Authors: Heather Graham
He hesitated, wishing that he could lie to her. His fingers curled around hers. “I have to go back, Callie.” He hesitated another moment. “Callie, you’re right. I’ve always known that slavery was wrong. But I also believe that each state should have decided upon emancipation, that we should have managed it with our laws—”
“It wouldn’t have happened, Daniel.”
“Hear me out, Callie, please. I want you to understand. I have to go back. I have to see the war through. There are men beneath me, and men above me, and I owe them my loyalty and my service. I have to, Callie. To the bitter end.”
She was blinded again. Not by blood, by tears.
“Callie, don’t you see? If I don’t remain loyal to my cause, to my country, I will never be able to be the father that Jared deserves?”
She nodded. She did understand him.
“Sleep, Callie.”
She shook her head. “No! You’re leaving!”
He kissed her forehead. “I will wait. One more day will not win or lose the war any faster.”
She closed her eyes, believing that he would stay. He had said that he would. He had given his word.
Daniel was glad that Callie slept. As Christa had assumed, their overseer had been killed by Eric’s men, shot in his bed before he’d ever awakened.
Daniel, Jesse, Jeremy, and Christa saw to it that he was buried in the family cemetery in the back.
The Yanks, the living and the dead, Daniel turned over to the Rebel captain.
He spent the early afternoon with Jesse, and it was damned good just to talk with his brother again.
They were going to stay another night. Kiernan was awaiting her time with her husband, so Daniel excused himself on some pretext or another. Despite the fact that he was leaving, he couldn’t bring himself to wake Callie.
He had been too terrified when he had seen the blood on her forehead. And now she needed rest.
In the late afternoon, he left the house. Daniel came to the slope of grass by the river, his favorite place on the plantation. It was where they had come as children. It was where the grass grew the richest, where it was such a dazzling green it was extraordinary.
It was summer, but the breeze, as always, was soft. The river gave the breeze that brush of velvet. The roses from the garden made it redolent and sweet. Far up on the mound, he could see Cameron Hall, still standing. White, stunning, beautiful in the sunlight.
He smiled. None of it mattered, he knew. None of it. He could live in the snow, in the desert, if he lived with Callie.
But this had been the dream, he reminded himself.
He had lain in the grass, felt the soft kiss of the breeze, heard the endless rush of the river. And then he had seen her. A slow smile on her face, coming toward him. Her hair, catching the sunlight. Her eyes, a silver dazzle.
He blinked.
She was there.
Her hair was pure fire, caught by the last rays of a setting sun. And indeed, her eyes were silver. Her face, her angel’s face, had never been more beautiful.
She smiled, standing above him. She lowered herself to her knees. There was a white strip of bandage across her forehead. But her color had returned, and his heart raced as he realized how very well she looked. There had been those awful moments when he hadn’t known how seriously she had been injured, trying to keep him from danger.
He smiled, tossed aside the blade of grass he had been chewing, and reached for her. “Come down here, angel!”
She knelt down before him.
“This is a dream, you know,” he told her.
“Really?”
He nodded. “In the middle of countless battles, I would see this place with you. Right here. By the river.”
“And then?”
“Then you stripped off all of your clothes, and we made love.”
“Like this?”
She was all seductress, slowly loosening one button after another.
“Mmmmm,” he agreed, but frowned, determined that two could play a game.
“What’s wrong?”
“The bandage wasn’t in the fantasy,” he said,
“Oh! Well, you Rebel varmint!” she began. But by then he was laughing, and he swept her into his arms.
The kiss was far better than any fantasy, any dream.
The sun set, lower and lower. Rays of gold and crimson streaked out over the river and over the grass.
And still, Daniel held Callie in his arms. As he had done as a child with Jesse and Christa, he now spun dreams with Callie.
“When the war is over …” he began.
She turned to him, fiercely, passionately. “Oh, Daniel, yes, please God! Let it be soon! When the war is over!”
