James Beckett's Gold
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Gold or Kate? Alas, I don't own either. Rating: K Time: After Season Eight.
Imperial Bank
London, England
July 10, 1864.
"Mr. Lloyd, I must protest." Vaughn said loudly. "Your terms for the loan are outrageous. You will loan is one hundred thousand British pounds sterling but expect us to issue you bonds worth a half a million British pounds to be paid in cotton? This is not business, sir, it's usury."
"It may well be, Mr. Vaughn." Lloyd replied quietly. "However, your Confederacy is not a good business risk. Not at all."
Vaughn shook his head.
"I can't understand how you can say that, sir. Look at the facts. Their General Grant is mired in Virginia by our General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, as have all northern armies since the beginning of the war. True, their General Sherman is approaching Atlanta, Georgia, but he has a huge supply line behind him reaching all the way into eastern Tennessee. The further he advances, the more troops he has to leave behind to guard his supply lines from Confederate raiders, who, swarm, I say swarm, sir, around those Yankees. President Davis has sent General Hood to Atlanta. He'll send Sherman's Yankees scrambling back to Tennessee."
"And consider the politics now, Mr. Lloyd. The Democrats have nominated General McClellan on a platform of peace with the Confederacy. Once that buffoon, Lincoln, is ousted from office, peace will reign, and the Confederacy will be secure. Your terms are unacceptable, sir. Totally unacceptable."
"Then we have nothing more to discuss, do we? Good day to you, gentlemen."
"Eric, this is the only bank that's offered to make the Confederacy a loan on any conditions. We must accept." Jim said as Vaughn headed for the door.
Jim hoped that Vaughn's usual anger and poor business sense would get the better of him, but it didn't.
Vaughn sighed.
"You're right, Jim. We'll agree to the loan, Mr. Lloyd."
On the next page, Rick found an undated note from James Beckett. From the contents it appeared to have been written around the end of 1864 or early 1865.
Vaughn was wrong of course. Confederate General Hood did attack Sherman and was beaten. After a siege, Atlanta fell to the Union. Sherman sent part of his army back to Tennessee where it eventually fought and destroyed Hood's Army of Tennessee. It was utterly crushed around Nashville, Tennessee.
Sherman then began his march the sea, taking little in the way of supplies with him, mostly ammunition. His army depended on foraging for food, animal fodder, and other supplies and taking horses and mules to replace his own animals as they wore out. He reached Savannah, Georgia where he was able to be resupplied by the Union navy.
London, England
April 30, 1865
"I'm afraid there's bad news, Eric." James Beckett said.
Vaughn looked up at him.
"What could be worse? Our capitol, Richmond, has fallen to the Yankees. General Lee has surrendered his army to the Yankees. President Davis is in flight to who knows where. It's all over."
"There's more, I fear. General Johnston has surrendered his forces to General Sherman. That's all of the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. But that's not what I wish to tell you. The Imperial bank is suing us to recover the loan they made to us. I fear that'll tie us up here in London for months, perhaps years."
Beckett could see that the old fire that had seemingly died out in Eric Vaughn had suddenly flared up.
"The Imperial Bank has been conspiring against us. No one would sell us arms. No one at all. I know that those money grubbers at the Imperial Bank are behind the plot. Now I see why. They and the damned Yankees are in it together."
Jim nodded, although he was the one who had discouraged anyone from selling arms and munitions to the South.
"We're not licked yet, Jim. General Kirby Smith still holds the vast Trans-Mississippi Department covering everything west of the Mississippi River. Why, he's practically a king there. With our gold, we can buy arms from the French in Mexico. They'll be happy enough for us to keep those damned Yankees off their backs. But we must move quickly before those rascals at the Imperial Bank can stop us."
That was the last entry in James Beckett's diary, but Rick did find letters written from Jim to Johanna tucked into the back of the diary.
Liverpool, England
May 6, 1865
My Dearest Johanna, and of course, my dearest little Katie,
I regret that Vaughn and other prominent Confederates here in London are all for heading for Texas to join Kirby Smith's army. I am afraid that with the money we have they could cause a great deal of mischief, so I am now a member of their party. My hope is that this will be over quickly as it seems highly unlikely that the remaining Confederate armies in the west can stop the Union armies.
I'm leaving my diary with you, but I'll do my best to keep in touch.
I do hope that I'll be with you soon.
I love you both so much,
Jim
Rick was able to piece together what happened next through Jim Beckett's letters, letters from Johanna Beckett and several letters from unidentified people who were doubtlessly helping Jim.
Nassau, the Bahamas
June 3, 1865
"Much has happened since you left England." The speaker was Winslow Fitzhugh, who had been the Confederate government's unofficial representative in the British colony of the Bahamas. "President Davis was taken by the Yankees. General Smith has surrendered his army to the Yankees. The Confederacy is done for."
"Surely there must be some loyal forces left in the field." Vaughn said.
"There may be a few distant garrisons who haven't heard of the surrender. There may be so-called Confederate guerillas about, but they're more bandits than anything else."
