The Spymistress (44 page)

Lizzie was not permitted to visit them, but she bribed the guards to deliver food, blankets, and warm clothing to them in their cells. Those who possessed wealth and influence immediately hired lawyers and appealed to their powerful friends to intercede on their behalf. Quietly, Lizzie retained counsel for the accused loyalists who could not afford it and sent gifts of money and food to their families to sustain them until their menfolk could return home. Not expectedly, before any of the accused faced a judge or jury, they were tried in the press. Mr. Lohmann was presumed guilty, due to rumors that incriminating documents had been found in his coat pockets, while Mr. Ruth was presumed innocent, thanks to his reputation for exemplary service on the railroad and the assertions of his staunchly faithful friends among the Richmond political and social elite, who apparently had no idea how profoundly his loyalties and beliefs differed from their own. In February, Mr. Ruth managed to secure an honorable discharge and returned to his post, but Mr. Lohmann and many others languished in prison, where Lizzie was continuously frustrated in her attempts to see them.

The Richmond underground had been dealt a staggering blow, but Lizzie was too angry, too determined, too hungry, too frightened, too weary of war to quit. As circumspectly as she could, she called on her Unionist acquaintances whose courage might be faltering and shored them up with encouraging speeches and with gifts of money and food. The war had taught Lizzie that it was far too easy to succumb to fear and intimidation when one’s belly was empty.

Her network had taken a beating, but even before the bruises healed, and despite their diminished numbers, Lizzie and the Richmond underground continued their work for the Union with newly inspired vengeance. If legal maneuvers and bribes could not free Mr. Lohmann and the other loyalists from Castle Thunder, the fall of Richmond certainly would.

In early February, the rumors of tentative peace negotiations suddenly became vividly real when Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln agreed to name commissioners to meet and discuss their options. Mary Jane learned well before most of Mr. Davis’s cabinet did that Mr. Davis had first rejected suggestions that he appoint Vice-President Stephens to lead the Confederate delegation, but had eventually acquiesced because Mr. Stephens and Mr. Lincoln had been friends when they had served in the House of Representatives together.

Even as General Sherman’s army marched from Georgia into South Carolina and ominously closer to Richmond, talk of peace filled the Confederate capital. Mr. Lincoln had sent his secretary of state, William H. Seward, to meet Mr. Stephens’s party at Fort Monroe, but astonishingly, three days later President Lincoln himself joined the parties at Hampton Roads. On February 3, aboard the steamboat
River Queen
, Union and Confederate representatives began talks that all present hoped would end the long struggle before another drop of blood was shed. Unfortunately, they never broached the finer points of the matter because the Confederates insisted the goal was to achieve peace between two sovereign nations, while Mr. Lincoln emphasized that he sought peace within their one common country. Mr. Lincoln insisted upon the end of slavery, Mr. Stephens was bound to the idea of Southern independence, and neither would yield, and nothing was agreed, and all returned home with little to show for the excursion. When the Richmond press published the delegation’s report and denounced the Union for demanding the total subjugation of the South, talk of hope and peace vanished, superseded by anger and the defiant certainty that Southern independence would be established not at the negotiating table but on the battlefield, once and for all, and soon.

Lizzie wondered how even the most ardent rebel could believe that anymore. The Confederate army was starving. Sickness, death, and desertions had reduced General Lee’s army to some fifty-seven thousand malnourished soldiers, including troops from the Home Guard and reservists, in stunning contrast to General Grant’s force, one hundred twenty-four thousand strong. General Sherman had captured Columbia, Charleston had been evacuated, and Wilmington, the last major port in rebeldom, had also fallen. It was only a matter of time until the Union army overpowered the rebels entirely, Lizzie thought, time that meant more bloodshed and hunger and needless suffering.

Lizzie’s disappointment with the failed peace conference had begun to fade by the time news of a very different sort appeared in the February 10 edition of the Richmond
Whig
.

GEN. WINDER DEAD

We regret to learn that Brigadier General John H. Winder, who, for a considerable time, it will be remembered, commanded the Department of Henrico, died at Florence, S. C., on the 6th.

