“Tell us the story about how you found him.”
Sharpe was no mean storyteller himself. This was business, and the facts were what mattered, yet he had to convince, and that was the storyteller’s art.
“Mr. President,” Sharpe leaned forward. “Before you can understand George, you have to understand what we do in the Bureau of Military Information. Since we were formed in February, thousands of men, white and black, have passed through our hands-prisoners of war, deserters, refugees, and contrabands. My chief interrogator, John Babcock, and I have developed a fine nose for the truth and just as fine a technique to get at it. We are rarely deceived.
“Those who come to us willingly are apt to exaggerate or invent what they think we want to hear. It is a common thing and easily found out, for already we have such a body of information on the organization, strengths, leaders, and problems of the Army of Northern Virginia that a simple comparison will tell if the story rings true or false. We know every regiment in Lee’s Army, its commander, and its strength. We know the state of their horses, the rations and forage they receive or not, the arrival of reinforcements or not. We follow them when they move their regiments, brigades, and divisions from one place to another, and issue updated maps and orders of battle to the general commanding on a regular basis.”
Lincoln asked, “Do you mean you get all of this from simple interrogations?”
“No, sir, we take our information from any and all sources at our disposal-and that means, in addition to interrogations, reports of my scouts and agents, examination of enemy documents, even personal letters, reports from the Signal Corps, the cavalry, the agents of the Secretary of War, and even the Provost Marshal of Maryland, James McPhail. I even encourage the pickets to obtain information from their Confederate opposites. They exchange coffee, tobacco, and newspapers often enough, why not information? That reminds me-” and before he could get further, Lincoln smiled as Seward and Stanton rolled their eyes.
Sharpe took it in stride and pressed on, “Of the time one little private from Rhode Island took my admonition with great enthusiasm. As soon as he got onto the picket line, he called out, ‘Johnny Reb, what’s your regiment?’ The Rebel called back, ‘The 21st South Carolina. How about you, Yank? What’s your regiment?’ The little soldier responded proudly, ‘The One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Rhode Island!” That seemed to get the South Carolinian in a real twist, as he yelled back, ‘You’re a damned liar, Yank, there aren’t 147 men in that whole measly little state!’”2
Lincoln burst out laughing and slapped his knee. “By heavens, Colonel, I will just have to steal that one from you, if you won’t stand on copyright.”
“Consider it in the public domain, Mr. President.”
Lincoln chuckled, “I don’t make the stories mine by telling them. I’m only a retail dealer.”
Stanton had enjoyed the story as much as everyone else, but thought that one storyteller in the room was more than enough. “Let’s get back to George the Contraband, Sharpe. Did he pass your test?”
“Indeed, sir, he did so without a doubt. Mr. Babcock and Sergeant Cline like to chat up the occupants of the Bull Pen, the Provost Marshal’s prison pen, to see if they can skim any cream right off the top. Cline came to me. ‘I think you should talk to this one. He came through our lines last night, gave himself up to the pickets, and claims to be John Hunt Morgan’s body servant.’ He had my attention immediately. You will remember that Morgan was rampaging through Indiana at the time before his capture.
“I could tell at once he was no field hand. You could almost say that he carried himself like a gentleman; he was a light-skinned mulatto, about five feet and four inches tall and well dressed. I didn’t even get the first word. He told me point blank, ‘I have news for you, Colonel.’ His English had that Southern lilt, but it was clear and grammatical as any white rebel I have interrogated. He can read and write as well. He had a copy of Les Misérables in his pocket. In my line of work, I make it a habit of not interrupting a man who wants to share something. I encouraged him to start.
“‘Let me introduce myself, first,’ he said. He was a straightforward man, and his eyes remained fixed on me. There was no telltale of a lie in his unconscious up and rightward glance. ‘I am William George Morgan, and I was born in General Morgan’s household. They call me George. The general and I received the same education while we were boys so that I could become his body servant. Mr. Morgan was a generous man, perhaps because I have, by a most strange coincidence, an uncanny resemblance to the old gentleman.’” Sharpe paused with a smile and commented, “In my journeys south before the war, I gathered that the chivalry down there acted as if the profusion of mulatto children in their great houses seemed simply to have fallen out of the sky.”
Sharpe continued, “At this point, I asked him the obvious question: ‘Why weren’t you with Morgan on his raid?’
“‘You must understand, sir, that the general knows perfectly well that I am his brother, and he has done everything he can to recognize that unwelcome fact, short of acknowledge me in public. I can’t blame him; he’s trapped by slavery as much as I was — more so, because I can run away from it, and he cannot not. I went off to war with him proud to be a soldier and, strange as it may sound, fight for the South. After all, it is my home, too.’”
Sharpe interrupted his story to comment again, “This is not as strange as he makes out. General Lee’s Army could not function without its thousands of Negroes, although they are not officially enlisted in the Confederate Army except, strangely, as bandsmen. After Gettysburg, Lee’s white troops were so depleted in strength and numbers that he ordered our five thousand prisoners escorted South by armed Negroes from his Army. And I must say they were punctilious in their duties. There was more than one white backside poked along to Richmond’s Belle Island Prison by a bayonet in black hands. I have learned also that after Grant took Vicksburg, he offered the 400 slave body servants the opportunity to go North. Everyone went South with their paroled masters.”
Stanton asked impatiently, “Then why can we trust what he has to say if they’re so damned loyal? And how do you explain the hundreds of thousands of contrabands that come into our lines?”
“One thing I have learned, Mr. Secretary, in my years with the old Negro community in Kingston, New York, and here in Virginia in dealing with thousands of contraband slaves, Negroes are eminently secret people; they have a system of understanding amounting almost to free masonry among them; they will trust each other when they will not trust white men.
“Their actions, however, speak louder than words. I will defy anyone to claim that a Negro, outside a Confederate Army, has ever betrayed a Union soldier. The lives of my scouts and agents in the heart of Virginia have depended on the active goodwill of Negroes. They have come to the aid of my people to warn them of danger and guide them to safety countless times. Where fear made them dare not give overt assistance, they could be depended on to remain silent despite great reward. There is little in their immediate neighborhoods that they do not know, although most slaves’ knowledge does not extend beyond five miles of their plantations.”
“This George is no field hand,” Stanton replied.
“No, he is not, but he shares with his people the same dream.”
Lincoln spoke, “It seems you have learned exactly the same lesson that Mr. Douglass has been pressing. How many forget that freedom is the most intoxicating of all the works of man?”