material that slaves pick.
“I told him I had to fight for the North because I could not conceive of what America would look like otherwise. I am not an abolitionist, William, but when I was young I chose to teach slaves on our plantation to read; even if they were not citizens and might never be, I believed they still deserved to read and write. My father, a gracious and dignified man, disagreed but did not interfere with my belief in their right to literacy. He set me on this road of independent thinking.
“I told Robert E. Lee that I would fight for the Union because there was no hope for any country within our borders—nothing that could be called America—if I did not. And if President Lincoln ordered the abolition of slavery, I told him, I would not feel a moment of grief. You talk about what Virginia has given this country. Beside our founding documents, Virginia has given us hundreds of thousands of darkened minds that are beginning to catch glimpses of the sun of a better life now rising before them.
“This time Lee was silent. He walked past me, without expression, and I have not set eyes on him since.”
His speech was guarded and emotional at the same time.
“I lost my great friend that day, William. I lost my family, too. I wired them with my decision from New York City, but they never responded, and I will never talk to them again. People in the South are polite only up to a point; if you threaten what they hold most dear, the system that enables them to live well, you have done something worse than murder. It is an act of disloyalty that is beyond indecency. My parents were already dead, thank goodness, but people I still communicate with in Southampton Country have told me that my sisters have turned all my pictures to the wall and refuse to speak my name….
There was a long pause, a deep breath.
Then, suddenly composed, he took my hand and thanked me.
4
A few minutes later, as I walked unsteadily to my horse in the drizzle that had started up again, all I could think of was an old hymn I learned back home, one the free Negroes of Vernon knew as well as I did and sang just as often:
There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
There everlasting spring abides,
And never withering flowers;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heavenly land from ours.
General Thomas was going to deal out death to get the rest of us, somehow, closer to that land where day excludes the night. I knew at that moment that he himself would have stayed behind in that “narrow sea,” if that is what it took.
By the time I had gotten back to my own men two miles away, I thought I understood a more personal reason that General Thomas chose to fight for the North over the South: he wanted to protect his boys even as he sent them into battle, and in some strange way, like the most responsible parent, the more boys he could watch over—South as well as North—the more lives he could try to salvage, the better he would have done his job.
◊◊◊
Riding back to my men, I could not avoid my own reasons for going to war.
My father hated me and I could never please him. As his only child, I was the target of his drunken rage. My mother died when I was twelve years old, and I have always believed she left this world to escape from him.
Everything I did was ridiculed—from my choice of profession to joining the army. After a year of reporting about the war in my newspaper, I suddenly realized that Confederate troops could march into southern Indiana very easily. One reason was Shiloh, a battle the past spring in Tennessee. Our troops luckily won by reinforcements arriving in time for the second day. Until then, all the major battles had been in the East. People forget that state’s rights cut two ways in the war—the North did not want Southerners on our soil any more than they wanted us on theirs. That was what decided the most famous battle of the war—Gettysburg—it was fought on Northern soil, in Pennsylvania, north of Washington, DC!
“You’re a fool to put your life on the line for a bunch of niggers,” my father shouted at me. “You’ve always been an idealist, and that’s another word for a damned jackass.” His eyes were alive with anger. When I tried to explain my position, he just insulted me further. “And that woman you’re courting is nothing but an Irish whore. I didn’t raise you to fill your house with a bunch of mic kids and that’s what she’ll do.”
Here I was preparing to risk my life for what I believed was a just cause, and his response was to attack me and my beloved Neala. Even then, I could not find the courage to confront him. My mother taught me to be silent in the hope that he would fall into a stupor and sleep it off. Now I did that automatically. I was so ashamed of my cowardice.
The following day I had a final delivery for my father to Neala’s father’s farm before reporting for duty. Helping him with his farm equipment business was my way of pacifying him, and keeping him from pestering me about joining him after the war. He could not wait to add “and Son” to his public notices in the county. It seemed the only way he would acknowledge me, and I wanted no part of it.
The Monaghan horse farm was the talk of Vernon. Liam Monaghan and his three children had arrived from Kentucky in 1861 after his son John had been killed at Manassas fighting for the Rebs. Mr. Monaghan brought his slaves with him and freed them when they arrived. All but one stayed and worked his thoroughbreds for show and sale. “I taught them everything I know,” he said in his lilting brogue.
“John and I had a parting of the ways about slavery. He was a true believer in the Southern way of life, having been born there and all. I hope God will forgive me for using human beings in that way, but I never would have been successful without them. They deserve whatever we can give them after what we put them through.”
His honesty was disarming… ever the critic of my newspaper articles, but praising when he felt it was warranted. A quick wit and fiercely loyal, yet melancholy and blunt as hell. I am told that is an accurate description of the Irish, and I liked and admired him very much.
And then there was Neala. Our first encounter was memorable.
Imagine a small but fierce tornado coming at you, Neala on her thoroughbred—chestnut in color, matching the hair of its rider. It was as if she and that stallion of hers were one, their movement fluid and graceful. I knew from Liam that its foundation was Arabian, and he was a spectacularly handsome and intelligent companion.
Neala and I sparred with each other. It was clear there was an attraction but I feared I was no match for her. She took my breath away.
“So you’re a newspaper man.” Her accent was pure Kentucky. And being the too-serious chap that I was, I responded with “Yes, but I am considering going to war at the moment.” I felt pathetic next to her.
She came right back: “Civil war is anarchy, not civility. Our democracy is in its infancy and it is already challenged. Over what? Profit and gentility? Can you see the hypocrisy, Colonel Swain? Civility hides the real truth: greed.”
I was completely captured.
She
