Annapolis, page 42
The nation he served was sundered. His youngest son had disappeared among the sunderers. His middle son, now on blockade duty, had lost his reputation at Gosport. Only the eldest, who now served in the Navy Department, had remained a Stafford rock.
Beside Jason and Tom, Margaret stared at the brick facade. She had grown more morose by the week, although Jason suspected that a letter from her Confederate son would restore her mood.
Eve, a hollow-eyed girl whose year of marriage had included a mere three weeks with her husband, did not seem much interested in her new home, perhaps because her baby was squalling and plucking at her blouse.
But Antonia, who was moving in with them, could not wait to get inside. She snatched the key from Tom and hurried up the steps, calling for the rest of them to follow her.
The echo of the women’s voices in the hallway made them sound more cheerful than they were. Margaret said she should see the kitchen. Antonia wanted to sit once more in the dining room where Jefferson had sat. Eve simply asked for a place to sit herself. And in the midst of it all, the two men stood silent, old Jason feeling the cool embrace of his ancestors, Tom surveying his purchase with the pride of a man who knew that he had bought well.
Then they saw her. She was standing at the end of the hall, a shadow in the light pouring through the French doors.
“Alexandra?” said Tom.
She took a few steps toward them.
And Jason’s good feelings flowed out of him. “What do you want?”
“My father says I can’t live at Parrish Manor if I intend to marry Ethan.”
“Marry Ethan?” said Margaret.
“Marry my son?” said Jason.
“I love him, even if my father thinks he’s a Yankee spy.”
“Yankee spy?” Margaret looked at Jason.
“Her father was a fool to let this house be sold,” said Jason, “and he’s a fool to think Ethan is anything but a confused boy.”
“I agree.” Alexandra stopped sniffling. “Though I’d prefer if you just said my father was merely misled… not a fool.”
“A misled fool,” grunted Jason. “Now, what makes you think we want you to live with us?”
“I love your son as much as you do.”
“I’m not sure I love him at all,” said Jason coldly.
“Pa…” Tom chided the old man.
As if it was all too much for her to comprehend, Margaret pulled off her sunbonnet and lowered herself onto the chair by the dining room door.
“Well, dearie,” said Antonia, putting her hands on her hips, “if you want to live here, you’ll have to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ll be working with the hospital that the army’s starting on the Academy grounds.”
Alexandra’s eyes opened wide and she looked at Margaret. “Nursin’ Yankees, when your own son has gone south?”
“If we don’t care for other women’s sons,” said Margaret sadly, “who’ll care for ours?”
“I s’pose I don’t know.” Alexandra folded her hands in front of her and looked down at the floor. “I’m just hopin’ you’ll take me in.”
“If my son loves you, you’re welcome here.” Margaret rose, wearing her weight as though it were a wet wool dress. “Isn’t she, Captain?”
After a moment, Jason grumbled, “If you lured my son into going south, maybe you owe the North a bit of service.”
And Margaret offered Alexandra her hand. “You must know a great deal about this house, dear. Won’t you show it to us?”
Alexandra looked at the outstretched hand, at the women, and she dabbed back a tear. “Work and a place to sleep… they’re a great kindness.”
“Work for a place to sleep,” Antonia corrected.
Margaret put her arms around Alexandra, and, as if the tears were contagious, began to cry herself. “We must not forget our kindness.”
Jason hated teary women, especially those who could go teary on demand. So he went down the hall to the French doors and looked out at the overgrown garden. Beyond it, soldiers were drilling on the Academy grounds. The cadence of their drums rumbled through the muffling humidity. The dust of their marching drifted in the air.
Soon the women went off with their tears and opinions, leaving Jason and Tom alone in the cool hallway.
“So,” said Jason in the sudden silence, “you now own something concrete.”
“Every man wants to leave something behind,” said Tom. “Even a man married to the navy.”
“The navy’s a fickle mistress. Find a real wife. Have a family. It’s not too late.”
