Authors: Heather Graham
Surrender (49 page)
“Jerome!” she shrieked his name, for no heads bobbed above the water. She waited, and cried out again. Then she dived in, desperate. But dusk had turned to darkness. The water was murky and dark. She brushed something … human hair. Hands gripped her, pulling her down. Down …
She looked into Finn’s face. He was drowning, trying to use her body to force himself back to the surface. He reached for her face, for her hair …
He suddenly jerked back, as if he had been catapulted from her. She shot to the surface, gasping for air.
“Jerome!”
She screamed when arms slipped around her from the rear. She swung around, and saw her husband’s face, blue eyes reflecting the moon’s light on the water.
“Jerome …”
She threw her arms around him. “It’s all right, it’s all right, my love. It’s over.”
“Finn … is he dead?”
“I don’t know. I would have killed him just now … but David came by in a small boat … and there are so many dead. I didn’t want to kill him if I didn’t have to. I’m sorry. Maybe I should have finished him off.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I was so afraid he’d killed you, shot you in the house—”
“I had to taunt him, make him shoot wild and think he’d killed me. I went down before his bullets could strike me.”
“Thank God … oh, Jerome. My baby, our baby, Jamie—”
“He’s safe,” he said softly, and he twisted around, looking for the small boat that drifted just feet away. Come on … let’s get back to shore.”
He helped her into the boat, then crawled in himself. His steady pull on the oars brought them back to the dock.
He sat in the boat, watching as the fire ebbed. She touched his cheek. “Jerome, what about your family?”
“They were out of the house, don’t worry.” He smiled, not looking at her. “My mother took the children into the woods. I admit, my father is one of the most savage fighters I’ve ever known. Hopefully, he’ll never need wage war again. But as for you… x it was noble of you to go looking for them.”
“It wasn’t noble; it was my fault Yankees attacked this place.”
He shook his head. “No. I heard most of what he said. Finn was an explosion waiting to be triggered. And I can promise you, the Yanks will waste no more ships or men coming here. Hamlin has taken the survivors out to an island to be picked up, but the casualties were heavy. Fifteen dead, ten wounded, a ship lost—and the Seminoles enraged when the government wants no more problems.”
“Your father’s beautiful home is destroyed.”
“He’ll built anew. My father is among the ‘undefeated.’ He’ll never surrender, to any man.” He stepped up to the deck, reaching back for her. He took her hand, and she leapt to the deck. Together they walked to the front of the house. James and Teela stood before it. Each held a babe, and neither seemed unduly upset that their beautiful home had been destroyed. “We can sleep in a chickee, like in the old days,” Teela mused.
“Mmm,” James murmured. “But actually, there’s a lot that’s still sound, and a lot we can save. The dining room is gone.”
“I had grown to despise the wallpaper, anyway,” Teela said.
“Well, we shall have new paper now!”
James turned, alerted to the fact that he and Teela were no longer alone. The fire had died down. Much of the house stood, though it was blackened by soot.
“I think you must be very worried about someone!” he said, holding Jamie. He set Risa’s baby in her arms, and she nearly sobbed with pleasure and relief.
“Thank you, oh, thank you!”
“Everything under control, son?” James asked Jerome.
“Aye, sir, it is.”
The four of them stood with the house and land before them, the ocean to their backs. Risa could not help herself. “I am so very sorry—”
“Don’t be,” her father-in-law said flatly. “Teela and I learned long ago that nothing in life is irreplaceable—except for life itself. Come here, daughter.”
He slipped an arm around her. “This is why I love this place so much. It’s new. Wild. A place to grow and build. And it’s your home now, too, you know. Even if you don’t stay, you’ll be back. It’s your son’s heritage.” He smiled at her, kissed her forehead, then walked away with his wife and infant. “I think we should build another wing,” he said.
Jerome took Jamie from Risa, tucking him under an arm, and grasping her free hand. He started to lead her down the pine trail to the pool.
“James, what about your men, your ship?”
