Charleston (43 page)

On King Street at that same hour Cal saw a woman accidentally step into a rut and fall. Her parasol and hatbox flew. The mishap occurred in the dark center of the block, where streetlamps didn't reach. Though more than slightly inebriated, Cal ran to assist, as any well-bred Southern gentleman would.

“Here, ma'am, let me help you.” He offered his hand. She felt light as a little bird when he lifted her. Her gloves were soft suede, her stylish London-style riding habit dark gray lightened by two splashes of white: frothy ruching at her throat and a veil trailing behind her high silk hat. She smelled pleasantly of lilac water.

She brushed herself off. “Very kind of you, sir. They haven't fully repaired the street.”

He retrieved her hatbox and furled parasol. “Not a good hour for a young lady to be out by herself.”

“I know, and it's curfew soon.”

“Allow me to escort you home. Cal Hayward's the name.” He tipped the black slouch hat he'd bought because it made him feel a bit like a soldier again.

The young woman hesitated. “I live near Marion Square. Henrietta Street. Mrs. Talcott's lodging house.”

Cal knew Mrs. Talcott's. He'd spent a night there, in the company of a comely quadroon. Mrs. Talcott was an elephantine Negress who rented rooms to the brown demimonde.

They walked north. In the corona of light at the corner of Liberty Street, he saw her clearly. She was older by as much as ten years but the difference wasn't apparent, ex
cept to him. His face haggard from prison and from drinking, Cal looked nearly as old.

The girl tilted her chin up, smiled prettily and said, “I've neglected the courtesies, Mr. Hayward. My name is Adah Samples.”

 

Along Meeting Street, trees were in full leaf. Streetlamps threw dappled patterns on the dusty paving. It was cooler.

Alex noticed changes in their benefactor. Richard Riddle was shaved and barbered. His plain workman's clothes looked clean and relatively new. He smelled of bay rum. “We'll forever be grateful to you,” she said.

“I'd have done the same for any lady.”

“Even so, it was gallant. It embarrasses me to remember how rude I was when we met on the wharf.”

“I recall I wasn't so polite myself. Maybe we should start fresh.”

“We must. Have you found decent lodgings?”

“One room. Small, but sufficient. Found a better job too. Mr. Riggs of the Charleston City Railway wants to put the cars back in operation. He's hired me as a driver. Been handling horses all my life. I ran a freight-hauling business in Columbia.”

“I remember. Your father started it.”

“And Sherman finished it. Would pipe smoke annoy you?”

“Not at all.”

Little Bob seemed fascinated by the tall man, and the blued revolver he'd hidden in the pocket of his sack coat. Ex-Confederates weren't supposed to carry arms. Richard packed a corncob with tobacco from a muslin sack, struck a match on his boot. Sweet smoke clouded in the lamplight.

When they reached the house, Alex invited him in for refreshment. She was pleased when he said, “That'd be fine.”

The downstairs was dark; Maudie had retired. She asked Little Bob to light two lamps in the dining room
while she went to the pantry. She returned with a plate protected by a gauze dome. “This is strawberry cheesecake, baked today, if you'd like some.” He said he would. “I can offer you apple brandy or cider. I'm afraid the cider's warm.”

“Cider will be fine.” He sat at one side of the table, opposite his reflection in a tall window. Little Bob watched raptly, chin in his hands.

“Were you in the war?” the boy asked.

“Yes, sir, the Congaree Mounted Rifles. Spent most of the time in a Yankee prison, I regret to say.”

Wide eyed, Bob said, “Did you hate it?”

Richard's expression clouded. “That doesn't begin to cover it, lad.”

Alex brought in a tray with glasses of cider. He ate the cheesecake without dropping crumbs. When he finished, he brushed his lips with a napkin, which he then folded carefully. He indicated the McGuffey readers piled in a corner, the easel holding a large slate, the matchboxes filled with chalk sticks. “Looks like a schoolroom.”

“I'm teaching a few adults to read. Black people who never had a chance to learn.”

“You think it's wise to teach their kind?”

He wasn't sharp, but his unspoken assumption irked her. “Are they any less entitled to education than we are, Captain Riddle?”

