word with you,' the slave reported.
' Hampton?' Jackson 's eyebrows rose. So did he. 'Of course I'll see him. You've put him in the parlor?' Cyrus nodded. Jackson headed in that direction. 'I wonder what on earth he can want with me, though.'
When he went into the parlor, Wade Hampton III rose from a sofa to shake his hand. The senator from South Carolina was five or six years older than Jackson, portly but erect, balding, with a neat beard once brown but now mostly gray and splendid mustachios. He and Jackson had known each other for twenty years, since the days when the former planter commanded a cavalry brigade under Jeb Stuart.
After the greetings were done, after Hampton had declined food and drink, the South Carolinian closed both doors into the parlor, having first looked up and down each hallway to ensure that no one lurked nearby. That bit of melodrama accomplished, he said, 'I must have your word, General, that, come what may, what we say and do here tonight shall remain solely between the two of us.'
'Well, sir, that depends,' Jackson said. 'If you are contemplating treason against the government of the Confederate States, I'm afraid I cannot help you.'
He'd meant it for a joke, a piece of light badinage. The last thing he expected was for Wade Hampton to look as if he'd just taken a gunshot wound. Slowly, Hampton said, 'Treason against the government of the Confederate States is not the same as treason against the Confederate States. Of this I am convinced down to the bottom of my soul. If you disagree, tell me at once, and I shall bid you a good evening and beg your pardon for having disturbed you.'
'You had better tell me more,' Jackson said, also slowly. 'I must confess, I have not the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Do you believe that I, in my recent conversation with General Rosecrans and Mr. Hay, am somehow betraying our country? If so, sir, we would be wiser to continue this conversation through our friends.' Dueling had been illegal in Virginia for many years. From time to time, though, gentlemen still traded fire on the field of honor.
But Hampton hastily held up a hand. 'By no means!' he exclaimed. 'You do not tarnish the honor of the Confederacy; your every action brightens it. Would to God others might say the same instead of trampling our beloved Constitution in the dust.'
'Take a seat, sir; take a seat,' Jackson urged. After Hampton sat, so did the Confederate general-in-chief, on a cane-backed chair well suited to his rigid posture. 'You still have the advantage of me, for I know of no plots brewing against our government.'
'You have a sizable army in northern Virginia, ready to compel the Yankees to obedience,' Hampton said. After Jackson nodded, the senator went on, 'I trust the men would also obey you if you called on them to preserve our republic from those who would destroy the principles on which it was founded.'
'Speak your mind, if that is what you came for,' Jackson said. Wade Hampton did nothing of the sort, but sat mute. Jackson 's bushy eyebrows came down low over his eyes. The scowl that made soldiers quail had no effect on the senator. Sighing, Jackson did something out of the ordinary for him: he gave ground. 'Very well-you have my promise.'
'I knew you were a true patriot,' Hampton breathed. 'Here, then: I shall ask my question, which is this-if you order your men to defend the Constitution of the Confederate States, will they move against the men here in Richmond who set it at naught?'
When Hampton spoke of setting an army in motion against Richmond, that was liable to be treason, though Jackson could not imagine his old comrade-in-arms disloyal to the CSA. 'From whom, in your view, does the Constitution want defending?' he asked.
And, at last, the senator from South Carolina brought his fear and anger out into the light: 'From President Longstreet, General, and from any other man who would tamper with the structure of society we have so long maintained in our beloved nation.'
'Ahh.' Jackson let out a long exhalation. 'You oppose him because he intends to manumit the Negro.'
'Of course I do,' Hampton said. 'What right-thinking white man in this country does not? My home state was first to leave the USA because of the federal government's continued interference with slavery, as our ordinance of secession clearly shows. Shall we tolerate from Richmond the tyranny that led us to break with Washington?'
Jackson sighed again, this time with deep regret. 'I am afraid we shall, Senator,' he said. Hampton stared at him. He went on, 'The president has persuaded me that his policy is in the best interest of our country. If not for the intervention of Britain and France, we might well have failed in the War of Secession. If not for their intervention, we should have had a far more difficult time in this war. If we forfeit their support by maintaining an institution they despise, how shall we fare against the Yankees the next time we have to face them?'
'We'll lick 'em, of course,' Wade Hampton III replied at once. 'We always have. We always will.'
'I wish I shared your certainty,' Jackson said. 'From the bottom of my heart, I wish I shared your certainty. But I do not. I cannot. Since I do not and cannot, and since I know the president purposes giving the Negro the name of freedom but not much of the thing itself, I am willing to suspend my disagreement with him on this matter and to believe him better acquainted with what will best serve us than I am myself.'
Hampton 's countenance darkened. 'General, you are making a mistake if you choose to side with a man who would cast down our peculiar institution.'
'Senator, you are making a mistake if you seek to suborn me into treason against the duly elected head of my government,' Jackson answered evenly. 'The Army will stand behind the president, sir; you may take that to be as much a given as one of Euclid 's axioms of geometry. This being so, have we anything further to say to each other?'
'I think not.' Senator Hampton headed for the door. 'You need not accompany me, General; I can find my own way out.' He opened the door from the parlor to the front hall, then slammed it shut.
Another window-rattling slam marked his departure from Jackson 's home.
'Good heavens!' his wife exclaimed when he returned to the table. 'You sent the senator away unhappy, Tom.' She took a longer look at Jackson. 'And you are unhappy, most unhappy, yourself. What happened between the two of you?'
'Nothing I much care to discuss,' Jackson answered. 'Least said, soonest mended.' He hoped with all his heart that his flat rejection of Hampton 's overtures would persuade the senator any attempt at a coup d'etat was foredoomed to failure. If it didn't, force of arms would persuade Hampton and whoever backed him of the same thing. 'We had a disagreement, that's all, and the senator from South Carolina is and has always been a man of somewhat hasty temper.'
His son's eyes glowed. ' Hampton 's red-hot for holding the nigger down and putting a foot on his neck,' Jonathan said. 'I'll bet he was trying to talk Father into going against manumission.'
Jackson rolled his eyes up to the heavens. 'Senator Hampton is a fool,' he growled. Jonathan grinned an enormous grin, convinced his father's words meant he was right. So they did, though not quite for the reason he thought. Jackson himself paid as little attention to politics as he could. Hampton 's appeal had taken him by surprise. But if his purpose was so obvious that even a youth-a youth more politically alert than the Confederate general-in-chief-could see it, people of greater prominence than that youth also would see it.
And, sure enough, when Jackson went to the War Department the next morning to continue discussion with General Rosecrans and Minister Hay, he was not altogether astonished to have a young lieutenant take him aside and lead him down the hall to a small room where President Longstreet sat waiting. Without preamble, Longstreet said, 'You had a visit from Wade Hampton last night.'
'Yes, Your Excellency, I did,' Jackson said.
'He asked you to help overthrow the government if I persist in moving us toward manumission.' Longstreet did not phrase it as a question.
'By his request, Mr. President, what passed between us last night is a private matter,' Jackson said.
'You need not tell me-I know Hampton 's mind,' Longstreet said. 'I also know you sent him away with a flea in his ear.'
'How do you know-?' Jackson paused. 'You are having him watched.' Spoken so baldly, it sounded like a transgression.
But Longstreet nodded, unembarrassed. 'I most certainly am. If he were actor enough to simulate the fury he showed outside your home, he would do better before the footlights than in the Senate. I assure you, General, I do not intend our nation to be torn asunder in the hour of our greatest triumph.'
'Our greatest triumph.' Jackson sighed. 'A great pity General Stuart cannot now enjoy it with us.'
