CHAPTER 12
WHAT DRIVES THE MAN?
Breckinridge brought the Confederate soldier with the musket ball in his
thigh to the Old Capitol Prison. About two hundred other captured South-
erners were cramped into the receiving room there, a third of them in need of
medical attention. The Federal military hospital had turned those wounded
away; because too many Union soldiers were forced to go without beds, no
hospital chief was inclined to put rebels in hospital beds or even in cots that
crowded the hallways.
At the Old Capitol, however, a medical team made up of Southern sympa-
thizers had been organized. Nobody stopped them from bringing scarce ban-
dages and supplies to attend the Confederate injured; Breckinridge assumed
this was as much because of the impending invasion by the victorious South-
ern troops as for any humanitarian concern.
"He's from Kentucky," Senator Breckinridge, Democrat of Kentucky, said
to the doctor taking the man off his hands, loud enough for the Federal
guards to hear. The wounded man was originally from the Bluegrass state but
had moved to Virginia, where he joined up with Jackson's brigade. The sena-
tor wanted it clearly understood that the wounded man was his constituent;
Breckinridge would face censure on the Senate floor for visiting the Southern
soldiers after the battle, and needed an excuse. Taking care of a wounded
constituent was an action no other senator could easily condemn.
"You're the only member of the Yankee Congress who had the courage to
come."
Rose Greenhow's husky voice was a pleasure for the senator to hear in that
hostility-filled old building. She had brought her personal physician and two
of the girls who worked for her to the prison and set up a medical unit in one
of the larger cells. Breckinridge admired the Wild Rose: her commanding
presence, eyes that could be fierce or mocking, expressive mouth, the sense of
abandon in the way she moved. He had always enjoyed her hospitality,
though rarely taking advantage of her available favors; in Washington, Anna
Carroll's companionship was more than enough for him.
"If my Kentucky friend were a Union casualty," Breckinridge said, still in
that stentorian voice he used on the Senate floor, "I would be with him in a
Federal hospital." Unlike Rose, he did not take unnecessary chances; she took
entirely too many, which suggested to him that she relished danger.
She took his arm, steered him out into the prison corridor, past the jam of
cots and benches containing the wounded or the sullen, to a supply closet
room where they could speak alone. "We've won, John!" She put her hands
on his shoulders and shook him. "We beat the Yankees at Manassas, and I
had a big hand in it."
"You're telling me something I don't want to know about," he cautioned.
He long suspectedin truth, he had to admit he knewthat Rose was a
Confederate spy. The spacious brick house on Sixteenth Street, so convenient
to James Buchanan when that bachelor had occupied the White House, was
more than ever the place where politicians and generals gathered. The reck-
less Rose sometimes modified but never concealed her contempt for the aboli-
tionists. That was still socially and politically acceptablein fact, most of the
Republican radicals were considered a dangerous minoritybut Rose probed
the outer limits of sympathy for the rebellion. It would be natural for her to
share what she learned in the Union capital with her friends in the Confeder-
ate capital, and she would be automatically suspect in a city where the word
"treason" was being bandied about. Why, in that circumstance, was she not
much more circumspect? Calculated recklessness, he supposed; dangerous
flirtations attracted her.
"I'll tell you what I please, Breck, because I trust you," she said, her strong
grip moving down from his shoulders, along his arms, to his hands. "Do you
know how Beauregard knew when the Yankees moved out? From me. You
know how we knew the whole plan of attack, with Joe Johnston supposed to
be held down in Winchester by that old idiot Patterson, so he couldn't rein-
force Beauregard? From me, from a message I braided into Bettie Duval's
beautiful long hair."
He looked over her shoulder into the crowded hallway for the appearance
of Federal guards. "That's your secret, Rose. I won't be a party to espionage,
not while I sit in the Senate."
"The entire battle plan," she persevered, "the map with the red dotted lines
on it showing the Yankee troop movementscan you imagine the advantage
that gave us?"
So that was why the Union suffered such unexpected disaster at Bull Run;
she had given Johnston the signal to slip away from the force supposedly
tying him down. That was no mean feat of spying. Against his better judg-
ment, he asked, "Where did you get the information, Rose?"
"The chairman of the Military Affairs Committee of the Senate, who ban-
ished you from the committee because you were a risk to the security of the
Union." A look of pure malice mixed with the delight and triumph in her
eyes.
