XLVI

The Molly MacGuires had come to the Nickajack by way of the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, and the prospect of good paying jobs in the coal mines that were being opened up in Birmingham. These were rough gangs of Irish who had been hustled off the boats off the East River Docks in New York by Boss William Tweed. They were given a hot meal and told to vote Democrat, then they were signed on to a coal mining company in Pennsylvania controlled by Tammany Hall cronies. During the war, Boss Tweed was signing these same bereft Irish into the Union Army. Little had changed since. The Irish were still coming off the boats in droves, and they were told to sign here for a Square Deal somewhere in the ferment of post-war America. Tens of thousands ended up in the mines of Pennsylvania where their Democratic voting bloc proved a headache for "Pig Iron" Kelly, a powerful House Committee chairman and Radical Republican.

The origins of this Irish phenomenon known as the Molly MacGuires are clouded in mystery, but certainly stem from the bond of poverty and resistance of the Old Country which characterizes every Irish-American immigrant. Dozens of such Irish gangs existed in Boston and New York, and their strange Celtic rituals migrated inland everywhere from the meatpackers of the Midwest to the coal mines of the Alleghenies. Each were familiar with each other by way of ties with the Old Country, though the Molly MacGuires tended to have origins in County Kerry. 

Meanwhile, Pig Iron represented the Southern concerns of the Consortium, which was a cabal of Radical Republicans who were as corrupt as the day was long. One project he was exceptionally proud of was the Huntsville Railroad Corporation, which bilked the government for millions on overbid contracts to build a new bridge across the Tennessee River at Decatur. Now the Consortium had purchased a controlling stake in the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, which was then racing Jimmy Sloss's L&N railroad from Decatur toward the newly founded settlement of Birmingham. The Molly MacGuires came to the Nickajack from Pennsylvania at the behest of Frank O'Brien, an influential Irish land speculator in that promising new settlement. They called him "Billfold" O'Brien on account of his mysterious wealth. He was also an ally of Jimmy Sloss, who was building his own competing railroad from Decatur south to that Birmingham.  Many of these railroad investors included Greeks like Bourbon George Houston, who was then running for Governor of Alabama.  

Through those ancient and mystic cords that seem to bind the bereft Irish race together the world over, Billfold O'Brien beckoned the Molly MacGuires. And they tumbled down South along the railroad like so many gypsies. The honest ones were finding work in the mines they were beginning to bore through Red Mountain like so many dwarves in a subterranean fantasy of cursed toil. The more pragmatic ones took to the usual racketeering among their own race, but there was more than that.  O'Brien set them to harassing the Consortium railroad interests in the Nickajack.  They plagued Pig Iron Kelly's machinations by roughing up the Alabama & Chattanooga railroad crews, and sticking up trains on the Memphis & Charleston. They were a plague on the Consortium's interests, and an embarrassment to the Radical Republicans.

Congressman Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, who was Pig Iron Kelly's boss in the Consortium and on Capitol Hill, was livid over sagging profits. Moreover there was this influx of Irish cockroaches flooding into Birmingham and the Nickajack. They were buoying the already anemic Democrat base in Alabama, and threatening the Republican hold on the Alabama governorship. In a secret meeting with Senator "Parson" Brownlow of Tennessee and Pig Iron Kelly, Spoons Butler orbited his desk a dozen times while reciting a litany of bitching. Spoons Butler was a figure to behold. He was so corrupt, he had two pejorative nicknames - "Spoons," on account of his habit of purloining silverware, and "Beast," on account of the rough and indignant manner he treated sesech women during the war.  He had hound dog eyes and sagging jowls. The swale of his gut sloped away from his chest to where he could not see his small feet. No matter. He spoke with his hands, which were also unusually small.  Little was this detail noticed, however, on account of the enormous dome of head which was speckled and repulsively matte. A tonsure of long hair, however, seemed to rebel at the encroaching desiccation of his skull, and it looked seldom washed. He could have worn a toupee, but he was naturally uncouth about his appearance.  His power, influence and ego spoke for themselves. 

These goddam Micks are a real burr in our ass, you know.  Parson?  What about your man, The Melungeon? What can he do about this?  

Parson replied.  He had blue marble eyes and sunken cheeks like the late Mr. Lincoln.  His mouth was wide and curled downward at the ends.  These Molly MacGuires, they're mostly operating out of Huntsville and Chattanooga. He said The Melungeon could clean the Molly MacGuires off the Memphis & Charleston tracks, but the Chattanooga to Birmingham Railroad was beyond what the Melungeon could manage.

I'll work on that, Spoons Butler spat.  I've got negroes in Chattanooga that can work the railroad to Birmingham, but you just get The Melungeon to work on the Irish in Huntsville.  Parson Brownlow nodded.  

As for you! Spoons Butler pointed his child-like finger at Pig Iron Kelly.  This Credit Mobilier scandal is getting out of hand and could blow open the whole circus tent.  I think we can put a lid on this, but this Huntsville Railroad Corporation. We can't have that dangling as a loose end.  I want you find a way to tie that up. There's an accountant somewhere who knows too much.  Find him.  He's probably Jewish.  So he was.  His name was Asher Applebaum, and he was now the accountant for The Major in Athens.  But for now the Molly MacGuires were the priority. No one expected violence from a Jewish accountant, but from an Democrat Irishman with a knife?  This was more than what any of these men bargained for sinking their interests in the Deep South.  

XLV

After the war, Bill Marmaduke's home and plantation had been confiscated by the military government of Alabama on account of a forfeiture of property taxes. He had been away fighting in Jackson Co. when his father died, leaving the estate to wither and the slaves to wander into freedom. And so it was auctioned from the Limestone Co. Courthouse steps by Captain Fritz Hermann, who commanded the local Yankee garrison of Fort Henderson on the Browns Ferry Road. By freak of bureaucratic fumbling, he commanded a company of 120 Irish "volunteers" who spoke incomprehensible English while he himself spoke only German.  It was by luck that there were several German families who had taken up temporary residence in Strangetown, many of whom spoke English.  These were immigrants who were bound for Colonel John Cullman's colony of Germans south beyond Falkville in the Warrior Mountains, where Jimmy Sloss was building his railroad to Birmingham.

Colonel Cullman and Captain Hermann became fond friends. Among the German immigrants, they organized concerts at the public gazebo in Strangetown where polka and the waltz wafted through the crisp autumn air.  Oktoberfest was celebrated, and these immigrants set up a makeshift beerhall beneath a circus tent on the Niphonia Track on West Houston Street.  To the dismay of Ms. Mary Fletcher Wells and the Temperance Society, the Germans brewed a a variety of beers for public consumption.  Most negroes had never tasted beer before. It flowed freely along with linked sausages and boiled cabbage.  And so did the Bavarian polka and the Austrian waltz. Both John Cullman and Captain Hermann dined together often in the Nickajack Hotel over a fine bottle of Franconian and retired to the Captain's private quarters for cards or to recite Goethe together.  The Greeks whispered else. 

Oktoberfest brought its own joys, but the freedman were celebrating more than that.  Captain Hermann was auctioning off confiscated properties of former Confederates who had failed to pay their property taxes.  These included Bill Marmaduke's plantation Damascus, and Drake Shoney's farm at Gloaming Birch.  According to a formula formerly proposed by General Sherman, each plantation would be subdivided into 40 acre parcels. Prices ranged from $4 - $12 per acre.  The Freedman's' Bureau under The Major, Bonwit Vrooman, ensured all coloreds had the first right of refusal on bidding above the reserve.  Big Jim Crow had high hopes.  He counted himself lucky. His survived the war and more in the Union Army and found gainful employment in the uncertain world of post-war freedom as a carpenter.  He had help construct most of Strangetown's boarding houses and saloons. He'd even help build Father Jessup's new African Methodist Church and Swampy Joe's Chapel of Freedom, which was vaguely of the Baptist tradition. Now with all he saved, he had his eyes set on his 40 acres of fertile bottomland on Bill Marmaduke's plantation called Damascus.  Bill Marmaduke was as of yet the Sheriff of Limestone County. He was at that time nowhere to be seen. He was rumored to be mining in Nevada, whaling in the Galapagos, or filibustering in Venezuela.  Wherever he was, he was nowhere to dispute the sale or payoff the lien.  

