With midterm elections 2 weeks away, the left has thrown out its pretended civility. We're watching Psalm 2:1-3 manifest. 5,000 invaders march to our southern boarder. Who is paying for their food and water? Radical angry mobs destroy private and public property. I pray in the name of Jesus; the Leftists never achieve their goals—the destruction of the Constitutional Republic. Oh, they want to control the land and its population, but they care about one thing—power. If the infantile left rises to power, God help us. Giving them control would be like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. I wrote it before, never underestimate the diabolical nature of revenge.
Destination Hope – Book 5 – Reconciliation
A Novel By:
Charles J. Patricoff
Copyright © 2014 by Charles J. Patricoff. All rights reserved.
Chapter 8
Dismissed
The spring of 1865 advanced toward summer. Conditions in the prison improved for several reasons. First, many men decided to take the oath. Colonel Hill and his men processed their applications and he signed and issued orders granting their release. Crowding disappeared. The second, Colonel Hill allowed mail to flow, and third, the prisoners expanded their gardens beyond the compound. The potential for a bountiful harvest lifted almost everyone’s spirits.
A pair of Johnson’s Island inhabitants engaged in what an observer might describe as a, “spirited,”conversation. The apparent superior, or leader of the two, threw his hands in the air and marched away saying, “We’re done here.”
The obvious subordinate yelled, “I thought we had a deal.”
The leader swiveled and faced his underling to make his final point. “The situation has changed. The war is over. It is time to move on and rebuild. You’re going your way, and I have a new objective to pursue.”
“But the deal was for after the war. What’s going to happen to me, now?”
“I’m going to my office and you’re staying in here.”
Mail contributed to camp disposition improvement more than any other thing. Nathaniel grasped the almost daily transmission and hurried to take his place of prison solitude, the chapel. He sat on a bench near the sunrays streaming through one of the windows.
May 15, 1865
My dearest Nathaniel,
I so hoped to come see you for your birthday. However, Doctor Norcross told me travel at this stage of the baby’s development would put both of us at great risk. I did think it would have been a good idea to marry on your birthday so you would never forget our anniversary. Once again, we face another delay.
I heard that the government is releasing prisoners if they agree to one year’s service in the Federal Army. One part of me wants you out of prison, now. Yet another tells me that there must be another option. What do you think?
How can I tell her my decision, Lord? I need Your wisdom.
Silence.
Nathaniel began to form an answer as he read.
Regarding our child, something different is happening to me.
I like the fact that she wrote,“our child,”because he will be ours. It will be my duty to raise him to serve God and others, Nathaniel thought.
I find myself praying for him that God will take control of his life even now, as he forms. I do not even know if the baby is a boy or a girl; however, I do have a sense of things. I hope you won’t think this odd, but I think I have been given a gift and the only way I can explain it is this: as I pray I feel a deep release, as if I’m already giving birth to a spiritual beginning before the natural occurs.
“Lord, I wish I could talk to her. I would like to reassure her that what she wrote does make sense.” He wondered. Maybe, I should reconsider. Nathaniel looked forward toward the podium that represented the chapel’s alter. His head dropped. “I will obey.”
So, with this in mind, I pray for your release everyday. On that day, come to Chicago.
With deep affection,
Eleanor
“This might be a problem.” I understand after a prisoner receives parole, the government sends him to his home of origin—not where he might want to go. “I need to find out if they will let me go to Chicago.”
The Federal Army by Corps, Divisions, Regiments, and Companies camped all around Washington. With this military protection and without the knowledge of the people, the Federal government reorganized. Office titles and positions remained, but a power shift occurred. Who performed which function could not, would not, be detected unless an astute eye paid close attention.
For the most part, Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, consolidated Executive power under his office and used the seventeenth president, Andrew Johnson as a figurehead. Stanton ignored the Constitution to get things done. He took advantage of Andrew Johnson’s stated desire to punish the South, although Johnson heralded from Tennessee. Stanton wished to make examples of anyone who objected. He alone would enforce iron-fisted orders and dictate subjugated behavior.
First, Stanton exacted revenge on the co-conspirators surrounding Lincoln’s assassination. Although the Constitution guaranteed a civilian charged with a crime a fair trial before a jury of his peers, Stanton would have none of it. He convened a military tribunal, whereby he could control the desired outcome.