“I was brought up to believe so.”

“The old days are over. The old ways are gone. When the war ended, everything changed. We have to let go of the past.”

“I don't know as I can do that, I—”

The window reflecting his image burst inward, scattering glass. Little Bob dived to the floor. Behind Richard the ball had torn the wallpaper and dug deep.

He jumped up, seized a lamp, and ran out the hall door, revolver in his other hand. Alex and Little Bob followed to the porch. Maudie clattered downstairs, her nightdress flapping at her ankles. “What in thunder's going on?”

“Someone shot at the house from next door. Our guest went to see about it.”

“Guest? Who—?”

“Sssh, I'll explain later.”

A hazy sphere of lamplight bobbed across the unrepaired gap in the brick wall and disappeared in the abandoned house. Alex clutched Bob to her side. She heard someone running on a wood floor, then Richard's shout. “You halt right there.” A pistol cracked.

A half minute went by. The lamp reappeared outside the Daws house. Richard climbed over the broken wall and returned to the porch.

“Got away. I saw the dirty sneak, but I couldn't scope his face, it was too dark. Tried to wing him as he ran, but I missed.”

Alex introduced Maudie, who was polite but plainly puzzled by Richard's presence. Richard set the lamp on a hall table, where it illuminated Joanna's painted face. Without asking he went to the dining room and blew out the other lamp. He returned carrying his slouch hat.

“Guess it's pretty obvious someone doesn't like you, Miss Bell.”

“I expect it's the teaching they don't like.”

“Well, I don't like it much, either, but I wouldn't register my opinion with a cowardly attack.”

“I owe you for all you've done, Captain.”

“Hardly, ma'am. I didn't catch the shooter.”

“But you pulled Bob and me out of a tight place tonight. I'd really like to do something in return.”

His gaze held hers. Little Bob sat on the staircase, not understanding the meaning of the looks passing between them. Nor did Maudie. Alex felt a strange, pleasant quiver in her breast.

“Well, now.” He cleared his throat. “I did enjoy our conversation, even though we disagree pretty fiercely. You could let me call on you so we could talk some more.” Before she could reply he said, “I don't know anybody else in Charleston except one person, you see, and he's out in the country a whole lot of the time.”

The response that sprang to mind was
How flattering.
She held it back, though her tone was cooler when she said, “Of course I understand what you're saying. You're
most welcome to call, Thursday excepted. I hold class Thursday night.”

“Thank you. Honestly never expected I'd ask to spend time with a Yankee woman.”

“Captain Riddle, you know I was born and raised in Charleston. I am not a Yankee woman.”

“Well, not on the outside, anyhow.” He tipped his hat. “Good night, Miss Bell. You, too, ma'am. Be sure to lock your doors. When I'm settled at the street railway company, I'll come by for a chat and another piece of that fine cheesecake.”

“Maudie baked it,” Alex said.

He walked off in the night. Maudie stamped her foot. “Will somebody kindly tell this child what in the devil is going on?”

Ham arrived a few moments later and asked the same question.

 

Next morning Alex returned to Prioleau Street, where she climbed the stairs of a squalid tenement. She introduced herself to Plato's handsome but haggard wife, a mulatto. No wonder they had to live in such a dismal place.

Giving her name eased the woman's apprehension. “You're his teacher,” Mrs. Hix said. Alex asked why Plato had left the class. The woman didn't know. Where might Alex find him? The woman told her.

The Mansion House hallway smelled of cigars and overflowing spittoons. She found Plato buffing the brown brogans of a man reading Horace Greeley's
New York Tribune.
Plato refused to meet her eye.

Alex sat on a hall bench to wait. The man flipped a coin to Plato, leaned sideways, and squirted tobacco juice into the spittoon next to the chair. The juice hit the rim and spattered Plato's hand. Plato wiped it on his leather apron. The man left with no apology.

“You decided not to stay with the class, Plato?”

“Been way too busy.” Not the real reason, she suspected.

“You're a good student. Will you come back at some later time?”

“No, can't do that. But thanks for all you done.”

“You're welcome. Put your writing to good use.” Disappointed, she turned away.

