Common Threads

By Larry Auerbach

The town of Pinetar, Alabama was almost ruined and burned out of existence during a protracted siege during the War Between The States. Twelve years later, it is still just barely hanging on, but good times may be coming.

 

A large financial investment is coming to Pinetar, to help newly enfranchised former slaves, and former Re

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949574586

Larry Auerbach

Larry Auerbach is a practicing psychotherapist of twenty-three years in Pt. St. Lucie, Florida, where he lives with his wife of 32 years. He earned his Master's in Social Work from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, in 1991 and has maintained a busy practice ever since. He has traveled out West for numerous pack trips, re-enactment rides and his interests include chess and horseback riding. He is a collector of frontier memorabilia, and maintains an extensive library of the people, places and events of the American Wild West. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, and this is his fourth novel. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Copyright © 2019 by Larry Auerbach.

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Printed in the United States of America.

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For my father who encouraged me to read; for my teacher, Mrs. Jackson, who encouraged me to write; and most of all for my wife, Chari, who has been my biggest supporter ever since we met. Behind every successful man there is a woman, and I am lucky she is mine.

Character Background

Albert Meek

Albert Meek is anything but meek. He is a former Union officer who found himself out of a career after the war ended, when there was no need for his specialty—weapons. Albert was good with a gun, any kind of gun—pistol or rifle. He knew how to take care of them, and how to get the most results from them. He could fieldstrip and reassemble any weapon faster than any man in the army. He liked guns; his father was a gunsmith, and he knew how to use one. It made Albert feel very important during the war and very frustrated and useless when the war ended. There was no more need for his abilities, and he was used to having the respect and admiration of others. He was also used to having the money that went along with his rank and prestige.

After the war ended, he moved around from town to town, hiring out his skill as a marksman to work as a deputy sheriff and part-time bounty hunter. Albert was a man with a very strong sense of honor. He was offered money many times to be a hired killer, but that was something he did not believe in. He believed in loyalty to his men, to his country, and to his flag. And he believed that they owed him that same loyalty. When he was discharged after the war, instead of being given the promotion he felt he was owed, Albert believed that his country had failed to honor their duty to him. When he was approached by Marshal Markston for this special mission, he saw this as his opportunity to get the rewards he had been denied. Albert also had one other trait that helped him rise to the top of his career, which was his ability to plan ahead and to know how to bluff his opponent into making a mistake that he could capitalize on. Albert’s grandfather had taught him the game of chess, and always told him that life was just a chess game with the stakes of a lifetime. Albert knew that this game was one he would win because he was a better planner than his opponents, and had more to gain by winning. He just hadn’t planned for someone else to take a hand in his game, or on there being another player who had more to lose than Albert had to win.

Thaddeus Morton

Thaddeus Morton was a career soldier. He was born into a very loyal Union family and grew up hearing stories of his grandfather who had fought with George Washington at Valley Forge. Thaddeus had enlisted at the very start of the war, when President Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers. He had served faithfully and without complaint for three years and through many battles when his life took a sudden and tragic turn. After a very intense five-hour battle, followed by a long two-hour march without anything to eat but a handful of corn and beans and hardtack, he had been assigned guard duty on the picket line. He had very little rest and predictably, he fell asleep on guard duty. The lieutenant who found him asleep was new to the unit, coming in after the battle and the forced march. The officer was a by the book soldier, who refused to listen to anything Thaddeus or his sergeant had to say, and pressed for a court-martial. The prescribed punishment for falling asleep on duty in a war was the firing squad, so Thaddeus thought his career and life were over. It was Thaddeus’s extremely good fortune that the current commander in chief was the most compassionate man to ever hold this office, and one who looked for every reason to vacate a death sentence. President Lincoln looked at Thaddeus’s record and his actions of the last three days and commuted the sentence to an honorable discharge for reasons of health. His military career was over, but he was alive. Because the president had spared his life and family’s reputation, he knew he owed Mr. Lincoln his life.

After the assassination of his leader on April 14, 1865, Thaddeus felt he owed it to Mr. Lincoln to carry on his policies. As soon as he heard about Marshal Markston and his assignment, he went looking for him and pleaded with him for a chance to be included in this dangerous assignment in order to redeem his honor and pay a debt to the man who saved his life. But as Thaddeus will learn, there are always strings attached to every golden opportunity, and some of these will be harder for Thaddeus to pull away from than he may expect.

Jason McCoy

Jason had never owned slaves before the war, always relying on his own two hands and his own strong back to make his way in the world. That is how he ended up in the Union Army, as a paid substitute for a wealthy man who didn’t want to serve. He did this for many wealthy men, in fact, he was making a good living at it until he had the misfortune to join a regiment where the captain recognized him as a bounty jumper during an engagement. He deserted South during the heat of the battle, after shooting the captain in the melee and joined the Confederate Army where no one knew him. Jason changed his name and became a soldier in the Southern Army for the rest of the war.

When the war ended and he came home, he came home to nothing. With the passage of time, Jason worked for others until he could scrape a few pennies together. He found a good woman, MaryAnne Harding, and they got married and started a family in the new world of the conquered South. They had a little farm where they raised just enough to keep themselves fed. But then there was a drought, and things fell apart very quickly for Jason and his wife. Jason had to cope with a farm gone to ruin, a wife who was expecting another child, and two hungry children he was responsible for.

