The Wrong Choice
(Le Choix erroné)
by Luke Jackson
49,400 words
“Justice pour nous, justice pour tous; raison et liberté pour nous,
raison et liberté pour tous.”
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C’est une bonne idée (March 1861)
“Jean! Jean-Paul!” Jacque’s urgent cry came from behind me for what seemed like the hundredth time. As I had done some 99 times already, I continued to press my way forward through the deep snow, not looking back.
At first Jacque’s whining voice had been simply another minor annoyance, like the snow itself that fell a dead weight on my arms and shoulders and crept over the tops of my boots to melt within. Our horse-drawn tram had been obliged by the unexpected and unwanted snowfall to stop halfway up University Hill forcing the rest of the passengers and I to step down and make the rest of the way to our various destinations on foot.
For a block or so, I’d enjoyed the exercise, but gradually as the falling snow forced its way into my boots, welding my socks to my feet in a sodden mass, I could only grimace and make the best of it. Glancing at my pocket watch didn’t help. Indeed, it served only to make me more irritable and more determined to press on.
Soon enough, I reached the campus where, thankfully, a half dozen or so pairs of boots preceding mine had partially cleared a path through the snow. Alas, the cleared path provided Jacque with a similar advantage and soon he was at my shoulder.
“Jean-Paul!”
I ignored him; I had no alternative; Professor Hamilton always had the proctors lock the doors a minute past the hour to discourage late arrivals. I had several minutes still to spare, but I knew from experience that a moment’s conversation with Jacque would soon become five, then ten, and finally an entire hour would be lost in fruitless discussion.
(And, to be honest, I did not want to be seen with him. My own clothes were barely acceptable by college standards, while Jacque’s were those of a clochard, a colorful tramp perhaps, but still a tramp. It was bad enough that I must arrive at McGill’s gates by tram, while others came by private carriage.)
Jacque was not Paul’s LaPluffe’s Christian name, much less that given him at his Confirmation, but rather what we had come to call him over the years, because the cry « j’accuse » so often came from his lips. No cause was too small, no slight at English hands too trivial to be ignored. This had led to his first joining the Institut Canadien de Montréal (dragging me unwillingly behind him) then being ejected from it a month later as being too disruptive (and we were a society much given to debate). I remained a member as much because the Institute offered excellent library facilities as because of my belief in its cause: Justice pour nous, justice pour tous; raison et liberté pour nous, raison et liberté pour tous.
Sure enough, once Jacque stood breathless on the path before me, clad as always in flamboyant, but ill-fitting clothes, he waved a handbill in my face. Silently, I took it from him and began to read, more to avoid his harangue than due to any interest in its contents.
Senator Clay of The Confederate States of America was to lecture the following evening on “The Mutual Interests of Two Great Countries.” What interested me most about this announcement (apart from the quality of the paper it was printed on, a step or so above the thin greasy sheets that Jacque and his comrades normally made use of) was the location of the lecture. The village of Westmont in Cote St. Andre was home to the most well to do and the most detestable of our English conquers. I could no more imagine Jacque going to Westmont, than I could picture him standing at attention for “God Save the Queen.”
Indeed, it was a major accomplishment for him to have ventured as far west in our city as the university where, to his amazement, I have studied English literature for the past two years. Jacque’s own legal studies, begun with such enthusiasm two years before, had gradually been abandoned as the separatist fever overcame him. (Or perhaps the constant need to commute to and from Ville de Québec to attend Laval, the sole French-speaking university in Bas Canada, had erased his desire for an education.)
For Jacque, our province’s defeat on the Plains of Abraham a century before was a criminal act that still cried out for remedy and revenge.
The fact I had chosen to study the literature of the conqueror, of Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden was a truth he had yet to come to grips with. Never mind that he had only studied the works of Corneille and Racine in our years at the école secondaire because the curriculum had been forced upon him. For Jacque, France and England were equally detestable. Had France not abandoned us in our hour of need? Let their own provincial concerns take precedence over the needs of their American colonies? Never mind that France had had a revolution and two emperors in the intervening years; in Jacque’s eyes, their guilt remained.
“You plan to go to this lecture?” I asked. “You want me to accompany you?”
I heard a bell, heard an imaginary door close; I had lingered too long on the path and my class on 16th Century British History and England’s long Civil War had begun without me. To the south, another civil war was in progress, the war of whose purpose Senator Clay was to speak. Though I was not as passionate in my beliefs as Jacque, still the immediacy of the War Between the States, of any war where a young man might prove himself a hero, appealed to me.
“No, no.” Jacque moved closer; he gripped my arm as though I might run away, though I was now almost as wrapped up in the dream as he.
“We will go instead to the hotel where this Senator Clay is staying. We will appeal to him directly.”
Of course, Jacque’s “we,” meant Jacque alone would voice this appeal. My role, as always when English-speakers were involved, would be that of interpreter, Moses translating the words of God to man. Did I really want to be part of Jacque’s latest madness?
“Why should this Senator help? What can we the working people of Quebec offer him? He speaks in Westmont because it is there the rich English live, men of means who can finance the campaigns of his Confederacy. We can not give him money.”
“We will not give him money, we will give him men: A brigade, a battalion, a division ready to fight for his cause.”
“And why should our people be willing do that?”
“So that the Confederates in their turn will fight for our independence.”
