“See if this passes inspection,” Vick requested. “I had Tammie bring me pen and paper and wrote it out when we were at your place.”
Jem looked it over. In somewhat stilted language it purported to be a message from Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston at Bowling Green, temporarily transferring command of all troops at Fort Donelson from Brig.-Gen. John G. Floyd to Brig.-Gen. Simon B. Buckner, and instructing Buckner to carry out an assault on the surrounding Federal troops “with all dispatch.”
“I’m not too well up on written orders,” said Jem. “I get mine mostly from my captain hollerin’ at me, usually not bein’ too polite about it. A courier sometimes in battle but still word of mouth. From the little I’ve seen, this looks right enough. Of course it’s not in General Johnston’s handwritin’ but I guess generals have aides write out their letters for them a lot of the time. Floyd outranks General Buckner and he might not like it but I’d say he’ll obey the order—if he accepts it as bein’ from General Johnston.”
“I’m counting on you being with me when I go in to convince them I’m a legitimate courier,” said Vick. “They know you. And with Floyd’s indecisiveness I’m betting he’ll be happy to turn over command to Buckner in a tough spot. After all, that’s what he’ll do when he decides to take his Virginia troops out by boat along with Pillow, leaving Buckner to surrender.”
“You’re askin’ me to interfere in a command decision well beyond my rank,” equivocated Jem. “If I help you, I’ll count on you to protect me from a co’t martial if they catch onto the swindle. We’ve got another day ahead of us to think it over. But don’t you think it’s goin’ pretty far to order General Buckner to attack? General Johnston can’t know what the Yankee strength is in front of the fort—he’ll barely have heard they’re attackin’.”
“Generals give orders like that all the time without knowing the situation. Johnston ordered these generals to Donelson in a hurry after Fort Henry fell on the 6th. Buckner just got here yesterday and Floyd himself doesn’t get to Donelson till tomorrow. Floyd’s under indictment in the Union and afraid of capture but Buckner feels Donelson ought to be held to the last and Forrest’s opinion is that the victory-flushed Confederates can drive the Yankees back to the Tennessee River. The way I see it, if the Confederates exploit Pillow’s breakthrough the whole army can escape down the road to Nashville to join forces with Johnston. They might even justify Forrest’s optimism, swing around behind the Federal lines and defeat the Yankees soundly. If they do that Fort Henry can be recaptured, the Confederate bastion across Kentucky will be restored, and with the loss of Grant’s force the way will be open to drive the Union armies back across the Ohio River.”
Jem blinked. The man might not know what he was talking about but he had some grand ideas on strategy.
Rich was successful in his hunt. He brought back some small game to supplement their rations. They lolled around in the woods all day without much happening except small arms fire in the distance. But shortly after nine o’clock the next morning the sound of heavy artillery rumbled to their ears from the direction of the fort. After some time it was augmented by the rattle of musketry.
“You’re off schedule,” Jem accused with a smile. “I thought you said the fightin’s not until the day alter tomorrow.”
“That’s when the crucial fighting comes. This today is a duel between the Federal ironclad Carondelet under Commander Walke and the fort. The small arms fire is a brigade sent forward by McClernand to try to clear Confederate snipers from a redoubt. Both attacks are due to fail.”
There was a lull in the artillery firing around noon, then it resumed and lasted most of the afternoon. They could see nothing of the battle, as they were surrounded by thick trees, but a veil of smoke from the bombardment drifted up into the sky southeast of them.
Vick listened to the sounds of battle, so similar to those he remembered and yet so different in tone, and his thoughts were snared by the history he had read ardently as a boy and a young man. Much more than during World War II he felt the sense of being present at a civilization’s struggle for survival… the culture of the agrarian South. It was the foreknowledge of what, historically, was to come that imposed on him this feeling.
The comparison arose before him of the long survival effort of ancient Rome. When history spoke of Rome it did not focus so much on the bread and circuses, the decadence of emperors, the gladiators and the crucifixions, as on the noble public buildings, the spreading latifundia, the aqueducts and paved roads, the proud, toga-clad lords of their world. Rome was a centuries-long light of civilization shining in the darkness of worldwide barbarism. A remarkable proportion of Western values and institutions were derived from that ancient Rome.
And the civilization of Rome, too, had been slave-based. Ignoring the natural reaction against Rome of the conquered lands that supplied the slaves, Vick was on solid ground in rejecting any suggestion that the institution of slavery was in any way responsible for the ultimate fall of Rome. Decadent politics, not slavery, destroyed ancient Rome.
Vick’s mind ranged ahead to the course of history when he succeeded, as he was bound to, in assassinating Grant and preserving the quiet charm of the prewar South. Without Grant the Northern armies would falter and fail, a peace agreement would leave the Confederacy independent. That was, after all, Vick’s aim in being here now. Two nations—and did not the midcontinent have room for both, a noisy, smoky, industrial North and the quiet and courtly South with its polite drawing rooms and singing slaves coming in from the fields at night?
A question that had come up sometime in history classes was that the brains of the widespread Roman world were no less sophisticated than modern brains, its philosophy was as profound and its artisans as clever. Why, then, had Rome and its tributaries failed to develop a more advanced technology? Not the suppressive hand of superstition, the belief in heathen gods: the Renaissance had arisen despite the equally oppressive hand of the mediaeval Church.
Here Vick had to admit slavery probably was largely responsible. The authors and orators and philosophers of that day were creative enough but they naturally confined their brilliance to the realms of art and literature, as befitted aristocrats. They would not demean themselves to such sordid concerns as labor-saving machines—the aqueducts, the buildings and the roads were practical and relatively simple exceptions, some of them owed to Greek slaves. Why should the Roman aristocrats bother with such things when slave labor was plentiful and relatively cheap? What patrician was interested in investing thought in ways to make a slave’s life less arduous?
It was a lot the same here in the Old South. Industrialism was already on the move in England and in the North. It would continue to progress there, into the 20th century. Within the next decade Prussia would unify Germany and it would plunge into not only the European power competition but the race for technological leadership. But what plantation owner cared to invest in a mechanical harvester when he had Negro slaves who could not only perform that field task but adapt to many other jobs as well?
That was fine. That was what Vick had in mind. Let the North have its factories, let the South stay civilized, if a Southerner needed some technological item it could be imported. The only caveat was, how would these separate American nations fare when developing technology shrank the world and it was plunged into multinational war?