“Hamlin will take charge of the situation.”
“Should I apologize to your father’s men—”
“They aren’t my father’s men, they are his people. They fought with him, as he fought with them. By choice. They don’t want apologies or thanks.”
She fell silent, following him. He sat on the sandy embankment, cradling Jamie, and looking out at the moonlight.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it? The moon on the water, the warmth, the sound of the night birds … I forget sometimes what it’s like to be home.”
“Yes, it’s beautiful.”
He was silent a minute, then said, “Risa, I love you.”
“I love you. So much. If anything had happened to you, I knew that I didn’t want to go on. Oh, God, what are we going to do? There is still a war on.”
“And you’re still a Yank. And I’m still a Rebel.”
“What do we do?”
“Survive!” he said softly, pulling her close to him.
“But you’re going to set sail again—”
“Not until we’ve helped my father rebuild.”
“But then …”
“You could stay here.”
“I could. But—it’s not that I mind being in the far south. I love it here. I do. Maybe that’s why you seduced me so easily here …”
“I seduced you? I think you were the seducer.”
“I was not!”
“You were. You were shocking. I loved every minute.”
She smiled, realizing that he had playfully goaded her. “I love the water, the bay breezes, the palm trees, the sand … the warmth in winter. I could stay here, easily. But I’m a good nurse. And the war isn’t just this giant thing that is about changing the nation—it’s about people as well. Individual people. I can save lives, and most of the time, when men are injured or dying, you can’t tell whether they’re a Yank or a Rebel. When they’re afraid of dying, sometimes they don’t even care. If you don’t want me taking Jamie back to my father’s company, I can understand that. But let me return to St.
Augustine, or even join with Julian in the heartland. I can help—”
“Do you think the Rebels can stand any more of your help?”
“Jerome!”
“Just teasing, my love,” he said, then sobered. “If you’re with the Rebs, I can come see you.”
“And if I’m not, you’ll see Janine Thompson?”
“I told you the truth—”
“So did I. Always.”
He laughed ruefully, pulling her even closer for a moment. Then he eased Jamie down, making a bed out of his blankets on the sandy embankment. He turned back to Risa. “I’m truly sorry. I was so hurt, and too afraid, to give you a chance.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“And I do love you. I never imagined I could love so deeply, or need anyone the way I need you, with all my soul.”
“Oh, my love!” she murmured, tears glistening in her eyes.
“There’s much more tempest ahead … but I believe that we’ll weather it. I believe in my family, and that no matter what comes between us, we’ll be together in the end. And this land will remain our paradise. It will be a place to heal when the anguish is over. And mostly …” he hesitated, smiling ruefully. “Risa, I’m sorry, but I’ll probably always be a bit arrogant—even if the South does lose the war.”
She shrugged. “I’ll always speak my mind.”
“I’ll want to tell you what to do all the time.”
“It’s most unlikely I’ll actually do it.”
He laughed. “I’ve been a fool. I believe in you. And us …” He glanced over at the baby, smiling again. “No matter what the war brings, always know that I love you. No matter where we are in time or place, you needn’t doubt me, because there’s no one else I would ever want to be with.”
“Oh, God, I do love you, too. So much.”
“Risa.”
“Yes?”
“Times like this may be very rare.”
“I know.”
“And you know something else?”
“What?”
“We may be political enemies, but we really made a beautiful child.”
“We did.”
“We could take a chance at making another, you know. Seize the moment, ride the wild wind …”
“Mmm …” she murmured. “Ride the wind … a Southern, Rebel wind, my love?”
He didn’t answer with words. She was swept down into the sand, and his lips upon hers were a potent reply.
She didn’t know what the future would bring.
But tonight meant surrender.
For them both.
