Calico Girl Read online

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Historical Background Notes

  Time Line

  Prologue

  Part I—The World as Callie Knew It

  Chapter One Callie

  Chapter Two Callie and Suse

  Chapter Three Henry Warren

  Chapter Four Hampton Wilcomb

  Chapter Five Raleigh Townsend

  Chapter Six Ruth Wilcomb

  Chapter Seven Catherine Wilcomb Warren

  Chapter Eight Hampton Wilcomb

  Chapter Nine Callie

  Chapter Ten Leaving

  Part II—The New World Begins

  Chapter Eleven Fort Monroe, Freedom’s Fortress

  Chapter Twelve Little Charlie

  Chapter Thirteen Mrs. Peake Makes a Visit

  Chapter Fourteen Mrs. Mary S. Peake

  Chapter Fifteen Susanna Wilcomb Warren

  Chapter Sixteen Mr. and Mrs. Fowle’s Idea

  Chapter Seventeen Lieutenant Mathew Jessup

  Chapter Eighteen Chloe

  Chapter Nineteen Farewell

  Afterword

  Internet Resources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bibliography

  To my paternal grandmother, Katie Nolen

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Maybe growing up in a family where we were not allowed to talk about slavery is the reason, for now, that is all I want to talk or write about. I have no other explanation than that. I just want to talk about it, know about it, and think about it. It is a very big story. It is as big as the Greek myths we read. And of course, the myths were written as stories to teach about how to live your life. Why couldn’t talking about slavery be like that, I wondered? But when I’d asked my father, “Tell me something about what happened during slavery times,” his eyes looked fierce, his nostrils flared, and his baritone voice boomed, “In this house, there are some things we just aren’t going to talk about! No sir, there are some things we just won’t discuss.” That was that!

  It was one of the words that I added to the List of Big Bad Words—most were four-lettered words we were not allowed to say. I confess I did defy my father. I hid behind the pantry door and practiced saying some of them. There was the one unspeakable word: six letters long, beginning with the fourteenth letter of the alphabet. I never practiced saying that one.

  But I did want to talk about slavery. I wanted to know about it and hear about it. I wanted to know why.

  I suppose I am tampering with IT now by writing about IT, talking about IT, out loud. What draws me in is wondering and imagining how one particular event impacted an individual or a family. I have wondered about this for a long time; What did it feel like to finally be free?

  HISTORICAL BACKGROUND NOTES

  On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. By late February, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas would follow.

  Most Southerners believed they had every right to break away from the Union as was stated in the Declaration of Independence: “It is the right of the people to alter or abolish” a government that denies the rights of its citizens. They believed Lincoln would deny their rights to own slaves.

  When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, 1861, it was a dangerous situation for the new president. He stated a warning in his inaugural address: “No state . . . can lawfully get out of the Union.” And he pledged that there would be no war unless the South started it.

  On April 12, 1861, the Southern Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter off the South Carolina coast. This act of aggression is what started the Civil War.

  The state of Virginia had not yet ratified their vote to secede. That would come on May 23, 1861.

  With the bombing of Fort Sumter, three field hands—Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker, and James Townsend—belonging to Colonel Mallory of Virginia had been instructed to build artillery batteries along the coastline for the Confederacy.

  Later, the three learned of the colonel’s plan to send them farther south, where they would be separated from their families and put to work constructing other artillery batteries for the rebels.

  On the very evening Virginians were celebrating their secession vote, the three men had been instructed to build an artillery battery near Fort Monroe, one of the only Union-controlled outposts in the South. That very night the three men made a courageous decision and a pact. They would not do as they were instructed. In fact, they decided they would not build another.

  Risking a beating or far worse, rather than follow Colonel Mallory’s command, the men took a boat across the James River and gave themselves over to the Union at Fort Monroe.

  Days later Colonel Mallory sent a messenger requesting the return of his property as he was entitled to do under the law. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act required citizens to assist in the recovery of fugitive slaves and runaways.

  Under the law the men should have been returned to Colonel Mallory.

  The general of Fort Monroe, Benjamin F. Butler, flatly refused the request, citing that since Virginia was now a “foreign country” having just days before seceded, he had no constitutional obligation to return the runaways. Instead, he would seize the three men as “contraband of war,” property to be used by the enemy against the Union.

  As word spread that these men were now granted a place of safety and protection under the contraband of war ruling, other enslaved people began flocking to “Freedom’s Fortress.”

  The fort quickly became overcrowded, as they were not equipped to handle the growing number of people arriving daily looking for refuge. Eventually, makeshift villages were established to accommodate the displaced people.

  Some of the people felt the conditions were far worse than what they left at the plantations they fled from. Some were happy to experience a degree of liberty and autonomy, to begin to consider for themselves what independence meant personally to them. For some it was self-determination; they could decide for themselves how to spend their time. Or they could live with their families and acquire work in order to support them. Through all of these transitions, people wanted their children educated.

