Louisiana, May 1864
Built in the Greek Revival style, encircled by twenty-four noble Doric columns and standing proud amid a vast acreage of plantation estate, the mansion was one of the grandest and most aristocratic homes in all of the South. Its dozens of reception rooms, not to mention the splendid ballroom, had hosted some of Clovis Parish’s most celebrated social events of the forty years since its construction, positioning Athenian Oaks, as the property was named, at the very centre of the region’s high society.
On this day, however, the stately house was silent and virtually empty. Deep within its labyrinthine corridors, a very secret and important meeting was taking place. A meeting that its attendees knew very well could help to swing in their favour the outcome of the civil war that had been tearing the states of both North and South apart for three long, bloody years.
Of the four men seated around the table in the richly appointed dining room, only one was not wearing military uniform: for the good reason that he wasn’t an officer of the Confederate States Army but, rather, the civilian owner of Athenian Oaks.
His name was Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett. A Texan by birth, he had risen to become one of the wealthiest landowners in Louisiana by the time he was forty. Now, fifteen years on, the size of his fortune and spread of his cotton plantation were second to none. As was the workforce of slaves he owned, who occupied an
