Where was the Home Guard? Where were the bushwhackers?
One day became much like the previous, with the column moving from farm to farm from dawn till dusk, steadily growing as it advanced, acquiring contrabands and varied means of transport to convey them in, my company out in the woods as flankers. Wild had moved our base of operations to South Mills, five or six miles beyond Ferrebee’s. Though but a hamlet of twenty-odd houses without even a general store, it was the largest settlement between Fortress Freedom and Elizabeth City, and so a better site for our ever-growing encampment. All around was thick agricultural land, fields and fields of corn and wheat and flax, and full of slaves.
By night, we non-comms set our men on their end-of-day duties, brushing and oiling the barrels of their rifles or darning socks that had sprung leaks. Then we congregated about some campfire.
“Youall should have seen us today,” said Gil Mezzell, of B. “Frye”—B’s captain—“organized a squad of us to peel off and canvass a small farm out by the millpond’s road.”
Captain Frye had taken a ball in the thigh at Fredericksburg, and it still lodged there. The resulting limp had prevented his rise in his former company but not his transfer to the colored troops, and we were the better for it. As officers went, he was one of the good ones.
Men shuffled from foot to foot, blowing white plumes into the night, as Mezzell continued: “One mammy called to the heavens that we was a saving sight, and right off she and the others just fell in our line. They was eight slaves. With us, we did not count two dozen.”
He took to chuckling, struggling to go on.
“The yard was filled with fowl, you see—turkeys and ducks and geese and such. I don’t know, easy going on a hundred. Had us outnumbered five to one.”
Other men joined in, tittering or bursting broad smiles. Likewise me, a release from the burdens of the day. Still, I noticed that Fields was nowhere about.
At a nearby bonfire, just within earshot, I could hear the newspaperman Tewksbury regaling the officers with his recent redaction, announcing that the article would be entitled “The Army of Liberation on the March!”
Mezzell resumed: “Well, youall recognize the DIE-lemma?” He mispronounced it for effect. “Here was fine feasting for two companies entire, and not a buckboard or a hay cart on the premises to convey them in. Meanwhile, the Mistuss of the farm, the only buckra about, is standing there straddle-foot atop her porch, glaring.”
Mention of the woman caused some to pause their chuckling. I expect I wasn’t the only one to wonder at the cravenly sort of white man who would leave his woman alone, what with us “brutish bucks” rampaging the neighborhood.
“Well, her Ladyship held her balled hands to her hips,” said Mezzell, doing likewise himself, “cursing us with her eyes while Frye limp-stepped up and back, pondering the proper course of action.”
“Get on with it, man!” said Cornick. “What did you do?”
“Frye ordered that we execute them prisoners.”
“The barn fowl?” said Livian Adams.
“To the one,” said Mezzell. “Frye told us they would feed the land pirates and feed them amply, was we to leave them.”
“Ah, naw . . .”
It was in no way funny, yet all were laughing and laughing stout.
Mezzell said, “He didn’t want to shoot them, on account of the noise and the waste of powder and shot. So here we was, chasing them birds about, catching some, but as many not.”
“And the Mistuss?” asked Cornick, the question we all wondered.
“Her Ladyship did not leave the porch, just hectored us from there. Took to calling Frye the ‘Officer of Geese.’”
“You making that up!”
“Said she had nary seen braver,” said Mezzell.
We all busted up then.
Each day’s confiscations were more and more joyous, and becoming the stuff of jokes. And where was the Home Guard? Where were the bushwhackers?
Flanking the main body of the regiment was not a thing to be breezy about, especially when the enemy was irregular and you in his country. But posted out in the woods day after day while across the fields the joyous notes of more noble activity resounded, some of my men began to surrender to easy distraction.
“Simpson!” I barked, a mite too sharp given our position on the edge of the corps. “Mind your watch and leave the buffoonery for camp.”
He promptly ceased prodding his bayonet at Simon Gaylord’s ample hindside and fell back to surveilling the trees for any signs of disturbance.
Keeping order was a thing I expected of my corporals, but Fields hardly reacted at my reprimand of Simpson.
As our picket line pushed forward, my squad came upon a simple house ensconced in the trees, obviously missed by the column. With neither surrounding fields nor any sign of crops, maybe Wild had deemed that it lacked chattel or suitable provisions to merit a stop-over. Slaves were present, though—two men and a woman. Carrying their possessions in rolled-up blankets, they were clearly aware of the Brigade’s presence nearby and of our mission out here.
“Please, please,” an old gentleman cried from the porch of the house. He had flowing silver hair and sported a green velvet tailcoat. “You aren’t serious, Jemimah. You cannot abandon me.”
