CHAPTER 3
THE PLUG-UGLIES

Anna Carroll watched the old man take Breckinridge's arm and walk off with
him alone. Their private get-together did not trouble her; with no witnesses to
their conversation, no damaging testimony was likely to be taken if Lincoln
decided to round up Taney and all the other anti-Union judges.
She engaged some of the reporters in conversation, as Attorney General
Bates had urged her to do, and as befitted the only woman whose name was
well known in the area as a political pamphleteer. Anna provided some of the
journalists, who knew so little about the great issues they were covering, with
arguments exposing some of the weaknesses in the Chief Justice's decision.
She had read Madison's journals of the constitutional convention, and
doubted that the men who wrote the Constitution had ever debated where to
place the right to suspend habeas corpus; it had been merely the decision of
the committee on style to put that power to make arbitrary arrests among the
legislative powers rather than under the President's powers. Who were John
Marshall and Roger Taney to invest that minor decision with such far-reach-
ing significance?
The man from the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley's abolitionist paper,
noted her point and showed her the lead sentence of his story: "The Chief
Justice today took sides with traitors, throwing about them the sheltering
protection of the ermine." She admired that and told him so.
She took issue with Washington's National Intelligencer story. The writer
for that anti-abolition dailywhich Mr. Lincoln was known to read every
daydefended Taney's decision as "able and lucid." At Anna's urging, the
reporter added that "Lincoln's action resulted from what he believes such an
impervious public necessity as is held to justify him in transcending the letter
of the Constitution." She especially liked the use of "transcending" rather
than "transgressing"; as she saw it, the President was reaching over and
beyond the Constitution, stretching its reach but not challenging its author-
ity.
Even as she dealt with these men as her writing equals, Anna hated to
admit that she felt the need for the physical protection of a man for the next
few hours. She was afraid of the plug-uglies. In a moment of panic, Mary-
land's wavering governoran old friend of the Carroll family, and her fa-
ther's successorhad destroyed all the railroad bridges between Baltimore
and Washington. That was supposed to keep Maryland out of the way of
belligerents, but it effectively isolated the nation's capital while making travel
in Maryland unsafe for anyone. The plug-uglies roamed the streets of Balti-
more and the roads to Washington, waylaying travelers who would ordinarily
choose safe rail travel. Their name came from their plug hats as well as from
the spikes studded in the front of their boots, worn by the hoodlums to do
greater injury with a kick.
Anna had come to the courtroom from Washington's Ebbitt House in the
company of a troop of returning Maryland militiamen, and had a note from
General Winfield Scott that would requisition a military escort for her return.
But she wanted to stop at her father's plantation on the way back for a
personal mission that meant a great deal to her, and the presence of a troop of
soldiers would be awkward. The less her family knew of her political activi-
ties, the better; she wanted no lectures about a woman's place from those who
her activities were supporting. That meant she needed a man, strong and
armed, to accompany her; otherwise, she was certain she would be attacked,
beaten, humiliated, raped, robbed, and murdered. She had frequently imag-
ined that sequence in detail.
Breckinridge returned from his talk with Taney and, to her relief, offered
her a ride in his carriage to Washington.
"Are you armed?"
"Of course not, Anna. I'm a politician. Haven't carried a musket since the
Mexican War."
"We'll stop at my father's farm and pick up a shotgun," she said with
finality. "It's on the way, and I have something to do there." She knew he
would not object; his way was to give in on all the little things. On the great
issues, she knew, he worked out his own way, not always taking good advice.
She was determined to keep him from making more of a pariah out of himself
in the Senate.
In the carriage, they said little at first. The road to Annapolis was deeply
rutted and Breck let the horse pick his way. As the Kentuckian stared
straight ahead, concentrating on the horse and road, she looked at his profile:
pugnacious yet aristocratic, an odd combination, making him not so much
handsome as magnetic. Perhaps that was the secret of his attraction as an
orator, on the stump or on the Senate floor; he was a big man who seemed
unconscious of his size, slow to decide but hard to budge after having made
his decision, not especially talkative in an armchair but eloquent on his feet.
The defeated candidate for President left Anna the clear impression that he
was in quiet command of himself even when he was unsure of his position.
Breck was at his most persuasive, she had found, when he seemed to be
working things out for himself, aloud, and carried his audience to his own
conclusion.
