Authors: Rita Mae Brown
The language of the slaves would be difficult for many readers, regardless of background, to comprehend. Language is a means of maintaining power; it is also a means of resistance to power. The white owners did not want the slaves to speak as they did. An argument can be made that the language issue is not resolved to this day. This is a novel, not a book on linguistics or the politics of language. I can’t write a novel set in 1861 and 1862 and have most slaves speaking like graduates of Yale. That’s an insult to everybody. Slaves revealed their status through their speech the same as everybody else. What I have done is slightly modify the speech so that it is easier to read, but I haven’t strayed too far from the original. Obviously, the speech patterns of the white people also reveal their status.
Some of you may know that less than ten percent of white males throughout the Confederacy owned more than two slaves. However, that class of men controlled the Southern legislatures and the written word. Since slavery was part of the economy of the South, it isn’t an easy issue to separate from the other issues, although today the Civil War is taught in that simplistic fashion. It is inconceivable that ninety percent
of the white men would fight so that ten percent could remain rich. On top of that, there were 93,000 blacks serving in the Confederate Army. Why did the poor whites and blacks fight? To state the obvious is a deceitful temptation. I’ll let you figure it out.
The real assault on our senses is the fact that this conflict is presented as inevitable. What happened was that fanatical and irrational elements on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line slowly gathered their power over the three preceding decades. Politics began to take on a hysterical tone. No man could run for office without ruthlessly being grilled by these special interest fanatics. A moderate candidate in Massachusetts or Alabama would be cut to ribbons. Then as now, moderates fade away in the vain hope of being left to private concerns. They cultivate wealth instead of solving the problems of their nation. Within the span of two generations, politics no longer attracted men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson. The legacy of gifted public service disappeared with them. Today as in the middle of the nineteenth century, the brightest and the best for the most part avoid politics like the plague. We paid for it then, and we’re paying for it now.
When the Civil War finally did come, it degenerated into a disastrous struggle. The Civil War was the last of the old wars and the first of the new. Not even the most rabid secessionist could have foreseen the toll it would take on both sides. Once the war ended, men on either side had a stake in declaring it inevitable. God forbid they should take responsibility for the horror they created.
If this war were not taught as inevitable, it would force students of all ages to question methods of government, to question the morality of powerful lobbying groups forcing their will on the majority as well as to encourage the student to formulate strategies. Why bother to see if we can negotiate these old issues? Aren’t they dead and buried? Not exactly.
In the first place, if you and I and millions of other Americans entertain a sense of history that is fatalistic, we’re in terrible trouble. If we believe that great forces—first embryonic, then fully developed—move on a collision course, then nuclear war is inevitable, as inevitable as the War Between the States. The past is prologue.
The ultimate blasphemy is that the hundreds of thousands
of dead did not solve the problems. The slaves were freed. That was a partial solution although the North hardly made life easier for them. But the central issue of who controls your community is alive and well. Do you control your community or do a group of men in Washington? Do you have the right to sell your product anywhere in the world? Do you have the right to buy the products of another country without excessive tariff added to the price of the item? Do you have the right to sell your labor at a fair price? Is industry more important than agriculture? If we are a Union, then are our taxes sent to the Federal government and fairly redistributed among the various states? What do we do when women enter the labor force? Now white men have competition not only from black men but from women as well. This is one of the hidden issues in the South during the aftermath of the war. It is now an issue everywhere. Another issue, usually expressed in the past in mystical terms by Southerners, is today expressed as quality of life. Just how do we want to live? Is commerce everything or is the life of the spirit equally as important? If it is equally important, how do we give it its just due in our society? The issue of environmental control began to surface between the two regions, too. If you take the time to read original sources and not anthologies, you are going to find that much of what vexes you today was clearly expressed then.
