The Winter Soldiers

By Andrew Miller

When Abraham Lincoln wins reelection in the fall of 1864, it spells final doom for the Confederacy. Driven by desperation and by the odds against them, Southern leaders reach a decision that could bring them sudden, stunning victory: They will kidnap Lincoln from the very streets of Washington, whisk him to Richmond, and hold him for a kings ransom. They will demand the release of all Confederate soldiers being held in Northern prison camps, in addition to $50 million in gold. It will be a devastating blow to Northern morale, restore the wasted Southern armies, and topple the Union government.

The man assigned to carry out the operation is Philip Bartlett, the Souths best agent and a spy in Washington since early in the war. Brilliant and ruthless, Bartlett is an aristocrat and a true believer in Southern independence. He has never failed. The spy foresaw this decision by Richmond, but he does not believe in the mission. To Bartlett, failure and success are both the same this time: If successful, he fears what enraged Northern armies will do to the South. If it fails, his remarkable operation in the enemys capital will be destroyed for nothing, and good men along with it. But whether the operation fails or succeeds, the spy knows the South will suffer for it, and the war made even harder on his beloved homeland. Still, he he is a soldier and he will follow orders.

Bartletts accomplices will be some of the Souths best cavalrymen, disguised as Union troopers. They will enter Washington the night of the operation, meet the spy, and abduct Lincoln as he takes his nightly stroll near the Executive Mansion. They will dash out of the city, then down dark country roads protected by Southern partisans, and into the Rebel capital.

The Confederate spy comes up against an unwitting opponent in Captain Peter Murphy, a young Union officer from a small town in Pennsylvania. Murphy has been damaged by two years of relentless warfare; his sudden bursts of temper and violence have convinced his superiors to send him off to Washington for a few months of rest and recuperation. Murphy is intelligent and sensitive, a teacher and educator before the war, but a man tormented by thoughts that he can never be the person he once was. Murphy has seen combat at Antietam, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, the Shenandoah Valley, and a dozen other places. He is wracked with guilt and confusion at having survived when so many others have fallen. When he is ordered to Washington, he must leave his friends and comrades in the Army of the Potomac, a painful separation for a man already bearing many physical and mental wounds.

Although Philip Bartlett and Peter Murphy come from entirely different worlds, and they could not possibly be more different as human beings, their destinies will meet in Civil War Washington.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 27, 2004
• ISBN: 9781477162187

Andrew Miller

ANDREW MILLER is an operations expert whose clients include the Bank of Nova Scotia, McKesson Canada, 3M Canada, Mount Sinai Hospital, and other world-class institutions. Before starting his firm in 2006, he held senior consulting positions with IBM Business Consulting Services and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

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Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Miller.

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

EPILOGUE

To my parents

PROLOGUE

Nov. 8, 1864 dawned rainy and cold in Washington, D.C., the capital of a splintered and bleeding nation. Unpaved streets ran with rivers of mud, people hustled about under umbrellas or hunched over inside hats and raincoats. But by eleven p.m. on this election night, the city’s streets were filled with smiling, exuberant faces. Every house was brightly lit, the saloons and restaurants were open late, and the hotel parlors were packed so tightly, and the cigar smoke in them was so thick, that breathing was nearly impossible. Complete strangers shook hands and embraced; the sodden streets were full of music and cheering. Abraham Lincoln had just been reelected President of the United States, easily beating out his opponent, General George B. McClellan. Lincoln won fifty-five percent of the popular vote, and won the electoral vote 212 to 21. Lincoln carried every state but Delaware, Kentucky and New Jersey.

One hundred and thirty miles to the south, in Virginia, General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac kept a noose tightly drawn around the city of Petersburg, where Robert E. Lee and what was left of his proud Army of Northern Virginia lay trapped, starving and freezing in its trenches. Once Petersburg fell, and all knew this would come with the spring campaign, Richmond would lose its last line of supplies and communication, surrender would follow, and the dream of the Confederate States of America would perish in a swirling sea of blood and dust.

Whatever the next four years of the Lincoln Administration might bring, one thing was certain the night of November 8: The Civil War, now in its fourth winter, would be pushed until the Confederacy, already so close to defeat, would finally, after four years of relentless warfare and six hundred thousand deaths, be brought to its knees by the North.