Even though President Lincoln ignored the Constitution and used the Federal Army against American citizens and put down the insurrection, Stanton thought it necessary to remove any symbol of this beloved leader. He knew Lincoln wanted to restore full constitutional restraint on the Federal government’s operations. Thus, on May 22, 1865, Stanton hastened Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln’s departure from the White House and helped his puppet president become its next resident. Unfortunately, the transition of power, ripping it from the people, continued unchallenged and unabated. Many assumed the Army would disband. After the grand reviews on May 23rd and 24th, going home seemed, to the troops, inevitable.
However, on July 1, once again, the men formed for assembly.
Colonel House stood before the regiment and shouted, “By order from Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, June 28, 1865. By virtue of special orders No. 330, current series, from the Adjutant General’s office, this army as an organization ceases to exist.”
Private Paul Ellis’ ears registered further sounds and tones, but he failed to comprehend anything. His mind repeated, “Ceases to exist.” I made it. He heard, “Dismissed.”
Men all around Paul fell out of formation. Some cheered and threw their hats in the air; others embraced; a few wept tears of joy. But Paul stood still like a Washington, D.C. marble monument. His younger brother, Lieutenant John Ellis grabbed Paul’s shoulders and, with the broadest smile John ever projected, shouted, “Can you believe it, we can go home.”
Still stunned and standing in a state of confusion and numbness, Paul shook his head and asked like a lost, forlorn child, “Can we really go home?”
Excitedly, John said, “Ye-e-e-s.”
A smile surfaced on Paul’s face. “How soon?”
John erupted with a volcanic belly laugh. “God almighty, big brother, start packing.”
Paul took one unsteady step forward, then, another. At last the truth reached his mind, stimulating his heart. He yelled a crazed, “Hurrah!” He took off his hat and swirled it over his head. The energy transferred to his legs, and he sprinted to the nearby tent city. He shouted over his shoulder. “Coming?”
Now it was their turn. After more than three years of facing unspeakable horrors—man’s inhumanity to his fellow man—Private Paul Ellis and his younger brother, Lieutenant John Ellis, packed to go home. Because John had risen to an officer’s status, he had other duties to perform for his company before he could focus on his personal needs. Paul, unencumbered by such matters, gathered his meager personal affects as if his very survival depended on speed to exit camp. Try as he might, memories of the war invaded his travel preparations. Some drove him to his knees in a deep, true repentance over two years earlier.
Private Paul Ellis stuffed his well-worn Bible into his haversack and asked of his tent mate, “Davy, can you believe it? We’re going home.”
“I have to admit, I never thought I’d live to see this day.” Private David Woods rolled his bedding, pressing down on the wool blankets with both knees to make the roll as tight as possible.
Paul buckled his pack’s straps and said with a somberness that overshadowed his joy, “Many didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know.” Private Woods suspended his progress. “I try not to think on it too much.”
Paul half smiled, “But, we have to; otherwise, I fear a day will come when no one will remember what they did for freedom. I know President Lincoln claimed at Gettysburg, ‘The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’I hate to disagree with him—he’s smarter than all of us put together—but I think, given time, no one will remember.”
David folded his cot. “You know what I think? You think too much.”
Paul started to roll his bedding, but stood up straight and faced David. “Do you remember details about the war for our independence against Great Britain?”
“Sure, we beat the English pretty good.”
Paul blinked. He realized his friend missed his point. “Not the outcome of the war, but those who fought it—who died for our liberty.”
“My grand pappy fought in the war. He’s one of the reasons I joined the army.”
Paul shook his head. “How in blue blazes did you ever reach the rank of corporal? ‘Course, that didn’t last too long.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Hey, we both did regretful things.”
“I may have gotten drunk and started a brawl, but at least I didn’t desert. You’re lucky you didn’t hang.”
“I know. I should have. God spared me. I know that now. I just wish I would have put my trust in Him long ago.” Paul frowned. “But this is why we must remember and teach others to do so because except for the notable few, like George Washington, I don’t remember any of the regular men.”
Davy finished his side of the tent, stood, stretched, and grabbed onto the center support. “I think I see what you mean. My children will never know our friends, like Corporal Rivers. He was a good man.”