Finally, no nation or people can go to war without the tacit support of its women. In the case of this war, some women disguised themselves as men to fight. There were no physical exams. Today, a woman is denied the right to combat under the guise of “protecting” her. Margaret Mitchell, before she wrote
Gone with the Wind
, researched this phenomenon among Georgia women. The two Northern women often cited for becoming soldiers were Frances L. Clalin of the Fourth Missouri Heavy Artillery, later of the Thirteenth Missouri Cavalry, Company A, and Doctor Mary Walker of New York state who passed as a male surgeon. There isn’t space to list the Confederate women. Then, too, for every woman who came forward after the war and revealed herself, there is no way to know how many melted back into society to continue life as a man or to quietly change back into a woman. As to why so many Southern women chose to fight, your guess is as good as mine.
Behind the front lines, women and slaves worked for the war effort. It was my privilege to read unpublished family papers, if I promised to maintain the family’s privacy. The courage of these individuals is breathtaking. Sometimes, in my darker moments, I wonder if we have it today.
One brief aside: Most academic research on this period focuses on politics or military operations. There is precious little about the bonds between men and women. Heterosexual relationships were not a luxury in those times, they were a necessity. Finding a suitable mate was a serious undertaking. People needed one another in a way they do not seem to today. I would love to see research conducted in this area since I think we can profit from it.
Also, there is little psychiatric research applied to this time. Aside from the jolt to everyone’s psyche, other problems became evident. Many men, permanently disabled or disfigured, committed suicide. We have no statistics on this since it was almost always covered up. In fact, this is often one of the reasons families want their papers kept private. Suicide remains a terrible stain. We also have little information about mercy killing. I bring this up in hope that it will spur someone into a new area of inquiry and also because it was discussed in my family. We also have no statistics on subsequent addictions to alcohol or morphine. We know it existed, but how wide the scope? How did the sight of a maimed and sometimes chemically incapacitated generation affect their children?
To the best of my knowledge, there is not one monument in the South to commemorate the sacrifice of our women nor is there even so much as a plaque paying tribute to the slaves for their contributions. Here in Albemarle County we have a fine monument of a Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse, a splendid statue of Thomas Jackson beside the courthouse, and another good statue of Robert E. Lee. In a lovely graveyard off Alderman Road there is a statue over the massed graves of those who died from their wounds. So many perished that we buried them in trenches. The earth still gently rises over the bodies so we know where they are even if they lack markers. At the rotunda in the university is a plaque listing the men from the school who died during the conflict. Yet nowhere in my hometown is there mention of the sacrifice
of women and blacks. Some paid with their lives, all paid with their worldly goods, many paid with their health, and no one, no one was ever the same again. Until such time as we correct this oversight, let this book stand as their monument.
6 March 1985
Rita Mae Brown
Charlottesville, Virginia
“Girl, my fingernails could grow an inch just waiting for you.” Di-Peachy leaned in the doorway to Geneva’s bedroom.
“If they grow an inch, you’ll work them off tomorrow.” Geneva yanked a shawl out of her bureau, twirled it around her shoulders, and breezed past her oldest friend and personal property, Di-Peachy. At eighteen Geneva Chatfield was the tallest girl in Albemarle County as well as the best rider. She stood six feet in her stocking feet. Towering over Di-Peachy, who at five feet six inches enjoyed some height, Geneva banged down the stairs.
“Last one to Auntie Sin-Sin’s—”
Geneva was interrupted by Lutie Chalfonte Chatfield, her mother. Lutie had the metabolism of a hummingbird and the nerves, too. “Calm yourself!”
“Yes, Mother.”
Di-Peachy tiptoed up behind Geneva. Lutie flashed like a sheet of heat lightning. “You’re going to be married tomorrow, and you’re running around here like you’re in a footrace.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I know you haven’t the sense God gave a goose, Geneva, but”—Lutie turned to Di-Peachy—“you do! What are you doing galloping down the steps? Is there no one in this house with a sense of proper decorum?”
Portia Chalfonte Livingston, Lutie’s younger sister at forty-one, strolled out of the parlor. A huge harp gleamed behind her. “Lutie, don’t rile yourself. This will all be over tomorrow, and things will return to normal.”