  Schools were started and people sought education to better their lives. Some people looked upon the contraband of war policy as a way of creating a brand new self. Some people looked upon the migration of enslaved people to Freedom’s Fortress as the beginning of the end of slavery as we knew it in the United States.

  TIME LINE

  ON SEPTEMBER 18, 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress as part of the compromise between the Southern slaveholding states and the Northern states. The law allowed slave hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law, and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery.

  ON NOVEMBER 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States (the first Republican), defeating opponents Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats, and John Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party.

  ON DECEMBER 20, 1860, in response to Abraham Lincoln’s election as president of the United States, a special session of the South Carolina legislature convened and voted unanimously to secede from the Union.

  ON JANUARY 3, 1861, the Delaware state legislature officially and overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to leave the Union and join the Confederacy. There was little expectation that Delaware would vote to secede; of the twenty thousand blacks who lived there, only eighteen hundred were enslaved.

  ON JANUARY 9, 1861, the Star of the West, an unarmed merchant steamer chartered by the War Department to transport troops and supplies from New York City to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbo
r, South Carolina, was fired upon and driven off by South Carolina.

  ON JANUARY 9, 1861, the state of Mississippi became the second state to leave the Union.

  ON JANUARY 10, 1861, Florida voted to secede.

  ON JANUARY 11, 1861, Alabama voted to secede from the Union.

  ON JANUARY 18, 1861, in reaction to the secession of the Southern states, Massachusetts offered President Lincoln “such aid in men and money as he may request, to maintain the authority of the general Government.”

  ON JANUARY 19, 1861, Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union.

  ON JANUARY 26, 1861, the Louisiana legislature voted to withdraw from the Union.

  ON JANUARY 29, 1861, the state of Kansas entered the Union as a free state, its constitution prohibiting slavery.

  ON FEBRUARY 1, 1861, Montgomery, Alabama, was chosen capital of the Confederate States of America. The capital would move to Richmond on May 20 after Virginia joined the Confederacy.

  ON FEBRUARY 1, 1861, Texas seceded.

  ON FEBRUARY 11, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln began his twelve-day journey to Washington, DC, to assume the presidency. It was from the Great Western Railroad depot in Springfield, Illinois, that he gave one of his most touching speeches.

  ON FEBRUARY 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis was appointed the First Provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

  On MARCH 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the United States. In his address he spoke to rebellious Southerners: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.”

  ON MARCH 21, 1861, Confederate leaders were eager to emphasize the irreconcilable differences between North and South. Vice President Alexander Stephens delivered an impassioned speech stating: “Our new Government is founded upon . . . the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and moral condition.”

  ON APRIL 12–13, 1861, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, was attacked by artillery. After exchanging fire for thirty-four hours, the fort surrendered. The bombardment of Fort Sumter marked the beginning of the American Civil War.

  ON APRIL 15, 1861, President Lincoln issued a proclamation of war and a call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion.

  ON APRIL 17, 1861, Virginia secedes.

  ON APRIL 19, 1861, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob of pro-Southern advocates while marching through Baltimore.

  ON APRIL 29, 1861, Maryland rejected secession.

  ON MAY 6, 1861, Arkansas seceded from the Union.

  ON MAY 16, 1861, the Kentucky General Assembly enacted a declaration of neutrality.

  ON MAY 23, 1861, in the evening as Confederate sympathizers celebrated Virginia’s decision to secede, three male slaves—Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shep Mallory—rowed a small boat across the James River to Fort Monroe, one of the only Union-controlled outposts in the South, surrendering themselves for having given aid to the rebels.

  ON MAY 24, 1861, General Butler refused to return the runaways, declaring them “contraband of war.” As Virginia was now a foreign country, he had no obligation to return the men. Word spread rapidly and within days, dozens, and then hundreds, more runaways appeared at the gates seeking safety.

  ON MAY 29, 1861, Richmond, Virginia became the Confederate capital.

  ON JUNE 8, 1861, Tennessee voted to secede.

  ON JUNE 18, 1861, President Lincoln signed legislation authorizing the United States Sanitary Commission, the relief agency created to provide care for the sick and wounded of the war.

  ON JULY 17, 1861, the United States government started issuing paper money.

  ON AUGUST 6, 1861, Lincoln signed the First Confiscation Act. Congress authorized Union forces to confiscate slaves used against the government, legitimizing General Benjamin Butler’s policy of designating runaway slaves as contraband of war.

  ON AUGUST 7, 1861, Confederate soldiers set fire to the city of Hampton, Virginia, burning it to the ground so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy.

