The Last Three Soldiers

by W. H. Shelton

Under date of March 1, 1865, Lieutenant Coleman says:

"With the aid of Philip, I pressed the boundary line south to the Red River. We all conceded Texas to the Confederacy. I was disposed to establish the extreme western boundary of the Confederacy as identical with the western frontier of Texas. George allowed this so far as the Rio Grande formed a natural boundary along the frontier of Mexico, but stoutly insisted that the successful Southerners would never consent to a settlement which did not extend their borders to the Pacific Ocean. To this claim on the part of the South he contended that the imbecility of Congress and the timidity of Northern leaders would offer little or no opposition. He held that if they took part of California, they might as well take the whole; and in either case they would take New Mexico and Arizona as the natural connection with their Pacific territory.

"I contended that California had never been a slave State, and would never consent to such an arrangement. To this George replied that California was without troops, and that her wishes would not be a factor in the solution of the problem; that the South, flushed with victory, could not be logically expected to content itself with less; that it would be a matter to be settled between the two governments, and that, for his part, he saw no reason to believe that the North, in view of its blunders civil and its failures military, would have the power or the courage to prevent such seizure by the enemy. Philip leaned to this view, and was even willing to throw in Utah for sentimental reasons."

Bromley showed great skill and cleverness in advocating his peculiar views. When he had a point to gain, with the natural cunning of a legal mind, he took care to begin his argument by claiming much more than he expected to establish. Thus, not content with the concession of California and the southern tier of Territories leading thereto, he called the attention of the others to the great Rocky Mountain range, offering itself, from the north-western extremity of Texas to the British possessions, as a natural geographical wall between nations. He admitted that the Western men had been the bone and sinew of the late fruitless struggle; but they were the hardy soldiers of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas, still far to the east of the great mountain-range, with vast uncivilized Territories between.

To this view Lieutenant Coleman opposed the jealousy of the great ally of the South as not likely to favor an unequal partition; he said that England would certainly not lend her aid to bringing the more aggressive of the two nations up to her own colonial borders. Besides, he contended, the South was without a navy, and at the outset could never defend such a great addition to her already vastly superior coast-line.

This long argument resulted in a compromise, and by the decision of Philip, California, Arizona, and New Mexico were given to the Confederacy, and half the Pacific coast was saved to the old government.

Bromley's matter-of-fact character had no sentimental side. He was a worker, and no dreamer. He threw himself with all the weight of his convictions and the force of his well-trained mind into the discussion of the extent of the Confederate victory; but the moment the boundary was settled he seemed to forget the existence of the map and to lose himself in the next piece of work.

After completing the outlines of the map in ink, Lieutenant Coleman began laying a tone of lines over the whole Confederacy. As the work progressed, the three soldiers watched the new power creeping like an ominous shadow over the map. The one break in the expanse of gloom was the white star at the northwestern corner of North Carolina, which marked the location of Sherman Territory. When the map was finished and hung on the logs, the Confederacy looked like nothing so much as a huge dragon crouching on the Gulf of Mexico, with the neck and head elevated along the Pacific and the tail brushing Cuba.