“That is unfortunate,” Lee said—blurrily, as his mouth was full. He chewed, swallowed, and resumed, sounding like himself again: “I had hoped to carry Louisiana, as its white voters have greater and longer familiarity with free Negroes, especially in and around New Orleans, than is the case elsewhere in the Confederacy.”
“The election is more closely contested than I thought it would be,” Brown agreed. He sounded gloomy, and with reason: he and Lee were also trailing in Mississippi, his home state.
Lee looked at the map tacked up on an easel beside the table. Having it there made him feel more as if this were a military campaign; it was, in fact, borrowed from the War Department, and would have to go back to Mechanic’s Hall once all the results were in. He was leading handily here in Virginia and in North Carolina, by rather less in Georgia and lightly settled Florida, and by a fair margin in Kentucky, which he had helped bring into the Confederacy and which was now voting for the first time for the President of the country it had freely chosen.
South Carolina had already come down against him: the Palmetto State, alone in the South, still chose its Electoral College representatives by vote of the legislature rather than of the people. Thus its choice had quickly, and painfully, become known.
He was losing Alabama; too, along with Louisiana and Mississippi. The cotton states; the ones whose livelihoods most depended on plantations and their slave labor, were unwilling to vote for anyone who questioned Negro servitude in any way.
That left Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee. Votes from the two western states were slow coming in. Those from Tennessee had arrived in large numbers, but every new telegram changed the leader there. At the moment, Forrest was ahead by nearly a thousand votes; an hour before, Lee had led by almost exactly as many.
Albert Gallatin Brown was studying the map, too. “We badly need Tennessee,” he said. The deliberate lack of emphasis in his voice highlighted his words as effectively as a shout.
“You have no confidence in the results from the other two?” Lee asked.
“Have you?”
“Possibly some hope for Arkansas,” Lee said. Only after he had spoken did he realize he had in effect written off Texas. It, too, was a cotton state, and also one that had boomed since the war, with Negroes in great demand and fetching high prices. Were Texans likely to vote against prosperity? It went against human nature.
Brown had been doing sums on the back of a telegram. “If Forrest takes Tennessee—and Arkansas,” he added in deference to Lee’s hope, which he did not seem to share, “that will give him sixty-four electoral votes.”
“And sixty are required for election,” Lee said heavily. Only once before had he felt as he did now: watching his men swarm up the slope toward the Union lines on the third day at Gettysburg. He had been confident they could carry everything before them, as he had been confident his own campaign would convince the people he offered the nation the wisest course. Was he to be proven as disastrously wrong now as he had been then?
A new messenger boy—the other had presumably gone home for the evening—arrived with more telegrams. Lee took them, unfolded the first few. He read them, set them down on the table. “Well?” Brown asked.
“Arkansas, or the first considerable returns therefrom.” Again Lee declined to continue. This time, his running mate did not press him: he could figure out what silence meant. Lee made himself get the words out: “The trend is against us.”
“So it all rides on Tennessee, does it?”
“It would appear that way, yes—or do you think results in any of the other states likely to change?”
Albert Gallatin Brown shook his head. He surprised Lee by starting to laugh. At Lee’s raised eyebrow, he explained, “Even if I fail of election, I remain in the Senate, and shall continue to serve my state as best I can.”
Again, Lee found himself envying Brown’s quick adaptability. If he was not elected, he would go back to Arlington, put in a crop on the sloping fields, and no doubt be more contented living the life of a semiretired gentleman farmer than as president of the Confederate States of America. Yet the idea of losing the election was intolerable to him; he would carry the weight of that rejection for the rest of his days.
The night dragged on. A colored waiter took away the dishes. Fresh stacks of telegrams replaced them. Before long, the whole big table was flooded. In Louisville, Lee had been getting returns from only two states. Now six times that many were voting.
“I have more election results here,” someone said. This was a man’s voice, not the treble of previous boys from the telegraph office. Lee looked up to find Jefferson Davis holding a handful of telegrams. The president said, “I waylaid the messenger at the dining room door.” He pulled out his watch. “It’s already past two. How long do you aim to stay up?”
“Until we know, or until we fall asleep in our chairs—whichever comes first,” Lee answered. The outgoing President smiled. Lee said, “From where are your telegrams, sir?”
“I beg your pardon, but I have yet to look at them.” Davis did so, then said, “These first several are from Tennessee: from Chattanooga and its environs, mostly.”
“Let me hear them,” Lee said, suddenly alert.
The President read off the returns. As he did, Brown scrawled figures and, lips moving, rapidly added them up. Finally he said, “That cuts Forrest’s lead there in half, more or less.” He glanced over at a pile of telegrams off to one side. “We gain when reports come in from the eastern part of the state, but fall behind when they’re out of the west.”
“The plantations in Tennessee are in the south and west. The planters there, I would infer, want their slaves back,” Davis. said. One eyebrow quirked as he turned toward Lee. “Whereas you, sir, are winning the votes of folk who, during the war, I feared would go over to the United States en masse, as did those of what must now be known as West Virginia. How can you call yourself a good Confederate, sir, if those who half wanted to be Yankees give you the election?”
But for that eyebrow, Lee would have thought the President in earnest. As it was, he hoped Davis was making one of his wintry jokes. He gave back another one: “If Forrest had seen the result there before the rest of the country voted, no doubt he would have taxed me with the same charge.”
“He did anyhow,” Brown pointed out.
“He succeeded all too well,” Lee said. “I don’t know whether you have kept track of how things stand, Mr. President, but—” He used a forefinger to point out on the map which states were going to whom.
Jefferson Davis gnawed on his lower lip as he pondered the shape of the election. “Sectionalism appears to remain alive and well among us,” he said, shaking his head. “That is dangerous; if we cannot cure it, it will cause us grief down the road: the United States, after all, tore asunder from a surfeit of sectionalism.”
“The Constitution of the Confederate States does not provide for secession,” Albert Gallatin Brown said.
“Neither did the Constitution of the United States,” Davis replied. “But if the western states have the gall to seek to abandon our confederacy as a result of this election, we shall—” He stopped; for once his façade cracked, leaving him quite humanly confused. “If they seek to abandon our confederacy, at the moment I have no idea what we shall do. In any event, the decision will be yours, not mine, General Lee.”
“Very possibly not,” Lee replied. “If the returns from Tennessee continue to favor Forrest, the decision will be his. And in that event, the states which favor him, and which favor the indefinite continuation of Negro servitude, shall have no cause for complaint as a result of this election.”