General Charles Harker:
Ah, Shaw. Sit down. [Shaw remains standing] Well, Colonel, what can I do for you?
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
You can give me and my regiment a transfer to combat command.
General Charles Harker:
Couldn't do it, Colonel. You're much too valuable to my operations here.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
[after a long pause] May I sit? [Harker motions for Shaw to sit.] Thank you. [to Major Forbes] Major. [Shaw and Forbes both sit down] I've written a letter to my father, asking him to press Governor Andrew and President Lincoln. But I don't have to wait for all that, do I?
General Charles Harker:
[to Colonel Montgomery] Colonel Montgomery, would you bring that ashtray over here?
[Colonel Montgomery stops playing the piano and walks over to the desk with an ashtray. General Harker lights a cigar]
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
But valuable to your operations here, do you say? Your foraging, your depredations? Yes, I've become quite a student of your operations in this region. Thirty-four mansions, I think it was, pillaged and burned under Colonel Montgomery's expedition of the Combahee. Four thousand bales of cotton smuggled through the lines with payment to parties unknown, except by you. False quartermaster requisitions. Major Forbes here has seen the copies.
Major Cabot Forbes:
Yes, indeed. Along with confiscated valuables shipped north as personal baggage.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
Shall I go on?
General Charles Harker:
Can you?
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
I can report you to the War Department. Oh, yes. I can do that.
General Charles Harker:
[stands] Let you take your regiment out to fight. That's what you want, isn't it? Show what they can do.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
When?
General Charles Harker:
[chuckles] You are bright-eyed, aren't you?
Colonel Robert G. Shaw:
When?
General Charles Harker:
Just as soon as I can write the orders.
