“Yes, sir. I will.”
“When she is strong again,” he said, “you give her the money in this envelope and you tell her to buy a train ticket to Philadelphia. You tell her to make a new home there.”
That was the last time Rebecca saw or heard from Mark Waverton.
Two weeks later she took the envelope of his money, bought fare to Philadelphia and never looked back.
And again, she wondered about this God person who would punish a kind woman who helped her and nursed her back to health, and who once thought she, herself, was a good girl.
Maybe one day she would figure out who that God person really was and what it was all about.
Chapter Forty-five: Silas and the Boys
It was nearing sundown at Matagorda Island, Texas in early April and Silas sat outside his tent, his back leaning against a tree. He was upset and he could not hide it from his friends, Elijah Summers or Dave Perin.
Summers lit his cigarette and then asked Silas, “Something bothering you, Silas?”
“You might say that, Elijah. I got a letter from Elizabeth Jane today. Doesn’t make me happy.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s very opposed to me going in a Colored regiment.”
“She is?”
“I wrote her that I had been thinking about wanting to do that and I could get a recommend for it. She doesn’t like the idea. I also told her not to worry about it as there were other recommends and not any openings and I did not know when there would be a chance of me getting a post. I told her I would like it though, if I could, that it would suit me well.”
“You really want to work with the Negro soldiers?” Perin asked.
“Sure. They are fine soldiers,” Silas told him. “But my wife thinks I don’t want to see her, told me she would have little hope of seeing me when the three years are out and if I took the post of the Negro regiment she would give up all hopes of ever seeing me. I want to think she didn’t mean what she wrote but I have read it several times and I think she means it.”
“Oh, Silas, maybe she was just upset when she wrote it,” Summers told him. “You know how wives can overreact at times.”
Perin said, “Yeah women get all emotional and mushy.”
“Janie does not usually overreact to things. So I don’t know what to think of her words. I told her probably she thinks I like Negroes so well that I would not think of coming home to see her or forget there was such a being as her and my two darling children. I said that was my first thoughts and then again when wandering thoughts come upon it. I told her it appears to me that a person would do better, and our government would be better, to stay in the army until the war closes.”
Summers laughed. “Closes. I’m beginning to wonder if it ever will end. We’re out here day in and day out and nobody has told us it is near end.”
Silas nodded. “I know. I suppose our women left at home sees hard and lonesome times. I worry about Janie having to plant the crops and take care of the farm, and keep life going back there in Iowa. That is when I have time to worry and not more concerned with what is happening right here.”
“The women have their hands full, alright,” Summers admitted.
“Time has been easier for us right now working on the island fortifications,” Silas said. “It was hard work but I am also happy to have our brigade drills again. Some of the boys do not like General Fitz Henry Warren, and say he makes them put on too much style. But I like that.”
Summers crushed out his cigarette in the dirt, stood up and said, “You would like all that style and rigidness. That’s why you would be good leading a Negro regiment. Your wife just doesn’t know how good you are at what you do.”
Perin and Silas laughed. “Hey, Summers, don’t make my ego inflate until it is too big for me to handle, now,” Silas said.
Chapter Forty-six: Sowing Corn and Thoughts
It was the last week of April, the winter’s frost was over and it was corn planting time in Iowa. Some farmers preferred to plant corn in mid-April, others by the first week of May. Alexander believed a lot depended on the winter weather and how frozen the ground had been and when it began to thaw. He would keep a close watch on the soil, and in all the years he had been planting crops, he found his timing was flawless. He could write the Old Farmer’s Almanac if it came out in spring instead of fall.
Alexander had planted his acreage with spring wheat in mid-April for maximum yield. He leased out several other acres he owned for planting. He had been using a variety of spring wheat from Minnesota for the last three years which gave him a high yield of thirty or more bushels of wheat per acre. Due to his high output of wheat the other local farmers were happy to buy seed from him in hopes their fields would yield as well as his had been doing.
This Monday morning it was time to plant the corn fields at Silas and Elizabeth Jane’s farm.
Elizabeth Jane had cooked up a hearty breakfast for Alexander, her father Daniel, her father-in-law Michael and three neighbor men and now the men were hard at work in the morning sun.
The ditches had been cleared and the ridges built up where needed and the horse-drawn corn planter was moving through the rows dropping seed into the furrow.
Daniel had stopped work to get a drink of water and was standing with Alexander watching the corn planter moving along the field, driven by one of the neighbor men who owned the machine.
“Boy that equipment sure beats a hoe from the old days,” Daniel said. “Makes life much easier.”
Alexander agreed. “It sure does. We could plant twenty acres a day with that machine. Maybe with a hoe we’d get one acre planted before the sun went down.”
“That’s right.”
“How much you planting tomorrow?”
“Five acres this year. Catherine said that should do us with the cattle and pigs.”
“No sense in making more work than you need,” he said.
“I agree. Enough work without adding more we don’t need. “
“How’s it feel to have Madeline home again?”
