It happened suddenly, over the course of a single day of travel. McFadden kept glancing with curiosity over at Annie, whose eyes boggled as the trees disappeared and the vast plains of central Texas opened before them like the pages of a book. Endless and vast, like the great waves of the sea his parents had crossed to come to America, the plains seemed infinite.
Somehow, even when he had been a boy, the great plains of Texas had promised possibilities. That had been why his parents had come to Texas after being driven off their land in the Highlands. Their dreams had ended in tragedy and death, but they at least had created him. Now their dreams were his dreams, too.
McFadden focused his attention on Annie’s reaction, partly out of sincere interest but also to distract him from the emotional turmoil he knew he would experience the closer they drew to his old home. He honestly had no idea what it would look like. A few days after the wedding, when they had decided to go to Texas, McFadden had written to a Waco lawyer whose name he had recalled but whom he did not remember ever actually meeting. A letter had arrived back several weeks later, confirming that no one was at the farm and, as far as he knew, McFadden still legally owned the place as the sole survivor of the family.
Throughout the journey west from Atlanta, they had encountered many other Texans traveling home, some of them being fellow survivors of Granbury’s Brigade from the Army of Tennessee, others having served in the ranks of Hood’s Texas Brigade in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, as well as many other men who had served in various cavalry outfits. Most traveled in small groups, while a few traveled alone. None of the men he talked to had been back to Texas since 1862 and most, like him, had extremely limited contact with anyone in the state. On many nights, James and Annie had pitched camp with such men, not only for the sake of camaraderie but also because much of the countryside was infested with brigands.
The lack of information fed innumerable rumors about how Texas had changed during the war. There were stories that the German immigrant communities in the Hill Country had risen up in some sort of Unionist revolt and that General Kirby Smith, commander of all Confederate forces in Texas, had made himself dictator and was refusing to communicate with the Richmond government. McFadden did not give any of these rumors much credibility, having heard more than his fair share of dubious stories during his time in the service. He kept telling a worried Annie that they should not believe anything until they had the evidence before their eyes.
In addition to wild rumors about Texas, their encounters with other travelers provided hard news of events back east. Newspapers were reporting that some sort of conference had been held in Canada and that a treaty of peace between the Union and the Confederacy had been hammered out after long and intense negotiation. The details of the treaty were sketchy and there appeared to be some question as to whether it would be ratified by the respective legislatures. Every day brought word of some new development, the general consensus being that peace was right around the corner.
The coming peace had made McFadden face the question of what he would do with the rest of his life, especially now that he had a wife. The decision to go west to Texas had not been made lightly. Annie had inherited her father’s wealth and the two of them could have lived comfortably in any of the cities of the Confederacy. But McFadden’s heart had been drawn back irresistibly to Texas.
Annie, having grown up as the daughter of a prominent businessman, accepted the role of a farmer’s wife with such ease that McFadden wondered how much of her reaction was feigned. As they pushed farther and farther west, he realized that she was in fact delighted. Her spirit seemed to rise with each passing mile and with it her appreciation for adventure. She had been uneasy during the first few evenings in which they had camped out under the stars, but now she positively reveled in it. This gave him hope that she would find the life of a farmer’s wife agreeable. If she didn’t, they could always go back to Atlanta.
They had begun their day’s trek early, even before the sun had risen. The scorching Texas summer was still in its early stages, but McFadden knew from long experience how hot it would be before the day was over. Best to get the horses moving while it was still relatively comfortable.
As the hours and miles passed by, they did what they had done every day for the past month. They talked. Throughout the journey, McFadden had regaled her with stories of Scottish history, tales of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, Rob Roy and John Knox. Even as their wagon bumped along the shoddy roads, he recited to her the poems of Robert Burns while she read to him out of a copy of Shakespeare’s collected works that they had purchased before setting out. They had discussed religion, literature, even the bits of philosophy and science they had picked up from their respective reading.
They grew closer the farther they traveled, intellectually as well as emotionally. Most of the women McFadden had known before the war had been rough wives of farmers, so he was unused to the education and articulation Annie presented to him on a daily basis. He regretted his own lack of a university education and had resolved that his children, however many there would be, would not endure such a limitation.
Events soon made that thought more than hypothetical. During their brief stay in Vicksburg, Annie had told her husband that she suspected a baby might be on the way. By the time they were passing through northern Louisiana, she was certain of it. McFadden had resolved to make contact with a doctor in Waco as one of their first priorities when they finally reached their destination.
Having spent so many long days on the road, both of them were increasingly anxious to reach the farm. McFadden grew more and more concerned by what he would find when they arrived. Would there even be a structure resembling anything like a farmhouse? What would be the condition of the soil? It was too late in the season to plant anything, so how would they get by until the spring? There were endless questions, and none of them yet had any answers.
