Book # 22

Behind Rebel Lines

The incredible story of Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy

By Seymour Reit

I like stories about strong women. Emma Edmonds was a strong woman. Turns out that she wasn't the only woman to disguise herself as a man and join the military in order to fight in the civil war, but she is the only one, as far as history knows, that was a spy for the Union army.

Sarah Emma Endmonds was born in Canada, but fled to the United States at  age 15 because of a brutal father who never forgave her for not being born a boy. At age 21, she joined the union army at the beginning of the civil war, disguised as a man. Her alias was Franklin Thompson. She worked as a nurse in a battlefield hospital for a year, but longed to do more. She volunteered to become a spy when an important union spy was caught in Richmond and executed. They trained her and then she created a disguise as a black male slave named Cuff. She slipped across enemy lines and gathered important information, plus discovered a man friendly to the union army, giving information to the rebels. Her information eventually led to the taking of Yorktown. 

For her next mission, she was disguised as a middle aged woman named Bridget O'Shay. I think its funny that a woman disguised as a man was disguised as a woman, and the army was none the wiser. As she moved toward the enemy, she took shelter in an abandoned house during a rain storm. There she discovered a young rebel soldier dying of typhoid. She nursed and comforted him until he died. He gave her a pocket watch and asked that he seek out a colonel in the rebel army and tell him that he had died. This gave "Bridget" the perfect opportunity to gather information. The Colonel asked her to lead his men back to the house in order to bring the body back for burial. Bridget agreed, and during the trip, the soldiers, thinking she was a rebel sympathizer told her of an ambush planned for the union army after they crossed the river. With this information, she was able to save many lives.

During one of her missions, she acquired a horse, which she named "Rebel". After that she was often called upon to ride as a messenger because it was discovered that she was a brave and excellent rider. On one such mission, she was nearly caught, when she found herself lost. Soon she saw a troop of union soldiers marching down the road. She was happy and rode to join them, not realizing that they were prisoners of the rebels. The rebel cavalrymen, charged at her, firing. She raced in the other direction, only to find another squad coming toward her. She wheeled Rebel to ride across a field and jumped him over a very large ditch, and managed to get away. 

In one mission, she disguised herself as a black washer woman. Carrying a basket of laundry, she quietly joined a group of slaves and passed through rebel lines. She spent an entire day in a confederate camp, washing and sewing for the rebels. By now she was expert at keeping her ears and eyes open and picked up valuable data. Late that afternoon, she was alone in the wash tent. A packet of official documents slipped from an officers dress coat. She quickly slipped out of camp and hid in the cellar of an abandoned farmhouse. All night long, the area was shelled and she wasn't sure if she would make it out alive. However, by morning the union army had taken the area and she was able to make it back to their camp.

Her next mission turned out to be the most difficult. She was sent to Louisville, Kentucky as a young gentleman. Kentucky was initially neutral in the war because it was a slave holding state, yet they had no desire to secede and destroy the union. But after a rebel army invaded, and the union army responded by sending it's army, the war was at its doorstep and Kentucky officially joined the union side. But there were many rebel sympathizers, and someone was feeding the rebel army a lot of important information that was hurting the union. Emma was sent in as Mr. Charles Mayberry, to discover who the informant was and arrange the capture of that person. He arranged to get himself a job as a book keeper with a prominent man who was known as a rebel sympathizer. He was a hard, dependable worker, and soon gained the trust of his employer, Mr. Aylesworth. Mr. Aylesworth often had secret meetings with a friend named Mr. Hall. Emma tried to eavesdrop on the meetings, without any luck. After weeks of no progress, she made a wild plan. She went to Mr. Aylesworth as Mr Mayberry, and told him that he was going to join the confederate army. He said that he believed in the rebel cause and wanted to do his part and was there any way that Mr. Aylesworth could help him? Mr. Aylesworth  liked his young employee and warned him that he would likely be killed in the war, and that he could arrange tor him to do important work with less risk of death. He arranged for Mr. Mayberry  to meet with Mr. Hall that night. Emma quickly met with her army contact and told him the plan. He arranged to have them followed and arrested. Of course she would have to be arrested to keep her from suspicion. The plan worked and Mr. Hall was discovered carrying important Union intelligence that he intended to pass to the confederate army. He also had information of two other enemy agents in Louisville, and they were arrested as well.

A few weeks after that mission, Emma became ill with malaria. She dared not turn herself in for treatment because she knew that it would be discovered she was a woman, and would be publicly humiliated. She applied for leave but the hospital was always  busy and her request was denied. So she ran away. She went to a nearby town and entered a hospital as a woman and received treatment. After a few weeks she was getting well, and planned to return to her post. But then as she scanned the army bulletins in the city newspaper, she saw the name of Private Franklin Thompson as AWOL. She had been listed as a deserter. There was no way she could return! So she went to Washington and worked under her own name as a nurse for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Emma worked as a nurse for a time. She wrote a book of memoirs, describing her two years as Private Thompson. She wrote how she made eleven different trips behind rebel lines and used various disguises, her favorite being the little black slave named Cuff. Her book was published and sold thousands of copies. Emma donated her share of the profits to US war relief. 