“Damn good, Alex. When she’s living close by it takes a lot of worry off my shoulders, and maybe even keeps my hair from turning all gray.”
Alexander laughed. “It’ll go gray, worry or not,” he said. “Seems the lieutenant is a nice man. You like him?”
“Yeah, I do like him. I hope they can marry one day ‘for long.”
“They plan to stay around these parts?”
“I think so. Seems he wants to do some lawyering some day. And he said this area is as good as any to open a lawyer practice.”
“Hmm, maybe he’ll want to go into politics. Look at our President. Lincoln was a good lawyer man. And then politics caught his fancy.”
“Well, we’ll see what William wants to do but he’s pretty sharp. I do wonder why he would have left the Union to join the Rebs, though. I don’t know if I’d call that a wise choice.”
“Must have had his reasons at that time. Seems nobody knew where this war was going back then.”
Daniel nodded. “Right. And I still wonder where the hell it’s going. I think Lincoln will make re-election but will that end the fighting? I don’t know.”
“Hard to say, Daniel.”
Chapter Forty-seven: Monday, the 13th Day of June 1864
Morganzia Bend, Louisiana
Dearly beloved companion,
I seat myself this day under a tree to inform you that I am well at present and I hope these few lines find all of you enjoying good health and pleasure. A few weeks ago I took a violent cold and was under the weather considerably and I was hardly able to march. We marched so hard that I could not keep up all the way and the last night Bill Downes stayed with me and I tried to march on a ways but had to stop and lay down for the nigh. After we lay there an hour or two some cavalrymen came along and told us we had better not stay there long as we might get gobbled. We rested a while longer and then moved on to our destination and I got a little rest and I got bet
ter. I’m fine now.
We are at Morganzia Bend but word has it we will be going to Brashear City to guard that place and then to Baton Rouge for the summer.
Well Jane, we had a general review last Saturday and it looked to me as though we had men enough here to whip the Western Confederacy combined if rightly managed. While on review a heavy shower of rain fell and wet us to the skin. That wasn’t good if the old general got his ass wet. It has rained since the first of June and how much longer it will rain I cannot tell. It does not rain steady but 3 to 6 showers through the day and then the sun comes out and shines hot enough to roast eggs. It seems to me to be the warmest weather I have ever seen or experienced. Some say it is not as hot this summer as it was last. But it is warmer than I like to see.
Corn looks well here. I have seen corn here at present that is two feet higher than my head. The greatest trouble with corn here is that it goes to stalk and the ears are very small but generally tolerable around the greater part of the corn. Here in the South I have seen a kind of flint corn.
A person can raise anything here in the South that they try unless it is wheat. I haven’t seen wheat here and I don’t think it would do well.
The Mississippi River is running down very fast since we have been here. The papers say that it is getting very low above. So it will take boats a long time to get up and down the river.
I understand there is to be a furlough given pretty soon.
I expect that Downes and Summers will be the next to go. I do not care anything about going until next fall. I don’t want to go until the water is up so as I can go in a hurry. I could have had a furlough last spring from the island if I had wanted it and the captain told me that I could make it pay better by staying with the company at that time. Thirty days was too short a time for me. It would take several weeks for me to get my visit out for I am a great fellow to stay at home. I do not know whether I will get to go this summer or not but I do not care whether I get to go or not although I would like to see you. But it would cost considerable to go to Iowa and back. It will cost $40 or $50 dollars to make the trip and I expect it will be better for me to stay and send my money home. It takes several months for me to make that amount of money and it is well earned and too much for me to throw away without deriving some benefit from it. Several of the boys want to go home very bad and I expect they will be the ones that will get to first.
Jane, I want to know whether you got anything for the rent of our ground and what kind of a crop was raised on the ground and whether you got the mortgage paid off and everything square with it. I want to know how the neighbors are doing and how they are getting along.
It is sorrow to hear of it being so dry there. I fear it will be a great injury to the crops. If you had some of the rain up there that we have had here it would have been a great help to the crops.
I learn from your writing that you have a great deal of flash news concerning the army. I have had experience enough to know that it is a policy for a person to not believe all such news unless it is confirmed. You said news was afloat about the capture of the 23rd. That was all a hoax. We haven’t lost a man of the 23rd since we have been up here. When we started up Red River, the superstition was two regiments had been captured trying to run past the batteries. Someone at the mouth of the river supposed we would be captured and the news went up the river aboard a transport as far as Cairo then it was telegraphed to the Northern States as rumors of such things. A great deal of such news is afloat and it creates excitement and uneasiness. I never let such news trouble my mind. I always wait for the officials and then I can rely upon it. We get some flying reports from Grant and Sherman but we just read it and talk over it until the officials come and then we set it down as true, but we get very little counterfeit news from Grant and Sherman. They are doing the thing up so nicely that counterfeiters have but little chance. I expect you get more flying reports than we do. Our communication is by water and yours by lightning.
