Historical fiction--The Glorious Cause

I wrote this fictional narrative in a single afternoon. I had been studying the historical period, so the narrative flowed. I'm willing to tackle almost anything but notice that historical fiction is easier for me than most types of writing.

I think it's because I love history and research.



The Glorious Cause


“I know it is the right cause,” Phillip Taylor thought as he stood on the roadside, watching the regiments stride past proudly in their new gray uniforms.

The onlookers were festive, cheering and waving enthusiastically as the brave young men filed off to war. Phillip’s mother and younger sister threw flowers and shouted, “Godspeed!” Phillip waved a handkerchief.

When the last unit passed, the youth, whose emotions had been stirred to fervor, jumped into the street. He wanted to join the crowd that followed the troops to the train station, but his mother pulled him back.

Along the busy street they moved. The boy’s mind was feverish. He wanted to camp, march, fight, and perform heroic deeds with those who had just paraded past.

His mother, umbrella opened, hurried along beside him. Already, she was thinking about the routines of the day—planning menus, giving orders to household servants, and looking after her invalid father, who lived with her and required her constant oversight.

Phillip dearly loved his affectionate, indulgent mother but was annoyed by her protective attitude. He knew that when he told her he wanted to join the army, she would demand that he stay at home. He hoped that his father would understand his desire to enlist in the regiment.

“Mother, may I spend the day with Papa?” he asked suddenly.

“Of course not. There’s school,” the mother said.

“On this day?” the boy replied. He was certain that his school, a military academy, would be deserted, since its faculty no doubt had gone to the train station to send off the troops.

The mother looked around. It seemed that the entire town was moving down the street. She thought, “How can I expect him to go to school on this day, which feels like a holiday?”

“I suppose it won’t do any harm to miss one day,” she finally said.

And so the little family made its way toward the white wooden building in the center of town where the boy’s father worked as the community’s only newspaper editor. Inside, four men sat around a wooden table, discussing politics.

“So here’s our fearless lad, Phillip,” said one of them, the town’s former mayor. Despite ailing health, the elderly gentleman stood up politely when Mrs. Taylor entered the room.

Phillip’s father was away from his office, but the mayor assured Phillip’s mother that he would look after her son until the boy’s father returned.

After a flurry of instructions, Mrs. Taylor left the office with a firm grip on the right hand of Phillip’s wide-eyed little sister, Hannah Leigh.

Phillip tried to hide his nervous excitement as he sat on a wooden chair and listened to the animated conversation that was flying around the room.

“Happened thirteen days ago,” the mayor was explaining to a country gentleman who had come to town to get news. “The first shots were fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, and the fort surrendered on the fourteenth. The war is on.” The plantation owner, pleased by the report, pulled a flask out of his coat pocket and offered a spot of whiskey to the other three men.

“May it fire the Southern heart,” he said, and everyone loudly agreed.

“What else could we do?” shrugged Abraham Simmons, a reporter. “We didn’t even put him on our ballots, but the Union elected him. And now they’ve installed their Abolitionist President. No honorable Southerner can submit to such a blatant Yankee attempt to dominate Southern government.”

“And topple our economy,” Benjamin Murray, a local businessman, added.

“Our whole way of life,” Simmons said. “It tramples on the right of the individual states to run their own affairs and live according to what’s best for each of them.”

“It robs us of our Constitutional rights,” said the mayor. “Our right to govern ourselves. Our ancestors died for nothing if we give in to the corruption of Yankee politics.”

“Abraham Lincoln, the Black Republican,” the plantation owner agreed. “Enthroned in Washington. At the beck and call of every Yankee industrialist.”

“And all of their confounded protective tariffs,” Murray said. A murmur ran through the room.

“More like foreigners than friends,” Simmons added. “They’ll do everything to make sure slavery doesn’t spread into the new territories. They’ll choke slavery to death if they can.”

“They know that slave property is the foundation of all property in the South,” the landowner agreed. “If we lose our slave property, the entire region will collapse. Banks, stocks, bonds. Everything.”