“We’re in a war, Pa.” Tom fingered a crack in one of the panes of glass in the door. “Who knows who’ll survive, especially if we have to use wooden ships to fight Confederate ironclads?”
The word “ironclad” struck the Staffords like a knife whenever anyone uttered it, because they felt responsible for the ironclad the South now was building. If George had been able to persuade McCauley to save the Merrimack, the big frigate would not have been scuttled and burned to the waterline; her salvaged hull and engines would not now sit in the Gosport drydock where Confederate workmen built an iron-plated superstructure on her cut-down hull.
Responsibility was a terrible thing to those who were willing to take it.
And taking it was part of standing where God put you.
Ever since news had arrived of the Merrimack refit, Jason and Tom Stafford had been trying to convince the Navy Department that a single Confederate ironclad could sink all of the wooden blockade ships in Hampton Roads, and that they should be building an ironclad to meet the threat. Many agreed. Others called the idea of iron ships a humbug. And someone actually said that since iron sank, what purpose could there be in building iron ships?
But Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was a methodical man, given to doing things in a methodical way, so he had finally appointed an Ironclad Board, named Lieutenant Tom Stafford as secretary, and set them to writing a report.
And all the while, the Confederates were bolting iron plates onto the Merrimack.
“The rebels build out of necessity,” said Jason. “They can’t waste time writing reports.”
“Neither can we,” said Tom.
“Then write quickly.”
vii
Letters to Annapolis
He did, and by October, a Federal ironclad was under construction at Greenpoint just up the East River from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Her builder—a hard-featured man of engineering genius and execrable personality named John Ericsson—had promised that he could deliver this vessel in one hundred days for the sum of $275,000. He called it the Monitor because it would watch over the Confederates and correct their errant conduct, as a good monitor should.
By late November, the Navy Department was sending cables almost daily to check on the progress of the Monitor, and in early December, they sent Lieutenant Tom Stafford to Brooklyn to make an eyewitness report.
“‘An amazing thing,’” Tom wrote to his father, “‘with almost no freeboard and little draft. It resembles a raft topped with a tower that will allow two guns to pivot and fire over a range of 360 degrees. This tower, or turret, is driven by steam engines and should prove a devastating weapon.’”
On a sleeting Sunday afternoon, Jason read this letter at the dinner table in the Fine Folly. Reading letters from his sons—or at least from the pair who wrote—was now part of his Sunday routine.
During the week, he stayed in monastic quarters at the Washington Navy Yard and worked long hours at the War Department. On Saturdays he rode the train to Annapolis, slept in the great house of his boyhood, worshiped with the women at Saint Anne’s, and after a Sunday dinner, to which several wounded men from the U.S. Army General Hospital, Division Number One, were always invited, he returned to Washington for another week of saving the Union.
He read on. “‘I asked Ericsson if he still thought he could deliver the Monitor in a hundred days, and he laughed in my face. I did not know if I had asked him to do the impossible or had insulted him. Clearly it was the latter, as he promised he would have the hull in the water by the end of January, and ready for action a month later.’”
Jason looked at the faces around his table, which this evening included two officers wounded at Ball’s Bluff. One was bandaged about the head. The other spent much of the evening staring forlornly at the stump protruding from his sleeve. But the hovering of the women and the happy gurglings of little Jacob raised their spirits, as they did for all the wounded who came through the Stafford doors.
“This letter is good news,” said the one with the bandaged head.
“It surely is,” answered Jason. “With luck, we’ll be able to meet whatever threat the Merrimack is going to present when she comes out.”
“Perhaps we should tell the men in hospital,” said Alexandra.
“Yes,” added Antonia cheerily. “It might bring a little optimism.”
“No. Soldiers talk too much.” Then Jason added, in deference to the two at his table, “Only officers can be trusted with such information.”