There was rejoicing everywhere throughout the North after Lincoln’s reelection. From Boston to Philadelphia, from the huge metropolis of New York to the hamlet of Los Angeles and in all the towns, cities and villages in between, Northerners knew that their awesome sacrifices would be rewarded with victory. By now, everyone knew a man or boy who had been killed or maimed in the war; the loss was immense, the pain immeasurable. It seemed to go on forever, just as the casualty lists, posted every day outside newspaper offices, seemed to grow with each terrible day.

McClellan and the Democrats had offered peace at any price, although the candidate himself was vague on the issue. But with Lincoln, there was no doubt or question that the war would be brought to a successful conclusion. There would be no compromise peace. The Republic would be restored.

November 8 was also cold and gray in Richmond. There, in the capital of the Confederacy, the election results from the North brought only more gloom to a hungry and discouraged city. Over the next few days, President Jefferson Davis and the rest of the men who led the South would read the election results with despair, for they were not fools and they could see the abyss that lay ahead. Less than thirty miles to the south, their best army lay besieged and on the verge of annihilation at the hands of a tenacious enemy. The last granary of the South, Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley, had been made a wasteland by the Yankees in the fall, and the Union naval blockade grew tighter by the day. Long since abandoned by Europe, the Confederacy was now treated throughout the world as a pariah. Atlanta had been captured and burned by the vandal Sherman in September, and panic-stricken Southerners could only watch as his army rampaged through Georgia. Union cavalry ranged at will. Food was scarce as gold and everything west of the Blue Ridge—land, population, resources, will—was as good as gone.

There were some powerful men in the South who still held out hope that the North would tire of the waste and bloodshed and agree to an armistice. After all, the fighting was not over yet. But there were many others who viewed the situation more realistically and were prepared to go to extremes never before seriously considered. For them, risks and consequences no longer held any real meaning.

In a small, locked cabinet in President Davis’ office was a thick folder containing some of the most important intelligence ever gathered by Confederate agents. The folder concerned the daily activities of Abraham Lincoln, especially the state of his personal security. It was updated regularly. President Davis and his closest advisors knew the material in this file very well, but they had never openly discussed what so many Southerners, both high and low, had whispered since the early days of the war. Indeed, the Confederate government had on several occasions given its half-hearted, tacit support to plots directed against Lincoln, but Davis and his government had never been quite willing to devise and direct their own plan.

On the morning of November 10, 1864, a copy of the previous day’s Washington Star sat on the desk ofJefferson Davis. Abraham Lincoln Re-elected by an Overwhelming Majority, the headline shouted. Confusion to Copperheads and Traitors Everywhere.

Davis glanced over the accompanying story, and read through the thick file again. When he had finished, he stood with his hands behind his back and looked out the window of his office for a long time.

I

Philip Bartlett sat in the secretary of war’s waiting room with his legs crossed, his hat resting in his lap. He had once again completed the dangerous journey from Washington to Richmond, a trip he had taken several times during the war. It was, however, a journey he detested. The trip consisted of several unpleasant legs, the first of which was getting past the Yankee sentries in the forts ringing Washington. That was the easy part. But then followed a midnight ride across the bleak Maryland countryside, hopefully avoiding Federal cavalry patrols, to a safehouse in the middle of nowhere on the banks of the Potomac. Then it was across the river in a rowboat to the Virginia shore. That was by far the worst part of the journey, especially in November.

After a quick meal of biscuits and gravy in a farmhouse near Colton’s Point, he and his ferryman—a secesh farmer who was not terribly bright but could at least be trusted—had very nearly drowned when their leaky boat struck a submerged tree in the Potomac. The trip from Washington into Maryland, and the wilderness of St. Mary’s County, was perilous enough, but if they had encountered a Federal gunboat on the Potomac … well, Richmond better have a goddamned good reason for summoning him. But he already knew the reason, and had expected the notice.

In any case, Bartlett had made it safely to the Virginia shore, where he was met by a small escort of Confederate cavalry and taken to Richmond. Now he sat waiting for his appointment with Secretary Seddon. Through concentration and discipline he had mastered the art of patience, a priceless asset in his unique and dangerous profession.

Bartlett was a handsome man, though in a hard way. He was slender but muscular, standing six feet tall, about two inches above average for the time. He had a rather dark complexion, with piercing black eyes and a heavy black beard which mostly hid a long, ugly scar stretching from his cheek to the bottom of his chin. His eyes were striking, and they were often the only thing people remembered about him; those eyes seemed to have nothing behind them, they were as hard and black and cold as ice on an open barrel of tar. Bartlett’s eyes betrayed no emotions, neither love nor hate nor anger. But they took in everything and missed nothing.

