The Quartermaster Page 10

  The enterprising captain told Scott that Southern Unionists had given up hope the country could survive. He said, “the temper of the South is excited, is dangerous. I do not think that any concerted plan is agreed upon, but Southern Senators are reported to intend resigning if Mr. Lincoln is elected.” Meigs worried that rebellious Southerners might try to make a name for themselves by seizing Fort Pickens at Pensacola and other lightly manned fortifications, and he suggested that the army quietly add men and armaments immediately to serve as a deterrent to Southern adventurers. “At present both this place and Fort Taylor [at the tail end of the Florida Keys] are at the mercy of a party which could be transported in a fishing smack,” Meigs wrote. “What a disgrace such an assault if successful would inflict upon our Government.”

  * * *

  Fort Jefferson, Tortugas, Florida, November 25, 1860

  Lat. 24 37 N Long 82 52 W

  My Dear John:

  I have not heard from home for two weeks or more, because the last steamer coming in from New Orleans brought me no mail, but tomorrow I shall send up the schooner to Key West to get the mail, which I expect the Isabel steamer to bring from Charleston.

  I had no idea of the delightful climate which I find here at this season. The thermometer keeps between 75 and 80 . . .

  The sea is white with wave crests which break over the harbor.

  I went fishing today on Two Sons. We caught in the schooner some 12 or 13 fish which would make about 70 pounds all together. Fine fishing here. Some of the fish here are beautiful. The kingfish which we caught is the first of the season, a single fish about 31 inches in length, a fellow which can leap 20 feet and 6 feet in height from the water. Their jumps are like those of the deer . . .

  Write to me and let me know how you get on with your studies. I am lonely and need letters from home, from those I love . . .

  Ever your affectionate father, Meigs.

  CHAPTER 15

  Floyd Resigns

  Events soon handed Meigs vindication, as a tide of truth turned against John Floyd. The change began with a report from a board of engineers that Floyd had formed to examine the aqueduct. It seems the war secretary assumed the board would find evidence that would indict Meigs’s work and reputation. As it happened, the board’s November 15 report could have been written by Meigs himself. It said the work was in good condition, had not cost more than necessary, and incorporated novel designs. Floyd’s reputation slid further on news that he had resisted calls by General Scott and others to reinforce Fort Sumter and other federal garrisons in Charleston Harbor. When the commander at Charleston moved on his own to bolster defenses, Floyd replaced him. The new commander, Robert Anderson, was known to tolerate slavery. But he was an army veteran of the Black Hawk, Second Seminole, and Mexican Wars, and he would not lift a hand against the Union. Contrary to Floyd’s wishes, Anderson immediately called for reinforcements to help keep the forts and harbor in Union hands.

  On December 20 South Carolina electrified the nation with its decision to secede. In the following days, Anderson sensed with good reason that state militia intended to occupy the harbor’s federal forts, including the one he occupied, Fort Moultrie. They were undermanned and could not fully use the guns they had in place. On December 26, under the cover of darkness, Anderson transferred his force to Fort Sumter, which offered a better defensive position than Fort Moultrie. When Floyd heard of the move, he was flabbergasted and accused Anderson of violating orders. In fact, Anderson’s orders, which Floyd had endorsed, gave him latitude to make such a move. “It has made war inevitable!” Floyd declared.

  In the midst of this crisis, new details about War Department corruption emerged from a House investigation. The findings were related to the so-called Mormon War in Utah, where Buchanan and Floyd sent troops in 1857 to enforce federal law and install a non-Mormon governor. Not only had the contractors supplying the army botched the job, the government fell behind on its bills. To avoid a lapse in funding, Floyd urged banks to advance money to the contractors. Then he endorsed the bills, which became known as the “Floyd Acceptances.” Matters spiraled out of control when the time came for paying off the loans. No money had been appropriated for the expense. The contractor, facing ruin, persuaded a cousin of Floyd’s at the Department of the Interior that scandal would erupt if the banks could not be paid. The House investigators found evidence that the contractor and Floyd’s cousin eventually took close to $900,000 from a trust fund established on behalf of certain Indian tribes. The scheme surfaced when interest on the trust fund bonds came due.