(and Events Which Influenced Her People)
1492 | Christopher Columbus discovers the “New World.” |
1513 | Florida discovered. Juan Ponce de León sights Florida from his ship on March 27, steps on shore near present-day St. Augustine in early April. |
1539 | Hernando de Soto lands on west coast of the peninsula, near present-day Tampa. |
1564 | The French arrive and establish Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River. Immediately following the establishment of the French fort, Spain dispatches Pedro de Menéndez to get rid of the French invaders, “pirates and perturbers of the public peace.” Menéndez dutifully captures the French stronghold and slays or enslaves the inhabitants. |
1565 | Pedro de Menéndez founds St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States. |
1586 | Sir Francis Drake attacks St. Augustine, burning and plundering the settlement. |
1698 | Pensacola is founded. |
1740 | British General James Oglethorpe invades Florida from Georgia. |
1763 | At the end of the Seven Years War, or the French and Indian War, both the East and West Florida territories are ceded to Britain. |
1763-1783 | British Rule in East and West Florida. |
1774 | The “shot heard ’round the world” is fired in Concord, Massachusetts Colony. |
1776 | The War of Independence begins; many of British loyalists flee to Florida. |
1783 | By the Treaty of Paris, Florida is returned to the Spanish. |
1812-1815 | The War of 1812. |
1813-1814 | The Creek wars. (“Red-Stick” land is decimated. Numerous Indians seek new lands south with the “Seminoles.”) |
1814 | General Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola. |
1815 | The Battle of New Orleans. |
1817-1818 | The First Seminole War (Americans accuse the Spanish of aiding the Indians in their raids across the border. Hungry for more territory, settlers seek to force Spain into ceding the Floridas to the United States by their claims against the Spanish government for its inability to properly handle the situation within the territories). |
1819 | Don Luis de Onis, Spanish minister to the United States, and secretary of state John Quincy Adams, sign a treaty by which the Floridas will become part of the United States. |
1821 | The Onis-Adams Treaty is ratified. An act of congress makes the two Floridas one territory. Jackson becomes the military governor, but relinquishes the post after a few months. |
1822 | The first legislative council meets at Pensacola. Members from St. Augustine travel fifty-nine days by water to attend. |
1823 | The second legislative council meets at St. Augustine: the western delegates are shipwrecked and barely escape death. |
1823 | The Treaty of Moultrie Creek is ratified by major Seminole chiefs and the federal government. The ink is barely dry before Indians are complaining that the lands are too small and white settlers are petitioning the government for a policy of Indian removal. |
1824 | The third session meets at Tallahassee, a halfway selected as a main order of business and approved at the second session. Tallahassee becomes the first territorial capital. |
1832 | Payne’s Landing: Numerous chiefs sign a treaty agreeing to move west to Arkansas as long as seven of their number are able to see and approve the lands. Thee treaty is ratified at Fort Gibson, Arkansas. |
1835 | Summer: Wiley Thompson claims that Osceola has repeatedly reviled him in his own office with foul language and orders his arrest. Osceola is handcuffed and incarcerated. November: Charlie Emathla, after agreeing to removal to the west, is murdered. Most scholars agree Osceola led the party that carried out the execution. Some consider the murder a personal vengeance, others believe it was proscribed by numerous chiefs, since an Indian who would leave his people to aid the whites should forfeit his own life. December 28: Major Francis Dade and his troops are massacred as they travel from Fort Brooke to Fort King. Also on December 28—Wiley Thompson and a companion are killed outside the walls of Fort King. The sutler Erastus Rogers and his two clerks are also murdered by members of the same raiding party, led by Osceola. December 31: The First Battle of the With-lacoochee—Osceola leads the Seminoles. |
1836 | January: Major General Winfield Scott is ordered by the secreetary of war to take command in Florida. February 4: Dade County established in South Florida in memory of Francis Lang-horne Dade. March 16: The Senate confirmed Richard Keith Call governor of the Florida Territory. June 21: Call, a civilian governor, is given command of the Florida forces after the failure of Scott’s strategies and the military disputes between Scott and General Gaines. Call attempts a “summer campaign,” and is as frustrated in his efforts as his predecessor. December 9: Major Sidney Jesup takes command. |
