“That’s very kind of you, sir.” Lee followed the lieutenant inside.
The first floor housed the Treasury Department. Most of the time, busy men there would pause to look and point as Lee walked to the stairs. Those men needed to be busy, he thought with less than perfect forbearance, to print all the paper money that was pushing prices in the Confederacy to the sky. But even they had Washington’s birthday as a holiday.
The second floor was always quiet, today no more so than usual. That floor belonged to the Department of State; no foreign nation had recognized the Confederate States of America, nor did any seem likely to unless the South won more victories than she had thus far.
President Davis’s offices were on the third floor. The lieutenant tapped on a closed door. “Yes?” Jefferson Davis called from within.
“I have General Lee with me, sir.”
“Excellent. I will see him. You may return to your other duties.” The lieutenant opened the door, saluted Lee one last time, and hurried away.
“Mr. President,” Lee said.
“Come right in, General. I’ll be with you directly.” Davis was going around with a tallow dip, lighting lamps. His bearing was military—indeed, extraordinarily erect; he was a West Point man himself, from the class a year ahead of Lee’s. He came back to his desk last, and lit two lamps there. “Go on, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you, sir.” Lee waited for Davis to seat himself before he sank into an overstuffed armchair. The lamplight played up the hollows in Davis’s gaunt cheeks, lit his pale eyes within the shadows of their deep sockets. He was aristocratically handsome, while Abraham Lincoln had no claim to either breeding or good looks, but the two presidents, Lee thought irrelevantly, had faces of similar shape and leanness.
Davis said, “How was your journey south?”
“Well enough, sir,” Lee answered with a shrug. “I left this morning and am here now. If I am a trifle later than the railroad men claimed I would be when I set out, well, what train ever runs dead on time?”
“None, I think; none on our railroads, at any rate.” Davis glanced to a tall clock that ticked in a corner of the office. His nostrils flared with exasperation. “Nor is Mr. Seddon. I had hoped him to be here half an hour ago.”
Lee shrugged again. The Secretary of War had doubtless expected his train to run even later than it did; unlike the young lieutenant, he was sufficiently important in his own right to take such chances. In any case, President Davis was for all practical purposes his own Secretary of War. Lee knew he would sooner have been commanding Confederate armies in the field than governing from Richmond.
As luck would have it, James Seddon walked into the office n()t fifteen seconds after Davis had complained about him. Lee rose to shake his hand. Seddon was tall, thin, and resembled nothing so much as a tired vulture. He wore his gray hair combed straight back from his forehead (it was thin in those parts anyhow) and long enough on the sides to cover his ears. At the president’s murmured invitation, he drew up a chair beside Lee’s. They sat together.
“To business,” Davis said. “General Lee, I’ve heard great things of these new repeating carbines the soldiers are being issued. Even General Johnston has written to me from Dalton, singing hosannas in their praise.”
If anything, praise from Joe Johnston was liable to make the President suspicious about the new rifles; if Johnston said it looked like rain, Davis would expect a drought, and the lack of affinity was mutual. Lee said quickly, “For once, Mr. President, I would say the reports are, if anything, understated. The repeaters are robust, they are reasonably accurate with adequate range, and they and their ammunition appear to be available in quantities sufficient to permit us to take the field with them. When spring comes, I intend to do so.”
“They improve our prospects by so much, then?” Seddon asked.
“They do indeed, sir,” Lee said. “The Federals have always had more weight than we, could they but effectively bring it to bear. These repeaters go far toward righting the balance. Without them, our chances were become rather bleak. In saying this, I know I catch neither of you gentlemen by surprise.”
“No, indeed,” Davis said. “I am most pleased to hear this news from you, General, for some of the counsel I have had from others approaches desperation.” He rose from his desk, strode over to close the door that led out to the hallway. As he turned back, he went on, “What I tell you now, gentlemen, must not leave this room. Do you understand?”
“Certainly, Mr. President,” said Seddon, who usually said yes to whatever Jefferson Davis wanted. Lee bent his head to show he also agreed.
“Very well, then, I shall hold you to that promise,” Davis said. “To give you the full import of the remedies which have been contemplated out of anxiety for our future, let me tell you that last month I received a memorial from General Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee”
“Ah, that,” Seddon said. “Yes, that needs to stay under the rose.” He was familiar with the memorial, then.
“Cleburne is an able officer,” Lee said. “He fought well in the Chattanooga campaign, by all accounts.”
“As may be. He stirred up a fight of his own, among the generals of his army. You see, in his memorial, he proposed freeing and arming some portion of our Negroes, to use them as soldiers against the Yankees.”
“Many might say, what point to the Confederacy, then?” Seddon remarked. “What point to our revolution?”
Lee’s brows came together as he thought. At last he said, “The Federals let some of their Negroes put on the blue uniform. They will surely take away ours if we are defeated. Would it not be better to preserve our independence by whatever means we may, and measure the cost to our social institutions once that independence is guaranteed? Fighting for their freedom, Negroes might well make good soldiers.”
“Put that way, it might be so,” Seddon said. “Still, the agitation and controversy which must spring from the presentation of such views by officers high in the public confidence are to be deeply deprecated.”
“I agree. We cannot afford such controversy now,” Davis said…Cleburne’s memorial is a counsel of the last ditch. At the last ditch, I would consider it—at the last ditch, I would consider any course that promised to stay our subjugation by the tyranny in Washington. What I hope, however, General Lee, is that, newly armed as we shall be, we succeed in keeping ourselves from that last ditch., and thus preserve our institutions unblemished by unwelcome change.”
“I hope so, too, Mr. President,” Lee said. “It may be so. That our prospects are better with these repeating carbines than they would be without them cannot be denied. Whether they will bring us victory—God alone can answer that. I shall do my best to foster that victory, as will your other commanders.” That was as much as Lee felt he could say. He wished Davis would trust General Johnston further, wished the two of them could compose their quarrel. He was not, however, in a position to suggest it. Both proud, touchy men would surely take it wrong.
Davis said, “General, am I to understand that these amazing rifles spring from Rivington, North Carolina? I had not thought of Rivington as a center of manufacture. Indeed”—he smiled frostily—”up until this past month I had not thought of Rivington at all.”
“I’d never heard of the place, either,” Seddon put in.
“Nor had I,” Lee said. “Since it was brought to my attention, my staff officers and I have inquired about it of train crews and soldiers who pass through the place. Their reports only leave me more puzzled, for it has not the appearance of a manufacturing town: no smelting works, no forges, no factories. There has lately been a good deal of building there, but of homes and warehouses, not the sort of buildings required to produce rifles, cartridges, or powder. Moreover—Mr. President, have you had the opportunity to examine these rifles for yourself?”