A PRIVATE AND HER FOES
A Novel of the American Civil War
A Private and Her Foes
Based on the novel by Mark Gallik
Copyright 2021 Mark Gallik
Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press / (505) 988-4418
LOGLINE: Set during the American Civil War, a Midwestern woman disguises herself as a man and enlists with her husband into the Union Army.
ACT I
As he recovers from a near-fatal wound, Captain John Singleton is a conflicted man. On the one hand, duty and comradeship are pressing him to rejoin his Confederate cavalry regiment, as is the continuing need to defend his collapsing homeland. Yet there remains John’s wife, Henrietta, a delicate beauty who possesses many strengths. It is she, after all, who is nursing her husband back to health at the Bastrop, Texas home of her sister, Georgina Shackelford. And it is Henrietta who is trying to persuade her husband to stay away from the conflict that has never been her cause.
Not that John, himself, feels much loyalty to the Confederacy and the divisive institution that stands contrary to his beliefs: slavery. Regardless, because he’s able to manage only a hobble with the aid of a cane, he’s months away from regaining his saddle.
ACT II
Meanwhile, 800 miles to the north in the community of Buena Vista, Iowa, a wedding occurs between childhood sweethearts, Susha Pye and Sylvetus Potter. This is a land of hardworking farmers, who practice both a strict religion and thrifty economy. A tall and sturdy girl, Susha, along with her husband, is determined to establish an independent household, even to the point where she joins his mindless drudgery at an isolated coal bank. Unfortunately, while their fellow Iowans enjoy relative prosperity, all the couple can achieve with their back-breaking work is a frustrating, threadbare poverty.
Two and a half years of war are forcing its demands on the Union Army. Thus, the pressures and inducements are being applied upon able-bodied men to join the cause. Unexpectedly, Sylvie’s older brother succumbs and enlists, leaving behind his family and farm. Susha’s fears are that her husband will do the same, that he is even more vulnerable to coercive arguments. Sure to form, following a serious confrontation with his stern and manipulative father, Sylvie airs his desire to enlist, putting his wife into a state of shock and confusion.
But Susha is quick to recover and even conjures a scheme that will keep the two of them together: disguising herself as a man and enlisting as well. At first, Sylvie finds her assertions appalling. Yet it cannot be denied that Susha possesses the stamina, and that the bonuses and bounties for two would double that of his alone. In the end, however, it’s the common news of the war nearing its end and of the dangers lessening which are most convincing -- this, and Sylvie’s deep reluctance to leave Iowa without his wife and life-long companion.
And so an agreement is reached, and a plot of secrecy and deception begins. Soon, the couple abandons their tiny cabin by the coal bank and moves into Sylvie’s brother’s farm, where Susha takes their sister-in-law, Eliza, into her confidence. While she tends to the farm, her husband conducts a search for an appropriate recruiting party in the neighboring counties. Together, Susha and Sylvie sort through the gathered information and settle upon one particular infantry regiment currently deployed in Arkansas.
To help her concoct a story that would explain her absence from Buena Vista, she recruits her sister, Emma. But as far as learning the complicated art of manhood, Susha comes under Sylvie’s tutelage. Before she realizes it, both of their names are signed on the dotted lines and their enlistments become official, along with a grace period to allow them to sort their affairs. No longer are they husband and wife, Sylvie and Susha, but first cousins, Sylvetus and “Robert”.
ACT III
As with Iowa, the winds of change blow in Texas. John Singleton recovers enough to mount a horse. Yet the more heartening news is that Henrietta is expecting, and that he’s being offered a bureaucratic
position at the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi Department headquarters in Shreveport. Although this means a separation, because it is a safe posting, Henrietta encourages John to accept it. With this assurance that he will return to Bastrop unharmed, her mind is at peace and she can prepare herself for motherhood.
Reluctantly, John leaves behind his wife and sets a slow pace across Texas. His journey allows him to bear witness not of the ravages of war, but of a creeping exhaustion being forced upon his state. Though death and destruction may be occurring elsewhere, their effects upon Texas are telling. Eventually, after a couple of hostile encounters with unscrupulous elements, John rides into the Sabine River country and meets Francis Simmons, a refugee planter from Louisiana trying to re-establish himself. In spite of the man being a slaveholder, John finds in him a kindred spirit. Simmons’ recent upheavals are giving him reasons to doubt the morality of his way of life, which he confesses to a sympathetic John. For Captain Singleton, the planter’s words are food for thought when he regains the road that leads him further from home and shortly to Shreveport.
