Jefferson Davis let out an audible sniff. Though his background was more like Forrest’s than Lee’s, he had enjoyed the education denied to Forrest, and had come to identify himself completely with the old, landed aristocracy of the South. He said, “I cannot imagine that—that brawler at the head of our nation.”
“The voters, unfortunately, seem to have suffered no similar failure of imagination,” Lee said.
“That is not so,” Brown said stoutly. “The aggregate total of the popular vote continues to favor us, regardless of what the Electoral College may say.”
“By the Constitution, however, the Electoral College is the final arbiter of the election. I shall not dispute its results, whatever they prove to be,” Lee said. “If we set aside the Constitution for our convenience, what point in having it?” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he realized others would apply them to his own views on slavery. It is not the same thing, he told himself, not quite comfortably.
The messenger boy whose function President Davis had usurped now returned with a fresh set of results, which he placed in front of Lee. Brown asked, “Where are these from?”
Lee unfolded the top one, read it. “Texas,” he answered. His tone of voice said all that needed saying about the way the votes there were going. He did his best to find a silver lining to the cloud. “We had no great hope for Texas in any event.” He opened another telegram.” Ah, now this one from North Carolina is more like it: we have carried Nash County by three to two.”
“Good,” Brown said. “What are the numbers?” Lee read them off. As Brown wrote them down, he grinned the grim grin of a fighter who has landed a telling blow. Jefferson Davis’s smile held something of the same quality. Lee’s own initial burst of enthusiasm quickly faded. The news from North Carolina was no more cause for jubilation than that from Texas was cause for despair; the two sets of returns merely confirmed and extended trends that were already there. Results that went against those trends would have been more interesting.
“Anothuh cup of coffee, suh?” the waiter asked.
“No, thank you,” Lee said. “I am sufficiently awash as is. My elder brother Sydney has always been the naval officer of the family, but at the moment I am certain I am shipping more water than he.”
As the waiter left, Lee put a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn. Altogether without intending to, he fell asleep in his chair. A few minutes later, more telegrams arrived. Jefferson Davis took them and read the results to Brown, who asked, “Shall we wake the general?”
“No,” Davis said. “They make no significant changes. When more word from Tennessee arrives, that will be time enough.”
“By the feel of things, the only definitive word from Tennessee will be the last word. It will be days before we have the final count.”
“Then we needs must compose ourselves to wait,” Davis answered. “And all the less point to waking him now, would you not agree?”
Nate Caudell stared at the empty space on the counter where newspapers should have lain. “Confound it, Mr. Liles, when are they going to come in?”
“They’ve been in,” the storekeeper said. “Went right back out again today, too—I done sold every copy I had. Wept faster’n I ever seen ‘em before, matter of fact.” Caudell stared at him in blank dismay. Grinning, he went on, “You ask me pretty enough, might could be I’» tell you who won Tennessee.”
“Why, you—” Caudell swore as he hadn’t sworn since his army days. Raeford Liles laughed at him. When he finally ran down, he said, “You’d better tell me, before I start tearing this place apart.” He sounded as menacing as he could.
It was, he knew, a poor best. Liles didn’t quiver in his shoes; in fact, he didn’t stop laughing. When he’d let Caudell hang long enough, though, he said, “Vote from Knoxville came in at last. That nails it down tight—Lee carried the state by twenty-five hundred votes.”
“That’s first rate,” Caudell said, letting out a long sigh of relief. The results had hung in the balance for more than a week. Usually, even if one or two states’ returns remained in doubt, the shape of a national election grew clear soon enough. This time, everything rode on the one closest state. Caudell asked, “How big an edge in the popular vote did Lee end up with?”
“Just under thirty thousand votes, out of almost a million, cast: sixty-nine to fifty in the Electoral College,” Liles said. “But if a couple thousand people in Tennessee had gone the other way, well, we’d be talkin’ about President Forrest now, no matter what the popular vote had to say.”
“I know.” For as long as Caudell could remember, people had complained about the Electoral College of the United States; the only reason they didn’t complain more was that it normally did a good job of reflecting what the people decided. For whatever their reasons, the Confederate founding fathers had included an Electoral College in the new nation’s Constitution; and in its first real test—Jefferson Davis having run unopposed—it had almost thrown the Confederacy into turmoil by its mere existence. He said, “What are they saying about the election in the west and southwest?”
“The states Forrest won, you mean?” Liles said. Caudell nodded. The storekeeper told him: “They’re still bawlin’ like pigs that burned their noses on hot swill. From what the papers say, Senator Wigfall’s makin’ noises like they ought to up and pull out of the Confederacy, set up a new one of their own to suit them.”
“What? That’s crazy,” Caudell said. After a moment, he wondered why. The South had left the United States after an election it could not stomach. “What does Forrest have to say about that?”
“Hasn’t said anything yet,” Liles answered, which struck Caudell as ominous.
He also noticed something else. “You don’t seem to be up on your hind legs on account of Forrest has lost.”
“I ain’t,” Liles admitted. “Oh, I voted for him, spite of the Rivington men and everything else. I ain’t easy about let tin” all the niggers loose. But I reckon we won’t go far wrong with Bobbie Lee in Richmond. God willin’, a few o’ them hotheads in South Carolina and Mississippi’ll see it the same way once they settle down a bit an’ stop listenin’ to nothin’ but their own speeches over and over.”
“I do hope you’re right,” Caudell said. “Fighting one civil war was plenty for me—I’ve seen the elephant now, and I don’t care to see it ever again, thank you very much.”
“I can’t believe they’d try anything so stupid—just can’t believe it,” Liles said. “Damnation, Nate, might could be they’d have to fight us an’ the United States at the same time.”
“Wouldn’t that be a fine mess?” Caudell said. The very idea of three-cornered civil strife made him want to pull his hat down over his eyes. But after he thought about it, he shook his head. “I reckon the United States have enough on their hands with England up in the Canadas. Did you read what the papers had to say about the war there?”
“Sure did. We—the Yankees, I mean,” Liles amended with a shamefaced chuckle, “whipped ‘em again on land, up near a place called Ottawa, I think it was. But their navy shelled Boston harbor, an’ New York, too—started a big fire there, the paper said. Hell of a thing, ain’t it?”
“It is indeed,” Caudell said. Like the storekeeper, he almost instinctively sided with the U.S.A. in a quarrel against Great Britain. His enmity with the North was new, and fading now that the Confederacy had gained its freedom. Britain, though—Britain had been the bogeyman since his Schoolboy days. “That’s a war I’m just as glad we’re no part of.”