Chapter 17

Homecoming was a sad journey into the past. As soon as the train crossed into southern territory, the devastation became clear. In contrast to the thriving prewar communities, Chance saw town after town slip by his window, half destroyed, nearly deserted. The only nodes of activity had a carpetbagger stamp on it, as Northerners took over more productive local businesses and industries.

At every stop, there were gaunt figures in vestiges of Confederate uniforms, ghosts of armies past, grim faces turned toward the train, waiting for relatives to come back from a lost war. No women or children were visible in this new world.

Separated into a country of their own were also groups of blacks, just loitering, with nothing to do. They were sullen, the whites of their eyes flashing with suspicion. It seemed that the new order didn’t bring them much satisfaction.

“You a southern boy?” a well dressed, well fed man opposite Chance, asked.

“From Europe,” Chance deflected the question.

“Here’s not a nice place to visit right now.” The man, however, seemed satisfied with what he had found. A northerner from Boston and a civilian who had never experienced the hardships and horrors of war. Perhaps he was an administrator going to his new assignment, or one of the carpetbaggers who sought to profit from the South’s misfortunes. The military governments that ran the conquered states would only do business with connected Northerners. His smug attitude seemed out of place here on this train, full of soldiers returning home. Chance closed his eyes to block him out.

When the train stopped at a small town, Chance got off to stretch his legs. The place had survived the war more or less intact except for a row of burned out warehouses near the track.

“The Union...?” Chance asked the stationmaster standing on the platform.

The man frowned and spat on the track. “No, our mayor. To keep the cotton out of Union hands.” Chance was saddened, the harvest of the war years burned. Cotton that could have been used to rebuild, now gone.

The train passed through Vicksburg, scarred by the siege. A rabbit warren of bunkers, trenches and gun pits still pocked the hillsides. Shells of homes destroyed by Union cannonades stood like skeletons, just piles of burned masonry. Chance had a strangled sense of being back in the war, hiding, keeping out of sight, afraid of sharpshooters. Leaning out the compartment window, he bought the local paper. The news was mostly pronouncements from the military authorities who now administered the city.

From Natchez, he walked to Fayette. There was little traffic on the dusty road and little work in the fields. Chance passed burnt out remains of plantations, with only a few surviving and those housing Union troops or the new masters of the times. Everywhere else, he was watched with suspicion or indifference, just another unfortunate winding his way home, if he was lucky enough to have a home left.

With quickening heartbeat and increased strides Chance rounded the final bend, to behold the charred remains of what had been his house. The barn and stables were gone too and most of the outbuildings. With a sick heart he turned into his lane and shuffled up to the remains of what had been once a veranda. Only the chimney and the blackened walls were left, with the windows staring vacantly into an abandoned yard. A magnolia bush that Anabelle had planted five years ago had survived the fire, one side still green, trying to bloom.

Feeling frozen inside, Chance walked around the house, stepping over the remains of a picket fence and the trampled down flower garden. There was nothing left to save. The fields were empty, half the orchard cut down for campfires by the passing army.

Turning his back on it, Chance walked to a nearby plot by the remaining woods, a fenced off cemetery where his wife was buried. In two years moss had overgrown much of the headstone. Chance bent down and freed its face, reading the inscription; Anabelle Fraser, passed into the care of the Lord on August 17, 1863. Be at peace.

“I’m home, Anabelle,” Chance mouthed silently, knowing those were empty words; when did he ever have a home that could hold him for longer than a few years? Weeds had grown around the stone, and dropping to his knees, Chance pulled most of them. Over the course of the war, he had seen so many graves dug and people buried that he had no feelings left now to grieve―just sadness and bitterness.

With a sour taste in his mouth, Chance turned away from the grave and took the road to his in-law’s place across the valley. He dared not think what he’d find. He passed houses, some damaged, some destroyed entirely. It didn’t seem to matter if it was a poor or rich place; the army foraging for supplies wasn’t choosy.

The large mansion where his wife grew up was also just a black hulk. The destruction of the outbuildings was even more complete, as if purposefully razed to the ground. The only sign of life was a starving cat hunting at the foot of the trees, eyeing the birds in the boughs.

