Charleston (36 page)

“You must mean Alexandra Bell. I'm only related by marriage. My half-sister is married to my partner, Mr. Gibbes Bell. He and Alexandra are second cousins. She's from one of the old Charleston families. She left because of a scandal. Took a fancy to a freedman and had quite a hot affair until a few gentlemen of the town objected and put a stop to it. I have it on good authority that up North, she offered herself to niggers at every opportunity.”

Beauregard took a moment to twist a point on his thick mustache. “Then perhaps I should not make her acquaintance.”

“That'd be my advice. She's a tramp, probably diseased. I wouldn't have her if she offered herself with a sack of gold between her legs.”

Folsey's loud remark generated laughter in the smoky bar. “Thank you for the counsel,” Beauregard said.

Another shell flew over, landing nearby with a detonation that shook the chandeliers and rattled glassware behind the bar. Folsey toasted the general. “Here's to your courageous defense of our city, sir.” He tossed off his whole glass; Beauregard took a single sip.

Folsey had already enjoyed several rounds. A warm, enveloping confidence overtook him as Beauregard and his aide left the bar. Spreading canards about Alex Bell was pleasurable and could be interpreted as honoring his promise to his father. Best of all it placed him in no personal danger.

 

Early Sunday morning Ham and Alex went to the attic, opened a round window, and looked through a telescope at
Fort Sumter. The flag of the Confederacy still flew, but large sections of the wall had been blown down, the rubble falling to form rough slopes leading to the water. Alex expressed dismay over the concentration of Union ships offshore.

“You know you can leave whenever you wish,” Ham said.

“Abandon you and Mother? Not at a time like this.”

Sunday evening was quiet. The air was tainted with the smell of fires. Alex sat in the shadowy garden, softly picking out “The Blue Tail Fly,” President Lincoln's favorite. Rolfe had gone home to avoid curfew trouble, but before that he'd sat on the piazza for half an hour, listening to the banjo. For once he smiled.

A carriage rolled up in the street, an ornate coupe rockaway with shiny carmine paint. A large letter
B,
scrolled and gilded, decorated the side panel below the glass window. The Negro driver tied the dapple gray to the ring block and opened the door for his passenger. Alex saw, at the gate, a square-toed ankle boot and a striped trouser leg jut from the carriage.

The driver reached up to help Gibbes Bell alight. What effrontery, to call after all that had passed between them.

Gibbes appeared nonchalant as he approached the gate. He didn't look the least bit like a victim of wartime shortages. Fancy black braid edged the lapels and pockets of his gray frock coat. His black cravat set off a vivid scarlet waistcoat. He was as stylish as a London nob.

He tipped his stovepipe hat. “A warm welcome to you,
cousin. I wanted to hasten over the moment I heard you'd returned.”

“I imagine half the town knows by now.”

“Oh, all of the town. Those who matter, anyway. Hester Mouzon identified you. Might I come in?”

He'd unnerved her by appearing unexpectedly. She opened the gate Rolfe had oiled and scraped free of rust, led him to a garden bench. His left foot tended to drag slightly but he seemed unbothered. Heroism and commercial success had given him a confidence and polish lacking in his youth.

“How is your dear mother, may I ask?”

“Improving, thank you.”

“Delighted to hear it,” he said as he sat. “We must all have a social evening soon, circumstances permitting. They say the infernal Swamp Angel blew up during last night's bombardment. Trouble is, the Yankees won't miss it, they have guns aplenty.”

Alex took the other end of the bench. Gibbes set his tall hat between them and they exchanged brief histories. She'd been widowed in 1855. He offered appropriate condolences. Simms Bell had passed away five years before that; she returned the condolences. Simms had divided his property between his children but left Sword Gate to Gibbes. Ouida was a war widow. Gibbes had settled her in a town house adjoining his on Legare Street. She spent a great deal of time at Prosperity Hall, he said.

“I understand you distinguished yourself on the Peninsula,” Alex said. “Were you decorated?”

“Oh, no, the government can't afford medals. They established a roll of honor for each battle. My name's on the one for Seven Pines.” He clasped his soft manicured hands between his knees. “Alex, I say this with all sincerity. I know I behaved badly toward you heretofore, and I regret it. I'd like to heal the breach. I'll start by reassuring you that I had nothing to do with the death of that young buck, Henry Strong.”

“It's good of you to say so, but I'm afraid your actions at the time suggested otherwise.”