Morals in the 19th century America were prim and proper and some people thought Emma's actions very shocking. But the publisher, W.S. Williams of Hartford, CT, added a gallant note of defense. "Should any of her readers object to some of her disguises, it may be sufficient to remind them it was from the purest motives and most praiseworthy patriotism that she laid aside for a time her own costume, and assumed that of the opposite sex, enduring hardships, suffering untold privations, and hazarding her life for her adopted country in its trying hour of need."

After her book was published, Emma became homesick and went back to visit Saint John, Canada, There she met Linus Steele, an old childhood friend. A romance began, and they returned to the US in 1867, to be married in Cleveland, Ohio. They settled in Kansas and had 3 sons, one of whom later joined the army, "just like Mama did". 

She never fully recovered from the malaria and her health was poor for the rest of her life. She also brooded about being branded a deserter. She got in touch with officers from her old regiment and they encouraged her to petition the war department for a full review of her case. The matter was debated in Washington DC and on July 5, 1884, a special act of Congress granted her military rights restored, including back pay, plus an honorable discharge. After that she felt able to contact her old army friends and many were "amazed to learn that this plump, matronly lady in her fancy bonnet and long skirts was none other than their slim, cool-eyed war buddy, Frank Thompson!" 

In 1891, Emma and Linus moved to Texas to be with one of their sons. They liked the climate and lived there until Emma's death on September 28, 1898. (113 years ago, today!) Her simple grave can be found in the military section of Washington Cemetery in Houston, Texas.

An interesting side note. The author of this book, Seymour Reit, is author of more that 80 books for young people. He is also the creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost and an experienced cartoonist.

Until Next Time ;o)

Book # 21

Saboteur

A Novel of Love and War

By Dean Hughes

This is a story of Andy Gledhill, a young soldier / spy in WWII. He is from Delta, UT. The story is about him and the family and girlfriend he left behind. It was a good story, but I found myself editing all his mistakes about Delta. Sorry, but the train tracks are not EAST of town and neither was the Topaz relocation camp.

One interesting thing I learned...."Do you know what sabotage is?" Simone (AKA Elise) asked. "Sabot is the name for the shoes we wear here on the farm--wooden shoes like the ones you two are wearing. During strikes, workers tossed them into the machinery as a way to shut down factories that weren't fair to them. It took courage to do such a thing, but it was the right thing to do. You're asking us to wait until the fight is over before we join the battle. I see no courage in that...."

BTW..... Elise dies in the book. 

That's what courage'll do for ya.....but of course she saved the hero.

Until next time ;o)

Book # 20

Sugar Changed the World:

A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science

by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

This wasn't the book I planned on reading next, but I was in the library and it caught my eye. So I thought I'd give it a lookie. And it was interesting. Lots of stuff I never knew.

To start out with, both authors have ancestors who were part of the history of sugar. Marc's distant uncle was a serf in Europe during the 1800's. At the time Britain controlled most of the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and the sea routes to Europe and so their rivals were looking for new ways to create sugar. Someone discovered that you could get sugar from beets. His relative, as the story goes, was an intelligent and remarkable man, who discovered how to give raw beet sugar sparkling colors. And although he was a serf, which was only a step above a slave, he made a lot of money from his invention and was able to buy his family a better life.

Marina's family story in sugar began when slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833. The British needed to find new cheap labor. So they turned to India. Marina's family were poor in India and so they went to Guyana to work on the sugar plantations and look for a better life. Marina's great-grandfather was chosen to be a "sirdar" in charge of the field hands. When his contract was over, he purchased land and prospered.

The book begins by describing "The Age of Honey" which was the sweetener before sugar was discovered. I liked this quote: "In the age of honey, people tasted the neighborhood where they lived. From a light orange blossom flavor that is almost a perfume, to dark buckwheat with a hint of soil and grain, honey tastes like local flowers. And that was only part of its appeal. Bees work very hard, and it is easy to see that a queen bee is surrounded by worker bees that protect and serve her. To the ancients, a beehive was perfect, for it brought a gift of sweetness to people while being a mirror of their lives--a king or queen served by loyal subjects....Honey was a way of living: people ate foods grown near them, did the same work as their parents and ancestors, and owed honor and respect to kings, nobles, those above them."

Cane sugar can be traced back to the island of New Guinea. The plant spread north to the Asian mainland. Polynesian seafarers took canes with them as they sailed from island to island and cane reached Hawaii around AD 1100.

India provides us with the first written record of sugar. It was used in religious and magical ceremonies. The word candy comes from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. The word for "a piece of sugar" is khanda. Sugar had another use in India, it was considered medicine. "Today we say, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. But from ancient times until quite recently, sugar itself was a medicine, a means of healing."

Hmmmm......interesting. I'd love to see some modern studies on that!

