Three batteries of Rebel guns on the hills north of town attempted to return fire. They were bracketed within minutes then obliterated by salvoes from the 44 guns that Alexander had held in reserve for counterbattery fire.
The stupendous thunder echoed and re-echoed across the valley. Lee motioned for Alexander to halt the bombardment after only forty-five minutes. By that time the smoke from spreading fires and clouds of dust thrown into the air from demolished buildings had obscured the aim points in the city. The shortened parabola of the winter sun sliding towards dusk lengthened the shadows. The smoke and shadows were ideal for masking a river crossing. Lee decided to commence the assault across the river without further delay.
Lee scribbled a note to cease fire and passed it to Alexander who raised the yellow and black flags to signal a cease fire. It took many minutes for the excited gunners, intent on their work, to notice the ceasefire flags, also becoming obscured by the smoke and debris cloud drifting in across the river. But the volleys finally tapered off and the shaking of the ground ceased.
“Send the men across the river,” Lee said to Dick Taylor when silence returned. Taylor looked puzzled. Lee issued the command louder. Taylor’s expression was still incomprehensible. Lee realized that he was hearing his voice only as it was echoed through the bones of his face. Only then did he realize that the bombardment had rendered every man in the Valley of the Ohio between Cincinnati and Covington stone deaf. Lee had to wait thirty more minutes for hearing among the officers to return sufficiently to command the men to move. The boats they had been storing on the hills around the Licking River that divided Covington from Newport began splashing into the river and rowing across on the slow current.
By the time the sun had set behind the hills of Covington, Lee’s men were clamoring up past the blasted docks and burning warehouses of the Cincinnati riverfront. And as, he had expected, more than a few had stopped to ransack the ruins of the taverns.
30
Elkton, Maryland, December 12, 1861
“Where in Hell are all the Negroes I came here to liberate?” bellowed General of the Atlantic Department John Fremont. “I invited Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens to attend tomorrow’s Liberation ceremony. If I don’t find more Negroes to set free by then, I’ll look like the King of Fools!”
Fremont could not understand why only two Negro slaves had shown up for his Proclamation of Liberation ceremony in Elkton, the seat of Cecil County, Maryland.
“You hear those guns?” asked Frederick Douglass whom Fremont had invited to speak at tomorrow’s ceremony. The sound of musketry came in on the wind, indicating that the Free State invaders and the Confederate defenders were fighting not far away. “Slaves won’t risk running away from their masters until we’ve shown them that we will stay here long enough to protect them from being returned to slavery. But if you need more Negroes to put on a show for tomorrow, Eddie and I can pretend to be slaves for a day.”
Eddie Bates, also invited by Fremont to speak at the ceremony, howled with laughter. Fremont grimaced with fury. Douglass decided he’d best apologize.
“I’m sorry, General. My meager attempt at humor was in very poor taste. Please know that I appreciate the risk you are taking in bringing your men into Maryland. You’re the only person of authority in the Free State Government who’s shown any interest in liberating the slaves. I am grateful for that.”
Fremont pursed his lips in a half-smile and nodded ever so slightly to show Douglass that he was mollified by the apology.
“I understand. I confess that I sometimes think more of my image with the public than I should. I was more disappointed at being held up to ridicule than I was at not being able to liberate the slaves I expected to find here.”
Fremont had acted immediately after receiving Lincoln’s permission to advance into Confederate territory. The Confederates, accustomed to pinning the Free State Republicans down with the ever-present threat of moving against Philadelphia, had drawn down their men in quiet stretches of the front. Fremont had easily advanced across the Maryland State Line, guarded only by frontier outposts on the macadamized roads that crossed into Pennsylvania.
His unexpected advance had caught the Confederates in Maryland by surprise, isolating the portion of the state east of the Susquehanna and north of the Chesapeake, and breaking the railroad connections between Baltimore and Wilmington. If Fremont had so far failed in his quest to free slaves, he had at least made the Confederates understand that they, too, could be invaded. He had set the telegraph lines humming with calls to return to Maryland the units transferred to other fronts. Those Confederate guns he heard had come from units hastily withdrawn from the front between Wilmington and Philadelphia. The Confederates had withdrawn them reluctantly, knowing that by weakening its defenses they were placing Wilmington in danger of attack from Philadelphia. That was precisely the state of confusion that Fremont wanted to foment.
I will have the Confederates swinging to and fro like a pendulum, moving their men between different points on a wide front. Every unit in transit is a unit that isn’t fighting. These movements exhaust the men and wear on the railroads and rolling stock that move them. They spread the Confederates thin and allow us to exploit their weak points.
Douglass continued explaining the paucity of slaves.
“The main reason that fewer slaves have come forward than you anticipated is because there aren’t many left in this county. There were thousands here when I was born into slavery. Now perhaps there are only several hundred. Their masters took those off when word came that your army had arrived in Maryland. The only two that were remained here to ‘liberate’ are the elderly servants of the oldest lady in town.”
“Why so few? I thought Maryland would be thick with them.”
“It is ‘thick’ with slaves on the Chesapeake Shore, fifty miles south of here. But slavery has been declining in northern Maryland since even before I was born. It’s difficult for masters to keep their slaves this close to the Free States. Look at me and Eddie. We both escaped from plantations not far from here. There are Quakers and Abolitionists all around here who’ll spirit slaves across the state line into Pennsylvania. They disappear into the Negro Quarter of Philadelphia and are never heard from again.”
“That’s exactly how my wife Emma got herself free,” interjected Eddie. “She walked out of her master’s house in Delaware when her master passed away. She crossed over into Pennsylvania and went straight into Philadelphia. Nobody ever came looking for her, not until the slave raid that started this war.”
Eddie thought about Emma, back home in Cass County Michigan. He longed to return home and get back to the comfortable routine of working his bakery shop. Then he remembered that it was cold and snowy back there. The pale sunny early winter sky of Maryland took his thoughts back to his first home, the cabin on the slave plantation he had been raised in until his family had escaped to Free Pennsylvania. Eddie turned his face to the sun.
Will my people ever be able to live free in the “Sunny South?” Most of us would return to this warm and happy land if only we could do so as free men and women. We would work for wages as we do in the Free States, educate ourselves and our children, and contribute to the improvement of the country.
Fremont has freed only two slaves, but everything has to start out small. Perhaps he will free more next week and still more the week after. Set the slaves free in dribs and drabs if that is how it has to be. Emma, Frederick Douglas, and I are only three, but to each of us freedom is more valuable than life itself. And every slave who is set free to prosper by his or her own hands refutes the stories told by the slaveholders who say that Negroes by nature are incapable of governing themselves.