While we ate at her table, she gave us our instructions for moving on. It was all I could do to keep from sleeping right then and there. “Traveling at night is best,” Talley said. “Tonight you’ll sleep by my fire for a time, then I’ll wake you so you still have a solid stretch of darkness left.”
Clem was fixed to every word Talley spoke. His eyes never left hers. “Follow the river till you come to a marshy stretch of land. You’ll then be near Mount Harmony, Maryland, coming onto the Chesapeake Bay. You can’t miss the mighty Chesapeake. It’s big water. When the trees start to get mossy at the roots, you’ll know you’re close. At daybreak—just before the sun peeks up at the horizon—a Quaker man, Wendell Hearn, will be waiting for you along the banks. He sails fugitives on his fishing boat up the bay to Baltimore.”
I was full to listening now. I took a bite of corn bread. I chewed slowly. I paid dose attention. “How will we know this Wendell Hearn?” I asked.
“Hearn makes like an owl—three single hoots— that’s his secret signal. Listen for the call, and fodow it until you find him. When you get to Baltimore, there will be another boat waiting, a dinghy operated by a man who will row you toward barn lanterns with colored shades—a yellow light and blue light on shore.”
The fire in Talley’s cabin was beginning to falter. The flame sputtered and hissed. Not Clem or me made a move to stoke it. We didn’t want to miss one single detail from Talley.
“When you’re back on land, you’ll have to travel by foot. You’ll be just south of Pennsylvania then. Stay low and quiet in those parts. And keep off the roads. The region is what some folks have come to cad the ‘freedom line,’ the place where Maryland crosses into Pennsylvania, into freemen’s country. Once you’re over the line, you can travel a bit more safely, as far north as you please, to New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts.”
Talley got up to fix the fire. She kept talking as she poked at the embers. She hoisted one of our just-cut logs into the smolder. She stood by the fireplace until the flame returned. “There’s all kinds of bloodthirst in and around the freedom line,” she warned. “Bounty hunters, hungry for runaways. And hound dogs who are just plain hungry. At every turn, always remember vigilance, prudence, careful timing.”
Talley brought our haversack up from under her table. “I’ve packed you enough food to last you plenty. Promise me that when you reach freedom, you’ll help others reach it, too. And that you’ll tell them how to find Talley Pembroke.”
Clem and I nodded agreement.
We did just what Talley said. Did it to the letter. Did it with vigilance, prudence, careful timing, and a heap of luck. For nearly two days, we kept a steady pace, and didn’t snag on no trouble. Wendell Hearn told us that the route we were following was one of the most foolproof of any along the Underground Railroad. Clem later swore it was the Diamond Eye that guided us safely. I thought it was all that praying I’d done in the potato hole.
We walked up on Pennsylvania at first light. It truly was a promised land, set out before us on a morning I would remember for a long time coming. Twilight spread through the trees in the same way a horn announces the arrival of greatness. The sun arched her long fingers over a grassy crest. If I hadn’t known better, I would have bet my britches that somebody had put a shine to the day with some kind of silver polish. Everywhere I looked—the trees, the leaves, the land, the sky—things seemed to glitter.
When we came to a wide-open meadow, Clem stepped ahead of me to be welcomed by its beauty. All it took was two words from Clem, and my heart was a pounding drum inside my chest.
“We’s free.”
EPILOGUE
Rosco
January 1, 1863
I AIN’T NEVER SEEN so many colored folk gathered in one place. Too many nigras to count. And these were high-hat coloreds. Free men and women, dressed fine and proper. Coloreds who had enjoyed freedom’s advantages. It was as if the Almighty had assembled us for the occasion, and had set me and Clem down in the middle of the hullabaloo to revel in the gladness.
We’d been waiting inside the packed hall of Tremont Temple since sundown, when, at about ten o’clock, a messenger hurried into the hall. “It’s coming! It’s on the wires!” he shouted. Soon after, a telegram came—the proclamation!
Frederick Douglass himself came to hear the news. Douglass was a man of unforgettable stature. A big man. Bold and proud. It was dear he didn’t shy back for nobody. His hair was a swell of cotton that haloed his face. He was dressed proper as a white man—waistcoat, cravat, starched shirt, and shoes shiny as a lookin’ glass. Clem nudged me. “That there’s a colored king,” he said.