Jason saw the arrival of the U.S. Marshal as an opportunity to get back on his feet and put the war behind him at last. He had a home now and someone who depended on him. He wanted to take care of them the best he could. He knew how to soldier, and this wasn’t much different so far as he could tell. What he didn’t expect was to run into someone from his past, who knew his history and what happened in his last fight for the North. What he also forgot was that whenever there is turmoil, sometimes small things get lost in the confusion; but when the dust settles, those issues will resurface. Very soon, all of these people and secrets will meet, and in cutting the cords of time, someone else’s strings will start to pull Jason’s chickens back home to roost.

Jake Hartwell

Jake Hartwell has few skills other than being good with a gun and willing to use it. He has few friends, because most people who know him don’t trust him. One of his few friends is Albert Meek. They have learned to rely on each other for their mutual safety and success, and they shared many a dangerous assignments during the war and several since then. Jake was only wounded one time, by a confederate officer who said he was surrendering and then threw hot ashes in Jake’s face when handed a plate of food at the camp. The confederate got away, but Jake believes they will meet up again someday for a rematch to avenge his humiliation.

Both Jake and Albert were career soldiers who were asked to join the marshal’s service for this dangerous job because of their excellent combat records in the service. Albert is the thinker of the two; and Jake trusts him completely, as long as Jake is getting closer to what he wants. What both of them want is the same thing—the gold that is to be sent to Pinetar. When their carefully laid plan for stealing the gold goes awry because of the unforeseen involvement of a stranger leading to an unexpected change of heart in Albert, Jake decides to end their partnership on a positive note—for him. Because Jake isn’t a thinker but a man of action who loves a good fight, he often acts without thinking about the possible consequences of his action. This will lead him into conflict with some other men of action who are thinking about taking what Jake considers to be his gold, and Jake will have to make some hard choices about his future. Jake will also have to stand up to Albert, his long-time friend, if he wants to get away with the gold, which he knows will not be easy to do. Compounding Jake’s dilemma, he will have the opportunity for his rematch with that confederate officer, which will create a conflict for Jake’s plans for the gold. All of these issues and much more will come into clearer focus for Jake when he arrives in Pinetar.

Clayton Cat Devereau

Clayton Cat Devereau is a slender and wiry man, deceptive in his appearance to the unwary. He seemed to slowly glide along in his path, never hurried, but always where he needed to be when he needed to be there. He looked to be about twenty-five, with curly sandy hair and clear blue eyes. He appeared to be very shy and innocent, but he had the knowledge of how to work people that only comes from experience. He had a smile that could be warm and friendly toward children and animals, but it was cold as ice and never seeming to reach his eyes when he looked at someone he didn’t like or trust. Those who knew Clayton said he was very catlike in his movements—that he could sneak up on his own shadow if he wanted. The ladies said he was as gentle as a kitten; while the men said he would often smile like he knew something they didn’t, just like a cat. His enemies cursed that he had nine lives like a cat; but what no one alive knew was that Clayton also liked to torment his prey, just like a cat would. He had a great deal of strength in his arms, but his real weapons were his lightning fast hands and feet. No one knew where Clayton called home and he didn’t say; no one felt very comfortable asking Clayton any questions. They assumed from his accent it was New Orleans, but they could not have been further from the truth.

Clayton followed Jake Hartwell everywhere, so people assumed they were good friends; but not even Jake knew why Clayton had attached himself to him one Sunday afternoon. Clayton had a line on Jake that no one knew or suspected, and for reasons no one could have imagined. Only Clayton knew the reason he kept Jake in his sight, and why he kept feeding him the line that he was. When the time was right, Clayton intended to be the only one pulling Jake into his net. Clayton intended to do his best to keep Jake alive and in one piece, no matter where he went and what he had to do, until he was ready for him. Like a fisherman, Clayton did not intend to let this one get away. He would follow him to hell, if need be, or right down to Pinetar, whichever came first.

Joshua Markham

Joshua Markham was not his real name, he didn’t know what his real name was other than Tobey, and he didn’t like that name. That was a slave name, and he was no slave anymore. The man who helped his escape into the north after finding the scared boy of ten half-drowned in the river, his name was Markham, and he gave the boy his name. Joshua was the name the boy always called his father, the man who raised him until he was hung for helping to save a pregnant black woman from the white man who tried to kill her. Joshua, then called Tobey, threw a rock at the man and spooked his horse, knocking the man to the ground. Just before they pulled his father up into the air, he heard his father call out for him to run away and save himself. Afraid for his own life, Tobey ran for his life until he couldn’t take another step. He ran like the devil was after him, which it was, in the person of the man on his horse. He heard the bullets singing around his head, and he ran for the river and jumped in, swimming for his life now. When the war came, Joshua enlisted as soon as he was old enough and spent the last three years of the war in Union Blue, fighting for his freedom, remembering his father with every shot.

He was ready to be discharged to go home and settle some old scores. When he heard of this opportunity, he decided to stay in the army and allow the army to help him settle his old hurts, as he had helped the army to win their fight. He knew he wouldn’t be recognized there, as he was only ten when he left; and didn’t know if his father’s killers were still there, but he was going to right one last wrong if he could. He had no way of knowing that righting one wrong would only tie him to the making of another wrong, or that so many different lives would be tied up together with his string. He had no way of knowing that certain other rotting strings would be the key to cutting all the strings free of each other at last. All the different threads of so many different lives held together by the common glue of a place called Pinetar.

