If Someday Comes: A Slave's Story of Freedom by Calloway David

Author:Calloway, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Point Fermin Publishing
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty-One

Monday, April 15, 1861

“We teachin’ that nigger-lovin’ Lincoln a thing or two!”

George was sitting outside Marsa Thom’s office in the back hall of the rail station when he heard the shout from the front counter. Ricky Acock was drunk and yelling about the firing on, and surrender of, Fort Sumter. Lots of celebrating by Acock, Billy Brown, and the like.

“Thar’s a great thing a-happened,” Acock continued to shout, “Chicken shit northern boys ‘fraid to fight!”

The Cleveland Banner had been whipping up secessionist feelings for weeks. On April fourth:

“The administration at Washington appears to be in a quandary—one day it concludes to evacuate the Southern forts—the next day it reconsiders and talks about re-enforcing them, but does neither. The fact is the Black Republican administration of Lincoln, Seward and Co., to use a common phrase, is ‘in a hell of a fix’ and don’t know what to do.

“While they are pursuing a hawk and buzzard policy… the Southern congress is perfecting a government that will stand the test of human scrutiny… such a one as our fathers contemplated—a government about which there will be no differences of opinion as to its spirit and meaning.”

The telegraph lines and the newspapers were full of the Confederate victory over the Union army at Fort Sumter. At four a.m. on the twelfth of April, the Confederate Army began firing on the fort, sitting in the Charleston, South Carolina Harbor. Firing from both forces continued nonstop and was watched by throngs of people ashore. Cut off from its supply line, the US Army surrendered the next day; two Union soldiers and one Confederate soldier died in the exchange.

George walked out into the front office and stopped short when he saw the jug of moonshine spilling on the out-of-town newspapers that had just come in that morning. Acock was so drunk that his hand listed badly to one side spilling the clear liquid, smearing the message of Confederate Sovereignty printed on the front pages. Why he had stumbled into the office, when the big noisy celebration of Confederate supporters was across the rail yard at the Will Camp’s boarding house, George could only guess.

Camp called his place ‘Camp House’, the self-proclaimed Confederate headquarters in Bradley County. ‘Captain’ Camp, soon joined by Colonel C.H. Mills and John Dunn, Esquire, had been signing up volunteers all through the weekend, calling themselves the “36th Tennessee Rifles”, a local militia. Free moonshine had been a large contributor to the excitement. Most of the young men and boys were from the hills and outer farms, where the ground was hard and rocky, and where generally, food to keep a body and soul together was hard to come by. The army would feed them, so they walked to Cleveland with what little they could call their own. Some hadn’t been in town but once or twice in their lives. Half didn’t own shoes, only a few had a gun and those were smooth bore muzzle loader flintlocks. If they could read, it was just to write their name.

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