I will be honest. This was the very first time a suggestion of Jacques or his like-minded companions had made the slightest sense to me. Immédiatement, I, too had the vision. The Yankees and I would fight side by side and drive the English from our land.
From Jacque’s smile, I could see that he shared my thoughts. Did he also share my fears? It would be many battles and many deaths before we achieved our dream.
The next morning, bright and far too early, we took the trolley to the Hotel Rasco despite the slight prospect of our actually getting to meet with Senator Clay.
Had it been up to Jacque, we would have gone the previous day. But I had pointed out the obvious. His touque—better suited to a child than a man, his ragged clothes—his sweater had holes in it, did not inspire trust. And his untrimmed hair and unkempt beard were unlikely to gain him entrance to the hotel, much less to the Senator’s private chambers.
Appropriately dressed with Jacque combed and groomed in a manner that my mother would have approved, we did get inside the hotel. And though the front desk denied all knowledge of Senator Clay, a hotel maid was easily persuaded by Jacque to provide the information. But, of course, we were met at the door of the hotel room by an officious secretary.
Told we needed an appointment, Jacque tried to bull his way into the room. I was barely holding him back, when a cultured voice from within said to let us inside.
Two men sat a small table, where one of the pair, the older, white-haired gentleman whose voice we’d heard, was enjoying breakfast. Still more plates with bacon, ham, and stacks of hotcakes lay untouched on the trolley, and I could see Jacque eying them hungrily. I hoped he would restrain himself. We never seemed to get enough food in those days, would be willing to eat meal after meal could we only afford it. Who would have dreamed that things were only going to get worse for us, not better?
The white-haired gentleman, a large white napkin tucked beneath his wing collar, heard Jacque (as translated by me) out, but then shook his head sadly. “We would appreciate any help you gentleman might offer, but I simply cannot promise you future aid on our part. Indeed, just the opposite.
“Our General Beauregard would eagerly welcome you all under his command. I can assure you [he meant me] that he can speak French with the same fluency as your friend. The problem is that we are looking to the British for their support and, alas, as I understand it, the British are your enemies.”
Alas, Senator Clay understood correctly. Still, he was very much the gentleman in his rejection and I was grateful that Jacque’s many unkind expletives went unnoticed by him.
The secretary who had first refused us admittance was all too eager to open the hotel-room door that we might exit. With equal passion, he closed it shut behind us.
We were halfway down the hall in the direction of the stairway, when the young man in the military uniform who had been sitting at table with the Senator came down the corridor after us. Would we join him for breakfast? Of course, we would. Or so I informed Jacques who, for the moment letting anger take the place of appetite, was all for continuing to make our way down the stairs and out of the building.
O
ur
amiable host, a Captain Thomas Hines, (he insisted we call him
Thomas) was only a year or two older than Jacque and I at best,
though, as I learned later, he was already a veteran Confederate spy.
His frequent smiles emerged from beneath an enviable bushy blond
moustache and I occasionally touched my own while we talked as if to
spur it on to matching effort.
We spoke about many things during our meal (yes, I admit to eating far more than was perhaps polite), during which somehow the Captain succeeded in learning all one could know about us, while revealing very little about himself. Jacque and I had been neighbors and playmates when we were children, had played lacrosse together while studying with the Jesuits at Brébeuf, and despite going our separate ways after we started college had somehow remained friends.
We were on our third cup of coffee, when the Captain finally revealed his true purpose in dining with us. Occasionally, I would offer a comment or raise a concern while the Captain spoke, but Jacques only continued to shovel forkful after forkful of the lavish hotel breakfast into his mouth, as if in fear he would not be seeing so much food so soon again. Just as well, for I was spared translating his thoughtless remarks.
Contrary to what the Senator had told us, Captain Tom felt that we might be of inestimable aid to the Confederate cause, aid that would surely be remembered when the war was concluded. We would not be serving in a line regiment of the Confederacy; instead, our help was needed to gather information on troop dispositions and supply lines in their Northern States. And it was not the intense and eager Jacque whose aid was required, but mine.
“You write as well as speak French?” he asked. I nodded.
“I would like you to go to New York, to act as a reporter for one of your papers. Given your efforts at McGill you should have no difficulty getting hired, particularly since you need not fuss about salary as you will be getting paid by me.”
This last remark, I did not translate.
“Along with your regular reports to your newspaper, you will transmit in your letters to your friend Jacque, written in French, of course, the information we really need.”
And while Jacque continued to rant and rave as we made our way back along the river from the hotel, all I could think of was that I would be doing something with my life at last, no longer a school boy doomed to discuss the works of dead poets, but a patriot doing a man’s work in the service of his native land.
Second Thoughts
Some seven or eight months after my enlistment in the Confederate cause, I began to wonder if I hadn’t enlisted on the wrong side. Though, it may seem harsh to say (even harsher to confide), we Canadiens Français are the colored persons of Canada doomed to be treated as second class citizens no matter that like the Negroes settled in the New England States we are nominally free.
In the Confederacy, the landless as well as the landed look down on the Negroes and the Catholics, their Protestant version of our Lord’s teachings seemingly lacking in the ways of Christian love. For that matter, their common Protestantism—whether Baptist, Episcopalian, or Methodist, binds them together only on Sundays.
