Chapter Fifty-Four
Mounted on his horse, Silas looked out over the drought-ridden expanse of Somerset from his favorite spot on the plantation. His vantage point did not allow a full view of his three thousand acres, but it allowed a vista that gave a sense of the width and breadth of his domain. In the past, the scene filled him with such joy of possession that sometimes when alone, he would shout his exhilaration to the sky. At other times, he rode to this place for its serenity and quiet when he required balm for his soul. Today, the land stretching in his line of vision left his spirits as bone-dry as the endless rows of burned, nubby stalks under his gaze. Today, he felt no peace here in this, his Gilead, and wouldn’t for a long time to come.
It was late October 1860.
On his Appaloosa beside him, Thomas said, “Hard to look at, isn’t it, Papa?”
“In more ways than one,” Silas said. The devastation was harder for Thomas, Silas recognized. Thomas had not lived through as many of Mother Nature’s attacks on men’s labors as his father, and this one had been the most vicious either had ever encountered. Out of the blue, Silas thought of Morris. His brother would ascribe some apocalyptic meaning to the destruction before him, probably taken from the Book of Revelation, and he could be right. The drought of the miserable summer just passed could be a prediction of the doomsday to come.
The year had started calmly, but cruelly deceptive, as things had turned out. Never had East Texas planters and farmers seen their crops so green and lush, so full of promise of an abundant harvest to come. March had delivered the perfect amount of rainfall and sunshine, and its winds, the dreaded enemy of fine, aerated soil and seeds planted just under the surface of the ground, had been surprisingly mild. They had all gloated, but as April and May passed without a drop of rain, hope for even a small yield faded utterly when June ushered in a blistering heat wave that had scorched the dry earth until hardly a stalk of cotton, blade of wheat, barley, or corn was left to wither in the hot, dusty winds—a harbinger of the ruin that would surely lay waste to Texas and the southern states should they secede from the union .
Reading his “heart thoughts,” as Jessica called them, Thomas said, “You think secession is inevitable, Papa?”
“As certain as I am that in time rain will come.”
“And then war?”
“And then war.” Silas could no longer deny it. If secession came, war would follow. The senator from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, had been nominated as the Republicans’ candidate for president and in all likelihood would win. He’d made his political position clear in a speech delivered to Congress in June of 1858 when he stated that “a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” As president of the United States, Lincoln had vowed he would not compromise on the issue of slavery nor recognize the legitimacy of secession.
“The handwriting is on the wall, son,” Silas said. “The South will secede whether Mr. Lincoln’s administration approves or not. Southern firebrands will never stand for a central government overruling states’ rights, and men like your grandfather and Texas planters who settled the republic would rather die than submit to any legislative body that would destroy their forebears’ way of life.” Silas drew in a deep breath of cool fall air, the first relief from the summer heat, but it only aggravated the needles of anxiety in his chest.
Again his son read his thoughts. “What makes you so sure war will come?”
“The Republican abolitionists are determined to free the slaves in this country, and Lincoln is determined to keep the country intact. The South believes it has the legal authority to hold slaves and the constitutional right to secede. The different attitudes make for a lethal conflict. War is inevitable, and the North will win.”
Thomas readjusted himself in his saddle, a sign of inner disturbance to his father. “Why?”
“Because it has everything the South and Texas do not.”
Silas swatted at a persistent fly buzzing around his head, an annoyance to his enjoyment of the pleasant breeze drying the sweat from his face. “It has industries, railroads, factories, and a huge and ready source of manpower provided by massive immigrations from Europe. The South has a smattering of cities, no railroads to speak of, little immigration, and few factories—all factors that will work against us in a war with the North.”
“What will happen then?”
Silas released his horse’s reins to allow him to nibble at the few blades of grass. He blamed himself for Thomas, at twenty-three, not being better informed of the explosive civil situation looming over his future and his very life. Thomas did not show interest in matters that did not pertain to the growing of cotton. He religiously read the Cultivator, a periodical published in New York for farmers, and devoured every article in newspapers pertaining to the most recent agricultural techniques and advances in farm machinery, but he was not one to pay much attention to current political events. Silas had seen no reason to muddle his mind with articles of bleak forecasts that might never come to pass. Over Jessica’s wise counsel, even at the dinner table, the only opportunity for family discussion, he had avoided talking of the growing conflict.
