THE ABOLITIONIST’S DAUGHTER
DIANE C. MCPHAIL
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK ONE: MARRIAGE - 1859–1861
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
BOOK TWO: DEATH - NOVEMBER 1861
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
BOOK THREE: ENDURANCE - 1861–1863
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
BOOK FOUR: LOVE - 1864–1866
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
THE ABOLITIONIST’S DAUGHTER
Although based on historical fact, this is a work of fiction, and all characters and narrative are fiction.
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2019 by Diane C. McPhail
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
The JS and John Scognamiglio Books logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2018912550
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2030-6
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: May 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2032-0 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2032-6 (e-book)
In memory of my mother, Loree Dunlap Cox
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Let me begin with gratitude to all the unknown people and family of Webster County for keeping alive the stories surrounding the history of what has been known as the Edwards-Gray feud, though the violence between the two families did not continue beyond the initial violence. I am thankful to those family members and local citizens who have continued to tell the story and contribute to the newspapers. I am especially indebted to Ralph Dunlap and to Sarah McCain Saxon for introducing me to the genealogy of the Edwards family. The staff of Mississippi State University Library Archives provided invaluable help in preserving and making available the historical papers and crucial inventories of Judge Edward Edwards. I offer my deepest gratitude to Gene Bridges, whose wisdom guided me through the intricacies of family and trauma and who will recognize himself in these pages.
From the beginning of this endeavor I have been supported and encouraged by members of my writing groups: Highlands Writers, Duke Writers Workshop, Table Rock Writers, Sweetwater Novel 6 and Critique Group, Abroad Writers, and Yale Writers’ Workshop. I am especially indebted to my esteemed teachers and mentors: To Madeliene L’Engle, I owe the realization that, indeed, I could write and trust the work to know more than I do. To Brian Railsback, the moment of commitment to this particular story. To Darnell Arnault, the years of patient sustenance of my skills as a writer. To Jane Smiley, refinement of research skill that led me to the crucial role on the Civil War of the extremes of climate change and weather at the end of the Little Ice Age. To Jacquelyn Mitchard, as my working editor, the ongoing push to never settle for less. To Ethel Rohan, the encouragement to reach ever further and to believe the furthest point attainable. To Judy Goldman, a million thanks for her keen eye and tenacity to detail. To Marian Thurm, gratitude for her amazing generosity of spirit and skill. To Louis Bayard, the validation that I belong. I am especially grateful to Jotham Burello and to the Yale Writers’ Workshop for providing me with that last step over the threshold into a waiting and wider experience than I might have imagined. And especially to Jotham, for providing the opportunity to meet the perfect literary agent for this project.
From our first introduction and intriguing conversation, my agent, Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, has offered deep insight into the underlying themes of this work and steadfast support. His enthusiasm provided the connection to my editor and publisher, John Scognamiglio of Kensington Publishing Corporation, who has been unfailingly supportive and a pleasure to work with.
Many thanks to those patient souls who took the time to read and respond to early versions of this manuscript, and to provide me with invaluable reader responses. Their questions and observations helped to form the novel as it is: David Sharp, Nancy Bolton Beck, Karen Barnett, Jim and Martha Yelverton, Jim Rollins, Theodora Ziolkowski, and Rawson Gordon. Later readers of the final manuscript have been equally generous in the gift of time and support: Carol Anderson, Corabel Shofner, Jody Franco, Alan Hlad, Louis Bayard, Ethel Rohan, and Brian Railsback.
Finally, this book would not have been possible without my husband, Ray, who believed in me and to whom I am forever grateful.
BOOK ONE: MARRIAGE
1859–1861
CHAPTER 1
Heat hung fierce for spring over the town of Greensboro, Mississippi, the late sunlight flickering in dusty rays. A breeze that might have otherwise refreshed only added to the oppressive atmosphere, diving in gusts to trouble the crinolined skirts of the ladies along the boardwalk. Except for the few accompanied by personal slaves, the women struggled with their parcels as they clutched their bonnets close against a dry haze of dust unfurled in the wake of passing carts. Nailed to the livery stable, a slave auction notice snapped in the gritty air. At the sound two women halted on the boardwalk. Emily Matthews pressed a gloved finger to still the paper. A cluster of men nearby suspended their conversation to stare. Ignoring them, Emily jerked away from Ginny’s restraining grip and tore the poster from its nail.
“You best drop that thing, Miss Emily. Here, give it to me.” Fierce determination drove Ginny’s half whisper.
“Leave me be, Ginny.” Emily thrust the paper in crumpled folds deep into her pockets. “Papa must see this. Holbert Conklin is selling Nathan.”
“People’s watching you, Miss Emily. Leave it now. You gone get somebody killed.” Emily shook herself free of Ginny, grabbed at her hoops, and stepped down onto the dirt of the street.
