Left by the Side of the Road is a collection of short stories about life in South Carolina's Low Country during the Civil War. It is not a continuous novel, or even a novella. There is no single plot or story line. The collection is simply that--a series of glimpses into the past.

What do they have in common? Some of these people have appeared in A Scratch with the Rebels and Beyond All Price. Others made cameo appearances in The Road to Frogmore. All of them are here because, even though their stories were fascinating in their own right, they did not fit into the novels where they first appeared. These are characters and events that were literally "left by the side of the road" as other historical novels took shape. These vignettes allow them to speak for themselves. 

Together they provide a multi-faceted glimpse into the stories behind the Civil War. 

Meet these real-life people and others "left by the side of the road" while you've been reading our other books.

 

Carolyn Schriber’s novels have been praised as “the stuff of a great book ... storytelling yes, but also a subtle message that eats at you...and makes you go seek out more information ... and gives you something to talk about over dinner.” (Joyce Faulkner, Past President of the Military Writers Society of America.)

When I first began thinking about the book that would follow “Yankee Reconstructed,” two different ideas tempted me.  One was that unspoken demand of the marketplace that two volumes about a South Carolina family needed a third to make them a trilogy. The other was a different project, based on the stories my mother had told me about growing up in a family of eight girls on a farm in Pennsylvania. Which one would win my attention?

I really did not want to do another South Carolina book. The story was pushing into the last decades the nineteenth century, a dark period in the history of the state. There had been an earthquake, i knew, that had destroyed almost the entire city of Charleston in 1886. But just as devastating was what was happening politically and socially. The education system that my characters had worked so hard to put in place had completely collapsed. State government was riddled by corruption. The economy had crumbled. it was also the era of Jim Crow laws, which were nothing more than a white supremacist plot to destroy the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The state gave off an aura of hopelessness that no mere novel could hope to counter.

But the Pennsylvania topic also had its problems. True, the North had much more to commend it at the turn of the century. Rapid industrialization had benefited the economy but had also revealed a need for social and political reforms. The period from 1890 to 1920 has been called The Progressive Era, as it sought to transform society. It was an exciting time, with campaigns to give women the right to vote, to put a stop to the excesses of alcohol, and drive political bosses and their corrupt machines out of local and state government. But the stories I had inherited from my mother were much more personal than that. They were the stories of individual struggles to find new roles for ordinary people in the dawning twentieth century.

it is not my favorite period of history, but I knew i could pick up the information I would need. No, what troubled me was the reliability of the stories in question. I first saw a book about my mother’s McCaskey family as a return to my favorite genre of creative biography rather than fiction. But that plan rested on  the assumption that what my mother had told me was completely accurate. And there I hit a wall. My mother, the youngest of the eight McCaskey sisters, was a creative soul, with a well-known habit of . . . uh . . .embellishing the facts. She told a great story, but it was not one on which I was willing to rest my own reputation as a historian. I also had to think about all my second, third, and fourth cousins out there, who might be disturbed or hurt by a less than factual “tell-all” book about their grandmothers or great-grandmothers.

I dithered and put off making a decision. Then came two small revelations that suggested a third path. First, that real Charleston earthquake drove thousands into the streets, and anyone who could escape the city did so. The three youngest Grenvilles had only loose ties to the city. Rebecca Grenville had agreed to stay there only to keep the family mansion open. If the earthquake destroyed it, she would be free to go anywhere, even Pennsylvania. 

And then I noticed that the fictional Jamey Grenville was exactly the same age as my maternal grandfather, Joseph McCaskey. Both had been little more than toddlers at the beginning of the Civil War. Each was the youngest child in his family, and both had older brothers who fought in the war. How easy it was to conflate the two—to use the details of Joseph’s adult life in Pennsylvania to create a new fictional life for Jamey Grenville.

And that’s how “Yankee Daughters” came into existence. Jamey Grenville met a young Pennsylvania Dutch girl who, due to a tragic accident involving her parents, had inherited a farm that she could not manage on her own. In a novel he could ride to the rescue, marry her, and save the farm.  A few years later, as the earthquake destroyed the last Grenville ties to Charleston, he could once again be the hero, rescuing his sister Rebecca Grenville and bringing her to live near his own growing family in Pennsylvania. 

Suddenly, all I had to do was change the names of the McCaskey women, and  I had a novel on my hands. There was a hero who was adored by both the women in his life— his wife and his sister. He had a family of eight daughters—interesting creatures with eight distinct personalities. And there was a feud between the wife, who wanted only to see to it that her eight daughters found suitable husbands who would support them and protect them, and the sister, who hoped to encourage her nieces to become strong, independent women in their own right. At one point in the story, Rebecca complained that her sister-in-law was raising 19th-century women who would have to live in a 20th-century world. She thus neatly summed up the central theme of the coming book.

Coming soon: A series of posts to introduce the new characters, illustrated by old photographs of the real women who inspired the characters. Stay tuned.

