Chapter Thirty-Four
As the war dragged on, the atmosphere in Mount Airy began to shift. The town, once lively with market chatter and the hum
of daily work, moved at a slower, wearier pace. Faces grew gaunt, eyes dulled by worry. Pride had faded to apprehension. At
supper, silences stretched long.
In the early days we’d lined the roads for parades and farewell processions, cheering the boys off to war. They marched past
our farm in crisp, clean uniforms, brass buttons gleaming in the sun, tipping their hats, certain of swift and glorious victory.
We sent them off with baskets of bread, handkerchiefs embroidered with their initials, ribbons from sweethearts tucked into
breast pockets. There was lots of talk of honor, of duty, of God’s will.
Now the roads were mostly empty, save for the occasional Confederate recruiter or courier passing through.
Casualty lists—set in type so small you had to squint, as if shrinking the letters might lessen the blow—began to fill entire
pages of the paper. Names we knew. Boys we’d watched grow up. Marked as wounded. Marked as missing. Marked as killed.
Some were buried in distant fields. Some had deserted, though no one dared say so aloud.
The ones who returned did not come back the same.
With Addie, I attended the women’s aid society meetings, where we worked in teams to provide the tattered Confederate Army with shirts, blankets, gloves, socks, undergarments, and food.
We busied ourselves sewing and cooking, loading boxes and bags onto trains bound for encampments in places we knew only from war reports—Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Vicksburg.
There was always more to be done. We carried home bundles of wool and gauze, assignments to be completed in our parlors by the next meeting.
On Addie’s porch, we read the Richmond Enquirer. It reported that our boys were pushing north, showing the Yankees what the South could do. They printed stories of bold
advances, praised General Lee’s brilliance, heralded our divine destiny. Even Gettysburg, when the news arrived in early July
1863, was spun to downplay the disaster. The headlines were triumphant: Lee’s army crossing into Pennsylvania, the Yankees
retreating, victory within reach.
But then came letters—carried by riders who’d slipped through enemy lines after days on the road—that told a different story.
One afternoon at a women’s aid society meeting, as we stitched in a loose circle of chairs drawn close enough for quiet talk,
Martha Tucker reached into her sewing bag and withdrew a worn, folded piece of paper. “I have news from Rufus.”
The room hushed. Hands paused mid-stitch.
“He was at Gettysburg.” Her fingers trembled as she opened the page. “He said it’s a miracle he survived. His regiment fell
by the dozens.” Squinting at the letter, she read, “ ‘The hills were slick with blood. All through the night I could hear
the wounded crying out between the lines, begging for water.’ ”
A pair of scissors clicked shut.
“Mercy,” someone whispered.
“Thank the Lord he’s safe,” said another.
Martha was teary as she tucked the letter back in her bag. “For now, at least.”
Gettysburg had been the bloodiest battle in American history, the papers finally reported. More than fifty thousand men dead,
wounded, or missing in just three days.
Sitting on my porch, Chang folded the newspaper, his face flushed with anger. “Lee never should’ve ordered that final charge. Sent our boys straight into their guns.” He spat over the railing. “And now they call it a ‘strategic withdrawal.’ As if we don’t know what that means.”
Eng shook his head. “What good would it do to tell the truth? Better to let people hope.”
I stopped reading the papers. Most of us did. Even reports of small victories felt hollow. What did it matter if we pushed
the Yankees back a few miles when every telegram brought another mother to her knees?
Some nights I dreamed the war itself was creeping toward us—not as gunfire or marching feet, but as a rising tide, intent
on pulling us under.
Earlier that spring, Christopher, Addie and Chang’s eldest son, had enlisted with the 37th Virginia Cavalry Battalion, a unit
that recruited in the North Carolina border counties. Addie stitched the Stars and Bars to hang from their porch. The morning
Chris left, Chang stood taller than I’d ever seen him, pride etched on his face as he clasped his son’s shoulder. “Defend
our way of life,” he told him, his voice choked with emotion. “The South must not surrender what is rightfully ours.”
Chris rode off on a horse from their farm, carrying a rifle inscribed with his initials.
Stephen was just a year younger than his cousin. Each letter he received from Christopher only fueled his eagerness to enlist.
“I’m going too,” he declared. “We need every man we can get.”
I had taught this boy his letters, soothed him through nightmares, nursed his fevers. And now here he stood, eyes bright with
conviction, eager to throw himself into a war whose horrors he only partly understood.
“You’re not a man yet,” I said.
He grinned. “I will be soon enough.”
On his eighteenth birthday, he signed the enlistment papers without hesitation.
The night before he left, I found him in the barn, polishing a rifle that had once been his grandfather’s. The stock was worn
smooth by generations of hands, the brass gleaming in the lantern light.
“You should rest,” I said, sitting on a hay bale. “You’ll have a long day tomorrow.”
“Can’t sleep,” he said, not looking up. “Too much on my mind.”
I watched him work, his movements careful, almost reverent, as he rubbed a cloth along the barrel. I thought of that same
hand clasped in mine as we crossed creeks or climbed fences.
