Mr. John Taylor, the Mormons' president.' When Lincoln didn't deny it, Custer went on, 'Do you know his present whereabouts?'
'No,' Lincoln said. 'If he's not at home, or perhaps at the Tabernacle, I have no idea where he might be. Why, if you don't mind my asking?'
'He is to be arrested for treason, along with the rest of the Mormon leaders,' Custer answered. 'We can't lay hands on him, though. He's run off, God knows where-I was hoping you might, too. When we catch him, General Pope aims to hang him higher than Haman.'
Chapter 8
General Thomas Jackson peered north across the Ohio River through a telescope. 'The onslaught cannot now be long delayed,' he said to Brigadier General Peter Turney, who stood by his side. 'I thank our heavenly Father for having given us this much time in which to ready Louisville for the storm.'
'The Yankees were slowcoaches in the last war,' Turney answered, his Tennessee twang contrasting with Jackson 's softer Virginia accent. 'Doesn't look like they've learned a whole hell of a lot since.'
'For which we should also give thanks to God,' Jackson said, and Turney nodded.
Negro labour gangs in tunics and trousers of coarse, undyed cotton-almost the same color as old-style Confederate uniforms-were still busily digging firing pits and building earthworks and abatis throughout Louisville, but especially down by the waterfront. Without the slaves, the defenses of the city would have been far weaker than they were.
Brigadier General Turney asked, 'Sir, is it true what I hear, that President Longstreet's going to try and manumit the niggers after the war?' Under bushy gray eyebrows, his broad, earnest face was worried.
'It is true, General,' Jackson said, and Turney grimaced. 'He feels the effort to be necessary for reasons of state.'
'Reasons of state be damned.' Turney pointed toward a gang marching along with picks and shovels shouldered like rifles. 'Without slaves like that bunch there, what in blazes are we supposed to do the next time the Yankees pick a fight with us?'
'I can hope that, even if free, the Negro shall not be equal to the white man, and shall be subject to some form of conscription in time of need.'
'Turn 'em loose and they'll get uppity-you mark my words,' Turney said. Then (rather to Jackson 's relief, for he agreed with the views the Tennessean expressed) he changed the subject: 'Do you think we knocked out enough of their invasion boats to have held them up?'
'I wish I did, but I very much doubt it,' Jackson answered. 'Artillery is ideally suited for breaking up an attack once launched, but I fear the science has not advanced to the point where it can preempt one. That day may be coming, but has not yet arrived.'
'We'll hurt 'em when they do come-whenever that is,' Brigadier General Turney said.
'We shall do more than hurt them, General,' Jackson said. 'We shall smash them and wreck any further hopes for the invasion of our country they may have-we shall do that, or I will know the reason why and the men responsible.'
He did not raise his voice or make any histrionic gesture. Nevertheless, before Turney quite realized what he was doing, he gave back a pace from Jackson. The brigadier general laughed nervously. 'The men won't dare lose,' he said. 'They're more afraid of what you'd do to 'em than they are of the damnyankees.'
Jackson considered. 'That is as it should be,' he said at last, and swung up onto his horse. Leaving Turney to stare after him, he rode back through Louisville to the headquarters he'd established south of the city, beyond U.S. artillery range.
Even in its present state, with most of the civilian population fled, Louisville struck him as the least distinctively Southern city in the Confederate States. That didn't spring only from its having been the last town to fall into Confederate hands. Many of the people hereabouts were Yankees by origin or descent, from New York and New England.
And Louisville, like Covington farther east, still looked across the border to the United States, in the same way that Cincinnati, on the other side of the Ohio, looked south to the Confederacy. All three were towns that had grown up trading what the North made for that the South did. That North and South were now two different countries made trade more complicated, but had neither stopped it nor even slowed it much.
Coins jingled in Jackson 's pocket. Some had been minted in the USA, some in the CSA. Both nations coined to the same standard; along the border, that was all that mattered. Yankee greenbacks circulated as readily as the brown banknotes issued in the Confederate States. A lot of people hereabouts not only didn't much care whether the Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes flew over them, they hardly noticed which flag did fly.
'They will, I expect, learn the difference in short order,' Jackson said to himself.
A company of infantry, the soldiers in gray, the officers in the new butternut uniforms, was marching north as he rode south past them. The men grinned and whooped and tossed their hats. 'Stonewall!' they shouted. Abstracted, Jackson was by them before he raised his own hat to acknowledge the cheers.
He rode past the University of Louisville, past the downs where, locals told him, people were talking about building a racetrack, and into a grove of oaks where he'd pitched his tent so he could rest under the shade of the trees. After giving his horse to an orderly, he hunted up his own chief artillerist, Major General E. Porter Alexander. 'It won't be long,' he said bluntly.
'Good,' Alexander answered. 'High time.' He was more than ten years younger than Jackson, with a perpetually amused look on his long, handsome face and a pointed brown beard flecked with gray.
'Much will depend on your guns, General,' Jackson said. 'I shall want as much damage as possible done to the Yankees' boats while they are in the water, and to their installations on the northern bank of the river.'
'I understand, sir,' Alexander said. 'We've been trying to hurt them before they launch, but we unmask ourselves when we bombard them, and they have a lot of guns over there trying to knock us out. Say what you will about the rest of the U.S. Army, their artillery has always been good.'
He and Jackson smiled at each other. Jackson had begun his military service in the U.S. Artillery. Alexander himself had started out as an engineer, switching to big guns not long after choosing the Confederate side in the War of Secession.
'It is of the most crucial importance that they not gain such a lodgment on the southern shore of the Ohio that they drive us beyond rifle range of the river,' Jackson said. 'That would enable them more easily to erect bridges to facilitate the flow of men and equipage into our country, and their engineers are not to be despised, either.' He didn't often think to return compliments, and was always pleased with himself when he did remember such niceties.
'As long as they don't drive us out of cannon range, we can still give them a rough time,' Alexander said. 'And our guns range a deal farther than they did in the last war.'
Jackson noted the artillerist did not promise he could put the bridges out of action with his guns. One reason he appreciated Alexander was that the younger officer never made promises impossible to keep.
'1 shall rely on your men quite as much as on the infantry,' Jackson said.
'Coming from you, sir, I'll take that,' Alexander replied. 'In fact, I'll let the men know you said it. If anything will make them fight harder, that'll do it.'
They conferred a while longer. Jackson went back to his own tent, where he spent an hour in prayer. He had heard that General Willcox, the U.S. commander, was also a man of thoroughgoing piety. That worried him not in the least. 'Lord, Thou shalt surely judge the right,' he said.
After a frugal supper of stale bread and roasted beef with salt but no other seasoning, a regimen he had followed for many years, he checked with the telegraphers to see if President Longstreet had sent him any further instructions. Longstreet hadn't. Having ordered him to make a defensive fight, Longstreet seemed content to let his gen-eral-in-chief handle the details. Robert E. Lee, God rest his soul, had known how to write a discretionary order. Seeing that Longstreet had learned something from the man who had commanded them both was good.
On returning to his tent, Jackson reviewed his dispositions. He was, he decided, as ready as he could be. He doubted the same held true on the other side of the river. Taking that as a sign God favored the Confederate cause,
