Page 57 of Queen

was happening and smiled. He stood and offered her his hand, asked her

  if she would like to dance.

  Queen could not believe her cars. This must be what Jane called being

  drunk, for it was unreal to her and wonderful. She sat staring at her

  adored father until he smiled again, and repeated his request. Believing

  him now, Queen accepted his offered hand. Jass led her to the center of

  the hallway, and to the distant music they could hear from the ballroom,

  he danced with her. They were alone, the two of them, in the vast, empty

  hall, the portraits of their ancestors staring down at them.

  It was the happiest night of Queen's life.

  55

  The Southern celebrations continued well into the New Year. Not even the

  seizing of United States arsenals provoked a reaction from Washington.

  There was a small hiccup in early January when someone burst into the

  tavern in Florence, where Jass was drinking with friends, to tell them

  that President Buchanan was sending a warship to reinforce the federal

  garrison at Fort Sumter, a small island in the middle of Charleston

  Harbor. They all raced from the tavern to the telegraph office, where the

  news was confirmed. There was general astonishment that it was the

  passive, lame-duck Buchanan who had taken this aggressive action, and a

  general, sobering realization that there were many federal army forts

  throughout the South. If there was to be war, the North had a natural

  advantage. A few men immediately enlisted in militia units, for there was

  no Southern army yet, while the others champed at the bit for news, and

  insisted that Alabama should show her solidarity with the sister state.

  Jass, wanting to be close to the source of news, the telegraph office,

  slept at the hotel for the next few nights, to the distress of both

  Lizzie and Sally, who felt he should be at home with them. For the

  following week, the South held its breath. Six days day later, they heard

  that the ship carrying the reinforcements, the Star of the West, had

  turned about under fire from Charleston shore batteries, and jubilation

  returned. The independence of South Carolina had been challenged, the

  rebellious state had won, and on the same day Mississippi withdrew from

  the Union.

  "The Yankees," Alec Henderson told Letitia, "are all piss and wind." Mrs.

  Henderson clucked at the language, but forgave her husband because these

  were stirring times, and she agreed with him. Still, she determined to

  try to curb his potty mouth when order was restored to the land.

  470

  QUEEN 471

  Momentous news now reached them with dizzying speed. Almost every day,

  it seemed, another state seceded. Florida, and then, to considerable

  rejoicing in the streets of Florence, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and

  Texas were the next to leave.

  When the telegraph officer rushed out to tell the assembled multitude

  that Kansas had been admitted into the Union as a slave-free state, he

  was jeered and pelted with mud and small rocks. He got a cut over his

  eye, but took it in good part. It was only sport, the boys were in high

  spirits, and who needed Kansas?

  Delegates from the seceding states were to meet in Montgomery, Alabama,

  to form a new provisional government. Jass had no official role, but was

  set upon a political career and had many friends of influence, so he

  decided to attend, if only as a spectator. Lizzie and Sally were inclined

  to argue with him, but Jass lost his temper. They were all perfectly safe

  at The Forks, he assured his women; no harm could come to them. The North

  was not going to do anything to hinder the rebellion; they were having

  a peace convention in Washington, for heaven's sake. And even if some

  retaliation did eventuate, at some later time, Florence was a very long

  way from the center of any possible action.

  "What if the baby comes?" Lizzie asked him, crying softly, but even the

  prospect of a new child, another son perhaps, did not deter Jass.

  "You've had babies before, and it isn't quite due yet," he whispered to

  Lizzie. "I'll only be gone for a couple of weeks. "

  Thus Jass went to Montgomery, and was present at the creation of a new

  country. The name chosen for that new country was the Confederate States

  of America, and Jass was profoundly moved. This was how it should be, he

  thought; this was how it should have been all along, for the very name

  itself represented what he believed America to be. A confederation, a

  group of sovereign states banded together in a common cause, not a

  federation, which implied surrender of power to a central authority. When

  Jefferson Davis was presented to them as president, the bands played what

  was to become their

  472 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  anthem, and Jass sang "Dixie" as loudly and lustily as anyone there.

  He rode back to The Forks with a full heart. Now that the deed was done,

  it was as if a festering boil had been lanced. He was filled with a sense

  of peace and purpose. He attended his family with care and affection, and

  went about his business with an unaccustomed vigor, for now the new

  country had to be made to prosper.

  It didn't matter that the new country had no treasury, Jass, like many

  others, invested heavily in Confederate bonds, believing them to be

  gilt-edged. They had cotton and powerful allies, for Great Britain had

  to protect the supply of that cotton to its mills in Manchester. Even if

  the North was initially belligerent to the South, it was unlikely to take

  on John Bull, and must eventually accept the fact of the new Confederacy.

  The two nations of America would live in harmony and prosperity, and the

  Jackson fortune would become greater than ever before.

  But what was a country without a king? Sally was less sanguine about their

  prospects. Although she believed in the idea of confederation, she had no

  faith in Jefferson Davis as their leader. She had met him several times

  when James was alive and active in politics, and was astonished when he

  was chosen as their president. The Confederacy needed a visionary general,

  not a pedantic schoolmaster. An intelligent and erudite man, Davis had an

  unpredictable temper, and was given to prolonged bouts of melancholy.