In spite of sullen glances her direction, Emily shouldered through the dwindling afternoon crowd and negotiated her way through the fine buggies, plodding mules with clattering wagons, and the ever-present dung of Main Street. Ginny funneled behind her, eyes down, but missing nothing. Opposite the courthouse, Emily clasped the edge of her gray bonnet, squinting. She brandished the crumpled paper up at her father where he watched for her from his office, as he did every Friday. His hair and beard glowed white in the sunlit window, his eyes intense under the thick brows. He saw me, Emily thought, as she stepped onto the courthouse lawn. By the time the two women mounted the steps, Judge Matthews w
as locking the heavy front door, one arm loaded with law books. Emily restrained herself, but barely, as he ducked under her bonnet to kiss her cheek and smooth a loose strand of hair over her ear. He smiled and nodded to Ginny.
Emily thrust the notice at him. “This is a travesty, Papa. You must do something.” Though his antislavery stance took a heavy toll on them both in a town like Greensboro, she counted on that foundation.
He shook the rumpled paper flat. Ginny clutched the unstable law books, as Emily peered over her father’s sleeve, her hand fisted against his arm. He retrieved his spectacles from a pocket, flicked them open, and adjusted them on his nose, where they magnified the intensity of his almost-brown eyes.
TO BE SOLD & LET, By Public Auction,
On Monday the 7th of March, 1859
For Sale, THE THREE FOLLOWING SLAVES:
Nathan, a 30-year-old buck and excellent hand of Good
Character
with some training as a household servant
He got no further as Emily jabbed at the words. “Nathan has a wife and two children,” she said. “I see them when I call on Virginia. Conklin’s going to tear that family apart. He cares nothing for family, including his own. He’s a despicable man, Papa. And cruel.” She glanced at Ginny. “Virginia never speaks of it, but I see her bruises. The ones she can’t cover and more than ordinary life accounts for.”
Judge Matthews folded the notice and retrieved his books. “Thank you, Ginny.”
The judge knew Conklin well—an unwelcome, perhaps even dangerous, cohort of his son, Jeremiah. Silence enveloped the three as they jolted over the rutted road home. First father, then daughter commenced to speak, but stopped, their utterances incomplete.
“He is a vile man, Papa,” Emily said, as he helped her from the buggy. Evil was the word she wanted to use. “Can you stop him?”
He hefted the law books from the wagon and held a hand to Ginny. “I’ll do what I can.”
* * *
Jessie pulled the ripped dress around her frail torso and shivered. Morning was moving toward the horizon. She stood on the unpainted porch, her eyes blank, not seeing her children’s red ball in the dusty yard, the pile of rocks she hauled up from the creek yesterday to line the front walkway, nor the broom abandoned in panic. Jessie did not see her own shoe on the sagging step, caught there as she fled Holbert Conklin.
Her dark eyes saw nothing before her, her mind seeing only what had befallen her in the cabin behind: the heavy white hands, freckled like dirty snow; a straggling lock of reddish hair over the icy eyes that burned into her naked flesh; and her own hand gripping the post of the bed Nathan had built her from scrap. Today she would lose him, perhaps forever. He would never need to know this thing that had happened.
She spun back into the cabin with its single room, closed the door, wrenched the coarse sheet from the bed, and piled it on the floor. Heaving, she collapsed onto the violated fabric of her rough mattress. As her body quieted, she rose. She stripped off her torn dress, dipped the barest edge of it in the water bucket by the door, and wiped the blood from her legs. Removing her other shift from its peg, she pulled it hard over her thin body and threw the damp remains of her dress on top of the mounded sheet.
Out back, she gathered an armload of fallen branches, ignoring the sharp twigs digging into her flesh. She stacked them, one by one, on the banked coals from the night before and blew into the fireplace, coughing from the dust and ashes. A flame sputtered. As the kindling caught, Jessie shifted on her haunches, but without relief from the pain. She held the wet edge of the ruined dress over the flame. When it was dry enough, Jessie laid it on the growing fire. With her teeth, she tore the edge of the sheet, ripped it down its length, and fed the two halves into the flames.
When the last of the fabric caught, Jessie stood. Holding the bedpost, she gazed around the cabin. Blood stained the ticking of the corn shuck mattress. With rag and lye soap, Jessie scrubbed the stains in narrowing circles. She took clean water and reversed the spirals, rinsing away the soap. But not the stain, not all of it.
Outside, Jessie dropped the rag in the dirt and started up the lane toward Auntie Clara’s. A cluster of children, including her own, too young for the field, played in the early dawn around the old woman’s cabin. As Jessie came into the yard, Auntie Clara shushed a boy’s wails and brushed dirt from his knees.
“Auntie, I needs your help.” Jessie looked down at the boy, who stopped crying and ran. “I needs a bedcover.”
