I realized that my cousin Julia had been right; Robert believed he was in love with me. I’d continued writing to him regularly since returning to Richmond, but now that I was falling in love myself, I knew that it was unfair to string Robert along with false hopes. I sat down at my desk one day and wrote him a long, honest letter, gently explaining to him that we no longer had an “understanding.”
At the same time, I wrote to Aunt Martha, asking her to help cushion the news. I felt relieved, but a little worried, when Robert’s letters stopped immediately. I eventually received a very cool note from my aunt saying that she and Robert had talked, but she gave no indication of how he had received the news. My cousin Julia stopped mentioning him in her letters.
I had much bigger things to worry about that fall. The United States that I loved so much seemed on the brink of a terrible crisis. The race for president, like John Brown’s uprising, revealed a nation bitterly divided over slavery. The Democratic Party had split in two, with Northern Democrats nominating Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and Southern Democrats nominating Kentucky’s Senator John Breckinridge. The Republicans chose a compromise candidate named Abraham Lincoln, who pledged to halt the spread of slavery in any states that joined the Union in the future but promised not to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed. I thought Mr. Lincoln’s position was a fair compromise; Charles disagreed.
“Lincoln’s views are unacceptable,” he insisted. “Once our slave states are outnumbered in Congress, we will no longer have fair representation. The North could enact any laws they pleased.”
“Is that why South Carolina is threatening to secede if Mr. Lincoln is elected?”
“Yes, that’s exactly why. America broke away from Great Britain for the same reason—her interests were not being fairly represented.”
“Do you think it will come to that, Charles? Another revolution?”
“I pray not.”
But when Abraham Lincoln won the election—with only forty percent of the popular vote—Charles and I both felt a sense of dread. Not a single slaveholding state had voted for him.
Charles and I still disagreed over slavery, but we were able to discuss it without arguing now. He listened to my opinions, and that drew my heart to him. He admitted that slavery was unjust, and I admitted that abolishing it immediately would not only destroy the South’s economy but would leave millions of slaves unequipped to deal with their immediate freedom. Charles was kind and fair to his family’s slaves, even if the bonds of love that existed between Tessie and Eli and me were missing.
Tessie and I continued with our reading lessons in the afternoons, and she made excellent progress. Within six months, she could read simple stories and write down the sentences I dictated to her, even though her spelling was poor. She remained very fearful of being discovered, however, and every afternoon she would make me repeat my promise not to tell a soul what we were doing before she would agree to read or write a single word. What had begun as a way to prove Tessie’s equality to Charles would forever remain our secret.
But I no longer felt compelled to prove anything to him. Charles had admitted to me that some slaves could undoubtedly learn how to read, but he felt quite strongly that they should not be educated. Even though we often disagreed, Charles and I were convinced of one thing: our growing feelings for each other were much stronger than our political differences.
Late that year, on December 20, Charles’ family hosted a Christmas party in their enormous home. All of Richmond’s high society was invited. As I waited for Charles to arrive to escort me, I couldn’t help recalling his sister Sally’s party, just one year earlier.
“So much has changed in a year’s time,” I said to Tessie. “I wonder what I’ll be doing a year from now?”
She was watching for Charles’ carriage from my bedroom window, but she turned to smile mischievously at me. “Think you’ll be waking up beside your Mr. St. John by next Christmas?”
The subject still made me blush, but the thought made my heart race. “I . . . I hope so,” I said shyly.
Tessie clapped her hands together and laughed out loud. “That prove it, then! My baby girl in
love
! And here come Prince Charming’s carriage now.”
I heard it, too. I waited for the ring of the door chimes, the sound of Charles’ footsteps in the foyer, his languid voice as he greeted my father. They never came. “What’s taking him so long?” I asked.
Tessie peered out the window again. “He standing out in back . . . talking to Eli.”
“Let me see.” I went to the window and saw them there, deep in conversation—Charles dressed in formal attire, Eli in ragged stable clothes. They were the same height, and they faced each other, eye to eye. The discussion seemed to last a long time. Then, to my amazement, Charles extended his hand to Eli. Tears filled my eyes as they shook hands with each other. Never before had I seen a well-bred Southern gentleman shaking hands as equals with a Negro.
