"To the unrighteous, the righteous no doubt seem wicked," Douglass replied.
"You are not the least bold of men, to say such a thing here," Jackson observed, more approvingly than otherwise.
E. Porter Alexander caught something he had missed: "Who here is righteous, who the reverse, and how do you go about proving it?" He held up a hand. "Since we could argue about that through the night, what say we don't, but eat supper instead?"
"I find myself unable to oppose such logic, especially when I but recently thought a noose my certain fate," Douglass said. Jackson contented himself with a single short, sharp nod.
A couple of minutes later, General Alexander said, "Do you see, sir? Douglass is among the righteous after all-for he eats mustard."
"His digestion would be better if he abstained," said Jackson, who, as usual, used only salt on his meat. Frederick Douglass looked from one of them to the other, unsure how serious they were. Jackson willed his face to reveal nothing. Only when his artillery chief smiled did the captured Negro agitator relax.
After all three men had finished, Douglass asked the question no doubt uppermost in his mind since he'd entered the tent-no doubt uppermost in his mind since he was taken prisoner: "What do you intend to do with me, General?"
"Hold you here until I have received instructions from President Longstreet." Jackson answered, "then follow them, whatever they may be." He cocked his head to one side, raised his arm in the air, and asked in turn, "What would you have us do with you?"
"What would I have you do?" Douglass said. "Why, release me, of course. I am a U.S. citizen, and a civilian member of the Fourth Estate."
"You are, I have heard, an escaped slave," Jackson remarked.
Douglass scowled. "I am an escaped slave," he said proudly, "but I escaped from Maryland, which is and has always been one of the United States, not a Confederate state, so your cruel laws pertaining to such conduct are without application to my case. Further, on payment of the sum of one hundred dollars, my former master formally manumitted me in December of the year 1846, proof of which I can readily provide if allowed to communicate in any way with my friends. I am, sir, a free man, both in my heart and in point of law."
"You are the cause of more runaways and the wellspring of more plots against the white men of the Confederate States than any other half dozen people I could name," E. Porter Alexander said.
"Thank you," Douglass replied, which nonplussed the artillerist. Douglass added, "You are telling me I have not lived my life as a free man in vain."
"Why should we not condemn you for attempting to create a servile insurrection of the sort John Brown tried raising?" Jackson asked.
"I advised Brown against that, brave patriot though I thought him-and still think him," Douglass said with a defiant toss of his head. "As for why you should not, I told you: I do not fall, and have never fallen, under your jurisdiction. I have broken none of my nation's laws. If you declare me persona non grata and deport me, you would be within your rights. Condemn me? No, not if you wish to adhere to the law of nations."
Jackson leaned forward, relishing the argument. "But uprisen slaves have committed many outrages in the Confederate States, some of them citing you as the author of their discontent. In war, shall I shoot the simpled-minded soldier who goes over the hill as a deserter, while taking no notice of the wily civilian who induces him to desert? Your case strikes me as similar."
"How can it?" Douglass raised his impressive eyebrows. "Do you not aim to keep your Negroes in such abysmal ignorance that they are not allowed to learn to read and write, lest the written word lead them to the desire for freedom? How then could your servile populace come to know my words, since assuredly I have never given an address within Confederate territory?"
"We instruct them in the things that matter," Jackson said. "Why, I myself began and taught a Sunday school for the Negroes in and around Lexington, Virginia, before the War of Secession. They are, in my view, perhaps not the Regulars of the church, but they assuredly make up the militia."
Douglass started to say something, then stopped. He resumed after an evident pause for thought: "I have come to see, over the years, that few men are entirely of a piece. I did not know you had done such a thing, General; it shall redound to your credit on the day when our Father judges you. How can you, though, justify the manifold evils of slavery while preaching the Gospel that sets all men free?"
"As you must know, the Good Book sanctions slavery," Jackson replied. "If Providence sanctions it, who am I to speak in opposition? I do believe Negro slaves to be children of God no less than myself, and deserving of good treatment."
"You might be wiser, from a master's point of view, if you did not," Douglass observed. "A slave who has a bad master wants a good master. A slave who has a good master wants to be free."
"Are you not betraying slaves' secrets to tell us this?" Porter Alexander asked.
Douglass shook his leonine head. "A bad master does not become a good one at the pull of a lever. Nor does a good one easily go bad; that can and does happen, as I know to my pain, but slowly, over years."
One of the telegraph keys in the tent began to chatter. Everyone whirled to stare at it. When it fell silent, the telegrapher carried the transcription of the wire over to Jackson. Douglass' eyes followed the man's every step. Jackson read the telegram, then smiled a crooked smile. "Anticlimax, I fear," he said. "General Alexander, some of the new shipment of horses that will haul your guns has arrived."
"I'm relieved to hear it." The artillery commander glanced over at Frederick Douglass. "Rather more so than our… guest, I daresay."
"I am not your guest, unless I misunderstand and am in fact free to come and go as I please," Douglass snapped. "I am your prisoner."
"Yes, you are a prisoner." Jackson minced few words, and appreciated candor in others. "Whether you will remain a prisoner, and upon what terms-these matters await President Longstreet's decision."
Porter Alexander raised an eyebrow. "I stand corrected. Our distinguished prisoner, I should have said, or perhaps our notorious prisoner. No, distinguished will do, for were you not distinguished, Douglass, were you, say, an ordinary white Yankee, it is moderately unlikely that you should have taken supper with the general-in-chief of the Confederate States."
A beat slower than he might have, Jackson caught the irony there. It won a smile from Frederick Douglass, too, a sour smile. "I note, General Alexander, that however distinguished I may be in your eyes and those of General Jackson, I am not distinguished enough for either of you to preface my name with Mister." Jackson blinked. "It never occurred to me to do so," he said. "To the best of my recollection, I have never called a Negro Mister in my entire life."
"That in itself speaks unhappy volumes on the history of my race in what are now the Confederate States," Douglass said bitterly, "and, I note, in the United States as well."
Another telegraph apparatus began to click. "This is the reply from the president, sir," said the soldier at the chair in front of it. Like every telegrapher, he enjoyed the privilege of learning the content of the message before it reached the man to whom it was addressed.
When the clicking stopped, he brought the wire to Jackson, who donned his reading glasses and skimmed through it. Longstreet made his instructions unmistakably clear. Jackson turned to Douglass. "By order of the president of the Confederate States, you are to be turned over to U.S. military authorities under flag of truce as soon as that may be arranged. You are to be freely given to those U.S. authorities; no exchange of any Confederate prisoner now in U.S. hands is to be required or requested. Until such time as you are turned over to the U.S. authorities, you are to be treated with every consideration. Is that satisfactory…" He hesitated, but the president had said every consideration, and he was not a man to disobey orders. He began again: "Is that satisfactory, Mr. Douglass?"