Walter Brookshire

Walter was a self-made man. He came from a very poor beginning, with a father who was barely able to write his own name and a mother who believed her role was to do whatever her husband told her to do without complaint. Walter’s father barely kept his family fed or clothed, but he always found the money for his drink. Walter watched his father drink and gamble all their money away over his childhood, and he saw his father taken advantage of constantly by the bankers and fast talking swindlers who lured his father into one get-rich-quick scheme after another. Walter learned that the trick to being successful is to find the greediest man in town and show him the way to take advantage of someone else. Walter learned the key to wealth is owning property in the path of progress, and now it was his turn to be the one owning the property in the path.

He knew of the financial investment to be made in the small hamlet of Pinetar riding the wave of enfranchisement of the former slaves, and he had a plan to own it all. But first he needed to have someone else take the blame for the problems he was going to create while he was setting up his move. The rich banker in town was the obvious choice as he owned most of the town already and held the mortgages on the rest of it. Walter planned to use this banker, as the bankers of the past had used his father, to take over all of the town and run his kingdom from there. All he had to do was allow the chaos caused by the new society of unforgiving rebels to create enough havoc that the army would come in and set up martial law. With his contacts in the army and the government, Walter would get himself named as the man to sort out the ownership of all the land deeds and mortgages. When the railroads began running again, he would own all the right-of-way in the entire state and his fortune would be made forever. He held the string to his future in his hands, but he couldn’t control the threads of destiny.

Jedediah Edward Taft

Jedediah is not a banker, as his father, Wesley, is. Jedediah is a merchant who believes that only by working together as a community will everyone survive. For Jedediah, the community is a group of people, regardless of color, working together for the betterment of everyone. He did not serve in the war, as he did not believe in slavery and thought it was morally wrong to own another human being. There were many arguments with his father over this issue, as his father was of the generation that believed in the superiority of the white race. Jedediah spoke out against racism and the Klan, and he often had to deal with the results of having an unpopular opinion. He had to endure taunts by the town ruffians and bullying by the town’s most virulent rebel and a known member of the dreaded and feared Klu Klux Klan, Landon Blair Wentworth II. When Jedediah started giving the black community credit at his store, the attacks on him and his store only increased. When Wentworth started a fight in Jedediah’s store and began to draw his gun, only the intervention by one of the U.S. Marshal’s deputies saved his life. This was the motivation for Jedediah to join with them to try and put an end to the Klan’s control of his town.

When the new school teacher came to town to begin teaching former slaves to read and write in order to prepare them for citizenship, Jedediah found himself strongly attracted to her and began to examine his own beliefs about equality and what freedom meant if he was not willing to fight for it. This new awareness started the final round in the war between those who wanted anarchy to restore their past and those who wanted to build a future in the town. It would also bring up a secret from the past and lead to the end of dreams for some and the start of new dreams for others. Jedediah would have to choose between right and wrong, and lives would depend upon his eventual choice and his ability to stand up to the faces of evil. He had to tie his dreams to a star or to an anchor and hope that he could cut himself free in time, if he needed to, before those same cords cut off his circulation.

Landon Blair Wentworth II

Landon was one of the wealthy landowners before the war, but the war took everything away. Landon was raised on the concept of his superiority over others because of his station and color, and the loss of the war turned his world inside out. He lost his family, he lost his land, and he lost his power and status in the town. He misses the loss of his power most of all. He is not a forgiving person, because he was raised without mercy by a very cold and unforgiving father. His father, lost in the war, did not believe in anything but winning and in owning the best of everything, regardless of how much it cost. He also believed that might makes right, and that the power he had as the wealthiest landowner in the area gave him the right to make the rules for everyone. He raised Landon to believe the same way about his place in society and his right to walk over others to get what he wanted, and his son was very eager to learn.

When the war ended, Landon found that he had lost everything about his way of life, except his views on life and the people under him. He carried a world of hate and anger in his heart for those who took away his world—the blacks who rose up against their proper station and the hated Yankees who aided them in their rebellion. When the opportunity arose for him to put things right and restore the natural order of things, as he saw them, he did not hesitate to do what he needed to do in order to reclaim his rightful place in the world; regardless of who was hurt in the process. He joined a new organization whose expressed purpose was to restore the old order through the use of violence, hate, fear, and intimidation. While Landon saw this as a golden opportunity for him to drive out those he considered inferior, what Landon didn’t count on was that others might feel the same way about him and see him as a tool for meeting their own ends, regardless of how much this might cost him. When Landon tied himself to the use of violence and hate, he failed to take into consideration that the cord might tie two ways.

Shelby Howard

Shelby was born at the end of what would be known as the pre-war South. She never knew who her mother was or where she came from. All she knew about her past was that she was dropped off at a church by a black woman that everyone assumed was her slave. She was found in a basket, wrapped in a blanket, with a corncob doll that someone had lovingly placed in the basket with her on the church steps. The Negro woman had been found a short distance away. There was no note or any indication of any kind to explain where she came from. She was adopted and raised by a loving family in the North who named her Shelby and gave her a home and stability in her life. They sent her to school and raised her to believe in equality for everyone. In keeping with the social order of the time in the North, Shelby was expected to become a dressmaker or shop owner, but because of her education and appreciation of the cost of the war as well as the teachings she was exposed to about the cause of the war, she took the opportunity to become a teacher. When the chance came to return to the area she had come from, as a teacher, she was only too happy to have the chance to give something back to the area and the people.

