December 30, 1862
Middleburg
It was the night before New Year’s Eve, the dawn of 1863. Stuart and his men were celebrating. The cavalry had ridden up from their winter quarters near Fredericksburg, and for the past several days had been raiding Union outposts and telegraph stations just south of Alexandria, across the river from Washington, D.C. They completely surprised the Federals and captured dozens of Union officers, two hundred horses, mules, and sutler wagons filled with supplies—the most prized cache being three hundred pairs of boots!
They’d ridden through snow and sleet, catching every Yankee picket along the heavily fortified Telegraph Road without alarming the Federal camps sleeping nearby.
Stuart’s final exploit had been at the railroad telegraph office at Burke Station. There he paused to send a mirthful, taunting message to the U.S. quartermaster general, complaining about the quality of mules Stuart had captured from the Yankees: “Quality of the mules lately furnished me very poor. Interferes seriously with the movement of captured wagons.” Then he cut the wires, burned a bridge, and set off to look for more loot at Fairfax Courthouse, a Union garrison.
Stuart was back to his bodacious self.
Despite the death of his small daughter, Stuart was buoyed, as were many in the Confederacy, by their victory at Fredericksburg in mid-December. Theirs was a hushed satisfaction, however. It had been a terrible slaughter of the Federals. Forced by their generals to cross a wide-open field toward a thick line of Confederates safely dug in behind stone walls and atop a rim of hills, thousands of Union soldiers had been shot down. Surely, sent in to such certain death with such callousness by their leaders, the bluecoats would give up fighting and the war would end.
With such thoughts, Stuart pressed on toward Fairfax Courthouse. But this last raid was not to be. Stuart was ambushed by pickets just outside the town. Stuart and his men withdrew without firing, relieved to find only one man nicked by a bullet. Confused by their lack of return gunfire, the Federals sent out a flag of truce and called through the darkness to Stuart’s men: “Friend or foe?”
“The flag will be answered in the morning,” one of Stuart’s men shouted back. Stuart had his men light enormous campfires as if a large force were settling down for the night. Then, silently, they rode west until they reached Middleburg, some twenty miles away.
There, they stopped to rest and to share with the citizens the bounty they’d captured.
From a house on the town’s outskirts, Laurence sent for Annie. She and Jamie arrived, with several other locals, to celebrate the holidays with some of the canned meats, fruits, and cheese Stuart’s men had found in the Union wagons.
While his men gathered around the fireplace to sing Christmas carols, Stuart approached the settee on which Annie sat. She was glad to be wearing a new dress made out of the Massachusetts velvet. Midnight blue, it was a grown-up gown. The bodice was high in the back, low and square in the front, modestly trimmed with an edge of lace. The fabric sent by the Yankee mother was so elegant, Miriam had left the skirt unadorned, save for a wreath of lace at the hem and at the elbows of the puffed, short sleeves. Annie even wore Miriam’s choker of pearls. Thus dressed, she felt very self-assured.
Still, Annie’s heart skipped at the sight of Stuart. She couldn’t help admiring him, even though her schoolgirl infatuation had died that night in her fields. She fleetingly thought of what Stuart might say if he knew the fabric had come from a Union family. Given his enjoyment of needling the enemy, he might relish the idea. She planned to tell Stuart until she noted the attitude of the small, wiry man accompanying him. The stranger was definitely all business.
“Miss Annie, this is Lieutenant John Mosby, one of my best scouts,” said Stuart. “We are heading back to the main army, back to Fredericksburg. But John wishes to stay behind to keep watch on the bluecoats, to harass the enemy’s rear for me. I think it’s a good idea. I’m giving him a contingent of nine men from the 1st Virginia.
“This lady”—Stuart turned to Mosby—“is Miss Annie Sinclair, a great friend to the cause. Don’t let her size or beauty fool you. She is Lady Liberty to me. If you are in need, I am sure she will come to your aid.”
Mosby turned to Annie. Unlike Stuart, who was dressed in all his finery, Mosby wore plain, unadorned gray. He was clean-shaven, with a long, sharp nose and fine, honey-colored hair. His eyes were piercing blue, lighter than Stuart’s, and serious as they assessed her. There was something shrewd, even calculating, about him, despite his polite manners. Annie was surprised that Stuart would think so highly of someone so very different from him. But then again, Stuart adored Stonewall Jackson, a dour, humorless man.
“Lieutenant.” She nodded at him.
“Miss Sinclair.” He nodded back.
“Why stay here in Fauquier and Loudoun, Lieutenant? The enemy is currently farther east, isn’t it? In Fairfax County—Centreville, Chantilly, Vienna, Occoquan?”