The book then describes the intensive labor necessary to process cane into sugar. Not a pretty picture. There were two problems with processing sugar. Time and Location. Cut cane begins to dry out and turns woody if not into the boiling vat within 48 hours. Also  a great deal of wood to burn was needed to keep the vats boiling. Not many places in the world offer rich lands that can grow cane, are near water so that the sugar can be shipped to distant lands, and has plentiful trees to be cut and used for fuel. 

The plantation was primarily  invented to grow and process sugar. "On a regular farm there may be cows, pigs and chickens; fields of grain; orchards filled with fruit--many different kinds of food to eat or sell. By contrast, the plantation had only one purpose: to create a single product that could be grown, ground, boiled, dried, and sold to distant markets. Since one cannot live on sugar, the crop grown on plantations could not even feed the people who harvested it. Never before in human history had farms been run this way..."

Spain and Portugal were competing with other European countries and with the Muslims to explore the coast of Africa and find a sea route to Asia. Spanish and Portuguese sailors conquered the Canary Islands and Azores and established sugar plantations there ,staffed with slaves purchased from nearby Africa. "One sailor came to know these islands particularly well because he traded in white gold--sugar. And then, as he set off on his second voyage across the sea to what he thought was Asia, he carried sugar cane plants from Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, with him on his ship. His name was Christopher Columbus."

The book then begins to talk about the slaves used to work the plantations. Between 1701 and 1810, 252,500 enslaved African were brought to Barbados, an island that occupies only 166 square miles. In that same time, 662,400 Africans were taken to Jamaica. Thus sugar drove more than 900,000 people into slavery and those were just two of the sugar islands. By 1753, British ships were taking an average of 34,250 slaves from Africa every year, and by 1768, that number had reached 53,100. "Scientists have shown that people all over the world must learn to like salty tastes, sour tastes, mixed tastes. But from the moment we are born we crave sweetness. Cane sugar was the first product in human history that perfectly satisfied that desire. And the bitter lives of the enslaved Africans produced so much sugar that pure sweetness began to spread around the world."

"Day after day, week after week, month after month, the cane was cut, hauled to the mill and fed through the rollers. The mills kept going as long as there was cane to grind--the season varied between four and ten months, depending on local growing conditions. A visitor who came to Brazil in 1630 described the scene: 'People the color of the very night, working briskly and moaning at the same time without a moment of peace or rest, whoever sees all the confused and noisy machinery...will say that this indeed is the image of Hell' ".

The death rate on the plantations was very high. "Though we often think of slavery as a problem peculiar to the United States, only 4 percent of the slaves taken from Africa were brought to North America--which means 96 percent went to the Caribbean, Brazil, and the rest of South America to work with sugar. The slave population in North America grew over time as parents lived long enough to have children. Some 500,000 slaves were brought here, and there were 4 million enslaved African Americans at the time of Emancipation. But on the sugar islands, while more than 2 million people were brought over from Africa, there were only 670,000 at Emancipation. Sugar, with its demand for relentless labor, was a killer."

The next chapters dealt with the human fight for freedom, both for the black and the white. Americans protested the sugar act set upon them by England, Africans revolted on the sugar islands and in South America, the English began to see the blood in the sugar they used every day. Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, William Willberforce were just a few of the many who fought to abolish slavery in England. The cry of freedom began to sound throughout the world. The French revolution, the American revolution, the American civil war. The revolutions fought by the slaves throughout the world. The book even talked about Ghandi and his work for freedom in South Africa and then in India. Ghandi was the first to use the idea of passive resistance for a mass movement. 

This is the second to last paragraph of the book..." Sugar turned human beings into property, yet sugar led people to reject the idea that any person can be owned by another. Sugar murdered millions of people, and yet it gave the voiceless a way to speak. Sugar crushed people, and yet it was because of sugar that Ghandi began his experiment in truth--so that every individual could free him or herself. Only sugar--the sweetness we all crave--could drive people to be so cruel, and to combat all forms of cruelty. The cravings for sugar took us from that ancient time when people were defined by the work of their ancestors to our modern world--the one Ghandi led us to see, in which each individual is valued as human. Though terrible conditions for sugar workers still exist in places such as the Dominican Republic, and cane sugar has been replaced by other sweeteners invented in the age of science, this one substance forever marked our history."....

Until next time ;o)

Book # 19

The Confession

by John Grisham

This is an interesting book. Some of John Grisham's books have an obvious agenda and this is one of them. He is against Capital Punishment, which is a reasonable opinion. I don't know how I feel about it. Having grown up in a conservative Mormon family and state, I have feelings in favor of it for practical reasons. We pay a great deal of tax money to support these men and women in prison. But as he points out in the book, often more public money is spent it the years of appeals to save these people, than if we just supported them for a life sentence.

I won't tell you much about the book because I don't want to spoil it for you. But it is about a young pastor who has a visit from a man who confides in him that he committed the crime that another man is going to die for in just a few days in another state. It is an exciting and upsetting tale. With a surprise ending. Enjoy!

Until next time ;o)