Candle in the Darkness

  The young men who arrived to enlist came from all walks of life—laborers and lawyers, farmers and factory workers, miners and merchants. Sally would call out to them from her carriage window, asking where they were from. Their varied answers amazed me. “Mississippi, ma’am . . . Texas . . . Florida . . . Missouri.” Seeing their enthusiasm, one might have guessed they were going to a picnic, not a war.

  Army encampments soon sprawled in all directions around the city, with men bivouacked in places like Monroe Park and the fairgrounds where Charles and I had our disastrous first date. From the top of every hill, white tents were visible in the distance, dotting the landscape like mushrooms.

  As the spring evenings warmed and lengthened, many of Richmond’s ladies made it their habit to ride out to the fairgrounds after dinner to watch the evening dress parades. Sally was one of them. She coaxed me into coming with her to watch Charles and Jonathan drill. The central fairgrounds above the city had been transformed into a vast instruction camp where Colonel Smith and his young cadets from the Virginia Military Institute drilled the new recruits. We saw gentlemen in top hats and frock coats drilling side by side with barefooted sharecroppers in muslin shirts. Suppliers simply couldn’t keep up with the demand for uniforms and boots.

  Those early days of parade drill often resembled a comedy routine. Inexperienced soldiers would mix up the commands, causing them to pivot in the wrong direction, march straight into each other, and even accidentally whack each other in the head with their rifles as they turned. Eventually everyone learned to form a column for long marches, to dress the line, and to form a line of battle in any direction. Once they’d mastered those commands, they were ready to be trained for larger tactical maneuvers. The men also had to learn the nine steps required to load and fire their weapons, although ammunition was too precious to waste on practice.

  “I have something for you,” Sally said on one of our first trips to the fairgrounds. She leaned close to pin a rosette of palmetto leaves onto my lapel.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a secession badge. Everyone’s wearing one. It’s a symbol of patriotism for the Confederacy.”

  The thought of it made me uneasy. I still considered myself an American, so it seemed disloyal to support the Confederacy. Yet when I thought of Charles going off to fight the enemy, American soldiers would be trying to kill him, American warships would be bombarding my home.

  Sally didn’t seem as bothered by divided loyalties as I was, nor did she notice my unease. As we sat on our folding stools near the edge of the field that evening, watching the maneuvers, she kept up a steady, patriotic monologue.

  “Just look at all those wonderful, brave men. Aren’t they courageous souls? When I see their bravery and determination it makes me so proud to be a Virginian. I want our men to know I’m behind them all the way. No sacrifice we’re asked to make is too great for the cause. I’m willing to do whatever I can here on the home front to support them, aren’t you, Caroline?”

  She turned to me for my assent, but I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I pointed vaguely toward the ranks of men and said, “Are they the ‘Blues’? Do you see Charles and Jonathan anywhere?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s their unit.” Then she returned to her speech. “The North will back down and leave us alone, you’ll see. They’re all cowards, afraid of a fight. Why, I read in the Richmond papers that they can hardly get anyone up there to volunteer—and even then it’s only for ninety days. If they ever do attack us, we’ll lick them in no time. Everybody knows Billy Yank won’t fight. Besides, our cause is just.”

  Sally talked very bravely, but I wondered how she—how I— would react if faced with another scare like Pawnee Sunday. What would we do if the next threat was genuine?

  One evening when Sally and I were at the parade grounds, she grew especially excited as she pointed to a tall, distinguishedlooking man with graying hair and beard watching from the sidelines. “Look! That’s Colonel Lee . . . I mean General Lee! He’s in command of all the Confederate forces in Virginia. Isn’t he a good-looking man?”

  Robert E. Lee was indeed a striking man. Tall and broad shouldered, probably in his mid-fifties, he had a handsome, wellproportioned face with calm, composed features. His military bearing was commanding and dignified, yet not cold or stern as many career military men sometimes were.

  “I read in the news that Mr. Lincoln offered him the command of all the Union armies,” Sally said, “but he refused.”

  I had read that, too. Lee, the hero of Harper’s Ferry, said he couldn’t fight against his birthplace, his home, his family. Since he had graduated from West Point—had been the academy’s superintendent, in fact—he would now be fighting against many of his former colleagues, friends, teachers, and even students like Robert. I sympathized with Colonel Lee’s dilemma. People I loved lived in the North, too. But like Charles, Lee was determined to fight for the South. At least I could be thankful that Charles and Jonathan would be under Lee’s capable leadership.

  By late spring, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas had joined Virginia and the other secessionists, bringing a total of eleven states into the Confederacy. The new government voted to move its capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond. We would be the “Washington, D.C.” of the South. I thought our city was already filled to capacity after the earlier influx of soldiers and refugees, but now it nearly burst its seams as politicians and government officials, along with their families, arrived from all the other Southern states. I couldn’t imagine where we would put them all.

  President Jefferson Davis arrived on May 29, moving into the Spotswood Hotel until his new executive mansion, not far from Charles’ home, was ready for occupancy. The city celebrated his arrival in grand style, decorating the hotel and nearly every house in Court End with the Stars and Bars in his honor. They held a reception for him at the governor’s mansion the following day. I accompanied Sally, her mother, and the rest of Richmond’s fashionable ladies in greeting President Davis in the forenoon; the men’s reception was in the afternoon.