“Hey, now! Stop that crying!” Tessie scolded. “Your eyes gonna be all puffy and red.”
“I can’t help it. I love him, Tessie.”
“Well, didn’t I just say that, honey?”
When I came down the stairs and saw Charles waiting for me, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He took my hand and kissed it, his lips lingering for a moment. He tenderly rested his bearded cheek against the back of my hand, then kissed it again.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
I had no sensation of my feet touching the ground as I floated out to his carriage. We settled in the back, side by side, for the drive downhill to his home in Court End.
When he said, “I want to give you your Christmas present a few days early,” my heart began to pound with joy and anticipation. Charles pulled a small, wrapped box from his pocket. My fingers trembled so badly I couldn’t unwrap it.
“Need help?” He smiled and took it from me again. Inside was a magnificent ruby ring in what looked to be a very old platinum-and-gold setting. “It was my grandmother’s ring,” Charles said. He paused for the space of a heartbeat, then said, “Will you marry me, Caroline?”
I wanted to shout my answer from the top of the capitol building, but I couldn’t seem to raise my voice above a whisper. “Yes, please.” I sounded like a small child accepting a cookie. Charles laughed and pulled me into his arms as I battled to control my tears.
“Listen now. I believe I’ve finally found a way to render you speechless,” he said. “I should have tried this months ago. Here, try it on and see if it fits.” He slid the ring onto my left hand. It was a perfect fit. “I asked your father for permission to marry you a few days ago,” Charles said. “He gave us his blessing. Would it be all right if we announced our engagement at the party tonight?”
I wanted the whole world to know, but all I managed to say was, “Yes. It would be wonderful.” Then another thought occurred to me. “Is . . . is this what you were talking to Eli about tonight?”
“You saw us?” For a moment, Charles seemed embarrassed. “Actually . . . yes. I know what a good friend Eli is to you, and I thought . . . well, I thought I’d like to have him as my ally. He gave us his blessing, too.”
I could no longer control my tears. I hugged Charles tightly, unable to express in words how much his gesture had moved me. He understood me well enough to know that Eli’s blessing meant as much to me as my father’s.
Charles’ parents stood next to Daddy at the party later that night to announce our engagement. We would be married next July. The guests applauded the news. All of Richmond’s leading citizens stood in line to congratulate Charles and me and wish us well. Many remembered my mother and spoke fondly of her. But I couldn’t help wondering if a few were worried, for Charles’ sake, that I would turn out to be like her.
Sally had tears in her eyes as she hugged me. “I’m so pleased that you’ll be my sister,” she said. We had become friends now that she no longer viewed me as her rival. She was fond of my cousin Jonathan but was reluctant to limit herself to only one beau.
Jonathan offered his congratulations, too, along with a hug and kiss. “I must say,” he grinned, “this is one match I never would have bet money on, judging by your first date.”
In the midst of this dizzying joy, Mr. Jennings Wise, editor of the
Richmond Enquirer,
arrived at the party two hours late. It quickly became apparent that he brought startling news. “We received a late bulletin over the wire this evening,” he said. “It came in just as I was leaving the office. South Carolina has officially seceded from the Union.”
The news wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it rocked the gathering nevertheless, bringing the merriment to a temporary standstill. Even after Mr. St. John told the orchestra to continue playing, and urged us all to enjoy the evening’s celebration, everyone gathered in small, worried groups, discussing the secession in hushed whispers. I couldn’t help feeling afraid. I had seen firsthand the deep rift between North and South after the events at Harper’s Ferry. Now that the first state had broken away, I wondered if anything could stop an avalanche of splintering states.
“Something terrible has begun tonight, hasn’t it?” I asked Charles.
“We don’t know that,” he replied, but I read the concern in his eyes.
“Do you think there will be a war?”
“That depends on how Washington reacts. Every state joined the Union voluntarily; they should have the right to leave it again if the Federal government no longer represents their best interests.”