THE NEXT DAY, Alexandra told Antonia that she was going to Baltimore to see her aunt. Instead, she bought a ticket for Washington, and an hour and a half later she entered the city that seemed, in the continuing sleet, the most frightened place on earth. A ring of defensive earthworks and forts had tightened around the city, and the steel spindle that pierced the unfinished Capitol dome now looked like a giant rusting nail.
Alexandra made her way through the muddy streets to number 541 H Street, a narrow brick boardinghouse painted a fading Confederate gray.
The door was answered by Mary Surratt, a buxom woman in her forties, with close-together eyes and a calm expression. She did not seem surprised that Alexandra asked for a man named George Thomas. In a city as full of intrigue as this one, it was not unusual for gentlemen to receive female callers at all times of the day or night.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” said Mrs. Surratt.
The parlor was small, papered in an ugly brown pattern, and dominated by an upright piano that swallowed whatever light seeped through the drawn drapes.
Alexandra sat on the settee and waited, hoping that he was not off eavesdropping on conversations at Willard’s or masquerading as a worker in the navy yard, right under his father’s nose, and making notes on the things that went on there. Then she heard his familiar tread on the staircase.
The man known now as George Thomas seemed bigger than the last time she had seen him. His beard had filled in. His black hair was shoulder length. He wore a blue suit that made him look like another Washington war contractor, come to feed at the public trough, a good costume for the lobby at Willard’s. And he did not seem at all surprised to see her. Without a word of affection, he said, “What’s wrong?”
Alexandra’s eyes shifted to the housekeeper, who, with a deferential bow of the head, closed the French doors that separated her parlor from the foyer.
Then Alexandra went to him and threw herself into his arms. “Ethan, I’ve missed you.”
“It’s dangerous for you to come here.”
“I have news of the Federal ironclad.” She looked into his eyes for some sign of affection, but saw only tension.
“Where from?” he asked.
“A letter from your brother. Your father read it at dinner last night.”
“He mustn’t consider the information secret, then, but I’ll pass it on.”
“The Monitor—that’s its name—will be launched on January 30.”
Ethan went to the window and peered through the curtains, came back to her, stroked his beard.
“What’s wrong, Ethan? I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“I’ve been ordered into uniform. Someone in Richmond saw my gunnery grades.”
“You don’t have to go, Ethan.”
“What would your father say if I deserted while you’re spyin’ and your brother’s runnin’ the blockade to supply the South?”
“If I love you, Ethan, my father’s got nothin’ to say.”
“What would my father say, if all I did in this war was spy on him?”
viii
The Day an Age Ended
It was a Sunday morning, March 9. The crisis was at hand, and Jason Stafford had remained in Washington.
Union spies in Norfolk had been feeding intelligence for days: The Merrimack, clad in iron and rechristened the Virginia, had been armed with six nine-inch Dahlgrens and four deadly Brooke rifles. She had taken on crew and coal. She had gotten up steam. And she had been placed under command of Franklin Buchanan, the first superintendent of the Naval Academy, a Marylander with a nose like the beak of a hawk and the personality to match.
“Old Buck’s a good officer,” said John Dahlgren, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, as he and Jason Stafford started the day in his office.
“That’s the pity of this damned war.” Jason wrapped his hands around a mug of coffee and let the warmth seep into his palms. Spring was coming, but it was still winter-cold in Jason’s belly. “Good officers turned away… sons gone over… sons forced to prove themselves after failure…”
“George is with Farragut, isn’t he?” asked Dahlgren.
“Little Davy Farragut of the Essex, all grown up, wondering how to fight his way up the Mississippi, with my hard-drinking son as his assistant engineer.”
“If I’d been with McCauley,” said Dahlgren, “I’d have been drinking too.”
Jason liked Dahlgren. It seemed that everybody in Washington did. Some liked him because he was friendly but never played the hail-fellow. Jason liked him because he was navy and because he was smart. One look at the high forehead, the hard line of brow drawn parallel to the mustache, and Dahlgren’s intelligence was imprinted on a man’s mind like a watermark.
