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"This anthology of short stories offers fascinating glimpses of the Civil War as most Americans at the time experienced it--by reading about incidents on the battlefront and elsewhere in popular magazines. Modern readers can project themselves back to that heroic and sentimental time more effectively through this medium of popular literature than in any other way."--James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era"

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To Live and Die

Duke University Press

Chapter One

The deepening crisis in the territories helped send Abraham Lincoln hundreds of miles across a divided continent to the White House. When he arrived in Washington during February 1861, after eluding an assassination attempt in Baltimore, he found a city that was as unfinished as the union was unsteady. The Capitol, where he was inaugurated in March, was covered with scaffolding, blocks of marble littered the grounds, a new iron dome was only partially built, and the crowning female statue of "Armed Freedom" had yet to be cast. With secession gathering momentum, military men abruptly relocated: Creole Pierre G. T. Beauregard left his new appointment as superintendent of West Point to command the attack on Fort Sumter, Virginian Joseph E. Johnston resigned as Quartermaster General to lead Confederate troops in the Shenandoah Valley, and Ohioan Irvin McDowell found himself in charge of the undisciplined Union volunteers assembled to defend the capital. On the cusp of war in "Job and the Bug," Washington is a miasma of questionable loyalties and thin disguises, a city whose poor boys and pawnshops quickly play a greater role than the Houses of Congress or Charleston's heavy guns.

Chauncey Hickox

"JOB AND THE BUG"

(Lippincott's, May 1871)

The old man looked like a beetle. He wore a black morning-gown tied tightly round the waist with a belt, a yard or more of black bombazine wound about his throat, a black cap set closely on his round head, and great goggles on his eyes. The round cap met the goggles from above, a grizzly beard met them from below; and it was difficult to tell what kind of face he carried beneath the cap and beard and goggles, or whether he had any real face at all. The belt and bombazine made him very small in the middle and the neck, his shoulders were full and round, and the loose gown made him large below the waist. Yes, he looked like a beetle, or some other great black bug, as he prowled among the dusty crannies under his shelves, and thrust his slender arms, like antennae, into all the doubtful corners of his desk.

His shop, or store, or office-bazaar, depot, emporium, repository, as an accomplished tradesman would call such a place of business-was an antiquarian bookstore, a pawnbroker's office and a junkshop generally. The establishment stood between Pennsylvania Avenue and that triumph of engineering and statesmanship, the great Washington Canal. Probably the old Bug's predecessor was in the "ring," and lobbied for the digging of this public work, on account of the junk business it would foster. This is certainly a more plausible reason for digging it than was ever made to appear to those who paid for it. For not all the judges in the departments round about-a clerk who has no other title is a judge in Washington-could compute the number of lame Negroes and unfortunate women and scrub-headed boys who have earned their daily tobacco by gleaning tin, bones, iron, glass, rags, paper, old boots and Congressional speeches from the bottom of this ditch. Neither could all the government judges have taken an inventory of the Beetle's stock. He had all the secondhand school-books in use during the last sixty years; and if there was ever a book in the Greek or Hebrew line, in the Annual line, in the flash-novel line, in the theological line-if there was ever a book printed in these, or any lines at all, which could be found nowhere else, the Beetle had a dusty, mouse-eaten copy of it. If one wanted a flint for an ancient musket, a pod-auger, a coffin plate, a dirty Masonic apron, a rusty Mexican spur, a leaky glue-pot, the long black antennae would go diving among the dark holes until they found it.

Among the oddities of this collection was the white surplice of a clergyman; and over it, on the same nail, hung a sword-belt and crimson sash. These had been wetted through the imperfect roof, until the coloring matter of the warlike trappings had run down and left a black mark, and a red stain like a blood-spot, on the bosom of the holy robe.

The accumulation of this stock must have been the work of a lifetime, and the "shebang," as Job called the establishment, was no doubt older than the canal. But the old black Bug did not appear until late in the winter of the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty. The original proprietor was a German Jew, who obtained, in consideration of the stock and good-will, a sum only twice as great as he would have asked had he not soon discovered that the Beetle, in spite of his mouldy and forbidding appearance, was not familiar with the sale of such trumpery. "Mine plessed fadders, sir! so sheap, so sheap, sir!" and the original proprietor gave a sigh to this successor and a chuckle to himself as he clinked the gold in his hand and surrendered the place to the old black Bug. And taking this transaction as evidence of his successor's commercial ability, the original proprietor muttered, "In von year I will puy pack der place mit von 'alf dermonish vot I now gits for him. Mine plessed fadders! Dat vill pe goot!"

Job was a hungry-looking boy, whose business it was to sweep the shebang, bring fuel, keep the Beetle's water-pitcher filled, brush the old man's desk and chair, wait on customers and make himself generally useful. He might have been anywhere from eight to fourteen years of age, for hunger will make small boys old and old boys small. His chief garment was a pair of green trowsers, upheld by one twisted suspender of cotton cloth, the trowsers being very liberal in the seat and very conservative elsewhere; so that Job's legs, in color as well as shape, were like two cork-screws covered with verdigris. His legs were evidently made to accommodate those trowsers, and in doing it they resembled two little poles which had been overgrown by hop vines, and which had followed all the twistings and turnings of their spiral covers. His eyeswere round, with yellow centres and pink borders, reminding one of china-asters; his face had the rich tint of a turkey's egg; and his hair was not unlike the husk of a cocoanut. He had great ability in making remarks entirely unsuited to his muscle. For instance, when he differed in opinion from the Beetle, that old gentleman-whose elegant diction and flowing periods assorted strangely with his dress and calling-would frequently call Job's statement a hollow falsehood, whereupon Job would unhesitatingly pronounce the statement of the Bug a solid lie. Strange to say, this ability was developed-where muscle was the standard by which the propriety of all remarks was judged.

He was a Virginian by birth. And, to prevent any possible misapprehension, it may be well to add that his family was not one of the first in that State. His mother, at the close of her honey-moon of four days-if any moon can be so brief-became cook and washeron the new boat Josephine, which transported coal over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The bridegroom, and subsequent father of our hero, was helmsman on the same vessel, which discharged her cargo at the port of Alexandria. Whisky being a slower poison then than it is now, Job's father continued for years to steer the Josephine successfully, until his family so increased that the small quarters of the boat could no longer accommodate the children.

The captain delicately stated the case...