Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  Finally, finally, Laurence’s body began to relax. He started to follow her. Then—miraculously, like the Laurence of old—he burst out laughing, flashing that amused, dimpled, disarming grin of his. “I never have been able to say no to you, little sister. God help your husband. Does he know what he’s in for?”

  “Let us hope not,” Annie teased back. “Or he might abandon me.”

  “Oh, I think not, Annie. I think not. Lord, I’m going to miss you, honey.”

  Laurence picked up the waltz lead himself, turning her round and round, her skirts flying, and brought her back to her husband and the crowd of Hickory Heights, waiting at the front steps.

  “Is this a Virginian custom I need learn? Dancing a good-bye?” Thomas asked in his good-natured way.

  “Perhaps so,” Annie said. But before she let go of Laurence’s hand, she looked at him with great earnestness. “You’ll write her, today?”

  Laurence nodded, but his grin broke as he looked down at his left hand, and he hesitated. He’d always been right-handed.

  “I’ll scribe his words for him, Miss Annie,” Sam said quietly. Rachel nodded.

  Annie knew it would be done.

  It was time to leave. As she and Thomas rode down the lane, Annie refused to turn back. She couldn’t have borne doing so. Instead, she thought of the foals Angel would have someday. She tried to imagine what they’d look like. Ebony like their mother, she hoped, with lightning blazes of white down their legs and faces. They’d be beauties, for sure.

  “Thomas.” She turned to her husband. “Do you think we could manage to have one of Angel’s foals brought to us, way up north?” Her voice shook a bit as she asked.

  Thomas blessed her with one of those calming, self-assured smiles of his. “Of course,” he promised.

  Of course, Annie thought. Of course. If they could manage to fall in love, to still care about poetry, to respect and admire each other across enemy lines amid all this bloodshed, they could manage to bring a little bit of Angel into their lives.

  Annie rode on. As they slipped onto the turnpike, completely out of sight of Hickory Heights now, Annie tried to save herself from a searing sadness. Leaving her home, her family, was an amputation of sorts. Like Laurence, she’d have to learn to do without, and, like Laurence, she could be happy as long as she made herself look for joy.

  Annie knew that Jamie’s bitterness foretold how many of her fellow Southerners would be—they wouldn’t give up the fight. Or if they survived the war, they’d never give up their grief and disappointment, their anger and hatred, inflamed by the outrages the Union had inflicted on civilians—their wives, children, and aging parents. While men like Laurence would work to restitch the country, men like Jamie would try to unravel it.

  She glanced at Thomas again. He was humming to himself the Stephen Foster melody, giving her time to sort out her feelings.

  How would she fit in with Northerners in a Northern land? Annie worried. Would they ridicule the way she talked or her Irish looks? Would they ostracize Thomas for marrying her, and would he come to hate her for it? Would they demean the Virginian people she so loved, the terrible fight they had fought, their sacrifices? Undoubtedly, as Thomas initially had, they would probably assume that her family had been advocates for slavery. They might even believe that she had been cruel to Rachel, Aunt May, and Isaac. How could she bear it? How could she hold her tongue if they did so?

  Annie’s head swam.

  Then her mother’s voice came to her again, a final good-bye from Hickory Heights. “Remember that it doesn’t matter where someone comes from, but where that person is going.”

  Miriam had done it—she had stepped into a social world that disapproved of her and made it on her own. She had even managed to disprove a few prejudices about her countrymen and to carry a bit of her past into her new life. If Mother could do it, so can I, Annie reassured herself. Thomas would help her. Perhaps their union promised what America itself could become after the war, for the nation, too, North and South, would have to redefine itself.

  Annie took a deep breath. Massachusetts. What would it be like? Cold, for sure. In heart as well as weather? The only thing she knew about it was the novel The Scarlet Letter—hardly reassuring. She thought of the character Hester Prynne, stepping out of a Puritan prison with the letter A embroidered so brazenly, so beautifully, on her dress. In Hawthorne’s novel, the Massachusetts court had ordered Hester wear it to identify her crime of adultery to anyone she met. And yet, through her elaborate needlework, Hester had turned the letter into a statement of her own—part shame, part pride. Shame for her mistakes, pride in her courage in admitting them and in her devotion to making a new, better life for her baby.