But Jason had not yet forgiven his son’s failure. “It was dereliction. George was drunk the day they scuttled the Merrimack. Dereliction.”
“What of Ethan?”
“A letter to Alexandra got through.” Jason stared down the Potomac. “When Old Buck went down the list of lieutenants and saw that my third son was Academy, and a Marylander to boot, and could put a howitzer shell through a porthole at half a mile, he picked him for the Merrimack.”
“Then he and Tom will be shooting at each other.”
“If the Monitor gets to Hampton Roads in time.”
There was a timid knock and a lieutenant came into the room. “Excuse me, sir, but there’s a gentleman to see you.”
“Who?”
“He asked that his name not be announced, sir.”
“Well, send him in.”
“He’s out at the gate, sir. He wishes that both of you come down. It’s… it’s the president, sir.”
A BLACK CARRIAGE stood at the gate on M Street. It looked like a hearse. The man inside looked like an undertaker, or perhaps like the corpse itself.
“Mr. President?” said Dahlgren.
“I have frightful news.” Lincoln told them to get in.
“Panic” was the only word to describe the White House cabinet room.
The Merrimack had come out the previous day, and in one awesome display, she had rammed and sunk the Cumberland, blown up the Congress, and run her former sister ship, the mighty Minnesota, onto a mudflat. She had been hit dozens of times, but by all accounts, every Union shot had bounced off her shell.
Now Gideon Welles sat with his arms folded and his beard set at a pugnacious angle while the rest of Lincoln’s secretaries raged around him.
The most enraged of all was Edwin Stanton, secretary of war. “Yesterday was the single worst day in the navy’s history. Three ships. Two hundred and eighty officers and men—”
“I am aware of the figures,” Welles answered stonily.
“And what do we have to keep this Merrimack from—” Stanton stopped abruptly when the president and two naval officers entered the room.
“I’d hoped Father Mars would wait until I was back before assailing Father Neptune.” Lincoln used his nicknames for the secretaries of war and navy.
Welles stood. “It’s the secretary’s job to take what criticism comes his way, sir.”
“Or let it hit someone else,” cracked Lincoln. “So I’ve brought Captains Dahlgren and Stafford. Let them draw some of the fire.”
“Ah, yes,” said Stanton, “the father of the modern cannon and the father of the man who failed to save the Merrimack.”
Jason did not like Stanton, and now he remembered why.
Stanton, an irascible pouter pigeon of a man whose chest-length beard and shaved upper lip gave him the look of a Mennonite prophet in rimless spectacles, was known to refer to Lincoln behind his back as a fool.
Lincoln did not seem bothered. Some thought this reflected his Machiavellian knowledge of politics: keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Others thought it reflected his utter lack of pride, because whenever he heard that Stanton was calling him a fool, he would nod and say, “Then it must be true, for the secretary is generally right.”
Jason would never have stood for such insubordination, but he was coming to appreciate Lincoln’s manner of leadership. If a man did his job with the honesty and decisiveness that Stanton ordinarily demonstrated, Lincoln could ignore his shortcomings.
Jason was also coming to appreciate Lincoln’s manner of manhood. It had only been two weeks since his eleven-year-old son Willie had died of fever, and yet the president soldiered on, despite the black band on his arm and the grief-stricken madness of his wife. He had even taken time to request that Congress appropriate money to finish the Capitol dome, for it was too strong a symbol of union to remain unfinished.
Jason would never be the folksy quipster Lincoln was, but he could control his anger and soldier on, too. So he said, with polite reserve, “I would remind the secretary that once my son had the engines turning on the Merrimack, his duty in saving her was done.”
“Since you’re such an expert on duty, then,” answered Stanton, “perhaps you can tell me whose duty it is now to save Washington.”
“Save Washington?”