"I can't believe that about Henry." He meant that; Senator Wilson was a
patriot, and no fool. He suspected that Rose might be spreading rumors about
her Senate lover to mislead the world about her true source.
"Your dear friend Henry Wilson is a slave to sex. I have given him a new
sexual life beyond his wildest dreams."
Breckinridge winced at that. "You sure say what you mean."
"I am a patriot first and a lady second. I am prepared to put everything
that God has endowed me with in the service of the Cause." In case that did
not make her point, she added, "I would prostitute myself for my country."
He shook his head at her certitude about the Cause, whatever it was, and at
her blunt language. "Henry Wilson handed you that map in bed?"
"Senator Wilson has some strange desires," she said. "One is to set the
slaves free. Another is to be a slave himself. I do what I can to accommodate
him. The Wild Rose can get fairly wild, if you really want to know."
"As I said, I don't really want to know."
"I want to talk to you about Anna Ella Carroll," she said, veering to
business. "I've seen the two of you together in my house, trying to act as if
you met there by accident. Doesn't fool anybody. We could use her. She
knows everybody, even Lincoln, especially Bates"
"Forget her," he advised. "Pro-Union all the way." That was more than
true; he did not add that he had spent the previous evening in her room,
listening to her read to him the text of the speech made in Lexington, Ken-
tucky by the Reverend Robert Breckinridge on the moral wrong of secession,
complete with gestures and inflections taken from the lecture-hall style of
Uncle Bob. Secession was immoral, in his thesis, because it invalidated the
grandest contribution of modern times to the progress of civilization, the
Constitution, which had given validity to the natural right of men to change
or abolish their government by voting.
No pledge of his to read the Union pamphlet with great care would stop
her; she had to stand there, on the footstool in her bare feet, reading the tract
for an hour and a half. When her visitor was drawn into making a point in
rebuttalthat the Constitution would remain in effect for those states that
subscribed to itshe had launched into a long recitation of a paper she was
drafting called A Reply to John C. Breckinridge. They wound up with three
hours' sleep, and he was off to watch the battle the next morning.
Rose did not accept his head-shaking about Anna Carroll. "She's from
Southern stock, with slaves of her own. And she may not be so pro-Union
after today. Lots of people are going to go with the winners, and Anna was a
power in the Know-Nothingsshe's not above buttering her bread on both
sides."
"You're mistaken about her, Roseforget it."
He must have spoken too sharply, because she flared: "She loves you, you
damn fool, and you can take advantage of it for the Cause. She gets around.
She's attractive, if you like 'em small, but she uses her head more than her
body to get things out of men."
He did not like that and set his jaw to say nothing; she saw the facial
gesture and softened. "We could use her, Breck. You may not realize it, but
she would do anything for you, no matter what she says now." She looked
over her shoulder, a touch too dramatically. "The Yankees may be on to me
before long."
To change the subject, he picked that up: "You ought to be more careful,
Rose, especially the way you talk at your parties. This prison is no place for a
woman, as a prisoner. Or her daughter." He knew Rose's surviving daughter
was too young to be separated from her mother, and would probably accom-
pany her to prison. Rose had to be worried about that, love of danger or not.
"Who would suspect that I would speak up for the South and spy for the
South? Most spies try to hide their true beliefs."
"Don't outsmart yourself. Pinkerton is just dumb enough to suspect some-
body who's suspicious."
"And you're protecting Anna Carroll. It's your duty to recruit her."
"It's my duty to try to end this war before it gets any bloodier, right here
where I can be most useful, in the United States Senate."
"You see your duty wrong. You're wasting your time here in Washington.
It's a cryin' shame seeing you haggling with these Yankees like a damn lawyer
when you should be serving your country in Richmond."
That troubled him; were they saying in Richmond that his lonely vigil for
civil liberty in the Senate made him untrustworthy? A guard passed the closet
and looked in; Rose took a length of bandage off a shelf, rolled it up, and
handed it out to the man, who shrugged and took it away. Breckinridge asked
her the politician's question: "What are they saying about me?"
"You know Mary Chesnut in Richmond, Breckshe likes you."
He nodded. Vivacious, politically keen, his age, well-connected, the former
Mary Boykin reminded him of Anna.
