“Much obliged.” Ham took the seat, the leather case resting on his knees. “Do you know how I might locate your husband?”
“No idea. Day he left, he said he had business in the country, and we’d be a whole lot better off soon as he took care of it.”
“You haven’t seen him since then?”
“No, sir, nor heard from him. I’m half out of my mind worrying.”
“I can imagine. I visited police headquarters before coming here. They have no information.”
“I thought of going to the police but I know they don’t much want to help”—she faltered—“people like me.”
“Did your husband say anything else before he left? Anything that might offer a clue as to his whereabouts?”
In the rear room the girl flicked her spoon at her brother. He wiped a gob of mush from his cheek and yanked her hair. Mary Hix screamed, “You behave, both of you, or I’ll blister your behinds.” She twisted her soiled apron. “I’m so sorry. You were asking…?”
“Do you recall anything that might suggest where we could find Mr. Hix?”
“He did mention a Mr. Gibbes Bell. Same last name as yourself. Is he a relative?”
“A second cousin. We’re not close. Please go on.”
“Plato said if anything happened to him, it would be Mr. Bell responsible.”
“Those were his exact words?”
“Not exact, maybe, but I remember the sense of it.”
Ham felt a tightness in his throat, a nervous spasm in his stomach. Mrs. Hix’s statement was alarming but legally useless. Even with corroboration the testimony of a colored woman against that of Ham’s highly regarded cousin would carry no weight with the police, or any court in South Carolina. He believed the same would hold true if Mrs. Hix were poor white.
“I’m scared something’s happened to Plato, sir.” She wasn’t alone; Ham was envisioning a figure crumpled in an alley, a body floating in a river. He opened the brass clasp of the case.
“This is what your husband left in my keeping. As you see, it’s addressed to you.”
Mrs. Hix took the letter, fingered it, as if not sure of its purpose or meaning. “I wonder, would you be able to read it for me?”
“If you prefer.” He retrieved the letter quickly, not wanting to embarrass her by forcing her to say she was illiterate. He inserted a finger under the flap, removed the sheets of cheap paper covered with bad handwriting. He scanned the first few sentences. “My God.”
“Sir?”
“It concerns the war. Allow me to read it silently first.”
He went swiftly through the unparagraphed document. When he finished he was thoroughly unnerved. Surely it was a tissue of falsehoods. But if so, why write it? No adult who thought clearly, reacted rationally, would fear such a wild story. Even setting aside Gibbes’s status in the community, a prosecutor would not give credence to the letter without supporting evidence, or another witness.
“There’s nothing here to help us locate your husband. What the letter contains is nothing short of…”
Ham wet his lips. How to tell her? The only way was straight out.
“An accusation of murder,” he said.
Rather than read the letter aloud he summarized it in careful, evasive language appropriate to a courtroom. By the end Mary Hix was crouched on a stool and weeping. “That man, your relative, he must’ve killed Plato for writing it all down.”
“I urge you not to repeat that charge to anyone. It’s unprovable based on this letter. For your own safety I advise you to keep silent while I consider what, if anything, might be done.” In truth he hadn’t a glimmer of what to do, other than throw the letter back in the safe and wish to God he’d never seen it.
She promised to heed him. He fled down the swaying stair. In Prioleau Street it was raining again, a hot, soggy drizzle. At Buckles & Bell he laid the letter on the blotter and stared at it, wishing the words would disappear or magically reveal some hidden, innocent meaning.
At home on South Battery that evening he showed Alex the letter and explained how he’d come by it. He and Alex sat together on a Hamnet Strong settee. “I fear this was written for purposes of blackmail. Mrs. Hix as much as confirmed it. I likewise fear Hix is no longer in a position to realize his expected financial gain. I suspect he may be dead.”
Horrified, Alex reached for the scrawled sheets. “Let me read it, please.”
75
Seven Pines
This is a true and honest statement of Corpral Plato Roscius Hix CSA. I never ment to see what I seen that day in 18 & 62, sometimes I wish God scald my eyes so I did not. I never saw any body white or nigro scairt as bad as Capt Gibs Bell.
