alternatehistory.com

This is a one shot. Been thinking about ways in which the South could have won the civil war late in the war, and this very, very dark story is what I came up with. I'll concede that the possibility is quite unlikely. Anyway, this is my effort at a late CSA victory. It isn't pretty.

In a non-descript room in a rundown hotel. The window is open, and a cool breeze from the Gulf of Mexico rustles the faded and dirty curtains. A young man, blindfolded, is escorted into the room. He is carrying a large suitcase. He is forcefully manhandled into a metal folding chair. A rickety table stood between the young man, who blinked repeatedly when the blindfold was removed, and the old man who sat on a narrow bed. The young man quickly set up the recorder he unpacked from the suitcase and turned it on.

A: I have agreed to this interview today because I don’t know how much longer I have before I stand before my maker and am called to account for my sins. Nearly sixty years have passed since I met him in November of ’64. And for the better part of half a century , I considered myself a patriot, even though I was a wanted man in two countries. Now, a decade after it started and the great war limps to its conclusion as a red menace marches westward from a desolate Russia, I can’t help but wonder if the Union would have been stronger had it not been for the terrible carnage that my fellow Boothites and I inflicted on the North over the last two years of the war of Southern Secession.

A: Yes. I recall where I was when I met Booth. It was right after President Lincoln had won reelection. I was homeless, living on the streets of Baltimore, when I met the man who I still, today, think of as my Fagin. Me, and my friends Charlie and Silas were all hard up and hadn’t eaten in several days, when we were approached by the actor. He offered us food, and I can tell you, when your belly and your backbone have been rubbing up against each other, you’re likely to listen to anyone. Say what you will about Booth, he fed us and took us in. How was I to know that thing that brought me, Charlie and Silas together was the very thing that would separate us forever?

My Pa had died a year before. He went and joined the 2nd Maryland Infantry, serving under Major Herbert. Both Charlie and Silas’ fathers also died in the war, serving in Virginia or Maryland regiments. So, when our Fagin took us in and told us that we would avenge our fathers, it sounded mighty good to three boys, not a single one of us who could shave.

A: Yes, I recall, it was the day after the second celebration of Thanksgiving. I don’t know the names of the men that assisted the three of us boys getting up to New York City, but a little mousey man, scarcely any bigger than I was at thirteen, gave us the wagon. It took all three of us boys to manage that wagon through the crowds, but I was told that I needed to act as a lookout once we rolled onto Wall Street. I climbed down and stood on the corner of Broad and Wall while Charlie and Silas continued on. They stopped the wagon and got out where a couple of large banks did business. They were supposed to set a timer and then walk away. I’ve never been able to find out if the timer was faulty or if that mousey man had deliberately set the bomb to go off when Charlie set the timer. But both of my friends went up in a towering explosion. I did find out later that the wagon was loaded to the gills with gunpowder and canister rounds. I was a block away when it exploded and it knocked me clear off my feet. The poor souls doing their business at those banks never knew what hit them. I heard later that more people died and were wounded in that one blast than in the entire draft riots the previous year.

A: Sometimes I still wake up shaking when I remember the bits and pieces of people who just moments before were going on their way never the wiser. But I did get back to my feet, as you can clearly see and I joined a whole bunch of people running away. I found my way back to where that mousey man had been. He was gone but there was another fellow there that gave me a few coins and told me to make my way back to Baltimore, and as you know, I did. On the way back to Baltimore I heard people talking about it. Said that the knights of the Golden Circle claimed responsibility. Folks were saying that the knights demanded a cease fire or more of these bombs would be set off.

A: No. What was his name again? David Russell. No. I didn’t know him. I had no idea how many boys, like me that Booth had recruited. But when he was caught with a wagon less than a block from the Capitol Building, sure, everyone heard about it. He was only thirteen when the Yankees hung him. After that, the Southern newspapers condemned the execution and took to calling the whole campaign the Children’s Crusade.

A: Yeah. I met my Fagin, Booth before Christmas. He introduced me to a brother and sister. Matthew and Mary. They were from Virginia, around about Harpers Ferry, if I recall correctly now. The three of us were taken by Booth and a couple of other men, down to Washington City. I remember being excited. Soldiers were eying every civilian, and especially young boys. But when we were with Booth and a very pretty lady that was on his arm. We looked like the perfect family. He took us by one of the bridges and we watched Lincoln’s soldiers march across the bridge. Over the next couple of days, a confederate of my Fagin, came by and worked with me in the basement of the house where we were staying, and showed me how to rig the explosives on the bridge and how to run fusing and also how to light the fuse. I forget the day now, only recalling that it was between Christmas and New Years of ’64 and I took Matthew and Mary with me. They were the decoys. They looked tired and hungry that night as they begged on the edge of the bridge. I had told them that when they saw me coming up the bank that they needed to hightail it from there.

A: Yes. By this time, we all knew what we were doing and to a bunch of kids, watching our country being torn apart by the Yankees, we thought it was our patriotic duty, and to a thirteen year old, the danger was exhilarating. But shut up, and let me get this off my chest. The water was cold, but the channel between the shore and the first piling was shallow. To this day, I have no idea how the guard on the bridge didn’t hear me. I hauled more than a dozen barrels of powder and placed them around the piling. And then I ran as much of the fuse as I had. Booth had given me a few lucifers and I struck one against the piling and it flared up. What I hadn’t expected was that when I lit the fuse, it wasn’t anything like the one that I had been trained on. It sputtered for a second and then it zoomed along, going far faster than I expected. I didn’t have time to run back up the bank of the river and let Matthew and Mary know to get out. I dove into the frigid water and swam as hard as I could downstream. Less than a dozen seconds after I hit the water I felt the whole world shake and shudder and then a few seconds later, debris started landing in the water.

