In 1862, a young slave named Robert Smalls managed to steal a Confederate gunboat and sail it past Ft. Sumter and turn it over to the Union fleet. Small’s actions meant much more than a grand nose-thumbing gesture at the Confederates.  Here was proof positive that the Negroes were clever, quick learners, full of initiative, capable of great heroism, and willing to fight for their own freedom.  Those opposed to slavery had been making that claim for years. Robert Smalls embodied their wildest dreams.

Abolitionists wasted no time in exploiting the advantage his cause had gained.  They hustled Robert Smalls onto the first ship that could be found headed north. He was taken to Washington, D. C. and into the office of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, where Smalls spent a hour regaling Chase with the story.  The Treasury Secretary was so impressed that he set in motion a resolution giving General Saxton permission to recruit Negroes into the United States Army, and, after  the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd, 1862, to create the First South Carolina Volunteers. This regiment would be the first to be manned almost entirely by former slaves, most of whom could neither read nor write, but who now stood ready to fight for their own country.

Robert Smalls, himself, followed up his triumph in a singularly middle-class sort of fashion.  He had been awarded a prize of $1500 for capturing the Planter and turning it over into Union hands.  He used the money to purchase the McKee House on Prince Street in Beaufort, where he had grown up as a slave.  He also opened a store on Bay Street and set himself up in business as a grocer. In time he became a United States Congressman.

Miss Laura M. Towne was a Unitarian, an Abolitionist, and a medical student.  In 1862, at the age of 37, she left her Philadelphia home to travel to the Sea Islands of South Carolina.  Her purpose: to do whatever she could to help the newly freed slaves become useful and productive citizens. The Road to Frogmore, published in 2012, tells the story of the first few years she spent in South Carolina during the Civil War.  During that time, she nursed a village full of abandoned slaves through a smallpox epidemic, fought tax collectors to defend the rights of a slave to purchase the land he had worked on all his life, fought with local preachers to defend the slaves' right to worship as they chose, and established a school to meet the needs of a population that had been denied access to education.

But what really set Laura Towne apart from all the other missionaries who came to St. Helena Island during the war was her tenacity. Most well-meaning teachers came for a while, suffered through a hot summer or two, and went home to find a good cause that did not ask so much of them.  Laura Towne came to meet a need -- and stayed for forty years. After the war, she was appointed to oversee the spread of Negro schools all through the Low Country of South Carolina. And it was from that position that she came to make an appearance in the story of Jonathan Grenville.

If Jonathan was ever to accomplish his own goal of teaching newly-freed slaves to understand and appreciate the history of their new country, he would need the approval and help of Miss Laura Towne. But those who fell under Miss Towne's spell would also find themselves pulled into whatever cause she happened to be espousing at any given moment.

Eli Moreau's character combines the best of both his parents. From Sarah, he had learned to value and respect his blood tides to the Dubois family.  And like her, he felt tremendous loyalty to his white counterpart on the family tree.  He and Eddie Grenville had grown up together, always knowing they were second cousins. As little boys they were playmates. When their families moved to Aiken during the war, they were teenagers hanging out together in the barn to escape the grown-ups. And as adults they were natural partners in their plans to turn the Aiken property into a successful business venture.

But Eli was also his father's son. He felt both tremendous loyalty to, and responsibility for, his African-American roots. He was outspoken in his defense of those who were brutalized because of the color of their skin, and brooked no nonsense from those who treated him with disrespect. The period of Reconstruction could have been as dangerous for him as it was for his father, if it were not for the tempering influence of his mother. She cautioned him to hold himself above the fray, and for the most part, he did so. 

Eli will play an important role in "Yankee Reconstructed" when his loyalty to his white family comes into immediate conflict with his own racial identity.

As a side note, readers of "Damned Yankee" will remember that Eli had a younger sister named Rosie. She left the family at the end of the war to finish her education and then become a teacher on St. Helena Island. That effectively removed her from becoming involved in the events taking place in Charleston and Aiken during Reconstruction; thus the new book is not her story.

Unlike his wife, who had always conflated and confused the ideas of family and slavery, Hector Moreau understood slavery all too well. And he also understood that Jonathan and Susan Grenville had no idea how evil slavery really was.

When Jonathan called himself his friend, Hector might say, "Yes, Massa," but he knew that a true friend would never deprive a man of his freedom. When Jonathan actually gave Hector his freedom, he refused to accept it, knowing that the rest of the world would always see him as a slave because of the color of his skin. And when the war was over and slavery was abolished, Hector understood that the real fight had only just begun. Among the steps he took to distance himself from the stigma of slavery, the first thing he did was change his name from Gresham (the name of a former owner) to Moreau (a French surname to commemorate his birthplace in the Caribbean.)

Hector Moreau was a man of principle, a man with great courage, a man with an abiding love for his fellow freedmen. He did whatever he knew was right, even if it put his own life -- and the lives of his family -- in danger. And danger was all around him during Reconstruction.

Herein lies a love story. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Pierre Antoine Dubois moved to South Carolina from his family's cotton plantations in the Caribbean. He brought with him a wife named Clothilde Martin. Theirs was an arranged marriage, designed to give Clothilde's father a connection in the new United States. Clothilde was bad-tempered and discontented, and Pierre's interest in her dwindled. But in her entourage was a lovely mulatto slave named Ernestine, and Pierre was soon smitten by this exotic beauty.

Despite Clothilde's efforts to send Ernestine out into the cotton fields, Pierre protected her, and eventually had a son by her. Pierre loved and favored Thomas, admitting to all that that little black slave was his son.  Clothilde was furious and turned all her attention to her own son, Georg Louis Dubois.  Pierre, however, treated his two sons as equals and raised them together. 

When the two boys grew up, they each married and had a daughter. Georg was the father of Susan Grenville, while Thomas was the father of Sarah, Susan's slave from the time they were both children. No one in the family seemed to notice -- or find it odd -- that Susan and Sarah could be both first cousins  and also mistress and slave.

Sarah appeared in "Damned Yankee" as a slave still, married to a fellow slave, Hector Gresham, and as the mother of Rosie and Eli, also working for Susan and Jonathan as slaves. The two cousins have such tight bonds that Sarah struggles with the idea of ever being "free."  She cannot imagine her life without her relationship to Susan, and even after the war, she refers to her cousin as Miss Susan. The turmoil of Reconstruction threatens everything she knows about human relationships.