Mosby hesitated, perhaps assessing Annie’s sincerity, perhaps surprised by the directness of her question and her awareness of enemy locations. “This is the perfect landscape for my operations,” he answered matter-of-factly. “There are woods in which to hide, hills that offer long views, high fieldstone walls for me to use in ambush, and, hopefully, loyal inhabitants such as you to keep me apprised. I can hit the very places you describe and quickly return here to safety.” He shifted his feet and added bluntly, “Besides, the enemy will come again into this area, miss. I am sure of it. This is the highway to the Shenandoah.”
His words filled Annie with dread. Yankees again. They had plundered through the neighborhood during much of November. She was so sick of scurrying to hide things—Angel in the cellar, feed bags on her hooves to quiet her tread; the silver in the pigeon roost; wheat in pillowcases and mattresses; bacon up the chimneys; meat shanks carefully wrapped and buried. The thought brought an end to her holiday mood.
It also was the end of Mosby’s conversation, beyond asking where Annie lived and making note of Hickory Heights’ location. He excused himself.
“A lawyer,” Stuart whispered to Annie. “Old Mose is not one for idle chatter. I gather he read the law while he was in prison. He shot a fellow student at the University of Virginia who had insulted and threatened him on a dark stairway. John is definitely not someone to tangle with. My kind of rogue!” Stuart laughed heartily and took Annie’s hand.
“Now, Miss Annie, do tell me all about yourself. You look exquisite this evening.”
Annie felt her face flush and took a deep breath to keep herself from silliness and reading too much into his banter. “Well, General, you know it is difficult these days to—”
But Annie never finished. Laurence stepped up, and behind him was a hot-faced, breathless Jamie. Laurence wore an amused look. “General Stuart, I need to introduce you to my brother, James.” He winked at Annie, who couldn’t help smiling. Jamie was about to split open from excitement. “I didn’t have the chance to do so when last we were together at Hickory Heights. The general had other concerns.” Laurence pointed the last words at Jamie.
Jamie sputtered his hellos, and Stuart bowed formally to the boy. “I am glad to make your acquaintance, James.”
“I…I…I hope very much to join your ranks, soon, General. Laurence here”—he glanced sideways at his brother, who rolled his eyes—“won’t let me.”
Trying to hide his growing amusement, Stuart asked solemnly, “How old are you, son?”
“Fifteen come March.” Jamie was wriggling all over, like a happy puppy.
“Well,” drawled Stuart, “this is December, which still makes you fourteen. Am I correct?”
The wriggling stopped. Jamie blurted, “I have a friend who’s a drummer boy. He’s only three weeks older than I.”
“I have no need for drummer boys, James. A drum cadence would take away the cavalry’s surprise, now wouldn’t it? But if you are as good a rider, as cool a head as your brother, and wait a year, I would be glad to—”
A brusque voice from the corner interrupted. “I’ll take him. He knows the area.”
Laurence turned, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Mosby. “For what?”
“For my ranger operations.”
Laurence looked to Stuart, who explained.
“I see. Guerilla tactics.” Annie noticed that Laurence’s jaw had set, his eyebrow had twitched then quieted—a look she knew well. Laurence was controlling his temper and his words. There was something about Mosby he didn’t like. His next statement was careful. “I need James at home, for my mother’s sake. This spring, for instance, in my absence, he will oversee the planting of crops that my family needs to live.”
“If we don’t rout the Yankees, there will be no need for crops, Sinclair,” Mosby answered quietly.
“Remember a statement of Napoleon’s—an army marches on its stomach. If the Federals are here, they will strip the land. We need to stop them first. I will need the help of people like your brother, your sister, to trip them up.”
Laurence’s fair face began to tint pink. “My sister is no soldier, Mosby. And my brother is a boy.”
Mosby said nothing. Jamie looked like thunder.
Sensing trouble, Stuart stepped in. “This is all temporary duty, in any case, Laurence. And here we are wasting the presence of a lovely lady to argue over soldiering. Miss Annie, do you play?” He gestured toward the piano.
Annie didn’t play brilliantly, but well enough. There had been so little time of late to practice.
“Do you know ‘The Dew Is on the Blossom’?” Stuart asked.
Dutifully, Annie played while Stuart and his companions sang:
“The dew is on the blossom,
And the young moon on the sea.
It is the twilight hour,
The hour for you and me….”