And so the morning of the sale, Drake Shoney had shown up with a mysterious carpet bag full of cash and paid off his lien in the nick of the moment.  He retained Gloaming Birch.  Damascus, however, was sold off in ten parcels of 40 acres, and the mansion went to the carpetbagging attorney names Rufus Lipman.  Big Jim Crow won his bid for the price of $385 the plot he so desired.  But the sale had been sneered at by Lyman Resnick of the Limestone Democrat.  He reflected the arguments of Dr. Prentiss, that the negro was naturally indolent and impulsive, and whose inability to subsist even on his own property will subject the State to burdensome welfare.  Better that the negro continue to work the plantations they knew under contracts negotiated by the planters.  This, of course, would not do so long as the Yankees were in charge. Freedman who continued to work these plantations had their contracts negotiated by The Major himself, who organized their labor according to blocs of collective contracts.  It infuriated the Greeks, but not more than giving negroes their own land. If their black labor fled to the yeomanry to plant their own plots, they will simply grow subsistence crops.  The Greeks' entire plantation system, which was dependent on the ability to command labor, was in jeopardy.  

But these concerns were none of Big Jim Crow's. He held in his hand something more than freedom - he land of his own.  It was a deed with his name - Jonas Jackson, owner of 40 acres of good bottom land on parcel 16-06-16 along Piney Creek. This was it - the Square Deal.  Not so many others were lucky.  As a carpenter and a soldier, Big Jim Crow was able to save up for his land.  Most of the freedman were laboring on contracts that, although negotiated by The Major, still resulted in conflict with former masters.  Many planters sought to impose old habits of controlling the lives of their laborers, while at the same charging them for clothing, food and shelter... all of which they benefitted from for free during slavery.  It was a tumultuous time as the freedman sought to exert their new independence, and define what their new freedom and community would look like after emancipation.  Meanwhile, the planters sought to command from their laborers as much work as they provided during slavery.  It was an impasse of plantation capital against agricultural labor, complicated by the racist assumption that a man like Jonas Jackson, on account of his skin, could not make it on his own, nor should he.  

XLIV

I send from the Great Father, the King of France, his most gracious compliments to Kis'kambu, Beloved of the Chicaza, and bring these gifts to honor your power over your people and your sacred hunting grounds. May thou and Our Great Father be as brothers against the encroachments of the English slavers, and their allies, the Cherokee.

Kis'kambu, Chickasaw Chief, kept his head facing low towards the gifts sprawled before him in his council house on Old Chickasaw Fields. They included twenty matchlock muskets, two small kegs of powder, a basket full of glass beads, and a case of brandy. His eyes looked up. Who is this French half-blood vagabond and what does he want from me? He smells like a tannery. Kis'kambu admitted he was better mannered and spoke better Muskogee than the Englishman. But he wants me to fight the English? He better bring more guns than this. They are allied with the Cherokee, who also have guns.

The Frenchman before him was named Emil Fouche. He was clad in buckskin and squatted like Kis'kambu in the dusty floor. They were both surrounded by the chief's brothers and cousins, and other leading warriors. They observed these proceedings eagerly. A shaman sat interposed aside murmuring before a gourd that smoked with smoldering berries.  Kis'kambu swept his arm slowly over this offering of goods and made a fist, and pressed it towards the Franca. No deal, Emil interpreted this. He leaned back on his heels and eyed the chief, whose eyes were black and impassive.  He was driving a hard bargain.  It took back breaking work just to haul these twenty muskets across the mountains from Fort Toulouse into the Nickajack. 

Emil was here for more than just profit. He was also here as a spy.  Inglish traders from the Carolinas were pushing deeper into the Nickajack every year. They had been arming the Cherokee who lived on the great river they called Hogohegee above the Gorge, which is the Tennessee River. These armed Cherokee helped the Carolinians suppress and enslave the Yamasee until that tribe had become extinct. Now these Iroquoian speakers, the Cherokee, turned their eyes west into Chickasaw territory, which extended from the Gorge and along the Hogohegee west into Mississippi.  Even the Shawnee were pressing down from the Wasioto River, which is the Cumberland River.  Every tribe was forsaking old methods of warfare with the spear and the bow for the white man's guns. They had no choice. It was arm up with guns, or be enslaved by those tribes with them.  

Emil Fouche was the half-Huron bastard of that legendary captain and explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. Born in 1690 in Quebec, New France, he flourished under the patronage of the powerful Le Moyne family of that province and accompanied his father to the colony of Louisiana, which he founded in 1700. It was a hard luck sojourn, for he found himself for several years attached as a sort of informant for the Le Moynes in the various settlements along the Mississippi and Mobile Rivers.  At length he found himself at the furthest fringes of the French Empire. Here was a god-forsaken outpost named Fort Toulouse, along the Coosa River near what is now the town of Wetumpka.  It was a log palisade surrounding a few hovels, and around which a sort of Indian camp was erected.  It was guarded by a platoon of Troupes de Marines and they were commanded by a Marine Captain named Francois Marchand de Courcelles, whom the natives called Bald Eagle on account of his pate. 

Emil was no stranger to the frontier. He had been on missions for the Le Moynes to Arkansas, Illinois and even Haiti. He's been shot with arrows, he's killed men with his hatchet, he's sold scalps. But Fort Tolouse was an especially bereft place. He was warned in Mobile by his superiors that Captain de Courcelles had "gone native." He'd served two terms in what was being called Alabama, and had married a Creek princess named Sehoy. He was known to have practiced scalping to the dismay of the Jesuits and he held considerable influence over the Creeks of that region.  Captain de Coucelles would be his controlling officer in his next mission, which was to dislodge the English from the Nickajack by alliance with the Natives. 

And so he rowed the bateaux through the great swamp of the Tensaw and up the Alabama River through wild country and the bluffs of the piedmont, the banks brooding and primeval. Arriving at the sullen fort deep in the interior, the Marines escorted him into the presence of Captain de Courcelles.  He wore his linen blouse and white wool jacket open, where you could see the tattoos some crazed shaman had scratched upon his chest.  A squaw hung on his arm as he sat behind an incongruously imported desk of crafted mahogany.  She was on her knees murmuring and knitting and looked quite pregnant. The Bald Eagle was as bald as a tonsured monk.  The only wrinkles his face beheld were on his chin and his heavy jowls. His pate was as taut as it were stretched at a tannery.  He rubbed water from an enamel basin over his speckled scalp and leaned back.  Lighting an enormously long pipe of tobacco he eyed Emil with suspicious eyes.  

So you are the spy?  You're a Le Moyne.  You are also a Half Blood.  What is your blood, Metis?  

Huron. You know my father, Emil replied confidently.

Yes, I know your father, I know your family. I've fought with them.  And here you are! Welcome to Alabama! A sergeant beside him chuckled. I've got orders for you, he continued. He withdrew an envelope sealed in red wax from a letter box and passed it to Emil.  

The Captain took another long puff from his pipe and passed it to his squaw. He gazed longingly at her as she did so, and he poured a brandy into a glass and drank it hazily. The orders were that Emil should proceed north into the region known as the Nickajack where he was to intercept a pair of white cousins who were English gun and slave traders penetrating into that country.  They were known as Havelock and Lang.  Not much more was known about them.  You have the support of a Jesuit Missionary at the Shoals, the apprentice of which is a La Moyne agent from Illinois Country who goes by the name of Duplantier. Win the support of the local natives and eliminate the English interlopers.  God go away with you.  Your beloved uncle, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, Governor of Louisiana.  

And so after a three month ordeal through the mountains of Alabama and arriving here at the island called Chickasaw Fields, he sat before Kis'Kambu and wondered how he might turn him and his people from the English. The twenty muskets the Le Moyne's had given him were not enough.  He needed something to really impress these people and win their admiration.  It meant guns, of course, but it could mean more than that.  Emil understood that the novelty of the alien impressed the natives, in as much as the alien drew himself unto it. And so he returned to Fort Toulouse where Captain de Courcelles was absent, for his controller was casting about the countryside dressing as a Creek chief himself and dancing about the council fires.  Without authorization from the Captain, Emil subscribed to a Casquette Girl in Mobile and brought her to Fort Toulouse where he was married to her by a Jesuit and began to trek north with her towards the Nickajack. 

Her name was Jeanne Dorvil, and she was an orphan swept off the streets of La Rochelle and committed to transportation to Louisiana as a Casquette Girl.  Her experiences in the Old World were one of unspeakable depradations and poverty.  But the journey upon which she was embarked now with her strange Half-Blood husband would lead to places she could not, in her imagination, have even wondered of. She was going to the Nickajack.  

Huntsville City Map, 1819

This is a map depicting Huntsville city around the time of the statehood convention in 1819.

Trip to Fort Sumter, Charleston

Incredible artifacts at Ft. Sumter, including the flag that flew during the opening dawn of the War, and the rebel Palmetto Guards flag that flew during the Yankee Siege of Charleston. There was one of the 8" guns that had actually fired on Sumter on April 12, 1861. Also, there was an 8” shot lodged into the wall of the fort as amazing to me as if I had seen and touched the Black Stone of Mecca’s Kaaba.

