Corn Silk Days: Iowa, 1862

by Linda Pendleton

  Catherine, known for her delicious pies, was placing pies on the tables and Elizabeth Jane was cutting them into slices and arranging them on several tables.

  Lucinda carried a pot of beans as she joined her sister-in-law. She asked, “Anywhere special for these beans?”

  “Right there is fine,” Elizabeth Jane replied. She glanced up to see Mayor Hampton straighten his tie as he walked to the front of the hall. She whispered to Lucinda, “Time for the mayor’s usual speech. I know it by heart now. I don’t think he ever changes a word of it.”

  As Elizabeth Jane believed, Mayor Hampton’s speech was word for word, pause by pause, grin by grin, exactly the same as it always was. He folded up the paper he had read from and then introduced Alexander.

  That brought a smile to both Lucinda and Elizabeth Jane. Elizabeth Jane leaned close to Lucinda. “Now we’ll hear something worthwhile.”

  Alexander stepped onto the platform, nodded at the mayor and turned to the audience. Tall and lean, Alexander towered over the short and stocky Mayor Hampton. Hampton left the stage to Alexander.

  Alexander had the attention of all in the hall. He began, “Ladies, gentlemen, and young-uns, we again gather today in celebration of our nation. To the many brave soldiers who are fighting in the cause and liberties of this country and to those who have died, we pray the good Lord will watch over them. Today, these men are not out of our memory but right here with us in our hearts and minds—and we will have a day of celebration of the anniversary of our National birthday—and a celebration of those of our men, our families, our townfolk, who are engaged in this war to preserve our Nationality.”

  “Some people seem to doubt the propriety of celebrating the Fourth of July as we usually have done. Because we are thus engaged, and there is great anxiety as to the result of the war, when the Capitol is in danger, while our gallant armies in the Mississippi Valley are exposed to grave dangers and are liable to meet great disaster, I say to you, it is only right that we celebrate our Union and celebrate this fine country.”

  “The principles of our Revolutionary fathers are still strong and the Declarations have not failed us. We will stop the rebellion and today we will celebrate the virtues and achievements won for us and giving us the inestimable blessings of civil freedom—and those blessings will continue next year and every year after. The Stars and Stripes will fly over our nation, God willing.”

  “So let’s partake of good food and good company.”

  Cheers and applause broke out and a festive mood was in motion.

  It was Monday afternoon, a day still hot from the searing sun and clear skies, when Alexander found his son, Michael in the yard behind the mill, sorting lumber.

  Alexander called out, “How’s it going, Michael?”

  Michael stopped his work, removed his hat and wiped sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. He replied, “Busy, shouldn’t have taken Saturday off. Too much work to be done.”

  Alexander told him, “We all needed a break, good for the mind.”

  “I don’t know about that. Makes no difference in what is happening with this damn war.”

  “Saturday, old man Haag told me he got a post from his son, Jake. Jake is in James’s company. You know how news travels in these parts. James heard what happened to Lucinda, and what Benjamin did.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Michael returned his hat to his head and his handkerchief to his hip pocket.

  “I just got back from Haag’s. He let me read the letter from his son. James didn’t take it well. According to Jake, James was ready to abandon his post and come back home. Some of the men had to hold James down for a bit. Some worthless soul from Marshalltown spread a rumor that Lucinda and Benjamin were involved with each other and said Benjamin killed the boy in a rage of jealousy.”

  “Ah, shit!”

  “Said James went into a fit of anger and was a threat’n to come back home and kill Benjamin. Said the men had to talk him down and even the Officer had to take him aside and calm him a bit.”

  “Has Lucinda heard this?”

  “Not yet, that I know of.”

  Michael’s mood veered sharply to anger, “Did you tell Benjamin?”

  “I will. I think he needs to know so as to be prepared when James does come back home.”

  His features hardened. “You see the trouble Benjamin causes! Maybe he should rot in jail!”

  “Watch your tongue, Michael.”

  His expression bordered on mockery. “Watch my tongue—”

  “That’s what I said. You’re gonna let go of this resentment toward your son and support him, ya hear?”

  Michael’s voice was rough. “How can I support him, Pap? He’s always causing pain for others!”

  Alexander studied him a moment as he sucked on his pipe, then replied, “Seems he only causes pain for you, and it’s time you figure out why that is.”

  Michael turned away from Alexander, kicked at the dirt with his boot, and walked several feet out.

  Alexander told him, “I expect you to be in that courtroom in support of your son when the time comes. And I’ll take no excuses, ya hear that?”

  Michael remained silent as his father turned and left the mill.

  By Tuesday, July 7, 1863, President Lincoln received at the White House, General Grant’s dispatch announcing the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4th. Word spread quickly through the streets, businesses, and hotels of Washington, and by evening a military band paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House accompanied by hundreds of citizens to give congratulations to President Lincoln. Lincoln, in an impromptu speech addressed the people. The next morning the Washington and New York papers printed his speech, as did many newspapers across the country.

