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.

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.

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.

XXIII

A delegation of Greeks waited patiently at the Athens Depot as the two o' clock train from Corinth arrived twenty minutes late. They included Dr. Licinius Prentiss, Luke Pryor and Branse Havelock. A telegraph from that penultimate Greek, George Smith Houston, had summoned them. He was by then arriving via a long circuitous route. It took him from Montgomery, then west into and then north through Mississippi, and finally east from Corinth. It was an excruciating voyage in the heat of August, but it was the only way. As of yet, there was no railroad linking the Nickajack to the rest of the state. But all that was about to change. The train hove into the station chuffing steam from its brakes. A rather hefty man stepped off wearing a pair of polished balmorals and an ashen broadcloth suit. Most of the hair he had was hanging bosky from his chin. For the figure he cut, he was surprisingly deft on his feet.

 
George "Bourbon Smith" Houston was a tower of Alabama politics even before the war. He had been a professional Democrat politician since the 30's. He had voted for both the Mexican War and for secession, then sat out both wars at home.. He purchased a substitute to avoid conscription, and then brokered the sale of cotton to the Union Army when the Yankees occupied Limestone County. He and the Greeks grew fat off this illicit trade deep in heart of the Confederacy, which increasingly demanded corn just to feed its citizens. Just then he had been milling about the halls of power in Montgomery. He had been working over his well-aged system of patronage, which he cynically called "The Swamp." Principally, he had been whipping up furor against the Governor of Alabama, David P. Lewis, who was a Republican from Huntsville and nicknamed "Beechnut."

 
He looked for supplicants and found them grouped together near the platform, Dr. Prentiss foremost. The party chairman for the County stepped forward very formally to greet his master. George Houston brushed by him as though heading to the horizon, and spoke without greeting or shaking hands. The other Greeks fell in behind.

What the hell is going on here, Licinius, George blurted? I leave for a year in Montgomery trying to drum up support for my gubernatorial campaign, and then I find out we elect a black sheriff in my own backyard!?

Actually, he's white. But yes, he's a Republican. Its Bill Marmaduke.

Bourbon Smith sighed a breathe of relief. Thanks god he's white. But Bill Marmaduke? Goddam, he's popular. A real war hero. He could be a worse threat than Beechnut Lewis. You know what this means? I'm in danger of losing this County at the polls.

 
Indeed we are, said Dr. Prentiss. Strangetown is filling with negroes and white trash, and the Republicans are registering them like a machine. We successfully collapsed the voting precincts to a single registration point here in Athens, but they are just bussing them in from the rural precincts.

 
It was true. A black freeman and carpetbagger named Bartholomew "Barry" Hogan had assumed chairmanship of the Limestone County Republican Party. His credentials were shady, having arrived from Illinois. He was part of the powerful Republican establishment of that state, He was notable for being an influential colored delegate to the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago that nominated Mr. Lincoln. He arrived in Strangetown and established a headquarters in a front on Strange Street. He got to work by festooning wagons with patriotic bunting. Then he would range them across the county, promising sweets and liquor to bring the formerly disenfranchised into Athens for registration. As if to reinforce the public trust, he passed out slips of paper inscribed with the Fifteenth Amendment that most of the freedman and poor whites couldn't even read.

 
Dr. Prentiss recited figures. Republicans turned out in record numbers. The Democrats got clobbered at the polls. When he had finished, he looked pale. Bourbon Smith had ceased walking and was glaring into Dr. Prentiss's face.

 
You’re the Chairman of the Democratic Party of Limestone County. I don't think you appreciate, Licinius, how critical the Nickajack has become to the future of Alabama. It has come down to me and a Huntsville scalawag - a Whig. The political compass of this state has swung North, and we are caught in this critical moment, Licinius. Do we hold onto what we have left of our way of life, or do we fold to a rabble of n*****s and illiterate crackers? Get your ship in order. Figure something out. Put your brains together, Licinius. I left you in charge for a reason!

 
The Klan sir?

 
Out of the question, barked Bourbon Smith. Jimmy Sloss is already on my ass about keeping them off the railroad he's building across the mountains from Decatur. He needs the colored labor. This is bigger than you think, Licinius. He's one of my largest donors, and he's in competition to get to Birmingham first with his railroad before the Yankees do.

 
That was also true. A Republican congressman from Pennsylvania named William "Pig Iron" Kelley was part of a cabal of Radical Republican investors who were racing Jimmy Sloss's railroad to Birmingham. Their railroad was being built from Chattanooga down the Wills Valley, which was flanked by Sand and Lookout Mountains. The A&C Railroad was backed by millions in government-backed bonds approved by the last Republican governor of Alabama, William Hugh Smith, which were corruptly solicited in excess of legal limits.