That was not her way at all; she knew what she thought, or at least what
she was supposed to think, and she said it or wrote it without the usual
coyness expected of a lady. That was true in almost all things, but when it
came to this man, her sustaining certainty slipped away. She never knew quite
how to feel about him.
The men in her life had always been men to admire. Her governor-father,
her political mentors, the railroaders who directed lobby-agent business her
way, the Reverend Bob Breckinridge, even that two-timing hypocrite Presi-
dent Fillmore and the gentle bachelor President Buchananall were men of
substance and stability, secure enough in their success not to resent her inde-
pendence. Like them, Breck moved confidently in the most exalted company;
he had almost reached the very pinnacle of power while a youth, and was in
her mind the most presidential non-President in the country today, but her
attraction to him was a mystery to her. She loved him and could use him,
both of which were important, but he was the only man she looked up to that
she worried about.
John Breckinridge struck her as a strong man who lacked the inclination to
protect himself; he showed too little interest in striking back at his detractors.
That curious deficiency drew strange impulses from a woman who rejected
the usual motherly or wifely traits. Because he did not weigh the personal
consequences of his political stands, he was especially vulnerable. She had
often vowed to straighten him out on that. If he was to be President one day,
as she hoped and suspected he would, he would have to learn to protect his
back.
She was glad he was happily married. Anna had never wanted to be held
down by marriage and motherhood, and felt only contempt for men who
found it necessary to be unhappy with their wives to be her friend. Friendship
was what counted, on rare occasions a complete and sexually satisfying
friendship, building those lifelong loyalties best achieved with a man whose
family life was secure and whose family was far away. She took the interest of
a maiden aunt in Breck's sons, especially the rebellious eldest, Cabell, and
delighted in dispensing the sound advice on upbringing that only an objective
non-parent could give.
Maiden aunt. Did Breck ever think of her that way? Anna Carroll, at forty-
one, saw herself as a vivacious redhead with a magnificent complexion and a
fine if petite figure, and had never looked or felt better in her life. The drive
and sparkle that had attracted two presidents and a handful of the most
powerful men in America were undiminished, and the fierce loyalty and tal-
ent that had resulted in lifetime friendships with families as politically diverse
as the Wades and the Biairs were increasing in her maturity. She could help a
man like Breck, and not just in arranging Know-Nothing support for his
campaigns, as she had in the past. She was convinced that she could help him
count mightily in the future of the country, if she could prevent him from
making a terrible mistake about secession and the war.
"Forget about that shotgun, Anna," he said out of nowhere. "I can talk our
way out of any trouble."
"If you won't carry it, I will. I'm not worried about getting raped," she
added, enjoying the way he winced whenever she used a taboo word, "I just
don't want you getting robbed."
She trusted him, and knew just how much he trusted her: ever since the
first stirrings of secession, nearly a decade ago, he had given her for safekeep-
ing the correspondence between many of the Southern leaders. She knew it
was then all a lot of fire-eater talkabsurd plans for a Southern nation that
would absorb Cuba and Mexico, extending clear down through tropical
Americabut fascinating to any student of politics. Someday, after the cur-
rent trouble was over, she would write about these early roots of rebellion.
But not now; Jefferson Davis, for example, might be a traitor, but he had been
Anna's loyal supporter in business and politics. She had worked on assign-
ments from him to promote the Memphis-to-Charleston railway that linked
South to West.
Thank God for all those railroaders. To a man, they needed political infor-
mation: whom to support, who could win, who could be reached on rights-of-
way. They hungered for access to power, introductions to landowners and
financiers. Those connections could best be provided by someone with social
standing and a hearty sense of politics, saucy and sensible, and Anna felt
comfortable in that role. She spoke their language and took their money and
felt good about both.
She needed those earnings. Her father, the former governor who had
spurned the legislature's offer of a Senate seat, could never come to grips with
the economic operation of a large plantation. Her fees as a pamphleteer and
purveyor of entree to men of influence supported him, four of her six sisters
who were not yet married, and herself. Anna did not treat this as a great
burden; she had been given a good education and a curious gift.