“What can Thomas do about it?” he’d said to Jessica.
“To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” she’d said.
“Forearmed? With what?”
“A plan to save the plantation from the destruction the changes will bring if war comes.”
Silas watched a prairie falcon swoop down to snatch a lizard in hasty retreat—an appropriate image of the crisis at hand, he thought. “Lincoln will emancipate the slaves, and the plantation system will be over,” he answered his son. “The way of life we enjoy now will be extinguished.”
Thomas stared off across the distance with a hardening of his Toliver jaw. He had reached his full height and breadth of shoulders, a man in every way, but Silas could not let go of the memory of him as a callow youth, uncomplicated and trusting, innocent of the world that lay beyond Somerset. Silas blamed himself for that, too.
“You have only yourself to thank that he lives for and would die by the plantation,” Jessica told him. “Isn’t that devotion what you wanted from your son?”
“Yes, but not to the exclusion of everything else.”
“He will have to learn, like his father did, that there is more to love than land and growing cotton,” she said.
Silas, too, could read his son’s thoughts. Thomas was imagining Somerset—his inheritance, land of his father, the one and only occupation he felt born to—gone to ruin.
“So what will there be to come home to?” Thomas asked.
It was the question Silas had anticipated, and its answer was the reason he’d asked his son to meet him out here today in this spot of solitude and reflection. Because of course if there was a war, Thomas would go. He would not exercise his legal right to hire another to go in his place, as was his option as an only son of a wealthy man. It was that numbing certainty that kept Silas and Jeremy and Henri up at nights working long in their studies to occupy their minds, leaving their wives as sleepless in their beds. Silas lost his breath sometimes visualizing his son in the midst of battle, vulnerable to a rifle shot, a knife blade, imprisonment, torture, death. Food stuck in his throat, sweat broke out, blood rushed to his head, his speech stopped in midthought whenever he envisioned all the ills that could befall his only child on the battlefield.
And his sleep was never without the haunt of his mother’s prediction.
“We must give him a reason beyond us and himself to stay alive,” Jessica had said.
“Like what?” Silas had demanded, feeling the strain of his sleep-deprived eyes glued upon his wife.
“You must save the love of his life for him.”
“Somerset.”
“You know what you must do to preserve it, Silas.”
“Yes, thanks be to you, Jessica.”
And so, following Jessica’s proposal of long ago, Silas had formed a plan for the salvation of Somerset when the backbone essential to its survival was no more. The plantation—the certainty that it awaited him—would serve as a vision for Thomas to hold on to that might see him safely home. Such a vision had worked for Silas in coming to Texas. The dream of Somerset was always before his path. That image had given him courage. It also had given him wisdom to meet life-threatening obstacles with patience and good judgment, not to give in to terror and desperation. The mental sight of land to call his own had given him reason to live.
That was what he wished to provide for Thomas. Silas did not mean to inspire cowardice—safety at any price—but to influence his son to exercise prudence, to listen to reason, to take no undue, foolish chances that would prevent his return to the place he loved. It was so little in the face of war when panic and despair—and simple bravery—so often prevailed, but it was all he could give his son. Beyond that, he must leave Thomas’s fate in the hands of God.
Silas said, “That’s what I’ve brought you out here today to discuss, Thomas—a way to save Somerset. Let’s talk about it over there.” They dismounted and moved to the shade of a heat-stressed red oak tree, where they sat on the ground and Silas explained.
Thomas listened and afterwards, he said, “This is the only way?”
Silas nodded. “The only way. East Texas planters will choke on my plan, but I suspect it will be adopted by all of them who wish to salvage a portion of the livelihood they knew.”
“Bless Mother and her altruistic heart for the downtrodden,” Thomas said.
Silas emitted a brief laugh. “Amen to that. God knows, if it hadn’t been for your mother…”