I see that President Lincoln places all confidence in General Grant’s success over Lee at Richmond. I think he is safe in doing so. I think without a doubt he will succeed in taking Richmond. The two great Generals of the United States have come together to try their skill in the turning point of the rebellion and I think Grant has out-generaled Lee. I think he is the man that can do it. He says all he wants is to take one hundred thousand men to take the place but according to the Reb’s own report they are losing as many men as we are. I have no reason to doubt it as they have made as many charges on our men as we have on theirs.
And there is Sherman, another of this Republic’s successes, and renown seems to crown his pathway and I hope it will remain so.
One thing has happened that I am well pleased with and that is the unanimous nomination of Lincoln for the Presidency. I think he is a man that should fill that place for the next four years. I do not believe a better man could be found in the United States at present. I do not say he is the smartest man in the United States but he has been tried in that place and he just suites the soldiers. We have other men as good as Lincoln and probably could fill the place as well but they are untried and we don’t wish to try them at present. And there is Andy Johnson, one of the best men in the U.S. We find his name on the ticket for Vice Presidency and he is a man that should be supported by all loyal men. When his state seceded he said no, he would stay with the Union. If old John Frémont runs on or accepts the platform of the Cleveland Convention or accepts the hard-line Republican Radical nomination, I think it shows what feeling he has for the Union and her soldiers. I have my opinion on him or any man that supports him. I do not think they will accomplish anything. I want you to write what you and the rest of the people think of the nomination of Lincoln and how they are going for the Presidency, whether any goes for the Copperhead or the Radicals as I term it.
You wanted to know if I thought you used money foolishly. I cannot tell but I can say this much, I did not think you had as much money as you have. I am satisfied that you use very little money. The majority of women use very nigh all the money their men send to them. I like to see women use what they need and not be extravagant for we soldiers here in the army earn our money by the hardest work. I was not raised to be extravagant and I do not like to see it. I use some money but I generally get things that will do me some good. My tobacco cost me considerably. Tobacco costs very nigh five cents a chew and that runs into a person’s pocket tolerably fast. I am going to send all the money home that I can and I want you to take care of it but I have seen enough of you to know that you will take care of money or anything else that is left in your charge.
I see by your letter that produce cost is high and that is hard on soldiers who have to buy everything their family uses when they get such small wages. I have heard some say that they cannot keep the family with the money they get. I expect it is true. Some families will use as much again as others but probably we can worry through it if nothing happens.
Well Janie, I expect when I get out of the service that I will have an inclination of living in a civilized country. I would almost as soon live in the South as to cross the mountains and live in the West. A majority of the people who have emigrated West have gone to escape justice. I would not live among them. If I should go any place I would rather go to Tennessee but I expect that I will be satisfied to stop in Iowa.
You said Denny is going to school this summer but I am fearing it will give him a dislike to study because he is still young. I want my children to have a good education so if he takes a liking to it and learns then let him go. If I should not get home I want you to give the children a good education if you live. Education is worth more to a man than a fortune in gold.
Yours as ever, Silas
Chapter Forty-eight: Tea and Biscuits
It was a lazy “ladies” afternoon. Chores had been completed, lunch had been served, and it was biscuit and tea time in Elizabeth Jane’s kitchen. Joining her at the table were Lucinda and Madeline, and Sadie w
as close by sitting on the carpet playing with young Katrina.
Their conversation had come about to the news that Elizabeth Jane had joined the Order of the Good Templers at the local lodge. She told them, “Silas told me in one of his last letters that he was surprised to hear I joined. But he said it did not offend him in any way and he said it should do me no harm.”
Lucinda laughed. “Maybe it won’t do you any good either.” When Elizabeth Jane did not seem pleased with her comment, Lucinda quickly added, “Janie, I was only kidding. I didn’t mean—”
Elizabeth Jane replied, “I know. It’s okay. Silas wrote that it is nice anyone can belong to it but it never did suit his fancy, and said that was not any reason for me not to belong. He was in hopes the lodge would prosper and that I would enjoy it.”
Lucinda said, “He’s such a nice man, Janie. You’re lucky he supports you in what you want to do. Not all men do that, you know.”
Elizabeth Jane smiled. “You’re right,” she said. “I am lucky. But it would sure be good to have a husband here at home.” She passed the plate of biscuits and jam and then continued, “Silas said he has no interest in lodges and that some man is filling his pockets of the poorer class of people but if someone wants to belong to lodges it is fine by him.”
Madeline spoke up. “There always seems to be someone who fills his pockets at the expense of someone else. I had a husband who was good at that. He cheated people all the time yet he had so much respect and status in Virginia. I never could figure out why. Just ask Sadie. He was not a good man.”
Sadie looked up from her play, smiled and nodded. “Sure was not a good man, that Mr. Taylor,” she said.
Elizabeth Jane said, “Silas likes his whiskey too much to join the Templers. He told me it would not do for him to belong for they have been drawing their ration of whiskey at night while working on the forts.”
Corn Silk Days: Iowa, 1862 Page 26