'You are a pious man, Mr. Douglass,' Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen said. 'This is in my judgment good. It will take you through hard times in your life more surely than will anything else.'
Douglass eyed the German military attache. What did he know of hard times? In his life, Prussia had gone from triumph to triumph, and now headed a German Empire that was surely the strongest power on the European continent. He had not seen his nation split in two, nor ninety percent of his own people, his own kind, trapped in bondagelike the Israelites indeed, Douglass thought.
But then he recalled having heard that Schlieffen had lost his wife in childbed. That was an anguish Douglass had never had to bear. He nodded judiciously. Schlieffen could know whereof he spoke.
'They brought you before Stonewall himself, didn't they?' someone asked. 'What was that like?'
What had that been like? Stonewall was a name with which mothers in the United States, and especially Negro mothers in the United States, had been frightening naughty children for a generation. 'When the Rebel soldiers took me into his tent, I told him I thought I had come before the Antichrist.'
'As well you might,' General Willcox said, and then, 'Oh, thank you, Grady.' The cook set on a table a large tray piled high with squab.
The succulently roasted birds went from tray to plates in next to nothing flat. Douglass snagged a couple for himself. Baked potatoes followed shortly. He went on, 'The very strange thing was that Jackson 's artillery commander-'
'General Alexander,' Oliver Richardson put in.
'General Alexander, yes,' Douglass agreed. 'Shortly before my arrival there, he had likened me to the Antichrist.'
Richardson nodded, as if he not only believed Alexander would say such a thing but agreed with it himself. Orlando Willcox asked, 'And do you and the Confederate generals still hold this view of each other?'
Cutting up a potato and grinding pepper over it, Douglass paused before answering. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he said, 'I, at any rate, do not. General Jackson is a man convinced of his Tightness and of his righteousness, but not the horrific figure of evil I had made of him in my mind.'
Captain Richardson looked mischievous. 'You'll notice, friends, Douglass says nothing of whether the Rebs changed their minds about him.' He spoke lightly, so the words would be taken for a joke, but Douglass did not think he was joking. By the snide laughs that rose around the table, neither did a good many members of Willcox's staff.
'In fact, I believe they did,' Douglass answered. 'We shall never love one another. We may now know a certain respect previously lacking.' He laughed a laugh of his own. 'I cannot deny that General Jackson treated me far more respectfully than the Rebel soldiers who first took hold of me.' He chuckled again. That rib didn't seem to be broken after all. He didn't know why not.
Down at the far end of the table, someone said, 'They didn't worry about the Antichrist, I'll bet. They likely thought they'd nabbed Old Scratch himself.' That got another laugh, this time one in which Douglass felt he could join. That major down there wasn't far wrong.
Colonel Schlieffen changed the subject, saying, 'These'-he groped for the English word-'these doves are very good eating. And we have them often, so they must common be. Very good.' He sucked the meat off a leg bone.
'Not doves, Colonel.' Oliver Richardson enjoyed showing off how much he knew, though this was something any American schoolboy could have told the German military attache. 'They're passenger pigeons, and yes, they are very common in this part of the country.'
'Not so common as they used to be,' General Willcox said. 'When I was a lad in Michigan, the flocks would darken the sky, as the Persians' arrows are said to have done at Thermopylae against the Greeks. Swarms of that size are no longer seen: fewer forests here in the Midwest where the birds can rear their young than in the old days, 1 suppose. But, as Captain Richardson says, they do remain common.'
'And, as Colonel Schlieffen says, they do remain very good eating.' Douglass had reduced the two he'd taken to a pile of bones. He hooked another bird off the tray and devoured it, too.
Schlieffen said, 'I am glad, Mr. Douglass, you here again to see, and to know that you are safe after being captured. I will not much longer with the Army of the Ohio stay, I think. I have learned much here, and am sorry to have to go, but I think it is for the best.'
'I'll miss you, Colonel,' Douglass said, and meant it. Like most Europeans he'd met, Schlieffen was far more prepared to accept him simply as a man, and not as a black man, than the common run of Americans. 'But, if you're still learning things here, why go?'
'I believe,' Schlieffen replied after a perceptible pause for thought, 'that what new things I may learn by staying will be small next to the knowledge I have already gained.'
Douglass needed a moment to figure out why the German had taken such pains with his answer. Then he saw: Schlieffen was saying he didn't expect the Army of the Ohio to accomplish much more than it had already done. He didn't expect U.S. soldiers to break through the Confederate entrenchments ringing them and to rampage across Kentucky. Had he thought they could manage something like that, he might have stayed to watch them do it.
And, in saying the Army of the Ohio was unlikely to accomplish anything more, he was also saying that army had failed. It still did not hold all of Louisville; its flanking manoeuvre had been costly but had not dislodged the Rebels. Even if it did eventually dislodge the Rebels from Louisville, it surely could not launch any triumphal progress through Kentucky thereafter. Since triumph was what Blaine and Willcox had purposed, anything less meant defeat.
No wonder Schlieffen was so careful not to offend. His departure passed judgment on the campaign and on those who ran it.
Richardson said, 'Whether he reckons you're the Antichrist or not, Mr. Douglass'-he was smooth when he wanted to be, smooth enough to use a title in public, no matter how hypocritically-'I'm surprised old Stonewall up and let you go instead of keeping you to trade for a Reb or something.'
Douglass shrugged. 'Had the decision been his, I do not know what he would have done with me-or to me. Had the decision been his, I gather he did not know what he would have done. He referred it to President Longstreet, however, who ordered my release. Having received the order, Jackson not only obeyed but treated me quite handsomely.'
Better than you deserved, Richardson 's face said.
Orlando Willcox sighed. 'Longstreet was more astute than I had thought he would be. By releasing you so promptly and with such good treatment, he enabled the Confederate States to escape the odium that would have fallen on them had they sought to punish you for your views and actions over the years.'
'Yes,' Douglass said, and let it go at that. Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.
From across the Ohio, artillery rumbled. 'Confederate guns,' Captain Richardson said, and grimaced. 'We've done everything we could, but we never have been able to beat them down.'
'The long range of modern guns makes this hard,' Schlieffen said. 'So we learned when we fought the French. When the guns you are shooting at are behind a hill or otherwise hidden out of sight, finding accurately the range is not easy.'
'True, true,' General Willcox said sadly. 'During the War of Secession, you could see what you were shooting at, and what you could see, you could hit. Only twenty years ago, but how much has changed since.'
'We do use up a lot of ammunition feeling around for where the other fellow is, and that's a fact,' Richardson said. 'A good thing he's doing the same with us, or we'd be in the soup.'
'Who learns first how to find the range to the enemy's guns will a large advantage have in the war where this happens,' Schlieffen said.
Nods went up and down the table. Oliver Richardson said, 'When they're in sight, a rangefinder like the ones the Navy uses would do some good. But land isn't flat, the way water is. Guns can hide almost anywhere, and shoot from behind hills, as you say, Colonel. I'd like to see the boys in the ironclads cope with that.'
The discussion grew technical. As far as Frederick Douglass was concerned, the discussion grew boring. Changing only the subject of the conversation and not its tone, the soldiers, hashing over the best ways to blow up their foes at enormous distances, might as readily have been steamboat engineers hashing over the best ways to wring a few extra horsepower out of a high-pressure engine.
