Stifling a yawn, Douglass shifted in his seat. But before he could rise, General Willcox held up a forefinger. 'Something I was meaning to ask you, sir,' the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. 'What was it, now? Oh, yes, I have it: during your captivity, did you have any occasion to speak with men of your race held in servitude in the Confederate States?'
Douglass settled himself firmly once more. 'No, General, I did not. I wish I had had such an occasion, but it was denied me. My captors went to such lengths to prevent me from having any intercourse with my own people that, until I was returned to this side of the fighting line, I had all my meals from the hands of white soldiers detailed for the task. Appreciating the irony of having white servants at my beck and call perhaps more than the Confederate authorities would have done, I refrained from pointing it out to them, although I have every intention of prominently mentioning it in one of my future pieces on the experience.'
'They were so afraid you'd corrupt their niggers, eh?' Richardson said. He found himself in a predicament that must have been awkward for him: Douglass had seen how he despised Negroes, but he also despised the Confederate States of America. Juggling those two loathings had to keep him on his toes.
'If, Captain, by corrupting you mean instilling the desire for freedom into the heart of any Negro' — Douglass stressed the proper word-'upon whom I might have chanced, then I should say you are correct. Should you desire to construe the word in any other sense, I must respectfully ask that you choose another instead.'
'That is what I meant, close enough,' Richardson said. Douglass sighed a small sigh. No point to taking it further. None of the officers at the table, not even General Willcox, had noticed that Richardson had called Douglass' brothers in bondage niggers-had, in effect, called him a nigger, too.
No. Colonel Schlieffen had noticed. The mournful eyes in that nondescript face held sympathy for Douglass. Schlieffen, of course, was a foreigner. None of the U.S. officers at the table had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Frederick Douglass wished that surprised him more. Had he really escaped from captivity after all, or only from the name of it and not from the thing itself?
Brakes squealed, iron grinding against iron. Sparks flew up from the rails, putting General Thomas Jackson in mind of distant muzzle flashes seen by night. The train was a special, laid on by order of President Longstreet. No conductor came down the aisle shouting, ' Richmond! All out for Richmond!' Jackson 's was the only Pullman behind the engine and tender.
Gaslights turned the Richmond and Danville Railroad depot bright as day. Under that yellowish light, a captain stood waiting. He sprang to attention when Jackson emerged from his car. 'Sir, I have a carriage waiting for you right over yonder. You're in less than half an hour later than you were scheduled to get here; President Longstreet will be waiting up for you.'
'Very well-take me to him,' Jackson said. Part of him-the frivolous part he'd been fighting all his life-wished the train had been hours late, so Longstreet would have gone to bed and he would have been able to spend the night in the bosom of his family and to see the president in the morning. But duty came first. 'The president would not have summoned me had he not reckoned the matter urgent. Let us go without delay.'
The captain saluted. 'Yes, sir. If you'll just follow me-' As he'd promised, the carriage waited just beyond the glow of the gaslights. He stood aside to let Jackson precede him up into it, then spoke to the old Negro holding the reins: 'The president's residence.'
'Yes, suh.' The driver tipped his top hat, clucked to the horses, and nicked the leather straps. The carriage began to roll. Every so often, Jackson saw men in uniform on the streets of Richmond. But he might well have done that in peacetime, too, here in the capital of his nation. From the spectacle that met his eyes, he could not have proved the Confederate States were at war.
'Did you have a good trip, sir?' the captain escorting him asked.
'Middling,' he replied. 'As travel goes, it went well enough. I should be lying, however, if I said I was eager to leave Louisville with the fight unsettled.' He glared at the young officer as if it were his fault. As he'd hoped, that glare suppressed further questions until the carriage had rattled up Shockoe Hill to the presidential mansion.