More often, apart from the members of their own church, their respect, their loyalties, are reserved for members of their own clan. Enlistees in the Confederate forces that came from different states, even from different sections of the same state, had great difficulty in working with one another. Alas, for the Confederate cause, if one is to have men fight a war, they need fight together, able to depend on the men on either side of them. Too often, the rebel troupers (though unrelenting and brave) would act as if they and they alone were at war. They were fierce fighters; put two or three members of the same family side by side and they were near invincible. But an Alabama trouper fighting on Georgia soil might just decide to walk away from his regiment, paying no mind to the changing odds on the battlefield his departure meant.
We Bas-Canadiens tend to think of the Southern States in romantic terms, its people chivalrous, unyielding defenders of tradition, like ourselves, a beleaguered minority. They are home to the Arcadian French, so cruelly displaced by the English. Surely, our loyalties lie with them. But the forced exodus of the French from Canada’s Atlantic provinces took place in a long ago past. In the active present, both Michigan and Illinois, loyal to the Union, are home to large numbers of more recent French Canadian immigrants.
Of course, these were truths I learned only slowly and over the course of many months. The principal reason for this delay in my education was that my initial efforts on behalf of the Montreal Herald (under a pseudonym), Le Franco-Canadien (under my own name, Jean-Paul Mercier), and gathering intelligence for Captain Tom among the Union troops. I moved south only gradually as the progress of the War dictated.
(Not incidentally, Captain Tom had been correct. Both papers proved eager to hire me once I’d demonstrated that I was both literate and not apt to quarrel about salary. The Herald was Captain Tom’s suggestion; Le Canadien was mine.)
In both the North and South, my credentials as a reporter served to keep me out of prison for the most part. Of course, they offered no protection against rifle fire and cannon balls and I’d many a close call. They also marked me as a foreigner. This made little or no difference in the Northern States where entire battalions of Italians, Irish, even Scandinavians were not uncommon. But in the South, on learning I was a Canadian, the officers as well as the men often looked at me as if I had horns like a Jew.
As for the blacks, I will be honest, their presence made me nervous. I did not understand their language; they tended to swallow their words as if not really wanting to be heard. Turning to them for help, one met only with blank stares. On one occasion, while I lay in hiding, it was a Negro who betrayed my presence to the soldiers. But I am getting well ahead of my story.
Departure
I spent a month in the happy company of Captain Tom before my departure for the Yankee States in April 1861. We went over the codes that were to be used in my letters home to Jacque and discussed what information might be safely and usefully included in my newspaper reports. I was given maps of Maryland and Virginia, the areas of greatest interest to the Captain, and I was given similar-sized maps of Bas Canada with instructions on how I might overlay one with the other so as to transform a description of a Union General’s march on Richmond into a seemingly innocent discussion of Tante Helene’s proposed trip from Montréal to Trois Rivière.
The train by which I traveled from Montreal to Albany on the first stage of my journey gave little indication of the troubles that lay ahead for me. As we rolled across the newly built railroad trestle that connected us with the south shore of the St. Lawrence, I felt very much as if I were going off on a picnic. All the passengers shared such a feeling, I think. Our seats were comfortable and the noise and confusion which had accompanied our departure readily forgotten.
Not everyone had been as eager as I to see me on my way. My mother, heavily under the influence of our parish priest, had felt that merely being in the United States would corrupt me. Her warnings continued, judging by the movement of her lips in prayer, even as we pulled out of the station leaving her and my father behind me on the platform. (Jacque, too, was there, but he remained hidden behind a stanchion, knowing that my family disapproved of him. A long multi-colored scarf, dangling loosely about his neck, belied his attempts at concealment.)
Though my mother knew nothing of my work for Captain Tom, still she felt that my involvement in a foreign war, if only as a reporter, meant unnecessary danger.
I think she also feared that I secretly planned to enlist. “The bishop forbids it,” she cried, though I suspect she knew how little the words of a bishop meant to me at that time.
My father, though less influenced by what a priest might say, clearly shared her fears. But he would never voice these fears aloud. Raised on a farm, and coming to the city only as a married adult, he had been behind my going to the university. I know he was disappointed that I had dropped out to join in this quixotic adventure. He hugged me before I left, though. And he gave my mother an equally fierce hug as if to let me know that she would be in good hands while I was away.
Apart from Jacque, my friends at the Institut Canadien had not been at all supportive. Adrien Dessaulles, who, admittedly, could be as wearying on the subject of abolition as J’accuse with his lengthy list of obsessions, insisted that the Union cause was the only one that should, that must be embraced.
With Dessaulles, as with my father, I nodded when spoken to, but his arguments did not resonate with me. I had yet to see a black man face to face, and had no idea whether they were or were not fit to be slaves. Of course, I’d little choice but to nod agreement with the editor of Le Franco-Canadien:
Were the United States to prove successful in reuniting their country, then, driven by Manifest Destiny, they would soon turn their weaponry northward. Had the notorious abolitionist John Brown not declared at a meeting in Canada West that, his words, “once right-thinking English-speaking North Americans had crushed the Slavocracy of the South they should then turn to overthrowing the French Priestocracy of the North.”
The New York Herald, a supporter of the party Republican that had launched the War, had argued for the annexation of Canada. “The contracted views of the people of Lower Canada will be enlarged and expanded by an infusion of the Anglo-Saxon element and the energy of the people of the free States.”
No wonder Le Canadien was solid in its support of the Confederacy. “Dictatorial tyranny has its way in the person of Lincoln,” my editor had written alongside a doting biography of Jefferson Davis. My stories from the war front were expected to hew to much the same line, nor did I anticipate any difficulty in following this dictum.