The three colored moved away up the lane, paying him no mind, though Jemimah glanced back over her shoulder. She looked resolved, if conflicted.
“Tom, Buck!” the old gentleman called. “Oh Jemimah, please! . . .”
I heard sniggering and, from one of my men, a scornful howl. The bondmen noticed us then, in the tree line, and along about the same time, I saw Miles Hews break our ranks.
“Buck Jones! Is that you?” he called, running over, and he and the man embraced.
The rest of us gathered around them. Hews said, “Sergeant, this here my mama’s kin.”
Buck Jones bowed, removing his hat—which left me feeling uneasy, somewhat abashed, as he was old enough to be my grandfather. I turned toward the porch.
The old gentleman dashed into his house, slamming closed the door.
Hews and Jones talked close, Tom and Jemimah joining them, and my men pushed in, too, some clapping the newly emancipated on the back. Then Hews worked his way out of the group, toward me.
“I’m told my mama’s Barco people are nearby, out on a farm where they been bonded,” he said. “Sir, may we . . . ?”
Backuss’s squad was to our south. As the company’s ranking officer, he should have the ultimate say, but I didn’t relish having to ask his permission. The lieutenant tended toward diffidence when matters called for initiative and action. Would he allow a detachment to go after Hews’s family when our assignment was to guard the column’s flank?
“How far from here?” I asked.
“Not overmuch,” said Hews. “Maybe a quarter mile through them trees.”
How had the main body of the Brigade missed them?
Fields stepped forward. “I will accompany him.”
And so it was decided. I would not deny Hews this opportunity to liberate kin, and perhaps Fields leading it was likewise just what was best for him, to put a peck of the hopeful overtop of his dour imaginings.
“Go, men,” said I. “Take eight more with you. And be speedy.”
They hustled off but did not return speedily at all. Thirty minutes passed. Nigh on an hour. The old gentleman not so slyly watched from behind the curtains of his front-room window, his expression ungenerous. I moved toward the tree line that Fields’s detachment had gone into and listened intently. But for what? Commotion? Some sign of trouble?
Backuss emerged from the direction opposite, red-faced and striding toward me. I met him halfway across the yard, wanting to remain out of hearing of the rest of my squad.
“What is this, Etheridge? Why have you halted and disrupted our picket line?”
My men, who’d been lazing by the side of the house, rose to their feet at the sight of the lieutenant. The old gentleman gazed on purposefully, perhaps hoping for relief at the arrival of a white man.
“Only briefly,” said I to Backuss. “Time enough to liberate one of my men’s family, overlooked by the column.” I added, deliberately choosing General Wild’s words: “As per the Confiscation Act. Are we not to endeavor to emancipate every bondman in the region?”
He duly noted it, as I’d hoped. The heat did not drain from his face, though, and he stared at me harshly. “This will be documented,” he said. “A record will be made of this.” Then he turned and repaired into the woods.
It took over an hour and a half before Fields’s detachment rejoined us. They were accompanied by a cart loaded down with a dozen men and women and tykes, singing “It’s a Great Jubilee Day!” over and again.
All but one. A woman in a calico dress and holding a babe looked distraught rather than joyful. The light-skinned child appeared to be howling, though I could not hear it over the merry singing. It was maybe the baby’s crying that provoked her distress, but Clapson’s farm came to my mind—not the old mammy but Revere, cowhide in hand. This had been Fields’s guidebook on confiscating when a defiant owner did not want it done.
I went to where he rested, on one knee aside a thick oak. “What happened out there?” I asked, likewise taking a knee so that we might speak eye-to-eye. “Wasn’t any trouble, was there?”
“No trouble,” said he. “The overseer thought himself still in charge. He was made to understand otherwise.”
“Goddammit, Fields, what did you do?” said I, sharp but not loud, so as not to attract the attention of the others. “I’m accountable for what happens out here if things go too far. Me!”
“Nothing went too far. That baby be the overseer’s, and the mama was of two minds about joining along. I decided for her, on account of the child.”
I was picturing the force he might have employed against the overseer and whom among the detachment he might have enlisted to help him. “That’s not how we do it, Fields.”
“Ain’t it?” I’d rarely known him to be deliberately mean, but there was meanness in his face. “Would you have me separate them, ma’am and pup? Or leave the baby behind? All them slaves is now freed.”
I looked away. I recognized that, as his sergeant, I should press him—that I should get firm details and act accordingly. But then what? Write him up? Report him as Backuss was to do me? For freeing slaves?
I wouldn’t do that, not under these circumstances especially—with what had happened to Riley.
But I couldn’t have him making like Revere either, not when leading the men, and particularly not on behalf of me. So, what to do then about my old friend?