The Walls of Jericho, Jackson County, Alabama

The Walls of Jericho, Jackson County, where Bill Marmaduke, future Sheriff of Limestone County, fell in and out of love amidst the tides of war. They are accessible by a brisk hike down from Hytop north of Scottsboro on the Cumberland Mountain. One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the Nickajack. After a good rain, the Walls would burst from multiple springs. (Chapter XLIII)

XLIII

Before he became Sheriff of Limestone County and rode his chuck wagon through the roaring crowds of the Darling of Strangetown, Royal Bill Marmaduke had been a different man altogether before he came home from the war. The Cause notwithstanding, something changed during the two years he fought guerilla in the mountains of Nickajack. It was as though it had been different arc of his life, different before and different after and never like the rest of it altogether. Only love could do that.

And so it was he saw her in church, which was to say the Estill Fork Methodist Church. It was deep up the valley, whose ponderous shoulders embrace the Paint Rock River in their cusps. The chapel itself was a single room clapboard structure. It was coddled on the sandstone ledges above the rustling waters of the fork. The gothic windows were shaded first by the woods, then by the mountain's draw towards sunset. And down the valley would echo the Sacred Harp these Holy people chorused from the mountains, for their Reverend was of the Holiness movement.

Her hair was brown, her eyes almond. Before church she passed mountain flowers to the elderly from a wicker basket. They baptized in the pools they call Jericho where they wore linen robes and sang Idumea. These praises were pleasing to the Lord like the aroma of burnt offerings, and thus the war had not yet reached these people of the mountains, who owned no slaves, and worked communally in the scratch of the sandy soils to raise lamb and cattle and grow patches of corn. Not one of this congregation had sent a son to the war.

This Bill Marmaduke respected, and honored the Reverend's wishes to attend service unarmed. It was up the Paint Rock River that Frank Gurley had pitched camp for his guerilla band for a time, striking south out of the valley to raid the Yankee outposts at Woodville and Gurley's Tank along the Memphis & Charleston. It turned ugly. Farms were burnt out, livestock shot up. They'd stick up the railroad to Bridgeport then burn the train carriages down to cinders.  The Yankees rarely ventured away from the railroad and chose to keep most of their garrison close to the Huntsville Depot. The mountains belonged to the rebels.  

They also belonged to her.  

Her name was Amanda, and she did not understand the war. None of them did. They were pacifists all. And he'd try to explain the Cause, but he felt he wasn't making any sense. She laughed at him. She was charmed by him. She was afraid of him. He carried firearms.  He's killed men.  He was Episcopalian. He had fallen madly in love with her.  He brought her flowers.  He asked to write to her. She was receptive, but cautious. There were the admonitions of her counsel.  Nothing sinister, but disapproving.  The Godly do not consort with killers.  And she did as she was bade. It was love irreconcilable to God.  

But the time grew to pass anxiously for her during which they were parted from each other's sight.  During one raid, Bill Marmaduke took a ball in the gut and he was brought in to Mr. Somerfield's farm where the doctor shook his head and removed his spectacles and place his arm on her shoulder. He wasn't expected to make it. The fever set in. She spent interminable hours at his side in prayer.  He spent a fortnight in the fitful brink before his fever broke and he came to.  Prayers were answered.  A promise was struck.  She took hold of his hand and walked with him as he convalesced beside the gliding mountain meadows.  She read the Bible to him beside cool waters.  She picked him bouquets and sang to him Lochaber No More beside the pools of Jericho.  It was time standing still.  But she could not marry him.  He pleaded, she demurred. He swore he would love her the rest of his days. He knelt before her as he parted, and she kissed his forehead, like Guinevere and Lancelot of the Lake.   

He did not return for two seasons.  He was swept up by the Wizard of the Saddle and rode with him burning across West Tennessee.  General Bragg and the Army of the Tennessee had turned out the Yankee occupation of the Nickajack and was now facing the mighty Union army of General Rosencrans's Army of the Cumberland near the Shelbyville, Tennessee.  General Bragg's agents swept into the Nickajack and confiscated everything that could be eaten, exchanging them for scrips in Confederate dollars.  Then they enforced conscription.  It was the unassailable force of incontestable authority.  When most of the yeomen of the mountain country sequestered their stocks and evaded the draft deep in the mountains, the congregants of Estill Fork prayed for deliverance instead.  Nothing came but the sutler's wagons and men with guns who passed them a scrip note and saluted them as they loaded away barrels of cereal. Then they drove off the cattle with them.  They were gone within the week and left scarcely anything behind but the mules to tend the next harvest. Malnutrition set in.  

Amanda was carried away by the diphtheria later that mournful July.  When Bill returned to Estill Fork, he felt as though his heart had suddenly swollen, then suddenly emptied onto the Earth.  He never knew when was the last time he would see her each time he had ridden off to war. He could have accepted that, but he never imagined it would be her the one to go.  They had never even kissed. They had never even made love.  All the time that had stood still but a memory. In time, the memories would fade too. Then there were just ghosts in his dream, where they'd never say a word to one another.  He never repeated her name again. 

Boo hags. 

He began to blot this one with sins.  It took years, even into the after-war. There was the soldiering, which she had called killing. Then the gambling.  Then, many say, his ambitions and pride.  He never cared much for Jesus, he concluded.  Never met him.  If she meant nothing, then all that meant nothing.  You could make room for Jesus, or you could make room for her. Not both. So he'd chose neither. Here is where they said Bill Marmaduke grew selfish and peevish, shrewd and cold.  Say what they will, he thought, I run ahead of my demons.  

But he never forgot the impression of charity in Amanda's heart. There were Bible verses she read he couldn't get out of his head, like from Malachi and Ephesians.  What is this Cause you were willing to kill for, Bill?  Who shall enslave his brother and sister in Christ but he who is a slave to the enemy's power?  

If Amanda was beyond a memory, and beyond a ghost, then maybe she could have been an angel.  

XLII

When he tossed Jesus over three weeks ago, Brother Pruitt fell into a deep funk. In fact, he didn't know which came first, but he bet on his unfaithfulness. The boo hags had come again. He didn't even leave the tent most of the time, which was pitched behind the Whitesport Salon. He battled with terrible demons and sulked gravely. He thumbed the handle of his pistol. He was drunk on Sunday. The Darlings of Strangetown would pass by his tent in the evenings and hear him raving and kicking like the fitful sleep of a dog. His beard grew long. He'd shake open the flaps to his tent in the morning, stark naked half the time. The sun would cast harsh beams into his squinting eyes. No one paid him any mind, so he'd skulk off back into his cot besides which a rifled-through Bible sat open to 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13. Evander Pruitt loved everyone, but in these terrible hours, he did not love himself.

It was out on the endless prairie where the farms were burning, spinning coils of black into the sky that were circled by the buzzards. They had chased Old Pap's army all the way across Missouri into Kansas. These rebels had been a miserable lot. They wore rags, their pockets stuffed with ammunition and molded bread. The lucky ones had shoes. They ate the land up like locusts. Starving themselves, they robbed what little was left on any farmstead they encountered, no matter if the inhabitants were secesh or Unionist. Every man they encountered they either shot or conscripted. Evander and his troop of Jayhawker Unionists snapped and hounded at the rebel column that moved through the land like an evil menace upon the Earth. They were galled by the dead that was left dribbling in its wake, both soldiers and civilians.

Once, they had caught up with a straggling column of Johnny Rebs that were sacking a homestead near Mine Creek, Kansas. They dismounted and fanned out into a crescent overlooking the farm from a wooded ridge. They heard the shrieking of a woman and the wail of a child. There were gunshots and it went silent. They swooped in on the farm and in a sharp spasm of violence they killed every Johnny Reb. Nine of them. They scalped every one of them, and then dragged their bodies to a pig sty and threw them in for the hogs to finish. Their mules weren't worth saving so they shot them too. When Evander walked into the farmhouse, he stumbled back out and vomited. Then they brought out the woman and the child and buried them.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? As it is written: for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered...

Amen.

The mother and the child. The Madonna and the Messiah. The bottle and the rope.

As all this was tormenting his mind, he was suddenly awoken by the ringing of a bell. It was his bell, which was hung from the outside pole of his tent. He rang it on Sundays to call the wicked to Christ. Who the hell is ringing my goddam bell?

Oh! I's sorry mistuh. I thought I's supposed to summon you by the rangin of this bell here.