“Maybe you saw what you wanted to see. For years
I've hoped we could put the incident behind us.”
Not likely,
she thought. “They say you're a tub-thumper for the black abolitionists, like those Grimké women. I hear tell you wear trousers too.” Smiling, he looked at her breasts, so obviously, she couldn't fail to notice. He seized her hand. “Damn if I don't still admire you in spite of it.”

Rigid, Alex said, “How is your wife?”

He jerked his hand away. “Doing well, doing well. Since we seem to be getting personal, may I say that I hope your brother won't persist in defending those niggers posing as soldiers?”

“It's his decision. I happen to agree with it.”

Red-tinted shadows of evening covered them now. A salt crow scolded them from the live oak. Gibbes clapped and shouted “Hah” and the crow flew away. “Naturally you do,” he said.

That angered her unreasonably; she attacked. “I saw some strange cargo on the ship that brought me here. Casks of salt pork, sent through Nassau but loaded at Philadelphia. The casks were marked care of your company, Palmetto Traders.”

“I don't know a blasted thing about salt pork, I'm only an investor. I'd have to ask my partner, Mr. Folsey Lark.”

“Ask him, then. Ask him why it's all right to profiteer when children are walking the streets of Charleston, starving. Or don't you see them? Do you practice looking the other way?”

He leapt up and loomed over her. “This is intolerable. I come here with the kindest of intentions and you insult me.”

A vein beat in his throat. She fisted her hands in case he hit her.
Murder is murder, nothing cancels that,
she thought. She held her tongue.

“By God, Alex, you're as arrogant as ever.” He put on his hat and rushed to the gate as fast as his bad leg allowed.

At the carriage his driver took his arm to assist him; Gibbes shoved the man away, pulled himself inside, and slammed the door. The last thing she saw was the golden
B
disappearing in a cloud of red dust.

She'd been a fool to lose her temper with him. She
might not meet him face-to-face again, but she feared she hadn't heard the end of their quarrel. For the first time since sailing into Charleston she appreciated the danger of her position.

Federal engineers advanced their trenches to within eighty yards of Battery Wagner. Beauregard saw the inevitable and issued orders. On the nights of September 6 and 7 his troops abandoned the Morris Island batteries, escaping in rowboats that carried them out to anchored ships.

On September 8, a sweltering Tuesday, Mitchell and Ham trudged up the stairs to the dark and stifling Police Court for the Charleston District. The court had jurisdiction over crimes committed by slaves and freedmen; its decisions could not be appealed. Theirs was an all-or-nothing gamble.

The two wore proper lawyerly garb: black fustian frock coat, trousers, vest, every piece prewar and showing it. Under smoky ceiling lamps the lawyers resembled a pair of black crows; one amply fed, one starving.

Ham had slept little the night before, fearful the defense would lose, given the almost universal hatred of the idea of Negroes daring to don army uniforms. He and Mitchell had labored many long hours to develop what they considered a persuasive counterargument. Mitchell saw it as the only way to avoid defeat on an emotional issue. While not overly optimistic about their chances, he cited one advantage for their side.

“The Beaufort Nine. We won't mention or allude to
them, but they'll be a presence in the courtroom, never fear.”

He referred to a Confederate sergeant and eight of his men who had been captured at a seacoast observation post by the Union navy, then turned over to Gen. David Hunter. Confederates hated Hunter almost as much as he hated them; standing orders said that in the event of Hunter's capture, he was to be “executed as a felon.” Hunter publicly declared his thirst for revenge against “these young darlings, these pets of the malignant aristocracy” and threw them in jail in Beaufort, not as prisoners of war but as “detainees.”

Ham thought the five judges looked unfriendly when they deigned to glance at the defense table, but less so when they chatted with the attorney general, Isaac Hayne, and his co-counsel, A. P. Aldrich. Armed guards brought the accused into the courtroom: Henry Kirk and William Harrison of Missouri, Henry Worthington and George Counsel of Virginia. They had been chosen to represent all the jailed men of the 54th. They sat together on a side bench, a long chain connecting their iron manacles and another their leg irons. Wearing threadbare prison shirts and pants, they looked like field hands. No doubt it was the desired effect.

Attorney General Hayne was a distinguished man bearing a distinguished name. He moved and spoke with the confidence of someone who had powerful backing, which indeed he did, being Governor Bonham's handpicked prosecutor. Hayne took an hour to state and elaborate on the two charges: the defendants, unquestionably former slaves, had been in rebellion against the sovereign state of South Carolina, and also “concerned and connected” with other slaves participating in said rebellion. The four Negroes listened to the mysterious legalese, their faces showing sad bewilderment.

