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.  

XIII

The sheriff was ushered into the study by a servant in white gloves where Burnside Lee was stooped over a large table by the light of a hundred candles. My eyes are going to s**t, he said without looking up. The table was crowded with hundreds of pewter toy soldiers and elaborately sculpted with plaster terrain. What battle is this, Bill asked? Rossbach. Frederick the Great's most magnificent victory! Bill had never heard of it, and worried Old Bernie would open into one of those ramblings-on about things that interested no one.

 
Instead, Burnside straightened up and took a puff of his cigar and studied Bill. You want something from me, he said. Forget it. You used to be one of us, Bill. A Republican? Your father would roll in his grave. You used to be a Democrat!

 
My father was a Whig. So were you before the war. You're not one of them, and they're not one of us. We served. We gave it all to the Cause, but whose Cause was it? It was theirs. It was Dr. Prentiss and the rest of those selfish philistines. The darkies are free, but the Greeks are all still grasping at reigns. Don't you see what's going on down there? He pointed in the direction of Strangetown. That's the new world down there.

 
Burnside looked off. Sighed. The world sure has changed, that's for sure. Now my coloreds are out there voting Republican. And here you are! Royal Bill! King of Strangetown!

 
He began to contemplate. We should have freed them long ago, he said distantly. It would have spared a good many of my boys.

 
Looking down at his toy soldiers he heard distant cannon fire from beyond time. It was the preliminary bombardment before Hood ordered them forward into the woods. It was a triumphant moment. He was colonel of the 19th Alabama leading his boys into the primeval dens of Chickamauga. They moved through the forest hallooing the old rebel yell as though flushing quail. Stabs of musketry and carnage. When it was over, they had broken through. The blue bellies were in flight.

 
When he had sobered up, his horse was dead, his leg was gone and his boys were shot to pieces. His war was over. The boys all still loved him though. Every veteran tipped their hat to Old Bernie. And he reveled in telling old war stories and boring tales of historical arcanum. Bill was right. The Greeks were not one of us.

Bill approached Bernie and looked very serious at him. I need you to keep me informed of what Prentiss and the Greeks are up to. I want you to be my spy on the inside. Can you do this?
Bernie looked mournful. A rivulet of tears ran down his cheek. He was weeping for them all. All of those beautiful boys lost. Bill was right about the Greeks and their "Cause." Bernie looked up as Bill stirred inside the leather pouch he had brought with him. He drew from it a shot-torn flag. It was blue rimmed with a white border. At its center was a seal sewn with the image of an ancient Greek hoplite. Inscribed upon it were the names of Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga and Franklin. A Company, 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. "With the Old Guard"

 
Bill pressed it into Bernie's hands, who was inconsolable. It was the colonel's first command. I kept it after the surrender, Bill said quietly. It's for you. The only cause now, old friend, is to get along with what's left. You'll do this for me, sir? For them? Burnside nodded yes.

With the Old Guard, Bill said.

Burnside Lee nodded again. With the Old Guard.

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.

VI

Licinius Mordecai Prentiss, Doctor Divinitatis, President of the Athens Theological Seminary. Prim and pencil thin, smooth shaven. He read Matthew with love, and Plato with passion. He lived in his mansion on Beaty Street called Parthenon. Now he was being harangued at his desk by his fellow Greek petitioners. These elite few gathered around him like Olympus Mons. What were they going to do about Strangetown? There are illegal whiskies and ladies-of-the-night down there. There are Republicans and transvestites. There are negroes with guns, although they did not say it like that. Dr. Prentiss’s normally steadfast patience snapped. Enough!!