The editor of the Montreal Herald had no such axe to grind. “Union, Confederacy, they’re all the same. Our readers just want to see the battles, up close and personal. Think of the war the way you would a hard fought lacrosse game, the more hits and injuries, the more our readers will lap it up.”
Someone less knowledgeable than I might have supposed the views of these two editors to represent not only their own personal feelings but also those of their disparate cultures. But I knew of a Shakespeare that had authored not only the history plays, (that provided the blood and guts the Herald editor sought), but the tragedies with their thoughtful interplay of conflicting motives. Macbeth, which I had studied in my freshman year, offered the best of both. In the course of reporting on the American war, I would write a new Macbeth.
The journey to Albany was interrupted only once when we stopped at the Yankee border so that the officers might examine our credentials.
Across the aisle from me, a large red-faced man had brought a great many trunks and suitcases with him. He was forced to open each one of them while the officers searched for contraband. I had no similar experience. My single battered suitcase went without inspection, while my new passport was quickly stamped after a brief examination. The officer did ask me one rather curious question. What was my race? “French?” I supposed. But he wrote down something entirely different and went on to the next person.
I ate the lunch of pork, pickles, and beer my mother had been kind enough to pack for me, glanced at, then tossed aside the pamphlets Jacque had given me, and looked out at the scenery which gradually began to be revealed as we headed further south.
First, the trees shed their coats of snow. Then, as the tracks ran between canyon walls, a stream began to poke its way through the ice until finally it turned into a raging torrent. When we left the canyon it was for higher ground stripped of all snow and dotted with patches of greenery. Above us in the trees, the buds had broken open to reveal green leaves and pale pink flowers.
F
rom
time to time, we would stop at one small town or other, good-sized
towns in some instances, that one or more passengers might board the
train. (I never saw anyone leave the train, but this may have been
because mine was a through car.)
A short time after we left each station, a conductor would appear to take a further look at our tickets. He often wore a different uniform from the man who had last examined them, suggesting, indeed the patch on his cap proclaiming, that he worked for a rail line other than the Grand Trunk.
Once, two conductors who worked for two competing rail lines appeared side by side at my chair. That is, the two rail lines competed. The men themselves were quite friendly, suggesting they must have worked side by side for some time. Each gave way to the other with exaggerated gestures until, finally, one did take my ticket. He immediately handed it back to me, remarking to his companion that here was “another Canadian guest.” The pair walked away together, chuckling.
Albany
I may have fallen asleep for a short while, but when we stopped in Albany that evening to change trains and, in my case, to spend the night, I was fully awake. I needed to be.
The first hansom driver I spoke with promised for a truly outrageous sum to take me to a first-class hotel. I wondered aloud if there might not be something in the way of a second-or even a third-class establishment in town that my employer could be expected to reimburse me for. The driver, apparently satisfied that I was neither rich nor a fool, then took me to a small but comfortable boarding house nearby for half the sum I’d originally been quoted.
Meals were included in the price of the boarding house (as proved to be the case at virtually all American hostelries) and we ate supper en famille.
Apparently, it was the custom at dinner for all the guests to introduce themselves. All did, save for one large silent fellow with the features of an Indian, whom I learned from a second table mate was one of the construction crew working on the new State Capitol.
I was one of the last to speak, but as soon as the others learned that I was a reporter, here in the States to write about the war, virtually all of them had something more they wanted to say.
For one elderly white-haired woman, the oldest at the table, it was that she hoped that I might find something more pleasant to write about.
Her niece who sat next to her was about to say something along much the same lines, when a florid-faced man interrupted to say jokingly that he hoped the war would last long enough to have something to write about. “We’ll soon have them on the run.”
While no one disputed openly with this opinion, a fair-haired cleric, not much older than I, but who already had a receding hairline, volunteered that no matter how long it did take, the nation would not rest until slavery was abolished.
The young woman sitting next to him held onto his hand throughout this short speech, gazing up at him adoringly, from which I gathered, as he held her hand with equal fervor that he must be of the Protestant persuasion and thus free to marry.
Somehow, despite my mother’s fears, I didn’t think the young clergyman was liable to corrupt me.
After dinner, I went up to my room, but not being tired or willing yet to attempt the bed which sagged threateningly in the middle much like a hammock, I went downstairs and out onto the porch to see what could be seen of Albany from that vantage point.
My eyes only adjusted gradually to the darkness, so that I first heard rather than saw that I was not alone.
“Not everyone shares his opinion,” said a disembodied voice at my side. A slim young man with dark sideburns that partially covered his acne-pitted cheeks stood smoking a cheroot as slim as he.
“Some of us believe this war is a mistake.” The young man’s voice was filled with pain as if he were personally aggrieved.
Before I could learn the nature of the tragedy or tragedies that had helped form his opinion, a second voice spoke up from the step below us. “It’s all about profit,” the voice said in the clipped tones of a proper Englishman. I remembered the man now from the supper table, like me a relatively new arrival to the United States though a good deal older than I. “A man will have, say, an idle factory or perhaps he has made too many poorly-sewn uniforms and requires a market for them. ‘Let there be war,’ he’ll cry to his Congressmen. And, if enough money accompanies his and others pleas to Congress, you can be sure the country will have war with its renewed demand for uniforms, weapons, and the hundred other items an army needs to go on the march.”