“Will Virginia leave the Union, too?”
He sighed. “There’s not a lot of support for secession at the moment. But listen now. We can only live our lives one day at a time—and this is our special day. Come with me, Caroline.”
He took my hand in his and led me outside to the terrace. The night was warm for December, but still cold enough to make me shiver in my ball gown. Charles took off his coat and wrapped it around me before pulling me into his arms. He held me tightly. Suddenly all that mattered was this moment.
When I stopped shivering, he pulled back to gaze at me with his beautiful eyes. “I love you,” he said. Then he bent his head toward me and kissed me for the first time. I felt the brush of his beard on my face, the pressure of his hands on my back, the warm touch of his lips on mine, and I knew that Tessie’s words were true—I wanted Charles’ arms around me more than I wanted air to breathe.
Richmond 1861
At the beginning of the new year, 1861, I began to include the
Richmond Enquirer
as part of Tessie’s daily reading material. Each morning after Daddy finished with the paper and left for work, Tessie and I would huddle near the fireplace in my bedroom and read aloud the latest news to each other. Then we would spend the rest of the day preparing my wedding trousseau and filling my hope chest. But throughout the month of January, the news we read grew more ominous, my future as a bride less certain. One by one, five more states followed South Carolina’s lead and seceded from the Union. Texas joined them on the first of February.
“Where’re all these places I reading about?” Tessie asked one morning. “They near Richmond?”
We went downstairs to the globe in Daddy’s library, and I showed her where to find the Confederate states: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. Then I showed her Virginia—sandwiched uncomfortably between the North and the South. Richmond was less than one hundred miles from Washington, D.C.
“What you think gonna happen here?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Everything is changing so rapidly—and you know how I’ve always hated change.”
“Oh yes, I do know that for sure.”
I gave the globe a spin, setting it in motion. “I used to believe that the United States was strong and that nothing could ever shake our great country. But this flood of hatred between North and South is spreading faster than I ever imagined it would.”
Tessie nodded. “It look like we all gonna drown in it pretty soon.”
By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president in March, the renegade states had created a new government in Montgomery, Alabama, with a written constitution guaranteeing the autonomy of each state. They’d selected Jefferson Davis, the former Secretary of War, as president of this new Confederacy. So far, Virginia still hadn’t joined them.
I helped Tessie read President Lincoln’s inauguration speech in March as we sewed yards of lace on my bridal gown, and his words sent a chill through me. Lincoln promised not to interfere with the states that already had slavery, but he clearly believed that no state had a legal right to leave the Union. He said he hoped the crisis could be resolved without resorting to warfare, but he vowed to preserve the Union no matter what.
The idea of war was unthinkable to me, yet events seemed to be drifting dangerously close to one. At my engagement party two months previous, the rising tide of unrest seemed far away from Richmond. Now my familiar world felt threatened, the future precarious and uncertain as the floodwaters rose higher, inching closer to Virginia.
I turned to Charles for reassurance. He was now taking part in a state convention that was meeting to decide whether or not Virginia would secede. So far, the delegates had proceeded very slowly, leaving everyone waiting anxiously for news.
“There are three factions within the Virginia convention,” Charles explained to me one day on our carriage ride home from church. “Those who favor immediate secession, those who want to stay in the Union, and those who want to work out a compromise.”
“Which faction do you represent?”
“I’m not an official delegate,” he said. “I’m only assisting Mr. Randolph, but he favors compromise.”
I felt slightly reassured when Charles told me in early April that the convention had voted nearly two-to-one against a motion to secede. For now, it looked as though Virginia would remain in the Union. But that was soon to change—so swiftly, in fact, that we were all unprepared.
Late one Saturday afternoon in mid-April, I had been entertaining Charles’ relatives—Sally, his mother, and two of his aunts—for afternoon tea, planning the guest list for my wedding, which had been set for July 20. My visitors had just departed a few minutes earlier, and I was helping Tessie gather the dessert plates and teacups when my cousin Jonathan burst into my parlor in his usual whirlwind fashion.