Shattered Nation by Jeffrey Brooks

Author:Jeffrey Brooks [Brooks, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780615802053
Published: 2013-09-23T20:00:00+00:00

*****

August 20, Night

There was no one in sight. The sound of his footsteps was strangely audible amidst the eerie silence of Richmond at night. Grace Street was home to many of Richmond’s older and more elegant houses, mostly owned by those fortunate few who had inherited their wealth rather than made it themselves. Walking to the east, away from the center of the city, Bragg passed by the stately home of Miss Elizabeth Van Lew, an eccentric Union sympathizer everyone called “Crazy Bet”. Insane or not, she would have long since been thrown in jail had Bragg had anything to say about it. He dismissed the thought as irrelevant to the matter at hand.

He was not wearing his habitual immaculate gray uniform. Instead, Bragg was wearing black civilian clothes. Although scarcely a soul was walking the streets, as it was approaching midnight, provosts on horseback occasionally rode by in their endless patrols of the streets. Recognizing him as a general, they would certainly stop to salute him. As it was, Bragg wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible.

As he walked down the street, Bragg knew he was taking a risk. John Daniel, editor of the Richmond Examiner, was one of the most ardent critics of the Davis administration, never letting pass an opportunity to lambast the President or disparage his policies. Among the favorite targets of the venomous pen of Daniel and his team of hack writers had been Bragg himself. That was an unforgivable sin in Bragg’s eyes, made all the worse by the fact that Daniel had been a staunch defender of Joe Johnston since the beginning of the war.

There was, however, one cause to which Daniel felt an even stronger commitment than his crusade against Jefferson Davis. Daniel was a passionate defender of slavery and white supremacy. That was what Bragg was now counting on.

Bragg turned north and began walking up 22nd Street until he came to St. John’s Episcopal Church, famed as the location where Patrick Henry had made his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech at the beginning of the American Revolution.

A man similarly dressed in dark civilian clothes stood beneath a tree off to the left of the church’s main door. He was smoking a large cigar, but tossed it into the ground when he saw Bragg approach.

“Mr. Daniel?” Bragg asked uncertainly.

“So, it was not a joke,” the man replied. “When I got your note, I thought either someone was playing a prank on me or that you had gone out of your mind.”

“Why is that?” Bragg asked, walking up beside Daniel. He motioned for the newspaperman to walk over with him to a spot just beneath one of the church’s windows, from which a faint glow was being cast by liturgical candles.

“Your note said that you had confidential information about a critically important story which you wished to share with me. No man has been treated more roughly in the pages of my newspaper than yourself, so why on earth would you want to help me?”

“My reasons are my own, Daniel.

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