“And never mind the poor bugger who dies in War’s name. We all know who that will be.” the young man interjected. Whereupon, having said all he felt could be said on the subject, the young man opened the door to the house, stepped inside and left us alone on the porch.
The smoke from a still stronger smelling cigar heralded the second man’s advance across the porch toward me. “As there is to be a war,” he confided, “and nothing can be done to stop that, the best a prudent man can do is to be sure he is one of the buggers who profits from it.”
I forbear from any reply feeling sure that the man had only just launched into what would and did prove to be a lengthy peroration on the subject.
“Not owning a factory, nor being close friends with the President or one of his advisors, not all lines is open to us, uniforms for one. Still there is much a soldier will need of equipment that will not be otherwise available to him.”
He paused, no doubt expecting some kind of brief response on my part, but I only continued to peer at him through the darkness and cigar smoke.
“Rum for one. Or whiskey, rather, as whiskey is what they drink out here in the colonies. The enlisted man always wants his drink and when he can’t get it officially—damn to all those who hold the government’s contracts—he’ll do his best to get it unofficially. That’s where we come in.”
It took me a moment to realize I’d been asked to join, no, incorporated in this quixotic financial venture. My reaction much have shown on my face, for he added quickly, “T’will take only a few dollars to get started. We’ll use the profits to buy more whiskey and double our money in no time.”
Twice nothing is nothing, I thought, but what I said to him, gesturing toward the house behind us, was, “If I had those few dollars, do you think I would stay in such a place as this.”
A moment passed in which I had time to realize how unnecessarily cruel my reply had been. If this poor man had those few dollars, would he also have elected to lodge here?
The Other Side of the River
My rooming house bed proved to be just as saggy and uncomfortable as my initial glance had first suggested. Nonetheless, I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow and slept well beyond the hour when I’d planned to rise.
No time to prepare copy for my papers; this would have to be done on the train; though I didn’t yet really have all that much to write about.
Besides breakfast was waiting. Or rather it had waited for me. A surly landlady handed me a plate of cold eggs and bacon from the oven; but to give her credit, she made a fresh stack of toasted bread, adding to it till I’d had my fill.
Walking though the capital I saw no signs of the war to come, unless it was the many flags on display. The only men in uniform stood behind the ticket window in the train station. “I need to go to New York,” I said.
“Which route?”
“I didn’t know I had a choice.”
“Course you do,” interjected a second official standing close at the first man’s side, “Direct or via New Jersey. Depends on which side of the river you want to end up on.”
“I want to go to New York.”
“Direct is best then but can’t always be counted on.”
“Then I’ll go the other way to Jersey.”
“Direct is cheaper.”
“Oh, leave the boy alone,” said the other man. “Direct’s not that much cheaper. What’s two bits these days?”
“A plate of eggs and ham, a pot of coffee, a haircut and a shave.”
“Still, tell him the truth.”
I rather hoped they would tell me the truth. Or, at least, that they would sell me some kind of ticket quickly, lest I had to spend another night in Albany.
“Direct train’s not running today. Line’s being used by the Army.”
“A ticket to New Jersey then. Please.”
The second man pushed the first aside and hollered through the small window. “You’ll be happier. Great view of the city from New Jersey.”
“City is always best at a distance,” the first man said and they both laughed.
They looked suspiciously at the coins I offered but after some further consultation with the books their trade was based on, they sold me the ticket. And just in time. I’d no sooner stepped out on the platform then the train to New Jersey, New York arrived.
New York City
The town in New Jersey in which I found myself that night was bare of hostelries. The lodging I located, finally, and only well after dark, was in the home of a family that had decided, reluctantly, to take in a lodger. The ceiling of the attic room they’d settled on for that purpose sloped in both directions and I could not quite stand erect even at its center.
“You’re a tall one, aren’t you? Well, you said it was for just the one night.”
They’d furnished the room with a few lithographs on the sloping walls, a washbasin, a chamber pot, and a mug of hot water the landlord brought up after I was settled. I had a kerosene lamp to undress by. Once lit, I saw that my bed for the night had been covered with a multi-colored patchwork quilt of exquisite workmanship (on which I forbore from commenting for fear the landlord, a crooked-back man with a pinched-in face and a flattened nose, would take it away). The sagging bed, as clearly all beds I would encounter while lodging with strangers would sag, had been handed down from one member of the family to the next until it was my turn.
Windows at each end of the attic brought in a pleasant breeze. Not till the next morning was I to discover that they faced east and west respectively so as to bring in the dawn’s early light.
I was dressed and out of the house before anyone else was stirring. Forgoing a promised breakfast—was this day not to be the true start of my career as a journalist, I made my way the few short blocks to the banks of the Hudson River. All about me, the world no longer hinted at spring, but shouted it aloud. Though patches of snow could be seen here and there upon the grass, leaves sprouted from all the trees, and one could make out the buds of what promised to be hundreds of fragrant blooms.
The ferry was not long in coming, but a crowd of men and women were already waiting to board it. From the ferry deck, the city was invisible, shielded by the tall banks of the Hudson. But once I’d climbed the long stairway on the far shore, the clamor and excitement of the largest city in America was all around me.
As Adrien Dessaulles had predicted, the sights and smells of New York were overwhelming, even for a long-time inhabitant of the grandest city in Canada. As I stood gaping, trying to get my bearings, a second ferry arrived discharging its crowd. Horse-drawn trolleys came and went in every direction, and a crowd of pedestrians did their best to shoulder me aside. I stumbled for several blocks away from the river, until I reached the Broadway.
