At the very last, he said to Burton, “I’ve been thinking about that question we left unanswered this morning. You said it would depend on your authority and how you interpreted it. I’m not sure what you meant.”
“I meant that in your colonel’s position, lacking specific orders to the contrary, I would move my men under cover of night to that new brick fort out yonder in the harbor.”
If Doubleday had expected some theoretical, wishy-washy answer, this was a surprise. He stiffened, clearly shocked by what he’d heard. “You can’t be serious.”
“I wouldn’t make jokes about something this grave, Captain.”
“That would surely be taken as an act of war by the people who live here.”
“Such a viewpoint has no logic. The fort is Union property, not the state’s.”
“Captain, you are speaking of logic in a land that does not know its meaning.”
“Then the problem must inevitably become critical, no matter what you do to prevent it. You can’t talk logic to madmen and you can’t prevent a war if only one side is interested in doing that.”
Nothing was said until Burton spoke again. “So in that situation my most immediate loyalty would be to my men. Assuming, as I said, no orders to the contrary.”
“And you would move them,” Doubleday said, still in disbelief.
“I would move them now—tonight if it were mine to do.”
“Interesting thought,” Doubleday said. “Depressing but interesting.”
We walked down the beach and took our leave in a hazy afternoon sunlight. At the fort we wished Captain Doubleday and his garrison good luck. As we put it some distance behind us, Burton said, “Those men are going to need a hell of a lot more than luck,” and this reality followed us over the marsh to the steamer and back across the harbor to the city.
That to me was the climax of our journey. All these years later I can still see Burton’s dark face in the candlelight; I can feel Double-day’s surprise, as palpable as a slap in that dark, flickering corner, and I would bet my life that he had never given such a bold move a serious thought before that moment. The act that started our civil war may seem obvious now in its dusty historical context. But what seems obvious to historians might not have been quite so clear to the men who were living it. Yes, those Southerners were mad, hot-blooded and irrational, determined to have their war. If there had been no Fort Sumter they would have found another time and place to begin it. But the fact that it did start at Sumter makes the provocative act, first posed by Richard Burton on a quiet afternoon a year before the shooting started, of considerable historical significance.
* * *
The time was now coming for us to part. Nothing had been said, but I had already gone well past the days I had begged from my wife. Richard planned to go on to New Orleans and then catch the river-boat north to his jumping-off point into the Western territories. Over dinner he launched a spirited campaign for me to join him. “Come at least as far as New Orleans.”
“Richard, I can’t. I’m a family man who has indulged himself long enough.”
We had carefully avoided the subject of his disappearance, but he alluded to it now. “I hope things are right between us.”
“Of course they are. I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything.” “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
He lit a smoke. Impulsively he reached through the smoke to grip my hand. “I’m not a sentimental man, Charlie. But in all likelihood we shall never see each other again, and I must say this. I’ve had damned few friendships that I value as much as yours.”
“That’s very mutual, Richard,” I said over the lump in my throat. “Then come with me to St. Joe. I wouldn’t insist on anything beyond that, my word of honor. I don’t want your scalp on my conscience if I run into Indians on west.”
I resisted, he insisted, and at last we compromised on New Orleans. The next morning I sent a telegram to Baltimore, stealing another two weeks from my wife and young daughter, and we left Charleston that afternoon. Down the coast we went to Savannah, then west on a rugged overland trip that took us through the growing towns of Columbus, Montgomery, and Mobile. We spent five days drinking and laughing in New Orleans. My two weeks ran into a third, and as the time drew to its inevitable close, I felt a cutting sadness like nothing I’ve known before or since. When my wife died in ‘eighty-three, my grief was crushing; this was different, but in its own way almost as overwhelming. I felt the loss of Richard as sharply as the slice of a knife.
We got roaring, hilariously drunk that final night. Richard drank more than I had ever seen one man consume, and we stag-gered into our rooms in a stupor that I can barely remember. In the morning we both paid the price: Richard was actually ill from the aftereffects, and it took him all morning, until just before his steamer departed, to begin to recover. I walked with him to the dock and we promised to write. I gave him a standing order for any books he might produce, “two copies of each, please, one inscribed to me, for as long as you write them and as long as I’m here to receive them.”
I watched him, a lonely figure on the riverboat’s deck, until he went out of sight. In that moment I’d have done anything to have him back. The city that night was full of tourists, but to me it was excruciatingly empty, and I knew the long voyage home would be solemn and bleak.
As I checked out the next morning, the clerk asked if my stay had been satisfactory. “And will you be seeing your friend again, sir?”
“I hope so. But he lives in London…”
“I only ask, sir, because the maid found something he left in his room.”
