Richmond, Summer 1863
The summer heat hung heavy over Richmond, carrying with it the odor of sweat, sickness, and despair.
Jefferson Davis sat in his office, his chair creaking beneath him as he leaned forward over the desk.
His hands trembled slightly, not from age—though the war had aged him beyond his years—but from the weight of memory.
Half a year had passed since he had ordered the Greybacks to stand down.
At the time, he had told himself it was the only choice.
His conscience demanded it, his people demanded it, and his office demanded it.
Yet now, with the Confederacy reeling from setback after setback, he could not help but wonder if he had made the greatest mistake of his presidency.
Reports lay scattered across his desk, each one a fresh wound.
The Mississippi had been severed with the fall of Vicksburg, as the union returned with greater force and drove the spike in from the south as its armies marched down from the north.
Grant's relentless pressure split the Confederacy in two, (having been released by the greybacks) choking off the lifeline of the western states.
Lee, despite his brilliance, had failed at Gettysburg just weeks before—his grand gamble in Pennsylvania ending not with triumph, but with retreat.
And the blockade… always the blockade.
Every month new Federal warships slid off the docks of Boston and New York, tightening the noose.
The Atlantic and Gulf coasts were nearly strangled, leaving only scraps of cotton and tobacco to slip out on desperate blockade runners.
The Confederacy was bleeding out.
Davis rubbed his temples, his mind drifting back to the winter past.
He could still see Captain Rex's unflinching gaze, still hear his cold voice declaring,
"This is war. To not go all the way is to accept the war is already lost."
At the time, Davis had recoiled.
The Greybacks' march through Kentucky and Indiana had shocked even his hardened cabinet.
Towns burned, civilians massacred, wealth plundered on a scale unseen.
The spoils had been undeniable—the Confederate treasury swelled with coin—but so too had the revulsion.
Mothers in Georgia whispered of Greyback atrocities to frighten children into obedience.
Governors muttered that Davis had unleashed a devil upon his own people.
So he had ordered them to stop.
Ordered them home.
And they had obeyed.
But now?
Now every defeat, every tightening knot around the Confederacy's throat, whispered to him that perhaps Rex had been right.
Perhaps the only way to win was to abandon notions of honor, of restraint, of civilization itself.
A knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.
His adjutant entered, bowing stiffly.
"General Jackson requests audience, sir."
Davis straightened in his chair.
"Send him in."
Moments later, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson entered the chamber.
He moved with his usual stiffness, his expression one of solemn gravity.
He saluted sharply.
"Mr. President."
"General,"
Davis said, gesturing him closer.
"I pray you bring better news than the papers on this desk."
Jackson did not smile.
He set his gloves on the table and leaned upon it, his eyes fixed on Davis.
"I will not veil my words, sir. We are faltering. Every man in the field sees it. The blockade strangles us. The Yankees' numbers swell beyond reckoning. Even General Lee cannot carry the burden forever. Without a force to unbalance the enemy, I fear the Confederacy cannot endure much longer."
Davis swallowed hard.
"You think I do not know this? Every day the people look to me for hope, and every day I give them less. Yet what can I do? I cannot conjure ships from smoke or regiments from thin air."
Jackson hesitated, then spoke the words Davis dreaded most.
"The Greybacks."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Davis's jaw clenched, his hands curling into fists upon the desk.
"They are gone, General,"
he said at last, voice low.
"I dismissed them. Ordered them to stand down."
Jackson's eyes narrowed.
"And in so doing, you may have dismissed the Confederacy's only chance at victory."
Davis shot to his feet, slamming a palm against the table.
"Do not presume to lecture me on what I have or have not done, sir! I know well the cost of that decision. I weighed it every hour since. Do you forget what they were? What they did? They were butchers, Jackson. Wolves in gray. If I had allowed them to continue, our own people would have risen against us. What use is victory if we become worse tyrants than those we fight?"
For the first time, a flicker of emotion crossed Jackson's face.
"And what use is honor if it brings us only ruin?"
he asked quietly.
"The Federals will not spare us because we fought cleanly. They will grind us down, starve us, shatter us until nothing remains. You think the people curse the Greybacks? Perhaps so. But I tell you this: they will curse you more, when they are driven from their homes, when their sons rot in Northern prisons, when their daughters beg for bread that never comes."
Davis sank back into his chair, his strength suddenly gone.
"You speak as if they could be summoned again,"
he muttered bitterly.
"But they cannot. I sent them away, and they have vanished. Months of searching, weeks of riders scouring the South and beyond… nothing. Not a trace of them remains. I fear they have left these shores, General. They are gone, where i do not know."
Jackson said nothing.
He gathered his gloves, his eyes heavy with something between pity and frustration.
"Then may God help us,"
he said, and departed without another word.
That night, Davis sat alone in the dim light of his study, the city outside restless with the murmurs of defeat.
He thought of Rex, of the terrible shadow they had cast across the Ohio Valley.
of how after being dismissed they were now long vanished across the sea.
And he thought of how, in the months since their disappearance, the Confederacy had withered as though their absence itself had sapped its strength.
But he did know this: when history was written, when the South lay in ashes or in chains, men would look back to this moment—his moment.
And they would ask why Jefferson Davis, besieged on all sides, had sent away the one force that struck terror into the heart of the Union.
He closed his eyes, the weight of the decision pressing down on him like a stone.
Perhaps, he thought, it had been the right choice for a Christian man.
Perhaps it had been the right choice for a statesman.
But for a President at war?
Perhaps it had been the worst choice of all.