  Annie felt a sudden kinship with the book’s heroine. Like Hester, she would be justly branded—not for adultery, but for the institution of slavery—because she was a Southerner. At least she could now speak for change, for abolishing the practice. And like Hester, she could still have pride in other aspects of her life—the bravery and compassion of men like Lawrence and Sam, her own dedication to Virginia and her Hickory Heights family.

  Annie squared her shoulders. Besides, she thought with a spark of mischief, if I have a foal of Angel’s, I can show those Yankees a thing or two about riding—the Virginia way.

  Resolved, Annie started singing with her husband’s humming: “Open thy lattice, love, listen to me! / In the voyage of life, love our pilot will be!/ He will sit at the helm wherever we rove….”

  Thomas joined in the words, nodding at their meaning for the two of them, his voice straining to keep the melody.

  Annie smiled. Thomas sang quite off-key. Oh well, she thought. Far better to sing with the man she loved, even if he was not a very good singer. There was no way that their marriage would be completely harmonious or trouble free. But it would, she knew, be a remarkable journey, because they took it together, traveling a course of their own choice, their own voice.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The tragic statistics of the Civil War are well-known: 3 million fought, 620,000 died, 420,000 were crippled or wounded. It caused 10,000 armed conflicts. Of those clashes, 384 were principal, strategically decisive battles.

  One in three of those major battles took place in Virginia. The last state to leave the Union, and the state with the most residents voting against secession, Virginia ironically endured the overwhelming majority of the war’s bloodshed. (The state with the second highest principal battle count was Tennessee, with 38 pivotal battles compared to Virginia’s 123. South Carolina, which fired the war’s opening shot, withstood 11.)

  Serving as the main fighting ground of a four-year war meant constant upheaval for Virginians. The state was the feedbag, hospital, gateway, camp, stage, and burial ground for two armies that staggered back and forth across its lands, neither quite establishing a lasting dominance over the other. The town of Warrenton, where Annie visits Charlotte, changed hands sixty-seven times.

  The title of this book, Annie, Between the States, carries many meanings. One of them has to do with this horrendous reality of perpetual invasion. Like so many Virginians during the Civil War, Annie and her family can look out almost any day to see an army marching through their fields. She has relatives who remain loyal to the Union. And, while opposed to secession, she is forced by circumstances and regional loyalty to choose Virginia over the Union.

  Robert E. Lee wrote in a farewell letter to a Northern friend, “I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children. I should like, above all things, that our difficulties might be peaceably arranged…. Whatever may be the result of the contest I foresee that the country will have to pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation for our national sins. May God direct all for our good, and shield and preserve you and yours.”

  Annie’s story is historical fiction, meaning the setting and details of day-to-day life are accurate. The plot, its conflicts, and its moral dilemmas grow out of the times. Therefore
, every battle and date mentioned in this book is factual. Annie is not, although she is inspired by several northern Virginia women—among them Laura Ratcliffe, Roberta Pollock, Annie Lucas, Amanda Virginia “Tee” Edmonds, and Antonia Ford, who did, in fact, marry the Union officer who carried her to Federal prison. The details of Annie’s life, from the Battle of First Manassas to her home and events in Fauquier County, are gleaned from firsthand accounts, war diaries, memoirs, biographies, local histories, and interviews with Civil War experts in the region.

  The oft-asked question of any historical fiction is: What really happened? I will tell you.

  Jeb Stuart, John Mosby, William Farley, Heros von Borcke, Major Goulding, Mr. Robinson, General Stoughton, Colonel Lowell, “Yankee” Davis, and Private Trammel are all true historic figures. Eliza is based on a “high-spirited girl” in Warrenton who did make a champagne bet with a Major Goulding about his making it to Richmond. Stuart did order a woman disguised as a Union soldier be sent to prison. (Records indicate someone released her before she arrived in Richmond.) Mr. Robinson, a free black, did have his farm destroyed by Union troops. (Details come from a petition he made after the war for reimbursement.) He did convince a sympathetic white man to purchase his enslaved daughter to keep her nearby until he could raise enough money to buy her out. William Farley did give his dress coat to a lady in Culpeper days before he died in the Union surprise at Brandy Station.

