Part 5 (2/2)

O a new song, a free song,Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,By the wind's voice and that of the drum,By the banner's voice and child's voice and sea's voice and father's voice,Low on the ground and high in the air...

-WALT W WHITMAN, ”Song of the Banner at Day-Break” (186061)

Fugitives fording the Rappahannock, Virginia, 1862 (photo credit 8.1).

Hampton Roads, Virginia, May 1861.

THIS WAS WHERE IT HAD ALL BEGUN.

Here, where the river washed into the great bay: a place as freighted with the heavy past as anywhere in the still-young country; a place of Indian bones and deep-cellared manor houses and the armor of King James's men rusting away beneath the dark soil.

Time itself seemed to move here like that tidal river, its ambivalent currents stirred first upstream, then down. By night, from the water, the sharp-edged silhouette of the federal fort might seem to soften and sink, becoming again the low palisades that the first colonists had raised on the same spot two and a half centuries ago. The navy steams.h.i.+p, moored in the fort's lee, might raise its black hull into the form of a bygone man-of-war.

History recorded that late in the summer of 1619, a Dutch corsair under an English captain had come in from the south and anch.o.r.ed at Point Comfort. On this promontory at the mouth of the James, thirty miles downstream from their fledgling capital, the Virginia colonists had built a lookout point and trading post that they called Fort Algernourne. John Rolfe, Pocahontas's widower, recounted the s.h.i.+p's arrival in a letter. The corsair, he wrote, ”brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes.” These it had captured from a Portuguese slaver, bound to Veracruz from the coast of Angola. A strange and circuitous voyage, a strange cargo, and yet exactly what the colonists needed. A single pound of tobacco would fetch three s.h.i.+llings in London, but here in Virginia there were never enough hands to tend and harvest the crop. English men and women were lured across the ocean with false promises; stray boys were kidnapped on London streets and s.h.i.+pped off to be auctioned like calves at the Jamestown wharf. They worked the fields for a few months and then died, regretted but unmourned. These Negroes, cheaply bought, would be put to work in the tobacco fields, too.1 Two and a half centuries later, there were four million descendants of Africans held in slavery on these sh.o.r.es.

But now, on a spring night in 1861, three of them were making their way across those same waters, toward the fort at Point Comfort-and, this time, to freedom.

THIS IS HOW IT WOULD ALL END.

The three men who crossed the James River to the fort that night-Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend-had been enslaved field hands on a farm outside Hampton, a quiet county seat on the north bank of the river. Then the war came. Like so many other Americans at that moment, the men unexpectedly faced a new set of challenges and decisions.

The tranquil rural landscape they had known suddenly blazed with activity. Seemingly overnight, it emerged as one of the most strategically important regions in the entire Confederacy-especially since its sh.o.r.eline bordered the expanse of water at the mouth of the James known as Hampton Roads. One of the greatest natural harbors on earth, this estuary commanded direct water routes to the capitals of both belligerents: the James, highway to Richmond; and the Chesapeake Bay, highway to Was.h.i.+ngton. It would be repeatedly contested in the years to come, most famously in the 1862 naval battle between the Monitor Monitor and the and the Merrimack. Merrimack.

As the war opened, Hampton Roads and its surroundings were dominated by one of the few military strongholds in the South that the federal government had managed to keep: Fortress Monroe, which sat at the tip of Point Comfort, a mile or so from the town of Hampton.2 The small peninsula had been occupied as a strategic point not just by the Jamestown colonists but also by both British and French forces in turn during the Revolution. Construction of the ma.s.sive stone citadel, designed to hold heavy armament and a large garrison, had begun after the War of 1812-during which the British had secured Hampton Roads with embarra.s.sing ease and spent the next two years raiding and burning towns and cities up and down the Chesapeake, including the nation's capital. The federal government was not about to let that happen again. Unlike such haphazardly designed coastal defenses as Fort Sumter, Fortress Monroe had received loving attention from the nation's best military engineers, among them a talented young lieutenant named Robert E. Lee. The small peninsula had been occupied as a strategic point not just by the Jamestown colonists but also by both British and French forces in turn during the Revolution. Construction of the ma.s.sive stone citadel, designed to hold heavy armament and a large garrison, had begun after the War of 1812-during which the British had secured Hampton Roads with embarra.s.sing ease and spent the next two years raiding and burning towns and cities up and down the Chesapeake, including the nation's capital. The federal government was not about to let that happen again. Unlike such haphazardly designed coastal defenses as Fort Sumter, Fortress Monroe had received loving attention from the nation's best military engineers, among them a talented young lieutenant named Robert E. Lee.3 Once complete, it became America's most impregnable military installation. At the start of the secession crisis, the War Department quickly sent additional artillery pieces and hundreds of extra troops to the fort. Thousands more Union reinforcements arrived in the weeks after Sumter. Fortress Monroe was now poised to become a major base of operations in the heart of enemy territory. Once complete, it became America's most impregnable military installation. At the start of the secession crisis, the War Department quickly sent additional artillery pieces and hundreds of extra troops to the fort. Thousands more Union reinforcements arrived in the weeks after Sumter. Fortress Monroe was now poised to become a major base of operations in the heart of enemy territory.4 The Confederates, too, were hurriedly marshaling forces in the area. And one of their leaders happened to be Colonel Charles King Mallory: county judge, commander of the local militia, and master of the three nocturnal fugitives, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend.