1837 | June 2: Osceola and Sam Jones release or “abduct” nearly 700 Indians awaiting deportation to the west from Tampa. October 27: Osceola is taken under a white flag of truce; Jesup is denounced by whites and Indians alike for the action. November 29: Coacoochee, Cowaya, sixteen warriors and two women escape Fort Marion Christmas Day: Jesup has the largest fighting force assembled in Florida during the conflict, nearly 9,000 men. Under his command, Colonel Zachary Taylor leads the Battle of Okeechobee. The Seminoles chose to stand their ground and fight, inflicting greater losses to whites despite the fact they were severely outnumbered. |
1838 | January 31: Osceola dies at Fort Marion, South Carolina. (A strange side note to a sad tale: Dr. Wheedon, presiding white physician for Osceola, cut off and preserved Osceola’s head. Wheedon’s heirs reported that the good doctor would hang the head on the bedstead of one of his three children should they misbehave. The head passed to his son-in-law, Dr. Daniel |
1838 | May: Zachary Taylor takes command when Jesup’s plea to be relieved is answered at last on April 29. The Florida legislature debates statehood. |
1839 | December: Because of his arguments with federal authorities regarding the Seminole War, Richard Keith Call is removed as governor. Robert Raymond Reid is appointed in his stead. |
1840 | April 24: Zachary Taylor is given permission to leave command of what is considered to be the harshest military position in the country. Walker Keith Armistead takes command. December 1840-January 1841: John T. MacLaughlin leads a flotilla of men in dugouts across the Everglades from east to west; his party becomes the first white men to do so. September: William Henry Harrison is elected president of the United States; the Florida war is considered to have cost Martin Van Buren reelection. John Bell replaces Joel Poinsett as secretary of war. Robert Reid is ousted as territorial governor, and Richard Keith Call is reinstated. |
1841 | April 4: President William Henry Harrison dies in office: John Tyler becomes president of the U.S. May 1: Coacoochee determines to turn himself in. He is escorted by a man who will later become extremely well-known—Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman. (Sherman writes to his future wife that the Florida war is a good one for a soldier; he May 31: Walker Keith Armistead is relieved. Colonel William Jenkins Worth takes command. |
1842 | May 10: Winfield Scott is informed that the administration has decided there must be an end to hostilities as soon as possible. August 14: Aware that he cannot end hostilities and send all Indians west, Colonel Worth makes offers to the remaining Indians to leave, or accept boundaries. The war, he declares, is over. It has cost a fledgling nation thirty to forty million dollars, and the lives of seventy-four commissioned officers. The Seminoles have been reduced from tens of thousands to hundreds scattered about in pockets. The Seminoles (inclusive here, as they were seen during the war, as all Florida Indians) have, however, kept their place in the peninsula; those remaining are the undefeated. The army, too, has learned new tactics, mostly regarding partisan and guerrilla warfare. Men who will soon take part in the greatest conflict to tear apart the nation have practiced the art of battle here: William T. Sherman, Braxton Bragg, George Gordon Meade, Joseph E. Johnston, and more, as well as soon-to-be President Zachary Taylor. |
1845 | March 3: President John Tyler signs the bill that makes Florida the twenty-seventh state of United States of America. |
1855-58 | The conflict known as the Third Seminole War takes place with a similiar outcome to the earlier confrontations—money spent, lives lost, and the Indians entrenched more deeply into the Everglades. |
1859 | Robert E. Lee is sent in to arrest John Brown after his attempt to initiate a slave rebellion with an assault on Harper’s |
1860 | The first Florida cross-state railroad goes into service. November 6: Abraham Lincoln is elected to the presidency and many of Southern states begin to call for special legislative sessions. Although there are many passionate Unionists in the state, most Florida politicians are ardent in lobbying for secession. Towns, cities, and counties rush to form or enlarge militia companies. Even before the state is able to meet for its special session, civil and military leaders plan to demand the turnover of federal military installations. |