I've seen several on-line discussions lately about the nature of historical fiction. It's not something I worry about a lot, but once in a while I have to stop and contemplate what I mean when I say I write historical fiction. Usually, my biographical novels are based on real people, and I use their real names, so that anyone interested can go back to the historical records and check on what I say.  Only rarely do I add fictional characters to that kind of story, but once in a while it is necessary. For example, in "Beyond All Price" I added a couple of fictional passengers to a scene in which a very real Presbyterian minister was traveling by train. Their statements and actions helped clarify the nature of the minister's prejudices. In the same book, there were some fictional nuns in a hospital scene, because the real women who worked in that convent hospital would never have left a record of their real names.

Now, however, I've started a series of historical novels in which the reverse is true. The main characters are fictional, but the people with whom they come in contact are real historical persons. A couple of months ago, I revealed the character sketches of  the people in my upcoming "Yankee Reconstructed." Even for my fictional characters, I sought out pictures of real people who looked as I imagined my characters would have looked.  And I included in those sketches some of the real people who appear in the pages of the new book. Laura Towne, Robert Smalls, Arthur Middleton, Rufus Saxton -- all of them can be found in any general record of South Carolina in the 1860s.

This week, as I worked on a new section of the book, I realized that I needed a black educator to play a major role in what happens in 1868.  Yes, I could have created one -- made him up out of whole cloth. But my normal practice is to take the opposite approach and find a real person who could step into the story and make it seem more real. And once I laid out in my own mind, just exactly what this character need to be and do, I discovered that he really existed.

The new character is Benjamin F. Randolph.  He was born into a free African family in Ohio. His parents were wealthy and well educated.  He graduated from Oberlin College, a pretty liberal place even in the 19th century, in a class that was predominantly white.  He thought first that he would become a minister.  When the Civil War began, he avoided military service. But when the U.S. began recruiting black soldiers, he volunteered and became the chaplain of the 26th U.S. Regiment of Colored Troops (their official name). 

His regiment was sent to fight in South Carolina in 1864, and he witnessed at first hand the condition of thousands of abandoned or reluctantly freed slaves -- uneducated, poverty-stricken, lacking all healthcare or opportunities for employment. When the war ended he stayed on in South Carolina, realizing a calling to do something to help his people. He went to Charleston and volunteered for a posting in the Freedman's Bureau, where he was put in charge of organizing black schools. He was, in fact, actually doing what my fictional character wanted to do -- turning abandoned plantations and their resources into black schools. He was a natural for my story, and his untimely death serves in the book as an important catalyst for future action. 

Gretchen Schwimmer, the Mennonite girl Eddie Grenville has decided to marry. Her family of Swiss immigrants are establishing themselves in SC as sausage and cheese-makers, bringing old-world traditions to their new home. Their plain life-style also appeals to Eddie, because it centers around a farm that produces everything the people need.

To the rest of the Grenville family, however, the Mennonite customs will be puzzling. Their family ties are much closer than most Southerners are used to.  "Family" refers to all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. The women dress in simple high-necked, long-sleeved gowns, frequently with a crisp white bibbed apron over the dress and a small white prayer cap. Gretchen will not accept an engagement ring because her people do not approve of jewelry. Their religious services do not depend upon a church or a minister. Any member can speak or pray as the spirit moves. Music plays a huge part in their lives, which should please Susan, but it is vocal, not instrumental. Food is simple and filling but not fancy. And special occasions are usually celebrated outdoors.

Life in the Schwimmer community is a long way from the cotillions and ladies parlors of Susan Grenville's South Carolina upbringing. Will she be shocked or engaged by the differences?

This is a  clipping from a picture taken in 1870. You'll notice that these members of the Ku Klux Klan have their faces covered (as well they should!), but these are not the white conical masks and white gowns of the modern Klan. During the period of Reconstruction, the Klan was a new phenomenon. They had figured out that they needed to be anonymous and protected from being identified, but it was too early for them to have much in the way of organization or official uniforms.

The Klan made its appearance in South Carolina around 1868-1870.  The members were clerks, shopkeepers, or craftsmen, who worked at mundane jobs during the day and then came out to play at night. They made their own masks, found a bit of rope, or a club, or a fiery torch, and amused themselves by making threats and terrifying newly-freed slaves.

The mysterious Klan member who visits Jonathan Grenville several times in Yankee Reconstructed is something of an anomaly, in that he operates on his own rather than as a part of a mob. He supports white supremacy and has no scruples about lynching a troublesome black man or a white man, either, for that matter. But he is also concerned that people understand why he does so, and that concern sets him apart. Will we ever know who he is? Perhaps.

Most Klansmen were middle-aged white men, most of whom had not fought in the Civil War. Why? Because the real veterans of the Civil War were often embittered by the war experience and unwilling to have much to do with those who only played at continuing to fight. Those former soldiers who were physically able and willing to cause trouble were more likely to join bands of "red shirts" led by their former commanding officers.

You've heard the description of a dog whose bark was worse than his bite. Well, that also describes the Klansmen. They were bullies who could be stymied by firm resistance. The Red Shirts, on the other hand seldom barked, but when they bit, they caused major damage. Both groups supported the Democratic Party and its efforts to keep Negroes from voting or owning property. Both hoped that somehow the Old South could be restored to its former glory. Both groups will play important roles in Yankee Reconstructed.