As seemed to be his way no matter what he did, he returned to the relentless attack: “My friends, I give you that Robert E. Lee helped the Confederate States get free of the Yankees, and I tip my hat to him on account of it. But before Robert E. Lee ever fit for the Confederacy, the Yankees wanted to make him their commander—and he almost took on the job. When he did decide to stick with his state, Virginia made him a general straight off. That’s a rugged way to fight a war, by God, isn’t it?”
The men in the crowd laughed appreciatively. Warming to his subject, Forrest went on, “Me, I started the fight as a private. I wanted to get right in—couldn’t wait to get right in. My friend Senator Wigfall, our next Vice President”—he paused for applause—”helped fix up the surrender of Fort Sumter back when Robert E. Lee, that gentleman up in Richmond, was still a colonel in the army of the U.S. of A. If you all Want some Bobbie-come-lately, I reckon you can vote for Lee. But if you want men who were with the Confederate States of America from the git-go, you’ll stick with Wigfall and me. I thank you kindly for listening to me today.” He bowed and got down from the platform.
The drum began to beat again. Forrest’s Trees chanted, “Hit ‘em again! Hit ‘em again!” One of the Rivington men raised his AK-47 to his shoulder and fired a short burst into the air. Caudell saw the muzzle flash, but hardly heard the report through the thunderous cheers of the people around him.
The band struck up the “Bedford Forrest Quickstep,” and then a minstrel tune, one Caudell didn’t know. He turned to Raeford Liles, asked, “What’s that?”
“It’s called, ‘I’m Coming to My Dixie Home.’ It’s a nigger talkin’ about life up North,” Liles answered. He sang a few bars: “I’d rather work de cotton patch, And die on corn and bacon, Dan lib up Norf on good white bread, Ob Abolition makin ‘.’ I got the sheet music back at the store, if you ever want to take a look at it.”
“That’s all right,” Caudell said quickly: trust Liles not to miss a chance to try to sell him something. Just then, the noise around them redoubled. Nathan Bedford Forrest was plunging into the crowd, shaking men’s hands and bowing over those that belonged to ladies. People surged toward him from allover the square. Caudell didn’t particularly care to meet him, but was swept along by the tide.
Forrest’s big hand almost swallowed up his. “Will you vote for me, sir?”
Looking up at that strong, determined face, Caudell had to work to make himself shake his head. “No, sir, don’t reckon so now. I fought under General Lee, and I’ll stick by him.”
Behind Forrest, a bodyguard who had plunged after him—and whom he was ignoring—scowled at Caudell. Caudell waited for the famous Forrest temper to explode. But the ex-general only nodded and said, “Good to find a man who’s loyal and not ashamed to say so. You might”—as a rustic would, he pronounced it mought—”change your mind. I hope you do.” He turned to Raeford Liles. “What about you, sir?”
“I might could vote your way,” the storekeeper allowed. “I was leanin’ that way, but I’d care for you more if the Rivington men cared for you less.”
Now Forrest showed anger. “Any man who wants to keep the right of property in niggers is a Patriot, by God. If that’s you, you’re with me, same as they are. And if it ain’t, be damned to you.” He spun away as if Liles had ceased to exist.
“He doesn’t leave much room for doubt, does he?” Caudell said after they had finally got free of the crowd and headed back toward the buggy.
“No.” Liles still looked like a man who’d bitten into something sour. “That’ll hurt him, too.”
“Good,” Caudell said. He waited for the storekeeper to argue with him, but Liles just kept walking.
* XV *
No sooner had Robert E. Lee ventured outside the Powhatan House to enjoy the brisk fall air than reporters swooped down on him like stooping hawks. He nodded to them, unsurprised; they had become familiar over the past few months. By unspoken agreement, they let him alone as long as he was within the hotel, but he became fair game the moment his foot hit the sidewalk.
“Mr. Quincy, you were here half a step ahead of the rest, I believe,” Lee said to the man from the Richmond Whig.
“Thank you, General.” Virgil Quincy poised pencil over pad. “If I may ask, why have you chosen to remain here in Virginia while Bedford Forrest travels allover the country, speaking, it seems, at every town big enough to boast a railroad station?”
“General Forrest is, of course, free to conduct his campaign in any fashion that suits him.” Lee had learned to speak slowly enough to let the reporters take down his words. “I might add a point which sometimes seems in danger of being forgotten: that is to say, I also enjoy the same freedom. The entire Confederacy surely knows where I stand on the issues of the day; perhaps General Forrest still feels the need to make his ideas more widely accessible to the voters.”
Quincy twirled a waxed mustache between thumb and forefinger as he considered his next question. “How do you feel about Forrest’s questioning your initial loyalty to the Confederate cause?”
“I prefer to allow my contributions to that cause to speak for themselves. If they do not make it plain where my loyalty lay, nothing I can say will do so.” For public consumption, Lee kept his fury tightly bottled. He was used to newspapers sniping at him from time to time. But to have his loyalty impugned by a man he had admired until their differing views created a chasm between them, and for no better purpose than political advantage—that was hard to bear. He had not imagined Forrest would stoop so low, which, if anything, but served to illuminate his own political naïveté.
Virgil Quincy took a step back; Lee’s rule was to allow each reporter two questions. Edwin Helper of the Richmond Dispatch approached in Quincy’s place. “To change the subject, if I may, sir, what do you think of the war just begun by the United States against England over the Canadas?”
“I deprecate war in general,” Lee replied. “As to this war in particular, I would be less than truthful if I said I was sorry to see so many U.S. troops drawn hundreds of miles to the north of our frontier.” He smiled; several reporters chuckled. He added, “Even with the accession of Kentucky to the Confederacy, the United States are a larger, more populous nation than the C.S.A. The implications to be drawn from that should be clear to the observer.”
“They’re not quite clear to me,” Helper said. “What do you think our course ought to be?”
“To continue the scrupulous neutrality President Davis has proclaimed and is observing,” Lee answered at once. “Any other course involves us in risks which should not be run.” Senator Wigfall was shouting for a Southern invasion to seize the slave states remaining in the U.S.A. while that country was otherwise engaged. Some fire-eaters shouted right along with him. Others, though, remembering how England’s not-so-scrupulous neutrality had almost ruined the Confederacy during the war, were all for allying with the United States against her.
“Should we not at least demand concessions from the U.S.A. as the price of our neutrality?” asked Rex Van Lew of the Richmond Examiner.
Lee shook his head. “They are our brothers. Though we no longer live in the same house with them, having grown up to enjoy one of our own, putting demands upon brothers strikes me as a bad business, and one which cannot fail to bring resentment.”