  Northerners became further inflamed when news emerged that Floyd had been shipping weapons and supplies to Southern armories. The shipments earlier in the year had included twenty-four thousand muskets from a national armory in the North to Charleston, South Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Some of the transfers were routine inventory management. They nevertheless suggested to secessionists that they had a friend in Floyd. The master armorer for the state of Virginia was open about this conviction in a treasonous note asking Floyd to ship weapons as soon as possible from the Northeast. “I desire to get all the assistance we can from the national armories before our much-honored and esteemed Secretary of War vacates his office, for I have no hopes of any assistance after a Black Republican takes possession of the War Department,” the armorer wrote.

  Near the end of the year, Floyd triggered outrage when he ordered 125 heavy cannons from Pittsburgh arsenals to garrisons in Mississippi and Texas, just as South Carolina seceded. Municipal and civic leaders in Pennsylvania were livid. They wrote to the president and recommended that he countermand the order. Buchanan did so on Christmas Day. Floyd resigned, attributing his departure to indignation at the administration’s handling of the crisis in Charleston. Prosecutors in the District indicted him for “malversation”—a violation of the public trust—charges dropped later for lack of evidence. At the same time, Virginia embraced him as a hero, and he was soon made a brigadier general of the Confederate army. In early 1862 he was relieved of duty after fleeing a pivotal battle. Floyd’s health soon failed. He died at his daughter’s home in Abingdon, Virginia, in August 1863.

  Years later, Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs provided a damning coda to Floyd’s life, a summation that must have pleased Meigs. Grant said that Floyd was never a soldier and probably was unsuited to be one. “He was further unfitted for command, for the reason that his conscience must have troubled him and made him afraid. As Secretary of War he had taken a solemn oath to maintain the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the same against all its enemies. He betrayed that trust.”

  * * *

  Everywhere Meigs looked, there was something on his desolate island that caught his attention. Coral reefs were visible just below the surface of water that shifted constantly from sapphire to teal to green. There were varieties of crabs at every turn, pelicans gliding low just offshore, and scorpions in the sand. He marveled at the phosphorescent trail left behind the schooner The Tortugas that ferried him occasionally to Key West. He was transfixed as the “waves splash away in great maps of light.” He thought that two local slaves (of the twenty-five who shared the island with him) were extraordinary, saying they looked as “black as the ace of spades.” On one excursion, Meigs went to Havana. He was almost as dazzled by the culture and feel of Cuba as he was of the natural beauty on the Dry Tortugas.

  He didn’t have nearly as much time to study as he had hoped. At Fort Jefferson, Meigs was the personification of the federal government, and the responsibility weighed on him. From what he had seen on his overland route south, he did not have a moment to lose in fulfilling his mission to fortify the island. After more than a decade of construction, it was far from finished. Also unfinished was Fort Taylor near Key West. Both installations took on strategic significance now because they commanded the route for ships sailing from key cities on the Gulf, including New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.

  Under
scoring his fears was the formation of secessionist-leaning militia in Key West. They had already taken ammunition from a federal storehouse, and Meigs expected a call from Southerners to surrender any day. There were no guns or ammunition on the island, and he had no way to mount a defense. He hustled to use what little resources he had to prepare for a fight as he waited to hear back from Scott. He urged a unit of federal artillerymen based in Key West to set up quarters in Fort Taylor. Meigs and the artillery commander engaged in a public ruse that the men were merely practicing at the fort.

