"Plenty of bastards in Congress, too," the bartender put in. He was plump and bald and had a white mustache, so he probably hadn't been in the trenches or just behind them. Even so, he went on in tones of real regret: "If they hadn't fired on the marchers in Capitol Square last week, reckon we might have seen some proper housecleaning."

Featherston shook his head. "Wouldn't matter for beans, I say."

"What do you mean, it wouldn't matter?" the whiskey-drinking veteran demanded. "Stringing a couple dozen Congressmen to lampposts wouldn't matter? Go a long way toward making things better,/think."

"Wouldn't," Jake said stubbornly. "Could hang 'em all, and it wouldn't matter. They'd go and pick new Congressmen after you did, and who would they be? More rich sons of bitches who never worked a day in their lives or got their hands dirty. Men of good family." He loaded that with scorn. "Same kind of jackasses they got in the War Department, if you want to hear God's truth."

He was not anyone's notion of a classical orator, with grace-fill, carefully balanced sentences and smooth, elegant gestures: he was skinny and rawboned and awkward, with a sharp nose, a sharper chin, and a harsh voice. But when he got rolling, he spoke with an intensity that made anyone who heard him pay attention.

"What do you reckon ought to happen, then?" the barkeep asked.

"Tear it all down," Jake said in tones that brooked no argument. "Tear it down and start over. Can't see what in God's name else to do, not when the men of good family9-he sneered harder than ever-"let the niggers rise up and then let 'em into the Army to run away from the damnyankees and then gave 'em the vote to say thank-you. Christ!" He tossed down the last of the beer and stalked out.

He'd fired canister at retreating Negro troops-and, as the rot spread through the Army of Northern Virginia, at retreating white troops, too. It hadn't helped. Nothing had helped. We should have licked the damnyankees fast, he thought. A long war let them pound on us till we broke. He glared in the direction of the War Department. Your fault. Not the soldiers fault. Yours.