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different class of remedies, but it is justified on the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it.” He paused, his tired, feverish eyes on the galleries. His wife, Varina, was like marble, whatever pain she felt suppressed, hidden.
    â€œI feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there might have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of God, I wish you well. That said, Mr. President and Senators, and having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to require, it only remains for me to bid you a fond farewell.”
    Davis’s colleagues sat silent out of respect, and sorrow. Sobs resounded in the gallery, some of the loudest those of the widow Greenhow. She covered her face and rocked in her seat. Fred Dasher’s chest was tight with tension. He was deeply moved. He charged out the door, too upset to apologize to those he jostled.
    Outside the Capitol the day was foggy, saturated with dampness. Like a man in a maze, he turned this way and that through the disgraceful litter of Corinthian columns, marble slabs, and lumber. Civilian gawkers—tourist families, single women—mingled with slovenly workmen, who seemed to be making only snail’s progress on construction of the Capitol dome. The cast-iron base was complete but wrapped in ugly scaffolding. The statue of Armed Freedom that would surmount the dome lay on its side in the mud.
    Every step spattered mud on Fred’s fawn trousers. His head was clearing after the wrenching speech. If someone as brilliant and important as Davis could stand up to the government’s assault on liberty, so could he.
    He failed to see the strolling whore until she barred his way, cooing at him with her rouged mouth. “Buy my muffin, dearie. Nice warm muffin.”
    Fred Dasher treated women politely, but not this time. He shoved her so hard she stumbled against a block of uncut marble. “Ow! Dirty bastard!” He settled his beaver hat more securely and strode into the miasmic fog lying on the Mall. He could already smell the canal where he was to rendezvous at twelve.
    He walked rapidly over the rough ground, past the towers of the Smithsonian, poking up like strange red fingers, and onward, till he was south of President’s Park, with the unfinished trunk of the monument to George Washington just visible in the distance. Subscriptions had dwindled; people said the monument would never be finished.
    He threw a rock at some pigs rooting in the mud. The area was a disgrace and by night, dangerous. It was marsh and mudflat, with the old municipal canal cutting across. Once the canal had linked the Potomac and the East Branch. Now it was abandoned, clogged with garbage, night soil, the occasional horse or dog carcass rotting away. Though not a delicate person, Fred held a linen handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he approached an iron bridge spanning the canal. On the opposite side, among bare trees, a man in a dark gray, caped overcoat and unmarked forage cap lurked like a footpad. Fred was filled with disgust. Was this fit duty for a professional soldier?
    â€œColonel,” he said as he approached the other man. He had been ordered not to salute where he might be observed.
    â€œLieutenant,” the colonel said. “What have you discovered?”
    â€œIt’s as you suspected, sir. The National Rifles are practically all secesh.”
    Colonel Charles Stone, West Point ’45, was in charge of the defenses of the District. He was given the responsibility by the bloated egomaniac at the head of the Army, old Fuss and Feathers Scott. Fred Dasher was Stone’s aide, forced to operate as a glorified detective. Until companies of the regular Army could be pulled from Kansas, upstate New York, and two Southern arsenals from which they’d been driven, four militia units including the National Rifles were