“Miz Bell.” She waited. Nervous fingers tapped his trouser seam. “You're related to Mr. Gibbes Bell of Legare Street and Prosperity Hall, that right?”

“He's my second cousin.”

“Thought so. Just wondered. Mr. Gibbes is a fine man.” The insincerity was apparent.

A new customer arrived and took the chair. Plato squatted on his box, bowed his head. The man's odd behavior troubled her. She knew him as a quiet sort, but not anxious, or secretive. She hoped nothing was wrong at home.

Gibbes campaigned in barrooms, parlors, law offices, and at small gatherings at Sword Gate that Snoo arranged. His vision, his promise, was simply stated. “A white man's government, for white men, by whatever means are necessary.”

He faced no serious opposition. Most of the elite gentlemen of Charleston wanted nothing to do with reconstructing South Carolina in any way that would mollify the radicals in Washington. They missed the point. Gibbes was following what he saw as the only clear path to recapturing control of the state. Along the way compromises, and dissembling, would be necessary.

Only a third of the city's electorate cast votes in the election. Some Low Country precincts skipped it entirely. Gibbes hired a jobless veteran to drive the rockaway and traveled to Columbia in relative comfort. On September
13 over a hundred delegates convened at the First Baptist Church, an imposing Greek revival building on Hampton Street that the fire had miraculously spared, even though buildings close by had burned.

The convention repealed the 1860 secession ordinance, then took up the issue of slavery. James Orr, a well-respected former congressman and speaker of the House, warned that Washington would never withdraw troops or seat a congressional delegation unless slavery was fully and clearly repudiated. The majority fought off an effort to compensate slave owners for financial loss and restrict Negroes to manual labor; here, Gibbes was on the losing side. The convention declared slavery and involuntary servitude abolished, never to be reestablished.

Gibbes stood with the majority in refusing to accept and consider a memorial on suffrage submitted by blacks from Charleston. Suffrage in any form wasn't on the convention's agenda, though this deliberately defied the Northern radicals.

The celebrated war hero Gen. Wade Hampton declined an offer of the governorship. James Orr was put forward as the convention's choice. Andrew Johnson approved Orr's candidacy and the convention's other actions. An election was called to organize a new General Assembly. Gibbes campaigned as he had before and easily won a seat in the House.

 

That same month brought a new military commander to Charleston. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles was one of the nation's more prominent, not to say lurid, public figures. Gibbes knew about him because “Devil Dan” had fought at Seven Pines, the battle whose very name tortured him.

Like Gibbes, Sickles had an artificial leg, the result of a stray cannonball at Gettysburg. The general was too important to have his amputated leg thrown away with others in a bloody basket; his was preserved and presented to him. He placed it on display in an army medical museum.

Sickles's career was something even a nickel novel writer would hesitate to imagine. A Tammany lawyer and Democratic congressman, he'd figured in a famous prewar love triangle. A nephew of Francis Scott Key had involved himself with Sickles's wife, Teresa. The cuckolded congressman shot Philip Barton Key to death in a public square in Washington. Promptly arrested, Sickles engaged Edwin Stanton to represent him. Stanton got him off with a plea of temporary insanity, a defense never used before.

Clerics and prudes deplored the murder and the acquittal, but many admired Sickles for defending the sanctity of marriage. That was not something he respected outside of his own house, however. He continued to drink and womanize openly.

When war broke out, he raised New York's Excelsior Brigade and commanded it bravely, though some said he almost caused Union defeats at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Through friendship with Grant and Lincoln he was given command of the Military District of South Carolina in September 1865. He left his reconciled wife, Teresa, and his adolescent daughter in New York and traveled to Charleston, where he surveyed several mansions for an appropriate headquarters. He chose 33 Charlotte Street, a brick home built by a prosperous planter named Thomas White. The White residence was serving as a hospital. Sickles threw out the staff and patients and moved in.

He publicly declared friendship with the South and Southerners. Few in Gibbes's circle believed him, even though Sickles distributed food to the poor. Rumors of the general seeking out and entertaining local beauties began to circulate. It was whispered that no chaste woman was safe in his presence.

