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patriotic society. I can’t tell you more. Even the name is secret.” He craned toward her in a way that reminded her of a turtle shooting its head from its shell. “No more questions, please.” It was said lightly, but she heard the warning.
    Cicero was much more of a political fire-eater than their father. In public he dared to refer to General Winfield Scott, the noble old Virginian who led the Army, as “that free-state pimp.” Cicero blithely said that Abe the Ape might not live to be inaugurated “if we are fortunate.” Margaret hated such talk. She hated the epidemic of secession fever sweeping Baltimore and infecting her own household. She couldn’t wait to return to the small, safe universe of Rose Greenhow’s salon.

4
January 1861
    When he walked into the Senate gallery on Monday, the twenty-first, he felt like a man lost on a stormy moor with no lantern and no signposts. The U.S. government had educated him, in return asking only that he give service, which he was glad to do. The military life with its order and predictability suited him. Further, there was this unspoken truth: West Point men from the South controlled the Army. Faced with the influence of this cadre, capable officers from the North resigned and looked to civilian life for advancement. Now Southern officers were resigning for a different reason.
    Word of the speech had spread quickly. Lines formed before dawn. By nine o’clock the gallery was nearly full. Varina Davis came in quietly, to a place reserved for her. The notorious socialite Mrs. Greenhow made an ostentatious entrance, obstructing the view of those behind her with the yellow ostrich plumes on her hat. Though asked, she would not remove it.
    He saw a seat in the last row, claimed it, and gave it up five minutes later when there were no more places for women. He stood at the head of the aisle, by the door, a look of brooding concentration on his face. It wasn’t a handsome face in the conventional sense, but an arresting one: carrot-colored hair, pale red brows, gray-green eyes, a large nose. Men under his command never argued when he gave orders. Or if they did, they only did it once.
    Second Lieutenant Frederick Scott Dasher, West Point ’57, wore civilian clothes today. Part of his special duty, which he disliked. A bachelor and a Virginian, he’d grown up on a horse farm near Front Royal, in the Shenandoah. He owned the farm but no longer had family there. His father was gone, a casualty of alcohol. His younger brother had died of scarlet fever at age eight. His older sister, Marie, lived in Tennessee with her husband. His poor mother was cared for by Marie in Knoxville, though she might as well have been on the moon, given her lack of recognition of her surroundings. Fred had always assumed he would find the right young woman, marry, and rebuild the Dasher line. He no longer assumed it. He wondered if anyone in America had a dependable future.
    Time dragged as the Senate disposed of its morning business. Every seat was taken, the aisles and outer stairways clogged with standees. The first of the cotton-state senators rose to speak his farewell. Others followed. The spectators were polite but restless. They’d come to hear the senator from Mississippi, who had left his sickbed for the occasion. When he rose, the huge hall and gallery collectively held its breath.
    Jefferson Davis’s voice was faint from illness. He was a few years past fifty, but stress had added a decade to his wasted, craggy face. A West Point graduate, he had fought in Mexico with Lee, Sam Grant, Tom Jackson, George Pickett. He’d served President Pierce as secretary of war, then represented his state honorably in the Senate. Now, he said, he was going. He felt it was the only course left.
    â€œMr. Calhoun, a great man who now reposes with his fathers, advocated the doctrine of nullification as a remedy, but a peaceful one. Secession belongs to a