Stunned, Lizzie quickly turned to the
Enquirer
, searching each column of newsprint for his name. Why had they given no cause of death? Had he been shot on the battlefield? Strangled by one of his own prisoners? She had to know. She had been entangled with him too long not to wonder.

Then she found it, another announcement: “He died in an apoplectic fit, and was, up to the moment of his illness, apparently in excellent health.”

She sank back into her chair, staring into space.

Her longtime nemesis was truly gone, struck down without warning as if by a bolt from above. It was impossible not to sense divine judgment in his demise.

On March 4, one hundred miles north of Richmond in Washington City, Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office inside the Capitol. Soon thereafter, he emerged upon the East Portico, the newly completed dome high above him, to deliver his second inaugural address. Lizzie wished with all her heart to be there to hear what was surely a stirring speech, full of noble ideas and simple eloquence, but she settled for a celebratory glass of sherry and a tiny slice of ginger cake with her mother and Eliza and a few other dear Unionist friends, who regarded the day with the same joyful reverence as she. Someday, she vowed, someday when peace again reigned from North to South, she would go to Washington City. She would see Mr. Lincoln—the Great Emancipator, the savior of the Union—see him with her own eyes, and if she had the chance she would introduce herself and perhaps, modestly, tell him all she had done for him. Or perhaps, she thought mirthfully, amused by her own silly pride, perhaps he would have already heard of her. Perhaps his eyes would light up at the mention of her name, and he would shake her hand, and bow, and offer her his thanks.

And then, if she were very lucky, Mr. Lincoln would introduce her to General Grant, whom she admired and greatly desired to meet.

That would indeed be a perfect day. That was a fond wish to keep her heart warm in the midst of a seemingly endless winter.

Confederate troops had been ordered down the Danville road, Lizzie wrote to General Grant one bitter winter day less than a fortnight later. Warehouses of cotton, tobacco, and other valuable goods had been turned over to the provost marshal. Mrs. Davis was packing some household goods, selling others, and giving away still more to trusted, loyal friends, and Mr. Davis had taught her how to fire a pistol. Citizens were ordered to “be organized,” although what that meant in practical terms had not been explained.

Taken together, the curious, unsettling incidents convinced Lizzie that the ephemeral rumors of an impending evacuation that had drifted through the capital since the turning of the year were now apparently coalescing, solidifying into a form yet unknown.

“May God bless and bring you soon to deliver us,” Lizzie concluded the dispatch, her hand shaking from fatigue, her stomach cramping painfully from hunger too long ignored. “We are all in an awful situation here. There is great want of food.”

And then, only a few days later, long after Lizzie had assumed that the events of the war had lost their power to astonish her, the truly unexpected happened.

The Confederate Congress passed a bill authorizing the War Department to raise companies of Negro soldiers, free and slave alike, not to labor but to take up arms in defense of the homes in which they had been born and raised, and in which they had found contentment and happiness—or so the recruitment handbills enjoined them.

Lizzie could hardly believe her ears when she learned the bill had passed, and she could scarcely believe her eyes when, only nine days later, the first three companies of colored soldiers paraded in the streets of the capital. Thousands of citizens packed Capitol Square to watch the new recruits march proudly to the strains of fife and drum, their uniforms spotless and new, their motives unfathomable, their judgment impaired—or so Lizzie concluded. She had joined the throngs of spectators because she had hoped that watching the colored Confederates would help her to understand them better, but the insight she gained from the parade had less to do with those poor, bewildering, misguided men than the politicians who had granted them the right to bear arms for the Confederacy. As she wrote in a dispatch to Colonel Sharpe and General Grant immediately upon returning home from the spectacle, the rebel government must be desperate indeed to do now that which they had vehemently sworn could never be done.

On the first day of April, Lizzie discovered that her suspicions that the beginning of the end was upon them were shared by the most prominent rebel of all.