Chance walked the yard, occasionally stopping to pick up a piece of debris to see if it had any relevance or recollection. Where was the family? he worried. He walked to the well, drew himself a bucket of water and drank from it. Looking up, he noticed the old Negro maid Uziya sitting beneath the walnut tree.

“Are you still here?” Chance asked the lone figure.

“Where else would I go? I don’t know nobody in Jackson.”

“Where’re Mr. Sutcliffe and the missus?”

“They’re living at the Old Mill Station. The only thing the yankee-doodle-dandies didn’t burn down. May God judge their deeds accordingly.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“Someone has to keep our people company.” She pointed a finger toward the cemetery where many slaves were buried. “Besides I’m free now. Or so I been told,” she said with a twist of sarcasm in her tone.

“Free enough to starve like any southern white. Free enough to have your house burned.” Angrily, Chance kicked at a broken pail in his path. He quickly scanned the view so that he’d later remember the sight that had greeted his return.

Strangely the gazebo in the garden still stood untouched, where he had proposed to Anabelle one autumn afternoon a lifetime ago. At his words, her face had lit up and excitement had bubbled up in her voice—then happily she ran to tell the rest of the world. Now honeysuckle had overgrown the limestone pillars guarding the marble birdfeeder. The memory like a cloud passed over him, and for a moment, he remembered the warmth of the sun. The feeling passed, and he was again filled with need to find a piece of his life he could reclaim. None of it, it seemed, remained here.

Chance turned his back on his former home and walked down the turnpike, then took a hedge-lined side road to the Old Mill. To his relief the place seemed untouched. He was welcomed at the door by the longtime family retainer Pierce, a black man, bred and born on the estate.

“Master Chance, how good it is to see you,” he said in that cultured tone that showed the depth of his education. The man had read every book in the library and then some.

Chance walked into the day-room. His father-in-law, Robert Horace Sutcliffe and his wife Maggie were overjoyed to see him.

“You survived my boy. How excellent. We got one letter from you in prison and then nothing. Just the other day, Meg and I were praying for your safe return. And here you are. God be praised!”

“Where are the boys?”

“They’re with their aunt in Baton Rouge, safe and sound. Adam will be starting school soon and Gage, well, the little rascal just started to ride his pony.”

The rest of the news was not so good. The plantation had been confiscated because of allegedly unpaid taxes. The factory had been taken over by somebody from Connecticut and was making mattresses now.

With their homes destroyed, a lot of their friends had scattered, some to Jackson or to try their luck elsewhere out west, in places untouched by the war.

“We’re well enough here. The mill still works and earns us a living and anyway, we don’t need much anymore in our old age. My only regret is that most of our servants and slaves are gone, and not having a good time of it in the slums of Jackson.” Mississippi had been under Union rule for almost a year, long enough to have learned the cost of defeat. Both whites and blacks were lost in this new era of “Reconstruction.” The North talked of it; the South felt every indignity of it.

That evening by the fire in the day room, a gathering of the household fell from the joy at Chance’s safe return into sadness over all that had happened to them personally, and then again on account of the demise of the South.

“The cultured South is gone,” Pierce grieved. “We shall not see a fine company enjoying a garden fete, or light the chandeliers in the ballrooms. Most plantations lie destroyed or neglected, no one to work the fields or willing to. The land is being carved up, given to the slaves who don’t know how to plan their time or work the soil. From riches we have fallen into poverty.”

“Come, come Pierce. No need to dramatize. We’re alive, have a roof over our heads and a way to earn a living. May the good Lord watch over our health, is all I ask.” Horace Sutcliffe tried to appease his former servant.

“Well, I want more,” Pierce persisted. “I want our library back and the grand piano that Missy Anabelle used to play so clumsily. I want the pictures, the fine china, the polished furniture, and yes ... all the servants back, be they slaves or free.”

Sitting in the corner, Chance shrunk into a wing chair, just listening. None of this seemed real; he was back in the prison, waiting for the ebb and flow of camp routine to guide him through the present moment. The reality was jarring. You have survived the war and prison, he told himself, that was all that mattered.

Horace Sutcliffe noticed his son-in-law’s silence and asked him directly, “We were right to fight for our statehood rights and not let the North dictate our future, weren’t we?”