 
The Democratic Party of Limestone County was dominated by the Greeks of Athens. They were for the most part the planter elite and ran it like a machine with Dr. Prentiss as the chairman. Even when the Union army occupied the town early in the war, they remained surly and obstreperous. That is until the mad Russian Ivan Turchininov descended on Athens and sacked it like the Muscovite he was. That was in the Spring of ‘62. The Greeks became pretty docile after that. In fact, they collaborated with the Yankee power to preserve their status. They sold cotton up North in exchange for real money. Formerly ardent secessionists, they were now flexible opportunists. But while they adjusted to gradual emancipation by paying their former slaves, there were already cracks in the edifice. Freedmen were pouring into town from the countryside. They took up residence along Town Creek in a ‘contraband camp,’ which is a rude word for a place of refuge. When the Yankees started paying them real money to dig forts along the Decatur & Nashville railroad, word got around. The Greeks were losing their freedmen workers. They were moving into Strangetown. That just will not do!

 
For Dr. Prentiss, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment turned crisis for the party’s hold on power. Suddenly thousands of negroes had the right to vote, and who did they vote for? They voted for the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself. They voted Republican! The Greeks blinked and did nothing. They had grossly underestimated the surge of political muscle this voting bloc suddenly brought to the polls. When elections came and went, the Democrats were flabergasted to find a Republican was now in control of the most powerful office in Limestone County - Sheriff. They thanked their heavens he was white. But my god? What if he had been black? The possibility terrified the Democrat elites, and so they slowly and surely drew their plans against the source of this new power – Strangetown.

III

Bonwit Vrooman was a Dutch New Yorker and a carpetbagger through and through. No man knew how to bilk the government better than this grinning, obnoxious, fun-loving Yankee. He had served as a federal captain of volunteers during the war where he became a virtuoso in the surreptitious art of government contracting. As a regimental quartermaster he built a tidy side income on contract kickbacks. At outrageous prices he bought boots that became un-soled on the march, and cardboard haversacks that melted in the rains. For his efficient labors they awarded him a pension after the war, and a permanent rank of major in the New York State Guard.

 
Taking his skills to further task, he outbid his competitors for a post from President Johnson to run the Freedman’s Bureau of Limestone County. He was viewed with great suspicion by the locals when he arrived by the cars from Nashville. That is until he walked out of the Western Union with his fat leather-bound checkbook. Not only did this Yankee have real money, but he knew how to get it, he knew how to squirrel it, and he knew how to spend it.

 
He settled into a mansion on Lee Street known as Grand Coeur and dressed it with fancy furniture and plush linens no one had ever seen before. Then he got to work spreading the wealth from an office he rented on Pryor Street, which became the Freedman’s Bureau headquarters. He hired a battery of scriviners to dictate grants and draft contracts from that fast-moving mouth of his. All of his old war buddies were in Washington controlling the spigots, and the dollars came flowing down an odious chain of custody straight into the Heart of Dixie.

 
Everyone was getting in on the cut, starting with Maw Possum, who pulled all the strings in the little freedman hamlets that were springing up all around the County. No one was getting paid enough to work the plantations they used to work as slaves. What gives? So, Maw Possum got contracts to build cisterns, livestock fencing and schoolhouses for all the freed negroes. Vrooman, who soon earned the nickname The Major, was pleased by the public progress and personal profits. He then worked over the Greeks on the Hill, mostly Democrats who found him abrasive and faux refined. But they gracefully tolerated the quick-tongued foreigner in their midst because he paid exorbitant prices for their wares, and they still controlled much of the local politics.

 
He rode around town in an imported Italian chaise with his mistress, the wealthy widow Bright Marin. She was a raven-haired femme fatale rumored to have poisoned her physician husband. They frequented Wang Fu’s laundry where they reclined on cotton divans, smoked opium and laughed into the night to the music that wafted across Strangetown. Bright Marin was no Greek, nor The Major a man of good Southern graces, but they were richer than just about anyone else in the County. They were resented by many on the Hill because of that wealth and because they were Republican, anathema to the old Democrat elites. These two stuck around for a time until the election of Rutherford Hayes, when the Greeks cut their devil’s deal with the Klan and Jim Crowe brought the hammer down on Strangetown. There might be more to tell about these two kids later.