Free Widow of Gettysburg by Jocelyn Green Page B

enough to unlock memories she had crammed into the farthest corners of her mind. How long had it been since she had been there?
Twenty-one years.
    She had been born just across the Altahama River from it, on St. Simon’s Island, in a hut made of oyster shells and mud on Master Pierce Butler’s rice plantation. As a child, she and her twin sister crossed the river to Darien by hollowed-out log most Saturdays to sell moss they had picked and dried from the Live Oak trees, which was used to stuff mattresses and furniture.
    Once a month Bella’s family and the rest of the slaves were allowed to attend a Baptist church for slaves in Darien, where they taught her from the Catechism for Colored Persons. She could answer those questions today, word for word, if asked.
    How are Servants to try to please their Masters?
    Please them well in all things, not answering again.
    Is it right for a Servant commanded to do anything to be sullen and slow, and answering his Master again?
    No.
    But suppose the Master is hard to please, and threatens and punishes more than he ought, what is the Servant to do?
    Do his best to please him.
    The rote lines rolled through Bella’s mind like a cannonball through barricades she had so carefully erected around those memories. Sheclenched her teeth. Religious instruction in that ramshackle, sand-sunk town of Darien had been just one more way their master reinforced the principle of blind obedience upon his slaves.
    Now just what did my Abraham have to do with that place?
Seating herself at the kitchen table, she studied the paper. The article consisted mostly of a letter written by a citizen of Darien, which began:
    WHAT HAS BEEN LONG THREATENED HAS AT LENGTH COME TO PASS. DARIEN IS NOW ONE PLAIN OF ASHES AND BLACKENED CHIMNEYS. THE ACCURSED YANKEE-NEGRO VANDALS CAME UP YESTERDAY WITH THREE GUNBOATS AND TWO TRANSPORTS, AND LAID THE CITY IN RUINS. THERE ARE BUT THREE SMALL HOUSES LEFT IN THE PLACE .
     
    The next few paragraphs detailed the churches that were burned, the milk cows that were shot in the street, and the anger of the writer. From another letter, the
Savannah News
excerpted this:
    THEY TOOK EVERY NEGRO THAT WAS IN THE PLACE, FORCING SOME TO GO WITH THEIR GUNS POINTED AT THEM ALL THE TIME. ONE NEGRO WOMAN RAN FROM THEM AND THEY SHOT HER IN THE HEAD, AND THEN CARRIED HER ON BOARD THEIR BOAT. … THE DESTRUCTION OF DARIEN WAS A COWARDLY, WANTON OUTRAGE, FOR WHICH THE YANKEE VANDALS HAVE NOT EVEN THE EXCUSE OF PLUNDER. THE TOWN HAD FOR A LONG TIME BEEN NEARLY DESERTED, AND THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT IN THE PLACE TO EXCITE EVEN YANKEE CUPIDITY. IT AFFORDED A SAFE OPPORTUNITY TO INFLICT INJURY UPON UNARMED AND DEFENCELESS PRIVATE CITIZENS, AND IT IS IN SUCH ENTERPRISES THAT YANKEE-NEGRO VALOR DISPLAYS ITSELF.
     
    Bella bit her lip and reread the words, pressing her hand against her furrowed brow. The idea of Darien burning to the ground lit a smoldering satisfaction in the part of her spirit still dark with bitterness. But shooting a negro woman? Abraham wouldn’t do that. And from what he had told her of the 54th, not one of those men would have done that either. Some were former slaves, some were born free, but all of them, he told her, were anxious to prove they were just as brave as white soldiers, and deserved equal citizenship.
    Shooting a woman in the head did not prove bravery. Burning a small deserted town—even one that Bella harbored no warm feelings toward—did not prove bravery either. Just the opposite.
    This can’t be Abraham’s regiment. There must be some mistake.
    But the article declared otherwise. Darien was “destroyed by a negro regiment, officered by white men.” If there was another regiment fitting this description, Bella did not know of it. According to the letter in the dispatch, “They left a book, which I found, and in which the following entry was made, and which, I presume, is a list of the regimental officers.” Bella’s heart dropped into her stomach as she