On May 13, the Union commander of Fortress Monroe sent a small squad of men across the narrow creek separating the fort from the mainland. Their job was to secure a well that lay on the far side, since the fort's limited cisterns could not support all the new troops arriving continually by steamer. Although the federal soldiers had advanced merely a few yards into Virginia, and although the state had not yet officially ratified its secession, the vigilant Colonel Mallory perceived nothing less than a Yankee invasion of the Old Dominion's sacred soil. He immediately called up his troop, the 115th Virginia Militia.5 Gallant as they may have been, these defenders of Southern rights and Southern homes were not exactly ready for a full-scale engagement with the enemy. (The militiamen's previous duties had consisted largely of standing guard on local pilot boats to prevent fugitive Negroes from escaping.) Instead, they joined the several thousand other Virginia troops already dispersed throughout the area, busily setting up camps, digging entrenchments, and building gun platforms.

Or rather: the Virginia militiamen were supervising supervising the construction of entrenchments and gun platforms. The actual hard labor was being done by local slaves, pressed into service from surrounding plantations. Soon, indeed, Confederate authorities required every slaveholder in the three nearest counties to offer at least half his able-bodied hands for military use. ”Our negroes will do the shovelling while our brave cavaliers will do the fighting,” a Richmond newspaper said. the construction of entrenchments and gun platforms. The actual hard labor was being done by local slaves, pressed into service from surrounding plantations. Soon, indeed, Confederate authorities required every slaveholder in the three nearest counties to offer at least half his able-bodied hands for military use. ”Our negroes will do the shovelling while our brave cavaliers will do the fighting,” a Richmond newspaper said.6 Baker, Mallory, and Townsend had accompanied their master across the James to Sewell's Point, where, directly opposite Fortress Monroe, the Confederates were constructing an artillery emplacement amid the dunes. The three men labored with picks and shovels beneath the regimental banner of the 115th Virginia, a blue flag bearing a motto in golden letters, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH.7 After a week or so of this, however, they learned some deeply unsettling news: their master was planning to send them even farther from home, to help build Confederate fortifications in North Carolina. They were bidding farewell to the area where they had spent most, if not all, of their lives. Moreover, two of them-probably Baker and Townsend, the elder members of the trio-had wives and children on the opposite side of the river. If they went south, away from their master's immediate supervision, into the hands of unknown military authorities, and in the direction that all slaves dreaded most, would they ever see their families again?8 Just four miles across the water, in the direction of their home and their families, sat Fortress Monroe. It must have been a familiar sight to them, especially since Colonel Mallory had a house in the shadow of its ramparts, on the outskirts of Hampton. Indeed, it is quite possible that they had been inside the fort already, in peacetime; relations between the townsfolk and the soldiers had always been neighborly, so any number of errands for their master might have taken them there. Now, of course, their master, along with all the other loyal Confederates, considered it enemy territory....

That was when the three slaves decided to choose their own allegiance. And they joined the Union.

All it took was one small boat. With Confederate officers frequently coming and going across the James, there must have been plenty such vessels at Sewell's Point. On the night of May 23, Baker, Mallory, and Townsend slipped down to the beach and rowed stealthily away. As they drew nearer to Hampton, they must have heard distant shouts and commotion. It was the day Virginians had voted to ratify the ordinance of secession, and here, as in distant Alexandria, citizens of the newly independent state were celebrating. (Only six townsfolk had cast votes for the Union.) The fugitives' timing may have been no coincidence, either. Colonel Mallory had served as his county's delegate to the secession convention; it is hard to believe that on the big night he would have stayed to swat sand flies by the campfire at Sewell's Point. Perhaps he was in town, rejoicing at his state's self-liberation, when his three slaves spied a chance to liberate themselves, too.9 Still, it cannot have been an easy decision for the men. What kind of treatment would they meet with at the fort? If the federal officers sent them back, would they be punished as runaways-perhaps even as traitors? Even if they were allowed to remain inside, might this leave their families exposed to Colonel Mallory's retribution? How, and when, would they ever reunite with their loved ones?

But the choice was theirs to make, and they made it. Approaching the high stone walls, they hailed a uniformed picket guard, and were admitted within the gates of Fortress Monroe.

Next morning they were summoned to see the fort's commanding general himself. The three fugitives could not have taken this as an encouraging sign. And however familiar Monroe's peacetime garrison may have been to them, at least by sight, the officer who now awaited them behind a cluttered desk was someone whose face they had never seen in their lives.

Worse still, as far as faces went, his was not a pleasant one. It was the face of a man whom many people, in the years ahead, would call a brute, a beast, a cold-blooded murderer. It was a face that could easily make you believe such things: low, balding forehead; slack jowls; and a tight, mean little mouth beneath a drooping mustache. It would have seemed a face of almost animal-like stupidity, had it not been for the eyes. These glittered shrewdly, almost hidden amid crinkled folds of flesh, like dark little jewels in a nest of tissue paper. One of them had an odd sideways cast, as though its owner were always considering something else besides the thing in front of him.

These were the eyes that now surveyed Baker, Mallory, and Townsend. The general began asking them questions: Who was the

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