“I used to think so,” Chance said tiredly. “Now, I count all the dead and maimed on both sides, and feel sorry for those who survived, to be haunted forever with memories of four years of carnage that cost the country the best and brightest of its generation. I just feel sad. Too sad even to feel the shame of defeat.” He lapsed again into silence, dragging the rest of the company into his despondent mood.

Maggie Sutcliffe tried to navigate to more comfortable topics. Wistfully, she recalled picnics by the river, summer church socials, balls and parties in the neighborhood. She remembered Anabelle and the children, when the family was together, still whole. How they all used to sit in the main salon, playing cards or games, or marbles with the children.

“Those days are gone,” Pierce couldn’t resist saying. “When the Union gunboats came up the river, firing at peaceful communities as they passed. When deserters from both sides pillaged the countryside.”

Throughout the evening no mention was made of prison and not one question about it was asked.

Two day later, Chance left for Baton Rouge, taking a river boat south. Even on the river the war had left its mark. The skeletons of ships that fell prey to cannons lay in the shallows and on the banks were the remains of forts that had been shot to pieces by Farragut’s navy, fighting their way upstream.

Baton Rouge seemed to have survived the war fairly intact. There was still some damage evident from the 1862 battle fought in the city, a few ruins and bullet holes pocking an occasional wall, but nothing like the destruction in Vicksburg.

From the boat landing, Chance had himself driven to the house of his sister-in-law Caroline Neely. It was no surprise to him that he wasn’t immediately recognized by Mathias and Caroline. It wasn’t until he gave his name that his wife’s sister reacted.

“Oh my God! We thought you must be surely dead, with so many casualties in so many battles. Every day we looked through the lists in the paper, and saw wounded beside your name, but nothing more. Heard from father that he got a letter from prison... but so many died in prison...”

The boys were called, Adam now nearly 6 and Gage just turning 4. They looked big-eyed at the tall stranger everyone insisted was their father. They didn’t remember him.

Adam and Gage knew only the Neelys as their real parents. As they didn’t have children of their own, the Neelys had had time to lavish undiluted love and attention on them. Increasingly, as time went on both were nervous that Chance was going to take the boys from them. But Chance had no proper place anywhere to take them, and too much to do first. For one, he had to find his steamboat somewhere north. He owned a half share of the Osprey, a 62 foot side paddler that used to ship freight up and down the river. When the war broke out, his partner, Samuel Carmody took the boat north for safekeeping. It was now the only piece of real property he had left.

Chance spent as much time with his boys as he could. He played with toy soldiers, fighting great battles against the North. Each time the South had to win, Adam insisted. Gage just wanted to be the flag bearer of the Southern Cross, leading victorious armies into battle. There were bloodless losses and pewter soldiers tipped over, only to be raised again for a new battle. Chance looked sadly on, remembering.

Chance took the boys on a carriage ride around the wharf, showing and explaining every ship dockside. They stopped at a candy shop and bought frozen ice to suck on.

A picture of Anabelle survived and Chance spent time reminding the boys of who she was. Both stared at the image, wondering. Gage remembered nothing, Adam only that she looked like someone who had sung him lullabies. The only other memory Adam had from his early years was of Rusty, the pony he had received for his third birthday.

“Do you remember Cub, your pup?” No, Adam’s head shook. Both boys regarded him blankly, still wondering who he really was.

“You were a general,” Adam decided; suddenly the thing somehow made sense to him: a general could be his father.

“Just a major,” Chance corrected. Adam pouted. He really wanted his father to be a victorious general. To distract him Chance tickled him and Gage, and for the first time both boys laughed uninhibitedly with him. It was sweetly painful to see their faces reflect the familiar expressions of their mother.

“What are your plans?” Caroline asked, fearful that he would take the boys with him.

“Don’t rightly know. Have to find the Osprey... probably somewhere north.” He shrugged his shoulder. Caroline was relieved to find that he didn’t intend to take the boys.

Chance stayed only two weeks in Baton Rouge. In time the boys warmed up to him, but never showed the easy affection they had with the Neelys.

“Adam will be starting school this fall, it’s a very fine school only a block away. Gage still needs the security of a familiar place. It would be sad to uproot him again,” Caroline said a little more self-assured now that she knew the boys were staying.

“Find yourself an opportunity, a place and then come get your sons,” Mathias advised.

“Yes, but hopefully you’ll settle down near here in Baton Rouge. We love them both, and will take good care of them,” Caroline added.