'Good to see you, General,' G. Moxley Sorrel said, as if Jackson had come round from the War Department rather than from Louisville. 'Go right in, sir. The president is waiting for you.' That was out of the ordinary. Jackson couldn't remember the last time he hadn't had to cool his heels in the anteroom while Longstreet finished dealing with whoever was in his office ahead of the general-in-chief.
This time, Longstreet was going through papers when Jackson came in. 'You made good time,' he said, rising to shake Jackson 's hand. 'Sit down, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I shout for coffee?'
'Thank you, Your Excellency. Coffee would be most welcome.' As usual, Jackson sat rigidly erect, taking no notice of the chair's soft, almost teasing efforts to seduce him into a more relaxed posture. Longstreet didn't shout for coffee; he rang a bell. The steaming brew appeared with commendable promptness. Jackson spooned sugar into his cup, sipped, nodded, and said, 'And now, sir, may I inquire what was so urgent as to require removing me from the sight of my command without the battle's end in sight?'
Longstreet drank some coffee, too, before asking, 'Do you expect the Yankees to break through while you're away?'
'I do not expect them to break through at all,' Jackson snapped. Longstreet only smiled at him. After a moment, he had the grace to look sheepish. 'Very well, Your Excellency: I take your point. Perhaps my absence will not unduly imperil the front. Nevertheless-'
'Nevertheless, I wanted you here, General.' Longstreet took a president's privilege and overrode him. 'Conferring by telegraph is far too cumbersome. Were the telephone improved to the point where I could remain in Richmond and you in Louisville, that might serve, but we must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now.'
'I do take the point, Mr. President, I assure you,' Jackson said. When Longstreet said conferring, he often meant lecturing. Like a lot of clever men, he enjoyed hearing himself talk. Jackson had not seen him anywhere near so happy when listening to someone else.
And the president kept right on talking. What came from his lips, though, was praise for Jackson, to which the Confederate general-in-chief was not averse to listening: 'You did exactly the right thing when you wired me after Frederick Douglass fell into your hands. Next to holding the Yankees' first assault at Louisville, sending that telegram may well prove your most important action in the entire campaign.'
'That's very kind of you, Your Excellency, but surely you exaggerate,' Jackson said.
'I do not! In no particular do I overstate the case.' Longstreet began ticking off possibilities on his fingers. 'Had the soldiers who captured him shot him on realizing who and what he was, we might have claimed he was killed in the fighting. Had they lynched him after realizing who and what he was-'
'A fate he nearly suffered,' Jackson broke in.
'I believe that.' Longstreet shuddered. 'Had they done it, I should have had to punish them and publish to the world that they had done the infamous act without authorization from anyone higher in rank. And had you hanged him, General'-the president of the CSA frowned most severely-'that would have been very bad. I don't know how I could have repaired it.'
'Mr. President, you are starting at shadows,' Jackson said. 'Douglass'-he'd forgotten about saying Mister Douglass-'is a prominent figure in the United States, but his prominence does not translate into popularity.'
'What you say is true, so far as it goes,' Longstreet agreed, nodding his majestic head. 'It does not go far enough. You see over the hill to the battle just ahead, but not to the larger fight three weeks later and half a state away.'
'Enlighten me, then,' Jackson said, more than a little testily. He knew he was no match for Longstreet as a politician, but did not enjoy having his nose rubbed in the fact.
Almost to his disappointment, Longstreet did enlighten him: 'As you say, Douglass is not nearly so popular as he would wish in the USA. He embarrasses his countrymen by reminding them they lost the War of Secession, an unpalatable fact on which they would sooner not dwell. But Douglass is popular in France, and he is extremely popular in England, and has been for upwards of thirty years. We would have had an easier time explaining to the United States how we had killed one of their citizens than explaining to our allies how we had come to kill a man they revere.'
'Ah. Now I see it plain.' Jackson dipped his head to the president. 'I humbly beg your pardon, Your Excellency: in such matters your mind does cast a wider net than mine.'
'Each cat his own rat,' Longstreet said. That was not quite the same as admitting Jackson made a better