  All skirmishes and troop movements are factual. The raids on Annie’s house are timed to coincide with actual Union raids through Fauquier and Loudoun counties by the troops mentioned. While there is no evidence that a teenage girl warned Stuart at Lewinsville or Mosby of the Trojan horse, there are countless stories of women riding or walking through bad weather and picket lines to alert both leaders of oncoming Federal troops.

  Stuart’s poems to Annie are snippets of verse the cavalry general actually wrote to Laura Ratcliffe, a beautiful young woman whom he first saw nursing the wounded of Manassas and who later saved Mosby from a Union ambush set for him near the village of Herndon.

  The brutal executions in Front Royal of Mosby’s followers and two seventeen-year-olds, Henry Rhodes and Lucien Love, did occur as I describe them. Battlefield reports and memoirs written by Stuart’s officers tell of white-flag conversations between Stuart and old Union army friends, the Cedar Mountain bet, the hat and coat “prisoner exchange,” the Culpeper ball, and Mosby’s capture of the sleeping Federal general. Charles Murdock is based on a Mosby rider named Charles Binns, who did desert and lead Union raids on homes hiding his former comrades. According to the records of Mosby’s 43rd Battalion, Binns and another man abducted two slave women with the thought of selling them. Binns did give testimony against Mosby ranger Philip Trammell in a Federal trial.

  The story of Annie and Jamie’s ride into the night after a Mosby ranger who did indeed abduct two African-American women is my invention, but it is plausible. So, too, is Annie’s presence when Stuart receives news of his daughter’s fatal illness. (Stuart encamped near Upperville that night, enjoyed a large shank of mutton, and received bad news about little Flora.) Heros von Borcke was wounded and hidden from searching Federal troops by a Confederate family in the area. William Farley was as he is described, a soft-spoken Shakespeare scholar. It makes sense that he would admire a young woman such as Annie. His final words are what his companions recorded.

  Everything else, while fictitious, is culled from accounts of the types of things that did happen during the war. The prisoners and their treatment at Carrol Prison, for instance, are modeled on what is described in the memoir of an incarcerated woman. According to the letters of a Manassas resident, Union troops did run through her house as they retreated in the Battle of First Manassas. Rachel and Sam’s wedding is similar to that described by some former slaves. Mosby’s men did have secret closets. Unfortunately Union soldiers did vandalize homes frequently. One Fauquier memoir tells of troops pouring molasses into their family’s piano and filling it with feathers from their pillows and mattresses. Epidemics, like the diphtheria that kills Miriam, were spawned by the poor sanitation of army camps and the lack of immunity soldiers from isolated rural areas had to contagious diseases. These illnesses decimated civilian populations.

  The people most important to Annie—Laurence, Miriam, Jamie, Thomas, Charlotte, Aunt May, Isaac, Sam, and Rachel—are imaginary, but again are reflective of loved ones described by many of the region.

  The poems, songs, and books mentioned were popular during the time. The nineteenth century’s equivalent of television and movies, they were one of the few common links between Northern and Southern people, who were so separated by geography and culture. According to Mosby’s biographers, Lord Byron was indeed his favorite poet.

  One of the most perplexing aspects of the Civil War was the cordiality that existed amid such carnage. Pickets did cross lines to trade and talk with one another while on duty. One Manassas area resident told of Union soldiers asking her family to set up a meeting between them and Mosby raiders. The enemies talked long into the night in the family’s parlor, and then shook hands before departing. There seemed to be a sense of curiosity as well as pity between them.

  West Point classmates constantly opposed one another on the battlefield. They worried about one another’s safety as they ordered murderous charges. Perhaps the best-known friendship was that of Confederate general Lewis Armistead and Union general Winfield Scott Hancock. At Gettysburg, Armistead longed to cross the field to talk with his old friend before the next day’s battle. Both Hancock and Armistead were wounded that day—Armistead fatally. But before he died, Armistead asked that his personal Bible be sent to Hancock’s wife as a remembrance of happier times their families had shared.