H
ere,
I ate some fresh-baked bread and a thin slice of overly salted ham
purchased from a vendor, and began to slowly stroll southward in the
direction of the ocean.
The crowds were no less dense in this direction, though better dressed on the whole. Men in top hats and frock coats stood and argued on the steps of the stock exchange. Further up the street, a dozen or more shops, their windows filled with goods, competed for my attention.
Several elegantly dressed women stood gazing fixedly at me through a shop window and it was several moments before I realized they were statues, put there to display the dresses and coats they wore and not real women at all.
Then, I saw, no heard, my first soldiers. Bugles and drums preceded the marching men, the sounds of their instruments echoing off the buildings. Then, five abreast, a contingent of men in blue came marching down the center of the road toward me. I stepped aside, but fared no better pressed against the shop windows, for a parade of urchins, their swinging arms aping the movements of the soldiers, surged along the sidewalk following the parade indifferent to those they might jostle in their path. Why were they not in school? Or, at the very least, hard at work at their apprenticeships?
I must have voiced my thoughts aloud, for the elegantly dressed older woman who stood next to me, replied, “The boys can’t help it. All this excitement is much too much for them. I feel like marching, too, even at my age. “
She then asked me where I was from, saying she could tell by my accent that I must be from abroad and perhaps this explained why I was not yet in uniform. I told her I was Canadian and she said that I was the very first Canadian she had ever met and that she was very glad.
She shook my hand then, and gave me her card. “As you are my first Canadian, I can give you a special price. This goes for any of my girls.” I realized then, though her card made it almost as clear, that she was in the business.
Before I could take advantage of her generous offer, the band was upon us. They played, “Yankee Doodle,” and other martial airs. The crowds attempted to dance in the streets before them, but were soon pushed aside by the police. After the band came the soldiers of the Seventh Regiment of Massachusetts, their bayonets brightly glancing in the sun; their steps firm; their bearing proud and erect.
The crowd parted for the soldiery to pass, but reunited before and behind them to become a dense, solid, impenetrable mass. Fire engines were brought to the street-corners and jangled their bells. Flags were everywhere. The buildings along Broadway were themselves a decoration, so variedly beautiful is their architecture, so magnificent their proportions; but I expect the street was not often decorated as it appeared that day, packed with tier upon tier of people from sidewalk to house-roof.
As we approached the open space of the Battery, the crowd only grew denser. Yet the soldiers continue to march on through the walls of human beings, close, compact, unshrinking, as the police, like a modern Moses, parted the sea of people. The soldiers marched on under a perfect canopy of flags, gilded by the sun, the cheers rolling along beside them like the thunder of canons. They marched past buildings whose fronts were covered with flags, while above them the doors, windows, stoops, and balconies were jammed with cheering men and women. Handkerchiefs, waved by fair hands and as numerous as the forest-leaves which the winds rustle, saluted the gallant volunteers.
I marched as close as I could behind them as we passed an effigy labeled “Jeff Davis as he would be”—hung, and bearing the motto,
“ Jeff Davis, Jeff Davis, beware of the day,
When the Seventh shall meet thee in battle array.”
Other unfurled banners bore mottoes in somewhat better taste, declaring the “National Guard was for the Union,” and that its members should imitate the National Guard of 1776, the year the Americans declared their independence from Britain.
Somehow, I succeeded in making my way through that vast crowd, and caught up with the rear ranks as they came finally to a halt. I soon learned that the soldiers, too, were on their way south to Washington, from where they would be dispatched as a company to wherever their generals could best make use of them.
My initial attempts at conversation with the men were not particularly successful, the result, I think, of the contempt, then as now, that many servicemen have for civilians. Finally, one man, recognizing my accent, called out to a comrade, “Hey Frenchie, here’s another of your lads.”
“Frenchie,” proved to be George Boulanger from Trois Rivière. He spoke the bare minimum of English and was pleased as punch that he was at last able to make use of his native language in conversation. Seven or eight years older than me, and never married, with watery blue eyes and an imperfect moustache, he had come to the States on the instructions of his priest to fight for liberty. Apparently, his priest hadn’t heard the latest ruling from the bishops that we French of Bas Canada were to remain aloof from this war.
Our talk continued as his company, responding to a yelled command, pushed aboard the ferry.
The sight that greeted us from the deck was of an ocean harbor alive and bustling. Recall, that Montreal’s harbor still waited empty of vessels for the last of the ice to clear. Here, ships were everywhere. Some at anchor, some just entering the harbor, while a fleet of small boats moved effortlessly in and around them, more ships and boats I’m sure than could be glimpsed in any other harbor in the world.
Pushed in among George’s companions, I soon found myself traveling back to the same New Jersey shore I’d left early that morning, albeit somewhat further to the south where the steep banks of the Hudson gave way to nearly flat land.
Several hundred people had congregated about the Jersey City ferry and railroad depot awaiting our arrival. Immaculately clad ladies filled the balconies that extended around the railroad depot, nearly every balcony bearing the Stars and Stripes. The depot’s interior was also beautifully decorated with flags. As we neared the dock, a salute was fired and the steamer Persia dipped her colors several times.