CHAPTER 2
At 7:28 on Monday morning, a violent knock shook Judge Matthews’s front door. Ginny heard it from the house kitchen, which had been added as an L to the main farmhouse for convenience. She slipped the flowered china cup back into the dishwater and wiped the soapsuds on her apron. Through the window, Ginny recognized Holbert Conklin’s overseer, a man whose name circulated through the quarters amid tales of unbridled cruelty. Behind him, four slaves huddled in the curve of the drive: a broad, clean-shaven man, a woman hardly larger than a pubescent girl, and two small children, a boy and a girl. In the dirt beside them lay two half-empty croker sacks.
“Go tell the judge I’ve come for Mr. Conklin’s money,” McCabe said when Ginny opened the door. He spit a stream of dark tobacco juice down the steps.
Ginny studied the little group. The man, a strapping buck, clasped his right arm in the other elbow. He leaned, bracing himself almost imperceptibly, against the tiny woman. The girl clung to her mother’s leg, and the little boy rubbed at his nose. Ginny nodded to McCabe and disappeared, shutting the door behind her.
McCabe spit off the porch again, swiping at his unkempt mustache with a dirty handkerchief, his back was to the door. When the judge opened it, he did not turn around. Judge Matthews stepped out even with him. Neither man greeted the other.
“Well, Judge. There’s your goods. You got the cash?”
“I do.” Judge Matthews handed him a stack of bills, which McCabe stuffed into his pants pocket, the wad of money folding in on itself. He wiped at his mustache again before thrusting the soiled handkerchief into his pocket on top of the bills.
“Man’s a drunk,” McCabe said. “Fell off his goddamned porch on a binge last night.”
Now, just how would a slave get liquor? Judge Matthews thought.
McCabe handed over the documents of sale. “May not be much of a bargain. But he’s yours.”
McCabe never looked at the judge, nor at the human merchandise he left in a wake of dust. When the wagon rounded the end of the drive, Judge Matthews started down the steps. Ginny rushed past him toward the band of frightened slaves.
“What you do to yourself?” Ginny assessed the man, who towered over the little cluster, his arm akimbo, cradled in his other like a baby. The swollen flesh of his left eye glistened like ripe eggplant. The boy swiped at his nose with the ragged sleeve of his shirt, eyes wide and bloodshot. Shame is an awful thing, Ginny thought. She laid her hand on the child’s woolly head and pulled him against her long leg.
“Ginny, get this man to the back porch and send someone for Dr. Slate.” Judge Matthews turned to the tiny woman. “Have you and your children been fed this morning?”
The woman shook her head.
“You’ll be all right now. Ginny will see to your needs.” Judge Matthews studied her face, shook his head, and returned to the house.
Ginny patted the girl’s short cornrows as she led the family around back. “Come on now, what’s y’all’s names?” The children stared up at this strange woman, almost as tall as their father.
“Nathan,” the man said. “This here’s Jessie. And Lavinia and Joseph.”
At the rear of the house Ginny indicated a bench at the long pine table on the porch. “Jessie, put your arms ’round your young’uns while I fetch you some victuals.”
Ginny stepped into the kitchen, where Samantha, in a sullen huff, was cleaning up from breakfast. Her ample body threatened to escape her dress as her hair had its kerchief. Perhaps everyth
ing about her wanted escape. Ginny ignored her foul mood.
“How many biscuits we got left?”
“Umm, six,” Samantha counted. “We got six, but one done broke cross the middle.”
“Never mind about that,” Ginny said. “Got us some hungry young’uns out here. They don’t give a hoot which way a biscuit’s broke.” Ginny considered Samantha’s feelings about that broken biscuit. She was new to the household, bought from a place where slaves had eaten with gourds from a common trough. But apparently sufficient to round out her ample body.
Samantha slapped butter on the leftover biscuits, jamming bits of smoked pork into them, licking her fingers. One of the biscuits fell to the floor. She wiped it on her apron and walked outside to set the plate down hard on the table. Ginny eyed her sideways as she brought out a jar of apple butter.
“All right now, y’all eat,” Ginny said.
All four sat motionless, looking at the food and then up at the two women. Samantha grunted and vanished back into the house.
“What you waiting for?” said Ginny. “Eat.”
Jessie picked up a biscuit. Ginny slathered apple butter on another and handed it to the little girl. She studied the child’s surprise as the tart sweetness of this unfamiliar brown stuff touched her lips.
“You need some help?” Ginny said to Nathan.
“I be all right,” he said. “Happens I’m left-handed. Mighty good victuals, mighty good. Ain’t it good, Jessie?”
Jessie nodded. Ginny held a spoonful of apple butter out to her. Jessie glanced at Nathan for approval and he gave her a small smile. Ginny spread the biscuit.
“You like apple butter, Jessie?” she said.
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