  Sally had known many powerful men, with Andrew Jackson, whatever his

  faults, as the greatest, and could not see in Jefferson Davis the dynamic

  aura of natural leadership. Whatever his political skills, he had no

  charisma, and in a moment of absolute panic, Sally saw the unraveling of

  the complex tapestry that had so recently been woven. Unlike Lincoln,

  Jefferson had no popular mandate and few skills of oratory, and she could

  not imagine anyone following him to death or glory. The South was bound

  together by a single idea and a single issue, slavery, and for that moment

  of panic she could not imagine that the idea itself was strong enough to

  bind them through the prospective crisis. The Union had been based on a

 
single idea and a single issue, but

  QUEEN 473

  that idea was freedom. Was slavery as powerful an ideal?

  Still, she had no choice but patriotism and cast aside her doubts.

  Provided Lincoln did nothing rash, and the South nothing to provoke him

  beyond its simple existence, they might prevail.

  In March, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president of the United

  States of America.

  And still there was no war.

  In April, Lizzie gave birth to a son, who was christened James, after his

  father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

  Transcendent emotions flooded Jass as he held his new son for the first

  time. A new boy for a new country. It seemed so fit and proper, and Jass,

  who had never been unusually religious, was moved to an extraordinary awe

  of God, his creator. He fell to his knees, prayed for a peaceful life for

  his new son, and made a most sacred, solemn oath to defend the boy's

  patrimony with every drop of blood in his body.

  On the same day, the Confederate States demanded the surrender of Fort

  Sumter, and when the Federal commanding officer, Major Anderson, declined,

  Southern bombardment of the island began. Anderson surrendered two days

  later, and two days after that, Lincoln declared a blockade of Southern

  ports and called for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months.

  The immediate Southern reaction was simple indignation. If Lincoln thought

  he could whip the South in only three months, he had better think again,

  they told each other.

  Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded from the Union,

  a rampaging mob attacked Union troops in Baltimore, there was a stirring

  parade by the Alabama Dragoons through the streets of Florence, and Jass

  enlisted as a private in the 4th Alabama Regiment.

  He looked very fine in his uniform of simple gray, uncluttered by

  decoration. He had not discussed his intention to enlist with any of his

  family, but had gone with Henderson to a meeting at the Wesleyan, Hall

  in Florence. He heard the speeches and watched the fellows enlist, and

  the ladies present gave them little Confederate flags as they did so.

  Jass knew he had no choice. He could easily have avoided military ser-

  vice, for he owned more than twenty slaves and was, by de-

  474 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  cree, exempt. He could as easily have formed his own regiment-he had the

  financial means to do so-and ridden off to glory as their colonel. He could

  easily have deferred any decision until the course of the war was known.

  But not to fight was the coward's way. Jass believed in his cause, and his

  sons, William and James, gave quickening momentum to his ideals. He had

  heard the cries that it was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, for

  the slave-owning rich were a small minority in the South, and to give the

  lie to that, he resisted a commission. He enlisted as the common man

  enlisted, and would fight beside the common man, for the common cause.

  Lizzie fainted when he told her, and on recovering, screamed her distress,

  but Sally's heart filled with love for her son, and pride that he had so

  stalwartly heard the call.

  Her heart was overflowing again now as he stood before them to say his

  good-byes.

  It was a perfect April, a day he would dream of in the dark nights to come.

  The family was gathered on the veranda, slaves watching from a distance.

  Henderson was near the magnolia tree saying good-bye to his wife. They had

  debated his enlistment several days before it happened, but briefly, because

  Letitia was in favor of it. She was proud of the man she had married, a good

  honest laborer, and believed it was his God-given duty to fight for his

  country. She didn't love him as Jass loved Easter, or even as Lizzie loved

  Jass, but she was fond of him, cared for him, and while she would miss him,

  she doubted that any real harm would come to him. The war would not last

  long, a few months at most, and it would be almost two months before he came

  within sight of a Yankee army. And even if he was hurt, or killed, she would

  have reason for pride in him. She had been happy with him for the few short

  months of their marriage, but it was the fact of her marriage that was most

  dear to her. Life as a widow was infinitely preferable to life as a

  spinster, which had seemed to be her fate but a few months before.

  Henderson, on the other hand, was excited at the prospect of a few battles,

  and bloodying some Yankee noses, for he was bored with his life as an

  overseer. It was the same thing,

  QUEEN 475

  day in, day out; the only challenge was the weather, which no one could

  predict, and keeping the niggers in line, which wasn't hard when he held

  the whip. Married life had been interesting for a few weeks, but Letitia

  was a stem taskmaster, always on his back about something or other. She

  had less patience with niggers than he did, and was forever urging him to

  flog them more, which made life difficult because he remembered and

  respected Mitchell's advice to him-it had served him well. Letitia kept

  a good house, and was obliging in the cot, but he had started to miss his

  freedom.

