“If necessary I can send you more information,” Adam went on, “but only to you. Not to anyone else. I cannot trust anyone else.” Both sides were riddled with informers who would betray anyone for the price of a bottle of whiskey, but Adam was certain he could trust this Boston lawyer who was as pious and godly a man as any in either army. “Will you give me your Christian word that you will keep my identity secret?”
“Of course,” James said, still dazed by this stroke of good fortune.
“I mean a secret from everyone,” Adam insisted. “If you reveal my identity to General McClellan I have no faith he will not tell someone else, and that someone else could be my ruin. Promise me this. No one but you and I must ever know.”
James nodded again. “I promise.” He turned as the ship’s bell rang again. His fellow prisoners were climbing the gangway, but still James made no move to join them. Instead he delved into an inside pocket of his faded, dirty jacket and brought out an oilcloth-covered packet. The oilcloth was loosely wrapped and James let it fall away to reveal a small, much-thumbed pocket Bible with a worn cover. “Will you give this to Nate? Ask him to read it?”
“With pleasure.” Adam took the thick Bible and watched as James wrapped his new Scriptures in the patch of oilcloth.
“And tell him,” James added in a heartfelt voice, “that if he returns north I will do my best to reconcile him to Father and Mother.”
“Of course,” Adam said, though he could not imagine Starbuck responding to his brother’s generosity.
“You want to stay here, mister?” a sailor called to James from the ship.
“Remember your promise,” Adam said. “Tell no one who gave you that letter.”
“You can trust me,” James assured Adam. “I’ll tell no one.”
“God bless you.” Adam felt a sudden great warmth for this good, clumsy man who was so obviously a brother in Christ. “And God bless the United States.”
“Amen to that,” James responded, then held out his hand. “I shall pray for you.”
“Thank you,” Adam said, and he shook James’s hand before walking the northerner to the waiting ship.
The gangplank was heaved inboard and the warps cast off. James stood at the rail, the new Bible clutched tight in his hands. As the last warp dropped away and the boat perceptibly moved into the river’s current, the freed prisoners cheered. The sidewheels began to turn, their great paddles churning the greasy water white. The motion of the paddles made the released prisoners cheer again, all but James, who stood silent and apart. A plume of dirty smoke sagged from the ship’s tall funnel to blow across the river.
Adam watched as the ship dropped past the navy yard, its progress helped by a cold, wind-fretted current. He gave James a last wave, then looked down at the pocket Bible to see that its margins were smothered in tightly written notes. It was the Bible of a man who wrestled with God’s will, the Bible of a good man. Adam closed and held the book tightly, as though he could take strength from the word of God, and then he turned and limped back toward his tethered horse. The wind gusted fresh and cold, but Adam felt an immense calm because he had done the right thing. He had chosen the course of peace, and by so doing he would bring nothing but blessings on his country; it would be one country again, North and South, united in God’s purpose.
Adam rode toward the city. Behind him the truce boat splashed and smoked its way around the bend and so headed south carrying its cargo of treachery and peace.
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY WAS FIXED AS THE day of Jefferson Davis’s formal inauguration as President of the Confederate States of America. He had been inaugurated once before, in Montgomery, Alabama, but that ceremony had only made Davis into the President of a provisional government. Now, hallowed by election and properly installed in the Confederacy’s new capital, he would be inaugurated a second time. The choice of Washington’s birthday as the date of this second ceremony was intended to invest the occasion with a symbolic dignity, but the auspicious day brought nothing but miserable and incessant rains which drove the huge crowd gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square to shelter beneath a host of umbrellas so densely packed that it seemed as if the speech-makers orated to a spread of glistening black lumps. The drumming of the rain on carriage roofs and tightly stretched umbrella skins was so loud that no one except the platform party could hear any of the orations, prayers, or even the solemn presidential oath of office. After taking the oath President Davis invoked God’s help to the South’s just cause, his prayer punctuated by the sneezing and coughing of the dignitaries around him. Gray February clouds scudded low over the city, darkening everything except the new battle flags of the Confederate’s eastern army. The flag, which was hanging on staffs behind the platform and from every rooftop within sight of Capitol Square, was a fine red banner, slashed with a blue St. Andrew’s cross on which were sewn thirteen stars to represent the eleven rebellious states as well as Kentucky and Missouri, whose loyalty both sides claimed. Southerners who looked for auguries were pleased that thirteen states founded this new country, just as thirteen had founded a different country eighty-six years before, though some in the crowd perceived the number as unlucky, just as they perceived the drenching rain as an omen of ill fortune for the newly inaugurated president.
After the ceremony a procession of bedraggled notables hurried along Twelfth Street to attend a reception in the Brockenborough House on Clay Street which had been leased by the government to serve as the presidential mansion. The house was soon crowded with dripping people who draped wet coats on the twin statues of Comedy and Tragedy that graced the entrance hall, then edged their way from one room to another to appraise and criticize the new President’s taste in furniture and pictures. The President’s slaves had placed protective covers over the expensive carpets in the reception rooms, but the visitors wanted to inspect the patterns and pulled the cotton sheets aside, and soon the beautifully patterned carpets were trodden filthy with muddy boots, while the twin arrays of peacock feathers on the mantel of the ladies’ drawing room were ravaged by people wanting souvenirs of the day. The President himself stood frowning beside the white marble fireplace in the state dining room and assured everyone who offered him congratulations that he conceived of the day’s ceremony as a most solemn occasion and his presidency as a mighty heavy duty. Some army musicians were supposed to be entertaining the guests, but the crowd was so tightly pressed that the violinist did not even have room to draw his bow, and so the soldiers retired to the kitchen where the cooks regaled them with good Madeira wine and cold jellied chicken.
Colonel Washington Faulconer, resplendent in an elegant Confederate uniform that was made even more dashing by the black sling supporting his right arm, congratulated the President, then went through the small fuss of not being able to shake hands with his wounded right arm and offering his left instead.
President Davis finally managed a limp, awkward handshake, then muttered that he was honored by Faulconer’s presence on this solemn occasion which was ushering in these days of heavy duty.
“Heavy duties call for great men, Mr. President,” Washington Faulconer responded, “which means we are fortunate indeed in you.”
Davis’s thin mouth twitched to acknowledge the compliment. He had a piercing headache that made him seem even more remote and cold than usual. “I do regret,” he said stiffly, “that you did not feel able to accept the duty of commissioner.”
“Though I certainly saved myself some inconvenience thereby, Mr. President,” Faulconer responded lightly, before realizing that in war all men were supposed to welcome inconvenience, even