Free Sarah's Ground (9781439115855) by Ann Rinaldi

She’s a roan color with a light mane. Very pretty. It surprised me somehow, though, seeing him on a horse with a musket. But then, I forget. He is Southern, And it is their men’s First Commandment that they learn to shoot and ride. He was morose that morning. I suppose not being in the battle made him morose. I hope he doesn’t decide to join.
    We still didn’t know who had won the battle the day before. And I kept telling myself that to us here at Mount Vernon, it doesn’t matter.
    Around noontime I was picking some beans in my garden, glad to see my crow back, when I heard the workmen and servants shouting and running beyond the bowling green to the far reaches of the property. I ran to see them pointing at the heavens.
    Now what?
I thought.
The South’s President Jeff Davis on a cloud bank?
    It was a balloon. Nothing less. The servants and workmen alike ran in the direction in which it was coming down, on the edge of our plantation.
    I ran too and stood, openmouthed, with the others as the basket, holding a man in a tall black ridiculous hat, hit the ground. Immediately the men grabbed the sides of the skidding basket and brought it to a halt on the road just outside the west gate.
    â€œThank you, thank you, gentlemen,” the man inside said. And he nimbly jumped out, took off his hat, seeing me, and bowed. “I am Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe,” he said, “special agent of President Abraham Lincoln, commissioned by him to send telegraph messages from the air to the White House. To whom am I speaking?”
    I introduced myself.
    â€œAh, I have heard of the Association and its good ladies. Could I trouble you to let your men help me hide myconveyance here while I telegraph my wife to come and get me?”
    â€œAs long as you don’t come on our property,” I said. “We do not give succor to either side. We are neutral in this war.”
    â€œMiss Tracy,” he said, “I wish I had the luxury to be neutral, but I do not. How I envy you, yes, how I envy you. That’s it, men, gather the balloon in. Be careful there.”
    He then proceeded to explain its hydrogen-generation apparatus to the men, who were fascinated, all thoughts of mundane work forgotten. They gathered in the colorful folds of the balloon, which now looked like a painted beached whale. He told them what to do and they did it. I stood by, still in amazement. The night before, dazed men with primitive torches, and that morning a balloon! What kind of war was this?
    After assuring me that he would not come onto our property, and that he would send our workers home soon, Mr. Lowe said his wife would be coming in a covered wagon, disguised as a farm woman, to take him back to Washington.
    What had he seen from the air? one of the men asked him.
    He could not say. It was military intelligence. He was working for President Lincoln. He was scouting the placement of Southern troops.
    He said the North lost the battle the day before, and that if Southern general Beauregard had the sense of a mountaingoat (which he doesn’t), he could have followed his win up with taking Washington. He said that before the battle the soldiers in Washington City were getting rowdy and drunk. He said the best possible order did not prevail in Washington but that the town was a great, confused garrison.
    â€œBut the North has had its first defeat,” he said, “and no one is very happy.”
    Upton succeeded in getting enough men for a Home Guard.
    He told me the Confederates have declared July 30 to be a muster day. And that many men in the area who do not wish to be drafted into the Southern army will be making their way North. “Don’t let any of them in if they come this way and you want to be considered neutral,” he told me.
    I said I would be careful.
    This afternoon some soldiers came by to see the house and Washington’s tomb. We made $7.25 from them. We are in need of money. I