“Normal, Poofy, normal! We’ve got a lunatic president in Washington, another lunatic in Montgomery, Alabama, who says he’s president, my son crows he can’t wait for a war, and
my daughter is getting married. Normal? I tell you nothing will ever be the same and I feel pulled around backwards.” Lutie returned her attentions to her fidgety daughter. “In the face of all this chaos, I would appreciate it if you would play your part and act like a bride!”
“Yes, Mother. May I be excused now?”
Imperiously Lutie waved her hand, and that fast Geneva shot out the door with Di-Peachy in hot pursuit.
Poofy took her sister’s elbow in the palm of her hand and discreetly walked her down the long hallway of the Georgian mansion that was the pride of the Chatfield family since 1796 when the cornerstone was laid. Under no circumstances was Poofy about to allow Lutie to strain herself. She’d begin talking to Emil and, well, the less said about Emil, the better. His name was not to be mentioned at this wedding.
The house was jammed with guests, family, and shirttail relatives. More would come from Charlottesville itself on the wedding day. Portia Chalfonte Livingston left Bedford, New York, a month ago to assist Lutie in preparing for the wedding. Their brother, younger by nearly twenty years, T. Pritchard Chalfonte, arrived from Runymeade, Maryland, a week ago to help out. Everything was under control except for Lutie and Geneva. Poofy sighed to herself. “Lord, just let us get through tomorrow.”
“Do you think there’s going to be a war?” Lutie shook Poofy out of her musings.
“How can we avoid it now that the radical tail shakes the dog? My husband will raise up a regiment for New York State and your son will enlist for Virginia and our brother will join the South. If I were a man, I don’t know what I’d do. Living all these years in Bedford gives me a different perspective.”
“Oh, perspective? I’d like to know how anyone can have perspective on murder, pure and simple!” Another flash of sheet lightning.
Poofy decided against a long discussion with her volatile sister on the merits of tariffs and the protection of industries versus slavery as a base for agricultural wealth. Portia smiled. “It’s going to be a splendid wedding.”
“I hope so. I feel this is the last time we’ll all be together. Henley is more nervous than Geneva, I think. He says he wishes Sumner married first. You don’t have to give your son away. That would toughen him up for Geneva.”
“He’s a wonderful father, your Henley.”
“And a lackluster husband,” Lutie snapped.
Portia dismissed this. “Sometimes I don’t like my husband, but sometimes I don’t like myself. Men—” Portia sighed again, “are different.”
“Different? I’ll tell you what’s different between men and women, sister mine: There’s one set of rules for us and another for them. I suppose my poor girl will find out just like every other woman!”
“Nash Hart is a good young man, and he loves Geneva.”
“Loves her! They all love you in the beginning. Oh, Poofy”—Lutie wrung her hands—“I’ve started to tell her so many times, tell her about the way things really are between men and women, about the way your heart shatters or maybe it disintegrates like a fine powder.”
“Don’t start. Geneva will find out things in her way and in her day. What good would it do you to tell her? Would she listen? Does any young person listen to an old one?”
“I’m not old—not yet!” Lutie appeared in command again. “I must put Di-Peachy further from the front than Geneva wishes. She’ll overshadow the bride.”
“Now, Lutie.”
“Don’t waffle. We both know that girl is the most beautiful female God ever put on this earth—to torture me, I suppose!”
It was true. Di-Peachy was lustrous in her beauty. The only way a man couldn’t get a hard-on around her was if he was stone queer or dead. She had almond-shaped eyes of light hazel. What a contrast those eyes were against her coffee-colored skin and her long curly hair. Her breasts stuck straight out like hard melons, and her hands were as aristocratic as a queen’s. At seventeen Di-Peachy was still far away from her full power, yet she defeated other women simply by drawing breath.
While not immune to the effect of her beauty, it brought her no pleasure. She learned to read and write even though whites thought slaves were best kept in ignorance. The only way Lutie could get Geneva, a lackluster dull student, to do her lessons was if Di-Peachy did them with her. What she learned did not make her position in life easy to bear. Her bondage, like her beauty, was a burden whose weight increased yearly. Her thoughts of freedom conflicted with her
love for Geneva who up until now had been the compass of her young life.