A: No. I knew that we were going to take out the chain bridge, but I had no idea that secretary of war Stanton was crossing when I blew it up. I knew two things for certain then. That it was only by the dumbest of luck that none of that debris didn’t crush me and that my inability to get back to the shore had cost Matthew and Mary their lives. I’m still not sure how it happened, but I found myself back in the basement of the house crying my eyes out when my Fagin, Mr. Booth came down stairs. I didn’t know enough to see the look of surprise when he saw me sitting there. That awareness came too late. But Washington was in an uproar up past the new year. The loss of Secretary Stanton was a shocking blow to President Lincoln.

A: You should know better. I had no idea that the death of Stanton was a signal for more of Booth’s boys to strike. Of course, I celebrated when I learned that a boy dressed in a union drummer uniform had pulled a revolver from the drum and shot General Grant dead in January. No, I’m not surprised that they killed him on the spot. What was it that the Yankee newspapers called it? Yeah, the reign of terror. I suppose it was fitting. It delayed campaign of ’65.

A: I heard the same thing. Had Grant survived he would have crushed Lee. No, I don’t understand what broke in Sherman, I only heard later that his mind had snapped after he learned of Grant’s death. But I suppose that’s one theory about the Union’s efforts in Georgia stalling. I heard another story. It right after the new year, when I met this pretty girl. Sally. She was my age, maybe a year younger. She told me that she was from Savannah, Georgia, but I swear, her accent sounded like a Yankee to me. I only talked to her a few times, but she told me that she was going to Georgia. Before she left, I watched her learn how to set explosives so that they’d blow up. She used picnic baskets.

You tell me. I have no idea how she managed to set hundreds of those baskets throughout the union camp. It sewed more commotion that I would have given credence. No. I didn’t know that many men deserted. No, I have never written any letters to her. After they closed down Capital Prison, I’m not sure where they transferred Sally to.

A: You tell me. You say that the South’s children’s crusade launched over 3,000 attacks between November of ’64 and the end of ’65? If you say so. I was there for only three of them, although now as God is my witness, I wish I hadn’t been. Maybe that’s why the two of them were there that day. Neither Booth nor his Knights were willing to settle for an armistice. It was full independence or nothing for him.

A: You’re correct, it has been well documented. I stayed with the knights through the late fall of ’65. Had you been born then, you’d remember where you were on that day. If you can call it a celebration, I celebrated my fourteenth birthday a few weeks before. My Fagin, himself came and fetched me back to Washington. I had been practicing with the Whitworth for six months. No, I’m not going to tell you where that farm was located. I have to admit, I had become quite a shot with it, although it kicked like a sun of a bitch.

Booth found me a very nice spot. It was over half a mile away from the front lawn of the White House. It was a boarding house, but the attic had a fine view that November day. They had been in the White House for a while. I don’t know, maybe an hour or two. I was getting a little antsy. I had been situated in that hidey-hole for a couple of hours already. Finally, I saw through the telescope on the barrel a couple of younger men come out the doors, and then what looked like an honor guard assembled on the stairs leading to the front lawn. You couldn’t miss him. I see him now, in my mind’s eye like it was yesterday. He wore that tall, stovepipe hat as he stepped through the door. I already had the shot lined up and so, I took it. How could I have known that it would tear through his throat and hit Jefferson Davis in the forehead, killing him too?

A: I didn’t know that at the time. I knew that I had hit President Lincoln and a second target. I left the rifle there in the attic of that boarding house and tried to walk, no, I strolled around, and thought I would see what people were saying closing to the White House before going back to the basement hideout. I know. I was too young and careless to know better. When I heard that President Davis had been shot too, I knew that I couldn’t return to my basement hideaway. I managed to get back to Baltimore before Washington was turned into a prison. I suppose that’s how they found Booth. Had I returned I’m not sure if Booth would have killed me or if I would have died when the Yankees tried burning him out.

A: I know it led to Johnson’s impeachment, but had it not been for Johnson and Stephens maintaining the armistice, who knows what the remaining Knights would have done. I know that they had dozens, if not, hundreds of more boys like me ready to use. Booth was the most radical of them all and an armistice was better than ongoing war.

A: When I saw a reasonable likeness of my face plastered on the walls in Baltimore I lit out for the South. But when I slipped over the border and saw my face on wanted posters there I had no choice but to head out west. I wound up in Mexico for a few years and grew a mustache and beard as soon as nature allowed. You know the important stuff back east. When the Radical Republicans lost seats in ’68, the armistice became as permanent as it has ever been.

A: Why now? Fair enough. When the manumission act was finally passed by the Confederate Congress, what, back in 1890, all it did was turn change the name of slavery, nothing else really changed. When the reds came up from Mexico, preaching Marx like Billy Sunday preaching Christ, it caught on like a wildfire and has created a war in the Confederacy that is worse and more personal than anything I recall from the old War of Southern Secession. It burns across the South, laying to waste a land that has known relative peace for the last sixty years. Yeah. I know, for the negro, it was a lousy peace. And now the fires of blood and revolution burn across the South. I lay abed every night and listen for a slamming door or a heavy knock to bring soldiers or police bursting in to hold me to account for the crime that I committed.

A: It’s kind of you to say. Maybe I was simply the gun in Booth’s hand. Now, enough, you got what you came for. Now get your infernal recording machine and get out.

The old man moves the curtain aside and watches as the young reporter is escorted out the hotel, the same way he came in, blindfolded. Tears stream down the old man’s face as he imagines a world in which North and South reunited following their great struggle. A world in which no man lives in fear of his life. A world in which the children’s crusade never happened.
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