XXXVI

However Mr. Lincoln felt about it, the Confederate States of America was a going concern, de facto if not de jure. Less than a month after Alabama declared Independence from the Union, all of the seceded states sent delegates to Montgomery. They included Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana in a list that reads like an SEC roster. As of yet the other states had not seceded from the Union. And so in Montgomery they formed a Congress and elected a President. The constitution mimicked that of the United States of America except where it pertained to the protection of slavery. However these founding fathers of the Confederacy felt about their Second American Revolution, theirs was an empire of bondage, a republic of suffering.

And so Jefferson Davis received a cable from the rebel Congress appointing him President of these Confederate States of America. He hadn't even known he was on the ballot. Varina, his beloved wife, was struck by how ashen he turned. It was as though the most enormous responsibility had been assailed upon him. He had been Mississippi's Senator and a former Secretary of War to Washington. He was a hero of the Mexican War, and though he was not a Fire-Eater, he was a uniting conservative of the Democratic Party. When he arrived by the cars to Montgomery, he was greeted on the Capitol steps by crowds of white people. There may have been a few slaves, but it wasn't their republic. He ascended the steps of the Capitol where he was embraced by the King of Fire-Eaters, plump little Alabama Senator William Lowndes Yancey. Never one to miss a good politicking, Senator Yancey grasped Jefferson Davis's arm and raised it high and called out to the crowd:

The man and the hour have met!

The crowds erupted! They played Dixie and paraded down Bibb Street singing the Bonnie Blue. Jefferson Davis was too grim a man to indulge himself in these jollities. The fate of this new Nation rest heavy upon his shoulders. So he took up a single office in the Exchange Hotel where the frosted glass door was crudely scrawled with the word - President. From this he would begin to craft the bureaucratic organs of this peculiar nation until, towards the end, he was a worse tyrant that Mr. Lincoln. Even the Fire Eaters would abandon him in time. But that was in the future, and after a great many trials.

As it were, Mr. Lincoln didn't even acknowledge or give credence to this rebel republic. In fact, he played dumb while the whole country had torn itself asunder. He was playing a very delicate game to keep what remained of the Union intact. As of yet, important border states had not yet seceded, like Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky. It was not war yet. It was a crisis of intransigence. Trade continued as usual. Travel between these two nations went unabated. To the concert of nations, who warily watched this bifurcation of a major commercial rival with interest, Jefferson Davis had this to say to elicit their sympathies.

All we ask is to be left alone!

Mr. Lincoln, who was endowed with the genius of patience, continued to wait out for the opportunity to goad the rebels into firing first, so as not to antagonize the Europeans. It soon came when a loyal Kentuckian by the name of Robert Patterson spiked the guns of Fort Moultrie and rowed his men for Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. There he refused all demands to give up his post as an officer of the United States. He was one of the precious few Union officers in the South who hadn't turned over their post to the rebel government. Most officers of the tiny pre-war army were Southerners.

And so that little creole general, P.G.T. Beauregard, gave the order for the batteries to fire on Fort Sumter. It was April 12, 1861. In the pre-dawn hours, a single 10-inch mortar creased a yellow arc through the sky where it burst like a firework over the fort. A few seconds later, the report echoed across Charleston Harbor. The crowds who had collected on the waterfront burst with joy and awe. The first shot of the war had been fired. It would not abate again for four more Aprils.

Back in the Nickajack, they kept the Union flag flying from the courthouses for some weeks after secession. The mountainous region had deep Whig roots with its large yeomanry and a growing burgher class. They were even horrified by the events of Fort Sumter. But what horrified them most of all was Mr. Lincoln calling up 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, for which Old Dixie had fired the first shot. No man of true republican instincts would possibly order soldiers to arms against his own citizens! These were the actions of a Tyrant! The Whigs had long been skeptical of executive power, and now here it was in its worst form. War against his own People!

It was then that Burnside Lee had rallied together the Athenian Hoplites, which became A Company, 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Branse Havelock and William Marmaduke were part of this company. But the Athenian Hoplites were not the first to go battle. The most ardent Greek secessionists had formed the Limestone Grays under Theodore Hobbes even before Fort Sumter. They formed the F Company of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment. They got sent to Virginia. Included in that group was Branse Havelock's father, who was Branse Senior.

Whatever their personal motives were for joining, they rallied around the Cause, which was short for they had all been sold a bill of goods by the Fire Eaters. They had all bought into the Big Lie which drove the whole machine of slavery... that a black man wasn't good enough to be free or equal. So much so, that they all marched into all-but-certain death for that Big Lie.

But they would do it so with an uncommon valor.