C. C. Phillips
C. C. Phillips
This story is a work of fiction, only vaguely following an historical outline. The names of actual people (alphabetically): John Wilkes Booth, Ulysses S. Grant, Queen Isabella II, Andrew Johnson, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, William Seward, William Sherman, Zachary Taylor are included with no intent to credit, discredit, change or alter the part they have played in history. Patowmack is the Potomac River (the spelling change officially took place in 1931). The ferry crossings of Citadel and Conception Landing are entirely fictitious, they have no geographical placement or representation. The town named Conception is something I fabricated to suit the introduction of the Preston Diamond series. Distance and chronology are manipulated to fit the plot.
The conflict of the Civil War, and the abominable living conditions that brought on typhoid, dysentery and malaria, cost 620,000 lives: North 360,000; South 260,000. These figures represent roughly one-sixth of the northern troops and one-third of the southern force. The south suffered far more direct damage: trade, industry, farming, towns, cities and the lives of the survivors were ruined. Wounds of war are slow to heal and generations passed before the South was back on its feet. The scars will never be erased entirely; change in perspective makes the loss more acceptable today.
Ulysses Grant was an interesting study. He engaged in many bloody battles during the Civil War and thousands upon thousands of his men were slaughtered. Northern critics called General Grant a butcher, however, and this is my opinion, he fought to win and not without compassion. In his memoirs, he said of the Mexican American War:
“I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”
These are not the words of a butcher. Nor was Grant's fair treatment of General Lee and his Southern troops in any way indicative of a man without mercy.
During his tenure as a farmer, Grant did emancipate his slave, but that man's name, unless by the greatest coincidence, was not the fictional Rufus Tweed. Ulysses Grant did, when possible, keep his family nearby during the Civil War. He had a penchant for buying good horses, but I made up the part about him shooting the flighty mare named Socks. That anecdote exemplified Lieutenant General Grant's ability to adjust and react in a difficult situation.
As for the traitors and the conspiracy, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Secretary of State William Seward was attacked the same night. General Ulysses Grant and Vice President Andrew Johnson were targets as well but that part of the plan did not materialize. Four people, one of them a woman, were convicted and together they swung from the gallows. Others were jailed and later pardoned. John Wilkes Booth escaped after slaying Lincoln, he ran at large for twelve days with a $50,000 reward on his head. Federal troops caught up with him and he was shot. Controversy over whether it was really Booth whom the troops killed surfaced later, but over ten witnesses had positively identified his corpse.
I do not know if it was customary, in 1865, to have so many people identify a body.
C. C. P.
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