And, oh, could Douglass ever speak. It was clear he had been schooled in the ways of oration. When he addressed the crowd—when he told us that President Abraham Lincoln’s signed-and-official Emancipation Proclamation would be delivered at any moment—he brought slow, deliberate music to each and every word. When the proclamation finally arrived, Douglass had to hush the excited crowd who kept interrupting the reading of the document with joyous shouts.
Finally, the audience setded. We grew as quiet as the winter air, letting true delight settle upon us. When the part of Lincoln’s pronouncement that said “. . . I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves . . . are, and henceforward shall be, free . . .” was read, the crowd broke into another wild cheer. Whoops and hollers rang through all of Boston. Menfolk threw their hats high in the air. Women did the same—they let loose their bonnets. People were hugging and happy and giddy and dancing. Even grown men cried at the wonder of it all.
But there was more to Lincoln’s proclamation. A provision that, judging by the thankful grin crossing Frederick Douglass’s face, pleased him greatly. The document said that henceforth freed slaves “. . . of suitable condition . . .” would be “. . . received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.”
Even though the Union had allowed colored men to enlist in their army before this day, hearing these words from our president made it all more official, somehow. Frederick Douglass, our colored king, led us in singing “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow!” and he told the crowd that any man among us would have his full and complete assistance in enlisting for military duty.
Clem locked me in the crook of his elbow. He hugged me to him. “Glory be!” I shouted. “Praise freedom’s name! Coloreds to arms!”
Clem raised both his fists. “To arms, to arms!” he called.
All of us nigras gathered on this day—men, women, young’uns, and old folk—had finally come to freedom. Some had been born to freedom. Others had bought their way free. Many had escaped, like Clem and me, who’d come to freedom by way of “Old Chariot,” the kindness of white folks, the Diamond Eye, and the Almighty’s good grace.
A Note from the Author
I AM AN AFRICAN AMERICAN. That means the branches of my family tree spread back to a time when slavery was an institution in the United States. It means I have grown up with a distinguished legacy of men and women who have spent their lives fighting for freedom, and whose names, though not officially logged on the pages of history, are integral to the shaping of America.
One of the many blessings of this rich cultural heritage is that I grew up hearing the same message over and over again: Search. Study. Find. Know the history of your people. As a result, I have become an avid history buff, reading all I can about American history as it relates to black people.
Silent Thunder: A Civil War Story began just this way. Sometime around the spring of 1996,1 happened on a photograph of a black boy named Jackson, a slave, who became a drummer with the United States Colored Troops. I was immediately struck by the intensity of young Jackson’s gaze. That child—he appeared to be no more than thirteen—looked proud to be part of the Civil War effort. (The photograph came from the Massachusetts Commandery Military Order of the Loyal Legion and the US. Army Military History Institut
e.)
Years prior, I had discovered a similar vintage photograph of an unidentified girl, seated near a woodpile, embracing a handmade doll. Her expression—she looked directly at the viewer—held the same intrigue as the photograph of Jackson. This girl had a spark of eager inquisitiveness in her eyes. And, it was clear that she loved her dolly.
Both images stayed with me. Who were these children? I wondered What kinds of lives did they lead? How did they express their deepest desires? Whatever became of them?
There was only one way to answer these questions for myself: turn these bright-eyed children into characters I could shape and come to know better.
Jackson became Rosco Parnell. The anonymous girl became his sister, Summer. There was no question that I would set Silent Thunder during the Civil War and during the time period when the Underground Radroad was running at its peak. What better backdrop to build a story, with these two characters at its very center?
In 1861, when the first shots of the Civil War were fired, one of the most fascinating periods in America’s history began. The war that came to be called “the War between the States” was fought between eleven Southern states that had seceded from the United States of America—the Confederacy—and the Northern Union States, those states that stayed in the Union. Like any war, the Civil War was a war about differences. The South fought to preserve its agricultural economy, which depended on maintaining slavery. The North sought to industrialize, which depended on wage labor. And, many Northerners felt that slavery was inherently wrong, and wanted to end it.