What she had no way to know was that she was coming not just as a healing force, but as the spark for a reckoning and cleansing of the town of Pinetar of an old secret and the resolution of an old murder. She would start the sequence of events that would lead to closing the book on one buried hate crime, and the prevention of another. Shelby would bring a long sought healing for one man, atonement for another, and justice for yet another. Along the way, Shelby would find her own future while she walked unknowingly in the steps of her past. One man would die to save her life, and one would die while trying to take her life. Shelby would do all of this without ever knowing of her role in these events, or how the thread of her life was intertwined with the threads of theirs.

Dr. Mordecai Hunter

Dr. Mordecai Hunter was a typical Southern small town doctor, in that he knew all the town secrets and all the gossip. He knew who had a secret drug problem and who was a closet drinker. He treated the men for their problems caused by careless sexual conquests of their neighbors’ wives, and the common sexual dalliances with their comely slaves on their plantations. He knew about the unrecorded births, and the mysterious broken arms and bruises of the townspeople. He helped them come into the world, and he eased their passage out of it. He was the soul of the town and kept the towns secrets as inviolate as any priest would. But even though he knew all these things, sometimes he would wonder how they all fit together in the town.

Dr. Hunter knew about Adelle Taft’s long illness and her relationship with her husband. He knew Adelle was of the old school, so their physical behavior was never discussed; but he knew her illness prevented her from being able to fulfill her expected marital duties. He also knew about the banker’s secret love life with his mulatto house slave, to satisfy his own sexual needs. What Dr. Hunter never told anyone was that he knew Adelle knew about it too. If it had only been a physical relationship, she would not have objected as it was a common practice of the time. But her husband had been careless and fathered a child—in their bedroom—and this she could not forgive. She had learned this when she overheard the house slaves talking in the kitchen one day. She told her husband to take care of the problem; so he did, he thought. When the banker’s solution involved murder, he started a chain of events that would take twenty years to play out and involve the good doctor. The good doctor has scruples, and when he was unknowingly drawn into this drama he never knew he would someday be witness to the final act of the play as well. He also never expected that he would be the one to pull all the threads together into a whole cloth to cover all of them in sackcloth and ashes.

Wesley Evans Taft

Wesley Evans Taft raised his son to believe in the superiority of the white man over the black man, a teaching his son resisted following, to Wesley’s great disappointment. With the coming of the Great War, Wesley was further disappointed by his son’s refusal to join the local unit and march off to combat and glory. With the collapse of the Confederacy, his disappointment was lessened by the fact that his son was still alive and in one piece, while this caused some envy and resentment from the parents and widows of those whose partners and children did not return whole or alive. Wesley was the town banker and he held all the mortgage notes in town, forcing everyone to sing his tune. He was the town’s leading citizen prior to the war, and now that the war is over, he is the only one with any money. Unfortunately, it is all in confederate bonds. He needs the town to survive if he is to rebuild his fortune, and he has just the plan as to how to do that.

The railroad is coming to Pinetar, and that means money, and a lot of it. In addition, the federal government is going to be sinking a lot of money in Pinetar, helping to rebuild the lives of the former slaves by buying up land and giving it to them. As the local banker, he will be the repository for all that gold coming in, and this money will help him reclaim the power he once had. As a merchant, his son is dedicated to helping the former slaves keep their property, putting him in direct conflict with his father over the future of Pinetar and its new citizens. Wesley holds all the mortgages on the property that the railroad is going to need; but with the government helping the poor, he may not be able to hold those mortgages long enough to sell them to the railroad without help from a new organization that wants to set things right, at least, as they see right, which means a return to the old ways of a two-class system with the white man on top. As the banker, he keeps many secrets in his vaults, and one of those is from his own past. Unfortunately, one of his old ways will be tied to his new future, and this string may unravel all of his plans and cut the strings to his purse.

Historical Background

The Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, and the War of Northern Aggression—depending upon where you lived—to all intents and purposes ended on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee, CSA, to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, USA. The Civil War was over; but the Uncivil War also known at the Reconstruction Period immediately began in its place on April 14, 1865, following the assassination of President Lincoln and the ascension of Vice President Andrew Johnson to the office of President of the United States of America.

Reconstruction is the era in United States history from 1863 to 1877, when the United States was focusing abolishing slavery, destroying all evidence of the Rebel Confederacy, establishing the rights of freedmen (the new name given to the former slaves), and rebuilding the power of the federal government and its courts. Reconstruction began in each state as soon as federal troops controlled most of the state.

On March 3, 1865, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help the newly freed slaves transition from the condition of slave to citizen. The Bureau was charged with providing food, clothing, medical care, and fuel to poor and wanting former slaves and the many white refugees; as well as giving the former slaves advice on negotiating labor contracts. It was also responsible for helping them find new homes, and it was charged with establishing schools for their education. The Bureau intended to serve as mediator and negotiator of new relations between freedmen and their former masters.