“Uncertainty will reign. That’s what they want,” Murray said.

“And if all the slaves in the South were emancipated tomorrow, what would those Yankee Abolitionists do?” the plantation owner asked. “When four million homeless, jobless, uneducated Negroes descended on Southern society, would they build houses? Provide jobs? Take Negroes into their homes? Welcome them into their churches and schools? Bear the burden, even in a small way?”

“They’d do nothing,” Murray said bitterly. “They wouldn’t even notice the confusion. They’d be blinded by those crocodile tears they shed.”

The others chuckled, and the landowner offered a second round of shots from his whiskey flask.

“But I don’t like the trend,” Simmons said, his voice growing serious. “They’ve had some political success, and success has a way of producing strength. People tend to follow it. And the Abolitionist movement is gaining strength in the South. I fear that it will continue to grow. Before you know it, we’ll be struggling against Southerners.

“Look at this.” Simmons held up a copy of the Knoxville, Tennessee Whig. “Here’s a Unionist paper being published right here in the South. And the editor is Parson Brownlows, a Southerner. If we don’t stand up to Abolitionists now, how many more Parson Brownlows will they be able to produce?”

“Damned Tennessee preacher turned journalist. Yankee sympathizer,” the former mayor said.

“Powerful voice, though,” the boy’s father said. Notebook in hand, he’d walked softly through the door.

“John Taylor, you scared me,” the mayor laughed.

“Mayor,” Taylor said, tipping his hat. “Gentlemen.”

Out of respect for his father, the young man jumped to his feet.

“Phillip, what brings you to town?” Taylor asked.

“Papa, I’ve come to talk with you about something very serious,” Phillip replied.

His solemn tone brought smiles to the visitors’ faces. “John, you’d better get to the bottom of it," Murray chuckled, revealing by his amused tone that he expected the subject of Phillip’s discussion with his father to be childish and insignificant.

John Taylor ushered his son into his office and closed the door. He sat down at his desk, and Phillip stood before him, waiting patiently for permission to begin

Taylor was a thoughtful, studious man who weighed his words carefully, and Phillip trusted him. “What is it, Phillip?” he asked.

“I want to join the army,” Phillip replied. He had intended to present a few persuasive arguments before making his request, but when the moment came, he was so nervous that he blurted it out.

John Taylor looked hard at his son. “Why is that?”

“Duty, sir. And for the glory of the Cause.”

“And what is the Cause you’re so willing to sacrifice for?”

“Papa, you know!”

“The preservation of the South?”

“Yes, of course. And the preservation of our proud past!” Phillip said zealously.

“Yes, in this region of the country, we’re certainly defined by our past. Son, you’re only thirteen years old. You are too young to go to war. Your place is here with your mother and me. Your place is in school. Comfort yourself by giving moral support to the Confederacy.”

Phillip, who had hoped for his father’s enthusiastic support, was disappointed, but he didn’t argue. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Now, you go out into the lobby and ask Benjamin Murray to walk you home.”

John watched his son leave the room. When the door was closed, he sighed heavily and put his face in his hands. Today, Phillip was a slender adolescent, but his body would mature. No doubt, his determination would also grow. John suspected that Phillip would go to war in a year or two, whether his parents approved or not.

Taylor unlocked a hidden drawer on the underside of his broad wooden desk and pulled out a journal that he had been writing in for weeks. When he opened the journal, letters fell out—correspondence from Abolitionists with whom he often sympathized.

The last journal entry had been written hastily, four days before. Dated April 21, 1861, it said, “We’ve been thrust into war. I am a gloomy man, for I fear the violent ruin of a proud society. How many lives will be sacrificed?”

“How quickly events march forward,” he thought.

He picked up his pen and wrote, “April 25, 1861. This dismal war! It has already cast its shadow over my family. What will be left when it’s done?”

And then John Taylor locked away his journal, walked out to the lobby, set to print a news story about the warriors of the Glorious Cause, and spent some time with his friends.