"She tells my friends that you could have been Vice President, or Secretary
of War, or general-in-chief, if you had come down in the early summer, when
the Confederacy was getting organized. Mary says every day you spend up
here is a day that your political future gets worse."
He nodded again; Mary Chesnut's assessment was probably right, and
every day spent in the middle of the opposing forces eroded his opportunity
for leadership on either side. "I don't care about that, Rose. All I want to do
is stop this horrible fratricidal contest."
"Idiot!" she hissed, hammering her fist on his shoulder. "Whose side are
you on? Don't you see we need this war?"
"To teach the Yankees a lesson?"
"To make the Confederacy a nation, the way the Revolution did a hundred
years ago, and to show the Westerners that they should join us. For God's
sake, Breck, we can't just creep out of the Union in peacewe have to show
the world who's master on this continent."
His head was shaking no, as she spoke, and he told her when she finished
that no reponsible Southern leader wanted anything but to depart in peace.
"That's what they say, but that's not what everybody thinks. No wonder
you're stuck halfway and can't see your duty clear, Senator, you believe what
politicians say. Wake up! All those talks with that baboon in the White House
have put you to sleep."
"He's no baboon," he said. Just as Rose underestimated Lincoln in her
mixture of hatred and patriotism, it was possible that Lincoln did not prop-
erly gauge the degree of determination in the secession spirit. "He's a very
stubborn man, a little on the arrogant side, who thought he could hold the
Union together at not too great a cost. It doesn't help to call him a baboon,
Rose. He's shrewd, and knows how to argue, but he has this blind spot."
She turned her head as if to indicate she would not listen, then said in a low
voice: "I hate him because he represents all the grubby foreigners in those
factories up there who think they can grind us down to their way of life.
They're ugly, and he's ugly, and that's why he's a baboon."
"He is not ugly, and there is no reason to fear him, or them."
"What does he want from us, then? What drives the man?"
"It's just that blind spot of his, Rose. Lincoln doesn't want to compromise,
he wants to win. In that way, and in no other, he's like you."
She appeared not to hear, and leaned close to impart some intelligence. "I
hear that Jeff Davis is coming up from Richmond to hold a council of war
with Beauregard and Johnston tonight." She did not say how she knew, nor
did he ask, but he assumed her information was accurate. "I hope to hell they
march on Washington tomorrow, because this city has no defense at all. If we
come across the Long Bridge in the morning, your baboon friend will be
spending the night in this prison."
Breck thought he would almost welcome that, if only to put an end to the
war before the lust for vengeance caused the North to mobilize hundreds of
thousands of men and appoint some real generals. But the Confederates at
Bull Run seemed to him almost as disorganized and amateurish as the
Union's civilians in uniform, and they might fail to press their advantage. In
that case, how would Lincoln react to a battlefield humiliation? Breckinridge
guessed he would shift the blame to his generals and grow more obstinate
than ever, settling in for a long war. Such a war could last until both sides
quit from exhaustion, bled white, and all for nothingfor Lincoln's strange
need for national dominion and the Southern leaders' imagined need to pro-
tect slavery.
To Rose Greenhow, he said only, "Don't get too confident. And don't
worry about my career in the Confederacy because I may never get there. It
may be Kentucky's destiny to be neutral, the peacemaker."
"You're a fool. The Yankees will arrest you in the middle of one of your
mealymouthed speeches in the Senate and hang you for treason." Her predic-
tion, he knew, was not so farfetched, though he did not foresee hanging.
Dishonor, prisonperhaps this very prison, or Fort Lafayetteand, worst of
all, enforced silence in the midst of despotism. But Rose's solution, to take up
arms in the South against the government he had served and the Constitution
he revered, held no appeal for the grandson of Jefferson's lawyer.
"The next Senate speech I make will not be mealymouthed," he said. "It
should offend everyone. You're invited to the gallery."
"I'll bring something I can throw," she said, suddenly putting her hand
behind his head, drawing him forward to kiss him flush on the mouth. He
offered no resistance because he did not want her to think he feared being
observed by the guards. "Beats having to bend down to kiss a woman, doesn't
it?" she teased, then became serious. "Recruit her for us, and leave her.
Anna's accustomed to being left by men. Make your damn speech and go
South, where you belong."