When she was done, and most of the group had begun playing charades, Laurence requested a three-day furlough from Stuart. Sam had asked to marry Rachel. Laurence wanted to give him a wedding feast before they returned to Stuart’s encampment near Fredericksburg. “Who knows when we will be back this way, General, and it is very important to Sam. I want to do this for him. He saved my life, after all, in Sharpsburg.”
…to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…
Sam held Rachel’s hands as he repeated the vows, steady, sure. Rachel smiled up at him. She looked ethereal in the candlelight. She wore a white muslin dress that Annie’s grandmother had given Aunt May to wear when she married Isaac. Aunt May had had to take it in considerably to fit Rachel. Lenah and Annie stood beside Rachel, Laurence by Sam. Miriam was bundled into a chair by the fire, listening. Aunt May stood behind her, tears streaming down her face. Molly and her brood huddled beside Jamie. Isaac had played the wedding march on his fiddle as Rachel passed through the parlor door. He stayed there now, sniffing loudly.
“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. I now pronounce you man and wife, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” said the traveling minister Laurence had found to perform the ceremony. Then, in an abruptly loud, resounding voice, the gangly, black-clad man added, “Obey your masters as you would the Lord.”
Everyone froze. Annie felt sick to her stomach as she saw Rachel’s face switch from happiness to defiance to nothing. Surely, this man didn’t compare a master’s authority to God’s, even if he was a believer in slavery. She started to open her mouth to say something, to push away the despicable nastiness of the moment, but Laurence put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and stepped in front of the minister.
“This is not the way I wanted to do this, but now seems the best time to speak. I have made a decision, and Mother agrees with me. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. Tomorrow is the day a statement from the Union president called the Emancipation Proclamation will go into effect, freeing slaves in areas Lincoln considers to be in rebellion. Officially, the Confederacy will ignore it. But I have long held the institution of slavery to be wrong. I had meant to do this myself last year when I turned twenty-one and legally was able to do so, but the war interrupted all my plans. Forgive me.
“Sam, Rachel, it is perhaps more fitting that you be granted your freedom today, your wedding day. You and everyone else here at Hickory Heights who have for so long been part of our family and our concerns are free. Two weeks ago, I filed the papers to make it all legally binding. I cannot undo the way you came to be part of our lives, but I can change the way you remain in it. The choice to stay is yours.”
Rachel caught her breath and Sam’s arm. He beamed. But no one knew what exactly to say.
Laurence tried: “May I kiss the bride?”
Rachel nodded vehemently and held her cheek toward him. Laurence brushed her face with his lips and then turned back to everyone else. There was a stunned silence.
Laurence cocked his head, frowning slightly. He tried again. “Let us enjoy the feast.” He held up his arm, gesturing toward the dinner room, where awaited an enormous dinner of fried chicken, sweet-potato custards, and apple pies. There were two tables, one for the servants and one for the family, both laid out with the best silver and china, drawn out from their hiding places and polished to shining.
No one moved.
“What’s wrong?” Laurence finally asked.
It was Bob who stepped forward. “What that mean, Mister Laurence? Do we have to leave Hickory Heights? Where we go?”
Laurence put his hand to his forehead. “Of course not, Bob. I’m sorry. I should have said that you are all welcome to stay here forever. This is your home. I have to be honest that I don’t know how I’ll pay you, but I will once the war is over. I’m thinking that maybe I could give each of you some land to work and then we’d share the profits. But each of you needs to think about what you want to do. All you need to know right now is that you are free to leave if you wish. I have legal papers that say you are free. Or you can stay. If you do, and I hope you will, we’ll do the best we can to keep everyone fed and healthy until the war ends. Just as we always have.”
Still puzzled, Bob nodded. Then he brightened. “Land of my own to work?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I ain’t going nowheres,” announced Aunt May loudly, “except to eat that dinner we worked hard to make for my baby and her new husband.” She grinned and wagged a finger at Sam. “Don’t you forget who her mama is and what I’ll do to you if you turns into a varmint on her!” She hugged Sam hard. Sam laughed.
“Aren’t you going to have them jump the broomstick?” Lenah asked.
“Lord have mercy, no, child. That’s a superstition for ignorant darkies,” said Aunt May. “My children are book-learned, thanks to this family. But we will have some fiddling later on. That all right, Mister Laurence?”
Laurence nodded.
Miriam smiled at Aunt May. “Does Isaac know ‘Star of the County Down’?” It was an old Irish song that Miriam had sung often at bedtime when Annie was little.
“If you hum it for him, missus, he can pick it out,” Aunt May said gently as she helped Miriam to her feet and guided her to the dining room. Annie heard her whisper, “You ain’t getting rid of me nohow, Missus Miriam, you remember that.”