The bureau was also responsible for dispersing land according to General Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15. This order, issued on January 16, 1865, distributed some 400,000 acres of abandoned rice land on Georgia’s Sea Islands and on the coast of South Carolina to the former slaves. The land was divided into forty-acre plots, and the army was later ordered to provide mules to those freedmen to help with planting and harvesting their crops. This arrangement became known as forty acres and a mule.

However, the fears of the mostly conservative planter elite and other leading white citizens were partly relieved by the actions of President Johnson, who turned his back on the plans of the late president and ordered that the confiscated or abandoned lands administered by the Freedmen’s Bureau would not be redistributed to the freedmen but be returned to pardoned owners.

Although resigned to the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were not willing to accept the concept of equality with their former slaves, or that they now had a right to say no or get paid for their work. These resistant former Confederates were often referred to as Unreconstructed Rebels, and they banded together to create a new social and political power structure to protect themselves from these changes and maintain the hold on the world they knew. Led by a former Confederate General who was known to be angry about the Lost Cause, they created a militant society to force the issue and intimidate the freedmen into leaving their homes in the South.

This paramilitary organization was called the Klu Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized many southern Republican governments, black voters, and black political leaders through acts of violence that included murder and torture. Many people who claimed to detest the Klan by day rode with them or supported them by night and protected their identities. It was organized at Pulaski, Tennessee, in May 1866. A general organization of the local Klans was organized in April of 1867, at Nashville, Tennessee. General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famous Confederate cavalry leader, was made Grand Wizard of the Empire and was assisted by ten Genii. Each state constituted a Realm under a Grand Dragon with eight Hydras as a staff; several counties formed a Dominion controlled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; a county was a Province ruled by a Grand Giant and four Night Hawks; the local Den was governed by a Grand Cyclops with two Night Hawks as aides. The individual members were called Ghouls. Its use of strange disguises, silent parades, and midnight rides, its mysterious language and commands, all of these intimidation techniques were found to be most effective in playing upon fears and superstitions of the newly freed and uneducated former slaves. The riders muffled their horses’ feet and covered the horses with white robes. They dressed in flowing white sheets, covered their faces with white masks, and often attached skulls at their saddle horns, and posed as spirits of the dead Confederate returning from the battlefields. Although the Klan was often able to achieve its aims by terror alone, whippings and lynchings were also used; not only against blacks, but also against the so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags, which usually meant any Northerner who had money or tried to change things in a way those opposed to Reconstruction didn’t like.

The primary purpose of the Klan was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by intimidating freedmen and white Republicans, members of the abolitionist movement. The increase in murders finally resulted in a backlash among Southern elites who viewed the Klan’s excesses as an excuse for federal troops to continue the hated occupation. During its first incarnation, from 1865 to 1870, the Klan included as many as 550,000 members.

The United States Marshals Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice and is the second oldest federal law enforcement agency (next to the Postal Inspection Services) in the United States. On September 24, 1789, President George Washington appointed the first thirteen U.S. Marshals following the passage of the first Judiciary Act. For over 200 years now, U.S. Marshals and their deputies have served as the instruments of civil authority used by all three branches of government. On September 18, 1850, Congress approved the Fugitive Slave Law. The U.S. Marshals were required to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by arresting fugitive slaves and returning them to their Southern masters. One of the more onerous jobs the marshals were tasked with was the recovery of fugitive slaves, as required by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. They were also permitted to form a posse, and to deputize any person in any community to aid in the recapture of fugitive slaves. Failure to cooperate with a marshal resulted in a $5000 fine and imprisonment, a stiff penalty for those days.

The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue was a celebrated fugitive-slave case involving U.S. Marshals. James Batchelder was the second marshal killed in the line of duty. Batchelder, along with others, were preventing the rescue of fugitive slave Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854. The marshals were required to enforce the law, and any negligence in doing so exposed the marshals and their deputies to severe financial penalties. During the Civil War, U.S. Marshals confiscated property used to support the Confederacy and helped root out Confederate spies.

Some of the more famous or otherwise noteworthy U.S. Marshals include:

•Seth Bullock (1849–1919): businessman, rancher, sheriff for Montana, sheriff of Deadwood, U.S. Marshal of South Dakota.

•Frederick Douglass (1818–1895): former slave and noted Abolitionist leader, appointed U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia in 1877.

•Virgil Earp (1843–1905): Deputy U.S. Marshal, Tombstone, Arizona.

•Wyatt Earp (1848–1929): Deputy U.S. Marshal (appointed to his brother Virgil Earp’s place by the Arizona Territorial Governor).

•Wild Bill Hickok (1837–1876): noted Western lawman, who served as a Deputy U.S. Marshal at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1867–1869.

•Bass Reeves (July 1838–January 1910): is thought by most to be one of the first African Americans to receive a commission as a U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi River. Before he retired from federal service in 1907, Reeves had arrested over 3,000 felons.

•William F. Wheeler (1824–1894): marshal for the Montana Territory.

•Ward Hill Lamon (1826–1893): friend, law partner, and frequent bodyguard of President Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia.

•Benjamin McCulloch (1811–1862): U.S. Marshal for Eastern District of Texas; became a brigadier general in the army of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.

•Henry Eustace McCulloch (1816–1895): U.S. Marshal for Eastern District of Texas. Brother of Benjamin McCulloch; also a Confederate General.

•Bat Masterson (1853–1921): noted Western lawman. Deputy to U.S. Marshal for Southern District of New York, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt.

