“The honor is mine, sir.” Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi was a strikingly handsome man in his early fifties, with dark wavy hair worn rather long, and bushy side-whiskers that reached down to the line of his jaw. His suit was of the most stylish cut (a good deal more so than Lee’s); his patent leather shoes gleamed in the gaslight.
“Do please sit down,” Lee said, waving him to a chair. Brown sank back into the soft cushions, crossed his legs, lay one arm on the velvet arm of the seat. He seemed the picture of ease; Lee envied him his ability to relax so completely. “You are perhaps curious as to why I asked if you would see me today.”
“Call me—intrigued.” Brown’s dark eyes, shadowed in their sockets, revealed very little. He was a veteran politician, having served in the Mississippi state legislature, in the U.S. Congress, and as a U.S. senator alongside Jefferson Davis until his state left the Union. He’d also fought as a Confederate captain before he was chosen for the new nation’s Senate.
Lee said, “My purpose is not to keep you in suspense, sir. I want to ask if you will serve as my Vice-Presidential candidate for the forthcoming elections.”
Brown’s relaxation dropped from him like a cloak. He leaned forward in his seat, said softly, “I thought it might be so. Even to be considered as your running mate does me more credit than I deserve—”
“Not at all, sir.”
But Brown had not finished. “—Yet before I say yea or nay, there are certain matters concerning which I must satisfy myself.” He waited to see how Lee would take that.
Lee was delighted. “If my views are in any way unclear to you, I would not have you blindly embrace them. Ask what you will.”
“Thank you, sir.” Brown dipped his head. “In one way, your invitation to me is surprising, for I perceived you as being President Davis’s chosen successor and, as you may know, the President and I have not always been in complete accord.” That was an understatement. While willing to do whatever proved necessary to win the war, Brown had consistently maintained war powers resided with the Confederate Congress, not with the President. He obviously remembered the angry exchanges he’d had with Davis.
“Had it not been for the President’s urging, I should not have sought the Presidency; that I admit,” Lee said. “I could hardly deny it—I was never struck with political ambition, nor do I feel it now to any great degree. But if you doubt I am my own man, then I thank you for your time here today and apologize for having inconvenienced you. I will discuss the position with someone else.”
“No need,” Brown said quickly, holding up a hand; he had political ambition. “You are quite clear; indeed, the fact that you have asked me says a great deal for your independence from Davis in and of itself. But the next question cuts to the bone: what precisely is your stand on the Negro and his place in our society?”
“I do not believe we can successfully keep him in bonds forever, and so I feel we must begin the process of lifting those bonds as quickly as is practicable, lest he tear them off himself and, in so doing, work far more harm upon us. If you find that position untenable, sir, the door is but a few steps away.”
Brown did not get up and leave. But he did not sing hosannas in praise of Lee’s generosity, either. He said, “Let me quote for you article one, section nine, clause four of the Constitution of the Confederate States: ‘No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves shall be passed.’”
“I am familiar with the clause,” Lee said. “That it is an impediment to what I propose, I cannot deny. Let me ask you a question in return, if I may.” He waited for Brown to nod before continuing: “Suppose the war, instead of turning in our favor in 1864, had taken a downhill course, as it might well have done without our troops’ being newly armed with repeaters. Would you then have favored giving weapons to and emancipating certain of our slaves in order to preserve our republic, the Constitution notwithstanding?”
“In such a crisis, I would,” Brown said after only a brief pause for thought. “Saving the nation is to me more important than any temporary damage to the Constitution, which can be made good later if the nation survives.”
“Fair enough. I submit to you, then, that the Negro as slave presents us with a continuing crisis, even if one less imminent than the prospect of forfeiting the Second American Revolution. The time to deal with it is before it becomes imminent, lest we be forced to act in haste and perhaps desperation.”
Brown pondered that, then startled Lee by throwing back his head and laughing. At Lee’s quizzical look, he explained rather sheepishly, “I marvel that I am sitting here listening to you at all, let alone carefully considering your ideas, when in the U.S. Congress I called for opening California to slavery, by force of arms if necessary, and for the annexation to the United States of Cuba and the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Potosí to serve for the planting and spreading of slavery.”
“Yet here you sit,” Lee said. From Brown’s words and votes in the Confederate Senate, he had gathered that the man was moderate on the question of the Negro. He had not thought to go back and learn what Brown had said as a U.S. congressman and senator. That, evidently, had been an oversight on his part. He wondered why the man did not rise up on his hind legs and storm out, as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Andries Rhoodie had before him in like circumstances.
“Here I sit,” Brown agreed. He laughed again. “Circumstances alter cases. When we were part of the United States, we had to seek to extend slavery wherever we might to balance the corresponding expansion of the Northern States and our consequent loss of power within the U.S. But now we are no longer within the U.S. and may act as we deem best, without fear it will weaken us before our political foes.”
“That is most sensibly spoken, sir,” Lee said with admiration. “Then you are with me?”
“I have not said so,” Brown answered sharply. “I concede there may be circumstances under which some form of emancipation is justified. We must, however, offer the voters a program they can stomach, or all this fine talk is so much moonshine. How do you propose to go about setting the niggers free?”
“In a word, gradually,” Lee said. “I have, I hope you will believe, given this a good deal of thought. I do not and shall not propose confiscatory legislation. I understand that would be politically impracticable.”
“I hope you do,” Brown said. “If you don’t get elected, nothing else matters.”
Again Lee longed for the clean, well-defined world of the soldier, where compromise had to be made only with weather and terrain and what the enemy would allow, not with one’s own principles. But the politician who could bring home half a loaf counted himself ahead of the game.
“I do not wish slavery to become the sole issue in this campaign,” Lee said. “Many others are of no small urgency: our relations with the United States, the still deplorable state of our finances, and our posture relative to Maximilian and the Mexican insurgents, to name just a few. We have yet even to establish a Supreme Court. On none of these matters has Forrest expressed a position; he owns but one drum to beat.”
“A good point, and one we can tax him with. But none of those, save maybe what we do about the United States, will make people sweat. They’ll get up in arms over the nigger question. You still need to answer me about that.”
“So I do,” Lee said. “As I see it, as a beginning we need to encourage emancipation in every way possible and to prepare freedmen to learn useful trades. During the war, several of our states relaxed their laws against slaves’ learning to read and write. I would extend that relaxation throughout the Confederacy. For the next step, I would propose a law allowing a slave, or anyone else on behalf of that slave, to pay for his release at the price for which he had been sold or was valued by a competent appraiser, the owner not having the privilege of refusing said price.”