 
Sir, interjected Branse, who stepped in beside Dr. Prentiss, who was sweating visibly now. I think I may have an idea.

 
Smith warmed. Branse, I knew your father. He was a good friend of mine. He was definitely committed to the Cause. Some say more, he added cryptically. Branse nodded.

 
Mr. Houston, I don't think we need to sidestep the Klan just offhandedly. They may serve one more purpose for us yet.

 
The last thing we need is for President Grant to send in the army again to quell violence at the polls. The Radical Republicans are already lashing out at us for suppressing the vote with these registration ordinances. It's not ideal, but it is all we have. I know you'll work something out, Licinius, he said turning to the doctor again.

 
Sir, if I may, pressed Branse. You may leave it to me to handle the Klan when the time is right. We'll clean up your backyard before election.

XVII

For his courageous actions as a messenger at the Battle of Shiloh, Branse Havelock was recommended by Fighting Joe Wheeler to the signals staff of General P.G.T. Beauregard, whom they called Little Napoleon. Pierre Gustave Toutont-Beauregard was a Louisiana Creole with grandiose tactical visions - a breathtaking prima donna. From this vantage Branse gained marvelous insight into the gods and generals that moved the destinies of nations. After General Beauregard withdrew the Confederate Army from Shiloh the Yankees had amassed a mighty host of over 120,000 men and followed him to lay siege to Corinth. Facing such a grandiose army, General Beauregard ordered an evacuation. He placed Branse in charge of a fantastic ruse to mask the withdrawal lest they invite an attack at a critical moment.

As the trains arrived to evacuate the countless wounded from the Battle of Shiloh, Branse had the 19th Alabama cheer around the railroad station to make it sound like they were welcoming reinforcements. Beyond the earthworks it gave the Yankees pause, who were now under the studious command of Henry Halleck, and who was nicknamed "Old Brains." Branse had so-called "Quaker Guns" made of logs installed around the perimeter to replace the real guns they evacuated by rail. Every night Branse had more campfires built to create the appearance of swelling numbers. Old Brains scratched his elbows and continued to hesitate, perhaps even expecting to be attacked by overwhelming numbers of rebels. Then one night they were all gone.

The Yankees mounted the earthworks kicking over Quaker guns and rummaging through empty tins looking for food. They had been bamboozled! The rebels slipped away! Indeed they had towards Tupelo, and for much of the summer of '62 the two great armies stood facing each other across the Mississippi hill country. At length, P.G.T. Beauregard was relieved after a scuffle with Mr. Davis in the press and was replaced by the General Braxton Bragg, who looked like a terrier. Branse was retained on Bragg's staff, but he found the general aloof and pugnacious. Still, the general planned a bold invasion of Kentucky for the autumn that raised the army's spirits after an inactive summer. The army was now called the Army of Tennessee and would remain so-named throughout the rest of the war. 

Branse helped organize the railway schedule to entrain 50,000 rebel soldiers from Tupelo to Mobile to Columbus to Chattanooga in a tortuous journey for the soldiers. The Army of Tennessee took this enormous geographical detour on account of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad being occupied by federals from Memphis to Huntsville, Ala. When they stepped off north into Kentucky they had high hopes of being welcomed as liberators, swelling their ranks with volunteers. Instead they were met with indifference, even derision.  They tarried for awhile until the grains were harvested and clashed in a sharp fight called the Battle of Perryville, in which the 19th Alabama didn't even participate. It was about that time that Branse Havelock received a letter from Virginia.  

It was marked with a return address to Richmond, but had no name for the sender. At his camp table in his field tent, he sliced open the envelope beneath the glow of a paraffin lantern. A ring had fallen out. He read the letter that was enclosed.

Dear Branse,

It is with great heartfelt condolence that I must convey to you the news that your father was killed in action at Sharpsburg on September 17th. He bravely withstood several Yankee charges made across the Antietam Creek bridge. His body was recovered and with General Lee's intervention was forwarded through to our lines. He is being advanced to Athens for burial.  Your father and I shared deep bonds of affection and politics. I have never had the pleasure of meeting my dear friend's son, but we must soon. Perhaps duty soon will bring us within reach, for I have much to tell you of your father's remarkable legacy. 

I Am Your Most Obedient Servant, Henry Lewis Benning, Brig. Gen., C.S.A.

His father was dead. They were at odds when they parted. Branse had voted against secession, one of the few Greeks to have done so.  His father, however, was a vehement secessionist - a real Fire Eater.  He had never been warm.  Indeed, he was harsh and domineering. He was too absorbed in the management of his plantation, Barbados, where he farmed a thousand acres with over a hundred slaves. He was gone often on business. As the country slid towards the secession crisis, he cursed the Yankee race and told Branse this war was for the salvation of the white race.  It will be like Haiti, where the n*****s killed ten thousand whites... women, children. They dashed babies against rocks and crucified white women after raping them. 