The sun had long since peaked and was approaching the horizon when, at long last, the desolate remains of the McFadden farm came into view. He pulled the horses to a stop and, for an endless moment, sat in stillness and silence. The farmhouse still stood, but the windows were broken and much of the wooden frame around one of the doors had fallen down. Some of the planks in the roof had been blown off by the powerful winds that so often swept through the countryside, leaving numerous gaps that would have to be filled in.
Annie glanced over at him, studying his face as a wave of powerful memories flooded his mind. There was the tub in which his infant sisters had happily splashed while being bathed by his mother. It had fallen over but could easily be set right. There were stones from the chimney that had fallen down. Repairing that would take much more work, but he wanted to do so in order to recreate the evenings by the fire during the brief winters, which he and his family had enjoyed so very much.
He spotted a small stone standing somewhat upright, which he suddenly recalled marked the final resting place of Gus, a white terrier his father had brought back from a trip to San Antonio, despite the protests of his mother than it had cost far too much. Gus had proven his worth, however, largely freeing the house from rats and other rodents before falling prey to the poisonous bite of a rattlesnake at the age of nine. During those nine years, Gus had been McFadden’s favorite playmate and the memory of his happy bark now brought a sorrowful smile to his face.
He stepped down from the wagon, beginning a slow walk around the farmhouse. Annie came down and walked beside him, holding his hand but saying nothing. As they passed around to the far side of the house, they saw the graves of his family, the stones marking the resting places of his father, his mother, and his two sisters still standing quietly, as though they had been waiting for him to return. Grass was growing around the graves and he resolved at once that he would clear it away the next morning as his first order of business. He knelt down and gently put his hands on the stones, first on those of his parents and then on those of his sisters, saying nothing and saying so much.
They entered the house. The furniture was long gone, probably taken by passers-by who saw no reason not to help themselves to it. The rooms were entirely empty, the floors covered with a layer of dust. It seemed eerie to think that no one had lived in the rooms for more than two years. No conversation had taken place, no laughter, no crying of children. The rooms had simply been empty, like the endless spaces between the stars, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the windows.
“This house will soon be filled with life,” Annie said, smiling cautiously.
He looked at her and returned the smile. “Are you sure you want to live here?”
“I want to be wherever you are, my darling. At the very least, I want us to give it a try. This is where you come from, so it is where part of our child comes from. It is only right that he be brought up here.”
“Being a farmer’s wife is not easy.”
She smiled and playfully slapped him. “So you’ve been telling me every moment of every day since we left Atlanta. If I didn’t know better, James McFadden, I would suspect that you were trying to frighten me away.”
He laughed. “Foolish indeed is the man who would ever try to frighten you. And even more foolish is the man who would ever try to persuade you to do anything you didn’t want to do.”
It was too late in the day to unload much of the wagon, so they simply hauled their blankets into the house to make an improvised bed on the floor. McFadden kept his Navy Colt and sword close at hand, as well as an Enfield rifle he had acquired. With the armistice, Texas cavalry had been deployed on the frontier to chase the Comanches back to their own lands, so he did not anticipate any trouble. Still, it was well to be prepared for anything.
And so James and Annie McFadden went to sleep for their first night in their own home. As they drifted off, neither could possibly have imagined that the child even then growing in Annie’s belly, who would be given the name of Thaddeus Kościuszko McFadden, would one day shatter the Confederate States of America.
*****
September 1, Evening
Sergeant Bayard gripped his Springfield rifle tightly, gazing down the hill at the column of Confederate troops marching down the road. Although his men would have followed whatever orders he had seen fit to give, he had already made the decision not to open fire. His band numbered scarcely more than fifty, most of them fellow veterans of the 13th United States Colored Troops, but some having come from other regiments. The Confederates, by contrast, appeared to be at least five hundred strong, probably being the remnants of two or three regiments headed home together. The Southerners looked to be a jolly group, laughing and talking happily among themselves, carrying their rifles in all sorts of ways.
Had Bayard and his men sprung an ambush, they would have had both the advantage of surprise and the tactical benefit of the high ground on their side. They would certainly have been able to kill a great number of the hated graycoats. However much Bayard detested the Southerners for seeking to keep him and his kin in a state of slavery, he acknowledged their skill as soldiers. After recovering from the shock, the Confederates would have stormed the hill and almost certainly destroyed his unit. Better, for the time being, to wait.
His men sensed his caution and held their fire, the training and discipline they had acquired during the war still holding strong. Not long after they had made the decision to take to the woods, they had elected Bayard as their leader. This was partly because of his previous status as a noncommissioned officer, but mostly because he was the man who had defeated Nathan Bedford Forrest in hand-to-hand combat.