Brother Pruitt sat up in his bed rubbing his eyes and grasped for his spectacles. Finding these he saw in his doorway a large black man. He wore a linen work shirt and denims and a wide-brimmed straw hat. His face looked like darkened copper in the morning light.

Who the hell are you?

Oh! Sir, my's name is Jonas Jackson, but all my friends call me Big Jim Crow. I reckon you can too.

Evander sensed he was missing something, so he straightened himself somewhat and beckoned the man to enter. As he did so, Evander washed his face from an enamel basin and ignored the signs of a creeping hangover.

Well, he said. I didn't think anyone besides a bunch of street urchins would ring my bell. I'm sorry. What can I help you with, sir?

Big Jim removed is hat and seemed uncertain how to start.

Well sir, Big Jim proceeded. I've been watching you, and some of the other preachers too. I've been looking to be baptized, and I thought I'd ask you to wash me in the Holy Spirit, sir. If you'll have me, of course.

The request did not confuse Brother Pruitt, but the circumstances had. He had just been thinking about hanging himself again. He might have gone through with it this time too, he thought. He searched Big Jim's eyes for something, maybe a sign. But all he saw was just the eyes of another man. What were his demons, he wondered? Did he have boo hags too? It did not matter. In that moment, there were two men searching for Jesus in one another.

For where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.

They spoke at length where Evander Pruitt learned of Jonas Jackson's yearning, his hunger for the Bread and Water of Life. The Saving Grace. The redemption of one man's Soul manifest in a world of sin in a universe of suffering. And when he heard all this, agreed to baptize Big Jim Crow in the Holy Spirit. And bye and bye, this had been done, and Big Jim Crow was cleansed of his Original Sin even if the country he lived in could never be cleansed of its own. And Brother Pruitt lived yet to continue serving the Lord.

Sterling "Old Pap" Price, Missouri Sesech Leader

The Missouri sesech leader Sterling “Old Pap” Price led an invasion of almost 12,000 mounted raiders through Missouri in the Autumn of ‘64 that ate the land up like locusts. Evander Pruitt and the Jayhawks hounded the rebel column into Kansas where farms burned across the prairie and soldiers and civilians alike were killed without quarter. (Chapter XLII)

Cotaco, the Nickajack's Southern Coast

The curious region of the Nickajack known as "Cotaco," a word which may be a portmanteau of the French name "Cote de Coeur," or Coast of the Heart.  The Nickajack was fought over by the Chicasaw, Shawnee and the Cherokee when mixed race traders brought firearms to the natives.  These mixed race traders were known as the Metis by the French, and Mestee by the English.  

XLI

Cotaco is the region of the Nickajack bound to the south of the Tennessee River and the shoulders of Brindlee Mountain where the town of Somerville was settled before statehood. It is also where the Valhermoso Springs drains into Cotaco Creek and thence into the great river near the place known as Talucah. The origin of the name of Cotaco is debatable. Perhaps the most intriguing theory is that it is not a Muskogean, Algonquin or Iroquoian word, which are all native languages spoken alternately in the Nickajack. Rather it is but a portmanteau of the French name "Cote de Coeur," or Coast of the Heart. For in all names is their curious genesis.

And so the Nickajack had not seen another white man for a hundred years since the Conquistadors Jimenez Maldonado and Alonso de le Cabra had assumed their mantle as the Lords of Koasati. From the Great Gorge to the Great Shoals, the Nickajack was wasteland of abandoned villages and fallow fields between forests crowded with brambles. A new power was on the rise among the survivors of the Great Plague. These were the Chicaza, who were the Chickasaw. They had become the new masters of the Nickajack who fought across the shifting landscape against Algonquin speakers like the Shawnee, and Iroquoian speakers like the Cherokee. Yuchi, the language isolate of the Koasati, was made extinct in the Nickajack.

After this long interlude of internecine warfare the first non-natives began to arrive again in the Nickajack. They were probably not white at all, but mixed descent traders called Metis by the French, and Mestee by the English. They began to arrive in the late 17th century, trapping furs and taking buckskins and exchanging practical goods with the Chickasaw and Cherokee and Shawnee. That is how the natives came to acquire firearms, which they embraced and used effectively. These traders and trappers came by way of the Province of Carolina, which was English, and by way of Louisiana, which was French. The blood of the Old World was now coursing through the veins of the New World, and a steady intercourse of new commerce bound up all these great nations, both native and European, in a Great Game.

And in this Great Game, which was played from the courts of kings down to the chiefs of the natives, lies the curious origins of this name Cotaco, Coast of the Heart, about which more shall be told.

The Battle of Brice's Crossroads, June 1864

 

The Battle of Brice's Crossroads, June 1864, where the Wizard of the Saddle, Nathan Bedford Forrest, defeated a Yankee army more than twice his size. Guster Ledbetter and the 55th Colored Infantry were ambushed as they crossed the Tishomingo Creek and were for a period overrun by Johnny Reb. When they had driven off the rebel cavalry, it was too late. The entire Yankee army had disintegrated and fell back in a stampede across the Tishomingo Creek. General Forrest had rounded up prisoners in excess of half his army's size! It was a spectacular victory, and a spectacular defeat. General Sherman was disgusted by the news. (Chapter XL)

XL

Guster Ledbetter could not remember marching in worse conditions. The march out from Memphis had been mired by six days of constant rain that had turned the roads to muck. Eight thousand Yankee infantry and cavalry were slogging it out in a search and destroy, but it had already turned into a fiasco. The wagon train and artillery was strung out three counties long. Worse yet, everyone was on half rations.

They should shoot the sunnavabitch in charge of this whole thing, Guster thought.

That could have meant General Sherman, since he ordered this diversion into North Mississippi in order to tie down the Wizard of the Saddle Nathan Bedford Forrest who, with just 3,500 cavalrymen, posed a dangerous threat to General Sherman's rear. Sherman was by then grasping at the Army of Tennessee in Northwest Georgia where General Joe Johnston fought a skillful withdrawal down the railroad towards Atlanta. If Sherman remained anxious about anything during the war, it was of General Forrest spoiling his plans. It was the Summer of '64.

As it were, the man in charge of this expedition was Samuel Sturgis, a competent but rather undistinguished officer who had been thrust in over his head against a wily, dangerous enemy like Nathan Bedford Forrest. And so Forrest allowed Sturgis and his mud-slicked army to march deeper into the rebel interior until at a place called Brice's Crossroads in Northeast Mississippi the Wizard of the Saddle gave battle. It was the ground of his choosing, and Sturgis marched his army into a veritable disaster.

Guster Ledbetter was marching with his unit, Company D of the 55th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, taking up the rear of the column when there was the sudden boom of cannons ahead. There the Yankee and rebel cavalry began skirmishing amid the swales of grass and groves of cottonwood. Heeding the call for reinforcements at the front, General Sturgis double-timed his strung out infantry along the Guntown Road towards the crossroads, past the bridge over the Tishomingo Creek. Hoping to use his superior numbers to break the rebel's center, General Sturgis's soldiers were hustled into a packed front. They did so exhaustedly from the enervating march, but the density of their firepower was beginning to tell on the rebels, who began to fall in numbers.

When General Forrest thought the bulk of Sturgis's army had arrived over the Tishomingo Creek, which was steeply sided, he unleashed a deep flanking attack around the left of the Union lines. That was where the 55th Colored was then bringing up the rear of the infantry down the Guntown Road. As they were crossing the bridge, Guster Ledbetter was surprised to see a mass of rebel cavalry emerge from the woods on their left. The rumble of their hooves thundered down the creek bank towards them. Guster's white officers were shouting in confusion. Before they could be rushed across the bridge and formed back into line, the rebel cavalry had discharged a devastating volley of fire from their carbines and had rushed into the ranks of colored soldiers. Few of the brothers even had a chance to mount bayonets.

It was bedlam. Smoke was everywhere. Rebel cavalrymen were pouring pistol shots into the milling ranks of brothers who clustered around in circles. Guster himself had discharged his rifle's ball into the breast of a chestnut mare. When that brought the rebel to the ground, Guster swing his rifle like a club and stove in the man's skull. He grabbed the man's riding shotgun and blew another rider off his horse. When he saw Color Sergeant Coker wrestling with a Johnny Reb in the mud, Guster removed his bayonet and thrust it deep into the rebel's side. He and the sergeant managed to organize a group of brothers that took cover in a stand of birch and starting popping off a steady stream of shots that was driving the rebels back. All their white officers had fled. They were nowhere to be seen.