She had just sat down to a meager breakfast of cornmeal gruel with her mother and nieces when Mary Jane burst into the dining room, breathless and wide-eyed from astonishment, her shawl and bonnet glistening with raindrops.

“Miss Lizzie, Mrs. Van Lew,” she gasped, clutching her side and panting as if she had run all the way from the Gray House. “Mrs. Davis has fled Richmond.”

Chapter Twenty-two

APRIL 1865

M
rs. Davis and the children departed in the small hours of the night,” Mary Jane told them, sinking into a chair at the foot of the table. “When I arrived for work this morning, I found them gone and the household in a state of great distress.”

“And Mr. Davis?” Lizzie prompted eagerly. “Is he soon to follow?”

“He remains in Richmond to direct the affairs of state, but for how much longer is anyone’s guess.”

Across the table from Lizzie, to Mother’s left, Annie and little Eliza watched Mary Jane wide-eyed, their breakfasts forgotten. Suddenly Lizzie realized that at nine and seven years of age, her nieces could not remember a time before the war, and her heart ached for them.

Soon, perhaps, they would discover peace.

“Where did Mrs. Davis go?” Mother asked.

“Mr. Davis’s valet told me that she, the children, and her sister Margaret boarded the train to Charlotte escorted by his private secretary,” Mary Jane replied. “She begged to be allowed to stay—Mrs. Lee has no intention of fleeing—but Mr. Davis insisted.”

“Well, of course. He wants his family out of harm’s way,” said Mother. “Mr. Lee would probably insist that his wife go too, if she were not in such poor health.”

“Mr. Davis told her that if they stayed in Richmond, their presence would only worry and grieve him, and offer him no comfort,” said Mary Jane. “So at last she agreed. He gave her his pistol and all of his Confederate money and gold except for one five-dollar piece, and told her to make her way to the coast of Florida, where she could take a boat abroad if necessary.”

“She would flee not only Richmond but the entire continent?” Lizzie asked, astonished. “Surely this means Mr. Davis believes the Confederacy is finished.”

“Not so,” Mary Jane cautioned. “His valet told me that Mr. Davis intends to go to Texas and continue governing from there. General Lee has given him reason to hope that the fall of Richmond would not necessarily mean the end of the struggle. If his army no longer needs to protect the capital, General Lee would be able to direct his forces as he sees fit for the first time since he took command. He believes he can prolong the war for another two years.”

“God help us, no,” gasped Mother. “We cannot have two more years of this. We cannot endure it!”

Lizzie reached across the table and clasped her hand. “We won’t have to. When Richmond falls, the Confederacy will crumble, and it will happen sooner than Mr. Davis and Mr. Lee think.”

If it happened tomorrow, or even that very day, it would not be too soon.

The previous day, ten thousand rebels under the command of General Pickett had fought off five times that many Union troops at Dinwiddie Court House. Lizzie had expected the fighting to resume in the morning, but when it did not, she sent Peter out into the rain-soaked morning to collect the latest rumors. He soon returned to report that General Pickett, cut off from the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia, had pulled back to Five Forks, a vital crossroads General Lee had exhorted them to hold at all hazards.

At about a quarter past four o’clock in the afternoon, the battle resumed more fiercely than before. The Van Lews soon became so accustomed to the relentless hammering that it was the silence between barrages that caught their attention, bringing their work or play to an abrupt halt as they stood perfectly still wherever they were, straining their ears to listen. The interludes of hushed expectation never lasted, and on that day the cacophony persisted long after Lizzie put her nieces to bed. Somehow the girls slept through the battle, though the ground trembled and flashing guns and exploding shells turned the night into intermittent day.

Lizzie managed to seize a few hours of sleep, but a huge explosion shook her awake at dawn, and after she threw on a dressing gown and raced upstairs to the rooftop, she glimpsed lurid flashes lighting up the morning sky in the direction of Petersburg. Spellbound, she lost track of time as she watched the red shells bursting in the distance, but she returned inside when she heard stirring from within. It was a Sunday, and whatever else might be going on in the outskirts of the city, she had to get the girls up and dressed and fed and ready for church.