The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

But then Charlie had seen the name and the date—Rose, July 21, 1861—and something, some fragment of memory long buried under the detritus of facts that filled his mind, had begun to stir, like a seed swelling and growing and reaching toward the light.

July 21, 1861. The day every schoolboy in the South was taught to hold dear. The day of the First Manassas (the Battle of Bull Run as the Union called it), the first battle of the War Between the States and perhaps the Confederacy’s most glorious day.

The battle was fought between General P. G. T. Beauregard’s unseasoned Southern army and the equally untested Northern troops commanded by General Irvin McDowell. The two forces met at Manassas Junction, just twenty-five miles to the west of Washington, near a stream called Bull Run, which eventually flowed into the Potomac. Since it was Sunday and Manassas was so close to the city, throngs of Union supporters had made a grand holiday of it, driving across Aqueduct Bridge in their elegant black carriages, laden with picnic baskets and bottles of fine wine and silver flasks filled with bourbon. They were all there, the cream of Washington society, senators, cabinet members, and their gaily garbed ladies, out to enjoy the spectacle of a splendid Union victory, the first and last battle of what they confidently predicted would be a very short war. Hawkers and peddlers lined the road, selling everything from sandwiches to spyglasses and battle maps and clever canes that unfolded into a seat. A correspondent from the Times of London was there to report on the battle. And so was Mathew Brady, already famous for his photographs of illustrious people. Determined to be the first man in history to photograph a battlefield, he had loaded a wagon with his large camera and plate holder, put on his straw hat and saber, and joined the crowd heading for Manassas Junction.

Early word filtering back from the battlefield gave General McDowell’s federal troops the victory, but the truth was something very different and entirely unexpected. By evening, it was clear that the South had triumphed. Back in Washington, Secretary of War Seward reported to President Lincoln that he had received a telegram saying that McDowell was in full retreat and pleading for General Scott to rally his troops and save Washington from the attack that was sure to follow. There was nothing between the victorious Rebels and the defenseless capital but crowds of wounded and disorganized stragglers, jostling for road room with a stampede of panic-stricken fleeing spectators—including a frightened Mathew Brady, who had narrowly escaped capture. The battle had been a rout, a clear, decisive Confederate victory that had left the North defeated and demoralized and the South in jubilant celebration.

A Confederate victory. Charlie frowned and scratched his head. But there was more. Some recollection was tugging at him, had been tugging at him ever since he had seen that name and the date. A memory of an unusual circumstance of that battle and the name Rose—and particularly about a secret code. What was it? What?

But while Charlie was deeply and fervently interested in many things—contemporary politics, and the disastrous state of the economy, and the crying need for a stronger and more progressive hand at the helm than Hoover’s—Civil War history had been of only passing interest, back when he was a schoolboy and still felt a patriotic stirring for the Confederacy. So he put Bessie Bloodworth’s paper aside and went back to his typewriter, pausing only occasionally to attempt (unsuccessfully) to remember what it was about the First Manassas that he might once have known but by now had almost completely forgotten. Almost, but not quite.

An avid reader, Charlie Dickens possessed an extensive personal library of books he had collected over the years. In his opinion, books were the most important pieces of furniture—furniture of the mind—that a man could own. His bookshelves included several books on codes and ciphers, but he knew there was nothing in them that would help him decode (if there was any message to decode, which was still doubtful) the symbols on the paper Bessie Bloodworth had given him. And he possessed not a single book on the Confederate victory at Bull Run.