Whatever the truth may or may not be, these rants offended Branse's political sensibilities.  He believed slavery would eventually be extinguished of its own accord, but it must be within the Union and involve compensation to the owners for their pains.  Branse's father was appalled by his son's Whig-ish sentiments.  He called his own son a n****r lover, which wholly offended Branse. When they last saw one another, it was on the platform of the Huntsville Depot. They did not embrace. His father simply looked at him and said to 'look to your kind,' whatever that meant. Then he was off to Virginia to fight.

In spite of all this, Branse began to weep. His father was a very renowned and respectable aristocrat among the Greeks. They were all embarrassed when the elder Havelock enrolled to fight, though they fully expected it from the fanatical Fire Eater. They commented that they would remain behind to aide the war effort with their tills, never mind the slaves that actually worked them.  Cotton was still going to pay the bills for the war.  Now Branse inherited a towering legacy, for Barbados was an expansive estate, and there was the mansion on the Hill. Dr. Prentiss and the Greeks would be looking to him to fill in his father's shoes when it came to the elaborate system of patronage that kept the Democrats in power.  

As he dabbed his tears with his hankerchief he noticed the ring again.  It looked like a class ring, perhaps from the University of Georgia where his father had attended. He picked it up and rolled it with his thumb.  Inlaid into the bezel was a red jasper stone inscribed with white gold initials. They read - AK.  

XVI

Burnside Lee, being a Democrat of the Whig tradition, voted against secession. His family were Burghers of Athens who made their fortune on hardware and believed in internal improvements and high tariffs. Still, he owned twelve slaves and 150 acres at his plantation Cerro Gordo, which he had specially constructed in the Spanish style of a hacienda and named after the battle in which he never ceased to recount. He was a proud veteran of the Mexican War where he fought under a bright constellation of heroes like Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and U.S. Grant. He had brought home a senorita, Romina Delgado, who was dusky and exotic and domineering. He called her his esposita.

After Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called up his 75,000 to suppress the rebellion, he threw in his towel with the secessionists like most other Southern Whigs. He personally financed a company of volunteers in Limestone County and called them the "Athenian Hoplites." He even designed a uniform (grey with bronze epaulets) and armed them with the excellent 1841 Mississippi rifle. Several scions of the Greeks joined up, including Bill Marmaduke and Branse Havelock. They were sworn into the Confederate Army in Huntsville, Ala. as Company A of the 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. "With the Old Guard." Their commanding officer was a dashing young Georgian named Joseph Wheeler. He placed the colors into the hands of Burnside Lee who would lead Company A in battle - a blue field with a white border and the image of an ancient Greek hoplite sown into the center.

They rode the cars to Mobile where they spent the next nine months drilling in the invariably stifling air of the Gulf. Their sergeant major was a profane martinet who whipped them into the most parade-sharp company in the regiment. In the winter of '62, Fort Donelson on the Tennessee-Kentucky border fell to Grant's army. Nashville was abandoned and the Confederate Army was falling back into the Deep South. If the Hoplites were eager for action, they were soon obliged. They were shipped north to join the mighty army of General Albert Sydney Johnston then concentrating at Corinth, Mississippi. It was time to strike back.

Their target was the army of Ulysses S. Grant, who had disembarked at a place called Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee River, near the Shiloh Church. He intended to collect more reinforcements before advancing with superior numbers on Corinth. General Johnston decided to strike first, and his army sallied forth to smash into Grant's exposed position. The great Battle of Shiloh opened with a surprise attack on the Yankees as they were cooking their breakfast. A crescendo of fire and thunder alerted Grant to the danger and the Yankees dug their heels in and made the rebels pay for every yard of ground.

A rider rushed forward and gave a crisp salute to Burnside Lee and passed him a slip. Sir, you are hereby ordered by Colonel Wheeler to advance your company up the Savannah Road and drive the enemy from his position. It sounded simple enough. Only the courage was lacking, so Burnside Lee withdrew a flask and emptied it down his gullet. Then he withdrew his sword, nodded to the drummer boy and they all stepped off to the cadence of The White Cockade. The entire 19th Alabama surged forward towards a peach orchard on the left side of the Savannah Road.

Nobody could see the enemy. Peach blossoms were raining down like confetti from an incessant rain of shots. They sounded like bees. As they reached the firing line men started dropping. The wounds were grievous. Burnside could see the flash of muskets from behind the curtain of smoke that blanketed everything. He halted the company. Make ready! They checked their primers. Take aim! They levelled their muskets with a clacking sound. Fire! The line erupted with a flash and long stabs of smoke. Load! It took a long thirty seconds to load a musket. They repeated this business for fifteen minutes during which men continued to fall with troubling regularity. Nobody could tell if they were hitting anybody.