He had black hair, too, which was naturally curly. He had a Roman nose and a prominent forehead. His hands were large and very strong but so smooth they were somewhat feminine, and his voice was low and deep. He was thirty-four years old and in excellent health. Women had always been greatly attracted to Philip Bartlett; he possessed that charisma which women find irresistible and which other men envy but do not understand. That charisma had proven to be a valuable commodity over and over in his life, particularly during the last three years.

As he sat in Seddon’s waiting room, he stared at the portrait of President Davis which hung on the wall opposite. Like the president, Philip Bartlett was a Southern Gentleman in every respect. He believed completely in the cause of Southern independence, a belief reinforced by his pre-war travels in the North. He had been just about everywhere important—New York, Boston, Philadelphia—and he was a perceptive man. Through careful study he had come to the firm conclusion that Northerners were far more prejudiced than were Southerners. Slavery or industrialism, call it what you will, they were essentially the same except that the Northerner made slaves of other white men. This was unheard of in the South, where every white man received at least some measure of respect. Besides, the Negro was treated more poorly in the North than in the South.

Bartlett did not care for most of the Northerners he had met; they were crass and uncouth, unwilling to accept the station in life that God had intended for them. Worse, Northern society had been contaminated by Papists, Jews and Abolitionists, with all the accompanying ignorance, lawlessness and subversive religions. By far, however, the great religion of the North was money. The Yankee had no soul but for money.

Like other members of his class he could see that it had become necessary for the South to separate from this increasingly polluted land, in order to maintain the virtue of what had once been America. The question was who would have America: the Papists and Abolitionists, or those who still honored the traditions, customs and laws of the Founding Fathers?

Bartlett was a spy. He was not and did not claim to be a military expert, but it did not take one to see that the South was now in a truly desperate situation. Come the spring, Grant would destroy Lee’s army, and Sherman could not be stopped. Obviously, there would be no assistance from the Europeans. The Southern well of manpower, shallow to begin with, had dried up and the will to resist was evaporating. Now, with Lincoln’s reelection, there was virtually no hope that the South could gain its independence on the battlefield. None of this terribly surprised Bartlett; he was a realistic man, and he had known from the beginning that the South faced extremely long odds. Despite his low opinion of Northerners, he had predicted that they would fight, and Lincoln, whether or not his fellow Southerners cared to admit it, had provided the strong leadership a country needs in time of war.

But also like his fellow Southerners, Bartlett held the conviction that the South had only been broken down by the superior manpower and resources of the North. All the daring of Lee and Jackson and Forrest could never have made up for the reality. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had decided the issue militarily, and since that time—well over a year now—the South had been fighting a losing contest. Once the North found competent military men, it became just a question of time. Now, with Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan leading the armies of blue vandals, the walls were beginning to collapse everywhere. All of the strains and sacrifices of the last four years appeared to have been in vain. Bartlett’s beloved South was hemorrhaging, the world he knew and honored in danger of vanishing forever.

Philip Bartlett had been a Confederate spy in Washington since January 1862, and he was superb at this most dangerous occupation. There had always been Southerners who lived in the city and craved attention while they went about proclaiming their allegiance to the Confederacy. Bartlett thought them useless; he was serious, professional, and his skills went far beyond simply gathering information on troops who had passed through the capital on a given day. Any fool could count bodies or read the Northern newspapers, which carried things like troop strengths and locations on a daily basis. Besides, top Confederate officials, especially Davis and Lee, read the Yankee newspapers every day. Washington newspapers reached Richmond in one day, while Philadelphia and New York newspapers took two days. Bartlett always played for much higher stakes. He was a brilliant, ruthless man, and he had always lived for the great gamble. He was a master manipulator with a special talent for discovering and exploiting the weakest point. A physically powerful man, he could murder or maim without the slightest twinge of conscience. In this, he liked to think, he was as efficient as any general or politician.