The orders for the 13th U.S.C.T. to withdraw from Nashville back into United States territory had come a month before, not long after the United States Senate had finally ratified the treaty of peace with the Confederacy. His commander, Major Easton, had offered to help Bayard find a decent job in the North, but had made the offer already knowing that Bayard would refuse. Instead, when the train whistle sounded and the regiment was supposed to board, Bayard and roughly half of the regiment had quietly slipped away, taking their rifles with them. Easton and the rest of the white officers had made no effort to stop them. Indeed, they had made a point to leave hundreds of ammunition pouches stuffed to the brim with cartridges lying conveniently next to the railroad depot, which Bayard and his men had gratefully taken with them.
They had made a camp in an isolated part of the woods, many miles away from the nearest town or railroad. They were supporting themselves thus far mostly by hunting, but that would not provide for their needs forever. Soon they would have to begin raiding the smaller communities in order to obtain sufficient food. There was already some discussion among the group about how to make contact with plantation slaves, who might be able to smuggle some food and other supplies out to them.
There would be other groups, Bayard knew. Well over a hundred thousand freed slaves had joined the Union army, been taught military discipline, felt the confidence that comes with shouldering a rifle and wearing a uniform. U.S.C.T. regiments had served in Tennessee, in the lower Mississippi Valley, and along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The woods and swamps of these areas would make ideal places from which to conduct a guerrilla war. Many of these soldiers were not about to quit the fight to free their people from slavery. The Confederacy might think they had won the war, but they were about to discover that the war was far from over.
Bayard silently waved his hand. He and his men slowly faded back into the woods.
THE END
Author’s Note
Shattered Nation is a novel of alternate history. In actual fact, Jefferson Davis did remove Joseph Johnston from command of the Army of Tennessee on July 17, 1864, and replaced him with John Bell Hood. Hood proceeded to fight and lose three battles against Sherman over the next eight days, including the historical Battle of Peachtree Creek. Hood’s army suffered enormous casualties in these engagements while achieving little if any advantage. In late August, the Army of Tennessee was defeated again at the Battle of Jonesboro, which resulted in the Union capture of Atlanta on September 2. The capture of Atlanta, in turn, provided the morale boost that catapulted Abraham Lincoln to reelection that November. The fate of the Confederacy had been sealed.
Davis’s decision to replace Johnston with Hood is perhaps the most historically controversial decision the Confederate President made during the whole war. Rivers of ink have been spilled over the question, beginning even before the fighting had ended. In a series of bitter postwar memoirs, Davis and Hood both blamed Johnston for the fall of Atlanta, essentially accusing him of being too cowardly to fight during the months leading up to his removal. Johnston, by contrast, held Hood responsible for the failure to defeat Sherman at Cassville and suggested that Davis’s removal order took place just before he was about to launch a long-planned attack on the Union army.
Who was right and who was wrong? The truth will never be known and I certainly don’t pretend to know the answer. My novel is an exercise in imagination. In developing the plot for Shattered Nation, I made a conscious decision to accept Johnston’s claim that he planned a massive attack on the Union army at Peachtree Creek. For all I know, Davis was correct in fearing that Johnston would have abandoned Atlanta without a fight had he been left in command of the Army of Tennessee.
Still, I believe that Johnston’s reputation as overly cautious is not entirely deserved. History records that Johnston launched offensive battles on multiple occasions during the Civil War. He attacked McClellan at the Battle of Seven Pines in May in 1862. During the Atlanta Campaign itself, he attacked Sherman at Resaca and Dallas and tried to attack him at Cassville and New Hope Church. In the last days of the war, Johnston launched the last major offensive of the Confederacy at the Battle of Bentonville in March of 1865. I find it entirely plausible to suppose that Johnston would have attacked Sherman at Peachtree Creek had he remained in command.
A few quick notes…
James McFadden and the members of t
he Turnbow family are completely fictitious.
The 7th Texas was a real regiment and the recounted history of its service before the events of the novel is actual fact. Some of the names of the soldiers depicted are the names of actual men who served in the unit, though the portrayal of their personalities is derived entirely from the author’s imagination. The continued existence of Company F of the 7th Texas Infantry – the “Lone Star Rifles” - is fictional. In actual fact, the unit was broken up after the Battle of Raymond and its men transferred to Company A.
The 7th Texas was under the command of different captains during the course of 1864, including Captain James Collett. To avoid confusion, I decided to have Collett in command throughout the novel. I confess that my love for the city of Austin may have had something to do with this, as Captain Collett’s grave can be found in Oakwood Cemetery not far from the Texas State Capitol.
Careful observers might note that Hiram Granbury took sick leave in early June and did not resume command of his brigade until July 23, which would be three days after the Battle of Peachtree Creek. But since this is an alternate history novel and because I couldn’t bear the thought of Granbury missing the battle, I decided I could overlook this particular factoid.
Some who read my novel before publication suggested that the acoustic shadow which prevents Sherman from hearing the fighting at Peachtree Creek is something of a deus ex machina. However, this was what happened in actual fact on July 20, 1864, so I felt comfortable including it in the storyline.
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