•Joseph Meek (1810–1875): Territorial Marshal for Oregon.

•Henry Massey Rector (1816–1899): marshal for Arkansas, later governor of that state.

•Porter Rockwell (c.1813–1878): deputy marshal for Utah.

•Dallas Stoudenmire (1845–1882): successful city marshal, who tamed and controlled a remote, wild, and violent town of El Paso, Texas; he became a U.S. Marshal serving West Texas and New Mexico Territory just before his death.

•Heck Thomas (1850–1912), Bill Tilghman (1854–1924), and Chris Madsen (1851–1944): the legendarily fearless Three Guardsmen of the Oklahoma Territory.

To combat the rising violence throughout the South, Congress and Republican President Ulysses S. Grant passed the Force Act of 1871 to protect the right of citizens to vote, the right to hold office, and gave the president the power to use military force and make arrests. The law resulted in the declaration of martial law in nine South Carolina counties in October 1871. Klansmen were rounded up, tried and convicted under federal law. The Klan was substantially weakened in that state after this.

In the Beginning

April 15, 1865 was a dark day for most of the country. There was panic, hysteria, a great mourning, and anger. The Great Emancipator was dead, killed by an assassin’s cowardly bullet to the back of his head, on the eve of his great celebration. Just that day, at the White House, he had asked the band to play Dixie, saying that now it belonged to the country again. Now, with Lincoln dead, the country was in turmoil once more. The future of the slain president’s plan for reconstruction, the healing of the country and the binding up of its wounds, was now in doubt. It was common knowledge that the former vice president, a known angry alcoholic, was not as charitable to the South as the late Lincoln had been; nor was he as likely to resist the demands of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for serious retribution from the South. It was not a secret to anyone there had been rumors of assassination plots against the president’s life from the moment he took office, nor was it a secret the president was not as affected by those threats as were those close to him. But now he was gone, and with him went the last chance the South had for any calm and peaceful reunification of its people and rebuilding of the land in a manner consistent with the late president’s words in his famous second inaugural speech—with malice toward none and charity for all.

There were many who were saddened by his death for personal reasons, such as family and friends and many of his political friends. There were some who felt his loss on a very individual level, such as the former United States Army Private Thaddeus Morton. Some people were glad he was gone, because they saw him as the architect of the loss of their world and culture and the way they were used to living. They blamed Lincoln and his bullies, criminals like Grant and especially Sherman, for destroying the South they knew and loved. Some, like Landon Blair Wentworth II, saw his death as a good thing and hoped to take advantage of his passing and rebuild the South as it was in the good old days. Some men, like financier and investor Walter Brookshire, or banker Wesley Evans Taft, simply saw an opportunity to make a killing of their own, financially of course, on the upheaval and the reconstruction programs being pushed down their throat by the victorious North. There are others, such as Marshal Martin Markston, Jedediah Edward Taft, and Thaddeus Morton, who see the loss of the president as a blow to the safety and salvation of their country. These were the men who believed in his ideals and what they represented for the country, and for what this country could become, and were fiercely determined to not let his death be the end of those dreams. And there were others who saw the death of the president as a foreboding sign of big trouble to come. The newly freed slaves lost their savior and protector, and their grief was real and deep. They were determined to make the most of this freedom, and to learn what they could to honor the new door to independence that he had opened for them. But, unfortunately, there were also some who had no particular feeling about it either way, they just went along with whatever wind was blowing, as long as they could catch some of the money floating about in the wind. Such men have always been present in the aftermath of a disaster.

A piece of cloth is composed of many threads, some long and some short. But they are all secured together to form a whole garment. Sometimes, one may cause a tear in the fabric that has no impact on the garment other than to allow wind, water, or soil to enter it; or to decrease its effectiveness to protect the wearer from harm. Sometimes, however, such a tear leads to the beginning of the entire garment unraveling and falling apart. Such it was that day in late September 1876 when an aging and grieving United States Marshal was summoned by his supervisor to stop what he was doing immediately and return to Washington for an important new assignment. This assignment would cause many threads to tear and many fabrics to unravel. It would take all those individual threads of lives, both healthy and decayed by time and wear, then circumstance and fate would tie them together in a town called Pinetar. Some of the strands would be broken and some combined into new strands, but the cloth would never be the same again. In the great fabric of life, useful and strong threads of those lives would be gathered into one new garment, the old and rotten threads discarded in the dust.

When Marshal Markston walked into the chief deputy’s office that Tuesday, he had no idea of what was ahead of him. He knew the summons had come before he was finished with his current assignment of tracking down four deserters who had information about a train robbery that cost the government six sacks of mail containing bonds headed for the Federal Reserve and sixty-five thousand dollars worth of currency headed for the Denver bank. He didn’t really care about these things so much as he did the families of the two marshals cut down before they had a chance to defend themselves. He knew one of them, Bradley Walker, he even had supper with him and Emily and their two boys just the other week. It was his recommendation that got Bradley killed, because he put Bradley’s name in for that assignment. It was supposed to be an easy assignment for a family man, and the last one Bradley was going to take. He was due to quit as soon as he got back to raise his boys on their ranch out in Colorado that they were going to buy. He had been talking about it for weeks. Now … now he had to go tell Emily and the boys their daddy wasn’t coming home, and this summons had come just as he was boarding the train to go tell her. In a way, he was relieved to not have to do it, but he also felt guilty about running out on telling her. It was damn confusing to a man that was used to making black and white decisions about good or bad.