  Fellow-citizens: I am very glad to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call. But I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called. How long ago is it? Eighty odd years since, upon the Fourth day of July, for the first time in the world, a union body of representatives was assembled to declare as a self-evident truth that all men were created equal.

  That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the fourth day of July has had several very peculiar recognitions. The two most distinguished men who framed and supported that paper, including the particular declaration I have mentioned, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having framed it, and the other sustained it most ably in debate, the only two of the fifty-five or fifty-six who signed it, I believe, who were ever President of the United States, precisely fifty years after they put their hands to that paper it pleased the Almighty God to take away from this stage of action on the Fourth of July. This extraordinary coincidence we can understand to be a dispensation of the Almighty Ruler of Events.

  Another of our Presidents, five years afterwards, was called from this stage of existence on the same day of the month, and now on this Fourth of July just past, when a gigantic rebellion has risen in the land, precisely at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow that principle “that all men are created equal,” we have a surrender of one of their most powerful positions and powerful armies forced upon them on that very day. And I see in the succession of battles in Pennsylvania, which continued three days, so rapidly following each other as to be justly called one great battle, fought on the first, second and third of July; on the fourth the enemies of the declaration that all men are created equal had to turn tail and run.

  Gentleman, this is a glorious theme and a glorious occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the theme and worthy of the occasion. I would like to speak in all praise that is due the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of this country from the beginning of this war, not on occasion of success, but upon the more trying occasions of the want of success. I say I would like to speak in praise of these men, particularizing their deeds, but I am unprepared. I should dislike to mention the name of a singl
e officer, lest in doing so I wrong some other one whose name may not occur to me.

  Recent events bring up certain names, gallantly prominent, but I do not want to particularly name them at the expense of others, who are as justly entitled to our gratitude as they. I therefore do not upon this occasion name a single man. And now I have said about as much as I ought to say in this impromptu manner, and if you please, I’ll take the music.

  Chapter Seventeen: Monday, the 10th Day of August 1863

  Vicksburg, Mississippi

  Dear Companion,

  I will now try and write you a letter that is a few more lines than I wrote a few minutes ago concerning the money I sent you for I was in a big hurry to get it ready. Now I will tell you how much I sent and who I sent it by. Our First Lieutenant is going to start home in an hour or two and I thought it would be as safe with him as it would to be expressed from here and he is to put in the Office at Marshalltown and you will then receive it at Collins. I sent you a twenty dollar bill, a ten, and a five, all amounting to thirty-five dollars. I could send you more money but you are not needing it and there is chances for speculation down here if a person has money. You may think I want to spend money foolishly. Well a person is more apt to spend money when they have considerable. Now I will tell you how much money I drew. I drew fifty-two dollars. If you can loan your money at interest to someone that is good and can get good security, I think it would be as good as you could do with it. What money you don’t want to use is dead property for it eats nothing or brings in nothing that is while you have it wrapped up and put away in some drawer or other, for fear a dollar would get away and you would not know it. Now you can do as you please as far as the money is concerned but do the best you can with it. You can tell how things run in Iowa and whether it would be safe to loan it or not.

  Now I must tell you something about Vicksburg. I suppose you have heard and read a great deal about our mortars tearing the place all to pieces and killing all the people that was in it. I do not believe them mortars done five hundred dollars damage to the town. It was only once in a while that a house was struck with them but in traveling over the town a person would be asked once in a while what made that hole in the ground. The answer would be a mortar shell done that. The small guns done a great deal, the most damage to the town and people, and you heard considerable about them batteries that our men had placed to throw shot in town to burn it up. When we got down here we could not see and hear anything of such a battery. And that canal, what a great thing that was. I have seen that canal. Some places it is ten or fifteen feet deep and it would vary from that to three feet. When I saw it, it was dry and the water in the river lacked eight or ten feet of being up to the canal. That is why the newspapers lie about a great many things.

  Now I will give you the price of some produce and what we have to pay for it. Potatoes are from seven to nine dollars per bushel. We can get a four pint tin full for twenty or thirty cents and green apples from five cents a piece or forty or fifty cents a dozen and peaches fifteen to twenty-five cents per dozen and tolerable good sliced onion is worth five cents a piece. Now you can see the contrast between this and Iowa.

  I received your very kind letter yesterday and was glad to hear that you were all well. I saw Luther Randles yesterday and he had seen Uncle Perry. He said Uncle Perry’s leg was almost well. I am with the regiment now. We have eight or nine men able for duty at present. We have had thirty men killed dead and discharged, that is Company K, six or eight only has been discharged.

  You need not send me any stamps for I can buy them here. So I must close. I hope this finds you in good health.

  Yours as ever,

  Silas

  Oh yes. Watermelons sell from seventy-five cents to three dollars a piece. That’s all.

  Chapter Eighteen: Sadie

  The earliest memories Sadie had were not all pleasant memories, but were dark, ugly, and painful. Throughout her thirty-four years those memories would invade her dream states and awaken her in a cold-sweat and panic.