In the spring of 1862 Gen. Joe Johnston fought and retreated, fought and retreated, in front of George McClellan’s army on the Peninsula. The strategic withdrawal took Johnston to the outskirts of the capital, and had two objectives: to give Richmond time to strengthen defenses, and Johnston time to find favorable ground for a decisive engagement.
Gibbes reached the headquarters of the Hampton Legion two days after a skirmish at Eltham’s Plantation. Federal troops disembarking from boats in the York River were driven back in brief action. Gibbes shuddered when he heard that the Confederates lost “only” forty-eight men, with another forty-six taken prisoner.
The Legion was now part of the division of Brig. Gen. William H. C. Whiting, a West Point engineer who at one time worked on the defenses of Charleston and Morris Island. Hampton had been given command of an entire brigade the preceding October but had yet to receive formal promotion.
Gibbes reported to Maj. Owen Wheat of the brigade staff. Wheat was a large barrel of a man with pale, frosty eyes, unruly gray hair, and a single star on his collar. He received Gibbes’s salute and papers, kept him at attention while he packed and lit his pipe.
“Let us be candid, Captain. We both know what secured your commission. Social position, connections, not experience. Well, I’ll not soothe you with fantasies. A battle is the devil’s own business. Imagine the worst and you’re but a tenth of the way to reality. Further, your company is now about fifty percent replacements, green striplings mostly. First time they see the elephant, they may run. As an officer it’s your duty to stop ’em. I am intolerant of cowardice.” Gibbes’s bowels were churning.
“The Legion fought bravely at Manassas. On the Warrenton Turnpike we found ourselves in the thick of it. Never had I imagined such a continuous rushing hailstorm of shot, shell, and musketry as fell around and among us. Those of us who survived constantly wonder how it happened. I don’t say this to alarm you but to prepare you.” Gibbes didn’t believe him. Wheat probably took sadistic pleasure in frightening his subordinates.
“Lieutenant Frank Adams will introduce you to your men. You may keep that fine horse you tied outside, but as of now you’re in the infantry. Look on the bright side. Combat presents many a sudden opportunity for promotion.”
It did not surpriz me that Maj W. & Capt B. come to a bad end, they did not like each other, all the men knew it. I never seen much of Capt Bell in Virginnia since he led one compny and I marched in another. But soljers talk and I heard the capt was not liked by his men either, they could tell he didnt care for plain folk & had got his rank becaus of who he was. Nor did he like the Army life but had joined up like some others so as not to be looked down on. That was not true of all officers esp Gen Hampton who was a brave and true fighter for the Cause. At 7 Pines he took a ball in his foot while in the saddle & refusd to dismount but made the surjun extrack the ball right there, in the stirrup so to say.
First Lt. Frank Adams had been a schoolteacher in Branchville. First Sgt. Oliver Burks owned a small cotton farm in Richland County. Both knew how to march, which Gibbes did not.
A few men in the company carried outdated muskets, but most were equipped with .69-caliber percussion rifles stamped with the name of the Palmetto Armory of Columbia. First Sergeant Burks drilled the veterans and their clumsy replace
ments while Gibbes observed, finding confidence to take over just days before the war engine roared to life.
Camp duty was miserable: scant rations, muddy bivouacs, nearly constant rain. Gibbes slept badly, haunted by Wheat’s ominous words about battle. Wheat harassed and criticized him at every opportunity. He let Gibbes know the reason:
“I did not volunteer to fight this war so Low Country gentlemen like yourself could put on plumed hats, mount fine horses, and trot off to glory. Frankly, I despise you and your kind. Although in a minority, you maneuvered the rest of us into an armed quarrel over slavery. I am not a slave master and never have been. I own a tobacco warehouse in Florence. The men who work for me receive wages, not whippings and cast-off shirts at Christmas. I long ago decided Carolina would be a whole lot better off if we shipped all our colored to Connecticut or some benighted province like Iowa and learned to dirty our hands with honest toil.”
“Sir, with respect. Isn’t this war all about the right to own property, niggers included?”
