He stopped, pencil poised on the same level as the steady flame. How wet, how weighty the air felt; drawing deep breaths took great effort.
What he had just written produced unexpected flickerings of guilt. He was already coming to loathe the war's ideological confusion. Perhaps by the time he and Brett were together again and she read all of the journal, including passages yet unwritten, answers, including his own, would be clearer than they were this evening.
Do forgive the strange philosophizing. The atmosphere of this place produces curious doubts and reactions, and I have no one with whom to share them save the one with whom I share all — you, my dearest wife. Good night and God keep you -----
Closing the passage with a long dash, he shut the copybook. Soon after, he undressed and blew out the lamp. Sleep wouldn't come. The bed was hard, and his need of her, his lonesome longing, kept him tossing a long time, while hooligans broke glass and fired pistols in nearby streets.
"Lije Farmer? Right there, chum."
The corporal pointed out a Sibley tent, white and conical, one of many. He gave Billy's back a cheery slap and went away whistling. Such breaches of discipline among the volunteers were so common Billy paid no attention. At the entrance to the tent he cleared his throat. He folded his gauntlets over his sash and, orders in his left hand, walked in.
"Lieutenant Hazard reporting, Captain — Farmer —"
Astonishment prolonged and hushed the last word. The man was fifty or better. Pure white hair; a patriarchal look. He stood in his singlet, with his galluses down over his hips and a Testament held in his right hand. On a flimsy table Billy saw a couple of Mahan's engineering texts. He was too stunned to notice anything else.
"A hearty welcome, Lieutenant. I have been anticipating your arrival with great eagerness — nay, excitement. You discover me about to render thanks and honor to the Almighty in morning prayer. Will you not join me, sir?"
He dropped to his knees. Dismay replaced astonishment when Billy realized that Captain Farmer's question was an order.
4
While Billy reported for duty in Alexandria, another of the government's continual round of meetings took place in the War Department building at the west side of President's Park. Simon Cameron, former boss of Pennsylvania politics, presided at his unspeakably littered desk, thought it wasn't the secretary who had called the meeting but the elderly and egotistical human balloon who purported to command the army. From a chair in a corner where Cameron had ordered two assistants to sit as observers, Stanley Hazard watched General Winfield Scott with a contempt he had to work to hide.
Stanley, approaching forty, was a pale fellow. Paunchy, yes, but a positive sylph compared to the general long ago nicknamed "Old Fuss and Feathers." Seventy-five, with a torso resembling a swollen lump of bread dough, Winfield Scott hid most of the upper part of the largest chair that could be found in the building. Braid crusted his uniform.
Others at the gathering were the handsome and pompous Treasury secretary, Mr. Salmon Chase, and a man in a plainly cut gray suit who sat in the corner opposite Stanley's. The man had barely spoken since the start of the meeting. With a polite, attentive air, he listened to Scott hold forth. When Stanley had first met the President at a reception, he had decided there was but one word to describe him: repulsive. It was a matter of personal style as well as appearance, though the latter was certainly bad enough. By now, however, Stanley had assembled a list of other, equally apt, descriptions. It included clownish, oafish, and animal.
If pressed, Stanley would have admitted that he didn't care for any of those present at the meeting, with the possible exception of his superior. Of course his job demanded that he admire Cameron, who had brought him to Washington to reward him for a long record of lavish contributions to Cameron's political campaigns.
Though a departmental loyalist, Stanley had quickly discovered the secretary's worst faults. He saw evidence of one in the towers of files and the stacks of Richmond and Charleston newspapers — important sources of war information — rising high from every free section of desk or cabinet top. Similar collections covered the carpet like pillars erected too close together. The god who ruled Simon Cameron's War Department was Chaos.
Behind the large desk sat the master of it all, his mouth tight as a closed purse, his gray hair long, his gray eyes a pair of riddles. In Pennsylvania he'd carried the nickname "Boss," but no one used it any longer; not in his presence, at least. His fingers were constantly busy with his chief tools of office, a dirty scrap of paper and a pencil stub.
"— too few guns, Mr. Secretary," Scott was wheezing. "That is all I hear from our camps of instruction. We lack the materiel to train and equip thousands of men who have bravely responded to the President's call."
Chase leaned toward the desk. "And the cry for going forward, forward to Richmond, grows more strident by the hour. Surely you understand why."
From Cameron, dryly, but with hinted reproof: "The Confederate Congress convenes there soon." He consulted another tiny scrap, discovered inside his coat. "To be exact — on the twentieth of July. The same month in which most of our ninety-day enlistments will expire."
"So McDowell must move," snapped Chase. "He, too, is inadequately equipped."
Discreetly, Stanley wrote a short message on a small tablet. Real problem is vols. He rose and passed the note across the desk. Cameron snatched it, read it, crushed it, and gave a slight nod in Stanley's direction. He understood McDowell's chief concern, which was not equipment but the need to rely on volunteer soldiers whose performance he couldn't predict and whose courage he couldn't trust. It was the same snide pose common to most regular officers from West Point — those, that is, who hadn't deserted after being given a fine education, free, at that school for traitors.
Cameron chose not to raise the point, however. He replied to the commanding general with an oozy deference. "General, I continue to believe the chief problem is not too few guns but too many men. We already have three hundred thousand under arms. Far more than we need for the present crisis."
"Well, I hope you're right about that," the President said from his corner. No one paid attention. As usual, Lincoln's voice tended to the high side, a source of many jokes behind his back.
What a congress of buffoons, Stanley thought as he wriggled his plump derriere on the hard chair bottom. Scott — whom the stupid Southrons called a free-state pimp but who actually needed to be closely watched; he was a Virginian, wasn't he? And he'd promoted scores of Virginians in the prewar army at the expense of equally qualified men from the North. Chase loved the niggers, and the President was a gauche farmer. For all Cameron's twisty qualities, he was at least a man of some sophistication in the craft of government.
Chase chose not to answer but to orate. "We must do more than hope, Mr. President. We need to purchase more aggressively in Europe. We have too few ordnance works in the North now that we have lost Harpers Fer —"
"European purchasing is under investigation," Cameron said. "But, in my opinion, such a course is unnecessarily extravagant."
Scott stamped on the floor. "Damn it, Cameron, you talk extravagance in the face of rebellion by traitorous combinations?"