Marshall Street and of the even more exclusive house of assignation on Franklin Street. If true, then the collected gossip of the two brothels doubtless provided Delaney with damaging knowledge about a good number of the Confederacy’s leaders, and doubtless the sly lawyer passed all that pillow talk on to the scowling, diseased, twisted-looking Daniels.

“We need heroes, Faulconer,” Daniels now said. He stared sourly down at the flooded paths and muddy vegetable beds of the soaking garden. A wisp of smoke twisted up from the presidential smokehouse where a dozen Virginia hams were being cured. “You heard about Henry and Donelson?”

“Indeed,” Faulconer said. In Tennessee Forts Donelson and Henry had been captured and now it looked as if Nashville must fall, while in the east the Yankee navy had again struck from the sea; this time to capture Roanoke Island in North Carolina.

“And what would you say, Faulconer”—Daniels shot an unfriendly look at the handsome Virginian—“if I were to tell you that Johnston is about to abandon Centreville and Manassas?”

“He can’t be!” Faulconer was genuinely aghast at the news. Too many acres of northern Virginia were already under enemy occupation, and yielding more of the state’s sacred turf without a fight appalled Faulconer.

“But he is.” Daniels paused to light a long black cheroot. He spat the cheroot’s tip over the railing, then blew smoke into the rain. “He’s decided to pull back behind the Rappahannock. He claims we can defend ourselves better there than in Centreville. No one’s announced the decision yet, it’s supposed to be a secret, which means Johnston knows, Davis knows, you and I know, and half the goddamn Yankees probably know too. And can you guess what Davis proposes doing about it, Faulconer?”

“I trust he’ll fight the decision,” Faulconer said.

“Fight?” Daniels mocked the word. “Jeff Davis doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He just listens to Granny Lee. Caution! Caution! Caution! Instead of fighting, Faulconer, Davis proposes that a week tomorrow we should all have a day of prayer and fasting. Can you believe that? We are to starve ourselves so that Almighty God will take note of our plight. Well, Jeff Davis can tighten his belt, but I’ll be damned if I shall. I shall give a feast that day. You’ll join me, Delaney?”

“With enormous pleasure, John,” Delaney said, then glanced around as the door at the end of the verandah opened. A small boy, maybe four or five years old and carrying a hoop, appeared on the porch. The boy smiled at the strangers.

“Nurse says I can play here,” the boy, whom Washington Faulconer guessed was the President’s oldest son, explained himself.

Daniels shot a venomous look at the child. “You want a whipping, boy? If not, then get the hell out of here, now!”

The boy fled in tears as the editor turned back to Faulconer. “Not only are we withdrawing from Centreville, Faulconer, but as there isn’t sufficient time to remove the army’s supplies from the railhead at Manassas, we are torching them! Can you credit it? We spend months stocking the army with food and ammunition and at the very first breath of spring we decide to burn every damn shred of material and then scuttle like frightened women behind the nearest river. What we need, Faulconer, are generals with balls. Generals with flair. Generals not afraid to fight. Read this.” He took from his vest pocket a folded sheet of paper that he tossed toward Faulconer. The Colonel needed to grovel on the porch’s rush matting to retrieve the folded sheet, which proved to be the galley proof of a proposed editorial for the Richmond Examiner.

The editorial was pure balm to Faulconer’s soul. It declared that the time had come for bold action. The spring would surely bring an enemy onslaught of unparalleled severity and the Confederacy would only survive if it met that onslaught with bravery and imagination. The South would never prevail by timidity, and certainly not by digging trenches such as those with which General Robert Lee seemed intent upon surrounding Richmond. The Confederacy, the editorial proclaimed, would be established by men of daring and vision, not by the efforts of drainage engineers. The writer grudgingly allowed that the Confederacy’s present leaders were well-meaning men, but they were hidebound in their ideas and the time had surely come to appoint new officers to high position. One such man was Colonel Washington Faulconer, who had been unemployed since Manassas. Let such a man loose on the North, the article concluded, and the war would be over by summer. Faulconer read the editorial a second time and pondered whether he should go to Shaffers this very afternoon and order the extra braid for his sleeves and the gilded wreaths that would surround the stars on his collar wings. Brigadier General Faulconer! The rank, he decided, sat well on him.