Richard Riddle encountered Sickles accidentally. The Charleston Railway Company had laid new tracks on Calhoun Street and partway down Meeting. Richard drove a car on the line six days a week. Making the turn south at Marion Square one afternoon, he was surprised when a short, middle-aged, bulldoglike officer with a drooping mustache dashed after the car and jumped aboard. He was
even more surprised to see two stars on the officer's shoulder straps.

“Take me as far as you're going.” The officer's speech had a juicy quality because of the cigar clenched in his teeth. Richard took an instant dislike to the man.

“You'll have to put out your cigar,” he said.

Sickles's eyes closed to slits. “Do you know who I am?”

Richard guessed, but he said, “I don't know and I don't care.”

“I am Major General Sickles, commander of this district.”

“That may be. Doesn't change the fact that smoking on the cars is against company rules.”

“You don't say. Well, sir, you may consider the rules suspended for the next half hour, or until I leave the car, whichever comes first.” Astonished passengers watched Sickles haughtily turn away and take one of the wicker seats. Richard seethed but did nothing; prolonging the dispute would almost certainly land him in a cell, and he'd had a bellyful of that.

The conductor who had witnessed the exchange approached the general timidly. “Sir, the fare.”

“I ride free.”

The conductor wilted. “Why, that's right, of course you do.” Sickles folded his arms, gazed out the window, and continued to enjoy his smoke. Richard yanked the overhead cord and clanged the bell furiously, even though there was no one on the rails ahead of him.

 

Slowly the city emerged from the tribulation of war. Each week a few more vessels called at the port. Rebuilding began, the largest project being the Northeastern Railroad depot rising on the ruins of the old.

The city faced a debt of over $5 million but nonetheless went forward with necessary improvements. Shell-cratered streets were paved. Sidewalks were built, with the addition of thick wooden curbs to protect them from damage by carts and drays. The mayor announced a program to illuminate over two hundred streets with gas
lamps. He also dedicated the new street railway; aging William Gilmore Simms read an ode written for the occasion. Simms's prewar popularity was a memory. New York publishers had abandoned him because of his unrelenting defense of slavery.

Retail merchants moved back to King Street. Marburg's sold books again. The Crescent Bank renovated and reopened its damaged quarters on Broad. Buckles & Bell rejoined the Chamber of Commerce. Ham thought it prudent to designate Cedric Buckles as the official representative. A few diehards would let no one forget Ham's friendship with Petigru the Unionist.

While plantations stood idle for lack of workers, Charleston's reviving business climate lured Northern speculators. Several brought contract work to the law firm, improving its cash position. Repairs at Bell's Bridge went forward in a mood of optimism.

One notable speculator arrived on the ramshackle right-of-way of the Northeastern line, alighting from his opulent private car at the edge of the depot construction. Bvt. Brig. Gen. Adoniran Huffington was a red-bearded Yankee of great physical stature and reputation. He bragged of friendship with Lincoln's first secretary of war, Simon Cameron. Both men had risen from the cesspool of Pennsylvania politics, and it was through Cameron that the general, as he insisted on being addressed, got his army commission.

Huffington had distinguished himself, if that was the right term, at Chantilly, Virginia, in 1862. After the Union defeat at Second Manassas, Huffington's 14th Pennsylvania Reserves took ninety rebel prisoners at Chantilly. None survived the first night of captivity. A rebellious lieutenant serving under Huffington, who was still a colonel at the time, called it a massacre, vicious and intentional.

Huffington trumpeted his innocence, blaming excessive zeal of “loyal subordinates” he refused to name. The Committee on the Conduct of the War examined Huffington's case and found him innocent of wrongdoing. Those who hated “Bloody Ad” said cronies in Congress had arranged
for him to be absolved. The stigma faded quickly; he was breveted the following year.

By the summer of 1865 Huffington had established himself as a developer and builder of railroads, with headquarters in Pittsburgh. Two local banks financed him. Each held a one-third interest in his company; the general controlled the other third of the shares.