“Your war, sir. I’m fighting for the land I possess. The patch of ground where I was born and still reside. I’m here because I don’t want some gaseous Yankee politician telling me I can’t spit into the wind if I choose. I’m no student of the philosophies of government”—though prating like one, Gibbes thought—“but it seems to me that if I have freely entered into an agreement to form a union, I should have the privilege of withdrawing from that union if and when it no longer comports with my beliefs. In other words, Captain, I am not fighting for your right to beat your niggers at your whim, I am fighting for a separate and independent Confederate republic.” Wheat waved his corncob, leaving traceries of blue in the air. “Dismissed.”
While the Confederate government prepared for the worst, burning records and readying an escape plan for President Davis, Joe Johnston prepared to fight. He would strike McClellan’s advancing right wing to prevent linkage with 40,000 reinforcements, including a division of McDowell’s, that would give Little Mac 150,000 effectives at the gates of Richmond—a two-to-one advantage. As it turned out, McDowell’s advance was a feint; he was soon countermarching to Fredericksburg.
The swollen Chickahominy River split McClellan’s army. Three corps, Sumner’s, Porter’s, and Franklin’s, held the north side, two more, those of Keyes and Heintzelman, the south. Incessant spring rain had created a muddy maze of new streams, tributaries, and ponds.
On May 30, Friday, south of the river, Confederate reconnaissance showed Silas Casey’s division strung across the Williamsburg Road about a half mile west of the junction known as Seven Pines. Casey’s left extended south of the road, into White Oak Swamp, while his right ran north for about a mile, to the Fair Oaks station of the Richmond & York River Railroad. Divisions of Couch and Kearny backed up Casey’s line.
After dark a violent storm brought down rain at the rate of three or four inches in two hours. The rain continued through the night, flooding roads and low places. Johnston’s attack started on Saturday, hours behind schedule due to road conditions and costly misunderstandings of orders by Longstreet.
Whiting’s division had the task of watching the Union right. At dawn Saturday they prepared to march from Richmond to Fair Oaks on the Nine Mile Road, a distance of six miles. Rain, mud, and General Longstreet’s division breaking camp at the city’s Fairfield Race Course hampered their progress. By one o’clock they were scarcely two thirds of the way to their objective.
In the afternoon improvised bridges allowed units of Sumner’s corps to cross to the south side of the Chickahominy. Scouts discovered this and Whiting rushed three brigades, Hampton’s, Pettigrew’s, and Hatton’s, to repel Sumner; Hampton’s Brigade was on the left. Gibbes would later say that when they advanced, they found hell without Satan.
It was already past five in the afternoon when they neared the Federal lines in an enveloping womb of dripping trees and watery sinkholes. They advanced in standard formation, two skirmisher companies out in front, then the main line, and two companies behind it as reserves. Gibbes’s was a flanker company, at the left end of the main line. Bayonets were fixed, although Frank Adams said they were seldom used. “They’re more to frighten than kill.”
Given the thick woods, intermittent rain, and a rising ground fog, it was hard to recognize comrades even a few feet away. Uniforms were muddy; gray might be blue, and vice versa. Men carried their rifles over their heads as they passed through standing water of uncertain depth. The forest grew darker. Less than two hours of daylight remained.
Gibbes made a brave show of flourishing his straight infantry sword as he sloshed knee-deep across a newly channeled stream. “Forward, men, forward, we’ll meet them any moment.” He was mortally afraid. Whistles and warbles echoed eerily in the wood. Whether they were bird calls or signals, he couldn’t say.
Far away to his right rebel yells and a rattle of shots signaled Hatton’s men engaging. Then, directly ahead, a rifle cracked. Gibbes saw the spurt of flame. Near him Frank Adams cried out and sank into shallow water. A bullet had cleanly drilled the center of his forehead.
Exploding shells set damp tree limbs to sparking and smoking. The distant artillery threw grapeshot as well, filling the air with hissing metal that felled four more men. Sumner’s blue-bellies opened up across their entire front; sheets of flame leapt out. “Forward, forward!” Gibbes screamed himself hoarse, walking backward, flourishing his sword. More men dropped. The company’s ranks disintegrated as soldiers wheeled and ran to the rear, leaving their rifles in the mud.
