How Few Remain

Jackson sighed again, this time with deep regret. "I am afraid we shall, Senator," he said. Hampton stared at him. He went on, "The president has persuaded me that his policy is in the best interest of our country. If not for the intervention of Britain and France, we might well have failed in the War of Secession. If not for their intervention, we should have had a far more difficult time in this war. If we forfeit their support by maintaining an institution they despise, how shall we fare against the Yankees the next time we have to face them?"

"We'll lick 'em, of course," Wade Hampton III replied at once. "We always have. We always will."

"I wish I shared your certainty," Jackson said. "From the bottom of my heart, I wish I shared your certainty. But I do not. I ca

Hampton 's countenance darkened. "General, you are making a mistake if you choose to side with a man who would cast down our peculiar institution."

"Senator, you are making a mistake if you seek to suborn me into treason against the duly elected head of my government," Jackson answered evenly. "The Army will stand behind the president, sir; you may take that to be as much a given as one of Euclid 's axioms of geometry. This being so, have we anything further to say to each other?"

"I think not." Senator Hampton headed for the door. "You need not accompany me, General; I can find my own way out." He opened the door from the parlor to the front hall, then slammed it shut.

Another window-rattling slam marked his departure from Jackson 's home.

"Good heavens!" his wife exclaimed when he returned to the table. "You sent the senator away unhappy, Tom." She took a longer look at Jackson. "And you are unhappy, most unhappy, yourself. What happened between the two of you?"

"Nothing I much care to discuss," Jackson answered. "Least said, soonest mended." He hoped with all his heart that his flat rejection of Hampton 's overtures would persuade the senator any attempt at a coup d'etat was foredoomed to failure. If it didn't, force of arms would persuade Hampton and whoever backed him of the same thing. "We had a disagreement, that's all, and the senator from South Carolina is and has always been a man of somewhat hasty temper."

His son's eyes glowed. " Hampton 's red-hot for holding the nigger down and putting a foot on his neck," Jonathan said. "I'll bet he was trying to talk Father into going against manumission."

Jackson rolled his eyes up to the heavens. "Senator Hampton is a fool," he growled. Jonathan gri

And, sure enough, when Jackson went to the War Department the next morning to continue discussion with General Rosecrans and Minister Hay, he was not altogether astonished to have a young lieutenant take him aside and lead him down the hall to a small room where President Longstreet sat waiting. Without preamble, Longstreet said, "You had a visit from Wade Hampton last night."

"Yes, Your Excellency, I did," Jackson said.

"He asked you to help overthrow the government if I persist in moving us toward manumission." Longstreet did not phrase it as a question.

"By his request, Mr. President, what passed between us last night is a private matter," Jackson said.

"You need not tell me-I know Hampton 's mind," Longstreet said. "I also know you sent him away with a flea in his ear."

"How do you know-?" Jackson paused. "You are having him watched." Spoken so baldly, it sounded like a transgression.

But Longstreet nodded, unembarrassed. "I most certainly am. If he were actor enough to simulate the fury he showed outside your home, he would do better before the footlights than in the Senate. I assure you, General, I do not intend our nation to be torn asunder in the hour of our greatest triumph."

"Our greatest triumph." Jackson sighed. "A great pity General Stuart ca

"That it is," Longstreet agreed. "Still, he fell in action, as he no doubt would have wished to do, and we have avenged and shall avenge ourselves upon the Apaches manyfold for his assassination." But nothing, not even the death of a friend of many years, could derail Longstreet's train of thought for long. "Believe me, General, I am glad you share my views on the integrity of our nation."

"I do indeed," Jackson said. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln had not intended the United States to be torn asunder, either.

But Longstreet, almost as if in response to Jackson 's thought, went on, "And I shall not allow Hampton and his fellows any opportunity to do us mischief, either. I shall steal their thunder. Easter has come and gone; the end of April approaches. Still Blaine delays and delays and delays. He shall delay no more. Is the army gathered by the Potomac in readiness?"

"You know it is, Your Excellency," Jackson replied, as if he had been insulted.

"Of course I do," the president said soothingly. "Still, the question had to be asked. At today's session with the Yankees, you and Minister Benjamin are to tell them the war will resume in forty-eight hours unless we, the British Empire, and France have the full acquiescence of the United States to all demands made against them before that time shall have expired."

"Yes, sir!" Jackson 's voice bubbled with enthusiasm. "We shall punish them as they deserve." He thought for a moment. "And, in so doing, we make Hampton and his complaints into smaller matters than they would be otherwise."

"Just so," James Longstreet said. "I have told you before, I believe, that you are, or you can be, more astute in matters political than one might suppose."

"You natter me beyond my deserts, sir," Jackson said. "Like you, my son had no trouble ciphering out the reason on account of which Senator Hampton paid me a call, though I did not realize what it was until he made himself unmistakably plain."

"Jonathan's a clever lad," Longstreet said, smiling. "Remember, the United States are to have forty-eight hours from the moment you deliver the ultimatum. Make careful note of the time, that we may not unduly delay their punishment should its infliction prove necessary."

"I shall carry out your orders in every particular, Mr. President," Jackson said. "You may rest assured on that score."

"I do, General, believe me." Longstreet got to his feet. "And now Lieutenant Latham will take you to Mr. Benjamin. I leave to the two of you the ma

" I am confident I know a man hiding his light under a bushel when I see one," Jackson said. Ignoring Longstreet's modest little wave, he went on, "I also have great faith in Mr. Benjamin's ingenuity." He rose and followed the young officer to the room where the Confederate minister to the USA waited.

"Ah, General Jackson!" Judah P. Benjamin exclaimed in delight, or an artful counterfeit thereof. "The president has told you of his intention?"

"He has." Jackson knew how abrupt his nod was. Benjamin's round, smiling, Semitic face, framed by hair and beard dyed a black that defied and denied his years, never failed to make the Confederate general-in-chief nervous. The statesman was too openly successful, too openly clever a Jew to suit Jackson 's stern Christianity.