High Hearts
Page 1
PRAISE FOR THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER
RITA MAE BROWN’S
HIGH HEARTS
“This expansive novel of the Civil War contains what must surely be the first in-saddle marital squabble between two members of a Virginia cavalry regiment.… Rita Mae Brown’s childhood fascination with Virginia battlefields—and her extensive research for this book—serve her well.… Fine comic scenes and smart-talking characters … Admirable.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A vivid and soul-searing picture of the psychological effects of war on decent and intelligent human beings.… She does a splendid job on behind-the-scenes power struggles in the Confederate bureaucracy.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Brown’s female characters, always her strength, don’t let us down here: they grab their milieu and shake it till things fall out as they please.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An entertaining historical tale that presents the war between men and women as a subplot to the War Between the States … Should keep readers turning pages.”
—Ms. magazine
Books by Rita Mae Brown
THE HAND THAT CRADLES THE ROCK
SONGS TO A HANDSOME WOMAN
THE PLAIN BROWN RAPPER
RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE
IN HER DAY
SIX OF ONE
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
SUDDEN DEATH
HIGH HEARTS
STARTING FROM SCRATCH:
A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITERS’ MANUAL
BINGO
VENUS ENVY
DOLLEY: A NOVEL OF DOLLEY MADISON IN LOVE AND WAR
RIDING SHOTGUN
RITA WILL:
MEMOIR OF A LITERARY RABBLE-ROUSER
LOOSE LIPS
Also by Rita Mae Brown
with Sneaky Pie Brown
WISH YOU WERE HERE
REST IN PIECES
MURDER AT MONTICELLO
PAY DIRT
MURDER, SHE MEOWED
MURDER ON THE PROWL
CAT ON THE SCENT
SNEAKY PIE’S COOKBOOK
FOR MYSTERY LOVERS
And look for
OUTFOXED
Coming soon in hardcover from Ballantine
HIGH HEARTS
Bantam hardcover edition / May 1986
A Selection of The Literary Guild of America, Inc.
Bantam paperback edition / May 1987
Biblical quotations through the book are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1986 by Speakeasy Productions, Inc.
Author photo copyright © 1988 by Peter Cunningham.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 27888-6.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79397-3
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1
For my beloved Uncle,
Claude Brown
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
PART I
THE DECEPTIVE CALM
PART II
THE ANVIL OF GOD
PART III
THESE BLOODY CARDS
EPILOGUE
Definition of Military Units, Confederate States of America
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the best parts of writing a novel is thanking everyone who helped you do it. My first thank you goes to Lawrence P. Ashmead for urging me to finally get to this story. My friend Wendy Weil, who is also my agent, gave me wonderful suggestions and support.
The following people gave freely of their knowledge and time, and I am indebted to them: Larry Rumley of Seattle; Elinor S. Hearn, Librarian of the Archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas; Sarah M. Sartain, Reference Librarian at the Virginia State Library; Sharon Gibbs Thibodeau, Archivist at our National Weather Archives; Robert E. Merritt of the Richmond Times-Dispatch; Colonel Joseph Mitchell, author of Decisive Battles of the Civil War; Richard Heinz; Carol J. Nicholas, Kentucky Reference Librarian of the Lexington Public Library; Eugene Genovese, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Rochester; Jerry L. Russell, National Chairman of the Civil War Round Table Associates; Fritz J. Malvai of the Hampton Institute; Mr. Dawson and Preston A. Coiner of Charlottesville.
Thank you to Edward Foss, Gloria Fennell, and George Barkley, also of Charlottesville, for providing me with information on foxhunting history.
The U.S. Weather Bureau, the Smithsonian Institution, the Cartographic Department of the National Archives and the fabulous Library of Congress were there when I needed them. Truly, these organizations are national treasures.
The Albemarle County Historical Society, friend to writers, historians, and the public at large, put up with me wandering in and out of their small library on Court Square.
Federal Express of Charlottesville literally kept me going. Materials came in and materials went out at a fast clip, and I could rely on them one hundred percent.
I wish to thank Thomas Selleck for sending me the “No Negative Thinking” T-shirt which I wore while writing the novel. I also wish to thank Jan and John Alonzo for asking him to send it to me in the first place.
Muffin Spencer-Devlin, a competitor in a different discipline, cheered me on. I appreciate the assistance.
I also must thank Daniel Van Clief of Nydrie Stud whose beautiful stables, unbeknownst to him, gave me inspiration.
I send a big kiss to the city of Richmond. Here in Charlottesville if I wander through the streets or fields with binoculars, maps, and notebooks, well, they’re used to me. “There she goes again” seems to be the prevailing attitude, but in Richmond they don’t know me from a hot rock. Nonetheless, the citizens of that fascinating city were tolerant, kind, and helpful.
