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.
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?