  And this morning had been one of those times. She was caught up in a vivid dream, trying frantically to break out of it, aware she was dreaming and fighting to wake up to end the horrors of it. Fragments of the same vivid dream often repeated and haunted her.

  But the dreams were not fantasy, they were reality. She had been only four-years-old when a White man had come into their home, a small one room shack on the Taylor Hills plantation. She had been sleeping on the floor in a corner, a piece of a blanket partially covering her. Loud voices awakened her and she was immediately overcome with fear. In the dim light, the man stood over her father, who was on the floor, his arms raised to protect the blows of a thick piece of wood, hitting, hitting, blood spattering, her father’s pleading, crying out. Soon his sounds changed to moans. Her mother, huddled nearby, was screaming and sobbing unable to do a thing to save her husband from the brutality coming from the White man.

  Sadie pulled the blanket to her face, not wanting to watch but afraid not to. She wanted to move to her mother but knew she could not. She dropped the blanket from her face and looked to the window but an escape seemed impossible.

  She didn’t understand what was wrong, why this man was beating her father. She silently cried out to God to stop it.

  Minutes later her father’s moans stopped and the man moved to her mother. He ripped her mother’s clothing off and then climbed on top of her. Sadie knew he was hurting her mother, but at that young age did not fully realize what was happening. All she knew was her mother was crying and her screams were stifled by the man putting his hand over her mother’s mouth. Soon it was quiet and the man stood up. He leaned over and picked up the piece of wood and hit her mother in the head several times.

  He threw the wood across the room and then turned toward Sadie. Frightened and terrified, she curled into a ball and pulled the blanket tight around her. In the next moment she could smell the foul odor of the man as he pulled the blanket from her and dropped onto her, straddling her small body.

  The pain was excruciating. She wanted to cry out, beg him to stop but her voice would not come out. Within moments, it was over. He stood, turned, and walked out of her home.

  Sadie had not moved from that spot for a long time, afraid the man might be outside. It was only when she heard the voices of those who lived nearby that she was able to move and go for help.

  Her parents were buried on the lower end of the Taylor Hills Plantation and on that day, the first wife of Lawrence Taylor took her home and allowed her to live in the mansion with the other housemaids. For a long time, Sadie reacted in fear any time a White man came to visit. Mrs. Taylor had assured her there was nothing to worry about as Mr. Taylor said they would all be safe. Rumor among the plantation Negroes was that Lawrence Taylor had killed the White man.

  Sadie hoped that was so. She wished only that God had acted sooner.

  As she grew older she learned to trust Lawrence Taylor and even respected him. That is, she respected him for a time. When she was thirteen, her girlish figure suddenly changed into one of a young woman, breasts full and noticeable, even in the plain cotton blouses she wore. Lawrence Taylor noticed, too. At every opportunity, he would fondle her breasts. It terrified her and she was helpless to do anything about it. Finally she told one of the older Negro women and her words to Sadie were, “You just never mind, honey. Don’t turn away from him. Let him have his pleasure.”

  It was not the type of consoling she expected or wanted from someone she believed to be older and wiser.

  Sadie was sixteen when Mrs. Taylor died and it worried her that Mr. Taylor might then need more “pleasure.”

  And he did.

  Two months after his wife died, Sadie was in his bedroom making the bed when he came into the room, watched her for a moment, and then grabbed her and pushed her onto the bed. She tried to shut out of her mind what was happening. It was no use. She would never forget the violation, the pain of it, and during those minutes sh
e flashed back to the memory of the White man raping her mother. That was the first time Taylor violated her to that extent, but not the last.

  Thankfully, a few months later, Taylor began courting White women and apparently he found his pleasure with them, and then a few years later he married Madeline.

  In the kitchen, Sadie began preparations to cook breakfast. She put wood in the oven, added small pieces of chipped wood and lit the fire. After she was sure the fire had a good start, she picked up the wheat flour sack from the pantry and went to the drainboard where she scooped flour into a large bowl to make biscuits.

  She wanted to forget her nightmare and all the memories it brought but it refused to leave her mind.

  But something else was bothering her, too, and she did not know what to do about it. Maybe that had been why she had the nightmare this morning, she decided. She feared Lawrence Taylor. Not for her own safety but for the safety of his wife, Madeline. He could be a violent man and she was unsure if Madeline knew that about her husband.

  Sadie was deep in thought as she rolled out the biscuit dough and did not hear Lawrence Taylor enter the room.

  “Where is my wife?” he asked, his voice somewhat gruffer than usual.

  Sadie, startled, turned around. “I b’lieve she went ridin’, sir.”

  The expression on his face was one of irritation. He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “She should be back.” He returned his watch to his pant pocket. “I will be in my study. Bring me a cup of hot coffee.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Taylor.” Sadie hurriedly wiped her hands on a towel, and moved to the coffee pot to prepare it. “Coffee’ll be ready in a few minutes, sir.”

  Taylor nodded and abruptly turned and left the kitchen.