He kept a high profile in Washington. In the city’s better hotels, restaurants and saloons, everyone knew him and talked to him. The most famous and fashionable place of all, Willard’s Hotel, was his main haunt and always had a table for him. To those who knew him or just knew of him, he was Philip Bartlett, special correspondent for the Toronto Gazette. Stories under his name did appear in that newspaper every few days, written by ghost writers in Canada. The stories were always kept pro-Union, which protected Bartlett’s real identity and encouraged people to speak freely to him. Bartlett stood out all the more because the Canadian press was rabidly pro-Confederate, or at any rate anti- Union—a fact which Bartlett often loudly bemoaned. The truth was that Bartlett had wealthy relatives in Canada who partly owned the Gazette, and so arranging this cover was easily done. The cover had been Bartlett’s concept and creation.

By the late autumn of 1864, this had gone on for over two years and Bartlett had provided the Confederacy with a wealth of good information. He was without question the South’s best agent in the enemy capital, probably in the world. He had sent detailed maps of Washington’s defenses to Richmond. He had provided accurate counts of Union forces in every theater of the war, and he had provided Richmond with intelligence that had led indirectly to several Confederate victories—and should have led to several more. Bartlett was so efficient and had so many contacts that he had even provided Richmond with more accurate information about the crucial situations in London, Paris and St. Petersburg, than Richmond had ever received from its agents in those capitals.

Some of the information came easily, such as when Bartlett and two Union officers, who worked at the War Department, sat drinking in a parlor at Willard’s one evening in early 1864. The officers became quite drunk and showed the spy a copy of orders signed by Grant himself ordering thousands of men out of the defenses of Washington and into the field against Lee. Bartlett could hold his alcohol, and as he was helping the men into a cab, he merely lifted the orders out of the officer’s pocket. They were on the desk ofJefferson Davis two days later, complete with manpower estimates for the remaining Washington garrison.

Some information was harder to come by. He had been blackmailing a clerk in the Navy Department for a year, after discovering that the man was a homosexual. Through this extortion Bartlett had been able to obtain costs, specifications and launching dates of Union warships, from ironclads to gunboats. He had also been able to obtain schedules for all the ships on blockade duty off the Southern coast. After Bartlett sensed that the clerk might end the situation, the spy followed him one night and stabbed him to death in a dark street. He lifted the man’s watch and wallet, and the police considered it just another robbery gone bad.

Bartlett also paid for information. One of these sources was a prostitute who was sleeping with a Midwestern congressman. When she tried to raise the price, Bartlett agreed until he got all the intelligence he needed, then simply cut her throat in her own bed. He also had affairs with prominent women all around town, including the wife of a senator and the mistress of a general in the War Department. What these women knew of military and government affairs astounded him.

The spy only made three trips to Richmond during the war; he considered it a senseless risk. Intelligence was passed to Richmond through special couriers, who did not know the sources of the information. They just checked in certain, secret places around the city, and if there was a message (always in code) with instructions attached, it was carried though Union lines to the Confederate capital. If any information was incomplete or unconfirmed, he made sure his superiors understood that. In Richmond, they always knew Bartlett’s work by its thoroughness and accuracy.

Most people gave up information willingly; one just had to know how to get it out. Bartlett had a natural inclination toward violence, but he preferred not to use such methods unless they were absolutely necessary. It helped his cause that the Metropolitan police were a laughingstock, but too many things could go wrong with even the best laid plans; one could make a mistake or come up against the wrong opponent one day. The real danger, which he well recognized, was that he might overlook some tiny detail or grow overconfident and make a mistake.

Bartlett’s real name was Philippe LeClerc, and he had been born the son of a major cotton grower in New Orleans. According to his cover, the Bartletts were wealthy publishers in Canada. However, his side of the family did not make its money printing books or newspapers. Bartlett’s ancestors had been Huguenots who had emigrated from France to England in 1701. One strain went to New Orleans soon after, while the other traveled to Montreal, then Toronto, where they established a successful printing business. In New Orleans, the LeClercs made a great deal of money in the slave trade and in smuggling. When Congress abolished the slave trade, the LeClercs focused on slave auctions and prostitution.

Philippe’s father, Charles LeClerc, was thus heir to a small empire. Under his cold, austere ways, the LeClerc dominion grew and prospered even more. A small, bent, humorless man, Charles LeClerc decided, as he neared middle age, that he needed an heir. His first wife had died in childbirth years before; the child, a girl called Catherine, followed her mother two years later in a yellow fever epidemic. This was no loss to Charles, who had loved neither and considered a daughter utterly useless. He would not leave his fortune to a female.