1861 | January 10: Florida votes to secede from the Union, the third Southern state to do so. February: Florida joins the Confederate States of America. Through late winter and early spring, the Confederacy struggles to form a government and organize the armed forces while the states recruit fighting men. Jefferson Davis is President of the newly formed country. Stephen Mallory, of Florida, becomes C.S.A. secretary of the navy. April 12-14: Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, S.C., and the first blood is shed when an accidental explosion kills Private Hough, who then has the distinction of being the first Federal soldier killed. Federal forces fear a similiar action at Fort Pickens, Pensacola Bay, Florida. Three forts guarded the bay, McRee and Barrancas on the land side, and Pickens on the tip of forty-mile long Santa Rosa Island. Federal Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer July 18: First Manassas, or the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia—both sides get their first real taste of battle. Southern troops are drawn from throughout the states, including Florida. Already the state which had been so eager to secede sees her sons being shipped northward to fight, and her coast being left to its own defenses by a government with different priorities. November: Robert E. Lee inspects coastal defenses as far south as Fernandina and decides the major ports of Charleston, Savannah, and Brunswick are to be defended, adding later that the small force posted at St. Augustine was like an invitation to attack. |
1862 | February: Florida’s Governor Milton publicly states his despair for Florida citizens as more of the state’s troops are ordered north after Grant captures two major Confederate strongholds in Tennessee. February 28: A fleet of twenty-six Federal ships sets sail to occupy Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine. March 8: St. Augustine surrenders, and though Jacksonville and other points north and south along the coast will change hands several times during the war, St. Augustine will remain in Union hands. The St. Johns River becomes a ribbon of guerrilla troop movement for both sides. Many Floridians begin to despair of “East Florida,” fearing that the fickle populace has all turned Unionist. March 8: Under the command of Franklin Buchanan, the April 2: Apalachicola is attacked by a Federal landing force. The town remains a no-man’s-land throughout the war. April 6-8: Union and Confederate forces engage in the battle of Shiloh. Both claim victories. Both suffer horrible losses with over twenty thousand killed, wounded, or missing. April 25: New Orleans falls, and the Federal grip on the South becomes more of a vise. Spring: The Federal blockade begins to tighten and much of the state becomes a no-man’s-land. Despite its rugged terrain, the length of the peninsula, and the simple difficulty of logistics, blockade-runners know that they can dare Florida waterways simply because the Union can’t possibly guard the extensive coastline of the state. Florida’s contribution becomes more and more that of a breadbasket as she strips herself and provides salt, beef, smuggled supplies, and manpower to the Confederacy. May 9: Pensacola is evacuated by the Rebs, and occupied by Federal forces. May 20: Union landing party is success- May 22: Union flag officer DuPont writes to his superiors with quotes that stated had the Union not abandoned Jacksonville, the state would have split, and East Florida would have entered the war on the Union side. Into summer: Fierce action continues in Virginia: Battle of Fair Oaks, or Seven Pines, May 31, the Seven Days Battles, May 25 through June 2, the battle of Mechanicsville, June 26, Gaines Mill, or Cold Harbor, June 27. More Florida troops leave the state to replace the men killed in action in these battles, and in other engagements in Alabama, Louisiana, and along the Mississippi. Salt becomes evermore necessary: Florida has numerous saltworks along the Gulf side of the state. Union ships try to find them, confiscate what they can, and destroy them. August 30: Second Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run. September 16 and 17: The Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg, takes place in Maryland, where the “single bloodiest day or fighting” occurs. September 23: The preliminary text of the Emancipation Proclamation is published. It will take effect on January 1, 1863. Lincoln previously drafted the document, but waited for a Union victory to publish it; both sides claimed Antietam, but the Rebels were forced to withdraw back to Virginia. October 5: Federals recapture Jacksonville. December 11 through 15: The Battle of Fredericksburg. December 31: The Battle of Murfrees-borough or Stones River, Tennessee. |