Savannah, or a Gift for Mr. Lincoln Read online

  Praise for the novels of John Jakes

  Savannah

  “[Savannah] is a charming, light, old-fashioned, Dickensian morality play with golden-curled heroines and villains so evil they do everything but twirl their mustaches…. Jakes is a master of the genre and is clearly having fun with this little gem…. [He] entertains and informs as he weaves historical tidbits into the story.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “A compelling picture of the life of the Southerners as the war was grinding to its end: their attitudes, privations, and spirit…. Jakes [breathes] life into an important bit of history.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “Readers of John Jakes know that he is America’s most successful and prolific historical novelist and that he is no stranger to the sound and fury of America’s Civil War…. Savannah is a delightful Christmas story…. Don’t let the spare style fool you; Jakes’s novel is supported by wide-ranging historical research and personal observation. Savannah would also make a fine Christmas film.”

  —The Charleston Post and Courier

  “[Jakes’s] novels…are filled with realistic characterizations of warm-blooded human beings and with detailed, entertaining, and accessible tales of Americans whose lives were affected by the circumstances of the eras during which they lived…. [Savannah] is filled with interesting characters—rogues and scalawags, war-torn lovers, pure-hearted ex-slaves, hopeful spinsters, and corrupt politicians…. [It] has all the hallmarks of Jakes’s work—strong storytelling, impeccable research, historical accuracy, and points of view on all sides of a conflict…. In a charming bit of writing, Jakes brings out the humanity in tough General Sherman by crafting a delicate relationship between him and Hattie.”

  —The Bradenton Herald (FL)

  “Jakes makes the city, the war, and his characters come alive, as he has done with a career’s worth of family historical sagas…. The novel is filled with small details of daily life during the Civil War.”

  —Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL)

  “Jakes continues to explore the nooks and crannies of American life during the Civil War…enjoyably lighthearted.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[Jakes] effectively captures the tensions, hatred, and even a curious nobility as a dying civilization tries to stand against an irresistible force…. He re-creates the spirit of the times, in the process of telling a whopping good story. His characters, both fictional and historical, are well drawn, and his protagonist, a plucky twelve-year-old girl, Hattie Lester, is a memorable creation. The result is a fine work of popular historical fiction, and even Civil War ‘purists’ should find it absorbing fun.”

  —Booklist

  “[Savannah] includes a rich cast of characters…. The narrative offers adventure, romance, humor, and crime along with the trials of an American city living under what is, to its citizens, occupation by a foreign army…. Though lighter in tone and significantly shorter in size and scope than the author’s previous novels, this work is still an engaging, well-crafted, and tightly focused story of a relatively unknown period of U.S. history. Recommended.”

  —Library Journal

  “An interesting array of characters roam through the story…. Fans of John Jakes will enjoy Savannah as will others who like good writing—Jakes’s prose is wonderful—and a story that has factual historic background.”

  —The Civil War News

  “Jakes gives the reader much to enjoy. Clearly he has a subtle feel for and deep knowledge of the period about which he writes. He produces dialogue that’s pleasant to the modern ear…. And the story really is amusing in places.”

  —Daily Republic (CA)

  “Savannah is comparable in many ways to Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Both novels masterfully reflect the horrific social injustices of their respective eras and feature truly vile characters who are completely apathetic to the suffering around them…. And while Jakes’s newest is set in the bloodiest war in American history, Savannah is, like Dickens’s classic, a heartwarming story about hope and compassion conquering all. The Christmas carol is an apt symbol throughout, bringing people—black and white, Union and Confederate, rich and poor—together in a time of absolute anarchy to find the one thing that truly matters: love.”

  —BookPage.com

  Charleston

  “Sure to lure readers…[a] masterly tale…[an] extraordinary family…during the most violent era of Charleston’s history.”

  —The Washington Post

  “A great read…fascinating historical anecdotes.”

  —The Charleston Post and Courier

  “An entertaining saga with plenty of action.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  On Secret Service

  “Draws you back into the Civil War and the wrenching days preceding Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The factual details are simply astonishing: You walk the muddy streets, smell the acrid smoke of battlefields, and experience firsthand the inner workings of a vast conspiracy.”

  —Patricia Cornwell

  “[Jakes] gets the big story right, while writing in a clear style, keeping the narrative moving briskly from cliff-hanger to cliff-hanger, serving up portions of steamy sex in between, and offering us plenty of heroes and heroines to admire and several villains to hate. Even a deep-dyed Civil War buff…will find himself turning the pages to see what happens next.”

  —Civil War Book Review

  Praise for John Jakes

  “The best historical novelist of our time.”