He was having a hard time coping with all the recent events in his world, from assassination of his president over ten years ago, to the near impeachment of his successor, Andrew Johnson. He had seen the rise of the gangs in the western states of Missouri, Kansas, Alabama, Texas, and the Oklahoma Territories. Bank robberies had become a regular occurrence, as had train robberies. Names of gangs like the James boys, the Youngers, the Reno brothers, and so many others had become part of everyone’s daily conversation. No, this was a time Marshal Markston could not understand. Yes, they had fought a hard war and there were still bitter feelings on both sides; but damn it, it was over with and time to get on with life. Now, he was getting too old for this. What was he, forty-five or forty-seven? Hell, he couldn’t remember anymore since Annie was gone. It didn’t really matter anymore with her gone, because all he had was the job. Now the job had taken one of his oldest friends. He and Bradley had joined the service at the same time, even though Bradley was older, and he had been a father figure to Bradley. They met in the war, when Bradley was a green recruit filled with desire to be a soldier. Well, the rush for glory ended when he took his first bullet and saw the reality of the war up close. From that day on, he had stuck close to Martin for advice, even though Martin was younger in age, because Martin had the wisdom of experience. Martin laughed to himself when he thought about just how much more experience he had then. It amounted to all of one hundred days and one battle, some called it the First Battle of Bull Run; and some called it the Bull Run Races, for the way the Union soldiers had panicked and fled the field, throwing away their rifles, backpacks, and anything else that might hamper their escape. He was labeled a hero in that mess, simply because he had gotten tangled up in some vines and couldn’t run away. For that they made him a corporal, and after that, Martin reflected, he just had to be brave to prove they hadn’t made a mistake in trusting him. Bravery, he had once heard, is just doing what you have to do because you are the only one that can do it, no matter how terrified you are. Well, over the years, he had done what he had to do because no one else would or could do it better, and what did he have for it? He pulled out his cheap pocket watch and looked at the inscription on the back—To Martin, from those he saved, with undying appreciation. April 15, 1865. He put the pocket watch back in his pocket without looking at the time. He knew what time it said, 4:15 p.m. The same time it had said for the last nine years ever since Emily died, the watch had run down that same moment, and he never rewound it.

He approached the deputy chief’s secretary and gave her his name, just like he always did, even though Shirley knew who he was. Why wouldn’t she, after all, she was his older sister. They didn’t make any small talk about that though, this was business and he never mixed business with family. She got up to go see if Buskirk was in, where else would that desk soldier be, she thought to himself. She came back to tell him the deputy would see him now. He nodded and walked in to Deputy Chief Elmer Buskirk’s office.

The marshal didn’t bother with small talk, this was well-known by everyone in the service, so Elmer didn’t bother to ask how he was. He told Marshal Markston to sit down and told him he had an assignment that required an experienced hand to get done. Being experienced, Martin knew a soap job when he saw it coming. While Elmer droned on about the policies of the late president and the need to know when to use force and when to be diplomatic, Martin was figuring that this was not a job for diplomacy or they would not have called him. This was a job where someone, or several someones, were going to die; and they wanted someone to be in charge that they could blame for the damage after it was done.

Martin started thinking about who he was going to need for this job while Elmer went on about the political issues. Finally, as the chair was very uncomfortable, Martin asked him as politely as he could to get to the point.

Elmer sniffed a little as if to say, Well! Then turned to the papers on the corner of his desk. He told Martin that the government was going to be helping the South Central-Upper Mississippi Railroad build a line through Central Alabama. They were going to achieve two goals at once, which was the right way to do things, according to Elmer.

The railroad is sending three hundred thousand dollars in gold coins to a town called Pinetar in lower Central Alabama, to be used in buying up the necessary right-of-way for their railroad and build a depot to use as a supply facility for the construction. The United States government is going to send a guard to help protect that money. The Freedmen’s Bureau is also sending in a team to help the citizens of Pinetar rebuild, Elmer intoned solemnly. They are going to put up a school for the Freedmen’s children, and send along a teacher to educate them. Your job will be to guard the safety of the gold for the bank, owned by a Mr. Wesley Taft, and to help the railroad’s representatives when they are in the countryside buying up the right-of-way. While you are there, you will put a stop to the activities of the Klan who are trying to intimidate the freedmen and to run them out of the county. When the railroad comes in to buy property along the proposed right-of-way, they will buy it from the freedmen who would then have the money to buy their supplies and perhaps move to a friendlier part of the country, Elmer explained. He sat back, obviously pleased with himself. The railroad will get built, the Klan will be run out of the area, and the area rebuilt for growth. It is really very simple, and all you have to do is select seven men to help you keep all these balls in the air, Elmer said smugly.

And without getting myself or them killed in the process, Martin thought to himself.

After being given the necessary paperwork to identify himself and his team to the bank and the men in the federal boxcar with the gold, he headed for his office to select his crew for this very difficult and likely dangerous assignment.

Martin had a very difficult time making a decision, because he was still coping with the loss of his long-time friend. His first thought was that he didn’t want anyone he knew on a personal basis, but then recognized this could jeopardize the entire assignment if he picked people without knowing their capabilities or weaknesses. As he sat there at his desk, he gazed out the window at the people walking by. He was interrupted by a knock on his door, and turned to see a stranger standing in the doorway.