To the nearly four and a half million black people living in the North and South, the Civil War was a war about slavery, a war they wanted to fight. But white folks had other ideas. Many thought slavery was not the issue at all. They called it “a white man’s war” and believed that African Americans had no business in it.
But the black men and women of the time refused to sit back and let this war, whose outcome they felt directly affected their lives, be fought without them. When the Union began to accept black people into its army, young, brave men were eager to take up arms. By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, nearly 180,000 African Americans had served.
Silent Thunder. A Civil War Story is fiction built on a foundation of facts. The Parnell family, the Parnell slaves, and their neighbors are my own creation, but many of the incidents surrounding their lives are based on real events.
The town of Hobbs Hollow is also fictional, but it is based on actual small towns in the state of Virginia. As was true in the 1860s, I have attempted to show how, even under the shroud of slavery, the lives of black people and white people were often stitched together like the threads and patches of an intricate quilt.
The Civil War battles in Silent Thunder, and the dates on which these battles occurred, are real. Also true is the occurrence of grave snatchers stealing the bodies of dead soldiers for study at a medical school in Winchester, Virginia.
During the Civil War, people looked to newspapers for updates on the war’s progress. Harper’s Weekly was one of the most widely read news journals of the time. Similarly, several newspapers were created by free blacks, with the purpose of providing those African Americans who could read with a black perspective on the events of the day. The New Orleans newspaper L’Union, and the “Men of my blood!” article, published on December 6,1862, did exist
A portion of Rosco and Clem’s escape route-sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore with the help of a Quaker man; riding in a dinghy toward colored barn lights on the shore—is based on documented accounts from Harriet Tubman’s many trips along the Underground Railroad.
President Abraham Lincoln did create a draft of his Emancipation Proclamation, which was originally presented to Congress on September 22, 1862. From that time, right up until the final document was issued on January I, 1863, there was tremendous speculation and debate about it.
The formal Emancipation Proclamation was indeed read at Tremont Temple, in Boston. Frederick Douglass, the noted black abolitionist leader, a former slave who devoted his life to the fight for equal rights, attended the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before a crowd of nearly three thousand black people who were holding a vigil, waiting for news that the president had signed his name to the document.
Though many of us who write historical fiction take great care in researching the day-to-day details and the political events of bygone eras, we can never fully know the true impact these events had on the souls of those who lived them.
We can never know the degrading injustice of having to hide one’s desire to read—of being shackled with the burden of illiteracy.
We can never know the sting of tears shed for family members sold off at auction.
We can never know the intense yearning for freedom that burned in the hearts of so many enslaved people.
It is only through books that we can glimpse the joys and sufferings experienced by those who came before us. And it is through these same books that we can look to the past to gain insight into the future, so that the history buffs of tomorrow can shape the events of history today.
Andrea Davis Pinkney
July 1998
New York City
Bibliography
I CONSULTED MANY BOOKS on the Civil War period for the creation of this novel. The following are those I found most helpful, those I referred to several times over. I cite them here with tremendous gratitude for the men and women who wrote them:
Foner, Philip S. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume III, The Civil War 1861–1865. International Publishers Co. Inc., New York: 1952.
Gorsline, Douglas. What People Wore: A Visual History of Dress from Ancient Times to the Early Twentieth Century. Dover Publications, Mineola, New York: 1980.
Haskins, Jim. Black, Blue & Gray: African Americans in the Civil War. Simon & Schuster, New York: 1998.
Haskins, Jim. Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad. Scholastic, New York: 1993.
Igus, Toyomi, ed. Book of Black Heroes, Volume Two: Great Women in the Struggle. Just Us Books, Orange, New Jersey: 1991.
Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. Dial Books, New York: 1968.
McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York: 1991.
Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember, an Oral History. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, New York: 1988.
Meltzer, Milton, ed. Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995: San Diego, California: 1995.
Meltzer, Milton, ed. Lincoln: In His Own Words. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995: San Diego, California: 1993.
National Park Service. The Underground Railroad. US. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.: 1998.
Taylor, M. W. Harriet Tubman. Chelsea House Publishers, New York: 1991.
Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862–1865. Little, Brown & Company, Boston: 1998.
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