“Reckon they carried on some, but with us here where we are, what can they do but carry on?”
Mollie waved a hand. Along with a good part of the rest of A. P. Hill’s corps, the 47th North Carolina was encamped in the White Lot, the big empty space between the White House and the stump of the Washington Monument. The barracks they occupied had been intended for Pennsylvania regiments on the way south; now the shoe was on the other foot. What with those fine barracks and rations from the bottomless Federal depots, Caudell hadn’t lived so well since he joined the army, and seldom before.
Mollie went on, “They’re callin’ him Hit-’em-Again Forrest, ‘cause they say he wanted to hit the Yankees one more lick, to remind ‘em they was whipped.”
“Hit-’em-Again Forrest.” Caudell said it slowly, savoring the taste. “Yup, that does sound like him. And that’s about the best nickname I’ve heard this side of Stonewall Jackson.” With some dignity, he added, “Not that Nathan’s a bad name.”
“That’s right, it’s just about the same as yours.” Mollie laughed. “Too bad it ain’t your bankrolls that’s just about the same.”
Caudell laughed too, ruefully. “Too bad is right. But if he made his money dealing niggers the way I’ve heard, well, it’s not anything I’d feel easy about doing for myself.” He knew that was hypocritical. The Confederate constitution enshrined the right to own slaves and trade them within the nation’s borders. The Southern economy rested on the backs of its black labor force. But a lot of people who could never have stomached the butcher’s trade ate meat.
Mollie waved again. “Isn’t this grand? Here I am, a nobody from a nowhere town in North Carolina, and now I’ve seen Richmond and Washington City both. Who’d’ve figured I’d travel so far? Must be close to two hundred miles down to Rivington.”
Caudell nodded. The army had expanded his life. Before the war, outside of a couple of trips to Raleigh, he’d spent his whole life inside Nash County. Now he’d been in several different states and even—though recalling it still came hard sometimes—a foreign country: the United States.
Whether in a foreign country or not, Washington was still the source of traditions he held dear, as London once might have been to an early Carolina colonist. He’d spent most of his off-duty time wandering through the city rubbernecking, and was far from the only soldier in gray to go off and see what he could see. The White House secretaries had had to set up a regular tour, taking Confederates through the Presidential mansion in company-sized groups.
He’d also walked over to the Capitol. Federal senators and congressmen were beginning to return to Washington, though a fair number of the important-looking men he’d seen flinched from him and his comrades as if they were Satan’s spawn set loose on earth.
The ordinary folk of Washington City did better at taking their occupiers in stride. Their principal complaint against the rebels was that they had too little money, and that in Confederate currency. Lee had issued an order that made the locals take Southern money in exchange for goods and services, but he could not make them like it.
Caudell had bought himself a drink at Willard’s, a couple of blocks east of the White House, on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Lincoln and Grant had each spent his first night in Washington City at Willard’s. Everyone who was anyone in Federal Washington frequented the hotel; its bars, sitting and dining rooms, and corridors had probably seen more war business done than any other place in the city, the White House not excepted. That was why Caudell went there; Willard’s fame—or notoriety—had spread south as well as north.
He found his shot overpriced and the whiskey villainous. “Is this what you served General Grant?” he asked indignantly.
The bartender, an Irishman of impressive size, glared down at him. “The very same, Johnny Reb, and I found himself not so particular as you.” Caudell shut up. From some of the stories he’d heard about Grant’s drinking, the fellow might even have been telling the truth.
Fighting Joe Hooker had also drunk at Willard’s, and given his name to the blocks south and east of it. Caudell stayed away from what the natives called Hooker’s Division. Confederates who did go in to visit such establishments as Mme. Russell’s Bake Oven, Headquarters U.S.A., and Gentle Annie Lyle’s place quickly learned to travel in pairs. Gamblers, pickpockets, flimflam men, and the girls themselves preyed on soldiers in gray as readily as they had on soldiers in blue. Plenty of men came back without a cent; a few did not come back at all.
Outside of the monuments, Washington City left Claudell disappointed. So had Richmond, outside of Capitol Square. They both seemed just towns intent on their own concerns, For the leading cities of great nations, somehow that was not enough. Rocky Mount and Nashville back in Nash County were towns intent on their own concerns. One day, maybe, he’d get back to Nash County and to his own concerns. Soon, he hoped.
The Confederate bands on the White House lawn struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” General Lee saluted the color-bearer, who marched before the party of high-ranking Federal officers coming to reclaim Washington from the Army of Northern Virginia. The flag of the United States had been his, not long ago, and still commanded his respect.
The Federals also had a band with them. It returned the compliment by playing “Dixie”—not the South’s official anthem, but the tune most closely associated with it. A short, slim man with a close-trimmed, light brown beard and three stars on each shoulder strap stepped out from among his comrades, strode briskly up to the waiting Confederate officers. He saluted. “General Lee?” His voice was quiet, his accent western.
Lee returned the salute. “General Grant,” he acknowledged formally, then went on, “We met once in Mexico, I believe, sir, though I confess to my embarrassment that your face does not seem perfectly familiar to me. Doubtless it is the beard.”
“I remember the day,” Grant said. “I recognized you at once, beard or no.”
“You’re too kind, when I’ve also gone all gray while you remain so brightly fledged,” Lee said. “Let me commend you on your excellent band.”
Grant shrugged. His long cigar waggled at one corner of his mouth. “I care nothing for music, I’m afraid. I know only two tunes: one’s ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other isn’t.” He brought the small joke out pat, as if he’d used it many times before.
Lee laughed politely, then turned serious once more. “Please believe me when I express my sincere compliments on the skill with which you handled the Army of the Potomac, General Grant. Never in the course of the war did I face an abler opponent, nor one who put more of his men into the battle.”
Grant’s pale blue eyes met and held his. All at once, he realized how much the Federal commander still ached to fight. “Had it not been for your repeaters, General Lee, I maintain we should have been treading on the streets of Richmond rather than here.”
“That may be so, General,” Lee said. From what Andries Rhoodie had told him, it was so. But Ulysses Grant did not need to know that. And the South did have those repeaters.
Having Rhoodie pop up in his thoughts made Lee glance over to the Rivington men, who stood in a small group of their own on the White House lawn, a few paces from the assembled officers of the Army of Northern Virginia. Not all the men from out of time were there. Two had died in the fighting outside Washington, and another three were wounded. Confederate soldiers had carried one of them back to the surgeons, who amputated his shattered leg.
The Rivington men got their other two wounded fighters back to a physician of their own. From what Lee had heard, Confederate soldiers who saw their wounds thought they would lose limbs, too. Yet. here both of them stood with their comrades, bandaged but whole. Their eyes were clear of fever, too, and fever killed more men than bullets. The Rivington men had also reclaimed the man upon whom the Confederates had operated. Fever had already seized him; the surgeons were sure he could not last long. The doctor from out of time broke the septic fever, though. That Rivington man was not here, but by all accounts he would live.