“There is something else,” Davis said. “There are two gentlemen in the office who want to see you.”

“I am too busy.”

“They are from the government, sir. They said that it was important.”

Muttering at this interruption of his work, Ericsson went down to the office. One of them he recognized, for he knew him far too well. Litwack was his name and he represented the US Treasury and was the channel by which Ericsson received his funding. There was always a battle over money whenever they met.

“Mr. Ericsson,” Litwack said, stepping forward, “This is Mr. Frederick Douglass, of the Freedmen’s Bureau.”

Ericsson nodded perfunctorily at the tall Negro, a striking-looking man with a great beard and a towering mass of hair. He shook his hand briefly, since he had no racial prejudice — any hatreds he might have had were directed against the stupidity of the people he had to deal with. He turned back to Litwack.

“What is it this time? You are here about funding?”

“No, not this time. It is Mr. Douglass of the Freedmen’s Bureau who has some questions for you.”

“I know nothing about your Freedmen’s. I am an engineer…”

“Then you had better learn right now,” Douglass said in an irritated grumble. Ericsson turned, angrily, to face him, but Douglass spoke before he did.

“The Freedmen’s Bureau was founded to see that the laws passed by Congress are carried out to the letter of those same laws. It is one thing to free slaves, another thing altogether to see that they have gainful employment once they are freed. How many Negroes exactly are there in your apprentice program?”

“What is this man talking about?” Ericsson shouted furiously. “I have my work to do. I know nothing of politics nor do I care nothing.”

“I assure you — that is not the case.” Douglass raised his voice even louder to drown out the angry Swede. “One war has ended, the war between the states. But a new war is just beginning. By law the slaves have been freed. This has been done. Slave owners have received compensation for what they so foully considered property. But this has been only the first step along the road to freedom. If former slaves can labor only in the cotton fields, as they have in the past, they will not have the economic freedom that they are guaranteed as free men. They need the skills, the trades that they have been denied for so long. The South is now undergoing an industrial revolution. There are machine shops, factories and shipyards, as well as the trainyards, that are now being built in the new South. They will bring prosperity to the South — and independence to their workers. The Negro who brings home his weekly pay is dependent on no man. That is right and just. The freed Negro must be part of that process. That is the law! The Federal government paid out the funds that were needed to build this new dockyard. It is here not only to build the ships of war, but to follow the new policy of industrial development in the South. Skilled machinists and fitters have come here from shipyards in the North, to train apprentices in their skills. Do you know how many of these apprentices you have in your program?”

Ericsson threw his hands into the air, exasperated beyond belief.

“This has nothing to do with me, I tell you. I am an engineer and my job is to build machines. I have never heard of these new laws nor do I care about them in the slightest.” He turned to his dockyard manager. “Davis — do you know anything about this?”

“I do, sir. I have the figures here.” He took a grubby piece of paper from his pocket. “As yet there are only forty-three men who have entered this program. But there will be one hundred and eighty apprentices in all when recruitment is finished.”

“And how many of them will be Negroes?” The question boomed out into the sudden silence. Davis mopped at his streaming face, looked around helplessly. “Tell me!” Douglass insisted.

The dockyard manager looked at the piece of paper again, then crumpled it in his sweaty palm. Finally, almost in a whisper, he said, “I believe… that there are no Negroes enrolled at the present time. To the best of my knowledge, that is.”

“I thought so!” Douglass’s words were like thunder. “When this dockyard agreed to accept Federal funding — it also agreed that one quarter of all apprentices were to be of the Negro race. That means you will enlist forty-five of them at once.” He took a thick envelope from his inside jacket pocket and passed it over to the hapless manager. “Before coming here I took the precaution of stopping at the local office of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Their address is on this envelope. Inside is a list of names of fit and able men who are available and desirous of work. Consult them. You have one week to get a list of these forty-five individuals to Mr. Litwack here. If they are not on his desk at that time all funding for this shipyard will be halted until that information is supplied.”

“Can he do this?” Ericsson shouted at the quavering Davis.

“Y-yes…”

“Then I see no problem. Do it at once. My building program shall not be delayed for a single instant.”

“But, Mr. Ericsson, there are… problems.”

“Problems? I don’t want any problems. Hire the men as has been agreed.”

“But, sir, it is the other trainees. They refuse to work side by side with niggers.”

“That is not a problem,” Ericsson said. “Make all of the apprentices black men. Surely the artificers of the North will be happy to train them.”

“I’ll see… what I can do.”

“One week,” Douglass said ominously. Then a sudden smile flickered briefly across his severe features. “I like your style, Mr. Ericsson. You are a man of uncommon good sense.”

“I am a man who builds ships, Mr. Douglass. I have never understood the American preoccupation with the color of a man’s skin. If a workman does his job I don’t care if he is even a…” He groped for an apt comparison. “Even a Norwegian — and I will still employ him.”

The wail of a steam whistle interrupted him. “Ahh, you must excuse me,” he said. Turning and leaving abruptly, heading towards the puffing sound of a locomotive. He had insisted that a spur track of the Chesapeake Ohio railroad be built, coming right into the shipyard. It was already proving its worth, bringing iron plating right to the dockside.

But this was no ordinary cargo of iron. The train consisted of a single passenger coach behind the engine, with a heavily laden flatcar behind that. A stubby man in a frockcoat, wearing a black stovepipe hat, climbed down from the coach as Ericsson came up.

“Could you possibly be Mr. Ericsson?” he said, extending his hand. “My name is Parrott, William Parker Parrott.”

“The gunsmith! This is a great pleasure. I have designed guns myself so know of what I speak. And this is the 12-inch cannon that you wrote me about.”

“It is.”

“Beautiful,” Ericsson said as they both stepped back to admire the bulk of the long, black gun. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder for this was a hulking black engine of destruction. “Your locking breech, this I must see at once.”

They both clambered up onto the flatcar, in their enthusiasm not noticing the soot that smeared onto them.

“The gas seal,” Parrott said, “that is the heart of a breechloading gun. I have examined closely the British Armstrong cannon, have even built one of them. Its breech is complex and when firing begins it soon becomes unusable. A sliding metal plate is secured in place by large locking screws. But the seal is incomplete. After a few rounds the heated metal expands and leaks hot gas and threatens the very safety of the crew should the breech explode — as has happened more than once. But I believe that I have now solved that problem.”

“You must tell me — show me!”

“I shall. The principle is a simple one. Imagine, if you will, a heavy threaded breach, into which a threaded bolt can be screwed into place.”