The carriage wheel hit a rock and nearly pitched her out. She grabbed for
Breck, then poked him in the arm and told him to be more careful, and did
not release her grip on his arm. The curious gift, uncommon among women
in her set or any set, was her talent in expressing outrage on paper. She
considered herself as persuasive a pamphleteer as the Revolution's Tom
Paine, nearly as powerful in her prose as the mutton-fisted Englishman Wil-
liam Cobbett. Writing with zeal and toughness was her special knack; so was
spinning out a long, scholarly argument on paper. The only time she wished
she had been born a man was when she thought of how much more money
she could have made.
The road was deserted after they left Baltimore's outskirts. It was still light
in the summer evening, but Anna wished they had that shotgun. On the other
hand, Breck might be right; if accosted, perhaps it would be safest to hand
over some money and go their way.
"You still in touch with your old political friends?" he asked. He meant the
Know-Nothings, a group that Anna had allied herself with a decade ago,
after the Whig Party broke up and before the Republicans got organized.
They styled themselves the Native American Party, and called themselves the
"Sams," after Uncle Sam; the anti-foreigner feeling was easy to exploit, and
the support of the frankly bigoted Sams was quietly sought by many a politi-
cian too queasy to make the blatant anti-immigrant appeals directly. She had
steered Breck some Know-Nothing help in his campaign; her old friends were
not proper political company for right-thinking people, but they had their
uses.
Anna smiled and gave the silent signal: one finger up, then touching the
side of the nose, then an "o" with the thumb and forefinger. "I Nose Noth-
ing." The secretive party had provided the margin of victory in many elec-
tions; she was proud, in a way, to have been one of the founders when she was
a young woman. But then the Native American Party was taken over by the
pro-slavery gang, and she left it for the Republicans.
"You didn't mean it, did you," he asked, "when you called Justice Taney a
traitor?"
She was not going to give him any reassurance. "That evil old man knows
exactly what he's doing. He's trying to make it impossible for Lincoln to
crack down on treason, which is all around us, and that puts him in league
with the traitors."
"Those are hanging words, Anna. You throw them around too easily."
"That mob in Baltimore killed four Union soldiers," she told him, "and the
soldiers killed a dozen of the rioters, the friends of that thug Merryman.
That's not just debates in the Senate, Breck, that's blood being spilled."
"Is it better to have more bloodshedto try to hold together two parts of
the country that want to go their separate ways?"
He was just baiting her, she figured; Breck was no disunionist, never had
been, even though the Southerners dominated his presidential campaign.
"There are some things important enough to spill blood over," she replied.
"What if the violence goes beyond a few people killed in riots," he asked,
"beyond a few hundred casualties in skirmishes. What if this war becomes a
real warhundreds of thousands dead, orphans, hunger, cities on fire
would holding those states in the Union be worth it then?"
That was not a question to be answered when everyone knew the insurrec-
tion would be put down before the winter. "Just say what you want to say."
"I don't know, Anna, I haven't decided. Sometimes a good thing is too
costly. Nobody is thinking about the price, in lives and in misery, of forcing
the South back into the Union."
She felt a constriction in her chest. "You can preach peaceful separation in
the Senate all you like, that's your right as Kentucky senator. But nobody's
going to listen." She thought a moment. "You're not going to try to take
Kentucky out, are you?"
"That would be treason, wouldn't it?"
She wondered if he could actually be entertaining the thought. Why? He
hated war, that was fine, so did she, so did everybody, but the war had
become a fact. At that point, even the pacifists had to think about their
futures. "Yes, that would be treason. Don't let them use you again, Breck."
"Again?"
"The secessionists used you in the last election to split the Democratic vote
for Douglas and to elect Lincoln. You know the secesh wanted Lincoln to win
so they could walk out on him. You know you were used. Don't let them use
you again."
He shook his head, guiding the horses out of a rut. "No, I won't try to take
Kentucky out. Kentucky will cling to the Union while a shard of it remains.
Bluegrass people will stay loyal as long as the abolitionists don't take over in
Washington."
"Lincoln is no abolitionist."
"I wish I could be sure. I get the feeling, sometimes, that he means to reach
into the South and free every slave there."
"That's scare talk, and you know it! Lincoln is against the extension of
slavery out West, and so am Ibut there is nothing abolitionist in being a
Free-Soiler."
"That's what Lincoln says now, and repeated in the Inauguralhe would
not strike at slavery where it exists," Breckinridge said. "But let's see what he
does when your friend Wade gets after him."