Annie stopped Laurence and let all the others pass. “I’m so glad you did that, brother. I’ve been worrying about…about…,” she stumbled, “about how happy our people are, even though we’ve tried hard to make their lives good, ever since Gabriel…well…left. I’ve been so troubled about my relationship with Rachel, too. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. No matter how kind we were to them, no matter how good their lives might be here at Hickory Heights, the premise for it was so wrong. Nothing could make up for it except what you have just done. Do you suppose…” She tried to ask if he thought Sam and Rachel could now see them as true friends, but stopped again and shrugged. Laurence couldn’t answer that for her. She simply ended with “Thank you, Laurence.”
“I should have done it before, Annie. I meant to. Gabriel and Jacob running off hit me hard, too. I would have let them go if they’d asked. I guess they didn’t realize I felt that way. So I wanted to make their choice legal, just as we say we have the right, the freedom, to choose whether we want to remain in the Union of states.
“Beginning of the month, General Lee filed papers in Spotsylvania Courthouse to free all his servants, according to the wishes set out in his father-in-law’s will. Mrs. Lee had inherited them, you see. Her mother was evidently a big proponent of educating and freeing slaves and helping them colonize in Liberia. Two of their servants travel with General Lee in the Confederate army. He’s freed them, too, and pays them the equivalent of a soldier’s wage. I’ve heard that Lee feels slavery to be a moral and political evil. If the general can take time out to do what’s right while he’s planning the defense of our country, then surely a lowly lieutenant can as well.”
He shook his head and added with bitterness in his voice, “Lincoln’s proclamation applies only to Confederate states, not to slave-holding Union states such as Maryland or to the Southern territory under Federal control. It’s so hypocritical. There are still many Northern leaders who own slaves. General Grant—a rather ruthless leader who commanded at that slaughter in Shiloh—his wife evidently still owns slaves and has brought them with her when she visits Grant in camp.
“Truth is, some Yankees are as bigoted as some of our countrymen. I have seen and heard Confederate mistreatment of servants during my travels with the cavalry that I could never have imagined before, and it shames me, Annie. Our family just never thought of our people in such ways. And I hear about how some Federals treat the runaways they call ‘contraband’—lots of demands for them to dance at gunpoint as evening entertainment for the troops. God forbid they do that to Gabriel or Jacob. We are all tainted by this. Slavery should have been outlawed in the Declaration of Independence or the original Constitution. And I wish to God that the South had not allowed itself to become a bastion of it. The reality is, if we do manage to win this accursed war, it will become even harder to try to abolish slavery in the South. But I can do right by our own people. And when this war is over, I plan to argue the point beyond Hickory Heights. I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but I need to try. Right now, all I can focus on is protecting Virginia.”
He stopped, thoughtful, and Annie’s mind wandered to the long-ago words of Thomas Walker. Funny, thought Annie: In another day, another time, Laurence and he probably would have liked each other a great deal.
“Let’s go in for dinner.” Laurence interrupted her musings. He held up his arm to escort Annie into the dining room.
She took it and then paused. “Where’s Jamie?” Their brother was nowhere to be seen. “I didn’t see him leave the room.”
“Oh, Lord,” sighed Laurence. “I should have told that hothead about my decision beforehand. I just hadn’t planned to announce it right after the service. That fool preacher. Oh, that reminds me, Annie; I need to pay him and send him on his way. I don’t think he needs to join us for dinner, given his obvious sentiments. Could you find James and herd him into the dining room so they can begin, please?”
Annie went in search of Jamie. To her amazement, she found him in his bedroom, reading. She hated to interrupt; she’d tried so often to encourage any interest in literature. “Jamie, it’s time for dinner.”
Jamie looked up at her with the surprise of someone who’d been completely lost in his book.
“What are you reading?”
“Lieutenant Mosby told me his riders would be ‘Tam O’Shanter’ Rebels, or like Robert MacGregor in Rob Roy, snookering the English. He told me to read them both, and then in March, when I turn fifteen, to find him. I couldn’t make any sense of Burns’ poem.” He pointed to a volume of Burns’ poetry, lying discarded on the table. “But this MacGregor fellow.” Jamie grinned. “Now there’s a man!”
Indeed, thought Annie, recalling the Sir Walter Scott novel. The real-life Scottish rebel MacGregor whom Scott immortalized was quite the fighter—clever, idealistic, tenacious, and incredibly courageous in the face of better-armed, more numerous foes. But his actions also sparked horrendous acts of retribution by the English on Scottish villages, on women and children. Would Mosby bring about the same?