“Talked too much, for my liking.”
“Maybe, but there was no better farmer from our county.”
Paul asked, “Do you remember Henry Patrick? He was one of the first from our outfit killed in action—at the second battle of Bull Run.”
“What a mess that was. But it didn’t compare to Antietam Creek.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t lose anyone.”
“We didn’t fight—made me madder than a rabid dog. We could have destroyed Lee right then and there, but we let that old gray fox slip away.”
“Is that why you got drunk?”
“Partly. Stupid generals: Pope, McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker. Worthless leaders. I’m surprised we won this war.”
Paul’s countenance fell to the grassy tent floor. “I’m not sure you can call it, won. Those boys in grey still had fight in them when they laid down their arms. I could see it in their eyes—proud men—yet exhausted, starving skeletons. How many good men, gone…for what? I’m still not sure what we accomplished. Those Southerners may be right. All we proved was that the Federal Government has the military strength to subjugate the people.” He threw his pack out of the tent. “Oh well. You ready to break our palace down and return it to the army?” He bent over and stepped outside—a free man.
Like he and Private Woods, other men scurried to pack their government-provided shelters, cookware, gear, munitions, and weapons.
Seeing Paul, Corporal Mark Stallings, another farmer from North-Central Illinois, pried out a tent stake and yelled, “Are you heading home today, too?”
Paul grinned. “As soon as we finish here and muster out, I’m hiking to the Union Station and catching the first train to Chicago.”
Stallings shouted, “Me too. Can’t wait to see my wife and children.” He untied another stake and his former abode collapsed. “My farm will need my attention, but it will have to wait. I will say this: it will be good to work the land, again.”
Private Woods asked, “What do you plan to do now that no one will be around to tell you what to do all day long, Paul?”
“I suspect my sister, Eleanor, will most likely have a long list of things for me to do.”
Another former soldier lifted a coffee pot hung from an iron hook above a smoldering campfire, and doused the hot cools with the steamy elixir. Paul stared in the direction of the train station. I have to douse the flames of her pending wedding.
Soldiers throughout the bivouac rushed to secure their army-issued tents, weapons, and cooking gear. Paul had never seen them pack so fast.
Stallings asked, “What were you two ladies talking about? Sounded like you reminisced over our company’s grand exploits.”
“Not exactly,” Paul said. “I thought we should remember the friends we lost.”
“Yeah.” Stallings hung his head. “I lost my best friend at the debacle at Fredericksburg. Sergeant McCoy was one of our best non-coms.”
Paul gulped. I wonder if he knows what happened. He shifted to another battle. “Then we suffered through another disaster at Chancellorsville. The Rebels lost many good-Christian men, too; some from strange happenings. Their best, Stonewall Jackson, died from an accidental shooting by his own men. And one of our troopers fires a lucky shot and mortally wounds General Stuart at Yellow Tavern. I still can’t believe a stray bullet killed our drummer boy, Marty Banks, as he waited for us in the rear near General Hooker’s HQ. That mess led to our greatest losses at Gettysburg—Captain Adams and Corporal Rivers. We all prayed to the same God. As President Lincoln said, we each invoked His intervention on behalf of one side against the other. But God could not have been for either side in this business.” Paul stretched. “I have to agree with Lincoln, the Almighty has His own purposes. Now he’s gone, too.”
With deepening sorrow, Private Woods said, “Then, we started the long summer chase of Lee and his army. We lost Corporal Birney Dorn during the butchering of Cold Harbor.”
Paul concluded the memorial. “And the most tragic loss, Private Mercer, just three days before his enlistment was up.”
Army life perfected the practice often referred to with angry sarcasm as “hurry up and wait,”even when that life came to the natural conclusion of its cycle.
With his company companions standing in a loose formation, Paul said, “I sure hope we can process out of here quick. I’d hate for the army to change its mind.”
Standing to Paul’s right, Private Davy Woods said, “Oh, they can’t and they won’t. They can’t afford to feed, clothe, and house all of us any longer—not with folks back home starving. The government needs us working again, generating revenue; not consuming every tax dollar they can squeeze from the people.”
Paul nodded. “I suppose you’re right. They need us making money so they can take it to pay for the war.”
