“You know, Mr. President, I just did what I felt in my heart was the right thing to do. I never felt calmer. I felt as if the arms of the Lord were wrapped around me. It was like He was saying, ‘You know what you have to do, now go and do it. I will be with you.’ I didn’t have time to be scared. I just knew the good Lord wasn’t going to let us be sold back into slavery, not if we took action to save ourselves. I thank the Lord for men like Sheriff Parker and Lewis Schneider, and especially for all those who gave up their lives to set Eddie and the others free.”
“My men were proud to come to your rescue,” said Sheriff Parker. “They were proud to fight for their friends and neighbors. Elmer Ellsworth’s men wasted not a second getting to Delphi either.”
“It seems like that’s the very thing that fate was preparing Elmer and us for,” agreed Lewis Schneider. “Like Emma said, we didn’t see it as courage. We just knew what we had to do when the time came to do it.”
“The hardest thing of all,” Emma said to Lewis and Parker, “must have been when you men faced down General Harney the next day. If you hadn’t stared him down until the Wide Awakes got to Delphi, he would have taken us off to the Slave Court. We know how that would have turned out.”
“I hadn’t heard that part of the story,” said Eddie. “The part about them staring down General Harney.”
“That’s because you were laid up in the doctor’s house,” Emma explained. “You didn’t come to your senses until three days after you were rescued from that coffin they had locked you up in. Well, let me tell you: there was an uproar all over the country when news of the battle with the slave raiders got out. Stephen Douglas tried to quiet folks in the South by ordering General Harney to Delphi. He had orders to take us to Slave Court. Douglas had put his men in charge of that court so you can bet they were going to send us back into slavery. Sheriff Parker and Elmer Ellsworth’s men stopped them cold in their tracks until the Wide Awakes got to Delphi and made the army leave.”
“Well, I’ll be switched,” said Eddie. “Douglas wasn’t going to let us go free even after we were rescued. That’s what set off the Partisan War!”
“It was,” replied Parker. “Like Emma said, Harney had orders to take you to that Slave Court that Douglas had set up in Indianapolis. My men and Elmer’s men, and some of the townspeople wouldn’t allow it. We formed a line between the doctor’s house and Harney’s men. We stared them down for hours. Harney hoped we’d chicken out and leave, but we didn’t.”
Parker picked up his coffee cup and swirled it as he remembered that day. “Fred Douglass was there too. He tried to persuade Harney to ‘look the other way’ so we could get you out of there. I could tell that Harney wanted to let you go back home but was duty-bound to obey Douglas’ order to send you to the Slave Court. But you know, I don’t think all of us put together could have held that line if it wasn’t for that old fellow who stood with us. His voice rolled like thunder and steadied our courage. He commanded Harney to halt. Harney stopped right in front of him and didn’t move another inch for two full hours. Never did find out who he was. Probably just an old coot full of hard cider.”
“But you did say he stopped General Harney, didn’t you?” asked Mr. Lincoln.
“That, he surely did.”
“Then let’s find out what cider he was drinking and have some made for the rest of us.” Lincoln chuckled. “We’ll likely need a lot of the courage it gave the old fellow before this war’s over and done with.”
“Why do we even have to have a war?” asked Emma when the polite laughter finished. “There aren’t enough free Negroes in the North to shake a stick at. Why don’t the Confederates just let us be? Haven’t they got enough slaves already, without needing to go chasing after us?”
Cump, who had been listening in silence, spoke up.
“You and Eddie are two of the reasons. The Confederates don’t like the example that free Negroes set for their slaves. The slaves are bound to ask why is it that if some Negroes can prosper as free men and women, like you and Eddie do, why can’t all the Negroes be set free to prosper?
“Another thing,” Cump continued, “is that the Confederates believe that the Free State Abolitionists are never going to stop agitating their slaves into rising up against them. I can’t say that point is entirely without merit, not after John Brown’s Raid. I suppose they’re afraid that if the Free States remain independent that one day they’ll start a war to liberate the slaves, perhaps with England and France in tow. So they think it’s better to fight a war to get the Free States back under their thumb now than to have to do it sometime later on. I’m not saying they’re right, but that’s they way they see it.”
“You speak as though you’ve lived among the Confederates and know how they think,” Emma observed.
“Cump was Superintendent of the Louisiana Military Institute until he came up here in July,” explained John. “He knows the Confederates well. In fact, Robert E. Lee asked him to command one of the Confederate Armies, but he refused. Good thing for us he did.”
“Why did you decline Lee’s offer?” Lincoln asked.
“Because I spent enough time fighting John when we were boys! He licked me enough times to learn not to fight with him anymore!”
John howled with laughter. “Well, I was your bigger brother, you know.”
That got a chuckle from everybody.
“Seriously,” Cump continued, “John, and now you, Mr. President, have convinced me that the Free States maintaining ourselves as a separate national sovereignty is necessary, but that it may also lead to our reunification with the Confederate Union States at some time in the future, just the way you explained it today.”
“Sort of like a troubled marriage, I suppose,” said the President. “Sometimes the only way to save it is for the couple to go out of each other’s presence for a while, until their hostility abates. If they remain in each other’s company it will only lead to more arguments followed by divorce.”
“We’ve reached that point, Mr. President,” acknowledged Cump. “We can’t maintain a country in which John Brown’s Raid on the South is followed by Bill Yancey’s raid on the North over and over again. To save the ‘marriage’ we’ve got to get away from the Confederate Union. We’ve got to restore the purpose of the old United States as a country that’s destined to bestow freedom on all. And separated from us, the Confederates may decide to end slavery on their own, when they think the time is right.”
Lincoln put his head in his chin and leaned forward. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us sending you over to talk some sense into Davis, Lee, and McClellan, is there?”
“I’ll be glad to try it, but I’m afraid we’ll have to beat them first. That’s the only way we’ll get them to accept Greeley’s Peace Plan.”
“I was thinking that Cump might be able to help us beat some sense into them,” said John Sherman. “I thought that if Robert E. Lee has judged him capable of commanding a Confederate army, then he’d he qualified to give you sound military advice.”
Mr. Lincoln chuckled. “Well, now, I have been offered advice from all manner of people. I don’t see why I shouldn’t receive it from somebody esteemed by General Lee.”
The President sighed and looked at Cump. “I apologize if I sounded flippant with my answer. I am in need of advice from a military expert. I can’t spare any of my field commanders to leave their positions to stand at my side. But I do know that I am lacking in the perspective I need to understand this war and to engage us as effectively as possible in fighting it.”
The President addressed John and Cump. “Would the two of you be available to meet with me at the Hargreaves House tomorrow morning at nine? Secretary of War Cameron and I will pick up the telegrams at the War Department when we get back tonight and see what mischief the enemy is making for us. I would very much like to hear Cump’s opinion on how he thinks we should respond to it.”