I knew Fields, and Fields knew me. I had to believe that my burst of anger had been heard. A lifetime of shared respect would check any more such impulses in him, should a like case arise. I had to trust this.
The joyous singing continued, the old gentleman still looking out from his window. We needed to move on, to unite with the column and deliver these contrabands, then rejoin our picket line.
As I rose, Fields said, “Do you think we will foray as far as Nixonton?”
He was asking on account of Riley and Lawrence. The Midgetts owned a farm at Nixonton, just beyond Elizabeth City, and Fields must have reasoned that his brothers had been taken there—a hopeful thought, as that place would soon be within reach of our column.
“I’m sure we will,” I said.
In truth, I had misgivings that we would find them, should the Brigade venture out there. Some contrabands who’d come into our line reported on masters loading up their chattel and sailing off for Texas, where Yankee blue had yet to see any victories and slavery seemed a damn sight more nailed down and defended. I could imagine Llewelyn Midgett doing such a thing.
“Riley and Lawrence are all right,” I said. “You will see.”
I had yet to pen the letter to Sarah Etheridge, to attempt to suss out whatever information she might have about them. I wouldn’t be able to see it dispatched, not until we’d attained Elizabeth City. But still, it needed doing.
“Form up!” I called, and to Fields, “Form ’em up.”
As he did so, I pulled Hews aside. “You did right earlier, stepping up for your kin.” I was thinking about Fields’s actions out there. “But know that you are always being seen.”
He dropped his eyes, mistaking my words for a reprimand. I had meant them as instruction.
“You can be wearing stripes one day,” I said. “You have leadership in you, Miles. So continue using good judgment, like you’re doing. In everything, show your best, and the rank will for certain come.”
He smiled broad, unmasking the child that he yet was. “Thank you, Sergeant, thank you! And so as you know, three of my cousins wish to enlist.” He pointed them out.
“I will make sure you’re credited for their recruitment.”
That night, word came for officers and non-comms to meet at the general’s Sibley tent. We gathered there and found Wild and, alongside him, Revere.
Also at hand was a party of colored that Revere had brought in, Negroes unlike any I had yet to see. I recognized them right off for Dismal Swamp Maroons, though before then I’d only heard tell of them without actually knowing their existence to be true. They were said to be a colony of runaways that had holed up in the pocosin with the Indians, and some poor whites, too.
So this had been Revere’s secret mission.
“What freaks,” I heard Backuss hiss at another officer, and he laughed some Old World Dutchman’s laugh.
His amusement rankled, but these men were indeed a strange-looking bunch. You would not easily confuse them with the colored we were emancipating, that’s for certain. They numbered eight, all rough-hewn and unkempt, wearing trousers but overtop them, like cloaks, layers of homespun blankets, cinched at the waist with twine. If not for their woolly hair and sable complexions, for the thick lips and broad noses, I might have mistaken them for the Red Man you read about in frontier books.
I recognized my reaction to be twinning the one that Backuss had just expressed but could not help it. Even as these Maroons captured my curiosity, they likewise left me feeling unsettled, deeply so, for to my eye they looked more akin to animals than men and seemed a question mark on whether attempts at civilizing them would warrant the great effort that would clearly be required. It was an ugly thought, but one I felt just the same. I wondered if this was what we were like back in Africa-days, before they brought us here.
At the head of their group was the indisputable chief. He was small of stature but large of presence, with hair gone gray and smoking a curved pipe that looked made of white clay. One other stood out—a sight younger but of equal, chiefly bearing. His head was a riotous tangle of hair, twisting black sprouts that dangled from his straw slouch hat. It was natural, colored-folk hair but unlike any I’d seen on a colored.
The general’s brother offered a camp chair to the Maroon chief. Wild sat opposite him. Major Wright and Revere stood behind the general, and the Maroon chief’s second—the young one, with rope for hair—stood behind him. It was all very formal.
Moses Cornick, who was nearby me, threw his hands in the air, not exasperated but in a sort of amazement. He whispered, “Who in the world is this man who will sit down with bush-headed swamp Negroes like he is hosting the king of England? What kind of white man is he?”
Aaron Mitchell, anew among us, back from Revere’s detachment, whispered in response, “Father Alick might not look kingly, but he a legend hereabouts.”
The general commenced then, making a show of portentous introductions and suchlike—of himself and of the African Brigade and of our mission. The Maroon chief, Father Alick, greeted this with a stone face that conveyed neither awe nor dismay. Fifteen hundred uniformed and musketed Negroes had little visible effect on him.
Wild and Alick began an exchange between them that was too low for us to hear. Someone behind me asked, “That old man be a legend?”
