Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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been seeking ever since the war’s sad beginning. John Pope had distinguished himself in the fighting on the Mississippi and had now been brought east to work his magic in the intransigent Virginian countryside where Northern general after Northern general had first been bamboozled and then beaten by the ragged rebel armies.
“Pope has the right ideas,” the Reverend Starbuck went on enthusiastically. “It’s no good being kind to rebels. Disobedience calls for punishment, and defiance demands retribution. The Slavocracy must be smitten, Faulconer, and its lands laid waste. Pope won’t stay his hand, he assures me of that. He is a man for the Lord’s work.” And indeed, General Pope, almost as soon as he had been appointed commander of the Army of Virginia, had declared that the old policy of treating Southern civilians with respect was finished. Northern soldiers would henceforth take what they needed from the Southern population, and any Southerner who resisted such depredations would be punished. The Reverend Elial Starbuck applauded Pope’s zeal. “The Southerner,” the preacher now lectured Adam, “understands only one language. Brute force. It is the language he has used to oppress the Negro, and it is the language that must now be used to oppress him. You agree?”
“I think, sir,” Adam said tactfully, “that the North must gain victory very soon.”
“Quite so, quite so,” the Reverend Starbuck said, not certain whether he had received agreement or not. He certainly deserved agreement, for it was upon the Reverend Starbuck’s generosity that both the future of Adam and of Galloway’s Horse depended. Adam had been penniless when he deserted the South, but it had been his good fortune to know Major James Starbuck, the preacher’s eldest son, and it had been James who had informed Adam about Galloway’s Horse and who had suggested that his famous father might be able to provide Adam with the necessary funds to join the regiment.
The Reverend Doctor Starbuck had proved more than willing to advance the money. Too old to fight, yet too passionate to abstain from fighting, he had watched, impotent, as the North suffered defeat after defeat in Virginia. The defeats had stirred the Reverend Starbuck into contributing his own and his church’s money to the raising and equipping of Massachusetts regiments, only to see those regiments led to disaster. Other men, lesser men, might have abandoned their efforts, but the disasters only fed the preacher’s zeal, which was why, given the chance to contribute to the establishment of Galloway’s Horse, the Reverend Starbuck had been quick to agree. He was not only supporting Adam but donating fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of weaponry and ammunition to Galloway’s regiment. The money was not the Reverend Starbuck’s own but had been raised by God-fearing New England abolitionists. “In the past,” he told Galloway and Adam as they journeyed westward from Manassas in the buggy, “we used such charitable donations for our work in the South: distributing tracts, establishing Sabbath schools for blacks, and, of course, conducting investigations into the evils of the Slavocracy, but now, cut off from those activities, our charities need other outlets for their expenditure.”
“There’s surely much to be spent on the welfare of escaped slaves?” Adam asked, hoping at the same time that he was not talking Galloway and himself out of their funding.
“The contrabands are amply provided for. Amply!” The Reverend Starbuck’s disapproving tone suggested that those slaves who had managed to escape to the North were living in pampered luxury rather than struggling for insanitary survival in makeshift camps. “We need to strike a blow at the root of slavery, not pluck a few diseased leaves from its topmost branches.” Adam, hearing the anger behind the preacher’s words, suspected that the Reverend Elial Starbuck was much keener to punish the slaveholders than actually free the slaves.
The buggy climbed the shallow hill from New Market, passed between deep woods, then plunged downhill toward the Warrenton Turnpike. As Major Galloway drove, he pointed out landmarks made famous in the battle that had been fought the previous summer across this same ground. There were the ruins of the house where Surgeon Henry’s widow had died in the shell fire, and there the Matthews house, which had been used as a hospital. As the buggy rattled down the Sudley road north of the turnpike, Galloway pointed to where the Northern flank attack had come from the river’s far side, but as he talked he became aware that the Boston preacher was hardly enthusiastic in his responses. The Reverend Doctor Starbuck did not want a guided tour of the place where the North had met its first defeat; he only wanted to hear promises of victory, and so the conversation died away as Galloway steered the buggy onto the track leading to the farm he had inherited from his father.
Major Galloway, a kindly man, was nervous around the famous abolitionist and relieved when the Reverend Starbuck announced that he had no intention of staying overnight at the comfortable farm, but instead intended to take the evening train south to Culpeper Court House. “My friend Banks did the courtesy of inviting me,” the preacher said, referring to General Nathaniel Banks, who had once been Governor of Massachusetts and was now a Union general who believed that a visit from his old friend would serve to encourage his troops’ flagging spirits. The invitation had certainly done wonders for the preacher’s spirits. He had been chafing in Boston, taking his war news from newspapers and letters, but now he could learn for himself exactly what was happening in Virginia, to which end he had arranged to be absent from his pulpit for the whole month of August. He was fervently praying that a month would be long enough to allow him to be the first Northern minister to preach the gospel from a Richmond pulpit.
But before joining Banks the preacher had agreed to this meeting with Major Galloway and his men. He spoke to Galloway’s regiment in the meadow behind the house, where he encouraged them to fight the good fight, but his brusque manner made it plain that he was in a hurry to conclude the day’s business and continue his journey. Major Galloway tactfully abandoned the planned display of saber fighting and instead conducted his guest toward the farmhouse, which was an impressive building shaded by great oaks and lapped by wide lawns. “My father prospered in the law,” Galloway said, explaining the luxurious house.
“A slave owner, too?” the preacher demanded fiercely, pointing with his ebony cane at the small cabins that lay to the north of the house.
“I freed all the people,” Galloway said hastily. “If I’d sold them, sir,” he went on, “I wouldn’t be needing to beg money for the regiment. I mortgaged the farm to raise funds, sir, and used all the money to buy the horses and weapons you’ve just seen, but frankly, sir, I’ve no resources left. I’ve made myself penniless in the cause of liberty.”
“In which cause we must all be prepared to suffer, Galloway,” the Reverend Starbuck exclaimed as he followed the Major up the veranda steps and into the hallway. The house echoed like an empty building, which it very nearly was, for with the exception of a few essential pieces of furniture Galloway had sent all his books and pictures and drapes and ornaments north into storage so that his rebellious neighbors could not take revenge on his allegiance by stealing his valuables. And if his neighbors did not steal the goods, he explained, his own brother would. “My brother fights for the South, alas,” Major Galloway told the preacher, “and he’d like nothing more than to take the house and its contents from me.” He paused for an instant. “There’s nothing sadder, sir, is there, than family members fighting on opposite sides?” The Reverend Starbuck offered a belligerent grunt as answer, and that ill-tempered noise should have warned Major Galloway against proceeding further with the conversation, but the Major was a guileless man. “Am I right, sir,” Galloway asked, “in believing you have a son who fights with the rebels?”
“I know of no such person,” the preacher said, stiffening perceptibly.
“But Nate, surely—” Adam began, only to be fiercely interrupted.
“I have no son called Nathaniel,” the preacher snapped. “I recognize no person called Nathaniel Starbuck. He is doomed, he is cast out, not only from my family, but also from the loving congregation of Christ! He is a reprobate!” This last condemnation was trumpeted in a voice that might have carried a half-mile into a mighty wind.
Galloway realized he had been tactless and so hurried on, talking inconsequentially about the house and its amenities until he reached the doors of the library, where a tall, heavyset Captain waited. The Captain had a ready smile and a quick, friendly