  “Wasn’t that exciting?” Sally said as we made our way back to her house afterward. “Think of it! We’ve met the president!”

  “He isn’t much to look at,” Mrs. St. John said with a sniff.

  “Well, neither is Mr. Lincoln, Mother,” Sally said. “The point is, none of us except Charles has ever met a president before, and now here we are, living in the nation’s capital!”

  I had endured the reception as if it was just another dreary party, but as I listened to the two women talking, reality began to set in. Not only was I being forced to face a war I dreaded, but I also lived in the capital city of a new nation. Overnight, Richmond had become a symbol of the rebellion, and for the enemy, the ultimate prize of war. The familiar Stars and Stripes no longer flew from every flagpole. In fact, I no longer lived in the United States of America. The city around me might look familiar, but I now resided in a foreign land.

  What worried me most was the fact that nobody I knew seemed to grieve over this loss the way I did. The man I loved was even willing to die for the right to create a new nation, fly a new flag. What was wrong with me that made me so different?

  I continued my prayers each morning and night—or whenever fear began to strangle me—asking God to help me through whatever the day might bring. And as summer neared, routine life in Richmond quickly adopted a new rhythm. Our days began with the distant sounds of reveille and the rattle of drums, calling soldiers to duty; they ended with evening taps. Throughout the day, the sound of martial music and the tramp of marching feet served as background accompaniments to everything we did.

  As soon as a company of soldiers was sufficiently drilled in military exercises, they would be transferred wherever the Confederacy needed them, defending one of the enemy’s three possible invasion routes to Richmond. General Joseph Johnston and his forces were positioned in the Shenandoah Valley, guarding against a western attack. Gene
ral Beauregard, hero of Fort Sumter, patrolled the northern approach and the rail route from Washington, D.C. to Richmond. Colonel Magruder was in charge of the peninsula, keeping an eye on the Union troops who still held Fortress Monroe, less than seventy-five miles southeast of Richmond.

  As the newly mobilized troops marched through the city toward their assignments, the ladies of Richmond would send them on their way with cheers and blown kisses and fluttering handkerchiefs. Sally believed that it was our patriotic duty to support our men by joining in as many of these farewell marches as possible. She somehow found out where and when the men would be departing and made a determined effort to show up along the parade route, plowing forward in rain or shine, towing me in her wake as if she was a mule and I was a barge on the Kanawha Canal.

  I found it difficult not to weep as I watched young men, family men with small children, saying farewell to the people they loved, reluctantly releasing them from their arms after a final, lingering embrace, then marching from sight, full of resolve and determination. We all knew that many of the waving, cheering women would never see their departing soldiers again, and behind our smiles our hearts were as heavy as cannonballs.

  Inevitably the day came when Charles and Jonathan completed their training. The Richmond Blues entered into Confederate service as part of the First Virginia Infantry. On the day before they departed, Captain Wise granted Jonathan a short leave to visit Hilltop. Jonathan stopped by my house on his way there, so excited, so full of life and the lust for adventure, that it was hard to imagine that anything terrible could happen to him. Wouldn’t he always be this vibrantly alive?

  “I’ve come to dance with you one last time before I go,” he announced, then he swept me into his arms and waltzed me around the foyer, singing “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair.”

  “See, my dear?” he said when he had whirled me into a state of dizzy laughter. “We’ve always made great dancing partners, haven’t we? Promise you’ll write to me, Caroline. Promise me you won’t waste all your ink on Private Charles St. John.”

  “Of course I’ll write to you. And I’ll pester Sally every day to make sure she writes to you, too.”

  “You are a sweetheart. Listen, I have to go—”

  “Already? You just got here.”

  “Sorry, but would you do me one more favor? Would you tell Josiah to be ready to leave by the time I get back from Hilltop tonight? He’s coming with me.”

  “Wait a minute. Coming with you . . . where?” I was confused. Josiah had been living here in town with us while Jonathan trained. Tessie had been dreading the day when the training ended and Josiah would be sent back to Hilltop. “Isn’t Josiah going home to the plantation with you?”

  “No, I’ve decided to take him off to war with me. My unit is going north to establish defensive positions along the Washington rail routes. We could use a good, strong set of muscles to dig entrenchments.”

  The absurdity of his plan infuriated me. “You’re fighting for the right to keep Josiah a slave—and you have the nerve to ask him to help you?”

  “Calm down, my dear little abolitionist,” he said, taking my hands. “Yes, I finally read your pamphlet, so I know you’re one of those.” He grinned, as if it were all a merry joke. “Josiah won’t be fighting in any battles. He’ll be quite safe behind our lines—which is more than I can say for yours truly. Besides, I’m certainly not the only soldier who’s bringing his boy along.”

  “Boy? Josiah is a man, not a boy!”

  “It’s only a figure of speech. . . . Come on, Caroline, don’t be mad at me. Who knows when we’ll see each other again?”

