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>> 249 7 “Stand on the Crater of a Living Volcano” Processions, Trials, and Recriminations I would as soon expect a house to stand on the crater of a living volcano, as a State, where whites and blacks being nearly equal in numbers, the whites are proscribed and the blacks made rulers . Such a Government cannot long have the heartfelt sympathy of any large body of men anywhere. Blood is thicker than water, and northern whites will sympathize with southern whites in their struggle to shake off the incubus of Negro rule. —Thomas Ewing Jr., 1867 Few soldiers in Cump’s army could complain about the hardships they endured while occupying Savannah. The city boasted gracious architecture and bore no resemblance to the dismal settlements they had seen in north Georgia. Admittedly, it took the sons of the Old Northwest some effort to get used to eating rice. Most of Cump’s troops, however, dove into the seafood . For the natives of Ohio and Indiana, saltwater oysters were a once-ina -lifetime treat. Meanwhile, Charley continued his explorations of the area, though he failed to loosen up the censorious Major Henry Hitchcock. Charley ’s friend and fellow staff officer Major George Nichols was far more easygoing . As Nichols said of Savannah: “A foreigner visiting the city would not suppose that it was so lately a prize of battle. Ladies walk the streets with perfect confidence and security, and the public squares are filled with children at play; the stores and theaters are open; soldiers are lounging on the doorsteps of the houses in cheerful conversation with fair damsels; carriages whirl by, wherein the blue coat and brass buttons are in close proximity—anything but warlike—to jockey hats and flowering ringlets.”1 250 > 251 ruin. With President Jefferson Davis’s permission, Campbell had written to Justice Samuel Nelson. Campbell asked Nelson if Thomas Ewing could set up a meeting between Lincoln and Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens . Lincoln agreed to talk but excluded Ewing. He sent the senior Francis Blair to make arrangements for Stephens and Campbell to come to Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia. The February 3 meeting proved to be a futile exercise. Stephens wanted a truce, but the Confederacy was willing neither to embrace emancipation nor to surrender its self-proclaimed status as a sovereign nation. The war, Thomas Ewing fretted, would continue until Robert E. Lee met “disgraceful defeat and surrender.”5 The last of Cump’s army departed Savannah on February 1, headed relentlessly toward Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Though the objective was 160 miles away—normally several days’ march—the swampy terrain and freezing rain made the procession extremely slow. Charley wrote to his father that he was experiencing the coldest and most miserable weather since his arrival in the South two years earlier. Always thinking, Charley secured an invitation from General Frank Blair to share a spacious—and dry—house that he had commandeered in Beaufort, South Carolina. His brother Tom may have loathed Blair, but still, as Charley could attest, he possessed a keen eye for comfort. Major Hitchcock grumbled that he ended up sleeping on the plank floor of a cold shack. Most of Cump’s enlisted men would have gladly traded places with Hitchcock. To speed their progress, they had left their tents behind.6 Charley and the troops did not have to worry much about Confederate forces. On the other hand, marching through South Carolina proved far more exhausting than the romp across Georgia. Just to get to Columbia required crossing several water-gorged rivers and at least two dozen swamps. There was also, in contrast to Georgia, not a lot of food to be foraged. In spite of these challenges, Charley had no doubt that victory was on the horizon. He wrote his father, “We all expect a hard but a successful campaign,” and added that afterwards he wanted to command a combat regiment “for the final struggle of the war” outside Richmond.7 While Charley may have been in good spirits, Cump’s chilled and muckcovered troops were in a vicious temper. Major Nichols succinctly referred to South Carolina as “this cowardly traitor state” that “with hellish haste dragged her Southern sisters into the caldron of secession.” Captain Foraker was not surprised to discover that the militarily and economically insignificant towns of Robertsville and Lawtonville “were both in ashes.” Having elevated eavesdropping on Cump’s high-level conversations into an art form, Foraker had...

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