Aaron Mitchell responded: “Sure enough. Folks call him the Postman of the Dismal on account of his unhindered comings and goings to-and-fro the pocosin. He ride an old mule said to be Nat Turner’s own and sell honeycombs to farms, and the white folks call him ‘uncle’ and generally just leave him be.”
“Honeycombs?” asked Orange Redmon.
“Yessir,” said Mitchell, like that, as just one word, not so much in respect of Redmon’s higher rank but as a turn of phrase. “The swamp men is bee gatherers, and white folk eat that mess up. Had you tasted some of they honey, you would not ask why.”
The night was colder than those previous. I buried my neck deep into the collar of my greatcoat and drew in closer to Mitchell, as did the others nearby, equally rapt. We all wanted to savvy more on these Maroons who had run off from farms and, despite slave catchers and bloodhounds, managed to evade capture.
“You say ‘Father’?” asked Robinson Tynes.
“Yessir,” said Mitchell. “The Postman be a minister, too. You would not think that white folks would permit it, but he ride up on old Nat’s mule of a Sunday and preach to whoall will hear it.”
Naws and general disbelief were the response. All, and likewise me, wondered at how this could be.
“I expect Mass would rather open his doors to the devil he know,” said Tynes, “than try and keep colored from secret prayer meetings. Otherwise, Mass end up inciting conspirations and danger-gospel like that old mule’s first keeper had schemed up.”
Our group fell still with this last fraught wisdom, just as General Wild returned his voice to speechifying volume. “My brigade is here on a solemn mission,” said he, “and I invite you to bring your people in. We will transport you to the freedman’s colony that is established at Fortress Monroe.”
“We already free,” was Alick’s reply. “How come we want to leave this home for another, unknown and uncertain?”
“Why, for safety, of course,” Wild said. “For—”
He stopped, apparently unknowing how to go on, which was notable for the general. I had yet to see him at a loss for words.
“We already free,” Alick repeated, “and safe as need be.”
He turned toward his party, many of the other Maroons smoking clay pipes such as his, and spoke something so riddled with strange words that it could not properly be called English. A banter ensued among them that was sing-songy, with plenty of exclamations of “Eh!” and tittering.
Abe Armstead turned toward Mitchell. “And the young one there, with the misdirected hair?”
“I heard him called Osman Golar but ain’t ever seen him before,” said Mitchell. “Nor none like him, frankly. Must be part of some band set up deep, deep inside the pocosin.”
That one, Golar, stood rigid and still, carefully surveilling what the surrounding bonfires would allow of our camp, and of us gathered around as well.
Revere, too. He stood by, silent but watching, much like the young Maroon. Even that Negro’s calm aspect reflected a coiled anticipation.
Alick turned from his party back to Wild, and so we turned our attention back to them. “Naw,” said he. “Sure, we got poison snake and mosquito as big as birds,” to which his party laughed. “But no. For ain’t no sun-to-sun travail in there,” Alick explained to Wild, who listened, spellbound. “We got children ain’t yet seen a buckra and wail salt tears the first time they do. You people call our home dismal, but that Black Mingo Pocosin be our paradise. Thank you kindly, General, but no thank you. We a feral thing, and we love this.”
The parlay broke up thereon, the general gracious though snubbed, and we all made toward our companies. All except Revere. He followed the Maroons into the dark, out past the edge of camp.
Tynes, like me, watched him go. “Do you think Revere will be appointed regimental sergeant major?” He looked none too easy at the prospect. “If asked, I’d vote Adkins.”
“Likewise me,” said I, though I wouldn’t have begrudged Tynes for voting Etheridge.
Revere, though, looked to be the general’s prized dog. “It is Colonel Draper’s regiment,” I told Tynes, “but the general’s command and vision. So we will see whom he favors. Only his vote counts.”
Outside Tyne’s tent, he bid me good night and I continued on, pondering. My duty as sergeant was to make my troopers fight; Colonel Draper had taught us this. But it was not bad sergeanting if I could also keep them alive along the way. I shared a bond with my men. I took joy when they bested a challenge and felt myself aggrieved when they deviated from the assigned course. Whatever glory might be attained in this war, I wanted their names to be the ones sung out in song.
Our regimental sergeant major might not be of the same mind as me on most matters, but should he be a man whose battlefield judgment was guided by longings for vengeance rather than by a bent for survival?
“Split-tail or hung,” Revere had said at the campfire our first night out, “all Secesh merit death.”
“And so through the night goes my cry,” he’d declaimed. “Evermore!”
Revere, our regimental sergeant major? He could lead us there, that seemed clear. But would he bring us out?