Walk in Hell (gw-2) by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sci_history

RESIDENCE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

Her head went up and down in a quick, decisive nod. "About time Gabriel Semmes got off his backside and wrote to me."

"Who it from, Miss Anne?" Julia asked.

"The president," Anne answered, and the Negro woman's eyes got big and round.

Anne tore the envelope open. The letter was in Semmes' own hand, which partly mollified her for not having heard from him sooner. My dear Miss Colleton, the president of the CSA wrote, Let me extend to you my deepest personal sympathies on the loss of your brother and the damage to your property during the unfortunate events of the recent past.

"Unfortunate events," Anne snorted, as if the two words added up to some horrible curse-and so, maybe, they did. Before he'd been elected, Gabriel Semmes had made a name for himself as a man who went out and did things, not a typical politician. Anne had thrown money into his campaign on that basis. But if he called an insurrection an unfortunate event, maybe she would have been better served spending it elsewhere.

She read on: As you no doubt know, these unfortunate events have adversely affected our ability to resist the aggression of the United States of America, which seek to reduce us once more to the state of abject dependency existing before the War of Secession. To meet their challenge, we shall have to utilize every resource available to us.

"I should hope so," Anne said, as if the president were standing there before her. She was sure she knew what would be coming next: some sort of higher taxes, which she would be asked to support in the name of continued Confederate strength and independence.

She looked around Marshlands. She didn't know how she could pay higher taxes. She didn't know how she could pay the taxes already due. One way or another, she would have to manage. She understood that. If the choice was between paying more and having the damnyankees win, she would-somehow-pay more. With the Yankees' having gassed Jacob, and with Tom still at the Roanoke front, how could she do anything less?

Her eyes returned to the letter: For that reason, I have introduced into the Congress of the Confederate States of America… She nodded and stopped reading for a moment. Yes, Gabriel Semmes was perfectly predictable… a bill authorizing the recruitment, training, and employment against the United States of America of bodies of Negro troops, these to serve under white officers and noncommissioned officers, the reward for their satisfactory completion of service, or for their inability to do so because of wounds, to be the franchise and all other rights and privileges pertaining to full citizenship in the Confederate States of America, intermarriage being the sole exception thereto.

"Good God," Anne said. Taxes, she'd expected. This, no. She felt as if she'd been kicked in the belly. The Negroes rose up in bloody revolt, and Semmes proposed to reward them for it? He did indeed go forth and do things, and she wished to high heaven he'd been content to hold still.

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