“I heard this government is going to force the South to pay for it. With all they’ve lost, it could take a generation or two,” Davy said.
Paul’s indignation surfaced. “They should pay for it. I don’t care how long it takes. Serves them right.”
Davy seemed resigned. “I think we’ll get stuck with the bill no matter what.”
“We who fought it shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden any longer,” Paul shot back. As if on cue, the formation moved forward. “We’re getting closer to getting out of here. Sure is crowded with men. Haven’t seen so many pressed into one building like this before.”
Davy adjusted his soon-to-be-gone musket. “No fooling. You couldn’t swing a dead cat with its rotting tail and not hit someone in this crowd.”
Paul picked up his gear and moved forward a few steps in the massive, unorganized line, waiting to muster out and said to no one in particular, “It is too bad that many of our friends didn’t live to see this day.”
With that, they put all joking aside.
About thirty minutes later, Paul, Davy, and others walked out of the government-leased warehouse as civilians. They shook hands, some embraced, and after saying heartfelt good-byes, departed for their respective homes.
July 4, 1865
To my dearest Eleanor,
I cannot wait to see you, and I believe that day will be here soon. I hope this letter finds you well. As your letter indicated, the baby will be along soon, too. Pardon my pun, but I guess we are in a race to see who will be delivered first. My prayers are filled with warm, loving thoughts of you and our future together as a family.
Conditions have improved everyday. One hundred and fifty men remain. One of our fellows received a newspaper clipping indicating the prisons will be disbanded, too, now that the armies have dissolved. I pray this is true.
Have you heard from your brothers, and when they will return home?
“No I haven’t,” Eleanor said. She felt her tumbler roll and watched the letter move. “I don’t know what to tell them about you.” Another kick and stretch caused Eleanor to take a slow, deep breath. “Maybe we will let you remain a surprise.” She addressed Nathaniel’s letter. “I’m more concerned when you will come. What are you going to do?”
I hope you will understand what I am about to say. I have given this matter to prayer and I believe God has directed me to stay here until all of us that remain receive a parole. I believe God wants me to minister to these men until we are all set free.
The baby kicked again as Eleanor resisted the flash desire to rip the letter, wad it up, and throw it into the trash. “No, I don’t understand.”
A one-horse, four-wheel carriage pulled away from Chicago’s Union Station, at a walking gate. The traffic heading into and out of this busy city, bridging the eastern with the western sections of the nation, kept a slow, steady pace under the mid-afternoon summer sun. The driver, Reverend Moody, said, “Eleanor would have been here; but, this stifling heat is hard on her.”
The passenger, former US Army Private Paul Ellis, removed a handkerchief from a rear pants pocket and wiped his brow. Sporting a new tan suit, the perspiring new arrival to Chicago stated, “You said the doctor ordered Ellie to bed rest. Did he say what he thinks is wrong with her? Is she seriously ill?”
Urging his horse to a trot, Reverend D. L. Moody answered, “No, she is not ill, but she does need to rest for a while. I think it would be more appropriate for her to tell you.” Changing the subject, Reverend Moody asked, “So, why didn’t your brother, John, leave Washington?”
“He applied to stay in the army. They accepted his application, and when I left, he was waiting for an assignment. My prayer is that he will not be sent to an occupying post in the south, or a remote fort out west in Indian Territory. I hope he becomes a supply officer. I think it would bore me beyond reason, but, he would be far from harm’s way.” Paul shifted in his seat. “You said, Ellie is not ill, but I don’t understand why she requires bed rest.”
Reverend Moody shrugged. “Suffice it to say, it is a female matter. We’ll be home soon. You’ll see for yourself.” Reverend Moody found it difficult to honor his promise to Eleanor, so he asked swiftly, “When are you leaving for Rockford?”
Paul scratched the stubble of his near clean-shaven face for a second. “I guess it all depends on Eleanor.”
Reverend Moody nodded as they bounced along the road. Minutes later, he directed the horse toward the hitching post standing by the street in front of the Moody’s home. “We’re here.”
Thanks for reading. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think about the story.
2 comments:
Still reading and enjoying.
It gets better and better. Still looking forward to each new chapter. It brings history to life.
Post a Comment