But that's not all who fled. When word had reached the front lines that their rear was under attack, Sturgis's already demoralized army at first started looking over its shoulder, then finally it turned its back. The Yankee front lines started dribbling stragglers to the rear, then entire companies began to skedaddle. Finally the whole army was in a panicked retreat. While Guster Ledbetter and what was left of the 55th Colored held the Tishomingo Bridge, they watched as the rest of the army came clamoring back down the Guntown Road. When they reached the bridge, it became a stampede. Soldiers were being trampled. They slid down the muddy banks into the flooding creek and struggled to climb back out the other side. Soldiers were clamoring over one another, their heads pressed into the mud by the feet of those above them.

The entire army disintegrated, and what was left of it streamed down the roads back towards Memphis. The Wizard of the Saddle had smashed an army more than twice its size, and rounded up a number of Yankee prisoners that were more than half his force's size. Guster Ledbetter, Sergeant Coker and several other brothers became lost from their unit in the retreat and took to hiding in the devastated countryside around them. They slept in burnt out farms and in the safety of creek bottoms avoiding all human contact. For if they were found by the rebels, they felt certain they would be killed by Johnny Reb.

When they made it back to Memphis, they learned General Sturgis had resigned his post under suspicion of drunkenness. General Sherman was disgusted. To Guster it was, yet again, an instance of the gross incompetence of his white officers. During the Battle of Brice's Crossroads, Company D, 55th Colored lost 22 dead and 45 wounded out of a pre-battle muster of 126 brothers. Those Union dead who were left behind on the battlefield were tossed in massed graves. The rebels thought to do so separating the dead by color. They didn't bother to mark the grave filled with coloreds.

XXXIX

Drake Shoney treated all his friends with airish disdain, even ones he was indebted to. So it was that one of his creditors was Linus Poteat, to whom he owed a gambling debt on account of a busted flush. These two kept low when the Yankees occupied Athens, for they had both been sponsors to the would-be ironclad, The Gar. They frequented Kingpin Cotter's turf where they played cards and gazed askance at Blanche Cotter's cleavage. This distraction had cost Drake Shoney a good sum, to which he pledged a note of $500 to Linus Poteat.

Goddamit why you gotta bother me about that money again, Linus? I said I'm good for it. I just gotta rake in this corn. Interest? Did you read the note? It says interest free. You signed it. I read it to you, you indolent cretin. Learn to read.

Linus looked sad, except he wasn't sober, and was somnambulate. He put the promissory note he couldn't read back into his pocket.

And so the Yankee occupation lifted in late '62, and Drake sold his late corn on a contract of $1,500 in Confederate bonds to General Bragg's agents in order to feed the Army of Tennessee, which was soon to occupy the Nickajack around Shelbyville. No sooner had he received this perceived windfall when he was also handed his conscription notice. He accepted it with confusion, his mouth open. Drafted? Me? But, but...

He went home and after a spell of drinking began to scheme a way out. He had not the specie to buy a substitute. He had $1,500 in Confederate bonds, which was merely an annuity. He couldn't afford to sell a slave. Elzey, his creole overseer, wouldn't have it. He'd never hear the end of it from her. She was already upset he had sold the early corn.

And so at another bender at Kingpin Cotter's flatboat, Drake Shoney threw his arms around his friend Linus Poteat, who was catfishing next to a demijohn.

Linus, before you get drafted, what do you say I pay you $1,000 to go as a substitute for me? That's a lot of money! The going rate for a substitute is half that. I'm telling you, this is the way to go. If you're going to have to fight, you might as well get paid a bounty for it. Am I right? Look here. Drake held out a slip of paper. He didn't even have the bonds in hand, just a scrip signed by General Bragg's agent transferring ownership of the bonds. For something worthless to begin with, this looked altogether suspect. But it would relieve $500 in gambling debt and buy Drake out of the war.

Linus Poteat, who was a doleful drunkard and a dullard, was convinced at length to take the deal. And before Linus could sober up, Drake rode into town in his chaise with his arm around his friend, sharing a flask and waving cigars singing Buffalo Gals. They rode straight to the Limestone County Board of Enrollment where, up until Linus Poteat affixed his signature of an "X” on his army papers, Drake never removed his arm from around Linus. This done, Drake signed over the scrip to Linus Poteat, who was now richer than he ever had been in his life. Or so he thought.

Its an annuity, Linus! They pay you every month, so you don't spend it all at once, you fool! Lord knows you'd lose it all at the table anyway!

In fact, it paid nothing. At length, General Bragg had been turned out of the Nickajack by the brilliant machinations of General Rosencrans and was falling back into Georgia. The Yankees reoccupied the Nickajack. In theory the payments and interest for Linus Poteat's bonds were accruing on a ledger book in Richmond, Virginia, but that was about the extent of it. Meanwhile, his soldiering potential was judged so abysmal that he was sent with an allotment of dunces to the Trans-Mississippi, which was to say Louisiana. His skills as a boiler mechanic, however, were at least passable, and he was thus assigned to the CSS Queen of the West, which had just been captured from the Yankees on the Red River. It was the third year of the war.

Capt. Frank Gurley, CSA - Wanted Man, Guerilla Leader of the Nickajack

Frank Gurley led a guerilla war from the mountains of Madison and Jackson Counties against the Yankee occupation. It led to him becoming a wanted man by the Union authorities for his alleged murder of General Robert McCook on the Winchester Road near New Market, Alabama. Future Limestone County Sheriff Bill Marmaduke rode with his friend Frank Gurley for two years in this guerilla war which helped protect the western approaches to Confederate Chattanooga. Frank Gurley himself became Sheriff of Madison County in 1865 while still under indictment for General McCook's murder, for the murdered general was of the powerful Ohioan War Democrat clan known as the "Fighting McCooks." The modern town of Gurley, Alabama is named after Captain Gurley. (Chapter XXVIII)

XXXVIII

Bill Marmaduke took official leave of the 19th Alabama Infantry at Bridgeport, Alabama in the Summer of '62. The regiment had remained behind to guard the western approaches to Chattanooga while General Bragg took the Army of Tennessee on its invasion of Kentucky. Bill had been pretty tore up about the loss of so many friends at Shiloh. They all had. While encamped on a knobby hill overlooking downtown Bridgeport, Bill Marmaduke was visited by his old friend Frank Gurley. He looking for recruits for his company of mounted irregulars, who were attached to the 4th Alabama Cavalry, CSA. Looking for some open air from the rank confines of army camp life, he jumped at the opportunity.

They were called Gurley's Ghosts, and they operated throughout the mountains of Madison and Jackson county protecting the western approaches to rebel Chattanooga from Yankee occupied Huntsville. The vital Memphis & Charleston, it must not be remembered, ran from Huntsville to Chattanooga. The one hundred miles between the two cities became a no man's land which was never wholly occupied by either side throughout the war. Gurley's cavalry would ride down out of the mountains to raid Yankee foraging parties or the occasional train.

Frank Gurley had by that point had a bounty placed on him for his alleged murder of the Yankee General Robert McCook on the Winchester Road near New Market, Ala. during an ambush. General McCook was a member of the famous "Fighting McCook" family of Ohioan War Democrats. This concerned Frank none in the least, and for the next two years Bill Marmaduke fought with a wanted man.

For Bill Marmaduke, this experience in the mountains of the Nickajack would influence his future ascension into Reconstruction politics as a Republican war hero. It was here that he grew to become a folk sensation of the Nickajack while riding with the "outlaw" Frank Gurley. It was here, also, he would also fall in and out of love. For there was no soldier in this cruel war that love and death did not go hand in hand.

Lt. Gen. Braxton Bragg, Commander of the Army of Tennessee

General Braxton Bragg, who commanded the Army of Tennessee when the Yankees lifted their occupation of the Nickajack in the Winter of ‘62. His soldiers rounded up the conscription “Class of ‘63” in Limestone County, at least those who hadn’t skedaddled into the woods or bought substitutes. Those drafted included a group of old music-loving friends who brought cheer to old veterans with the 4th Alabama Infantry under General Lee’s command in Virginia. (Chapter XXXVII)

XXXVII

For good spell from the Winter of '62 into the Summer of '63, the Army of Tennessee occupied positions along the upper Duck River Valley at the far northern reaches of the Nickajack. General Bragg, who looked like a terrier and was quite as irascible, had completely outturned the Union positions in the Nickajack, temporarily relieving the Yankee occupation of that region. This was welcomed with tepidity by the locals. The Greeks were concerned their next cotton harvest would be purchased by Richmond's agents in worthless Confederate dollars or worse, Confederate bonds. Worse yet for the yeomanry and poor whites, Richmond's agents rounded up a fat class of conscripts who had heretofore avoided the draft due to the Yankee occupation. They were sardonically called the "Class of '63" by the Limestone County Board of Enrollment, who pitied them all.

