Sir Arthur said. We all strained to see movement in the dim gaslight that glowed over Grant Park. A crowd was gathering there too. “Finch, go get Harvey.”
“You wanted me, sir?” Harvey, the middle-aged groundskeeper and coachman, said. He stood only a few feet away. He was fully dressed but still rubbing his eyes. The cannon blast had aroused him from his room in the carriage house.
“Yes, Harvey. Bring the gig around. I want to see what all the commotion is about.” Harvey went back toward the carriage house. “Lieutenant? Care to join me? I’ll wait for you to dress.”
Triggs looked down at his wife and kissed her brow. “Sorry, Sir Arthur,” he said without his usual jovial tone, his wife still clutching his arm. “Too reminiscent of Vicksburg for my tastes.”
Sir Arthur turned to me. “Since you’re prepared as always, Hattie, fancy a midnight drive?”
Why not? I thought.
Within minutes, Sir Arthur and I were rumbling over the Green Street Bridge toward Grant Park. Since coming to Galena a few weeks ago, I made a stop at Grant Park a regular part of my morning hikes. Spanning almost two blocks of Park Avenue, it was a place of meandering walkways and strategically located benches, all with a superb view of the river, the bluffs, and downtown, on the river’s eastern bank. It was flanked on one end by a monument honoring the Civil War soldiers from Galena and a bronze “Napoleon” cannon marked with a deep impression of some past battle, and by a statue of Ulysses S. Grant on the other. Between the two was a lovely fountain installed last year by the Ladies’ Auxiliary of a female figure, on bended knee, elevated on a pedestal. Four nude cherubs, sitting on rocks, held shells aloft from which, had the fountain been turned on, water would spray. Its pool was empty but for last autumn’s fallen leaves. I could only imagine how pleasant a spot it was in summer. Even stark and cold, the park was a peaceful place that I often had to myself. Not tonight. We’d been right about a crowd. Dozens of people had gathered in the northwest corner of the park, near the soldier’s monument. And they sounded angry.
“Stomp on the copperhead! Stomp on the copperhead!”
Sir Arthur and I pushed our way through the shouting crowd for a better view. Sir Arthur stopped short.
“Astonishing. Isn’t that . . . ?” Sir Arthur said, speechless.
“Santa Claus,” I said, finishing Sir Arthur’s thought. He looked at me perplexed.
“Santa Claus?”
“I’m sorry. I mean Henry Starrett,” I said. Sir Arthur looked at the man in the fur-trimmed overcoat and fur cap standing next to the cannon.
“I didn’t see it before, but you’re right, Hattie. Captain Starrett does bear an uncanny resemblance to Father Christmas. But what is he doing?” The captain had climbed onto the cannon, which had been turned around to face Park Avenue, and was now straddling it as if it were a horse. He waved his cap in the air as the crowd clapped and cheered him.
“Do you think that got his attention?” Henry yelled.
“Again!” several in the crowd cried.
“It didn’t hit his house!” someone else yelled.
“Enough of this,” Sir Arthur said as he pushed his way to the front of the crowd and confronted the man on the cannon. “What is the idea, Captain, disturbing the peace like this?”
“Disturbing the peace?” Captain Starrett said as he deftly leaped down from the cannon. “We’re just getting started!” He stooped over and retrieved a sack that had been lying on the ground. He waved his arm above his head. “To the copperheads!”
Captain Starrett purposely cut across the park and crossed the street. The crowd followed. As I walked among them, I recognized many of the men who had been at the G.A.R. meeting earlier this evening. They held shovels or horse whips or carried sacks or pails filled with I knew not what. I was surprised to see that I was not the only woman, but the proximity of others of my sex did not make me feel more secure. Two separate women, bent upon staying with the mob, had heedlessly trampled a brown derby hat that lay abandoned on the ground. I stayed as close to Sir Arthur as was appropriate.
We didn’t walk far. The crowd stopped suddenly in front of a small, two-story redbrick house, with green shutters and a white, pillared portico, a block from the park. Henry Starrett reached into his bag and retrieved a large, rancid cabbage.
“Now!” shouted Captain Starrett, smashing the wilted, slimy cabbage into the front door. The cabbage slid down the length of the door, leaving an oily, putrid-smelling streak. Already at the edge of the throng, I instinctively took several steps back.
With that order, men and women shouted, laughed, and gloated as they bashed windows, trampled hedges, and volleyed eggs, rotten vegetables, and animal feces at the house. Even a man with one arm missing below the elbow lobbed tomatoes at the house, creating what looked like splatters of blood. It was horrible to watch and the stench was almost unbearable.
So why am I still here?
“My God!” Sir Arthur cursed from behind the handkerchief he held to his nose. “This is barbaric.”
Mere minutes had passed when, with the damage done, Captain Starrett held up his hand and bellowed, “Come out and face us, Jamison, you traitor, you coward!”
Jamison? Was Captain Starrett going to attack the man again? Hadn’t he suffered enough?
The mob miraculously fell silent and all eyes stared at the front door. Would he come out? The door slowly opened and a man took a firm step onto his porch. A rocking chair beside him was still swaying from the impact of a brick. With gaslight from the street and a few lanterns that swayed in the midst of the crowd, it was difficult to see the man’s face clearly. Then he raised a lantern above his head, casting light on both himself and his immediate foe. I gasped. The man’s face was swollen. One eye was circled by black and purplish bruises and his nose looked slightly off center. With the evidence of Captain Starrett’s savage beating written on the man’s face, I knew Enoch Jamison at once.
“What do you want?” Enoch Jamison said. He suddenly dodged his head to the side as a rotten potato missed him by inches. “Don’t have anything better to do than attack the home of a feeble, old woman? Cowards!” he yelled.
“Traitor!” someone shouted in reply.
“Go home,” Jamison said. “Go home and frighten your own wives and mothers with your savagery.” The man whom they had called a coward then turned his back on his attackers. “And Merry Christmas!” he shouted over his shoulder before slamming the door behind him.
“Astonishing,” Sir Arthur said as the crowd slowly dispersed. Some shaking their heads, others mumbling. Most seemed ashamed of what they’d done. Not Captain Starrett. He shook hands with anyone who would take his hand and congratulated them on a job well done.
“We showed him,” I heard Captain Starrett say over and over. What was he trying to prove? He had attacked the man physically and now had succeeded in terrorizing him in his mother’s home. But why? Because of a political stance Enoch Jamison had held over a quarter of a century ago? I didn’t think I would ever understand.
As the crowd dispersed, Sir Arthur approached Captain Starrett, who now stood alone in Enoch Jamison’s front yard.
“Why?”