Hayne's central argument for conviction sprang from an undeniable fact: the prisoners had black skins, or variations of it; one was light as sand, another dark as ebony with highlights of blue. “I declare to this honorable court that color, the very color which you see in the
flesh of the accused, is prima facie evidence of servitude. The color of a Negro, mulatto, or mestizo is the color of a slave.”

Occasionally the judges jotted notes; otherwise they listened carefully to the prosecution. Hayne, then Aldrich, tiresomely pounded away at a single point: the defendants were slaves because of their skin pigmentation, which was “incontrovertible proof of guilt.” Although the allegation of slavery was unsupported by any other evidence, Ham felt the tide flowing against them. Everything hung on Nelson Mitchell's ability to shift the focus away from the issue of negritude.

When Mitchell's turn came, he introduced depositions in which each of the defendants swore to his place of birth and his status as a freedman before the war. Two had signed their statements; two had made their mark. Ham rose to call a key defense witness, the warden of the city jail.

“Warden, kindly cast your thoughts back to the hour when the first captives from the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Infantry regiment were brought into Charleston and incarcerated. What was their appearance at the time?”

“Some of 'em were pretty damn—uh, pretty bedraggled and bloody.”

“What were they wearing?”

The warden threw a nervous, almost apologetic look at the prosecutors. His reply was barely audible. “Uniforms.”

“May I ask you to repeat that, sir?”

“Uniforms. They were wearing Yankee uniforms.”

“You testify to that unequivocally?”

“I was there, I ought to know.”

“The uniforms were taken away from them?”

“Taken away and burned.”

“Thank you, Warden. I have no further questions.”

When Mitchell rose to present the defense argument, the chamber had heated to an intolerable level—this despite a somber gray rain dripping down the windows. Mitchell began quietly. He held the pages of his text but he knew it so well he never looked at it.

“May it please the court. The matter before the court today is one of great consternation and import for the defendants whom we represent. It is also of great consternation and import for our young country, as how you decide this case will signal to the world how the Confederate States of America, the newest member of the community of nations, conducts its foreign and military affairs.”

In the back row where half a dozen reporters sat, pencils flew.

“One may make the argument that the issue before the court is a relatively simple matter of answering two questions. Are the defendants entitled to prisoner-of-war status? Or, because they bore arms and, as my learned colleague asserts, because they have black skin, are they deemed to be insurrectionary slaves by legal presumption and, thus, to be put to death?”

One of the prisoners, Kirk, swayed sideways, eyes glazing; his comrade next to him held him up.

“The gravamen of the complaint against the defendants rests on the legal presumption that they are insurrectionary slaves because of their color, and, simultaneously, because they bore arms in the recent engagement at Battery Wagner. Under the rule of law, however, a legal presumption is no more than a proposition which stands only so long as no other credible evidence supports a contradictory conclusion. Where other credible evidence is presented, the presumption fades away. In this case there is credible evidence that allows the court to draw a contradictory conclusion.”

Ham's shirt, sweated through, clung to him like wet rags under his old coat. The sound of the rain tormented his nerves. The chief judge scowled as he made notes.

“Testimony in this court has clearly established that defendants wore the uniforms of Union soldiers, only to be stripped of those uniforms when they were incarcerated. As to previous conditions of servitude, if any, there is no evidence of it whatsoever—no evidence as to who their masters were, if indeed they had masters at all. My learned friend the attorney general is correct when he says that, under state law, color may be considered prima facie evi
dence of the status of slavery, but this evidence is rebutted by the aforementioned uniforms.”

Hayne and Aldrich exchanged side glances; smugly, Ham thought. Mitchell paid no attention.

“Further, were the defendants slaves, one would believe that at least one master might have appeared to lay claim to such valuable property. No such claim has been made. Has not, then, the weak presumption arising simply from color failed logical scrutiny?

“If the court believes it must determine whether defendants are prisoners of war or insurrectionary slaves, I would urge that the legal analysis favor a finding for prisoner-of-war status. But I am also a realist. I recognize that such a finding may well be unenforceable in the current wartime environment.

“We have heard much in recent weeks about President Abraham Lincoln's declaration of 30 July stating that if any Union soldier is executed in violation of the rules of war, Northern forces will retaliate in like manner. Frankly, Mr. Chief Judge and members of this honorable court, when weighed against that declaration, the overwhelming measure of logic and prudence calls for this court to abstain from making a rush to judgment in favor of insurrectionary slave status. Any such hasty decision may well escalate the tragic loss of lives we are already suffering in the current conflict. Many brave Confederate boys languish in Union jails and stockades. Therefore I respectfully urge the court to consider another course.”

