Louisiana, May 1864
Built in the Greek Revival style, encircled by twenty-four noble Doric columns and standing proud amid a vast acreage of plantation estate, the mansion was one of the grandest and most aristocratic homes in all of the South. Its dozens of reception rooms, not to mention the splendid ballroom, had hosted some of Clovis Parish’s most celebrated social events of the forty years since its construction, positioning Athenian Oaks, as the property was named, at the very centre of the region’s high society.
On this day, however, the stately house was silent and virtually empty. Deep within its labyrinthine corridors, a very secret and important meeting was taking place. A meeting that its attendees knew very well could help to swing in their favour the outcome of the civil war that had been tearing the states of both North and South apart for three long, bloody years.
Of the four men seated around the table in the richly appointed dining room, only one was not wearing military uniform: for the good reason that he wasn’t an officer of the Confederate States Army but, rather, the civilian owner of Athenian Oaks.
His name was Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett. A Texan by birth, he had risen to become one of the wealthiest landowners in Louisiana by the time he was forty. Now, fifteen years on, the size of his fortune and spread of his cotton plantation were second to none. As was the workforce of slaves he owned, who occupied an entire village of filthy and squalid huts far out of sight of the mansion’s windows.
But it was by virtue of L.W. Garrett’s renown as a physician and scientist, rather than his acumen for commerce, that the three high-ranking Confederate officers had made the journey to Clovis Parish to consult him. For this special occasion they were majestically decked out in full dress uniform, gleaming with gold braid. The most senior man present wore the insignia of a general of the C.S.A. He had lost an eye at the Second Battle of Bull Run and wore a patch over his scarred socket. He had also lost all three of his sons during the course of the conflict, and feared that he would have lost them for nothing if the Yankees prevailed.
A bitter outcome which, at this point in time, it seemed nothing could prevent. Since the crushing defeat at Chattanooga late the previous year and the subsequent appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as General-in-Chief of the Union forces, the turning point seemed to have come. Rout after rout; the tattered and depleted army of the South was in danger of being completely overrun.
‘Gentlemen, we stand to lose this damn war,’ the general said in between puffs of his cigar. ‘And lose it we will, unless saved by a miracle.’
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ said the second officer, who was knocking back the wine as fast as it could be served. He was a younger man, a senior colonel known for his fiery temperament both on and off the battlefield. The last cavalry charge he had personally led had resulted in him having his right arm blown off by a cannonball. It had been found two hundred yards away, his dead hand still clutching his sabre. He now wore the empty sleeve of his grey tunic pinned across his chest, after the fashion of Lord Nelson.
‘Indeed they do,’ the general agreed. ‘And if that yellowbelly Jeff Davis and his lapdog Lee don’t have the guts to do what’s necessary to win this war, then by God someone else must step in and do it for them.’
This provoked a certain ripple of consternation around the table, as it was somewhat shocking to refer to the President of the Confederate States of America, not to mention the revered General Robert E. Lee, hero of the South, in such harsh language. But nobody protested. The facts of the matter were plain. The dreadful prospect of a Union victory was looming large on the horizon. Leonidas Garrett, whose business empire stood to be devastated if a victorious Abraham Lincoln acted on his promise to liberate all slaves in North America, dreaded it as much as anyone.
After another toke on his cigar and a quaff of wine, the general leaned towards Garrett and fixed him with his one steely eye. ‘Mr Garrett, how certain are you that this bold scheme of yours can work?’
‘If it can be pulled off, which I believe it can, then my certainty is absolute,’ Garrett replied coolly.
The third senior officer was the only conspirator present at the top-secret gathering who was yet to be fully convinced of Garrett’s plan. ‘Gentlemen, I must confess to having great misgivings about the enormity of what we are contemplating. Satan himself could scarcely have devised such wickedness.’
The general shot him a ferocious glare. ‘At a time like this, if it took Beelzebub himself to lead the South to victory, I would gladly give him the job.’
The objector made no reply. The general stared at him a while longer, then asked, ‘Are you with us or not?’
‘You know I am.’ No sir, no display of deference to a man of far superior rank. Because rank was not an issue at a meeting so clandestine, so illicit, that any and all of them could have been court-martialled and executed by their own side for taking part. What they were envisaging was in flagrant contravention of the rules of war and gentlemanly conduct.
Silence around the table for a few moments. The dissenter said, ‘Still, a damned ugly piece of work.’
‘I’m more interested in knowing if we can make it work,’ said the one-armed colonel.
‘It isn’t a new idea, by any measure,’ Garrett said. ‘Such tactics, though brutal, have been used in warfare throughout history. Trust me, gentlemen. We have the means to make it work, and if successful its effect on the enemy will be catastrophic. It will bring the North to its knees, cripple their infrastructure and force those Yankee scumbellies to surrender within a month. But I must reiterate,’ he added, casting a solemn warning look around the table, ‘that not a single word of this discussion can ever be repeated to anyone outside of this room. Not anyone, is that perfectly clear?’
Throughout the meeting, a young female negro servant dressed in a maid’s outfit had been silently hovering in the background, watching the levels in their wine glasses and meekly stepping up to the table now and then to top them up from a Venetian crystal decanter. Nobody acknowledged her presence