At one of his slave auctions in Baton Rouge one day, Charles spied a particularly beautiful young mulatto woman up for sale. Her name was Clarice. She was eighteen and tall, with light brown skin and huge, doe-like eyes. Her breasts were full, her legs long and lovely. He took her home, where she joined his two hundred other slaves. Clarice was not allowed to perform any manual labor, instead working only in the household, where her chores were light. Charles kept her for himself, and from this liaison came Philippe LeClerc.

When he first learned that Clarice was pregnant, Charles beat her and demanded she get an abortion. When she refused, he planned to sell the child after it was born. But it came as a stroke of genius to him one night that, if the child was a boy, he could raise it as his own and one day have the child take over the family business. He would just pass the boy off as a nephew. And if he was a bit dark, a natural complexion for the French in any case, no one in New Orleans, of all places, would ask questions. If the baby turned out to be a girl, she would be a slave and sold later on.

And so Charles was content when Philippe LeClerc emerged from the womb. Now there was an heir. Philippe was told all through his early childhood that Charles was his uncle, that hismother and father had died of yellow fever just after he had been born. Charles was incapable of warmth and cared only that Philippe learn how to run the family business. The plantation house itself was perpetually dark and clammy, unfriendly and inhospitable, and the little boy led a joyless life. Between the absence of affection and his gloomy surroundings, Philippe acquired a melancholy personality.

To escape his cold, lonely existence, Philippe often went to the slave quarters in the evenings. There he found partial relief among the slaves, who so easily lapsed into song, story and dance when their dawn to dusk workday was finished. it was so unlike Philippe’s own miserable world. One night, he and a slave boy named Frederick were playing when the two boys got into an argument over something completely meaningless, as ten year olds are wont to do. The argument got nasty, and the black boy blurted out what all the slaves knew but never dared speak.

Oh, you’re daddy’s white and your momma’s a nigger! Frederick shouted at Philippe. And they both livin’ with you, you just too dumb to know it!

Life for both boys changed dramatically after that. Philippe ran home in tears and burst into his father’s study. He demanded to know who his real parents were, and refused Charles’ orders to leave. Charles whipped the boy until his behind was raw and bleeding. The next day, Charles told Philippe who he really was, that he was the son of Charles LeClerc and Clarice the house slave. Clarice had always been kind to Philippe, but to the boy, she had always been just another slave.

To one so young and in whom it had been deeply ingrained that blacks were an inferior, primate-like race, the news was like being struck by lightening. That very day, not wishing Philippe to become attached to a slave, Charles sold Clarice to a tobacco planter from North Carolina. Philippe never saw her again. His last memory of his mother was a tearful hug and a vague despair as she was taken away in a wagon, looking back and crying as the wagon slowly disappeared down the road. Little Frederick was tied to a tree and whipped until his back was in shreds; then, overthe weeping and begging of his mother, he was exchanged with another plantation for a female slave.

After the discovery of his real lineage, Philippe became even more distant and remote. He remained an only child and as he grew into a teenager, he found release in riding, shooting and fencing, as well as in managing his father’s slaves. Never sure of who he was, part white and part black in a land which despised the Negro and kept him in chains, Philippe grew to hate himself and all those around him, white or black.

Charles closely tutored his son in managing the plantation, handling the slaves and maximizing profits. Although he knew that Philippe hated him, Charles was otherwise pleased by the boy’s dark personality, which was proper for a business consisting of slaves, prostitutes and smuggling. Never trust anyone, he told Philippe, and never, never show weakness. No weakness was more foul than kindness or compassion, because they were an invitation for others to take advantage. Kindness encourages disrespect. People respect strength and determination, and one must sometimes be ruthless if only to make an example, whether it be with a rival businessman or with a slave. No one has ever taken advantage of Charles LeClerc, he would proudly point out.

Philippe’s anger often found release among the unfortunate slaves of the LeClerc plantation. He displayed a streak of cruelty which kept the slaves in a perpetual state of terror. He secretly blamed them as the messenger of evil tidings, and he ordered beatings and whippings for the most minor of infractions. When Philippe felt that the slaves had loafed one day, he set several of their little shacks on fire, forcing those families to live in the open until they could rebuild their own homes. To cut expenses, he reduced the slaves’ meager flour ration by one third, and their meat ration by nearly half. Charles was disturbed by Philippe’s occasional lack of foresight: A sick or weak slave was a liability, not an asset, and while discipline was absolutely essential in dealing with the nigger—harshness was often required, true—the master must balance discipline with good business sense; one did not whip a mule until it could not stand. But this would come in time.

