Widow of Gettysburg (10 page)

Harrison Caldwell had a special talent for finding trouble—and then diving headfirst into it. His mother was the first one to notice, and pointed it out as a reprimand. As a freckle-faced, red-haired schoolboy, he took it as a compliment. Still did.

Now, in the lobby of the United States Hotel in Frederick, Maryland, he was right where he wanted to be. Surrounded by trouble, and on the brink of getting into more. He could feel it.

Literally.
The hoofbeats of ten thousand Federal cavalry—Alfred Pleasonton’s, Harrison was told—pounded the street between the hotel and the train station, and beyond. The great column did not halt at any point, but moved on through the streets and out on the roads leading north, toward Pennsylvania, like a winding, dark blue ribbon. Next came the Reserve Artillery, jarring the ground with the carriages and cannons rolling over the pavements. The rumbling outside rattled the hotel windows and reverberated in Harrison’s stomach. The infantry was moving too, but not through Frederick. General Hooker had ordered them to move either east or west of it, but ultimately, north. To Pennsylvania.

“Well, what do you make of it?” Sam Wilkeson puffed on a cigar and eased into a red velvet armchair soaked in the late afternoon sun.
The sweet-smelling, blue-grey smoke curled in the air.

“I’d say we’re in the right place, wouldn’t you? General Hooker is already here, and more infantry will be passing through tomorrow and Monday.”

Sam grunted. “Dr. Brinton is here too, with twenty-five army wagon loads of battlefield medical supplies the medical director had him bring straight from Washington.”

“Sounds like a generous supply.”

“Quite so.” Sam tapped his cigar on the nearby ashtray. “I’d say they overestimated the need, but better that than to err on the opposite end.” He sighed and looked out the window, where the setting sun tinted the fleecy clouds rosy. “Soon enough we’ll be off living army-style with the rest of them.” The older man winced at the thought, but Harrison was thrilled. If this was to be the battle to end the war, it was going to be profound. Just the stuff on which he could build a name for himself.

“So they’ve got you on the review, too, I see.” Sam pointed to a small book on the walnut table next to Harrison:
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838–1839
, by Frances Anne Kemble.

Harrison picked up the book and flipped through it. He had only just begun to read it on the train. “Her husband is a native of Philadelphia, you know.” Frances Kemble, more commonly known as Fanny, was a famous British actress who, though staunchly opposed to slavery, had once been married to Pierce Butler, owner of rice and cotton plantations in Georgia. Every major paper in the country—at least in the North—would be covering the release of Fanny’s new book.

“I do know. It was a New York paper that first carried the story of the Weeping Time.”

But not yours.
Harrison’s lips tilted at the smug look on Sam’s face. It was Harrison who had penned that story four years ago for the
New York Tribune
, but under a pseudonym for his own protection. The article covered the sale of more than four hundred of Butler’s slaves in Savannah, Georgia, to pay off his gambling debts. It rained for days, until the last slave was sold, earning it the name the Weeping Time. Some
said the story, which was reprinted as its own pamphlet, fueled the fires of abolitionism and convinced many that slavery was an issue worth going to war over—perhaps even more so than
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, for Mrs. Stowe’s book was fictional, while the Weeping Time was fact. Harrison’s pseudonym became a household name among those opposed to slavery.
Now if I can just earn as much fame for my real name.

“I’m well aware of that, Sam,” was all he said. He brought his coffee to his lips and took a long sip before he said anything else. The
New York Tribune
left an aftertaste far more bitter than his sugarless coffee. The editor there, Horace Greeley, was as inclined to shape the news as he was to report it. Some said it was the
New York Tribune
’s relentless pressure on the Union army that prompted the ill-conceived rush into the disastrous Battle of Bull Run in 1861.
Papers should report the news, not try to create it.
Harrison joined the news staff of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, famous for its objective coverage of the war, and never regretted the decision.

“And,” Sam began again, leaning forward, “Pierce Butler was arrested for treason and spent a few weeks in New York harbor’s Fort Hamilton.”

“True.” Harrison set his mug back on the table and folded his hands. “But he’s back in Philadelphia, sitting out the rest of the war. If anyone will get an interview with him about his ex-wife’s journal, it’s going to be me.”

Sam glared as sunlight bounced into his eyes off bronze artillery rumbling by outside the window. “I seriously doubt he’ll give it to any reporter at all. He’s keeping his mouth shut tighter than a drum these days. No, young man, your story of this book will be the same as everyone else’s: a simple book review. Interesting enough, judging by her inflammatory previously published journal. But in times like these, I wager it will be altogether forgettable. War news is what the people want. They are practically mad for it.” He leaned back in his chair once more and smoked his cigar.

“Then that is what we shall give them.” Tucking the book and his
notebook under his arm, Harrison nodded at Sam, cut through the haze of his cigar smoke, and retired to his room for the night.

Finally enjoying a rare moment alone, Harrison hung his linen duster in the wardrobe of his hotel room and unfastened the top button of his shirt. The air was thick and heavy, despite the window being open. And thanks to the cavalry pounding the dirt street below, a fine layer of dust coated everything in the room.
No matter. I’ll be sleeping on the ground before too long anyway.
With a satisfied sigh, he settled onto the bed with Fanny Kemble’s journal and began reading by the light of the dipping sun.

The following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838–9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altahama, on the coast of Georgia.

The slaves in whom I then had an unfortunate interest were sold some years ago.

Harrison paused as images of slaves held in pens at Savannah’s Ten Broeck Race Track surged before him. Poked and prodded for four days before the sale began, made to bend, twist, jump, crouch, and to show their teeth, as if they were livestock. To keep his identity as a Northern reporter hidden, he had pretended to inspect some slaves, too. Their faces still haunted him. Some were resigned and stoic. Some rocked back and forth, moaning with grief.