  —Patricia Cornwell

  “John Jakes makes history come alive, makes it stir your blood and excite your senses.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  “The godfather of historical novelists.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Jakes’s bent for historical accuracy is unmatched in commercial fiction.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  ALSO BY JOHN JAKES

  CHARLESTON

  ON SECRET SERVICE

  CALIFORNIA GOLD

  THE BOLD FRONTIER

  The Crown Family Saga

  AMERICAN DREAMS

  HOMELAND

  The North and South Trilogy

  NORTH AND SOUTH

  LOVE AND WAR

  HEAVEN AND HELL

  The Kent Family Chronicles

  THE BASTARD

  THE REBELS

  THE SEEKERS

  THE FURIES

  THE TITANS

  THE WARRIORS

  THE LAWLESS

  THE AMERICANS

  A N O V E L

  JOHN JAKES

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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ca

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  First Signet Printing, September 2005

  Copyright © John Jakes, 2004

  Illustrations copyright © Wesley W. Bates, 2004

  Map copyright © Jeffrey L. Ward, 2004

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65961-8

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  for

  Carole,

  her book

  Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,

  Waiting for the war to cease;

  Many are the hearts looking for the right

  To see the dawn of peace.

  —“Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground,” 1863 Words and music by Walter Kittredge

  PREFACE

  Between the burning of Atlanta in November 1864 and the burning of Columbia in February 1865, there occurred one of the most remarkable yuletides in American history.

  Late in November, William Tecumseh Sherman, nemesis of the Confederacy, launched out from Atlanta in a campaign still written about in books and studied in military colleges. He cut his lines of communication, literally disappeared off the Union’s war map and, with his army of sixty thousand, marched across Georgia to the Atlantic.

  It was a march rife with pillage and arson, civilian suffering and martial excess. Sherman professed a hope of shortening the war by “making Georgia howl.” Those caught in his path called him the new Attila.

  Yet when the Yankees reached the sea in December, a curious interlude followed. Sherman captured and occupied Savannah and remained there throughout the holidays. It was a Christmas like none that had ever been and none that ever would be: not quite war but not quite peace, forever remembered by those who lived it and those who came after.

  Through the eyes of a few—Yankees and Confederates, men and women, and one special girl—this narrative spins a tale of that Christmas.

  Table of Contents

  Thanksgiving Afternoon, 1864 Little Ogeechee River

  Silverglass Plantation

  Silverglass Plantation, Continued

  November 27, 1864 Near Sandersville, Washington County

  December 1, 1864 Silverglass Plantation

  December 3, 1864 “Station 7,” Jenkins County—Headquarters, XIV Corps, Screven County

  December 5, 1864 Silverglass Plantation

  December 8 and 9, 1864 Ebenezer Creek, Effingham County

  December 10 and 11, 1864 Silverglass Plantation

  December 12 and 13, 1864 In and Near Statesboro, Bulloch County

  December 13, 1864 Left Wing of the Defense Line

  December 16 to 18, 1864 Savannah, Chatham County

  December 18, 1864 Bull Street, Savannah

  December 18 to 20, 1864 Savannah

  December 20 and 21, 1864 Bay Street—York Street

  December 21, 1864 Pine Woods, Liberty County

  Camp of the 81st Indiana, 5:15 p.m.

  Miss Vee’s, 9 p.m.

  Pulaski House, 9:15 p.m.

  Miss Vee’s, 9:45 p.m.

  December 22, 1864 Camp of the 81st Indiana

  Pulaski House—Charles Green Manse—Pulaski House—Miss Vee’s, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

  Bull Street, 4:40 p.m.

  Camp of the 81st Indiana, 5 p.m.

  December 23, 1864 Savannah Riverfront, 9 a.m.

  Camp of the 81st Indiana, 10:15 a.m.

  York Street—Charles Green Manse, 11:30 a.m.

  Miss Vee’s, 12:15 p.m.

  Judge Drewgood’s, Early Evening

  Perry Street, Near Midnight

  December 24, 1864 Miss Vee’s, 10 a.m.

  Winks’s Tent, 4 p.m.

  Judge Drewgood’s, 5 p.m.

  Christ Church, 7:00 p.m.

  Outside Judge Drewgood’s, 8:20 p.m.

  Miss Vee’s, 9:30 p.m.

  Miss Vee’s, 10:20 p.m.

  Christmas Day Miss Vee’s and Elsewhere

  December 27, 1864 Miss Vee’s—“Under the Bluff”

  December 27, 28 and 29, 1864 Miss Vee’s—Searching

  Masonic Hall—Searching, Continued 4:30 p.m. and Later

  Charles Green Manse—8 p.m.