  Once again, his charm won me over, just as it always had in the past. I reached up to touch his cheek. “I could never stay mad at you.”

  “Then how about one last hug good-bye?”

  I held him fondly in my arms—and in my heart. “Be safe, Jonathan,” I whispered. “Please. Please. Be safe.”

  Charles came later that evening to eat dinner with us. Esther vowed to fill him with enough food to last until the war ended, then she made a valiant attempt to do just that.

  “Please, no more,” Charles finally begged. “My uniform buttons are about to pop off, and I haven’t a clue how to sew them back on.”

  “I’m sorry, Massa Charles, but I do love to see you eat. You a man with an appetite, just like my Josiah. Little Missy here don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive. Ain’t no fun feeding her at all.”

  After dinner, Charles and I walked outside through the drawing room doors and into the balmy evening. Tomorrow was the last day of June. If it weren’t for the war, we would have been married in three more weeks. I was sickened at the thought that this was our last evening together, that neither of us knew when— or if—we would ever see each other again. We walked wordlessly through Eli’s garden, never noticing the carefully tended boxwood or lacy crepe myrtle, oblivious to the scent and beauty of the flowers we passed. Charles didn’t stop until we reached the shelter of the magnolia tree near the rear of our yard, the tree I’d climbed so often with my friend Grady. We ducked beneath its low-hanging branches, then stood once again beside the trunk. There, hidden behind a curtain of thick, glossy leaves, Charles bent to kiss me.

  “You have no idea how much I want to make you my wife,” he murmured as we clung to each other afterward. “It should be our life together that’s just beginning, not a war.”

  “Then let’s get married, Charles—now, tonight. I don’t care about a big wedding, I want to be your wife, if only for one night.”

  He pulled back to look into my eyes. “I can’t do that to you. I won’t. If anything should happen to me—”

  “Don’t say it!”

  “Listen now. If anything should happen, I don’t want to leave you a widow.”

  “I want to be your wife.”

  “I know. But let’s get this war behind us first. Let’s begin our marriage in happier, more hopeful times.”

  Our final moment together had come. I tried to study every detail of his face in the moonlight, memorizing it. We had exchanged photographs, but a picture wouldn’t help me recall the exact shade of his eyes or the texture of his hair. It couldn’t offer me the same assurance of love that I felt every time he looked at me.

  He gave me one last kiss, one final embrace. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Please don’t go,” I begged as I held him for the last time.

  “Caroline . . . please don’t ask me to stay.”

  He tore himself from my arms, tearing my heart from its place, as well. I watched him hurry away.

  He looked back once when he reached the garden gate—the same gate they’d dragged Grady through—but the night was too dark for me to see Charles’ face.

  Jonathan returned for Josiah later that night. When all three men were gone, Tessie and I wept in each other’s arms. We didn’t speak. There were no words to say. We both knew the thoughts and emotions that filled the other’s mind and heart. The color of our skin didn’t matter, nor did the fact that she was my slave and I was her mistress. We each loved a man, and now we each felt the same pain, knew the same fear at his leaving.

  The day after Charles left, I began practicing the piano again, using music as an outlet for my hoarded emotions. Concentrating on the notes took my mind off the war, if only for a few hours each day. I was in the parlor one afternoon, so intent on learning Mozart’s “Turkish March” that I didn’t hear my father return home early from work. I don’t know how long he stood listening in the doorway, but when I finished the piece, he applauded softly.

  “That was excellent, Caroline.”

  “Is there a reason why you’re home early?” My heart had changed tempo the moment I saw him there. It accelerated when Daddy moved a small parlor chair next to the piano and sat down beside me.

  “May I talk with you, Sugar?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. But I’ve reached an important deci
sion today, and I’d like to share it with you.”

  “You aren’t going away to war, too, are you?”

  He smiled, and for a moment I saw my childhood daddy again, the man with the familiar, cockeyed smile and uplifted brow. “No . . . no, I’m not going to fight. This war came ten years too late for me. But there is a way I’d like to help the Confederate effort.” I stared down at my hands as I waited, my heart beating a quickstep.

  “You’ve read in the papers about ‘Operation Anaconda,’ haven’t you, Sugar? How the U.S. Navy intends to close all our Southern ports?”

  I could only nod and wait, fearing what he was about to say.

  “Lincoln thinks he can strangle us to death by cutting off all our supplies. Frankly, I think it will be quite impossible for seventy-odd Union ships to patrol more than three thousand miles of Southern coastline. Still, it’s clear that Richmond has already begun to feel the effects of blockade.”

  Anyone who had shopped downtown lately had noticed the blockade’s effects, not only in the higher prices but also in the growing scarcity of many consumer items. Richmond relied on imported goods. Everything came from outside the South, from tin pots to teacups, from our hairpins to our shoes. In the months ahead we would quickly learn to either make do, do without, or make it ourselves.

  “Is the blockade interfering with your business, Daddy?”

  “It is, but that’s not the point. I met with President Davis today. He said the government is having trouble importing the military equipment we so desperately need. England is willing to sell us their Enfield rifles, but we need ships to get them here.”