General Bragg donated soldiers to help round up this class of Nickajack draftees, many of whom had fled into the woods and bottoms of Limestone County, or thrown themselves at the mercy of the Rats to avoid conscription. That was the flight of the intrepid. The Greeks simply bought substitutes, but most of the others were swept up by General Bragg's soldiers and allotted to Alabama regiments across the Confederacy. Many of these allotments were composed of friends, who were still given the choice to serve together.

And so a group of a dozen friends were shipped up to Virginia as replacements for Company F, 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment - The Limestone Grays. They were mostly sons of Athenian burghers and who attended the same school on Hine Street, the Edgewood Academy. They called themselves the Hine Street Bandits, for they had been rascals about town before the war. Several of them brought instruments, and were warmly welcomed into Company F, who had lost most of their musicians during hard campaigning.

The Limestone Grays had lost most of their original volunteers. Theodore Hobbes, who had organized the regiment, was dead. So was Branse Havelock's father. Both were felled at Sharpsburg, which is called Antietam up North. Whoever survived that furious day would subsequently fall trying to push Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine off Little Round Top. The Grays were there, at the high water mark of the Confederacy. After the Battle of Gettysburg, General Lee had fallen back and positioned his Army of Northern Virginia along the Rapidan River in Virginia for a long interlude of rest. That's when the Hine Street Bandits arrived in camp as replacements, virgin as the first fallen snow to the trials that awaited them on the battlefield. Luckily for them, they arrived at a long period of inactivity by the Union Army of the Potomac.

It gave the Bandits time to adjust to new friends, who were hardened veterans all. Most of the Grays by this point weren't even from Limestone County. They were conscripts rounded up from all over the Old Dixie. But these veterans warmed up to the Bandits when they would break out their instruments and start to pick out tunes by the campfire.

One of the boys was named Amos, who was a big fellow and was an incredible banjo picker. He wore steel rimmed glasses and always looked short of breathe everywhere he went. He'd budge his pal Skinny Southers begging for a tune.

Hey Skinny. How about some of that good ole Dan Tucker for the fellas?

Skinny couldn't play, but he could belt out a tune like no other while tapping the tambourine. And with the other Bandits like Chip Hollow and Fred Rankin and Lincoln Woodcuff and all the others would join in singing and playing along.

Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man
Washed his face with a fryin' pan
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel

Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper
Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker
You're too late to get your supper

The circulation of whiskey and 'hasheesh' was rife in the Confederate Army of that time, and during the long and welcome period of quiet along the Rapidan front, spirits grew high after the loss of Gettysburg. One who appreciated that was Captain Noah Amherst, who taken command of Company F from Tennessee and was a cousin of Burnside Lee. Morale had been so low after the retreat from Pennsylvania. The music was welcomed among so many homesick boys.

But all this quiet in the frontlines was about to change. In the Spring of '64, Ulysses S. Grant had assumed command of the Army of the Potomac after repulsing General Bragg's Army of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Grant had big plans to end the war quickly, and it involved bloodletting the Confederacy of its youth in an all out lunge against General Lee's throat. The quiet welcome for the Bandits was about to come to an abrupt end. For Captain Amherst, he knew it wouldn't last forever. He only hoped the music would still play for those left to hear it.

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. Sam Houston, Founder of Texas, called him as ambitious as lucifer, and as a cold as a lizard. It was said he was more likely to quarrel with friends than assail his enemies. By war's end, he had become a worse tyrant than he could ever claim upon Mr. Lincoln. For his charge was an empire of bondage, and a republic of suffering.

XXXVI

However Mr. Lincoln felt about it, the Confederate States of America was a going concern, de facto if not de jure. Less than a month after Alabama declared Independence from the Union, all of the seceded states sent delegates to Montgomery. They included Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana in a list that reads like an SEC roster. As of yet the other states had not seceded from the Union. And so in Montgomery they formed a Congress and elected a President. The constitution mimicked that of the United States of America except where it pertained to the protection of slavery. However these founding fathers of the Confederacy felt about their Second American Revolution, theirs was an empire of bondage, a republic of suffering.

And so Jefferson Davis received a cable from the rebel Congress appointing him President of these Confederate States of America. He hadn't even known he was on the ballot. Varina, his beloved wife, was struck by how ashen he turned. It was as though the most enormous responsibility had been assailed upon him. He had been Mississippi's Senator and a former Secretary of War to Washington. He was a hero of the Mexican War, and though he was not a Fire-Eater, he was a uniting conservative of the Democratic Party. When he arrived by the cars to Montgomery, he was greeted on the Capitol steps by crowds of white people. There may have been a few slaves, but it wasn't their republic. He ascended the steps of the Capitol where he was embraced by the King of Fire-Eaters, plump little Alabama Senator William Lowndes Yancey. Never one to miss a good politicking, Senator Yancey grasped Jefferson Davis's arm and raised it high and called out to the crowd:

The man and the hour have met!

The crowds erupted! They played Dixie and paraded down Bibb Street singing the Bonnie Blue. Jefferson Davis was too grim a man to indulge himself in these jollities. The fate of this new Nation rest heavy upon his shoulders. So he took up a single office in the Exchange Hotel where the frosted glass door was crudely scrawled with the word - President. From this he would begin to craft the bureaucratic organs of this peculiar nation until, towards the end, he was a worse tyrant that Mr. Lincoln. Even the Fire Eaters would abandon him in time. But that was in the future, and after a great many trials.

As it were, Mr. Lincoln didn't even acknowledge or give credence to this rebel republic. In fact, he played dumb while the whole country had torn itself asunder. He was playing a very delicate game to keep what remained of the Union intact. As of yet, important border states had not yet seceded, like Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky. It was not war yet. It was a crisis of intransigence. Trade continued as usual. Travel between these two nations went unabated. To the concert of nations, who warily watched this bifurcation of a major commercial rival with interest, Jefferson Davis had this to say to elicit their sympathies.

All we ask is to be left alone!

Mr. Lincoln, who was endowed with the genius of patience, continued to wait out for the opportunity to goad the rebels into firing first, so as not to antagonize the Europeans. It soon came when a loyal Kentuckian by the name of Robert Patterson spiked the guns of Fort Moultrie and rowed his men for Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. There he refused all demands to give up his post as an officer of the United States. He was one of the precious few Union officers in the South who hadn't turned over their post to the rebel government. Most officers of the tiny pre-war army were Southerners.

And so that little creole general, P.G.T. Beauregard, gave the order for the batteries to fire on Fort Sumter. It was April 12, 1861. In the pre-dawn hours, a single 10-inch mortar creased a yellow arc through the sky where it burst like a firework over the fort. A few seconds later, the report echoed across Charleston Harbor. The crowds who had collected on the waterfront burst with joy and awe. The first shot of the war had been fired. It would not abate again for four more Aprils.

Back in the Nickajack, they kept the Union flag flying from the courthouses for some weeks after secession. The mountainous region had deep Whig roots with its large yeomanry and a growing burgher class. They were even horrified by the events of Fort Sumter. But what horrified them most of all was Mr. Lincoln calling up 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, for which Old Dixie had fired the first shot. No man of true republican instincts would possibly order soldiers to arms against his own citizens! These were the actions of a Tyrant! The Whigs had long been skeptical of executive power, and now here it was in its worst form. War against his own People!

It was then that Burnside Lee had rallied together the Athenian Hoplites, which became A Company, 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Branse Havelock and William Marmaduke were part of this company. But the Athenian Hoplites were not the first to go battle. The most ardent Greek secessionists had formed the Limestone Grays under Theodore Hobbes even before Fort Sumter. They formed the F Company of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment. They got sent to Virginia. Included in that group was Branse Havelock's father, who was Branse Senior.

Whatever their personal motives were for joining, they rallied around the Cause, which was short for they had all been sold a bill of goods by the Fire Eaters. They had all bought into the Big Lie which drove the whole machine of slavery... that a black man wasn't good enough to be free or equal. So much so, that they all marched into all-but-certain death for that Big Lie.

But they would do it so with an uncommon valor.

The Massacre at Fort Pillow

The Battle of Fort Pillow saw Confederate troops under command of Nathan Bedford Forrest engage in the wanton massacre of colored soldiers who were attempting to surrender. Even as some begged surrender, they were shot on their knees. Word gets around. When Guster Ledbetter got word, he snapped.

XXXV

Guster Ledbetter stood staring out the doors leaning on his rifle and watched the countryside roll by. Company D, 55th Colored was on patrol again. They rode a four car train pulled by the 4-4-0 locomotive they called Old Sow. It was getting bad out there. It was only a month before that the Wizard of the Saddle, Nathan Bedford Forrest, had raided deep into Tennessee and captured Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River. Rumor was going around that Johnny Reb had massacred everyone. Brothers. Sisters. Children. It was a real race war, Guster thought. No quarter asked, no quarter taken.