  The Warehouse—9:10 p.m.

  New Year’s Eve Miss Vee’s—3 p.m. and Later

  Charles Green Manse—5:30 p.m.

  January 1, 1865 Miss Vee’s—7 a.m.

  January 19, 1865 Outside the Exchange, Broad Street

  Afterword

  Thanksgiving was a holiday not much observed in the failing Confederacy. It was suspiciously Northern in origin, but more important, Abe Lincoln had lately promoted it to boost home-front morale. Anyway, there was precious little to be thankful for. The air was biting. Last night it had snowed, although the white dusting melted away by noon. The tidal waters had a flat, cold sheen; thick windrows of spartina grass on the islands dotting the marshes had lost their summertime brilliance. The worst was unseen: Somewhere out beyond the autumnal forests and farmsteads was the trampler, the looter, Sherman.

  Two youngsters, together with a starving pig named Amelia, whiled away the afternoon beneath a straggle of sable palms on the bank of the Little Ogeechee, just where the Grove River flowed in from upstream. Neither youngster came from a poor family, but you wouldn’t have known it, given the patched and threadbare state of their clothes.

  “You having anything good for dinner?” asked the boy, Legrand Parmenter. He was fourteen but looked older because of his bony height and craggy jaw.

  The girl, twelve, pulled her patched shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The girl’s name was Harriet Lester; all in the neighborhood, including her companion, knew her as Hattie. She was approaching the doorstep of womanhood but was not quite there yet.

  “Same as yesterday,” she said. “Blue crabs I caught this morning with mullet heads. Mama’s boiling them. I have to pick the crabmeat before we can eat.”

  “Don’t act so peeved about it. You’re lucky. We get possum.”

  A silence. Food was a prickly subject. After the hateful Union general drove the citizens of Atlanta out of their fair city early in November, then torched it, conditions along the seacoast had deteriorated to previously unimaginable depths. Railroads no longer ran. A few provision schooners sneaked down the Savannah or the Ogeechee, but what little they carried was fought over by mobs in the city’s public market. Hattie and her mother, Sara, were never in town to get any of it.

  In front of Hattie and Legrand, the river curved prettily through rice lands long ago cleared of tupelo and pine and palmetto. Behind the children lay square fields where generations of Lesters had dug out stumps, burned brush, built dikes and trunks; a h
ouse; and a rice barn. Hattie’s great-grandfather had named the place Silverglass late one afternoon at candle-lighting, when the confluence of the Grove and Little Ogeechee shimmered and shone like enchanted metal. The county seat, the charming old city of Savannah, lay roughly ten miles northeast.

  The boy seemed to have that place on his mind: “Beauregard’s put a new general in charge of city defenses. Hardee.” Legrand seemed to be dancing around something important but so far hadn’t said it outright. He’d been nervous and fidgety ever since he came calling. He’d get to it—maybe.

  “Old Reliable.” Hattie pulled a face. “Mama says he can’t be too reliable—he’s only scraped up ten thousand troops, and the Yankees are coming with six times as many.”

  She studied a limp white ribbon tied to the tail of her beloved Amelia, a young sow, rust red. Amelia’s dwindling weight created a deep anxiety in Hattie. She frowned and drummed her peculiar shoes on the hull of the overturned rice boat where she sat. The shoes consisted of strips of canvas attached to thin soles of poplar. A pair cost thirty cents in town, made thunderous noise on pine floors, and were FULLY GUARANTEED TO LAST UNTIL VICTORY IS OURS. Leather shoes, like so many familiar things, had gone to the soldiers at the front.

  Legrand continued to ponder and fidget. Hattie jumped off the rotting boat and poked at Amelia’s ribs. “Oh, damnation.”

  Legrand Parmenter’s eyes bugged. “Are you allowed to say words like that?”

  Hattie tossed her thick yellow curls and flashed her periwinkle-blue eyes. “I guess I can if I do, Legrand. Everything’s topsy-turvy.”

  She explored Amelia’s ribs again. The pig rebelled, snorted, and ran off. A green heron stepped through the reeds below the bank, then lunged and speared a fish.

  Legrand said, “The birds around here are better fed than people.”

  “Or pigs. Amelia can’t eat acorns and snakes forever. She’ll starve to death ‘less we find some food.”

  Legrand eyed the western horizon, a vista of lemon-colored marsh and sky tinted by the pale sun. “If General Sherman’s boys don’t kill us first.”

  Hattie showed her fist. “If I lay eyes on General William Tecumseh ‘T-for-Terrible’ Sherman, I’ll give him a sockdologer, see if I don’t.”