“This Merrimack has changed the whole character of the war.” Stanton pulled back a green velvet drape, revealing the river, like a ribbon of silver in the morning light. “Once she destroys the squadron at Hampton Roads, she can steam right up the Potomac. Why, we could have a cannonball from one of her guns in the White House before we leave this room. She could shell the Capitol, disperse Congress itself—”
Beside Jason and Tom, Margaret stared at the brick facade. She had grown more morose by the week, although Jason suspected that a letter from her Confederate son would restore her mood.
Eve, a hollow-eyed girl whose year of marriage had included a mere three weeks with her husband, did not seem much interested in her new home, perhaps because her baby was squalling and plucking at her blouse.
But Antonia, who was moving in with them, could not wait to get inside. She snatched the key from Tom and hurried up the steps, calling for the rest of them to follow her.
The echo of the women’s voices in the hallway made them sound more cheerful than they were. Margaret said she should see the kitchen. Antonia wanted to sit once more in the dining room where Jefferson had sat. Eve simply asked for a place to sit herself. And in the midst of it all, the two men stood silent, old Jason feeling the cool embrace of his ancestors, Tom surveying his purchase with the pride of a man who knew that he had bought well.
Then they saw her. She was standing at the end of the hall, a shadow in the light pouring through the French doors.
“Alexandra?” said Tom.
She took a few steps toward them.
And Jason’s good feelings flowed out of him. “What do you want?”
“My father says I can’t live at Parrish Manor if I intend to marry Ethan.”
“Marry Ethan?” said Margaret.
“Marry my son?” said Jason.
“I love him, even if my father thinks he’s a Yankee spy.”
“Yankee spy?” Margaret looked at Jason.
“Her father was a fool to let this house be sold,” said Jason, “and he’s a fool to think Ethan is anything but a confused boy.”
“I agree.” Alexandra stopped sniffling. “Though I’d prefer if you just said my father was merely misled… not a fool.”
“A misled fool,” grunted Jason. “Now, what makes you think we want you to live with us?”
“I love your son as much as you do.”
“I’m not sure I love him at all,” said Jason coldly.
“Pa…” Tom chided the old man.
As if it was all too much for her to comprehend, Margaret pulled off her sunbonnet and lowered herself onto the chair by the dining room door.
“Well, dearie,” said Antonia, putting her hands on her hips, “if you want to live here, you’ll have to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ll be working with the hospital that the army’s starting on the Academy grounds.”
Alexandra’s eyes opened wide and she looked at Margaret. “Nursin’ Yankees, when your own son has gone south?”
“If we don’t care for other women’s sons,” said Margaret sadly, “who’ll care for ours?”
“I s’pose I don’t know.” Alexandra folded her hands in front of her and looked down at the floor. “I’m just hopin’ you’ll take me in.”
“If my son loves you, you’re welcome here.” Margaret rose, wearing her weight as though it were a wet wool dress. “Isn’t she, Captain?”
After a moment, Jason grumbled, “If you lured my son into going south, maybe you owe the North a bit of service.”
And Margaret offered Alexandra her hand. “You must know a great deal about this house, dear. Won’t you show it to us?”
Alexandra looked at the outstretched hand, at the women, and she dabbed back a tear. “Work and a place to sleep… they’re a great kindness.”
“Work for a place to sleep,” Antonia corrected.
Margaret put her arms around Alexandra, and, as if the tears were contagious, began to cry herself. “We must not forget our kindness.”
Jason hated teary women, especially those who could go teary on demand. So he went down the hall to the French doors and looked out at the overgrown garden. Beyond it, soldiers were drilling on the Academy grounds. The cadence of their drums rumbled through the muffling humidity. The dust of their marching drifted in the air.
Soon the women went off with their tears and opinions, leaving Jason and Tom alone in the cool hallway.
“So,” said Jason in the sudden silence, “you now own something concrete.”
“Every man wants to leave something behind,” said Tom. “Even a man married to the navy.”
“The navy’s a fickle mistress. Find a real wife. Have a family. It’s not too late.”
“We’re in a war, Pa.” Tom fingered a crack in one of the panes of glass in the door. “Who knows who’ll survive, especially if we have to use wooden ships to fight Confederate ironclads?”