I am blessed to live in Albemarle County, not just because the citizens are fun-loving, but because it is a community that nurtures writers as well as other creative people. I thank everyone in my hometown.
I am also fortunate to live in a state whose first lady, Lynda Johnson Robb, cares deeply about preserving and sharing women’s history. I hope other first ladies will follow her example.
Thank you, too, to Nightcap at The Barracks. Nightcap is a school horse. His generous temperament helped me go back to the typewriter, relaxed and refreshed.
Claudia Garthwaite, my researcher and right hand, was a part-time saint and I thank her.
For those of you who write me about my cats, I pass on the sad news that Baby Jesus died on October 6, 1982, at the ripe old age of seventeen. She was followed too soon by my mother who died August 13, 1983, at the age of seventy-eight. I console myself with the knowledge that they both had good, long innings.
I still enjoy the protection of little friends, and I would like to thank my mews: Cazenovia, Sneaky Pie, Pewter, and Buddha.
FOREWORD
Novels, like human beings, usually have their beginnings in the dark. High Hearts, a slight variation on this theme, was born in 1948 in blinding sunshine. My great-grandfather Huff, born
in 1848 or 1849, was still alive. Breaking one hundred is not uncommon on that side of the family. He enlisted in the army at age thirteen or fourteen. In 1948 I was three and a half, so I recollect vaguely the details of his conversation. But I do recall his passionate need to tell me about the central event of his life. In this he was successful. I could not pass a battlefield without beseeching my father to take me through it. Fortunately, my father encouraged me in my pursuits. I often wonder how many times I took that poor man out of his way or made him late for an appointment. No matter, he cheerfully turned down dirt roads, put the car on the shoulder, and out we’d go to wander over pastures and through woods with our inadequate maps. Mother’s contribution was to park me in the library on Saturdays so I could ransack the sections of books devoted to the War Between the States. I have always had the strangest sensation that I was not really learning anything but rather I was being reminded of something I already knew.
When you sit down to write a novel, old research and recollections aren’t enough. You’ll find a bibliography in the back of this book should you wish to further your own studies.
Walking battlefields is more difficult than when I was a child. Some, like Manassas, are carefully preserved. Others, like the Seven Days which took place around Richmond, are not preserved and the trenches, the dead, the forests have often given way to modern needs. If you attempt to retrace Stuart’s ride around Richmond, this will become apparent to you.
The characters in this book belong to the First Virginia Cavalry, and their actions often parallel those of the troops belonging to Colonel Fitz Lee.
For those of you who wish to read battle reports, allow me to warn you. The Union officers often did not bother to file a report if they lost a battle. They habitually inflated Confederate numbers and then screeched to President Lincoln that they needed more men. Does this sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Southern officers created a variation on this theme. Their assessment of enemy numbers was usually closer to the mark, but if they did not fare well in an engagement, they wrote florid reports in which they praised their personal favorites.
Julius Caesar started the rage of congratulating one’s military exploits in print. By the time of the Civil War almost 2,000 years later, men had perfected it to an art. In reading these reports, you can immediately spot the man who has an eye to future public office. Nothing has changed there either.
You must consider anything written by a Southerner after the Civil War which attacks General Longstreet as corrupt. The fortunes of that man are too complicated to address here, but suffice it to say he was made a scapegoat and much abused by everyone except for Robert E. Lee.
This novel is written entirely from the viewpoints of Virginians. They did not think as Georgians or South Carolinians. Virginia, then as now, nurses its own peculiar vision of world events. Sometimes we are prophetic, other times dead wrong, but we are always Virginians. While I admire a novel that attempts to explain both sides of a story, that was not my intention. My concern is what happens to the main characters. You see things as they saw them. To give them credit for our world view would be a slander on them and on me.
Which brings me to the problem of slavery. No one alive knows what it is like to be a slave. We may know what it is to be downtrodden, despised, deflected, and determined to win despite the odds, but not one of us knows what it is to be owned. Since I could interview no one, I sifted through records. For the most part, the records are written by the owners of the slaves. Even after the Civil War, few former slaves could read or write. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the WPA Program, and one of those projects enabled writers to go out and interview former slaves. These interviews, unedited, poorly typed, and of varying quality, exist in eighteen volumes. They are only available in libraries designated as Federal record depositories. Claudia Garthwaite, my researcher, and I poured over these volumes. I spent the summer of 1984 in Alderman Library at the University of Virginia reading the direct word of slaves. We also read A Classified Catalogue of the Negro Collection in the Huntington Library at the Hampton Institute. Aside from a few religious fanatics interviewed, volume after volume reveals individuals who could laugh at the world and themselves. Some were servile. Most were not. All were curious, caring, and filled with a rare perspective due to their phenomenal experience. What was most impressive was their ability to love and to even love and extend forgiveness to the very people who possessed them. This takes a rare spiritual courage, all the more remarkable since so many of the subjects expressed it. These people did the best they could with what they had. Do I pity them? No. I’m proud of them.
