“Bosh!” Raeford Liles said. “Only thing wrong with niggers, aside from they’s lazy, is they costs too much. I was thinkin’ maybe I’d buy me a buck one o’ these days, help around this place some. But Lord Jesus, the money it takes! Now that cotton’s movin’ again, the cost of prime hands done went through the roof-planters is biddin’ against each other so as they can harvest the most crops. Poor storekeeper like me can’t stay with ‘em.”
“Everything is dear these days.” Caudell’s smile went from sympathetic to wicked. “That goes for things in this store, too, you know.”
“Will you listen to the whippersnapper!” Liles raised aggrieved eyes to heaven. “Do I look like a man doin’ any more’n just scrapin‘ by?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. You want to talk about just scraping by, you try living on a schoolteacher’s salary for a while.”
“No, thank you,” the storekeeper said at once. “My pa, he learned me to read and write and cipher back before you were born. I got nothin’ against you in particular, Nate, you know that, but that’s the way it ought to be, you ask me. I’m not nearly sure it’s the state’s business to go schoolin’ folks. It’s liable to set all sort o’ silly ideas loose.”
“Times are more complicated than they used to be,” Caudell said, “and more ideas are running around loose than there used to be: what with the telegraph and the railroad and the steamship, it sort of has to be that way. People ought to know enough to be able to deal with them.”
“Maybe so, maybe so.” Raeford Liles sighed. “Things were sure enough simpler when I was a boy, and that’s a fact.”
Caudell suspected every generation ever born had said that, and also suspected that, when he was old and gray, he would look back fondly on the days before the Confederate States gained their freedom. But Raeford Liles’s lifetime had seen an uncommon amount of change, and the next years would see more. And one in four adult white men in North Carolina could not read or write. “Not everybody has a father willing to work as hard as yours, Mr. Liles. We ought to give some of the others a hand.”
“The hand’s in my pocket, takin’ out taxes,” Liles complained. Then he brightened. “Could be worse, I reckon. If them damn Yankees had won, likely they’d try taxin’ me to school niggers.” He laughed at the very idea. So did Nate Caudell.
* XI *
The three Federal peace commissioners filed glumly into the Confederate Cabinet room. Lee, Judah Benjamin, and Alexander Stephens rose to greet them. Lee kept his expression sober as he sat, to avoid even the appearance of gloating.
“The people of the North have spoken,” Benjamin observed. His voice was suave, but that served only to plant the barb more deeply.
“Oh, go to the devil,” Edwin Stanton snarled. The Secretary of War looked tired and drained and sounded bitter.
“I admired President Lincoln’s statement of concession,” Lee said, trying still to soften the moment. “He was wise to urge your country to unite behind the new leaders the citizens chose: ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all.’ The phrase deserves to live.”
“Lincoln deserved to win,” Stanton retorted. “I’d sooner see Horatio Seymour making phrases for the ages.”
“So he may,” Alexander Stephens said. “Come next March 4, he will have his chance. I wonder whom he will name as his representatives in these discussions.”
“Perhaps no one,” William H. Seward said. The Confederate commissioners leaned forward in their chairs as the U.S. Secretary of State continued, “Perhaps we shall succeed in resolving all outstanding issues between us before President Seymour is inaugurated.”
“Lincoln could have resolved them at any time up to this point,” Lee said. “Indeed, his dilatory approach to these negotiations has upon occasion disappointed me.”
“It also cost him twenty-two electoral votes, as both Kentucky and Missouri favored Seymour,” Judah Benjamin added.
“Even if they’d both gone Confederate, it wouldn’t have been enough to turn the election, worse luck,” Ben Butler said after a quick calculation.
“As may be.” Seward waved a hand to put an end to side issues. “President Lincoln has directed me to inform you gentlemen that he is now willing to abide by the results of elections in the two disputed states, upon the model advanced by General Lee, and suggests as the date for said elections Tuesday, June 6, 1865. He also suggests that we fix ninety million in specie as the amount of composition due the Confederate States, half of said amount to be paid before March 4, the other half within thirty days after the elections in Kentucky and Missouri.”
“Well,” Judah P. Benjamin said. Lee glanced over at the Confederate Secretary of State with considerable respect—again, he had guessed which way events would go. “Well,” Benjamin said again, as if gathering himself. Finally he managed something more coherent: “Most constructive, gentlemen. I hope you will forgive us if we request an adjournment until tomorrow so that we may consult with President Davis.”
“He won’t get more from us,” Stanton said gruffly. By his tightly clenched jaw, he regretted Richmond’s getting so much.
“No, not from you, certainly.” By stopping there, Alexander Stephens let the Federal commissioners worry about just how much Horatio Seymour might surrender to the South.
Lee broke in: “As Secretary Benjamin has said, this is a matter that requires the President’s decision. Shall we meet here again tomorrow at our usual hour?”
The men from the United States left the Confederate Cabinet room. Their feet dragged across the carpet. To Lee, they seemed more like beaten men now than when they had first begun these negotiations: even their own countrymen had repudiated their policies.
The Confederate commissioners went up to Jefferson Davis’s office. This time, Alexander Stephens accompanied his colleagues. Davis looked up from the papers on his desk. “Something of importance has occurred for you to be here so soon,” he said. When he saw Stephens, his eyes widened. “Something of importance has occurred for you to be here at all, sir.”
“Something has indeed, Mr. President.” Stephens told of Seward’s concession.
“Ninety million?” Davis plucked at the hair under his chin, as he did when thinking hard. “We have no hope of wringing more from Lincoln; of that I am sure. But from Seymour, who knows what we might get? Both border states, perhaps, without the necessity of military action or the risks of the ballot box.”
“I think that highly likely, Mr. President,” Stephens said. “Vallandigham might as well speak our counsel straight into Seymour’s ear.” Judah Benjamin nodded.
Davis turned to Lee, who stood in silence. “May I hear your opinion, General?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Lee paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts. “Whether or not we may hope for more from President-elect Seymour than from President Lincoln strikes me as moot. The United States have accepted a proposal we ourselves advanced. How can we honorably impose further conditions upon them now? Let us have peace, sir; let us accept the composition they offer; let the voters of the two states at issue choose under which flag they would sooner live.”
“You feel strongly about this,” Davis said.
“I do, sir; as the proposal involved was originally mine, I feel it touched upon my own honor as well as that of the nation.” Lee took a deep breath. “If you seek to impose further conditions upon the United States, I shall have no choice but to tender my resignation from the Army of the Confederate States of America.”