with pine trees piled several feet high rumbled past in the street below. “It’s just too late.” I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was only half past five.
What does she mean by that? I wondered as I slipped out the door and hastily closed it behind me.
CHAPTER 5
“It was the greatest adventure of our lives,” a man with only one leg and a long, flowing white beard said. Every head in the room, with the exception of mine and Sir Arthur’s, nodded in solemn agreement.
“I’ll never forget the time I got up to water the trees in the middle of a moonless night,” the one-legged man said. “Just as I finished up and turned around, I bumped right into a rebel, I did. Must of been a scout or something. Well, I be damned if I didn’t pull up my britches and run as fast as I could go. I looked back once, trying not to get shot, and wouldn’t you know, the damn reb was running the other way!” He slapped his one knee and let out a loud guffaw, spreading laughter through the room.
What was Sir Arthur thinking, bringing me here? I wondered.
When Sir Arthur, Lieutenant Morgan Triggs, and I had arrived at the monthly meeting of the #502 Edward D. Kittoe Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, otherwise known as the G.A.R., heads weren’t nodding, but beards were wagging and eyes were raised. Women were not allowed at the meetings and my presence set the men, mostly feeble old men, into passionate complaints. But Sir Arthur had been asked to attend as a special guest, and with General Starrett’s assurances, for he was the Senior Vice Commander of the post, I was allowed to stay and take notes as long as I sat in the shadowed corner and didn’t speak. As the one-legged man’s tale attested, the men quickly forgot I was in the room at all. At least most of the men. In an attempt to shield myself from the coarse men, I vainly buried myself in my shorthand. It didn’t work.
“Who can forget the ‘horizontal entertainment’? ” another man added, chuckling.
Horizontal entertainment? I wondered as several men shouted, “Hear, hear!”
One of the men, with a scruffy gray mustache and several moles on his cheek, looked directly at me and winked. I dropped my gaze, tugged my hat down as far as it would go, and pressed my back against the wall. A moth landed on my tablet, methodically searching the paper for food. When I shooed it away, the man with the moles was still staring at me. I didn’t look up again.
After taking roll call, which I had dutifully captured in my notebook, the Post Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Issac Holbrook, a tall, elderly man with thick white hair that protruded from his head and ran in various directions, read the minutes of the last meeting, including a description of the “sham battle” the men put on for the town. He then reminded everybody of the “Great Men of Galena” house tour scheduled for tomorrow that was organized by the G.A.R. specifically for Sir Arthur, though everyone was invited to attend. Then General Starrett officially introduced Sir Arthur, who in turn introduced his guest, Lieutenant Triggs. The general had allowed Sir Arthur a few minutes to speak to the group. Sir Arthur described his purpose for moving to Galena and then asked if anyone was willing to tell their impression of the war. Contrary to his normal dominating personality, Sir Arthur never passed on the chance to live vicariously through men who had actually fought in the war.
“We had to walk fifteen to twenty miles a day, share our short rations of rancid bacon and hardtack with the worms, use our rifle butts to crush coffee beans, sleep out in the rain with only our coats to cover us, and yet we enjoyed ourselves capitally,” the old one-legged, bearded soldier said.
“Damn near got myself killed three times over,” another said, “but I’d have to agree with Rufus here. I had one hell of a time!” Unlike the other veterans, Lieutenant Triggs did not smile nor did he nod his head in response.
“But you were at war,” Sir Arthur said. “How could you describe your experiences with such joy?”
“I didn’t say it weren’t hell, Mr. Englishman,” the old soldier named Rufus replied. “A man’s not supposed to see his own leg tossed onto a pile of severed limbs like so much refuse or whittle away his hours between battles betting on how long a tick can crawl on a man before it bites him. No, it was war all right but if you’ve never lived through it, you have no idea what we here are talking about.” Sir Arthur flinched. The old soldier didn’t realize it, but he cut right to Sir Arthur’s one known vulnerability. He would’ve given his title and lands for a chance to experience the war as these men had.
“There’s a pride in it, sir,” a small, round-faced, spectacled man said in response to Sir Arthur’s open expression of bewilderment, suspicion, and hurt pride. “I know you are interested mostly in the big men that came from here, like General Grant or Dr. Kittoe, but for us ordinary folk, who never traveled more than twenty miles from home before the war, there’s a pride and a sense of importance in being a part of beating the rebs and keeping this country together.” A preponderance of head wagging followed.
“Yeah, we Union men stuck together, fought together, and lots of us died together. But those of us who lived, we can hold our heads up higher than before because we did what was right.”
“Unlike those Southern-loving rich folk!” one man cried.
“Or those lousy Southern-loving copperheads,” someone else added.
“I’d heard a certain segment of Galena society had ties to the South, especially those relying on the Mississippi River trade,” Sir Arthur said. “But I didn’t know there were copperheads.”
I’d learned about the Copperhead Movement while helping Sir Arthur with his first book. A Northern faction of the Democratic Party, they were called by President Lincoln “the fire in the rear” and by their enemies who hoped to stigmatize them like venomous snakes “copperheads.” Among other things, they believed the Union could never be restored by war and demanded peace at any cost. To undermine the war effort they were known to fight the draft, encourage desertion, talk of helping rebel prisoners of war escape, and take money from the Confederacy. Even unsuccessful efforts to organize violent resistance occurred. When the Union suffered losses, the movement had strong support. After Sherman’s victory in Atlanta, support for the movement waned and some movement leaders were tried for treason. Copperheads in Galena could’ve split the town apart.
“It sounds like living in Galena during the war was . . . complicated,” Sir Arthur said, in what I took to be a vast understatement.
“Oh, no, sir,” the round-faced man said. “Like General Grant once said, ‘There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots.’ ”
“Hear, hear, Charlie!” Rowdy applause erupted and several men slapped the round-faced man named Charlie on the back. Before the clamor settled down and Sir Arthur could ask another question, the door swung open.
“Who’s a traitor and who’s a patriot?”
“Henry!” a simultaneous cry went up as Henry Starrett was welcomed heartily into the room. Sir Arthur scowled. Lieutenant Triggs stared at the newcomer with an unreadable expression.
“You old rascal!” someone said.
“We heard that you were back.”
“Break any hearts lately?”
“Sink any ships lately?”
Men clambered over to shake Henry Starrett’s hand. I couldn’t shake the impression