  Stuart, the quintessential Virginia cavalier, also faced divided family loyalties during the war. His father-in-law, Federal general Philip St. George Cooke, remained with the Union and, by a twist of fate, was the commanding officer pursuing Stuart during his famous ride around McClellan’s army in June 1862. Stuart’s military star rose after the encounter; his father-in-law’s sank. Cooke lost his field command and spent the war serving on court-martial duty and recruitment boards. Stuart showed little regret for his father-in-law’s plight. Unable to forgive Cooke for remaining with the Union, Stuart changed the name of his son, which originally honored his father-in-law, from Philip to James Ewell Brown Stuart, Jr., calling him Jimmy.

  Stuart is perhaps the most endearing and exasperating of all Confederate leaders. A true romantic, he collected wildflowers and bird feathers to press into scrapbooks alongside poems during his time in the West. He courted his wife on horseback rides for a mere two months before marrying her, saying, “I came, I saw, I was conquered.”

  Wherever he went, Stuart wanted to be liked. And typically he was, even by his opponents. As his cavalry rode through Urbana, Maryland, on their way to the ill-fated Battle of Sharpsburg by Antietam Creek, Stuart was so beguiled by the young women of the town that he hosted a ball for them despite their Union loyalties. Girls from all around came. In the middle of the festivities, Federals attacked the Confederate camp outside the village. Stuart and his men donned the sabers they’d hung on the wall and rode off to meet them. After the skirmish, Stuart returned. He restarted the dancing, which went on until three A.M., when stretcher-bearers began bringing in wounded men. In their party gowns, the Union women helped tend them. One injured Confederate said he’d be hit any day to have such surgeons dress his wounds. Maryland did not join the cause as Lee had hoped, but Urbana, at least, was certainly captivated by Stuart.

  Many historians and people of his time condemned Stuart for not arriving at Gettysburg in time to guide the floundering Confederates with cavalry reconnaissance. Some blamed the devastating loss on him and his sizable ego, which kept Stuart looking for spoils on his ride north and delayed his arrival. Still, it is hard not to like the effusive, flamboyant Stuart.

  Mosby, on the other hand, is m
ore complex and less accessible. A brilliant but prickly man who survived seven wounds, Mosby believed in eye-for-an-eye retribution. After the savage executions of his men at Front Royal, Mosby ordered that when they were captured, any Federals who belonged to the Michigan regiment responsible for the acts should be separated from other prisoners. When his rangers had collected twenty-seven Michigan cavalry riders, Mosby ordered a lottery. A hat with slips of paper was passed among them; seven bore an X—the death sentence. During the first round, a young drummer boy drew an X. Not previously knowing that a youth was among the captured, Mosby pardoned the sobbing boy. The hat was passed again and the painful drawing repeated. The condemned seven were taken out to be shot or hanged. But his men were reluctant to carry out Mosby’s orders. Two of their prisoners easily escaped and were not pursued. Another two were only wounded when shot. They survived.

  The escapes evidently did not anger Mosby. He called the lottery and executions a “judicial sentence, not revenge.” Had he been seeking revenge, wrote Mosby, he “would have ordered others to be executed in their place.” He did not. His purpose was to “prevent the war from degenerating into a massacre” by answering the Union’s actions measure for measure. Mosby wrote to Federal general Philip Sheridan, who commanded Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley: “Hereafter any prisoners falling into my hands will be treated with the kindness due to their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me reluctantly to adopt a course of policy repulsive to humanity.”

  The executions of Confederates stopped, but Sheridan’s overall harshness did not. Ordered by Grant to “eat out Virginia clean and clear…so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their own provender,” Sheridan began systematically destroying the Shenandoah Valley, a plunder begun by Union general David Hunter. For three days in October 1864, right after harvest time, Sheridan’s troops scoured the valley, burning every barn, every mill, and all crops, farm equipment, and outbuildings they found. They killed or carried off livestock. A month later they did the same to Fauquier and Loudoun counties, even to Quaker villages that supported the Union, claiming Mosby might find provisions there. For decades, the residents remembered the famine-producing destruction as “the burning.”