Philippe grew to be strong and handsome, and fully imbibed with the spirit of what it is to be a Southern Gentleman. This code held that might makes right, and any insult, no matter how trivial, must be answered physically. It was a code of violence and intimidation, and Philippe came to it naturally.

By the age of seventeen he had bedded all of the younger wenches on the plantation. Philippe also had a tryst with the young wife of one of the LeClercs’ wealthy neighbors. The girl, who was only a few years older than Philippe, had married a man twenty years her senior and had been carrying on the affair for some time before her husband found out. The older man confronted Charles, who was faced with a dilemma. The man did not wish to face Philippe in a duel, but did threaten to cut off all business dealings with LeClerc and ruin LeClerc’s name in Louisiana. Charles thought it best to send the boy off somewhere, to school, where he could mature and sharpen his business education. The farther the better, so Charles sent the boy to England.

Philippe spent the next few years at a boarding school in Kent where he rode, hunted, fenced, and played cards with the sons of aristocrats. While intensely proud of his Southern heritage, Philippe was in no hurry to return home. instead, at the age of twenty he traveled to France, where he made a good living fencing and gambling. He had no real friends in France and yet was never without an invitation to parties and balls. He carried on affairs with a number of women, most of whom were married.

Philippe developed a taste for blood. Hundreds of francs would often be wagered on one fencing match, and Philippe made it a point to humble an opponent as much as possible; this would demonstrate his own superiority and dishonor the loser, thus bringing about a rematch—which rarely happened. To Philippe, it really didn’t matter. He enjoyed the competition, he relished victory, and he loved seeing blood on an opponent; indeed, the sight of blood brought him an almost sexual excitement. But for the law, he would gladly have killed his opponents each time. He acquired a reputation which began frightening away men. When times with the sword grew lean, hefocused on gambling, at which he was also quite successful. An excellent fighter, Philippe dealt with unpaid debts by beating the debtor senseless. He nearly beat a man to death one night in Paris, and in Cherbourg he stabbed to death a sailor who tried to rob him.

During these years he lived entirely without his father’s assistance, so he could ignore Charles’ demands for him to return to Louisiana. This soon changed, however, after one particularly grueling fencing match. Philippe’s opponent, the son of a French Army colonel, slashed a deep cut on Philippe’s chin. The match was declared a draw, but Philippe swore vengeance. in the meantime, his trim, fashionable goatee would not hide the ugly scar on his face, so he grew a thick, full beard.

The rematch came some weeks later, in an apple orchard about ten miles outside Paris. in the heat of combat he forgot himself and killed the man with a thrust through the upper chest. For the first and only time in his life, Philippe felt panic, but he suppressed it and watched the young man bleed to death. Philippe dragged the body to a stream, where he stuffed it into a hollow log. He led the man’s horse into the woods and cut its throat, then jumped on his own horse and raced back to his apartment in Paris.

it would be some time before the body was found, but Philippe would be a natural suspect because of the grudge. The man’s father was an aristocrat, so there would be a high price on Philippe’s head. He could turn to no one. Most of his lovers were married, and this was not the time to encounter a jealous husband or fiancé. He had no male friends whom he could trust. There was only one course.

Philippe burned the little book in which he recorded his winnings, took all of his cash, bundled up his clothes, and spent the night sleeping in an abandoned shack on the outskirts of town. He made his way to the coast, where he boarded a ship for Canada. On the day he set foot in Newfoundland, some children playing in a meadow discovered the body of twenty-one year old August Cambert, stuffed inside a hollow log, and the French police began searching for Philippe LeClerc, American citizen.

From Newfoundland Philippe traveled to Toronto, where the LeClercs had a healthy printing and publishing business. Charles saw this as an opportunity to force him to come home. He would have to lie low for some time, however, so Charles advised Philippe to remain with the Toronto LeClercs, and to change his name so as to avoid any business about extradition. When the LeClercs had settled in Toronto many years before, they had taken an Anglo name for business reasons. The name they chose was Bartlett, after an Englishman who had assisted their Huguenot forebears. As a result, Philippe LeClerc—Southern Gentleman, master of the sword, professional gambler, murderer of August Cambert—disappeared and became Philip Bartlett.