Ohio senator Ben Wade, a leader of the radical Republicans, made no bones
about his abolitionist intent. "Ben is my friend," Anna said carefully, "and
Carolyn Wade is my best friend. But even they know they're a tiny minority
in the country, and it would be foolish, even unconstitutional, to strike at
slavery where it exists."
"Abolition is what this fight is really about, Anna."
"Wrong!" She saw through his strategy: he would pretend the fight was not
about the preservation of the Union, nor even about the extension of slavery
into the territories; instead, he would change the issue to the one that ap-
pealed to the extreme men on both sidesslavery itself. "Lincoln is not
threatening to take away anybody's slaves, you know that. Abolition is a
scare, that's all, and you're using it to make secession look right."
"I can understand," Breck said in a reasonable tone, "an abolitionist fight-
ing to 'save the Union,' because he's passionate about his causeto establish
a Union that does away with the slave property of the South. But you, Anna
you and Lincoln and all the conservative Republicans willing to abide
slavery where it existswhy do you insist on a bloody war? Just to hold some
territory intact?"
"You swore an oath when you became Vice President," she reminded him,
"to preserve the United States. You would break that oath?"
"I swore to preserve the Constitution, and it doesn't matter whether that
sacred document covers thirteen states or thirty." She frowned at that; the
oath was one of Lincoln's favorite arguments, binding the most upright to his
side. "If the sections cannot live together in peace," he went on, "it may be
better that they live apart. There is no excuse in American history or geogra-
phy for brother killing brother in war."
She took off her hat, put it in her lap, and let the wind whip her hair. She
quoted to him, in derision, the slogan of the peace crowd: "Erring sisters,
depart in peace."
Breck smiled. "Horace Greeley wrote that in his Tribune, but Lincoln's
friends turned him around in a hurry. The Tribune changed its tune. Now it's
'On to Richmond!' "
Anna was aware that Lincoln and Seward, recognizing Greeley's impor-
tance in keeping up pro-union spirit, had sent Thurlow Weed to the New
York editor to straighten him out about the erring sisters. There was to be no
easy secession; the sister states would not be allowed to depart without war.
"How many slaves do you own, Anna?"
"Twenty."
"You inherited them, of course."
"I bought them with my own money," she said abruptly. "Four hundred
dollars a head."
He grunted surprise and said no more. Quietly, she began to seethe. What
did this ill-used border state politician know about the ownership of slaves in
a Southern state economy? She was especially glad he was with her on this
visit to her home. He would learn something about Southerners and slavery.
Within an hour, Breck's carriage drew up in front of Castle Haven, the
Carroll farm. The house and scrubby land were a far cry from Kingston Hall,
the family estate where she had been raised; that had been lost long ago under
the auctioneer's gavel, and the small farm was all that was left. Anna, who
had not been home in six months, winced at the way the farmhouse and
grounds had continued to run down. She had been promised they would paint
this year, and cut away some of the rampant creeper. Too cavernous to be
modest, the house looked hugely disreputable. She confronted her dismay and
turned it around: with her companion in mind, she was glad her home looked
that way. Part of his lesson.
Thomas Carroll, a political man when in his prime, had turned reclusive in
his old age; he saw them from the porch and went inside to his room. Two of
her sisters came running to greet them.
"We won't be staying for dinner," Anna told them after an embrace, "Sen-
ator Breckinridge has to be in Washington. But I have to see the girls, every
one of them, in the parlor right now."
The senator looked puzzled. He accepted a tall glass of mint tea offered by
an elderly slave, and when he was alone again in the parlor with Anna, asked,
"What 'girls'?"
"You think I'm a hypocrite, buying slaves myself while I side with the
North." She cut off his courteous protest. "You've been a soldier and a politi-
cian, and you may have practiced law for a few months, but you've never
been in the business world. Let me show you something about the slave
business."
She took out a ledger and laid it on the desk. "We have sixty acres of land
here. Corn, potatoes, a peach orchard. We have one hundred and fifty slaves."
She waited for his question.
"Isn't that a lot of slaves for a farm this size?"
"About a hundred more than we need. Now if we were smart business
people, we'd sell off our surplus slaves. At eighteen hundred dollars a head
for a strong field hand, about half that for a house slave, that would give us
capital to work with. We could buy some decent livestock, a few strong horses
for plowing, maybe build a barn to replace the one that burned."
"Bring down your expenses, too," he added helpfully.