Another shell landed twenty yards away. Gibbes cringed and covered his head against a rain of earth. No sooner had he uncovered than a ball tore his gray sleeve. He peered down at the hole in the cloth and lost control. His bowels released. He ran with the others, away from the hail of enemy fire.
About half past 6 we met Sumner’s boys in the woods where you could hardly tell who was friend or enmy. Men sank to their bellies in water, shot or just stumbling, they screamed and yelled like scairt babes. Formations broke, compnys melted together, everything was crazy. I must have went the wrong way for I found myself amongst men I never saw befor. A ball hit my hand and I fell in a crick bleeding bad. I climbed out and held fast to a tree trunk. More men ran away, wild eyed, one was Capt Bell.
What little courage Gibbes possessed deserted him in that mad flight. His stinking trousers sagged, shaming him. He lurched out of a water hole, slipped, and fell on his face, trembling and sobbing. A familiar voice boomed in the murk. “Form details, form details. Those unhurt prop the wounded against trees so they don’t drown.”
Gibbes told himself to get up, run; he recognized that voice. He wobbled up on one knee, only to collapse again. The dusk was deepening. There were few men anywhere near him. He couldn’t stop crying.
A hand yanked his collar, flung him on his back. Major Wheat’s livid face dripped sweat and rain. “You rotten coward. I saw you bolt. I wagered you would, first time I laid eyes on you.”
Gibbes groped for his holstered revolver. Wheat slapped his hand down, then pulled his own short-barrel revolver, an imported Tranter. “You’ll hang for this, you son of a bitch.”
Wheat’s hand must have been slippery; he fumbled with the revolver grip. Gibbes seized Wheat’s wrist in both hands, wrenched the revolver loose. Wheat’s eyes popped. “You yellow toad, you don’t have enough guts to—” Gibbes fired into Wheat’s mouth, blowing off the back of his head.
I was in pretty bad pain after they got my hand. I hung on to a tree trunk not 5 yds from where Capt Bell shot the maj. in cold blood but he didnt see me, he was looking out for himself.
The man who could have destroyed Gibbes’s life lay motionless, eyes open, a little blood dribbling from his mouth, black as licorice. The gloomy woods were full of red flashes, yells from both sides, shell bursts, men running or lying hurt and pleading for help. Medical corpsmen rushed to the rear, carrying wounded in blankets sopping with gore.
Gibbes left Wheat
and splashed down into the water, moving not to the rear but toward the guns. Not too far, not too far, he thought as the hissing and snapping of bullets and buckshot grew louder. He stopped on a muddy slope. When he believed he was unobserved, he gritted his teeth, aimed Wheat’s revolver to his left thigh, and fired.
His leg buckled. He stifled a scream. He reached behind him and dropped the revolver into black water, where it sank. He threw his own sidearm after it. He couldn’t remember losing his sword, but he didn’t have it. He shouted into the rain. “I’m hit. Over here, I’m hit.”
A corpsman soon reached his side. Gibbes’s left trouser leg was dark with blood, his mind hazy. The corpsman smelled Gibbes and winced. Duty compelled him to take hold of Gibbes’s arm.
“No, son, no, see to the major first,” Gibbes said. “He’s back there. I think they killed him.”
Then he fainted.
God strike me if I lie, I saw the Capt shoot the majr, run a little ways, & put the pistol to his own leg. I expec he wanted to look like he took a wound from the enemy but he outsmarted him self because I heard later that the gangreen set in & the surgeons took his leg. So they sent him home. I hung on the tree til they put me on a litter. While I was passed out they sewed up my hand with the fingers shot off. They sent me home & in Charleston I learnd everyone said Capt Bell was brave at 7 Pines, he was a hero. I saw him run. He was scairt bad or worse than any of the rest of us, if he wasnt then tell me why did he do murder & cover it up? Both sides say they won that day, Yankees call the battle Fair Oaks, our side 7 Pines. This is my truthfull acount of what I saw there in Virginnia in May 18 & 62.