For the next several years, Philippe worked as a representative of Bartlett Publishing, Ltd. He found business tedious but ventured throughout the United States, visiting all the major cities in the North and Midwest. During this time Philippe became engaged to a beautiful young Swedish woman, the daughter of a count. Her father broke it off, however, after he discovered the existence of Philippe’s numerous lovers.

His travels were also educational. He studied Northerners and their society, noted the power of industry, the busy shipyards, and the teeming, filthy cities. The North’s greatest failing, in his eyes, was that its democracy had become open to virtually anyone—foreigners, beggars, Jews. Eventually it would even welcome the nigger, although he found Northerners far more hostile to the black man than were most Southerners.

Bartlett also had occasion to visit the South, which he had never known as an adult, and was surprised to hear so many of his people talk openly of war with the North. The Southerner was by far a more virile breed of man than the Northerner, and his society was vastly superior to the democracy of Papists and Abolitionists running the North. But the very power of the North was not something to be discounted. Bartlett never believed the South could win its independence in any conventional manner,at least not without help from Britain and France. And Bartlett, unlike most Southerners, knew this would hardly be a priority for any British government, as it would certainly mean war between Britain and the Northern states.

By the time Bartlett was ready to leave Canada, the land of snow and ice, for his native Louisiana, he believed he knew Northerners quite well indeed.

Philip Bartlett finally returned home to Louisiana in 1856, assumed his rightful place as a Southern planter, and helped run the family empire. After such a life as he had led, the business world was very dull. Nonetheless, Bartlett took over various aspects of the family business and ran them competently. Life still had its pleasures—hunting, fencing, gambling, women—but the future seemed unattractive. He oversaw the slave auctions and often traveled to Atlanta, Vicksburg, even Richmond. He grew close to no one, won a great deal of money at cards, and carried on affairs with a great degree of recklessness, for he did not fear other men.

When Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, the South reacted with violence and fury. It had become apparent that slavery would soon be outlawed in Congress, and with it the Southern economy—and with that the Southern way of life. The right of an individual state to rule itself in its own best interests was being eroded and destroyed. The principle of states’ rights had been a pillar of American government, and the South had joined the Union because of it. Now it was being taken away without the consent of Southerners. Eighty years before, the Union had been necessary for survival and economic prosperity, but now the Union itself had become superfluous—and dangerous—to the South.

Lincoln had not even campaigned in the South, and had won only a plurality of the vote. Candidate Lincoln had made it clear that slavery would not expand into the territories acquired from Mexico in 1848. This, on top of John Brown, on top of the Abolitionists, on top of lies like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was just too much to bear. It would be only a matter of time before the South was overwhelmed in Congress—their culture outlawed, their healthy economy destroyed, ruled by a hostile government hundreds of miles away. There was one solution: secession. If the North will not let us go peacefully, we will go by force. We have the right to determine our own destiny, and we will go one way or another.

Bartlett agreed completely but listened to all the fiery speeches with cynicism. Too many of his people thought it would be a war of weeks—if the Yankees fought at all. Bartlett had seen the North and its power and knew the Yankees would fight, that they would bring that power to bear if they could harness it quickly enough and properly. The coming war would be a brutal fight to the finish. Yankees might be no match for Southerners of any level, from planter to dirt farmer, but the North would fight and it had ample means to do so. A man of few words in any case, Bartlett did not bother to tell the hotheads this. It would not have mattered. They would not have listened.

The fantastic Southern victory at Manassas in July 1861 did not change Bartlett’s thinking. No matter how well the South fought, the North’s power would become greater and greater. First would come the inevitable blockade, and in the absence of British help the South would not be able to import the manufactured goods and medicine they needed. The South would have to resort to unconventional means; Southerners would have to take long chances and exceptional risks to win this war.

After Bull Run, Bartlett decided to offer his services to the government at Richmond. He had considered raising a cavalry regiment from Louisiana but opted instead for a much more unusual route, one that promised far greater dividends than would a few hundred more men in the field. He offered to go into the North as an agent.

Bartlett had carefully considered this choice. He could easily have stayed home, as did many of his wealthy neighbors, but in his heart he believed in the Southern cause and welcomed the physical challenge. He understood full well the risks inherent in