Chapter one, continued

Father had much to say to me. He was telling me the things I would have to know if he died before we met again, and we both knew it.

When I finally made it up to my room, I was drugged with sleep and sadness. All my life, I had planned to go to sea. It was a family tradition. My great-grandfather had been captain of a privateer during the Revolutionary War. Our plantation was bought with prize money from his three cruises. My grandfather was a lieutenant on the Constitution when she captured the HMS Java in 1812. Even Father had served on coasting bugeyes when he was a boy, before he had run for office. I had been about to follow in their footsteps. With an appointment to the Naval Academy, the dream had been so close I could almost touch it. To lose it now seemed too much to bear.

But . . . when the southern states seceded, they would surely need a navy. That thought cheered me considerably.

(Even though it doesn’t seem so now, this is a precursor of things to come. The fact that Matt’s family has seen a world beyond the South is instrumental in preparing for his later change of heart. He will contemplate this himself, in coming chapters. Having this paragraph here both shows his present state of mind and prepares the reader for changes which are to come later.)

*****

The next morning James readied the carriage and drove Father and me across town to the boarding school to pick up Sarah. Until a few months ago she had stayed with Father, but during the hopeless battle to keep Lincoln from being elected President, he had not had time for her.

Apparently Father had sent instructions ahead, because there was a pile of trunks on the ground outside the carriage house. We left James and one of Mrs. Davison’s slaves to load them while we went inside. (We associate Washington, D. C. with Lincoln and the Union, but at this time it was a city full of slaves.) The house was full of the early morning sounds of young girls awakening and getting ready for the day. We could hear scurrying and laughter in the rooms above, and the hallway where we waited was full of the pleasant smell of bacon and grits.

Mrs. Davison was short and round, in a hoop skirt that made her look rounder still. Cosmetics made her cheeks red and her eyelashes long and black, even so early in the morning, and her hair was elaborately done up. She was full of sighs and flutters, gesturing with her fan and declaring how she “didn’t know what she was going to do without Sarah. The girl was such an angel!” If she had been twenty years younger and sixty pounds lighter, she would have been the picture of a southern belle; instead she was a parody of one.

Since Sarah was still eating, Mrs. Davison took us on a tour of the lower part of her house. Father endured it gracefully, but I could see it was hard for him to listen. The nation was falling apart around him; all he wanted was to see his little girl off on her way to safety so he could get back to the business of saving what could be saved. Father’s strained courtesy made Mrs. Davison even more silly in my eyes.

Eventually the tour ended and Sarah was brought out. To my relief, she was sensibly dressed for traveling, in a dark dress of linen with no hoops to get in her way. She ran into Father’s arms, then greeted me with a curtsey and a shy smile.

Chapter one, continued.

Father led me back into the parlor and motioned me toward a chair. “You know Lincoln was elected. You know war is coming.”

“Yes, I know, but might be a year before it begins. Or President Buchanan may let the South go peaceably, before Lincoln is even inaugurated.”

“Perhaps, but I doubt it. And Lincoln will fight.” 

There were men who would welcome this war. Senator Jacobs was such a man, but my father was not.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“I am sending your sister to stay with your aunt in Pennsylvania. I want you to take her there and stay with her. I want you to protect her.”

“Pennsylvania! In the North! What about Waterside. Why aren’t you sending us back home?”

Father said, “Waterside will be a battleground when war comes. All of Virginia will be. There will be no safety there as long as the fighting continues.”

He looked sharply at me and said, “Matt, you are the only one I can depend on to keep Sarah safe.”

I was hurt by his doubt. I said, “You know that I will keep her safe. I would keep her safe wherever we were, in Waterside as well as in Pennsylvania.”

“How, Boy? If I sent you back to Waterside, how would you keep her safe from Federal troops? How would you explain to our neighbors if you stayed at Waterside while all their sons were going off to war? How could you resist when they came to recruit you? Could you stand by when they called you a coward?”

He was right. I could hardly stand hearing the word here, now, from my father. I could certainly never stand to have it hurled at me in anger by a neighbor. For a minute there was no sound in the room but the ticking of a clock. Then I said, “If I go North with Sarah, won’t that be the act of a coward?”

“No. You will just be taking your sister to safety.”

“And I will be taking myself to safety,” I answered. “I can’t do that. You wouldn’t do it! Father, I have always done what you said, but this time you are asking too much. Tell me why you are sending me away from my home to live with the enemy when war is coming. Convince me that you have good reason and I will go, but I won’t go just because you tell me to. Not this time.”

There was irritation in his face, but some pride, too. He said, “Yes, you may have to fight. But not yet. The war is not here yet. Take your sister to your aunt’s and stay there with her as long as you feel that you can. See to her safety, and then do what you must.”

He had much more to say to me. We sat for hours as he brought me up to date on the details of Waterside. He told me what fields were under what crops, how the shipyard on the James River was doing, and what slaves he had assigned to which jobs. It chilled me to listen. He was telling me the things I would have to know if he died before we met again, and we both knew it.