— William Russell, London Times
Samuel and Elizabeth Bowater left White Point Gardens and walked through a Charleston that Samuel had never seen, a jubilant, ecstatic, self-congratulatory Charleston. There was a universal joy and goodwill; it was Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July, and many times more than that.
Sumter was fired upon. The waiting was over, the war had commenced. South Carolina, leader in secession, was the leader in the fight. Now that powder was burning, those states of the upper South—sister North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri—had to secede and then join in with the Confederacy. Now there was only to lick the Yankees and the South would be free.
Samuel was not immune to this mood, not entirely, though he found the crowd’s enthusiasm cheap and facile. Still, there was a new liveliness to his step, and he returned enthusiastic waves of greeting with a smile and a broad gesture, whereas just the day before he would have frowned and given a halfhearted shake of his hand.
“I don’t recall ever seeing you so enthusiastic, brother,” Elizabeth said.
“I am not made of stone, my dear,” Samuel said. He thought of their father. There was a man made of stone. He was not like that. “At least I am not treating the event like a circus come to town.”
“No? I could swear I caught you down at the Gardens, gawking like one of the mob.”
“I was painting, I was most certainly not gawking,” Samuel replied, but his sister’s implication rattled him. She was good at rattling him, always had been.
They walked on, and Samuel’s thoughts returned to the firing on Sumter, and with that thought his good mood returned. The waiting was over, the torment of indecision. He was not happy about war, had not wanted it. The United States Navy was his life. He had sworn an oath. No event short of his beloved South Carolina’s taking up arms against the United States could have moved him to break that oath. So he had waited, and suffered the suspicions of both sides.
They walked down King Street, shouldering through the crowds. All of Charleston was in the streets, and Samuel caught snatches of conversation as he passed, men bragging on what they would do in the upcoming fight, women adding to their bravado, or speaking in fearful tones, or gushing about the strength of Southern arms. He heard the word “honor” punctuating conversations like an exclamation point, and “Yankee” and “Black Republican”; it all swirled together in a patriotic gumbo.
They came at last to the Bowater house, three stories of brick walls and white-painted window frames and green ivy, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other fine homes on Tradd Street. A sign over a side door proclaimed, “William Bowater, Esq., Attorney at Law.”
It was the only home that Samuel had ever known, the only place he had ever lived besides the dormitories of the Naval School and the wardrooms of various ships. It was the place where Samuel had grown to manhood under his father’s seemingly omniscient eye, his unwavering rule.
It was where Samuel had learned to be a gentleman, and, more to the point, a Southern gentleman. Courteous to the last. Studied, urbane. Personally disciplined—a gentleman, he was taught, did not show womanly weakness of any sort. Passionately loyal to his country and his state. Unwilling to suffer even the hint of insult. Tolerant of the lower classes, appreciative, even, of their labor, but always aware of their place, and his. Kind to slaves. These were the things that made the Southern man, and the instruction was so thorough that those traits became a part of Samuel Bowater as much as his height and the color of his eyes.
They climbed the stairs, brother and sister, and crossed the porch, and Samuel pushed open the big front door. It opened onto an expansive foyer, at the far end of which was the wide staircase to the second floor. The floor was tiled, white-and-black checkerboard. A deep brown, ornately carved Venezuelan ironwood table sat to the right of the door. Samuel had brought it back from Caracas following a cruise in South America.
Samuel had not yet closed the door when Isaac appeared, his dark face—nearly the color of the ironwood table—showing no hint of interest in the commotion going on in the streets.
“Here, Isaac.” Samuel handed the black man his haversack and easel and paint kit.
“How da paintin’ go today, Misser Samuel?” Isaac asked. Samuel held up the canvas for the servant to inspect.
“Ain’t dat somethin’?” Isaac said. It was what he always said. Samuel considered it one of the more insightful comments he received.
“Samuel?” His mother’s voice came from the sitting room off to the right, a lovely, strong voice with just a hint of her native Ireland. There was a rustle of crinoline and silk, the tap of shoes on the marble floor, and the heavier footfalls of his father.
“Samuel!” His mother, Rachel, raced out into the foyer, his father right behind. “Oh, Samuel, have you been down to the harbor?”
His mother, at fifty-four, was still a beauty, with her once black hair now showing signs of gray, her strong features emboldened with tiny lines around her eyes and mouth. She came up to him, put her hands on his arms. “You are all right?”
“It was a near thing, Mother. I almost stabbed myself in the eye with my paintbrush. But my dear sister was there to see I came to no grief.”
“Our Michelangelo was well out of the way of the flying metal, Mother.”
Over his mother’s shoulder Samuel met his father’s eyes. He wore a vest and bow tie, as he did every day of his life, as far as Samuel could recall, and his white hair and beard were as perfectly groomed as Samuel’s dark brown hair and goatee. “What news, son?”
“Stevens’s Iron Battery at Morris Island opened up just at dawn, and the rest right after that. The firing has been continuous since. There was a relief squadron in the offing. Pawnee and Harriet Lane, looked like, but they’ll never dare come in now.”
“Sumter still stands?”
“For the time being. Not for much longer.”
William Bowater nodded.
“You are the only people in all Charleston not in the streets, I reckon,” Samuel observed. He knew that his father, like himself, thought the gawking crowd unseemly.
“Let us retire from here,” William suggested, and the party moved en masse from the foyer to the big, open drawing room. Through the tall windows they could see throngs in the streets. The jubilation seemed to reach through the glass, to sweep the elegant room and its occupants along with it. The excitement was like the odor of spent gunpowder that drifted over the city, ubiquitous, invading every space, wrapping itself around every person.
“Isaac, coffee,” William called as he sat in the big wing chair, the patriarch chair, and turned to Samuel. “I would say this is war, son. What will you do now?”
Samuel let out a breath. He had no notion of what his father, a staunch secessionist, thought of his long resistance to joining the Confederate forces. His father was a lawyer—his feelings were not easily read—and he was a gentleman, so he did not impose those feelings on others. He and Samuel talked at length about politics. They did not talk about emotions.
“I had hoped it would not come to this, I won’t pretend differently,” Samuel said. “I swore an oath to the United States, once. But it is war, as you say, and now my duty is clear.”
Isaac came in with the silver tray. He poured the coffee, added sugar and cream to each individual preference, and handed out the bone china cups.
William Bowater balanced his cup and saucer on his knee. “You are resolved, then, to fight for the Confederacy?”
“It is my duty. Honor demands it. But it was not an easy thing, Father, not at all.”