“My love, our war is over,” he whispered and kissed her in return.
But in the morning, he kissed her again, and rode away once more to battle.
At the end of the long drive, he embraced his brother and said good-bye to him.
He turned back and looked to Cameron Hall. “When the war is over, please, God, yes! Let it be soon!”
The war would not end that soon.
In the North, George “Little Mac” McClellan lost his bid for the presidency, Lincoln was reelected, and hopes for an end to war by a Union peace effort perished.
Just as thousands more soldiers perished on the fields.
Liam McCloskey never appeared for his wedding—he was killed at Cold Harbor. His name didn’t appear on the lists of the dead for weeks, but from the moment that he failed to appear at Cameron Hall, Christa knew. Kiernan and Callie comforted her the best that they could, but there was little to be done. She cried once, then never again, turning her sorrow into supplying the Rebel troops with the very best that she could.
In Richmond, Varina Davis gave birth to a baby girl. She was named Varina for her mother, but they called her “Winnie,” and to many she was the “daughter of the Confederacy,” for she brought life and hope to a time of loss and desolation.
Spring brought new life and hope to Cameron Hall. On March 14, Kiernan gave birth to a second son. Five days later, Callie had her second child, a little girl.
She was the most beautiful infant Callie had ever
seen, she was convinced. More beautiful than Jared, but Jared, of course, had been handsome. Her daughter was born with a full mop of deep red curls and brilliant blue eyes.
And the face of an angel, Callie thought.
She prayed ever more fervently that Daniel would live to see her.
For Daniel was with the battle to the very end, with Lee at Petersburg.
And the South tried. She fought hard, she fought valiantly, she fought with the life’s blood of her sons and daughters.
It wasn’t enough.
Grant surrounded Petersburg, and the city was under seige.
Sherman moved steadily forward on his “march to the sea,” destroying everything in his path in Georgia.
The Confederacy staggered and fell. She struggled to her feet again. Rebel cries resounded in battle, and some men never gave up.
But in the end, none of it mattered, for the South stumbled and went down again, and this time she was on her knees.
Petersburg fell, and Lee had to warn President Davis to flee from Richmond.
They circled around their enemy. Lee planned to make a last stand near Danville, joining his army with that of Johnston, moving northward from the Carolinas.
But desperately needed supplies did not arrive. Unlike many of his predecessors, Grant could move quickly. One quarter of Lee’s men were captured; he was left with a ragtag force of thirty thousand while Federal forces blocked his only avenue of escape.
On April 9, Lee tested Grant’s line. It was far too strong to break through.
And so they came to a little place called Appomattox Courthouse.
On the afternoon of Palm Sunday, Lee met with Grant at a farmhouse. It was a curious place, for its owner, a Mr. McClean, had moved to Appomattox Courthouse when his first home had been in the path of some of the opening shots of the war at Manassas.
Lee rode to the meeting upon Traveler, straight and poised in his saddle.
Silent groups of men awaited the outcome.
For all practical purposes, it was over.
Lee didn’t formally address his troops until the next day. He told them that he had done his very best for them. And he told them to go home. He told them to be as good citizens as they had been soldiers.
Daniel watched the man he had followed for so very long, and his heart was heavy. The war had taken its toll upon him. His marvelous face was lined with sorrow and with weariness.
The great Army of Northern Virginia was done. There were other forces in the field, still fighting. But they couldn’t last long. It was over.
Some of Daniel’s men shouted that they would fight on and on. One of them called out to him in dismay. “He’s done surrendered, sir! What are you going to do?”
Daniel mulled it over and then smiled with a bittersweet curl to his lip. “I’m going to find my brother. I’m going to embrace him. And I’m going to go home.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course. The formal surrender of the troops came on the following Wednesday, April 12, 1865. Neither Grant nor Lee was in attendance. The surrender was to be accepted by Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a man who had held his positions at Gettysburg, who had been wounded time and time again.
And a gentleman without thought of revenge.
