Lee returned the courtesy, then extended his hand. “Delighted to see you, Colonel. Allow me to present to you my aide, Major Marshall.”
When the formalities were complete, Rains said, “I have my carriage here. May I drive you to the hotel? I’ve arranged rooms for you and Major Marshall at the Planters’, which is by far the finest establishment in the city. Even English travelers, men with wide experience of the world, think well of the Planters’—with the exception, I fear, of the tea, which, one of them complained, was so weak he did not see how it got out of the spout.”
“I should find that no great hardship, Colonel, preferring coffee as I do,” Lee said. “I am confident you will have done everything necessary for our comfort. Your exemplary management of the powder mills here throughout the course of the war makes me certain of your ability to tend to such trifles.”
A bare-chested slave attached to the train station carried the newcomers’ bags to the carriage. Lee gave him a dime; having come from Kentucky, he still had on his person a fair sum of U.S. specie. The slave grinned, displaying uneven yellow teeth. Colonel Rains raised a quizzical eyebrow but said nothing. He flicked the reins to set the carriage in motion.
“Your shops are busy here,” Charles Marshall observed.
“They were even busier during the war,” Rains answered. “A large portion of the goods that came into Charleston and Wilmington through the blockade were sold here at auction, for dispersal all over the interior of Georgia and South Carolina.”
“Is that a bookstore there?” Lee asked, pointing. “Perhaps I shall buy a novel, to commemorate my stay here. It’s been a good many years since I’ve had the leisure to enjoy a novel, but I just may indulge myself.”
“They’re first-rate on a train,” Rains said.
“As I was telling Major Marshall, Colonel, I feel at the moment a certain—sufficiency—in respect to trains,” Lee said. “On the off chance, however, that I may be forced to ride them more than I would wish, I shall have to investigate that shop. Merely an off chance, of course, as I say.” Lee admired Rains for keeping his face so straight. He wondered how many more thousands of miles he would put in rattling along over the iron rails before his career was done.
They pulled up in front of the Planters’ Hotel. Slaves strolled out to take charge of Lee’s luggage. He and Marshall got down from the carriage. “I will leave you gentlemen here, to recover from the rigors of your journey,” Rains said. “If it pleases you, I shall return for breakfast tomorrow, then drive you over to the powder mill.”
“You are very kind, Colonel,” Lee said. “That sounds most satisfactory. I’ll see you, then, at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, if that be not too early.”
“Eight o’clock will be fine.” Rains saluted again. “Good day to you, sir, Major.” The carriage rolled away. Lee and Marshall went into the hotel. Spurred on by shouts from the white manager and clerks, the serving staff did everything but carry them to their rooms. Yet the shouts were good-natured, and Lee got the impression an ordinary guest would have received treatment no different from his own. He thought better of the Planters’ for that impression.
Supper did nothing to disappoint him, and over chicory-laced coffee the next morning he told Rains, “Your establishment here compares quite favorably to the Galt House in Louisville, Colonel. Smaller, certainly, but very fine.”
“I’ve heard of the Galt House, though I never stayed in it. I think, sir, if you were to say that to Mr. Jenkins behind the front desk, you would have to stand back quickly to keep from getting hit by the buttons that flew off his waistcoat as he swelled up with pride.”
Lee smiled. “I’d sooner risk buttons than a good many other things that have flown through the air in my direction.” He drained his cup, got to his feet. “Perhaps this evening, when we return, I shall brave Mr. Jenkins’s waistcoat. Meanwhile, though—”
The powder mill lay by the Augusta Canal, a couple of furlongs west of the Savannah River. The road ran past underground powder magazines, each separated from its neighbors by thick brick traverses. “Is that tin sheathing on the roofs of the magazines?” Lee asked.
“Zinc,” Rains answered. “It happened to be more readily available at the time. Sooner than wait for tin to appear, I went ahead with what i had. That was what I had to do all through the war, if I wanted to accomplish anything. Pharaoh made the Israelites make bricks without straw. Looking back on all my contrivances here, I sometimes think I could have made bricks without clay.”
Young Georgia soldiers had stood sentry around the magazines. More guarded the big wooden shed that housed the powder mill. They stared and pointed and lost almost any semblance of military discipline when they saw Robert E. Lee. Colonel Rains coughed drily. “They all wish they’d been bold in battle like you, General. The life of a soldier far from the cannon’s roar has little glamour to it.”
Lee thought Rains was speaking for himself as well as for his men. Raising his voice so the Georgia lads could hear along with their commander, he said, “Without your labor, Colonel, and that of your garrison, the cannon never could have roared. How much gunpowder did you produce for the Confederacy here at Augusta?”
“Just over two million pounds,” Rains answered. “Of that total, about three fourths was sent north to Richmond for use by the Army of Northern Virginia. The balance went to the big guns in the fortifications around Charleston, Wilmington, and Mobile. Still more would have gone north to you had the infantry and cavalry not suddenly reequipped themselves with these newfangled AK-47s.”
“Indeed,” Lee said. “That reequipment and its consequences are the reason I have come to Augusta.”
“So you intimated in your telegram from Louisville.” A horse with a uniformed rider came trotting up to the powder mill.” Ah, good,” Rains said. “Here is Captain Bob Finney, who is superintendent of the arsenal a couple of miles outside of town and thus responsible for the production of small-arms ammunition, percussion caps, and other such military materiel. Between the two of us, we should display a truly staggering amount of ignorance for you.”
Finney arrived in time to hear that last remark. He was a cheerful-looking, round-faced man in his middle twenties who wore a close-trimmed reddish beard like that of the Federal general Sherman. “Yes, indeed, General Lee, if it’s ignorance you want, you’ve come to the proper place,” he said gaily as he dismounted. “We turn out more of it than munitions these days, as a matter of fact. “
Rains smiled, plainly used to the captain’s forward tongue. “If you gentlemen will step into my office”—a small hut next to the powder mill—”we shall see how much ignorance we can produce today.”
One of the chairs in the ramshackle office did not match the other three, which made Lee suspect Rains had borrowed it for the occasion. Charles Marshall said, “Colonel, does not the thought of working so close beside a place where so much gunpowder is produced ever weigh on your mind?”
“Not a bit, Major,” Rains answered at once. “In a fifteen-hour day, we can manufacture close to ten thousand pounds. If by unhappy accident such an amount went up, I should be translated to my heavenly reward before I had the chance to notice the explosion. Under those circumstances, what point to worrying?”
“Put that way, none, I suppose,” Marshall admitted. Even so, he could not help sneaking a glance out the window toward the powder mill.
“To business, then,” Rains said. “General, I gather from your telegram and from the correspondence I have had with Colonel Gorgas in Richmond that you are aware the powder which propels the bullet from the cartridge of an AK-47 is not, properly speaking, gunpowder at all.”