Gut twisting, as it always did when he saw their faces in his mind, he focused once again on the journal that would tell the stories of their lives before the sale.

The islands themselves are at present in the power of the Northern troops. The record contained in the following pages is a picture of conditions of human existence which I hope and believe have passed away.

A bell rang in Harrison’s mind. He pinched the bridge of his freckled nose and turned the page. It was a letter to her friend, more like an essay, refuting all the arguments given by proponents of slavery.
I could write that myself
, he thought and flipped past several pages until he came to the first entry written from Georgia.

Darien, Georgia.

That was it. Darien, the small town that had just been destroyed by Yankee-negro troops. Col. Robert G. Shaw and his men had been implicated, but Harrison would be more willing to believe that Col. James Montgomery and his South Carolina contraband troops had been behind it. Montgomery may wear blue, but he had very little use for Negroes and made no secret of it. It would be more his style than Shaw’s to shoot that negro woman in the head and torch the town. In any case, Fanny had been friends with Col. Shaw’s abolitionist family in Boston.

Harrison closed the book and grazed his thumb over the spine.
There may be more to this story than a simple book review after all, even if I don’t get an interview with that rat Pierce Butler.
With the link to Darien, and with a little extra digging, Harrison could turn this book into war news—the kind of news that would stir both hearts and conversations, just as the Weeping Time story had. Maybe he would recognize one of the slaves he’d met on the auction block in this little book he now held. If he could find a connection … but it would have to be good. Really good.

He opened it again and skimmed more entries. Fanny and Pierce’s daughters had been children when they were in Georgia. Now they were grown women and both living in the Philadelphia area. Perhaps they remember plantation life, and would talk to him of their experiences.
Didn’t I hear that Sarah was loyal to the Union, but Frances took up her father’s affections for the Confederacy?
That may be a story. Not quite the emotional impact of the Weeping Time, but a start, anyway.

Outside the hotel window, night began unfurling upon the town. But in Harrison’s mind, a new day was dawning. He was fully aware that the big news story to follow right now was the impending battle between Lee and Hooker. But it wouldn’t hurt to follow one more lead until it was time to move out with the army. Turning the knob of the kerosene lamp, he determined to read as much as he could of Fanny Kemble’s journal before slumber overcame him.

Frederick, Maryland

Sunday, June 28, 1863

Dreams of rice swamps, slave huts, and the driver’s whip had held Harrison captive far too long. One glance out his window told him that something was up just one floor beneath him. He hurried through his morning routine, nicked his jaw with the straight-edge blade, and cursed himself for rushing through a shave yet again.

Pad and pencil in hand, he burst into the lobby of the United States Hotel to find it more packed than a church on Easter Sunday. Bewildered, he watched the crowd part to allow General Hooker to exit, alone.

Gen. George Meade, another Philadelphia native, was now the center of attention. With wispy grey hair framing his balding dome, he stood unmoving, staring at a paper in his hand. Soldiers in blue crammed in closer to hear what he might say.

Spying Whitelaw Reid among the crowd, with his own pencil and notebook at the ready, Harrison edged over to him. “What’s this?” he whispered.

“Unthinkable. You nearly missed it, Harris.”

“Missed what?” he hissed.

“Didn’t you hear the train at the station last night?” He hadn’t. “It came from Washington with two urgent messages from President Lincoln: one for Hooker and one for Meade.”

“And?”

“Hooker’s gone.”

“Yes, I just saw him leave. He didn’t look happy.” He pressed a corner of his handkerchief to the cut on his chin.

“No.” White shook his head impatiently. “Lincoln gave command of the Army of the Potomac to Meade.”

Harrison blinked. “Now?”

“Just now.”

“On the eve of battle?”

White cocked an eyebrow at him, then looked back at Meade expectantly.

What could the man possibly say? Harrison’s pencil was poised to capture every word with shorthand. The sounds of pealing church bells and the trundling cannons floated in through the window as all men waited for Meade to speak.

Eyebrows knitted together, Meade cleared his throat. “The country looks to this army to relieve it from devastation and the disgrace of hostile invasion. Whatever fatigues and sacrifices we may be called upon to undergo, let us have in view constantly the magnitude of the interests involved, and let each man determine to do his duty, leaving to an allcontrolling Providence the decision of this great contest.”

Harrison studied the general. He held his head high and his shoulders back in the perfect posture of a soldier. But apprehension collected in heavy, shadowy bags beneath his eyes. No one knew what Hooker’s plan was but Hooker himself. The whereabouts of Lee’s army was still a mystery. All they knew for sure was that a battle was imminent, and that it could determine the outcome of the war. And the Army of the Potomac had just been placed under new command. Unspoken questions tumbled in Harrison’s mind.
How will Meade lead? Will the men resist or respond to his command? Can he formulate a plan in time?

The rest of the speech took no more than a moment, and then Meade was gone.

“Harrison.” White elbowed him in the ribs. “If we print this, you know it will give the enemy the advantage.”

Harrison knew. The Confederates could read Yankee newspapers as well as anyone else, and they did. “Lee will attack—only God knows where—while the new leadership settles in.”

“He has no time to settle in. There is only time to lead.” White’s voice was hushed, but his eyes blazed with conviction.

“All the more reason for Lee to strike now, during the transition.”
Can the Union army possibly be ready in time?
Harrison rubbed the back of his neck and laced his way to the window. More artillery rumbled by,
through air thickly scented from budding trees. “But what we imagine the Rebels will do with the information is of no account.” He swiveled around to face White again. “We can’t sit on the story in an attempt to influence the battle.”