  Meigs also convinced two navy steamers in the region to anchor nearby. After the navy recalled one of the ships, Meigs fulminated in his diary. He thought that “the President ought to be impeached & convicted of treasonable weakness.” Day by day, he became angrier about the secessionists and more concerned about the country’s core values. “Is slavery stronger than freedom?” he wondered. “My heart grows sick as I think of this prospect, & yet I believe that even in the greatest political trouble there is peace & happiness for those & those only who each hour & minute endeavor to do their duty & I hope to be able to do mine.”

  Finally, Washington showed interest in the Gulf fortifications. Joseph Holt, the new War Department secretary, and General Scott agreed to send reinforcements to the region. In January a steamship called the Joseph Whitney arrived at Fort Jefferson. Among those onboard was a new commander, who found the place ready for action. In addition to everything else Meigs had created a bombproof magazine for the small force’s ammunition, reinforcing it with brick arches four and a half feet thick. At Fort Taylor, meanwhile, Meigs had fortified a wall facing a moat and pulled up bridges that provided easy access. Meigs was grateful for the new companionship, and he comfortably assumed a secondary role on the island as chief engineer. He shared his view that with enough supplies, ammunition, and men, the fort would enable the North to harass the Gulf ports. He was right. With the benefit of his foresight, the federal government kept the fort in Union hands throughout the coming war.

  On February 13, 1861, his banishment ended abruptly. At ten in the morning, new orders arrived on The Tortugas directing Meigs to return immediately to the nation’s capital, where he was to resume control of the aqueduct project. Two hours later, he headed home.

  CHAPTER 16

  He Plucked a Laurel

  When Meigs returned to Washington at six o’clock in the evening on February 20, he had been gone almost four months. His family rejoiced to have their gruff, loving husband and father back. Many in the political world took comfort that he had prevailed so definitively over Floyd. “Meigs has been summoned back in good season,” one newspaper declared. He has been “fighting for six years past a strong battle with the army of great thieves,” and he “made it his business to see that the Government got the worth of their money.” Francis Preston Blair, the politician and journalist, said his adversaries “sent Meigs to gather a thistle, but thank God, he has plucked a laurel.”

  Meigs reached out to his friend and mentor, army chief engineer General Joseph G. Totten, and together they went to see Secretary Holt. Meigs learned that Holt and his aides had been delighted by his rousing letters from Florida. Holt recounted with glee how Floyd had tried to thwart efforts to reinforce the forts by telling Buchanan “it was perfectly ridiculous that [Meigs] wanted men and guns to defend the Tortugas and some heap of rocks, perfectly indefensible.” Holt’s advisors had assured the new secretary of war that Meigs was smart, tough, and determined, and would fight off any attackers—by hand if necessary.

  The atmosphere in Washington was electric. In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina had adopted a Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States. They selected Jefferson Davis to be president of the new government, a development that fueled Meigs’s bitterness about the rebellion. Lincoln, meanwhile, was on the way from Illinois to Washington for his inauguration. Despite all this, Meigs couldn’t wait to get back to work on the aqueduct. He walked with Louisa to Cabin John Creek, and they looked with satisfaction at his unfinished masterpiece, now called Union Bridge. It was regarded almost universally, even in the South, as an engineering triumph. (Jeff Davis’s name would be removed from the granite memorial honoring those responsible for the bridge’s construction. And engineer Alfred Rives, who also went south, did not receive the recognition he was due for his role in its design.) On their walk through Washington, the couple was impressed by the city’s martial air. Batteries occupied key points on bridges and crossroads. Soldiers seemed to be everywhere, and the sound of bugles filled the air. Rumors of plots to assassinate Abraham Lincoln shot back and forth across Washington. The president-elect was set to arrive in the capital by special train the next day. General Scott insisted on vigorous efforts to defend the city and the new chief executive. Though he was seventy-three and infirm, he was not going to let anything happen to Lincoln on his watch.