  He went to see Mitchell, who agreed he should enlist, and agreed to visit

  The Forks from time to time to check that things were running smoothly.

  They found a young man, Tom Parsons, to fill in as temporary overseer,

  and when Henderson went with Jass to the Wesleyan Hall, he had already

  decided to join up. He waited till Jass took the plunge first, for Hen-

  derson thought it was sensible that the two of them be in the same

  regiment. Jass Jackson was his bread and butter, and he'd be able to keep

  his eye on the Massa, who wasn't, in Henderson's opinion, cut out to be

  a soldier. He was surprised, and a little disappointed, that Jass went

  in as a private. If he'd been an officer, Henderson could have been his

  sergeant, but there was never any point in telling Jass when he had his

  mind made up, so Henderson had accepted his fate and followed his Massa.

  Now, standing under the vast magnolia, he kissed Letitia politely, said

  all the right things, he hoped, mounted his horse, and waited to follow

  the Massa again.

  Jass shook William's hand. The boy had been excited at seeing his father

  in a soldier's uniform, but now fear assailed him and he was close to

  tears. His training stood him in good stead, and he didn't cry, but hugged

  his father hard. Jass kissed Mary, and said good-bye to the little ones,

  then moved to his mother.

  Neither said anything for a moment, and both smiled a little, but without

  joy.

  " I hate to see you go," Sally said.

  "I hate to have to go," Jass told her, although it was not entirely true.

  476 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  Sally embraced him. "Be brave," she whispered. "Do your duty." She didn't

  want him to go and she didn't want him to die, but he had to go, and she

  put her fa
ith in God that he would not die. She knew that she would have to

  say good-bye to all her sons, for all had enlisted, and it was probable

  that one of them, at least, would be wounded, or worse. But a man was

  either brave or he was a coward, and it had comforted her during the last

  dark days before Jass's departure to know that all her sons were brave.

  Jass held her close for a moment, and the truth of his circumstances hit

  him hard. He longed for war, he longed to prove himself in battle, he felt

  he had wasted too many years of his life, an idle, rich man's son, and now

  he had the opportunity to be the man he had always promised himself he

  would be. But he had to face the truth of it. It was war, and he might die.

  The smell of his mother caressed him, the smell he had known all his life,

  from before his memory of it. This is what he wanted to take with him; this

  is what he wanted to remember of home, the loving embrace of his mother.

  He had another memory to take with him, but it was not of home. It was of

  the woman he cherished and to whom he had never been a failure. It was the

  memory of Easter, plump and full now but as exciting to him as she had

  always been. He had spent some of the previous night with her, after Lizzie

  was asleep, and when dawn came he told her something that was important to

  him.

  "If anything should happen to me," he whispered, "always know that I will

  have loved you until the moment of my dying. "

  He knew that she understood, because she hadn't wept, as Lizzie had been

  weeping for days, but had held him to her, and had hummed a lullaby from

  some place deep inside her soul, just as she had on their very first night

  together, and he had drifted to sleep in her arms, knowing that he was

  loved.

  Easter was standing with Queen, at the end of the veranda, watching him say

  good-bye. Jass moved reluctantly from his mother to Lizzie, whose face was

  blotchy with tears.

  "This is it, my dear," he said, for want of anything better to say. He

  wished he could think of some intimate truth to give her in farewell, but

  he could not say to her what he had said to Easter, because it was not

  true.

  QUEEN 477

  Lizzie was distraught. "I can't bear it," she cried.

  "I'll come home safe, I promise," he said. Suddenly, he grabbed her, held

  her to him, kissed her hard, and forced his tongue into her mouth. For

  suddenly he hated himself. The memory of his farewell to Easter rang in

  his ears, but she was a nigger, and Lizzie was his wife, mother of his

  children. It was Lizzie he was ready to die for, to protect.

  "I love you," he whispered harshly, when his mouth was free. But Lizzie

  would not let him go. She hung on to him for dear life.

  "Don't go," she screamed. "You don't have to go!"

  Letitia Henderson clucked in disapproval, and glanced slyly at her

  husband. She thought Mrs. Jackson would have had a greater sense of

  proper behavior.

  Jass tried to pull himself away from Lizzie, but she clutched at him,

  tried to drag him back, screaming at him.

  Sally moved to help, but Lizzie was a frantic woman, and Sally too frail.

  None of the other slaves dared touch their hysterical mistress, and so

  Jass had to do the unthinkable.

  He called to Easter and Queen.

  They did what had to be done, and pulled Lizzie from him.

  "Go now, Massa, quick," Queen said, when he was free. Lizzie was sobbing

  desperately, in Easter's arms, but still Jass couldn't go. There was one

  more thing to do.

  They looked so frail, so helpless: his old mother, his weeping wife, and

  his little children. Even William, trying so hard to act like a man, was

  obviously only a boy. Someone had to take care of them.

  "Look after them, Queen," Jass begged. "They need you."

  It was a sublime moment for Queen. The Massa, her father, had given her

  charge of his family. It was a sacred trust.