She nodded at his quick grasp of the economics. "Absolutely. Our operat-
ing expenses would come down if we had only fifty mouths to feed. We could
even show a profit, take good care of Papa." She perched on the edge of the
desk and crossed her arms. "The problem is, we cannot sell a slave. Papa
doesn't believe in splitting up families."
"You could sell a whole family," he offered.
"Into what? The negroes on this farm grew up with us, and they're accus-
tomed to decent treatment. When you put a family on the block, that may be
fine for your conscience, but the next slave trader will break up that family on
a strictly business basis. You know what some of those plantations are like
downriver, and how they drive their slaves. Could you sell a family, knowing
they'd be split up, and used like animals?"
"No."
"Neither could we. So our slaves kept breeding like damn rabbits, and
growing up and needing more food, while we had to sell off our land until we
were broke." She slammed the ledger shut and tossed it on the desk. "I know
how the reporter for your Louisville Courier says how the 'peculiar institu-
tion' is essential to the Southern way of life, but to people like us, slavery is a
burden. It's ruined my father and disinherited my sisters. We're stuck with
our slaves, and it's made no more than slaves out of us."
When he said nothing, she went on: "Now you should ask why we didn't
simply free our slaves, the ones we couldn't use to work the farm."
"I'm aware of the laws of Maryland," the senator said. "No slave can be
set loose here. Anybody who frees a slave must ship him to Liberia."
"That was the law up till last month," she snapped, irritated that he
stepped on her point. "And I wouldn't send my worst enemy back to Africa.
Your Uncle Bob is a sweet and kind man, but that colonization society of his
is a disaster. Liberia is a hellhole."
"There were ways to get around that law."
"Sure, sell them to New Yorkers who would free them up there," she said
quickly. "And that would mean that they would starve and freeze. Who
would take in a freed slave? White workers hate 'em, they undercut their
wages, and they hound them out. The abolitionists are all for freeing slaves in
the South, so long as they don't come up North."
"It was a dilemma, I know."
He did not begin to know, but she would educate him. Some of her girls
began to slip into the parlor, tentatively, each worried about being part of
some formal occasion, which could be harsh news. Mostly house blacks, their
ages ranged between sixteen and thirty. Almost all were tall, many were
unusually attractive.
"The debtors began to close in on this farm about seven years ago," she
told him. "There's a glut of field hands around the Eastern shore, but the
slave traders have a ready market for prostitutes, and they had their eyes on
these girls. Look at them, Breck." He was looking, all right. "They're beauti-
ful, nubile, highly desirable as prostitutes or for some rich man's private
stock. Every time we went four hundred dollars deeper into debt, the slavers
had the legal right to claim one of these girls."
The room was filled with the slaves, who were eyeing their owner and her
friend with curiosity. The girls were well behaved, but not unusually shy or in
any way beaten down. Anna knew each one well and was proud of the lot.
"So I went to one of my railroad men and took out a mortgage loan on the
lot of twenty slaves. I used that mortgage money to buy the slaves from Papa.
At that point, the farm's creditors couldn't touch a one of them, because they
were my personal propertyas long as I could come up with four hundred
dollars a month to service my mortgage debt."
She was tempted to recount the wheedling she had to employ on visits to
New York and Philadelphia, scratching up writing assignments from rail-
roaders, supplemented by loans from abolitionists sympathetic with the cause
of keeping a score of black girls from the life the slavers had in store. She had
pleaded, dramatized, persuaded, wept on cue; the one period in her life that
she really abased herself, setting all pride aside, was to find that four hundred
dollars a month above her own needs. She held back from telling him all that;
such pleading was out of the independent character she wanted to be in his
eyes. Suffice it for Breck to know that she had good reason to put a high fee
on her writing skill and her politico-social services to railroaders.
"Thanks to you," she said instead, "the Douglas vote was split, Lincoln
was elected, and the slavers walked out of the Congress. That made it possible
to free slaves in Maryland today without condemning them to shipment to
Africa or starvation up North. And that's what I'm going to do right now."
Flushed with excitement at the consummation of her work in front of the
border-stater most respected by the South, Anna addressed her property for
the last time.
"I don't want anyone to be frightened at this, because it is good news," she
began. "You're free. All of you. Free. I have a letter of manumission for each
of you, with each of your names on it. Come up here as I call your name and
take it. You're nobody's property anymore."