The language of the slaves would be difficult for many readers, regardless of background, to comprehend. Language is a means of maintaining power; it is also a means of resistance to power. The white owners did not want the slaves to speak as they did. An argument can be made that the language issue is not resolved to this day. This is a novel, not a book on linguistics or the politics of language. I can’t write a novel set in 1861 and 1862 and have most slaves speaking like graduates of Yale. That’s an insult to everybody. Slaves revealed their status through their speech the same as everybody else. What I have done is slightly modify the speech so that it is easier to read, but I haven’t strayed too far from the original. Obviously, the speech patterns of the white people also reveal their status.
Some of you may know that less than ten percent of white males throughout the Confederacy owned more than two slaves. However, that class of men controlled the Southern legislatures and the written word. Since slavery was part of the economy of the South, it isn’t an easy issue to separate from the other issues, although today the Civil War is taught in that simplistic fashion. It is inconceivable that ninety percent of the white men would fight so that ten percent could remain rich. On top of that, there were 93,000 blacks serving in the Confederate Army. Why did the poor whites and blacks fight? To state the obvious is a deceitful temptation. I’ll let you figure it out.
The real assault on our senses is the fact that this conflict is presented as inevitable. What happened was that fanatical and irrational elements on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line slowly gathered their power over the three preceding decades. Politics began to take on a hysterical tone. No man could run for office without ruthlessly being grilled by these special interest fanatics. A moderate candidate in Massachusetts or Alabama would be cut to ribbons. Then as now, moderates fade away in the vain hope of being left to private concerns. They cultivate wealth instead of solving the problems of their nation. Within the span of two generations, politics no longer attracted men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson. The legacy of gifted public service disappeared with them. Today as in the middle of the nineteenth century, the brightest and the best for the most part avoid politics like the plague. We paid for it then, and we’re paying for it now.
When the Civil War finally did come, it degenerated into a disastrous struggle. The Civil War was the last of the old wars and the first of the new. Not even the most rabid secessionist could have foreseen the toll it would take on both sides. Once the war ended, men on either side had a stake in declaring it inevitable. God forbid they should take responsibility for the horror they created.
If this war were not taught as inevitable, it would force students of all ages to question methods of government, to question the morality of powerful lobbying groups forcing their will on the majority as well as to encourage the student to formulate strategies. Why bother to see if we can negotiate these old issues? Aren’t they dead and buried? Not exactly.
In the first place, if you and I and millions of other Americans entertain a sense of history that is fatalistic, we’re in terrible trouble. If we believe that great forces—first embryonic, then fully developed—move on a collision course, then nuclear war is inevitable, as inevitable as the War Between the States. The past is prologue.
The ultimate blasph
emy is that the hundreds of thousands of dead did not solve the problems. The slaves were freed. That was a partial solution although the North hardly made life easier for them. But the central issue of who controls your community is alive and well. Do you control your community or do a group of men in Washington? Do you have the right to sell your product anywhere in the world? Do you have the right to buy the products of another country without excessive tariff added to the price of the item? Do you have the right to sell your labor at a fair price? Is industry more important than agriculture? If we are a Union, then are our taxes sent to the Federal government and fairly redistributed among the various states? What do we do when women enter the labor force? Now white men have competition not only from black men but from women as well. This is one of the hidden issues in the South during the aftermath of the war. It is now an issue everywhere. Another issue, usually expressed in the past in mystical terms by Southerners, is today expressed as quality of life. Just how do we want to live? Is commerce everything or is the life of the spirit equally as important? If it is equally important, how do we give it its just due in our society? The issue of environmental control began to surface between the two regions, too. If you take the time to read original sources and not anthologies, you are going to find that much of what vexes you today was clearly expressed then.
Finally, no nation or people can go to war without the tacit support of its women. In the case of this war, some women disguised themselves as men to fight. There were no physical exams. Today, a woman is denied the right to combat under the guise of “protecting” her. Margaret Mitchell, before she wrote Gone with the Wind, researched this phenomenon among Georgia women. The two Northern women often cited for becoming soldiers were Frances L. Clalin of the Fourth Missouri Heavy Artillery, later of the Thirteenth Missouri Cavalry, Company A, and Doctor Mary Walker of New York state who passed as a male surgeon. There isn’t space to list the Confederate women. Then, too, for every woman who came forward after the war and revealed herself, there is no way to know how many melted back into society to continue life as a man or to quietly change back into a woman. As to why so many Southern women chose to fight, your guess is as good as mine.