Huffington wasn't a man to blend quietly into the Pittsburgh scene. He stood out in any crowd and always ducked his head to enter a room. He was a family man with eleven children—he'd buried three wives to reach that number—and a devout Presbyterian who prayed publicly at every opportunity. His tiny black eyes intimidated lesser men. He was famous for shouting at those who opposed him.

The general's agents roamed the South looking for ruined railroads that might be gobbled up cheaply, repaired, and restarted at a profit. The agents brought him surveys, inventories, and faded news clippings about the moribund Greenville & Columbia, a line of some 145 miles, with short branches to Anderson and Abbeville.

Huffington recognized a prime opportunity but knew he needed the cooperation of the state government. A liberal corporate charter, state approved, was mandatory. Support must be assured by the state's purchase of stock and its guarantee of corporation bonds. Arriving in Charleston, the general cast about for local citizens who could forward his cause. His eye fell on Folsey Lark.

After several interviews Folsey was invited to join the inner circle of the Carolina Railroad Development Company, or CRDC. Huffington promised a seat on the board if Folsey performed satisfactorily. Folsey didn't mind being sneered at as the scalawag lapdog of a carpetbagger. He'd been called worse.

He traveled to Columbia to attend an organizational meeting of what Huffington termed his apostles, a group of venal pols, bureaucrats, and free agents whose job it would be to win the cooperation of “those whose friendship we will unhesitatingly reward.” The target list included not only legislators but also the attorney general, the state au
ditor, the treasurer, the land commissioner, and chairs of the House and Senate Committees on Railroads. Folsey was assigned legislators to cultivate and was also given $3,000 to rent and furnish a luxurious caucus room where some of the proselytizing would be done.

Huffington convened the meeting of his apostles in the unfinished caucus room located on Richardson, three blocks from the State House. The room smelled of new paint, and the windows were raised to get rid of fumes. The noise of saws and hammers and planes was constant. Folsey had supplied an assortment of chairs and benches.

The general held forth, stomping up and down in his heavy boots and waving and gesturing like the most flamboyant of preachers. Few men frightened Folsey, but the general did. If he could judge from the faces of the eleven other apostles, his reaction was not unique. It took two hours for Huffington to reach his impassioned conclusion.

“The old Carolina system of living and working failed, gentlemen. The old system is dead as Jeff Davis's chances for enshrinement in the Confederate pantheon. This state can no longer survive with a posture of artificial self-sufficiency and isolation, nor can it ignore the fast-flowing tide of national, not to say global, industrialization.

“We are on the cusp of a fantastic profit, in which we all may share. Once we achieve our goal, I shall dedicate myself with equal vigor to reaching another, also for our mutual benefit. I shall apply my sweat and my capital to becoming United States senator from this fair state. Yes, I am of the North. Yes, I fought against your kith and kin. But our white skin makes us brothers again. Like you I am sickened at the thought of Carolina becoming another Liberia.

“Some will oppose us openly. Others may work secretly. We must and we shall foil them all. Smite them with every ounce of our God-given strength. To do that we must humbly call upon Him whose guidance and support is essential if we are not to fail. On your knees, gentlemen. Let us pray.”

He dropped to the floor with a colossal thump, clasped his hands, and awaited similar action from the apostles.

Some knelt immediately. Folsey was slow, aghast that he'd gotten mixed up with a religious fanatic. He was the last person seated, more out of shock than protest. When Huffington turned those tiny eyes on him, Folsey almost broke his kneecaps joining the others.

Huffington prayed for twenty minutes, at peak volume. Folsey squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if he should sever himself from the group. The general surely wouldn't condone the abandoned private life Folsey led and enjoyed.

“O Lord,” Huffington cried, “grant thy blessing to our righteous cause. Bring confusion to our enemies. Crush and destroy any who stand or speak in opposition to us. Aid and abet our just undertaking, which will shower the white race of Carolina with monetary and spiritual blessings beyond reckoning. All this we humbly and prayerfully ask in the name of thy beloved son Jesus Christ, He who died on the cross for our sins, amen.” When the apostles failed to echo it with sufficient volume, Huffington flashed his murderous eyes and roared,
“Amen.”
Folsey fairly screamed it, his face red with strain.