Yancey felt the pain shooting through his belly again.
“I don’t have much time left. If we don’t make this Southern Republic happen now the moment will be lost. Time will pass us by. Davis thinks he’s saving the United Sates by remaking it into the Confederate Union. He’s saving it for the Yankees. The Confederate Union will be their country, not ours.”
Rhett considered his point a minute before replying.
“If we do call this convention we’ll have to pack it with true friends of the South so that the Davis men won’t be able to take it away from us by planting their men on the platform committee….”
“A trick he learned from Douglas at the Charleston Convention last year!” interjected Yancey.
“Yes,” replied Rhett. “So we’ll have to make sure that our States Right men are invited to the convention before we publicize it. They have to be here before Davis has time to think about sending any of his own people here to head us off. I don’t want the embarrassment of having to refuse seating to the Davis men.”
“Then let’s start getting together our list of who to invite,” suggested Yancey. “We know we can count on your Governor Pickens and Senator Keitt. Then there’s Governor Brown and Robert Toombs in Georgia. There’s Louis Wigfall of Texas, Ed Ruffin of Virginia, and Albert Brown of Mississippi. Let’s notify them by messenger. There are too many busybodies at the post office and telegraph companies who’ll gossip.”
“And let’s refer to it as a Political Party Convention,” suggested Rhett. “Those words won’t alarm the Davis Government. The convention will organize our Southern Rights men into a new political party.”
“A new political party?”
“Why not? We have no truck with the Davis government. Why should we remain in a party that allows us no voice in its government?”
“Davis stole my voice!” exclaimed Yancey, remembering how Davis had interrupted him just before he issued his call for secession at last year’s Democratic Party Convention. “All I needed was one more day! Just one more day and we would have had our Southern Republic! We would have been done with the Yankees for now and forever! Just one more day! But, no, Davis had to show up uninvited to unite the party behind Douglas.”
Yancey shook his head as he remembered the agony of seeing his life’s work destroyed in an instant by Davis delivering the Douglas / Davis Compact to the convention at the very instant when Yancey was scheduled to speak.
“Our new party will restore your voice,” Rhett assured him. “The party will draft a platform demanding an end to the war, the disbanding of the national army, the postponement of the national slave code, and the suspension of paper currency. If Davis and his faction in Congress don’t abide by these resolutions then we’ll nominate a slate of candidates to run against them in next year’s elections. What do you think we should call our new party?”
“Hmmmmmmm,” aid Yancey after a moment of reflection. “Why don’t we call it ‘The Confederate Party?’ We are the true Confederates. We’ll call Davis’ men ‘The Consolidationists!’”
28
Springfield, Massachusetts, December 2, 1860
Cump Sherman and Ambrose Burnside walked through the textile warehouse that was being converted into a makeshift factory to replace the Springfield Armory burned by Jeb Stuart’s cavalrymen. Cump, commanding the Department of New England, had called Burnside here to coordinate the defense of what was left of Free State New England. Burnside commanded Rhode Island’s militia. Just as importantly, he owned the Burnside Rifle Company in Providence. The destruction of the Springfield armory and the Colt works elevated Burnsides’ company in importance as one of the Free States’ remaining arms manufacturers.
The rooms where the salvaged machinery was being cleaned, polished, and lubricated smelled of soot and machine oil. Salvaged rifle barrels and trigger assemblies from the work in process inventory were being cleaned and stacked in rows. Carpenters were scraping the ashes from partially burned rifle stocks. All salvaged parts in passable condition were being assembled into finished rifles. The fire-damaged rifles weren’t pretty, but they would work.
“We’ll be able to salvage most of the equipment and work-in-process inventory,” said Sherman. He looked at the rows of lathes and drills his men had pulled out of the ruins of the Springfield Armory. “It’s more difficult than you’d think to destroy industrial machinery by arson.”
“How long do you expect it will take to get back into production?” Burnside asked.
“We’ll be finished with the work-in-process inventory by the end of next week. Then we’ll resume production of new weapons. We’ll be back to full production in about four weeks. The same schedule applies to the Colt Works in Hartford, more or less.”
“The Confederates accomplished much less in the way of destruction than they expected, then?”
“They were in too much of a hurry. They burned each manufactory then left. They could have ended production for good and all if they had taken time to haul the machinery out and dump it into the river before they burned the buildings. But that would have taken them a couple days and they were in a hurry to get back to their lines around Boston.”
Sherman escorted Burnside out of the building and across town to Sherman’s headquarters in the guest house of the owner of the textile warehouse where the weapons were being salvaged. Burnside scanned the horizon as they walked. Looking eastward toward the highlands of the Connecticut River Valley he saw men at work constructing fortifications. Older men were shoveling trenches and piling the dirt up in parapets along the rim of hills ringing the valley. Younger men were positioning field artillery salvaged from the burned armory into gun emplacements that commanded the approaches from the other side.
Down by the river construction crews were erecting commercial buildings and residential barracks. Many of the buildings had been hastily built with green lumber that was already warping. Cloth had been stuffed between cracks to keep out the wind and rain. Like the salvaged rifles, these buildings were not pretty, but they would do their jobs of housing the refugees from Confederate-occupied New England who were evacuating to Free State lines every day.
Burnside saw today’s newly arrived refugees standing in the blocks-long line outside of Sherman’s Provost Marshal’s office. Perhaps these people had lived comfortably in Boston until a day or two ago. Now they would be assigned to live in the most humble, drafty quarters shared with many other families. Despite being uprooted from all that was familiar, many were smiling. The bits of conversation that Burnside could pick up were surprisingly cheerful. He decided to talk to some of these people to gauge their motives for coming here.
“Good day, sir,” he addressed a middle aged head of one of the families who was standing in line. “I am General Ambrose Burnside of Rhode Island. I’d like to welcome you to the United States of Free America. I’m supposing that you arrived here today.”
“That’s right,” answered the man. “The Confederates are letting anybody who wants to leave their lines go. They took us by train as far as Worcester. Hired a wagon to take us the rest of the way.”
“May I inquire as to why you decided to join us here?”