“I’m sure of that and thank you both for their good care. Were it possible, I would take them with me; they’re the only thing left to me of Anabelle.”

So decided, Chance took the boat, not upriver but to Georgia. He had Andersonville in mind.

Once in Georgia he found the Camp Sumter pretty much abandoned, the prisoners long gone. An enterprising local, however, had set up a tour to display the dismal conditions the Union prisoners had been forced to live in. For 5 cents, Chance took the hour-long walk.

The scene he beheld was eerily familiar. There were no barracks or buildings, just a stockade wall and burrows dug into the earth, stick and mud shelters and shanty tents, one atop another, still not enough to house the overcrowding. There was not one tree to provide shelter, and some had been forced to live in the open, their clothes rotting off them. The water source had become a sewer. Months after, the smell still assaulted the nose. With a shudder, Chance recalled The Pond in Hellmira.

The guide recited the facts to a group of about twenty, mostly men, as the women found the smell too offensive, and the few who attended held perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses and often turned back, revolted. In the scant 14 months that the camp was in operation, it had held upwards of 45,000 Union prisoners, of whom nearly 13,000 died due to disease, malnutrition, starvation and exposure. They were provided with little food, or even little oversight. Penned up, the guards were content just to keep them in, not to control them. Desperate men preyed on each other to survive. The guide relished telling them the worst, hinting at cannibalism.

Chance learned that after the surrender, nurses had come and worked hard to save the survivors, but many were so far gone they couldn’t be saved. They moved as many as they could to more sanitary facilities. Within a month they were gone. In the museum, there were pictures on the wall of emaciated bodies, skin stretched over skeletons, sunken cheeks and dark, hollow eyes that stared into death.

The guide shepherded them through the place, over duckboards that had been erected for the convenience of the paying sightseers, but had not been there for the prisoners to keep them above the mud and the cesspool the soil turned into after just a little rain. Everywhere the canvas tents were rotting, the mud hovels collapsing under the onslaught of the weather.

Looking at the confines of just 16 plus acres, Chance had a hard time imagining how 45,000 had found space there. Even empty and silent, the camp bespoke of horrors and the smell of it was thick in the air. The guide threw a rock into a mud hole and the stink that rose made people gag and retreat.

But Chance also learned about bravery. About prisoner Dorence Atwater who kept a secret copy of the log of all who died, and after the war, helped to identify the Andersonville graves to a commission that included Clara Barton.

And about retribution. Henry Wirz, commander of Camp Sumter, was arrested and awaiting trial in federal prison on charges of war crimes against prisoners of war.

The guide couldn’t tell Chance much about the nurses. “They came, they went. You can ask Dr. Heyerstall in Andersonville; for a while he worked with them in the transportation of sick prisoners to northern hospitals.”

After the tour, Chance found the office of Dr. Heyerstall. The doctor was out making house calls, but the nurse was very helpful. Yes, she remembered April Cameron. “An elegant lady with an English accent. Well bred. Strange to find her among such hard working women taking care of the sick.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” Chance asked anxiously.

“Yes. For a while we worked together emptying the camp. She was sent on to Washington Hospital. I got a letter from her from there.”

“Then you don’t know where she is now?”

“No. But she talked about some relatives; her daughter is married to someone in New England, Boston, I think.”

Chance spent a month in Washington trying to track her down. He queried the War Office, the Sanitary Commission, the fledging Association of Nurses, but no one could tell him anything. In the aftermath of the war, civil servants were collating documents and storing them in the public archives and there was not one central place to find information.

He left for Boston hoping to find Emily’s daughter, but had no name to inquire about. After about a month of fruitless searching, he also gave that up. He thought of writing to the Dubineaus in England hoping to get the information, but that would take time and who knew where he would be by the time an answer arrived? It seemed that all avenues were closed.

He didn’t know what to do with himself. Go back to Fayette? Baton Rouge? And do what? He had to find something to support himself and his family. The money the Sutcliffes had given him was running low. He decided that he must track down his boat the Osprey and his former partner Samuel Carmody. He thought his best bet would be to start his search in St. Louis. Someone had to know something. River people knew each other.

On the train out of Boston Chance read that Wirz was convicted of war crimes and hanged. He wished that Hoffman had been hung beside him.