Promises to the Dead (19 page)

He lay back and closed his eyes. "But I ain't well and I need my nap, so you run along now and make yourself useful. Hunt me up a turtle or something. I ain't had a decent meal since you left."

I did as my uncle said and went on downstairs. It didn't seem worthwhile to start preaching at him about what I'd learned in my travels with Perry. The old man was set in his ways now and not about to change his views.

***

The very next morning I went down to the marsh and caught the biggest turtle in all of Talbot County. Delia made the finest soup ever concocted, and a few days later Uncle Philemon rose from his bed, feeling almost like his old self. He took a seat on the veranda and set me to work hammering and nailing whilst he sipped whiskey. It seemed many things had fallen apart in my absence.

"This is your chance to learn the art of carpentry," Uncle Philemon told me, "A fine and useful trade."

The first chance I had, I used my newfound skills to fashion a cross from hardwood. When it was done, I carved Lydia's name and dates deep so the letters and numbers wouldn't wear away. If Uncle Philemon knew what I was making, he didn't say a word. In fact, he never spoke of Lydia nor the colonel nor my Yankee ways again.

One fine July morning, I walked through the marsh to the place in the woods where she lay waiting.

I pounded the cross into the ground, and then I knelt down and read the words out loud to her. "Here lies Liddia, deerly beluved mama of Perry, and her baby girl. Died 1861. Rest in Peece."

I was silent a minute or two. The sun shone through the leaves, burning hot, and gnats buzzed around my face. The earth had sunk some where Lydia was buried, and moss had started growing, a nice green cover for her and the baby. Birds sang like a church choir, and I felt sad but peaceful.

"I done my best to keep my promise to you," I told Lydia. "Perry's with your mama and sister now, living free in Ohio. I know you wanted him to stay with Polly Baxter, but she wasn't much use. I hope you won't blame me none for not doing exactly what you asked."

I swear I heard Lydia's voice saying I did well, though I guess it must have been the leaves murmuring in the breeze.

"Another thing," I added, "Colonel Abednego Botfield is dead, so he won't be chasing Perry ever again."

Those leaves fluttered like they was laughing.

"I just wish you was in Ohio with Perry," I told her, "not lying here in these dark woods."

Once again the breeze ruffled the leaves, splashing sunlight in my eyes. I laid a handful of wildflowers on the grave and got to my feet. Then I walked slowly home. There was still plenty of work waiting for me.

AFTERWORD

P
romises to the Dead
began as most of my books do—with a vision. I saw a boy in a marsh on a rainy day long ago, hunting turtles for his uncle. As I pondered the story he was no doubt a part of, I saw him again—this time in a dark woods, captured by a runaway slave. As a result of that encounter, Jesse leaves his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore and journeys first to Baltimore and then to northern Virginia across the Potomac River from what is now Brunswick, Maryland.

In the spring of 1861, Maryland was a slave-holding state with a strong inclination to secede from the Union. The Eastern Shore and the city of Baltimore were particularly loyal to the southern cause. Indeed, had not the federal government intervened, Maryland would most likely have joined the Confederacy.

The Pratt Street Riot on April 19, 1861 was Baltimore's response to President Lincoln's effort to squelch the rebellion begun in South Carolina on April 12, 1861. On April 13, Major Robert Anderson, Union Army, surrendered Fort Sumter to Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. The federal fort had been under fire by southern troops for thirty-four hours; in all that time no one on either side had been killed.

Determined to regain Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln called for an army of 75,000 volunteers. Thousands of men responded immediately to the president's call. To reach the South, these troops had to pass through Baltimore.

Four companies of the 25th Pennsylvania Volunteers arrived at Bolton Station on April 18, 1861. At that time, Baltimore prohibited locomotives from pulling trains through the city. To continue their journey south, the soldiers had to make their way on foot to the Camden Street Station. When they left the train cars, a mob assembled and hurled bricks and paving stones at them. Nicholas Biddle, a Union officer's black servant, was killed in the melee. He is often described as the first casualty of the Civil War.

Unfortunately, the events of April 18 were merely a warmup for what happened the next day. On April 19, the Massachusetts Militia arrived at the President Street Station, near Fells Point. They, too, had to go through the city to reach Camden Street Station, but unlike the Pennsylvania Volunteers, they were transported from one station to the other in railroad cars pulled by horses along Pratt Street. The soldiers were armed but had been told not to shoot unless they were fired upon.

The first seven units reached Camden Street Station safely, but a large mob attacked the Massachusetts companies at the end of the line, as well as an unarmed regimental band from New York and a unit of Pennsylvania Volunteers. The rioters dumped cartloads of sand on the tracks. They hauled anchors from nearby piers and threw them in front of the horses, blocking the train cars. Joining the melee, citizens pelted the soldiers with rocks, bricks, bottles, and anything else they could throw.

Soon the riot on Pratt Street turned into a battle. Civilians fired on the soldiers, and the soldiers fired back.

At that point, Mayor George W. Brown placed himself at the head of the soldiers' column and marched beside their commanding officer. Marshal George P. Kane and a squad of Baltimore police formed a line in the rear of troops.

When the battle ended—the first of the Civil War, some say—four soldiers had been killed and thirty-six wounded. Twelve Baltimore citizens were killed and an unknown number wounded.

To prevent further incidents, General Benjamin Franklin Butler made a decision. On the night of May 13, 1861, he led five hundred men from the 6th Massachusetts, veterans of the Pratt Street Riot, into Baltimore under cover of a thunderstorm. The troops occupied Federal Hill above the harbor. While the city slept, Butler's men set up guns and aimed them down Charles Street, straight at the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon Place. Any more trouble and the good folks of Baltimore would find their city under fire.

Butler acted on his own initiative and, for that reason, was later relieved of his command. However, Baltimore remained under martial law for the duration of the war, and Maryland remained in the Union, a state of strategic importance despite its small size.

Many Marylanders continued to be sympathetic to the South. Numbers of young men fled to Virginia and joined the Confederate army, later fighting against their fellow Marylanders at Front Royal and Gettysburg. Some of their fathers were jailed at Fort McHenry for treason against the Union. Like Uncle Philemon, most of them claimed to be opposed to the federal government's encroachment on states' rights.

Other young men heeded Lincoln's call in even greater numbers, forming the Maryland Volunteer Infantry in May 1861.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in Confederate states, it did not free the slaves in Maryland, a Union state. As late as July 1863, three weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg, Union officers liberated the inmates of a slave trader's jail near the Baltimore harbor.

This is the Baltimore in which Jesse and Perry find themselves when they arrive on April 19, 1861. "Mob Town" it was called then—and for good reason. With the exception of their encounter with Colonel Abednego Botfield, the events the boys experience really happened in pretty much the way Jesse describes them.

Later in the story, when Jesse witnesses a "Baltimore Belle" mocking a Union soldier, he is actually seeing my great-grandparents on the day they met—one for the South and one for the North, like so many Baltimoreans.