How Few Remain

But then a miner said, "Colonel, you can talk about wi

The miner drew applause from people who had booed Roosevelt; those who had agreed with him stood silent, waiting to hear what he would say. He picked his words with care: "Do you want to burn down the timbers that arc holding up the roof of the tu

"And a hell of a lot of good that'll do," the miner said. "They only listen to the bastards with money."

"No," Roosevelt said. "They listen to the bastards with votes. And you mark my words, sir: they will go a hell of a long way to keep the revolution from coming. A man will do a great many startling things if all his other choices look worse. On that you may rely."

" Lincoln said the same damn thing, and you were going on about hanging him," the miner said.

" Lincoln pays lip service to peaceable redress, but he doesn't believe in it," Roosevelt said. "I do."

The miner looked him up and down. "You don't mind me saying so, there's a hell of a lot of difference between what some pup who was a cavalry colonel for a little while thinks and what goes through the head of a fellow who was president of the United States and who's been trying to help the little fellow, the labouring man, his whole life long."

Some little pup who was a cavalry colonel for a little while. A flush heated Roosevelt 's cheeks and turned his ears to fire. Now he knew what came after hero: has-been. Savagely, he said, " Lincoln is the past. I am the future. And Socialism, sir, Socialism is the road to ruin."

If he impressed the miner, the man-who had to be at least twice his age-did not show it. "Talk is cheap," he said. "You get to be as old as Lincoln is nowadays, you look back and see what you've done, see if you measure up. You ask me, it ain't likely."

"I will take that wager, and I will take that chance," Theodore Roosevelt said. "And there is one thing Lincoln has done that I swear before almighty God I shall never do."

"Yeah?" The miner laughed. "What is it?"

"If the chance should come my way to fight the Confederate States of America, I shall never lose a war to them," Roosevelt promised. The miner laughed again. Roosevelt didn't care.

General Thomas Jackson had just finished the last piece of fried chicken on his plate and was wiping his fingers when someone knocked on the door of his Richmond house. "Who could that be?" his wife said in some a

"Let us hope it is some traveler who has lost his way and seeks directions, then," Jackson said. "But if it is not, Mary, that too is as God wills."

Cyrus, the butler, came into the dining room. "General Jackson, suh, Senator Hampton say he wish to have a word with you," the slave reported.

" Hampton?" Jackson 's eyebrows rose. So did he. "Of course I'll see him. You've put him in the parlor?" Cyrus nodded. Jackson headed in that direction. "I wonder what on earth he can want with me, though."

When he went into the parlor, Wade Hampton III rose from a sofa to shake his hand. The senator from South Carolina was five or six years older than Jackson, portly but erect, balding, with a neat beard once brown but now mostly gray and splendid mustachios. He and Jackson had known each other for twenty years, since the days when the former planter commanded a cavalry brigade under Jeb Stuart.

After the greetings were done, after Hampton had declined food and drink, the South Carolinian closed both doors into the parlor, having first looked up and down each hallway to ensure that no one lurked nearby. That bit of melodrama accomplished, he said, "I must have your word, General, that, come what may, what we say and do here tonight shall remain solely between the two of us."

"Well, sir, that depends," Jackson said. "If you are contemplating treason against the government of the Confederate States, I'm afraid I ca

He'd meant it for a joke, a piece of light badinage. The last thing he expected was for Wade Hampton to look as if he'd just taken a gunshot wound. Slowly, Hampton said, "Treason against the government of the Confederate States is not the same as treason against the Confederate States. Of this I am convinced down to the bottom of my soul. If you disagree, tell me at once, and I shall bid you a good evening and beg your pardon for having disturbed you."

"You had better tell me more," Jackson said, also slowly. "I must confess, I have not the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Do you believe that I, in my recent conversation with General Rosecrans and Mr. Hay, am somehow betraying our country? If so, sir, we would be wiser to continue this conversation through our friends." Dueling had been illegal in Virginia for many years. From time to time, though, gentlemen still traded fire on the field of honor.

But Hampton hastily held up a hand. "By no means!" he exclaimed. "You do not tarnish the honor of the Confederacy; your every action brightens it. Would to God others might say the same instead of trampling our beloved Constitution in the dust."

"Take a seat, sir; take a seat," Jackson urged. After Hampton sat, so did the Confederate general-in-chief, on a cane-backed chair well suited to his rigid posture. "You still have the advantage of me, for I know of no plots brewing against our government."

"You have a sizable army in northern Virginia, ready to compel the Yankees to obedience," Hampton said. After Jackson nodded, the senator went on, "I trust the men would also obey you if you called on them to preserve our republic from those who would destroy the principles on which it was founded."

"Speak your mind, if that is what you came for," Jackson said. Wade Hampton did nothing of the sort, but sat mute. Jackson 's bushy eyebrows came down low over his eyes. The scowl that made soldiers quail had no effect on the senator. Sighing, Jackson did something out of the ordinary for him: he gave ground. "Very well-you have my promise."

"I knew you were a true patriot," Hampton breathed. "Here, then: I shall ask my question, which is this-if you order your men to defend the Constitution of the Confederate States, will they move against the men here in Richmond who set it at naught?"

When Hampton spoke of setting an army in motion against Richmond, that was liable to be treason, though Jackson could not imagine his old comrade-in-arms disloyal to the CSA. "From whom, in your view, does the Constitution want defending?" he asked.

And, at last, the senator from South Carolina brought his fear and anger out into the light: "From President Longstreet, General, and from any other man who would tamper with the structure of society we have so long maintained in our beloved nation."

"Ahh." Jackson let out a long exhalation. "You oppose him because he intends to manumit the Negro."

"Of course I do," Hampton said. "What right-thinking white man in this country does not? My home state was first to leave the USA because of the federal government's continued interference with slavery, as our ordinance of secession clearly shows. Shall we tolerate from Richmond the tyra