As soon as the ferry had been made fast to the bridge, the order was given to go forward. The band struck up the Yankee anthem, the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ which was nearly drowned out by the accompanying cheers from the crowd in and about the depot. As the soldiers entered the railroad depot, cheer after cheer broke forth, the ladies waving their handkerchiefs and flags. By my watch, the cheering lasted for nearly twenty minutes. Just long enough as it proved for me to compose and send a telegram.
My first attempts, in French, were much too long. “All the talk is of the war. I go now to Baltimore with new friend George Boulanger of Trois Rivière. Will write soon.” I cut this down considerably, and George, looking over my shoulder, said I might get by with fewer words still if I signed it with his name rather than mine. “They’ll know the message is from you, will they not?”
I got the clerk’s attention, barely, for he, too, was fascinated both by the armed men and the cheering crowd, but was dismayed by what he then told me. “Message has got to be in English. Military censors you know. And you can’t tell where you is going.” (He’d recognized the word “Baltimore,” if not the balance of the message. Either way, French was out, and the plans so carefully laid by the Captain and I in the Hotel Rasco were now drifting on the wind.)
“Tell you what you can do though,” the man continued, “That your train out on the platform?”
I couldn’t see through the crowd, but I supposed it was. It would be my train, that is, if I could succeed in getting aboard.
“Tell’m you’re taking old ’98 instead.”
And so my first message as a spy read, “Took the 98 to Three Rivers.” And was signed George Boulanger.
The men and I passed through the station finally and out onto the platform where the second of two huge locomotives was being hitched to the longest train I had ever seen.
A sergeant came up to me then and demanded, his conversation livened by a great deal of profanity, to know who I was and what I was doing delaying his troops.
“He’s Frenchie’s pal, leave him alone,” the men around us cried. But the sergeant merely said, “Wait here,” as he went off to get instructions from a superior.
I had no intention of waiting—I suspected, correctly, that this train was intended solely for the army and that civilians like me would have to wait a day or three before we could find transportation.
Fortunately, the men of George’s company felt the same way, albeit for different reasons, and they swept me along with them up into the carriage. We were all in our places, and one of George’s comrades had even thrown a blue greatcoat over my shoulders by way of disguise, when a lieutenant not much older than the men he commanded entered the carriage trailed a step or two behind by the sergeant who had fetched him.
“No civilians on this train,” the lieutenant proclaimed. No one said anything and the men at the far end of the car who had been engaged in a healthy debate grew deathly still.
“Fellows, you heard the Lieutenant.” These words came from the sergeant.
“Let him stay, Sarge, let him stay. He’s Frenchie’s pal.” spoke up half a dozen of the men.
“Sergeant, remove that man from the train.”
“Sir, perhaps it would be best if you would take the action.”
The lieutenant sighed in resignation, stepped forward, and then paused as two of the soldiers, two very large soldiers, stepped out and, turning their backs, blocked the aisle ahead of him.
“I may be needed elsewhere,” the lieutenant said and vanished down the corridor in the opposite direction. The men gave a great cheer, the argument at the far of the car renewed, and the sergeant settled himself in place, pushing aside one poor soldier who was now forced to walk down the corridor with his duffel and rifle to look for another seat.
Our train numbered eighteen cars in all; some like the passenger car my friends and I pushed into were similar to the ones I’d ridden in the previous two days where we sat two abreast, with fine scenic views. But the men of the Sixth Massachusetts regiment which was to accompany George’s comrades in the Seventh found themselves crammed side by side on narrow benches in windowless carriages that were normally used to carry freight. Tant pis.
The first movement of the locomotives brought out cheer after cheer from the crowd, and as the train slowly glided out from the depot, the crowd kept up their cheers and waving of flags. Several of the watching ladies were in tears, deeply affected at the scene, and one old gentleman appeared to be crying like a child.
On to Baltimore
As I saw the need to take notes, George and then the balance of his comrades soon learned I was a reporter. They had already given me valuable quotes that would serve the Herald well, but the editor of Le Canadien would not be pleased to hear. Echoing the florid-faced man who’d spoken out back at the boarding house in Albany, they declared Johnny Reb would soon be on the run, the hope being that with their mission completed, they could soon return to farms, wives and sweethearts.
As for George, it was his intent to remain in Maine, south of the border. “My brothers have taken all the good land back home.” We Catholics, my own parents excepted, do tend to have large families, and the result can only be less and less farmland for each new generation. A pity, for George with his square frame and broad shoulders seemed built for life behind the plow.
When we arrived at the next great city, I assumed it was Baltimore, but no, it was Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania. (The Yankees appear to have as many States as we have cities in Canada.)
A great crowd of Pennsylvanians had gathered in the station to welcome us and to see off some of their own troops. The men of the 7th were grateful for their support, but more so for the food that was soon handed up through the window. George and I ended up with an entire roast chicken to split between us.
With chicken in my stomach along with half the contents from George’s flask and occasional drafts from the other flasks the men passed along from hand to hand, I soon fell asleep and so missed a view of the state of Delaware through which we also passed.
While I slept, Jacque and the Captain were doing their best to make sense of the telegram I’d sent them. “Who or what is George the Baker?” the Captain asked.
“Boulanger is a common name,” Jacque replied, “I imagine he lives in Trois Rivière.”
“Or comes from there,” the Captain added. “And I think I know what ’98 might stand for.” He began to draft his own telegram and to pour over the tentative itinerary I’d left behind.