Anna called out the names one by one, handed out the letters, shaking each
former slave's hand. Breckinridge, standing alongside, extended his congratu-
lations to each with a handshake of his own, because it seemed the appropri-
ate thing for a visiting politician to do. He whispered to Anna, "How do your
mortgage holders feel about your giving away their collateral?"
"They know I'm good for the money." She had no idea where she would
get the eight thousand dollars to pay off the chattel mortgage. She would
manage; it was enough that the girls were out of reach of the slavers.
"Miss Carroll," one wanted to know, "where we gonna go? What if we
don't want to leave?"
"You have to go," she said firmly. "You're free. If you want to marry one
of the hands, fine, Papa will free him and you can go away together. But you
have to go." Anna did not want to face the paradox of the cruelty involved in
the manumission. She bugged one of the girls who had been especially close
to her, wrote out addresses in Frederick and Annapolis where some might
find work, and ran upstairs to say good-bye to Papa and find the shotgun for
the journey.
In the carriage, riding southwest after sunset, when she could trust herself
to speak, she said, "What a goddamned relief."
Breck looked at her as if he had never heard a woman of any social stand-
ing use profanity before. Anna assumed he had not and it would be good for
his soul.
"They're free, but you're not," he said, jiggling the reins loosely as the
horse made his way along the darkening road. "You still have the debt service
on your slave-purchase mortgage."
"I can handle four hundred a month," she said almost merrily, glad he
understood the extent of her sacrifice, "and someday I'll raise the whole eight
thousand."
Breckinridge shook his head. "A senator makes three thousand dollars a
year. Sounds like a lot of money to me."
Anna knew how much of a mountain it would be to climb, and how small
the likelihood of climbing it before her old age, but she had no regrets.
"Twenty virtuous women saved from a fate worse than death," she said
lightly; "I'd do it again."
"Emancipation is wonderful," he replied, "so long as somebody pays for
the property and the seller is willing."
"I had dinner the other night with Rose Greenhow," she changed the
subject, "in that marvelous home of hers. Rose and I never see eye to eye on
politics, but she's well informed"
"Stay away from Rose Greenhow."
She glared at him. Who was he to tell her to stay away from anybody? "I'll
see whoever I like."
"Just stay away from Rose. I like her, too, and I can think of a half-dozen
senators who are crazy about her, but she's trouble."
She thought that over. Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a widow of Anna's age and
social standing, was outspokenly pro-Southem but had never been in political
trouble. Her brick home on Lafayette Square, a short walk from the Presi-
dent's house, had become a salon for many of the most interesting leaders and
soldiers in the capital. If there was any woman Anna envied, it was the "Wild
Rose"; she wished she had her height, her striking facial features, and her
rich dead husband's home for dinner parties of wild pigeon and old Madeira.
"What sort of trouble?" she wondered aloud, she hoped idly.
"Wouldn't be good for your business." He was vague about it; she sus-
pected he might be having an affair with Rose and was worrying about the
two women comparing notes about him. Anna smiled at that as they rode in
silence for a couple of miles.
On the high road to Washington, not far from the Silver Spring estate of
the Blair family, the carriage lurched and splashed thin mud. Breck reined in
the horse and then relaxed the reins, letting the horse pick his way through a
series of what Anna presumed to be puddles in the road.
A lantern flashed in the blackness ahead. Two horsemen appeared, block-
ing the roadway. The horse and carriage stopped. Anna heard a voice to the
side, in the darkness behind a bush, say, "Where you nice folks coming
from?"
"All of us are coming from Baltimore," Breck said, his voice steady. "I
guess we're a couple minutes ahead of the others."
Another voice behind them said, "Nobody's following them. 'Cept me."
"Get out of the carriage and hand over your money," one of the men in
front said. The voice was low and authoritative; Anna, in her terror, assumed
that was the leader.
"Whatever you say," Breckinridge said. Anna was slightly relieved. They
were surrounded; this was no time for heroics. It could be all they wanted
was money and the horse and carriage. She started to rise and felt her com-
panion's hand firmly on her arm, pushing her back down. With the same
deliberate movement, he reached behind him for the shotgun. She wanted to
tell him to leave it alone, she didn't mind walking, it made no sense getting
killed, but the words stuck in her throat.
"Get out and lie down by the side of the road," said the voice up front.
"There's four guns aimed right at your heads."