"General Joseph Shelby has taken his troops, about a thousand strong and headed for Mexico. Others are headed there." The speaker was a Colonel Demming. Jim had found out that he had been appointed as the liaison with the blockade runners and had never served in combat. Jim was not impressed with the man. "There're half a dozen Confederate generals in Mexico now and even former Governor of Texas Pendelton Murrah is there. A former Confederate admiral, Matthew Maury, the famed oceanographer and a friend of Mexican Emperor Maximillian, is seeking to recruit 200,000 former Confederates to settle in Imperial Mexico."
"By God! That's it." Vaughn yelled. "We'll head for Mexico. We'll fight those damned Yankees again, but with the help of the French and Mexican Empires."
"We'll need a ship." Beckett said. "And I think I can find a good one."
Globe and Laurel Pub
Nassau, the Bahamas
Later that same night.
"it's good to see you, Mr. Beckett. Very good indeed."
"And good to see you, Captain. Ryan."
The Irishman smiled happily.
"I'm afraid I'm hardly a captain anymore. With the war over, there's no call for fast blockade runners. Normal cargo ships can go to southern ports and load cotton. The south is full of cotton that couldn't be sold in Europe because of the blockade. It's the law of supply and demand. With so much supply of cotton, the demand and the price are low. But I've made a good bit of money, or should I say we've made a good deal of money from the sale of fripperies."
"Might you make one more trip? This time to Vera Cruz, Mexico."
Jim explained what his Confederate friends wished to do.
"But of course, sir. I'd be pleased to take you and your friends to Very Cruz."
"By the way, can you tell me what happened to the ship Mr. Vaughn purchased? The CSS Tidewater? Vaughn will not talk about it at all."
Ryan laughed heartily.
"What happened? Exactly what everyone said would happen. Oh, Mr. Vaughn got his big ship loaded with weapons. A big, slow ship that had no chance of outrunning the Union blockade. The ship was captured and the whole cargo taken. All Vaughn did was provide many tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of military supplies to his enemies."
Jim didn't bother to mention that his messages to the Union Navy Department had helped catch the Tidewater.
On the road from Vera Cruz to Mexico City
July 16, 1865
Jim Beckett was happy that they had gotten out of the lowlands around Vera Cruz before the dreaded vomito negro, the black vomit, fever had hit any of them. The disease was deadly and each year it killed many in the lowlands.
Now Jim was sitting on a wagon that was part of a French column going from the seaport to the capitol. Although there was a large military escort, Jim had a Le Mat revolver at his belt and an Enfield rifle beside him. He knew that convoys were almost always attacked on this road. Mexican guerillas rarely, if ever, managed to overrun a convoy, but they could cause damage.
The French escort was a battalion of Second Regiment of Zouaves, some five hundred strong. In addition, there was a small squadron of the Chasseurs d' Afrique, the African Light Cavalry, numbering less that one hundred men. There were also two small mountain guns drawn by mules.
The French appeared to be well trained, well-armed and well disciplined. The same could not be said for the Imperial Mexican troops that accompanied the convoy. They were a regiment of some two hundred men, far less than the paper strength of a regiment. Most wore the white coat and trousers common to Mexican peasants. Few had shoes, either going barefoot or wearing cheap sandals. A few had kepis, but most wore a wide brimmed sombrero woven out of some local reed. Their weapons were ancient British Brown Bess muskets, sold to Mexico after the Napoleonic Wars a half century before. Nothing about them inspired confidence.
Colonel Demming also did not inspire confidence. He rode up and down the convoy, shouting orders which were ignored by the French army wagon drivers who did not, in any case, understand much English. He wore a grey Confederate uniform with far more gold braid than a colonel should have. He was, however, armed to the teeth. He had a saber, an Enfield carbine, four Colt pistols and a large Bowie knife.
The convoy was commanded by a Major de Hauteclocque, a hard-bitten veteran of France's wars. He spoke excellent English having served alongside the British Army in the Crimean War.
The major rode up to the wagon Jim was riding in and reined in his horse.
"Where has that man Demming fought, Mr. Beckett?"
"I fear his duties were in the Bahamas and were entirely administrative. He has had no combat experience."
"Eh bien." He growled. "If your army had been led by the likes of him, they could not have beaten the occupants of a Marseilles brothel."
Jim managed not to smile at the insult.
"I'm much afraid that your Mexican allies don't inspire a great deal of confidence in me. Perhaps I am wrong?"
"Most certainly, Mr. Beckett. They inspire absolutely no confidence in me at all. The are useless. Most are poor peasants dragged away from their villages. Some are former Republican soldiers who, defeated in battle, were given the choice of fighting for the Mexican Empire or being executed. All have only one goal, to leave the army and return to their villages."
Suddenly, Colonel Demming rode up.
"Major de Hauteclocque. We are being spied upon by mounted Mexican guerillas on the hill over there. I saw them through my binoculars. You must order your cannon to open fire on them at once. At once I say."
Major de Hauteclocque shook his head.
"They've been watching us for fifteen minutes. They know they are well out of range of our small guns. And they'd simply ride back over the hill and disappear if they saw us readying our cannons. This way we know where they are."
Demming looked for a moment like he might argue, but then rode off.
"Tonight, we'll stop at the Hacienda Camaron. Perhaps you've heard of it, Mr. Beckett?"
TBC