“Let me begin by thanking you for your kindest expressions of support while we mourn the passing of the late President Douglas. May God rest his soul”…wherever it is. Davis glanced upward and then downward as he tried to guess where Douglas’ agnostic soul might be reposed. He fixed his eyes on a cigar box sitting atop the fireplace mantle.
“That reminds me, Adele Douglas is taking up a collection for a memorial mass to pray his soul out of Purgatory. Those who feel so inclined may place your donations in the box up there.”
Postmaster General Andrew Johnson took a pull from his ever-present flask of “medicinal” whiskey then reached into his pocket, brought out a gold dollar, and flipped it between his thumb and forefinger into the box.
“That ought to help some,” he exclaimed before belching. “Lord knows, his soul is going to need all the help it can get to get out of there before the Second Coming. He surely wasn’t a religious man.”
Attorney General Alexander Stephens chuckled. “Looks like the Widow Douglas is having the final say about that!”
“And that’s the first time anybody’s ever gotten in the last word with Stephen Douglas!” retorted Senator George Pendleton of Ohio, slapping the table with his palm.
Guffaws echoed around the tables. Most of the men got up and chucked a silver or gold coin into the box.
“Douglas was certainly attracted to opposites,” remarked Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb. “He, an agnostic Vermont Yankee, married twice to devout Catholic women from Southern slave owning families.”
“The old boy always hedged his bets,” said Stephens. “I imagine he reckoned that if there is another world beyond this one, his wives would pray his soul out of Purgatory instead of leaving him to the Bad One!”
“Let’s not be too hard on Douglas,” suggested President Davis when the sounds of laughter and clinking of coins finished. “I don’t know that he was so much against religion as he was against its being corrupted by human beings who sometimes bend it to advance their political agendas. I do know that he was a patriot. The Union was his paramount principle. It would have been lost by now without him. We’d have been ground between the millstones of the Black Republican Abolitionists at the North and Bill Yancey’s Fire Eating Secessionists at the South.”
Murmurs of affirmation echoed from around the tables. Davis shifted his head left and right to look the members of the Union Cabinet in the eyes.
“I ask now for your patience as I assume the mantle of Chief Executive. Experience in public stations of subordinate grade has taught me that care and toil and disappointments are the price of official elevation. You will have many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate. But you will not find in me either a want of zeal or fidelity to the cause of restoring our Confederate Union. Upon your wisdom and patriotism, I rely to direct and support me in the performance of the duties required at my hands.”
Andy Johnson took another pull of whiskey, then stood up and applauded. Born and raised in a frontier cabin, Johnson had an inherent dislike for planter aristocrats of Davis’ class. But he began to warm to Davis as he sensed there might be more to the man than the haughty personality he showed to those who did not know him well. The rest of the Confederate Union Cabinet followed Johnson in standing to applaud their new President.
“With friends such as you our government cannot fail,” Davis acknowledged. “And I want to commend the Congress for accepting my invitation to include its members in this Union Cabinet,” Davis added. He looked at the three Senators and three Representatives from the Confederate Union Congress. “It is essential for the Executive and the Legislature to be of one mind in the restoration of our Confederate Union.”
I’m glad I had sense enough to invite these Congressional busybodies into my Union Cabinet before they tied their drawers in a knot criticizing my administration, especially after our defeat at Gettysburg. Taking these people into my most intimate confidence poses risks, but if they are going to criticize me, then it is better here than from the floor of Congress.
“Our Confederate Union is a confederation of sovereign communities,” Davis intoned. “We acknowledge the right of any state to assert its sovereignty, provided it does so by taking the legally required steps. To assert its sovereignty, a state legislature must vote to convene a Secession Convention of delegates duly elected by the people. The Convention must vote to approve an Ordinance of Secession. The Ordinance must be ratified by the people.
“The Insurgents have not met any of these tests,” Davis said firmly. “They have not garnered the consent of the people to reassert their sovereignty by electing a convention, passing an Ordinance of Secession, and ratifying it by popular referendum. They have instigated a Rebellion against the Confederate Union based on their dubious claim of having obtained slim majorities in several of the Free States during the recent election. Even that feeble test fails for California, Oregon, Illinois, Indiana, and New Jersey — Free States that were won by us!”
Davis raised his right hand and waved it for emphasis.
“When I came into the Senate in ‘47, my first effort was to persuade Congress to appropriate funds to reconstruct the Capitol to the size appropriate to house the legislature of our expanding Republic.”
He looked past the Cabinet to the fogged up windows behind. They were closed tight to block the humidity and raw stink rising from the swampy grounds where human and animal waste had been poured until it bubbled up and festered in the steaming heat. He coughed and felt the irritation of the chronic sore throat he had picked up here.
Well, truth be told, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest decision I’ve ever made. If I had known Washington City was going to stink like this I would have asked Congress to move the Capitol to another place instead of expanding it here. This city has killed untold thousands with its plagues. Now it has claimed Stephen Douglas. His drinking brought him to the edge of the grave, but the deadly airs of this city pushed him over the edge.When we have put down this Rebellion I will urge Congress to remove the capital to the beautiful mountains where there is sanitation, drainage, pure flowing water, and healthy airs. We will build a great new capital in the cool, clear sunshine to celebrate the restoration of the Confederate Union.
Davis returned his thoughts to the present.
“I do not intend now for the Capitol to house the Congress of anything less than this entire Republic! I will not permit the Insurgents who have suborned the state governments of a portion of this Confederate Union to ally themselves with foreign nations hostile to the remaining parts of it. The Insurgents are seeking to guarantee the success of their Rebellion by allying themselves to the British Monarchy and its North American Dominion. They have emboldened the French to assert their hegemony over Mexico. So now, instead of fulfilling our Manifest Destiny to master the American Continent, we are to be mastered by European Monarchies allied with Rebels who were formerly our fellow citizens!”
Howell Cobb pounded his fist on the table, shouting, “ This shall not be!”
“We cannot allow it!” roared Congressman John Reagan of Texas. “We cannot allow the British and Abolitionists to threaten us from the North while the French thumb their noses at us from a cross the Rio Grande!”
Davis, caught up in their fury, uncharacteristically pounded the table with both fists.