  Meigs reunited with his friends in the Saturday Club. When talk turned to his banishment, he was asked about his intentions at the Capitol. Would he try to resume control? At least one member suggested it might be a good time for Meigs to show generosity and allow his replacement, Captain Franklin, to remain. Even though Meigs got along with Franklin, he was rigid about his goal. He wanted a complete restoration of every post that had been stripped from him the year before. Meigs hoped that Franklin would contact him with an offer to resign. He waited for two days before writing to Franklin and spelling out his wish that he step aside. Meigs cast it as a matter of honor, saying “no man has reputation enough to be able to throw away any” of it. “I have always held a firm conviction that with or without effort on my part if God spared my life I should place the Statue of American Freedom upon the Dome of the Capitol,” he wrote. “To this end, I invite your cooperation.”

  Franklin declined, and for good reasons. He needed the assignment and worried about his own reputation. If he followed Meigs’s lead, people might think he had been a willing pawn to dishonest leaders. That was something Meigs could understand, so he set about helping to arrange another post for Franklin at the Treasury Building. Holt agreed to the arrangements and put them into effect. The secretary of war also eliminated regulations established by Floyd that diminished Meigs’s previous authority. Congress, meanwhile, appropriated $250,000 for the next round of work.

  Meigs thought he ought to visit President Buchanan one last time, and found him a broken man. He wondered about how Lincoln would fare. He had heard wildly varying reports about him. Judging from the prints he had seen, Meigs thought Lincoln looked peculiar. “He certainly does not seem to come much to the level of the great mission,” he wrote the day before the inauguration. That night, Meigs visited the Senate. He chatted with old friends, watching lawmakers work under the gas lamps on end-of-administration business. It was a strange atmosphere, thrilling and ominous. No one knew what lay ahead. Everybody assumed it would be something momentous. “Exciting times, these,” Meigs wrote in his journal that night. “The country trembles in the throes of death.”

  * * *

  The inaugural procession began at the Willard Hotel and worked its way slowly east along Pennsylvania Avenue. Lincoln was escorted by so many horsemen and guards that it was difficult for onlookers to see him. The carriage took him to the Senate chamber, where Lincoln greeted a waiting crowd. He led them to the Capitol’s east front, where as many as twenty-five thousand restive people had gathered, some of them anxious about whether an attempt would be made on Lincoln’s life. He took his place on a platform near a desk that held the Bible. Above him was the massive unfinished dome. Rising above that was Meigs’s distinctive wood derrick. Lincoln stood above all those around him, looking both calm and sad. Nearby was Stephen Douglas, the Little Giant; the worn-out Buchanan; and Horace Greeley, the nettlesome editor of the New-York Daily Tribune.

  Meigs squeezed in near the platform and watched as Lincoln put on his reading glasses, and lis
tened as he began to speak. The sixteenth president said he would occupy forts still in possession of the United States. He would not attack anywhere, but he would resist attacks by anyone. He promised to be patient at the same time he urged citizens to do their duty. The speech left Meigs more devoted than ever to defending the Union. “No time was wasted in generalities or platitudes but he grappled at once with his subject & no one could doubt that he meant what he said,” Meigs wrote later that day. “Each sentence fell like a sledgehammer driving in the nails which maintain states.”

  Meigs quickly resumed working in the capital. He awarded contracts and put 450 men and 150 horses to work on the bridge at Cabin John, Bridge No. 6 at Rock Creek, and related projects, but he was soon called away to serve his country in far more important ways.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 17

  A Secret Mission

  Meigs returned home from work on the aqueduct one afternoon to find a letter from the new secretary of state, William Seward, who wanted him to come to a meeting at the White House. Seward had taken on the self-appointed role as dictator of defense. It was widely assumed that he, not Lincoln, was the “premier” who held the reins of power. When Meigs arrived, Seward told him that the president wanted to talk to a soldier about certain military operations. Though Lincoln had Scott and Totten to advise him, Seward said, “No one would think of putting either of those old men on horseback.” The president needed someone who could be sent into the field. Seward escorted the captain to the White House and introduced him to the president, who spoke openly about his concerns.