The word “ironclad” struck the Staffords like a knife whenever anyone uttered it, because they felt responsible for the ironclad the South now was building. If George had been able to persuade McCauley to save the Merrimack, the big frigate would not have been scuttled and burned to the waterline; her salvaged hull and engines would not now sit in the Gosport drydock where Confederate workmen built an iron-plated superstructure on her cut-down hull.
Responsibility was a terrible thing to those who were willing to take it.
And taking it was part of standing where God put you.
Ever since news had arrived of the Merrimack refit, Jason and Tom Stafford had been trying to convince the Navy Department that a single Confederate ironclad could sink all of the wooden blockade ships in Hampton Roads, and that they should be building an ironclad to meet the threat. Many agreed. Others called the idea of iron ships a humbug. And someone actually said that since iron sank, what purpose could there be in building iron ships?
But Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was a methodical man, given to doing things in a methodical way, so he had finally appointed an Ironclad Board, named Lieutenant Tom Stafford as secretary, and set them to writing a report.
And all the while, the Confederates were bolting iron plates onto the Merrimack.
“The rebels build out of necessity,” said Jason. “They can’t waste time writing reports.”
“Neither can we,” said Tom.
“Then write quickly.”
vii
Letters to Annapolis
He did, and by October, a Federal ironclad was under construction at Greenpoint just up the East River from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Her builder—a hard-featured man of engineering genius and execrable personality named John Ericsson—had promised that he could deliver this vessel in one hundred days for the sum of $275,000. He called it the Monitor because it would watch over the Confederates and correct their errant conduct, as a good monitor should.
By late November, the Navy Department was sending cables almost daily to check on the progress of the Monitor, and in early December, they sent Lieutenant Tom Stafford to Brooklyn to make an eyewitness report.
“‘An amazing thing,’” Tom wrote to his father, “‘with almost no freeboard and little draft. It resembles a raft topped with a tower that will allow two guns to pivot and fire over a range of 360 degrees. This tower, or turret, is driven by steam engines and should prove a devastating weapon.’”
On a sleeting Sunday afternoon, Jason read this letter at the dinner table in the Fine Folly. Reading letters from his sons—or at least from the pair who wrote—was now part of his Sunday routine.
During the week, he stayed in monastic quarters at the Washington Navy Yard and worked long hours at the War Department. On Saturdays he rode the train to Annapolis, slept in the great house of his boyhood, worshiped with the women at Saint Anne’s, and after a Sunday dinner, to which several wounded men from the U.S. Army General Hospital, Division Number One, were always invited, he returned to Washington for another week of saving the Union.
He read on. “‘I asked Ericsson if he still thought he could deliver the Monitor in a hundred days, and he laughed in my face. I did not know if I had asked him to do the impossible or had insulted him. Clearly it was the latter, as he promised he would have the hull in the water by the end of January, and ready for action a month later.’”
Jason looked at the faces around his table, which this evening included two officers wounded at Ball’s Bluff. One was bandaged about the head. The other spent much of the evening staring forlornly at the stump protruding from his sleeve. But the hovering of the women and the happy gurglings of little Jacob raised their spirits, as they did for all the wounded who came through the Stafford doors.
“This letter is good news,” said the one with the bandaged head.
“It surely is,” answered Jason. “With luck, we’ll be able to meet whatever threat the Merrimack is going to present when she comes out.”
“Perhaps we should tell the men in hospital,” said Alexandra.
“Yes,” added Antonia cheerily. “It might bring a little optimism.”
“No. Soldiers talk too much.” Then Jason added, in deference to the two at his table, “Only officers can be trusted with such information.”
THE NEXT DAY, Alexandra told Antonia that she was going to Baltimore to see her aunt. Instead, she bought a ticket for Washington, and an hour and a half later she entered the city that seemed, in the continuing sleet, the most frightened place on earth. A ring of defensive earthworks and forts had tightened around the city, and the steel spindle that pierced the unfinished Capitol dome now looked like a giant rusting nail.