  ON SEPTEMBER 3, 1861, Reverend Lewis C. Lockwood of the American Missionary Association became the first missionary to the freedmen at Fort Monroe. He made arrangements for weekday and Sabbath meetings, and organized weekday and evening schools.

  ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1861, Mary S. Peake held her first class at Fort Monroe.

  ON DECEMBER 1, 1861, a bill was introduced in Congress to end slavery in the District of Columbia.

  ON DECEMBER 10, 1861, Kentucky was accepted as the thirteenth Confederate State.

  ON FEBRUARY 22, 1862, Mary S. Peake died of tuberculosis. Her tombstone reads: The First Teacher of the Freedmen at Fortress Monroe, VA.

  ON MARCH 13, 1862, Congress prohibited the return of fugitive slaves.

  ON APRIL 10, 1862, President Lincoln requested that Congress pass a resolution to offer any slave state compensation from the federal government in return for enacting a bill of gradual emancipation.

  ON APRIL 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed into law the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act. It freed all slaves within the capital and paid every slaveholder three hundred dollars for each slave.

  ON MAY 20, 1862, the Homestead Act of 1862 was signed by President Lincoln.

  ON JUNE 19, 1862, Congress outlawed slavery in all territories belonging to the United States of America.

  ON JULY 17, 1862, Congress passed the Militia Act of 1862, declaring that African-Americans could be utilized by the United States Army and Navy.

  ON JULY 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, decreeing that any Confederate official whose land was occupied by the Union who did not surrender within sixty days would have his slaves freed.

  ON SEPTEMBER 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in active rebellion states would be freed if said states didn’t end their fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863.

  ON JANUARY 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation. He would later call it “the great event of the nineteenth century.”

  Prologue

  All is well now for Callie. But things did not start out that way. The days that led to these were many and hard. There were times when she supposed life could be nothing else. Looking back, it was only the world as she knew it. But the world is vast. Time brings many changes.

  In time war came and changed her world. It started April of 1861—the opening of the Civil War. Callie could not have known what was to come, but her world was ending.

  Out of the old, something new was beginning. She became what she is today because of that.

  Many stories come out of long ago and hard times. It was not so long ago. But the times were hard indeed. This is Callie Wilcomb’s story.

  PART ONE

  The World As Callie Knew It

  On April 12, 1861, the Southern Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter off the South Carolina coast. This act of violence is what started the war between the North and the South: the Civil War. The North was industrialized. There were factories. Most of the wealth in the South was held in land and slaves and their labor. Southerners had to raise money quickly. Many plantation owners were forced to sell their slaves and livestock to pay off their debts in support of the war effort.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Callie

  April 22, 1861

  Sunlight poured into Suse’s bedroom, making Callie feel even more weighed down with what the day was bringing. Callie wished she could have stopped the new day from rising. Morning was her favorite time of the day, but not this morning. The world was spinning and churning out of control around her.

  The hurt inside her was deep as a well; she felt she was drowning. She wished she could open herself u
p to release what made her feel so numb and silent.

  The crying and wailing of Callie’s stepmother, Mama Ruth, could be heard all the way to Mister Henry’s house from the Quarters. He had forbidden her to leave the cabin. Callie’s papa, Hampton, was with her and Little Charlie, who was only two years of age. Callie prayed her little brother was too young to truly know or remember what was happening this horrible day.

  Mister Henry was selling the last of his able-bodied slaves to Mister Arnold Tweet, a Mississippi cotton farmer. This included Albert and John, and Callie’s stepbrother Joseph. He was fifteen and could handle a plow. Joseph may not have been a seasoned slave but he could do a man’s day. He was considered a man.

  Yesterday, when Mister Henry announced his intentions to sell his slaves in order to raise money for the war that was coming, Mistress Catherine was nowhere to be found. Papa found no fault with her, though.

  “Callie,” he said, taking his daughter’s hands into his. Papa only did this when he wanted her to understand the thing that was so impossible for her to understand: the intricate and peculiar family ties that bound master and slave together.

  Mistress Catherine was wholly white. She was Papa’s half sister. They shared the same father but not the same mother. Hampton’s mother was a slave. The child had to follow the condition of the mother. Hampton never got to know and love his mother. She was taken away from him and sold shortly after he was born. And so, he was brought up right alongside his half sisters, Catherine and Eloise.

  “We must not blame Mistress Catherine for being such a timid soul,” Papa explained, trying to soothe Callie. “Matters such as these were never in her spirit to conduct.” But Callie could not even look at her papa. He gently turned her face to his.

  Then Papa reminded her, “Callie, you must remember, we have a kind mistress in Catherine. It is because of her that you and I are better off than so many other folk.” Callie knew he meant, better off than even Mama Ruth, Joseph, and Little Charlie, too. And this knowledge hurt her even more.