Whatever the effect of their shooting, the firing receded. The Yankees were falling back. They then advanced up the right side of a road and found a grove where they rested for an hour. Rations were brought up, but there was no water. A nearby pond was greased with too much offal and blood to drink. Firing was heard everywhere around them as they ate. The boys were shocked to find their ranks missing so many friends they knew. Rumors started going around that General Johnston was dead. They could believe it. The fighting had been a maelstrom of bullets flying everywhere. No one was safe from that. PGT Beauregard was in command now.

They made the final push to drive Grant into the Tennessee River towards dusk. Company A was mustered into line and sent forward again. This time the Yankees weren't driven back. They had massed ranks of cannon and threw thick black shot you could see into the Hoplites' ranks. The men were simply blown back, or torn to pieces. Exhausted, they broke into camp for the night. Old Bernie walked around encouraging his boys then retired to his tent to weep. No one slept because Yankee gunboats on the Tennessee kept throwing shells into their camp.

The next morning it wasn't even contest. Grant had been reinforced by the army of Don Carlos Buell and had counterattacked with overwhelming numbers. It was the Hoplites' turn to feel the pressure, and they gave in. They had lost too much blood. General Beauregard called for a retreat. The Battle of Shiloh was over. They slogged back south to Corinth where the hospitals were swamped with casualties.

It was time to take to stock of their losses. In its first action, Company A lost over half of its ranks. They mustered 122 before battle. When they returned to Corinth only 55 remained fit for duty. Burnside Lee was crestfallen. He had lost so many of his boys. For the Athenian Hoplites, Shiloh was only the beginning of a war that would arc across three more Aprils.

Map of the Franklin Campaign: Sept. - Dec. 1864

 

XII

William Stovall Marmaduke, Capt. CSA, bid farewell to friends, including Frank Gurley with whom he had grown close. He had ridden guerilla with him for over two years in the mountains of Jackson County, Ala. It was a difficult moment for Bill Marmaduke. He had fallen in love in these mountains, and had lost that love along the way in what seemed like another lifetime. He had to move on. Now great armies were on the move and mighty plans were afoot. The Confederate army of John Bell Hood set its sights on Nashville to cut off Sherman's army, which was then slashing and burning its way across Georgia towards the sea. So Bill joined back up with the old Army of Tennessee which was then marching its way west along the river near Gunter's Landing.

 
He was convinced to join by the appeals of a fellow Greek from Athens, Branse Havelock, who was then a Major on Hood's staff and with whom Bill had joined the Cause with. It was a warm reunion. Branse needed an old hand to take B Company of their old regiment, the 19th Alabama, so Bill obliged. His new company was a sorry sight but not because he doubted their courage. They seemed too young to shave, or make love, or to die. They looked like they were just pressed into the ranks straight from grammar school by the local home guard. So he drilled them for what he called "The Elephant," the din and terror of battle under which they must survive, and furthermore prevail. Bill discarded the manuals. Thrust your bayonet underhanded into the gut and tip your enemy over to the side, like bailing wet hay. Overhanded bayonet thrusts tended to strike and lodge in the ribs. There is no shame in laying down under fire, particularly from artillery. Shots float high when firing downhill, so aim at the enemy’s waist.

 
While the army was encamped at Tuscumbia, Bill was sent on a secret errand to occupied Limestone County by Branse to gather more recruits, and where General Hood believed enthusiasm for the Cause was still strong. He was wrong. Bill met clandestinely with Dr. Prentiss and the other Greeks. He found them nothing better than Yankee collaborators. Instead of growing corn to feed the starving countryside, they grew cotton and sold it North. He was disgusted. They didn't bother asking about the substitutes they had hired for themselves to avoid conscription. They would have learned they were all dead.

 
Bill felt stung by the indifference of his fellow Greeks. He had served. He had hired no substitute. His plantation was in disrepair and abandoned by its slaves. He was most probably in financial ruin, though he had no idea. He hadn't been home since he joined in the Cause, and didn't go back just then learning Yankees were quartered there. When he returned to B Company, he cursed the Greeks as selfish traitors. They had all voted for secession, but did nothing for the war effort except pay off a $300 substitute to catch a bullet in the chest for them. He had seen it all happen too. They were buried all over Tennessee and Georgia.

 
When the cold November rains came, Hood's army crossed the river at Muscle Shoals and invaded Tennessee. The boys of B Company, 19th Alabama began their long slog north looking for a fight. The Yankees, fearing defeat in piecemeal, abandoned their outposts in the Nickajack and concentrated north towards the Duck River, just south of Franklin. But now that the Yankees had abandoned Athens, Bill Marmaduke wondered whether Hood should not turn east and sack the Greeks on the Hill instead.