Most of the men were also sleeping as we entered the outskirts of Baltimore. The sound of musket fire woke us. We didn’t need the Sergeant’s voice to tell us that something was up.
“You will bring all your equipment with you when we exit the train. You will leave behind anything you would not bring into action.” The men groaned, those who had brought non-critical items like a favorite blanket or a sweater sewn by a wife or girlfriend groaned the loudest. But they made no protest. Apparently, they knew their sergeant well enough to know what was debatable and what was not.
Remarkably, given the liquor we’d consumed, we exited the train in orderly fashion and I looked on as the men inspected their rifles under the Sergeant’s watchful eye and refilled their canteens from the large water barrel that had been rolled along the platform.
As the Lieutenant marched toward us in the wake of several other superior officers, the Sergeant put his hand on my shoulder and said in a kindly voice, “You’d best disappear now. If you plan to go on to Washington, then you need wait till we clear the city. A French accent won’t protect you from bullets.”
Baltimore
In 1861, Baltimore was a city of divided loyalties. Some residents were for keeping the Union together; others believed the federalists had gone too far, that Maryland ought to join with the other Confederate States in preserving the right to determine their own destiny. (These latter were my own feelings with regard to Bas Canada.)
Baltimore was also a city with two widely separated rail stations, one serving the states to the north and one serving the country to the west and south. As soldiers arrived from the north heading to the army of the Potomac they had to cross the city to board trains heading southward.
On April 19th when the Sixth and Seventh Massachusetts Regiments arrived at the President Street depot, Confederate sympathizers blocked their transfer across the city. The troops dismounted from their train and with guns loaded and fixed bayonets they attempted to march southward. A series of horse-drawn trams bearing supplies and munitions followed slowly behind them. And in amongst the troops, clinging closely to the walls of the houses was this reporter.
F
rom
Gay to South Street, the Union soldiers who marched or, rather, ran
through the town were subjected to a constant barrage. Large paving
stones were hurled into the ranks from every direction. To the
surprise of those in the Massachusetts regiment with abolitionist
sympathies, many of the Negroes who were standing about in the
streets joined in the assault.
At Gay Street, I hid in a doorway, watching as the men I’d eaten and drunk with fired a number of shots in retaliation, though without hitting anyone, so far as I could ascertain. After firing this volley the soldiers again broke into a run. I was preparing to follow, not willing to be entirely on my own in a strange city, but another shower of stones was hurled into the ranks at Commerce Street with such force as to knock down several of the men. The order was given to George’s company to halt and fire. The order had to be repeated several times, both the Sergeant and the Lieutenant shouting and cursing, before the men could be brought to a halt.
The men’s training took over finally. They wheeled and fired some twenty shots, but from their having to stoop and dodge to avoid the stones, only four or five shots took effect. The marks of a greater portion of their balls were visible on the walls of the adjacent warehouses, even up to the second stories.
Four citizens of Baltimore fell, two of whom died in a few moments and the other two were carried off, supposed to be mortally wounded. The Union cause gained little from these men’s deaths, for those citizens of Baltimore who till then been indifferent to either side, identified with the fallen, and in an instant had aligned themselves against the soldiers.
A woman, my mother’s age, the owner of the business in whose doorway I was hiding, came out of her shop to ask why such a nice young man as me was getting involved in such a dreadful business.
I explained that I was a correspondent, a Canadian, whereupon she invited me into her shop, and offered me a cup of tea and some very nice pound cake with raisins and dried plums in it.
The Union men were driven back at that moment, so that had I had not been huddled inside the shop, I might well have been the next victim of the angry mob.
As one of the Union soldiers stopped to aim his rifle, he was struck with a stone and knocked down. As he attempted to rise, another stone struck him in the face. He pushed through the doorway of the store, crawling on hands and knees. For several moments he lay prostrate, clasping his hands and begging piteously for his life, saying that his officers had threatened him with instant death if he refused to accompany them. He said—a lie—that one half of the men had been forced to come in the same manner, and he hoped all who forced others to come might be killed before they got through the city. He pleaded so hard that no further vengeance was bestowed upon him, though some of the men in the shop were for it.
I was glad he was successful in his pleas, for I recognized him; he’d been among those who shared their liquor with me on the train south; yet, as a reporter, I could not intervene on his behalf.
I can’t be sure what became of this man for I left before his fate was decided. The woman who’d invited me into the shop did say that once the battle outside died down, her husband would take the man to the police station to have his wounds dressed. Still, passions raged everywhere and the couple might simply have abandoned him to the mob.
The battle had moved on down the street little more than a block when I emerged to find the balance of the day a constant repetition of what had gone before. The Union men would fire a volley scattering their attackers. Their officers would order a further advance; the men would be off running, when once again some three or four parties would issue from concealment and fire into them. Some died instantly, others crawled a few steps only to fall back awaiting capture or death. The swift and the lucky would regain their feet, and proceed with their comrades, the whole running as fast as they could.
Somehow or other, the main body of the men made it to the southern depot with me following close behind them. A running fire was kept up by the soldiers the entire distance, the crowd continuing to hurl stones into the ranks throughout the whole line of march. Alas, neither George Boulanger nor his lieutenant was with us when the sergeant herded his men onto the Washington-bound train.
Washington
The train ride from Baltimore to Washington was not a pleasant one. I had slipped aboard along with the men in Frenchie’s company. We all were too exhausted to do little more than fall back into the nearest seat when permitted to sit down.