In his small, precise hand, Ham wrote on his tablet. The courtroom was silent save for the rain and the ticking of a large clock. He reversed the tablet on the table so Mitchell could glance at it. He thought he detected the tiniest smile on Mitchell's face when he read the message.

The Beaufort Nine are here.

Perhaps the judges sensed it too; their expressions of vague hostility had melted into blandness; even, in the case of the chief judge, frowning attention to Mitchell's argument.

Mitchell turned his back on Hayne and Aldrich and
spoke more strongly. “The matter before this court goes to the heart of how the Confederacy conducts its foreign and military affairs. I say that because the provost marshal's court is a civil court from which there is no right of appeal. Therefore a finding in this matter is final, and so, in reality, makes foreign and military policy. Under circumstances where issues of this magnitude must be addressed, I submit they must be addressed in a nonjudicial forum.”

Ham thought he heard one of the reporters in the back row say, “Jehosaphat.” The chief judge rapped for order and threatened to eject anyone else who spoke. Hayne was scowling at Aldrich, as though co-counsel was responsible for the sudden change of atmostphere.

“The great Virginian, Chief Justice John Marshall”—Ham could almost feel an electric charge in the room at the mention of the legendary jurist—“who shaped enlightened common law thinking just after the turn of the century, opined that the judiciary should not entertain political questions. Marbury versus Madison is the seminal case in this regard, and Chief Justice Marshall's opinion is most persuasive. It lays the foundation of the political question doctrine.

“Political questions are properly committed to the legislative and executive departments of government and surely questions of international and military affairs are the most political of all political questions. For this reason, honorable members of the court, I submit that you have no alternative but to let the
political
arms of our government deal with this matter which is so fraught with international implications.”

Ham's eye moved from judge to judge and what he saw relaxed his body to the point of limpness. On all five faces, in varying degrees, he detected relief.

“Thus,” said Mitchell, rising on tiptoe, “I implore this honorable court to enter a finding of lack of jurisdiction in a nonjusticiable political question.” Grandly confident, he gave the panel a respectful bow. “I thank the court for its patience and indulgence.” He picked up his coattails as he took his seat, his face relaxed, untroubled.

After deliberating for an hour, the five judges declared lack of jurisdiction and dismissed the case.

Mitchell and Ham drove to the jail in a rainstorm, fortified with celebratory rounds of bad whiskey. Mitchell scrambled up the slick steps of the gallows built for the Negroes in the jailhouse yard. Hatless in the downpour, he made a trumpet with his hands. “Gentlemen on the third floor. Can you hear me? You will not stretch hemp, you are recognized as United States soldiers. You are safe.”

A couple of civilians in first-floor cells screamed oaths at Mitchell while black hands reached through the bars two floors above. The Negro prisoners shouted thanks and praise. Ham reeled home to South Battery in a blurry state of triumph.

 

Military tents were everywhere in the city, from Battery Ramsay at White Point to Washington Race Course. Drunken soldiers roamed at night with few to stop them; policemen had gone to the army. Singing, cursing, and occasional gunfire disturbed the Bell household into the small hours.

Although shelling grew desultory, the bombardment of Charleston had touched off panic. Like the Children of Israel fleeing Pharaoh's army, a good part of the white population shifted north of Calhoun Street, out of range of the siege guns. The Post Office moved, along with medical dispensaries and many law offices including Buckles & Bell. Civilians with sufficient money boarded trains for Columbia or Charlotte, while poor people settled in squatter encampments on open ground beyond the northern defense lines. Alex and Ham agreed they wouldn't leave the house until they felt it necessary.

Gradually Alex caught up on events in wartime Charleston. She heard of a fabulous submersible attack boat named the
Hunley
. Cooper Main, one of the Mains of Mont Royal plantation, had something to do with its development. Alex had met Cooper Main at a levee years ago. He was a paradigm of Southern courtesy, and yet
much like her brother: intelligent, iconoclastic, no blind follower of majority opinion.

She learned that seven of St. Michael's bells had been taken down and sent to Columbia for safekeeping. She heard about Robert Smalls, the daring slave pilot of
Planter,
a Confederate patrol boat. One night when the white officers were ashore, Smalls had put his wife and children aboard and sailed out to the Union blockade, and freedom.