Heaven and Hell by John Jakes
Authors: John Jakes
Tags: United States, Fiction, Historical fiction, General, Romance, Historical, United States - History - 1865-1898
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warehouses, the docks, and the trade of his Carolina Shipping Company in Charleston.
"See here, I understand your resentment," Trezevant said. "But if General Lee can humble himself and apply, as he did in Richmond last week, you can, too."
!'A pardon implies wrongdoing. I did nothing wrong."
"I agree, Cooper. Unfortunately, the federal government does not.
" you want to rebuild your business, you have to free yourself of the onus of having served the Confederate Navy Department." Cooper
glowered. Trezevant continued. "I went to Washington personally, and, wUhin limits, I trust this pardon broker, even though he's a lawyer, and
^ Yankee on top of it." The bitter humor was lost. "His name is Jasper
"Is. He's greedy, so I know he'll get your application to the clerk of Pardons, and to Mr. Johnson's desk, ahead of many others."
"For how much?"
35
36 ' HEAVEN AND HELL
Page 39
"Two hundred dollars, U.S., or the equivalent in sterling. My fee is fifty dollars."
Cooper thought a while.
"All right, give me the papers."
They talked for another half hour. Trezevant was full of Washington gossip. He said Johnson planned to appoint a provisional governor in South Carolina. The governor would call a constitutional convention and reconvene the state legislature as it was constituted before Sumter fell. Johnson's choice was not unexpected. It was Judge Benjamin Franklin Perry, of Greenville, an avowed Unionist before the war. Like Lee, Perry had proclaimed his loyalty to his state, despite his hatred of secession, saying: "You are all going to the devil--and I will go with you.''
"The legislature will have to fulfill Mr. Johnson's requirements for readmission," Trezevant said. "Officially abolish slavery, for example."
A sly expression alerted Cooper to something new. "At the same time, the legislature may be able to, ah, regulate the nigras so that we'll have a labor force again, instead of a shiftless rabble."
"Regulate them how?"
"By means of--let's call it a code of behavior. I'm told Mississippi is thinking of the same thing."
"Would such a code apply to whites, too?"
"Freedmen only."
Cooper recognized danger in such a provocative step, but the morality of it didn't concern him. The end of the war had brought him, his family, and his state, a full measure of humiliation and ruin. He no longer cared about the condition of the people responsible--the people the war had set free.
By noon, Cooper's slow old horse was plodding southeast on the homeward journey. The route carried him back through central Columbia.
He could hardly stand the sight. Nearly one hundred and twenty blocks had been burned down. The smell of charred wood still lay heavy in the air of the hot June day.
The dirt streets were littered with trash and broken furniture. A wagon belonging to the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands dispensed packets of rice and flour to a large crowd, mostly Negro.
Other blacks crowded the few stretches of wooden sidewalk still in Page 40
place. Cooper saw military uniforms and some civilian gentlemen, but well-dressed white women were notably absent. It was the same everywhere.
Such women stayed indoors, because they hated the soldiers and feared the freed Negroes. Cooper's wife, Judith, was an exception, which irritated him.
Lost Causes 37
General Sherman had destroyed the wooden bridge spanning the Congaree River. Only the stone abutments remained, standing in the stream like smoke-stained gravestones. The slow crossing on the ferry barge gave Cooper an excellent view of one of the few buildings the fire had spared, the unfinished statehouse near the east shore. In one granite wall, like periods on paper, three Union cannonballs testified to Sherman's fury.
The sight of them raised Cooper's anger. So did the burned district, which he reached soon after leaving the ferry. He rode along the edge of a lane of scorched earth three-quarters of a mile wide. Here, between flaming pines, Kilpatrick's
"See here, I understand your resentment," Trezevant said. "But if General Lee can humble himself and apply, as he did in Richmond last week, you can, too."
!'A pardon implies wrongdoing. I did nothing wrong."
"I agree, Cooper. Unfortunately, the federal government does not.
" you want to rebuild your business, you have to free yourself of the onus of having served the Confederate Navy Department." Cooper
glowered. Trezevant continued. "I went to Washington personally, and, wUhin limits, I trust this pardon broker, even though he's a lawyer, and
^ Yankee on top of it." The bitter humor was lost. "His name is Jasper
"Is. He's greedy, so I know he'll get your application to the clerk of Pardons, and to Mr. Johnson's desk, ahead of many others."
"For how much?"
35
36 ' HEAVEN AND HELL
Page 39
"Two hundred dollars, U.S., or the equivalent in sterling. My fee is fifty dollars."
Cooper thought a while.
"All right, give me the papers."
They talked for another half hour. Trezevant was full of Washington gossip. He said Johnson planned to appoint a provisional governor in South Carolina. The governor would call a constitutional convention and reconvene the state legislature as it was constituted before Sumter fell. Johnson's choice was not unexpected. It was Judge Benjamin Franklin Perry, of Greenville, an avowed Unionist before the war. Like Lee, Perry had proclaimed his loyalty to his state, despite his hatred of secession, saying: "You are all going to the devil--and I will go with you.''
"The legislature will have to fulfill Mr. Johnson's requirements for readmission," Trezevant said. "Officially abolish slavery, for example."
A sly expression alerted Cooper to something new. "At the same time, the legislature may be able to, ah, regulate the nigras so that we'll have a labor force again, instead of a shiftless rabble."
"Regulate them how?"
"By means of--let's call it a code of behavior. I'm told Mississippi is thinking of the same thing."
"Would such a code apply to whites, too?"
"Freedmen only."
Cooper recognized danger in such a provocative step, but the morality of it didn't concern him. The end of the war had brought him, his family, and his state, a full measure of humiliation and ruin. He no longer cared about the condition of the people responsible--the people the war had set free.
By noon, Cooper's slow old horse was plodding southeast on the homeward journey. The route carried him back through central Columbia.
He could hardly stand the sight. Nearly one hundred and twenty blocks had been burned down. The smell of charred wood still lay heavy in the air of the hot June day.
The dirt streets were littered with trash and broken furniture. A wagon belonging to the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands dispensed packets of rice and flour to a large crowd, mostly Negro.
Other blacks crowded the few stretches of wooden sidewalk still in Page 40
place. Cooper saw military uniforms and some civilian gentlemen, but well-dressed white women were notably absent. It was the same everywhere.
Such women stayed indoors, because they hated the soldiers and feared the freed Negroes. Cooper's wife, Judith, was an exception, which irritated him.
Lost Causes 37
General Sherman had destroyed the wooden bridge spanning the Congaree River. Only the stone abutments remained, standing in the stream like smoke-stained gravestones. The slow crossing on the ferry barge gave Cooper an excellent view of one of the few buildings the fire had spared, the unfinished statehouse near the east shore. In one granite wall, like periods on paper, three Union cannonballs testified to Sherman's fury.
The sight of them raised Cooper's anger. So did the burned district, which he reached soon after leaving the ferry. He rode along the edge of a lane of scorched earth three-quarters of a mile wide. Here, between flaming pines, Kilpatrick's
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