Alexandra made her way through the muddy streets to number 541 H Street, a narrow brick boardinghouse painted a fading Confederate gray.
The door was answered by Mary Surratt, a buxom woman in her forties, with close-together eyes and a calm expression. She did not seem surprised that Alexandra asked for a man named George Thomas. In a city as full of intrigue as this one, it was not unusual for gentlemen to receive female callers at all times of the day or night.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” said Mrs. Surratt.
The parlor was small, papered in an ugly brown pattern, and dominated by an upright piano that swallowed whatever light seeped through the drawn drapes.
Alexandra sat on the settee and waited, hoping that he was not off eavesdropping on conversations at Willard’s or masquerading as a worker in the navy yard, right under his father’s nose, and making notes on the things that went on there. Then she heard his familiar tread on the staircase.
The man known now as George Thomas seemed bigger than the last time she had seen him. His beard had filled in. His black hair was shoulder length. He wore a blue suit that made him look like another Washington war contractor, come to feed at the public trough, a good costume for the lobby at Willard’s. And he did not seem at all surprised to see her. Without a word of affection, he said, “What’s wrong?”
Alexandra’s eyes shifted to the housekeeper, who, with a deferential bow of the head, closed the French doors that separated her parlor from the foyer.
Then Alexandra went to him and threw herself into his arms. “Ethan, I’ve missed you.”
“It’s dangerous for you to come here.”
“I have news of the Federal ironclad.” She looked into his eyes for some sign of affection, but saw only tension.
“Where from?” he asked.
“A letter from your brother. Your father read it at dinner last night.”
“He mustn’t consider the information secret, then, but I’ll pass it on.”
“The Monitor—that’s its name—will be launched on January 30.”
Ethan went to the window and peered through the curtains, came back to her, stroked his beard.
“What’s wrong, Ethan? I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“I’ve been ordered into uniform. Someone in Richmond saw my gunnery grades.”
“You don’t have to go, Ethan.”
“What would your father say if I deserted while you’re spyin’ and your brother’s runnin’ the blockade to supply the South?”
“If I love you, Ethan, my father’s got nothin’ to say.”
“What would my father say, if all I did in this war was spy on him?”
viii
The Day an Age Ended
It was a Sunday morning, March 9. The crisis was at hand, and Jason Stafford had remained in Washington.
Union spies in Norfolk had been feeding intelligence for days: The Merrimack, clad in iron and rechristened the Virginia, had been armed with six nine-inch Dahlgrens and four deadly Brooke rifles. She had taken on crew and coal. She had gotten up steam. And she had been placed under command of Franklin Buchanan, the first superintendent of the Naval Academy, a Marylander with a nose like the beak of a hawk and the personality to match.
“Old Buck’s a good officer,” said John Dahlgren, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, as he and Jason Stafford started the day in his office.
“That’s the pity of this damned war.” Jason wrapped his hands around a mug of coffee and let the warmth seep into his palms. Spring was coming, but it was still winter-cold in Jason’s belly. “Good officers turned away… sons gone over… sons forced to prove themselves after failure…”
“George is with Farragut, isn’t he?” asked Dahlgren.
“Little Davy Farragut of the Essex, all grown up, wondering how to fight his way up the Mississippi, with my hard-drinking son as his assistant engineer.”
“If I’d been with McCauley,” said Dahlgren, “I’d have been drinking too.”
Jason liked Dahlgren. It seemed that everybody in Washington did. Some liked him because he was friendly but never played the hail-fellow. Jason liked him because he was navy and because he was smart. One look at the high forehead, the hard line of brow drawn parallel to the mustache, and Dahlgren’s intelligence was imprinted on a man’s mind like a watermark.
But Jason had not yet forgiven his son’s failure. “It was dereliction. George was drunk the day they scuttled the Merrimack. Dereliction.”
“What of Ethan?”