 
Since Forrest had launched his West Tennessee raid in the Spring of '64, the Memphis & Charleston had been the scene of intense guerilla warfare up and down the line. The Yankees had built outposts every three miles along the length of the railroad. They were wooden blockhouses or, more commonly, a dugout emplacement held by no more than a platoon of soldiers, mostly colored infantry. The outposts were close enough to wigwag to each other if they were attacked by Johnny Reb, and Old Sow would come steaming full tilt down the railroad from Corinth or Memphis to bring in reinforcements. And so the warning had gone out that Blockhouse Buffalo was under attack by a force of unknown size about ten klicks east of Chewalla, Tennessee. Old Sow set out from Wenasoga Station with two platoons and raced off northwest along the Memphis & Charleston.

 
It was an ambush. Johnny Reb had cut the line short of the blockhouse and fired a shot into Old Sow's boiler with a hidden six-pounder gun. It made an awful hissing sound as steam roiled out across the tracks and Old Sow lurched towards a stop. Suddenly there was musket fire everywhere. The brothers were up and popping shots off out the boxcars. Bullets were smacking back in with a knocking sound. Another cannon shot blew through the wooden planks of Guster's boxcar. Splinters exploded everywhere. The Color Sergeant, a brother named Coker, was screaming at them. Get the f**k out! Get the f**k out! The sergeant started throwing his men off the train to get them to cover.

 
Guster found defilade with some brothers behind an embankment. Johnny Reb was firing at the train from all sides, but the greatest danger was from the six-pound gun that was pumping shells into Old Sow. The Color Sergeant collapsed next to them after making a mad dash from the train. Bullets had smacked dust all around him. We've got to take out that gun, he said. Now that they were off the train, the brothers seemed to be pushing back against Johnny Reb. Color Sergeant Coker guessed there weren't more than twenty or thirty or so. He peeked up the embankment to see where the gun was. He drew immediate fire. Bullets whizzed over with a zipping sound. I see the gun, he said, wide eyed! It ain't but a fifty yards. It looks like four riflemen protecting the gun crew.

 
Guster was long a hardened veteran, but no one liked hearing what was said next. Fix your bayonets, Coker said grimly. Everyone was wide-eyed in that eternal moment. Guster did the simple math. There were twelve of them behind that embankment. There were four rebel riflemen, and three - maybe four gunners. Kill the rifleman first. The gunnery sergeant may have a six-shooter. Kill him first if you see him draw. Coker looked every single one of them in the eye. Without a word, everyone understood. Then he nodded and said, let's roll.

 
Everything Guster remembered immediately after that was a blur. There was gunfire everywhere, but he was conscience of the shots that were now bowling down the grass towards him. Bullets zipped by his head, seemingly inches. A brother went down. It was Morrison. He couldn't see where he'd been hit, but he wasn't moving, so Guster kept rushing in with his bayonet. They kept their shots until the last second. Guster saw the rebel gunnery sergeant. He saw his bright red beard and the red band on his kepi hat. The man tried to draw his pistol. Guster hip shot him in the chest with his rifle, then ran him through anyway screaming like a fury. Like he was taught, he flipped him over to the side like bailing hay. The man spewed blood, his hands clenched around the barrel of Guster's rifle. Guster's blood rage was up. He lost track of time. He couldn't remember what he was staring at. A hand touched him on the shoulder.

 
It's done. Clean this up. I've got to check on the others, said Coker.

 
Guster snapped to. He suddenly remembered where his mind spun off to in the universe. It was a brother. He was dead. He had been ambushed like this, but he wasn't so lucky. Worse yet, his trousers had been pulled down. His genitals had been removed and stuffed into his mouth. The flies were everywhere. The brother had a slip of paper stuffed into his shirt pocket. It just said A-K.

Guster liked it better when he couldn't remember what he was thinking about. He suddenly realized he had been staring at the dead gunnery sergeant this whole time, and his read beard, and the red band on his kepi, and red stripe down his trousers. Guster bent down and removed the six-shooter from the mud, which was slick with clay. It was a Colt Walker - the one with the short barrel they called the Dragoon.
He realized the brothers were accosting some prisoners. They were upset about Morrison, who was dead. There were four Johnny Rebs. They had surrendered, but one looked rather surly at having been captured by brothers. He stood around rather huffily while the other three rebels sat dejected in the mud. Guster thought to change all that. He walked up to the one who was standing, then looked into his face.

 
Dance, he said.

Johnny Reb didn't even look perplexed. He stared back, then he spit into the mud. Guster looked askance at one of the prisoners sitting in the mud. He threw his hand out and discharged a ball into the man's chest. He fell over, dead. The others went wide-eyed. In an instant, Guster had tapped into what he wanted. He wanted them to fear. His brothers, whose blood were also up, gave looks of excited bemusement. Guster had worked them up too.

 
Dance, he said again.

 
Johnny Reb weighed his options, which in flight-or-flight had actually boiled down to neither. When he hesitated, Guster fired a shot with the Colt Walker into the dead space between his feet.

 
I said DANCE motherf****r!

 
Slowly and quite self-consciously, Johnny Reb began to dance. The brothers were loving it. When he wasn't impressed by the tempo, Guster fired again into the rebel's feet. He danced faster. He was positively terrified. Then the brothers began to sing, mockingly:

Run, run, or the pattyroller git you! Run, n*****r, run 'fore you better get away!

 
Guster shot again, then again into the man's feet. The brothers kept singing:

Some fokes say a n*****r won't steal, I caught three in my cornfield. One stole a bushel. One stole a peck. One stole the rope hung around his neck.

When they had finished singing this line, they felt that they'd had their fun. Guster remembered their brother, Buckwheat Stokes, who never came back from leave, but was found hung instead near Holly Springs. Then he thought about all he had heard about Fort Pillow.

 
Johnny Reb was still dancing when the brothers stopped laughing. When he thought his brothers had gotten bored, Guster shot Johnny Reb in the chest anyway. He was tossed back like a ragdoll thrown into the mud. When this had been accomplished, the brothers looked at each other and laughed again. One of the other rebels got up and ran. Guster grabbed his Lorenz Model 1854, a fine Austrian rifle, loaded it and took aim. He fired at the man from 150 yards across a field of burnt corn. Zzzzzzzuuuuup-puh. A puff of pink dust blew out the back of the man's butternut duster, and he went down.

The brothers cheered! They were loving it! Their blood lust was up, and it didn't seem it would abate until Color Sergeant Coker came back. The rebels were falling back. Coker barked at them.

 
Stop messing around with that prisoner and let's move out! We're marching the rest of the way to Blockhouse Buffalo.

 
It was like a toy had been taken from them, but Guster wasn't finished. As the brothers picked through the carnage looking for souvenirs, there was one prisoner left, and the man was in abject terror. Guster was fresh out shots with the Colt Walker and the Lorenz, so he leaned down close into Johnny Reb's face... so close he could kiss him. Then he placed his knife under the man's chin, and then he walked it down towards the man's genitals.

 
Then he asked him slowly, what do you know about this A-K?

Gravesite of Ferdinand Paleologos, Grandee of Barbados and Titular Heir to the Eastern Roman Empire

The actual grave of Ferdinand Paleologos, grandee of Barbados and root of the Carolina branch of the Havelock bloodline. He was also a titular heir of the old Eastern Roman Empire and had settled on Barbados to grow indigo and sugar. He also sought to escape Parliament’s vengeance, for he had been a cavalier that supported Unhappy King Charles I. Nowhere was slavery more cruel than in overcrowded Barbados in the mid 1600’s where death rates were nearly genocidal.

A Portrait depicting how Anthony Paleologos may have appeared

A portrait of how Anthony Paleologos may have looked when he affixed his signature to a petition for settlement in the Carolinas. He Englishized his name to "Havelock." Reportedly a mulatto of Portuguese origins, he was the illegitimate son of Ferdinand Paleologos of Barbados, and the heir of a terrible and ancient legacy.

XXXIV

A deep examination of the records might reveal that Branse Havelock may indeed have been a prince of the Greek blood, and not just of the planter elite of Athens. He understood the Havelocks first arrived in Limestone County by way of South Carolina. His great grandfather, James Havelock, fought against his own kin at Kings Mountain, then he killed Redcoats at Cowpens. This was during America's first civil war, which was the Revolution. James Havelock settled over the Appalachians after the war where he was given a bounty of land next to Cane Creek near Petersburg, Tennessee. That is how the Havelocks first arrived in the Nickajack, before Branse's own grandfather resettled in Limestone County.