"I have only one gun aimed at you," Breckinridge said in the direction of
the voice. "But it's a shotgun. At this range, it won't miss you. And the
second barrel should take care of the man next to you before you kill us."
The damn fool was going to start a bloodbath, Anna thought. She said
nothing, holding her breath.
"He's bluffin', Alvin," said the man behind them.
"Hold the lantern up high, Alvin," said Breckinridge. His voice, she noted,
had assumed his stump-speaking tone, resonant and commanding. "You'll see
the barrel pointed at you. Your friend back there can afford to be brave, he'll
get your share afterward."
"Don't move that damn light," Alvin hissed at the man at his side, "he
wants a target."
"I'll take two of you with me," Breckinridge said, his voice more menacing
than the highwayman's. "The boy here with me may or may not be armed;
you can't know until the shooting starts."
"All we want is your money," the voice at the side said, negotiating. "You
can keep the carriage. Just throw down the money in your pocket."
"If you don't get out of the way, Alvin," Breckinridge replied, making the
most of his knowledge of the plug-ugly's name, "I'll blow your head off. I'm a
soldier and I shoot straight and I'm prepared to die. Are you?"
The leader of the group was silent. The man at the side said, "Who you
soldiering for? Federals?"
"We're headed South," Anna croaked in as low a voice as she could mus-
ter, hoping to give the plug-uglies an excuse to withdraw without appearing
to be cowards.
"Say hello to General Beauregard," said the man who answered to the
name of Alvin, and the pack turned and rode away.
Anna, her stomach in spasm, bent forward and moaned. She felt the car-
riage begin to move ahead in the mud's softness. She did not trust herself to
speak.
When the knot in her stomach began to relax and her hands stopped
shaking, she ventured a comment. "All they wanted was money."
"To tell the truth," he said cheerfully, pleased with his reaction to the
emergency, "I never was faced with a challenge of that kind. Always won-
dered what I'd do. Strange, no fear at all."
"You could have gotten yourself killed. For nothing." That did not seem to
trouble him. "You could have gotten me killed."
"I knew that if I laid my life on the line, the gang leader would back off."
He was not thinking of the danger to her at all. "I had to do what was fit for a
man to do."
"Oh for God's sake," she exploded, "did you swallow all that pap from
Judge Taney? He quotes Coke and the King of England at every dinner party
he goes to, and to every pompous ass who'll listen." She straightened up.
"Listen, Senator Breckinridge, you can take your life in your hands all you
like, but when you take my life too, I want to have a say in it."
"I never thought of it that way, but of course you're right. Didn't think
you'd look at it that way." He was still analyzing his own foolhardiness,
which he surely took for bravery. "You know, Anna, there's no telling what
those men would have done."
"They'd have robbed us and let us go. If they started tearing my clothes off
and raping me, then you could have grabbed a gun and been a hero. But not
over a few dollars."
"He really quotes Lord Coke to everybody?" He was missing her point.
She had a right to participate in a life-or-death decision.
"What are you, Senator, one of those fire-eaters? Do you live for violence?"
Now that the danger was past, she was getting her natural voice back. She
could hear herself prattling in the darkness, clenched fist jabbing into his leg,
at once proud of his quickness of mind and cool nerves and determined not to
act the damsel saved from distress. He had leveled that shotgun with great
authority; she could not comprehend his fatalism in lazily assuring the thieves
that death, while not a friend, held no terror for him. As her confidence
returned, and the gaslights of Washington's streets brought at least the illu-
sion of safety, she stopped hectoring and took his muscled arm in her two
hands. She thought of Fillmore, the weakling, and of Buchanan, the vacilla-
tor, and of Lincoln, about whom she knew little. This man in her hands, even
if all too pleased with himself at the moment, possessed a character and
intelligence probably superior to all of theirs. If he did not throw his future
away on some mistaken notion of peace-above-all, he could one day grace the
highest office.
She was being offered a drink of corn whiskey from his flask. She shook her
head. He tilted his head back and started gurgling; after a while, she said,
"Leave a little for me." He stopped, swallowed hard, and handed the flask to
her. She finished the remainder.
"You said we were going South," he observed.
"I lied. One of us needed to show some sense. You're not going South, nor
is Kentucky." She swore to bend every effort to keep her Maryland loyal and
hold her favorite reckless Kentuckian in the Union as well.