“A letter to Alexandra got through.” Jason stared down the Potomac. “When Old Buck went down the list of lieutenants and saw that my third son was Academy, and a Marylander to boot, and could put a howitzer shell through a porthole at half a mile, he picked him for the Merrimack.”
“Then he and Tom will be shooting at each other.”
“If the Monitor gets to Hampton Roads in time.”
There was a timid knock and a lieutenant came into the room. “Excuse me, sir, but there’s a gentleman to see you.”
“Who?”
“He asked that his name not be announced, sir.”
“Well, send him in.”
“He’s out at the gate, sir. He wishes that both of you come down. It’s… it’s the president, sir.”
A BLACK CARRIAGE stood at the gate on M Street. It looked like a hearse. The man inside looked like an undertaker, or perhaps like the corpse itself.
“Mr. President?” said Dahlgren.
“I have frightful news.” Lincoln told them to get in.
“Panic” was the only word to describe the White House cabinet room.
The Merrimack had come out the previous day, and in one awesome display, she had rammed and sunk the Cumberland, blown up the Congress, and run her former sister ship, the mighty Minnesota, onto a mudflat. She had been hit dozens of times, but by all accounts, every Union shot had bounced off her shell.
Now Gideon Welles sat with his arms folded and his beard set at a pugnacious angle while the rest of Lincoln’s secretaries raged around him.
The most enraged of all was Edwin Stanton, secretary of war. “Yesterday was the single worst day in the navy’s history. Three ships. Two hundred and eighty officers and men—”
“I am aware of the figures,” Welles answered stonily.
“And what do we have to keep this Merrimack from—” Stanton stopped abruptly when the president and two naval officers entered the room.
“I’d hoped Father Mars would wait until I was back before assailing Father Neptune.” Lincoln used his nicknames for the secretaries of war and navy.
Welles stood. “It’s the secretary’s job to take what criticism comes his way, sir.”
“Or let it hit someone else,” cracked Lincoln. “So I’ve brought Captains Dahlgren and Stafford. Let them draw some of the fire.”
“Ah, yes,” said Stanton, “the father of the modern cannon and the father of the man who failed to save the Merrimack.”
Jason did not like Stanton, and now he remembered why.
Stanton, an irascible pouter pigeon of a man whose chest-length beard and shaved upper lip gave him the look of a Mennonite prophet in rimless spectacles, was known to refer to Lincoln behind his back as a fool.
Lincoln did not seem bothered. Some thought this reflected his Machiavellian knowledge of politics: keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Others thought it reflected his utter lack of pride, because whenever he heard that Stanton was calling him a fool, he would nod and say, “Then it must be true, for the secretary is generally right.”
Jason would never have stood for such insubordination, but he was coming to appreciate Lincoln’s manner of leadership. If a man did his job with the honesty and decisiveness that Stanton ordinarily demonstrated, Lincoln could ignore his shortcomings.
Jason was also coming to appreciate Lincoln’s manner of manhood. It had only been two weeks since his eleven-year-old son Willie had died of fever, and yet the president soldiered on, despite the black band on his arm and the grief-stricken madness of his wife. He had even taken time to request that Congress appropriate money to finish the Capitol dome, for it was too strong a symbol of union to remain unfinished.
Jason would never be the folksy quipster Lincoln was, but he could control his anger and soldier on, too. So he said, with polite reserve, “I would remind the secretary that once my son had the engines turning on the Merrimack, his duty in saving her was done.”
“Since you’re such an expert on duty, then,” answered Stanton, “perhaps you can tell me whose duty it is now to save Washington.”
“Save Washington?”
“This Merrimack has changed the whole character of the war.” Stanton pulled back a green velvet drape, revealing the river, like a ribbon of silver in the morning light. “Once she destroys the squadron at Hampton Roads, she can steam right up the Potomac. Why, we could have a cannonball from one of her guns in the White House before we leave this room. She could shell the Capitol, disperse Congress itself—”