Numerous Havelocks remained in South Carolina where they had settled up the backcountry as far back as the Great Buck War against the Yamassee Confederation. This was years before the Revolution. South Carolina was still a young colony. Charleston itself was threatened with being overrun by Indians. The frontier was ravaged by the Confederation. Plantations were burned, settlers and slaves were murdered. It took a tough and ruthless sort of settler to push out from the city burning Indian villages, slaughtering all males and enslaving the rest. When they had wiped out the natives, they would hunt out the skin of deer from the countryside and move on, for this war was about the almight "Buck," from which we derive the slang. These were the Havelocks, whose kin pushed the frontiers of white South Carolina deep into the interior in a war of annihilation.

The mysterious origins of the Havelocks, however, reaches even further into the mists of time. The name first appears as the Englishization of Paleologos, affixed to a petition for settlement submitted from Barbados to the Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina. The colony of Carolina itself was granted by King Charles Stuart I to the Lords Proprietor, which was a roll call of Royalist supporters of the King against Parliament. Most of the settlers were induced to resettle from the English island colony of Barbados by way of tax exemptions and generous land grants.

Anthony Havelock was born Anthony Paleologos, the illegitimate son of Ferdinand Paleologos, a Royalist cavalier who fled to Barbados to avoid Parliament's executioner. His mother was rumored to be a Portuguese mulatto and a slave of the Paleologos estate. Ferdinand himself was known as the "Greek Prince of Cornwall," for the Paleologos had been the last imperial dynasty of the Eastern Romans, known as the Byzantines. Ferdinand's ancestors had come to England by way of Italy where the imperial kin and kith had resettled after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Perhaps no place in the history of slavery did that vile institution manifest greater evils than in Barbados of the mid 17th century. The first plantations were worked by white indentured servants, mostly Irish whose debt contracts were transferrable and effectively made them white slaves. The European was wholly unconditioned to the pestilential tropics of its environs. Both the plantation proprietors and their white slaves died in droves from diseases as they hew indigo and tobacco from the rich volcanic loam. If these indentured servants survived their five year contract, they were given a 'freedom due' worth ten pounds in goods and some land.

As unpropitious as these prospects may seem, many took it. The need for labor soared, so the growing Barbadian elite contracted privateers to prowl the Atlantic looking to impress whites to work on the plantations. They included Ferdinand Paleologos's son and Anthony's half-brother Thomas, who raided the Caribbean aboard the privateer Charles II. In the years before the 1650's, two-thirds of all whites from the British Isles travelling to the Americas were settling into Barbados, voluntarily or involuntarily. The island quickly overcrowded in conditions that seemed like they couldn't get worse. But they did, and for a whole new class of arrival.

Sugar cane was introduced to Barbados in 1640 by a band of Sephardic Jews from Dutch Brazil and it completely swept the island over. It ushered in an agricultural and labor revolution, and not for the better. Because of the intensive labor required to cultivate and refine sugar, the Barbadians began to import slaves by the tens of thousands. African slaves were hardier than white indentured servants. They could survive the tropical climate better. They were also less inclined towards the inconvenient individuality by being completely uninformed about the culture and society into which they were thrust.

Barbados had grown into one of the most densely populated places in the Western Hemisphere. Thousands were still dying in droves, even the hardy African slaves, but the Dutch slave ships still anchored off shore to deliver more human cargo. They arrived in the most wretched conditions and were sold by the hundreds at the dockside slave markets. The densely cultivated island was intersected by straight roads where tudor-style plantation homes were hedged like the English countryside. Each held dark secrets like mass graves and slaves being whipped to death, hung, or even boiled alive for their intransigence. Meanwhile, the white Barbadian elite held social court among themselves. A portrait of Ferdinand Paleologos himself shows him dressed in a ruffed damask doublet and silk trunkhoses wearing a black velvet capotain, still very Elizabethan in habit.

Anthony Paleologos himself grew into a small landholder of 100 acres and twenty slaves until he was bought out by a Consortium of English investors. That is when he decided to emigrate to the Province of the Carolinas, which was being solicited by the Lords Proprietor. And as he prepared to sail aboard the galleon bound for the settlement of Charleston, he parted from his father for the last time. He had neverminded his mulatto heritage. The cruelty of Barbadian Master had known no color, but his father impressed upon him to keep it a secret unto the grave, then pressed into his hand a ring.

Inset into the bezel of the ring was a red jade. Inscribed upon it were the Greek letters Alpha and Kappa. Anthony was confused and asked his father about it. It stood for Adelphon Kuklos. It was an ancient crusading order of the Eastern Roman Empire, sworn in kanly, or Turkish for blood revenge, against the black Mamluks of Egypt. Its sinister imprecations reach back into the clouded annals of time. White Christians against Black Moslems. Anthony did not know what to think about all this. He did not know any Moslems but for the few that crewed his half-brother's ship. But he certainly knew a lot of blacks. And so he kept this ring and brought it with him to the Province of the Carolinas where its secrets were related down the Havelock line, and it infused them with a cursed fury, first against the Yamasee, and then again against the race upon which their family was cursed to loathe.

Williams Lowndes Yancey, Senator from Alabama and King of the Alabama Fire-Eaters

Alabama Senator William Lowndes Yancey, Fire-Eater and architect of Alabama’s secession from the Union where slavery could be practiced freely and forever. He was a professional Democratic politician who had warned his seat since the 40’s. He believed he was ushering in a Second American Revolution, but it was merely a reactionary coup by the slaveholding elite. Perhaps even a bluff. But it triggered the greatest conflagration the Western Hemisphere has ever seen.

XXXIII

Alabama declared Independence from the United States of America on January 11, 1861. Or so the document said. It went through on a vote of 61 to 39 among the delegates of the Secession Convention, which had convened in Montgomery. A young negro page had rushed out of the legislative chambers to announce it to the throng of citizens who gathered below the Capitol steps. Everyone erupted in cheers! Steamboats piped their horns as fireworks burst over the wharfs along the Alabama River. A torchlight ball in the open streets of Commerce Street where bands played Dixie. The flag of the United States was hauled down from the Capitol and replaced by the flag of the Bonnie Blue. This new flag snapped brightly below that of the flag of Alabama, now paramount among nations to these celebrants.

As it were, the delegates from the Nickajack were disgusted. Most of them had opposed secession against the radicals. They included youthful Greeks like William Marmaduke and Branse Havelock and Burnside Lee. Even Bourbon George was a hold out until the last moment when he threw in his lot with the secessionists. These radicals, who were branded the Fire-Eaters, felt they were inaugurating a new Second American Revolution. But it was wholly reactionary and lacked any of those fundamental humanistic merits embodied in the Spirit of '76. It was, quite simply, a dangerous and escalatory political ploy to protect the institution of slavery, Union be damned.

They called the present crisis the "Negro Quarrel," but it really meant war. It had been the inevitable trajectory of history that was arcing towards this moment, when the question of human bondage and its place in modern society must be settled. America would be all free, or it will be all slave, as Mr. Lincoln defined the quandary, but it would all be the same. And this he was prepared to do by the sword to keep the whole lot together, and the same as it were. And so the war came.

For the negroes in bondage, they knew something was up in the air. Very few among them had any idea about politics. Asking about it was taboo. Politics was impossible to grasp for the slave without any political agency to exercise it. But they did have the 'grapvine telegraph,' that vast diaphanous network of rumor and gossip that travelled across the landscape. Slaves who ran errands traded information in the towns with other slaves and white trash. And though slaves could not read the papers, the network originated with people who did, especially in Louisville, Kentucky. News travelled down with the railroad.

Jonas Jackson, who was called Big Jim Crow on account of the blackface minstrel ditty, learned about the secession as he was unloading a consignment of wood at Cottonport. He was a carpenter and slave for Lawrence Darby, a yeoman of Limestone County who owned 80 acres and four slaves. He didn't understand it anymore than the stevedore he exchanged the news with. When he returned home to his Master, however, he found him pale and looking rather shocked. He sat next to the fire place staring into the flaming pit.

Eveythang okay massa? Can I getchu somethin to drank?

He didn't answer, although Master Darby did look thoughtfully at Big Jim and pouted. Then he gently held Big Jim's wrist, which confused him. What he felt in this grasp was trepidation. It crept into him through his Master's hand. From it he sensed things were about to change. More than that, he sense upheaval and calamity. He also sensed death. All these things processed through his mind in no real order. But one thread remained constant among the babel of possibilities. It resolved itself into an infinite point of light. And in it, he sensed the spark of freedom.