“Christopher says the Yanks are running low on supplies,” he said. “He thinks by summer it’ll all be over. We’ll have pushed
them back for good.”
“That’s what they say.”
He looked up. “You don’t think we can win?”
“I think war isn’t what you imagine. It’s not all parades and glory, Stephen.”
“I know what it is, Ma.” His voice had an edge. “I’ve read Chris’s letters. I know men die.”
“I just don’t . . .” I hesitated. “It’s not only that. I’m afraid they might not treat you like the others.”
His jaw tightened. “I’ll be wearing the same uniform. Carrying the same gun.”
“Stephen—”
“What would you have me do? Stay home while others fight? What kind of man would that make me?” He laid the rifle aside. “I
know what I look like, Ma,” he said. “But this is my home too. My fight too.”
A dozen arguments filled my head. I knew he would hear them as doubt, not love.
“I have to go,” he said. “For Chris. For all of us. For our way of life.”
Our way of life. Once, I might have spoken those words myself.
I stood and brushed the hay from my skirt. I wanted to hold him like I used to, pull him close, but I knew he wouldn’t let
me, not tonight. “It’s late,” I said. “Try to sleep.”
As I reached the barn door, he called after me. “Ma?”
I turned.
“I’ll make you proud.”
The next morning, he rode off to war in a uniform two sizes too large, the sleeves rolled at the wrists. I stood on the porch
with baby Georgianna in my arms and watched until he disappeared from view.
He fought alongside his cousin in the same battalion until August, when Christopher was shot from his saddle during a skirmish.
His blood-spattered horse was brought back to Mount Airy, and for weeks we feared the worst. Then word came that he’d been
wounded, captured, and taken to Camp Chase in Ohio, a Union prison.
A month later, we learned that Stephen, too, had been shot—just below the knee, near Winchester, Virginia. When the wound
healed, he returned to his company.
That fall, Eng and Chang began dressing in Confederate gray. At night, under the flickering glow of spermaceti candles, they
sat in the parlor poring over Prang maps, popular lithographic prints of battlefields, tracing the looping lines of rivers
and ridges with their fingers. Eng, a pipe clenched in his teeth, read aloud the letters we received after Stephen had been
released and sent back to the front.
We are holding firm, though rations are thin.
I contracted smallpox but didn’t tell you sooner because I didn’t want you to worry. Only a few scars remain.
My leg has nearly healed. I’ll rejoin my battalion soon.
Most of the men treat me fair enough. I keep my head down and do what I’m here for.
I pictured Stephen in that oversize uniform, trying to look older than he was. His gaze fixed on a future I could neither predict nor protect him from.
The righteous hand of the Confederacy. A holy war for the Southern way of life.
Sundays brought sermons laced with patriotism—a preacher who still called it God’s war, though there were fewer amens these
days and more tired nods. With the war pressing in on every side, I had agreed to return to White Plains Baptist with Eng,
Chang, and my sister. A gesture of solidarity, or perhaps of resignation.
As I sat beside them one morning, listening to Reverend Hawkins’s fiery assertion of the sanctity of our way of life, and
his call for the faithful to defend it, I felt a growing chasm between myself and those around me. The familiar Scripture
rang hollow in my ears. Down the pew, Chang and Addie beamed with pride, their son fighting for a cause they still believed
in with their entire hearts.
My own heart felt heavier with each passing Sunday. Stephen’s letters, once frequent, had slowed to a trickle. What did come
through was written in a careful hand, designed to spare us worry, but the reality was clear: our boys were sleeping without
blankets on frozen ground, with rations so meager they boiled leather for broth.
As we filed out into the sunlight, Addie clasped my arm. “Didn’t that sermon move you?” she asked, her eyes bright with conviction.
That was when I knew: I couldn’t do this anymore.
The next Sunday, I returned to the Quaker meeting house and sat on the hard wooden bench, hands clasped in my lap. The silence
intended for spiritual connection, for reflection and shared community, was laced with tension.
When Elder Ryder stood, his gaze swept the room.
“Friends, we gather in a time of great darkness,” he said.
“A period of unspeakable violence and division. The land runs red with the blood of our kin.” His voice rose.
“Many cite Scripture to justify the wicked institution of slavery, twisting the words of the Old Testament to serve their own sinful ends. But remember, friends—the heart of Christ’s message is love.
Mercy. Justice. How can we claim to follow His teachings while condoning the suffering of our fellow human beings?
How can we preach peace while turning a blind eye to the chains that bind our brothers and sisters in bondage? ”
I closed my eyes.
Thousands of our dead lay in muddy fields, facedown in forests, their swollen bodies floating in rivers. These boys were the
sons of my friends and neighbors. I had comforted their mothers, gripped their hands as they wept, all while fearing for my
own bad news.
And for what?
For the right to hold other human beings against their will, to chain and beat and sell them like cattle. To force them to
labor without compensation or hope of reward.
There was no retreating into the comfort of not knowing. My old certainties had dissolved like sugar in water.