The man stood about five feet nine, taller than most men of his day, with a derby under his arm. The man had a long moustache, drooping at the ends in the Western fashion, but he was dressed as a city dweller would be. He had light colored hair, worn neatly trimmed. His suit looked tight on him, as his shoulders appeared to put the seams at their fullest. The bottom of a large caliber pistol showed its nose just below the bottom of his suit coat, and there was a very familiar bulge just below his left arm. Martin felt very confident that this stranger could quickly draw either pistol with ease, should that ever be necessary. The man did not look formidable, unless you really looked deep in his eyes and saw the light of determination in there.

Can I help you? he asked.

I am looking for Marshal Martin Markston, the man said. It is a personal matter, so I would rather only discuss this once. The voice was polite but firm, with a trace of a New England accent. Although it wasn’t spoken, the subtle message was that no further information would be given if he were not Martin Markston.

I’m Markston. What can I do for you, stranger? Martin said evenly.

Do you have some identification? the stranger asked.

I’m sitting at his desk, aren’t I?

Well, it’s his name on the door, so if you say it’s his desk, I’ll take your word for it. But that doesn’t mean you are him, so if you can’t produce some identification, I’ll come back later, the man replied, politely but more firmly this time.

Martin stood up quickly, slightly irritated at the waste of his time, and reached into his inside pocket for his identification. As he did, he noticed the man’s hand move toward his own inside pocket. Thinking about that reaction, he slowly removed his hand from his pocket with his identification card and opened it for the stranger’s inspection.

The man visibly relaxed at that point, his own hand coming back out of his coat with an envelope instead of a pistol. The man spoke in a more friendly manner and he identified himself as one Thaddeus Morton, a United States Deputy Marshal from the Vermont area. Hesitantly at first, until he warmed up to his subject, Morton explained why he was there. It was a very straightforward telling, without shame or denial; and Markston felt compelled to believe him and listened closely, but without a flicker of any reaction.

I was going to be a career soldier. I was born into a very loyal Union family in New York and grew up on my grandfather’s knee, hearing the stories of his time fighting along with George Washington from the start of the revolution through the crippling deprivations and cold of Valley Forge and helped to defeat British General Lord Cornwallis, he said. I grew up hearing about the sacrifices my grandparents made to give birth to this country. I was raised on a steady diet of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the greater good. I read constantly from the writings of Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams. I was taught that every man deserved his own freedom to create his opportunities for personal success. Thaddeus looked away as he talked about hearing his grandfather and parents condemn the horrible state of bondage, recalling the images he had seen during his time in the army. "I saw pictures of slaves from some of the woodcuts in the newspapers, but I never really saw it in person until I went south with the army. My grandparents came from England, and they told me all about the notorious debtor’s prisons there, which is why they left it in the first place. Later on, when the book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published in 1852, I almost cried when I read in great detail the descriptions the horrors and degradation of slavery. This was the start of my emotional transformation. I enlisted at the very start of the war, when President Lincoln issued his first call for volunteers. I served faithfully and without complaint for three years and through all the ups and downs of the army’s struggles, mostly downs and failures. Thaddeus recalled. I volunteered for every assignment, regardless of how boring or thankless, in the spirit of my forefathers."

Martin saw the pain in Thaddeus’s face and he could hear it in his voice as Thaddeus recalled his lost career. He nodded to encourage Thaddeus to continue his story.

Somehow I survived many battles and camps, long forced marches in drowning rain and finger- freezing cold, throat-choking dust and brain-burning heat; all because I was part of the great American Holy Grail to break the rebellion, and later to free the slaves. I survived several near misses and even a few hits, only to come back as soon as I could, to rejoin my comrades in arms for the Great Adventure. Things started going wrong for me after a very intense battle on September 17, 1862, at a place called Antietam, followed by a long two-hour march without anything to eat but a handful of corn and beans and hardtack. I had been assigned guard duty on the picket line. I’d had very little rest and unfortunately, I fell asleep on guard duty. The lieutenant who found me asleep was new to the unit, he had come in after the battle and our forced march. He was a by-the-book soldier who refused to listen to anything me or my sergeant had to say, and he pressed for a court-martial.

Martin knew the prescribed punishment for falling asleep on duty in a war was the firing squad, so he knew what Thaddeus had been facing.

It was my extremely good fortune that Mr. Lincoln was the most compassionate man to ever hold that office, and one who looked for every reason to vacate a death sentence. I wrote my father about what had happened and what lay in store for me. I was just saying my good-bye s, but my father didn’t waste a moment and rode hard for four days to reach Washington, D.C. It was common knowledge back then that anyone could walk into the White House at any time and ask to see the president. President Lincoln was known to be available to any citizen who wanted to talk to him at any time. When he heard my father crying, he went out to him and asked him to explain the situation. President Lincoln called for the official report, including my sergeant’s testimony and he looked at my record and actions of the last three days and commuted my sentence to an honorable discharge for reasons of health. My military career was over, but I was still alive. With a medical discharge, instead of a dishonorable one, I still had a chance to earn a living and hold my head up. I applied for and was accepted into the United States Marshal’s Office as a United States Deputy Marshal, Thaddeus explained. "Because the president had spared my life