For as the conquered troops moved by him to lay down their arms, Chamberlain ordered his men to salute them.
And salute them they did.
The men were allowed to keep their horses or mules and their side arms.
They were allowed to go home.
Daniel was promoted to brigadier general in the final days of conflict. It was not so easy for him to leave as it was for his men, and there would be all manner of things that he must clear up, but he knew that Jesse was with the Union troops, and Daniel was anxious to see him.
It was Jesse, though, who found him. Daniel was bidding Godspeed to a young major from Yorktown when he looked past the man to see Jesse standing there, waiting silently for him to finish.
Daniel grinned and strode the distance between them, pausing just a second as his brother saluted him.
He saluted in return.
He grasped Jesse, and the two held tight for a long moment.
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“So am I. Can you get leave?” One good thing about losing, Daniel decided, was that you didn’t need permission to go home anymore. Jesse was still in the military.
“Yes, I’ve already arranged it.”
“Good,” Daniel told him. “We rode away separately. I’m glad to ride home together.”
“Congratulations on your daughter.”
“And on your son.”
“And we haven’t even seen them,” Jesse murmured.
“Soon enough, we will.”
Jesse held him tight one more time and left him. Daniel returned to the command tent to finish with the business of losing.
His heart should have been heavier. There were still forces in the field. He’d heard that Jeff Davis and the cabinet were in hiding, trying to decide whether to surrender themselves, hide out and fight on with guerilla warfare, or try to escape the country.
Daniel was sorry for all of them, but as Lee had known, to go on was foolish. Lincoln had already been in Richmond. It was over.
And he wanted to go home.
Janey brought the paper with news in it to Kiernan, handing it to her in silence. Kiernan quickly scanned the sheet, then sank into an armchair with it. “We’ve lost,” she said softly. The paper fell from her hands and wafted to the floor. She put her head in her hands, and she began to sob.
Christa walked over to the parlor window and stared out in silence.
Callie thought of the hundreds of thousands of men who lay dead, and she thought of the devastation of the countryside. Kiernan wasn’t sorry that it was over—Callie knew that. It was just that intangible thing, that essence,
that
something that had been the cause itself, a way of life, of acting, of being, was over. Never to come again. She understood. They both understood.
She walked over to Kiernan and put her arms gently around her sister-iii-law. “Kiernan, it means that they’ll be coming home now!” she told her. “They’ll be coming home.”
Shocking news reached the country by the morning of April 15. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest single force behind the Union victory—and the sanctity of the Union—was dead. He had been assassinated at Ford’s Theater, shot in the back of the head by a man named John Wilkes Booth—an actor, a southern sympathizer, a man who had attended the hanging of John Brown
all those years ago at Harpers Ferry. There had been a conspiracy, and officials were in a fury to arrest anyone involved.
Booth had escaped, but he was soon hunted down, and killed.
Daniel, hearing the news, mourned Lincoln’s death as deeply as any northerner could.
Lincoln had been as dedicated to repairing the great schism in his country as he had been to preserving it. The Rebels could always claim that they had produced some of the greatest generals to ever live.
The North could claim one of their country’s greatest men, for the rail-splitting lawyer from Illinois had proven with tenacity, dedication, and wisdom to be just that.
With Lincoln gone, who knew quite what would befall the South?
That all remained to be seen.
Daniel just wanted to go home.
Early on a late April morning, he rode out into a field of mist and he waited. Minutes later, another horseman appeared. Jesse.
They
were
going home.
Christa was the first to see them. She started screaming from an upstairs window.
Callie heard her and rushed to the porch. She could see them both, the Cameron brothers.
The one in blue.
And the one in gray.
They had dismounted from their horses, and they were walking down the long drive together toward the house, weary, arms linked, leaning upon one another.
Callie cried out.
Daniel lifted his head, and he saw her. A broad grin
touched his face. He turned to Jesse, said something, and broke away from him.
And then he was running to Callie.