ACT IV
After several days of preparations, including the irreversible act of bobbing Susha’s hair, the Potters travel to Des Moines. There they join a company of other recruits under the command of a Lieutenant Warner. A bundle of nerves, Susha takes her cues from Sylvie and finds that posing as a man is surprisingly simple. Even an examination from a physician proves less than cursory.
It takes a few days to reach Keokuk on the Mississippi, where the recruits are issued uniforms and where Susha begins her letter writing campaign to Emma and Eliza. Soon, the company boards a riverboat bound for St. Louis, where it is to receive two weeks of drilling before being parceled off to its assigned regiments. In time, when they depart for Arkansas, armed and accoutered, the Potters look the part, and as Susha is quick to adapt, she’s also inconspicuous.
In Helena, a town notorious for its epidemics, the Potters and a handful of recruits disembark. As it happens, Lt. Warner belongs to the same regiment, which itself has its companies strewn across Arkansas, performing picket duties from their winter camps. Joining a detail of supply wagons, the Potters and their fellow privates march into the dismal Arkansas interior. There they become a part of Company C, where Lt. Warner inserts Susha and Sylvie into a mess: a group of five other privates with whom they share quarters, duties, meals and complaints over their incompetent captain, and from whom they learn the art of soldiering. Affable and eager to be dutiful soldiers, soon the Potters become good friends with their messmates.
ACT V
Not so far away, John Singleton settles himself in Shreveport. Now a major, it seems he must bide his time as head of a bureau, the staff of this sinecure consisting of no one other than himself. In fact, boredom and loneliness are the true occupations of John’s posting, though he does amuse himself by having an occasional skirmish with his profiteering, spinster landlady, Ariadne Smallbones. Then again, there is the Christmas soiree as planned by his fellow junior officers in defiance to the dreary setting. Indeed, in spite of the shortages and Miss Smallbones’ presence, the cozy affair is a delightful one, to which John’s gimpy leg feels no pain.
ACT VI
But while Major Singleton’s circumstances become sedentary, Susha Potter’s are increasingly active. Her regiment is sent to Vicksburg, to become a part of William Tecumseh Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee. Although spring is months away, the general has it in mind to make war on the interior of Mississippi and into Alabama. The expedition becomes a classroom of sorts for Susha and her comrades, a schooling in the systematic destruction of depots, manufactories and railroads. And because the cumbersome supply trains are kept to a minimum, the soldiers learn to live off the land. Also, in spite of the enemy’s weak numbers, Company C manages to participate in a brief skirmish, where it performs splendidly, Susha and Sylvie included.
ACT VII
Back in Shreveport, with the addition of Private Frank Peevy, a war amputee, Maj. Singleton’s bureau
doubles in size. But a tragedy looms in the form of an unexpected letter from Georgina. Shockingly,
Henrietta has died, the news driving John into a stupor. Only the department can wrest him free, their orders stating that he and his private should ride to Bastrop. To say the least, it is a miserable journey. Frank does his best to bolster John’s spirits, the result being that a friendship develops. Soon, when Bastrop is reached a more proper mourning begins, with his in-law’s and neighbors giving comfort. Unfortunately, this period is cut short when word reaches John that the Union Army of the Gulf is on the move, Shreveport being a possible target.
ACT VIII
As it happens, Susha’s regiment is participating in the aforementioned campaign -- along with 10,000 other soldiers on loan from Gen. Sherman. Into the Red River Valley, they march against little resistance, only to re-embark on the riverboats for a ride to Alexandria. However, there they must wait for the Army of the Gulf under Nathaniel Banks. This is a campaign of fits and starts, and of a slipshod design, with one of its goals being the plunder of cotton. The confusion adds fuel to Sylvie’s apprehensions concerning Susha’s safety, though she manages to calm him. In time, Banks’ forces arrive, along with their extravagant use of supply trains. But surprisingly, they abandon the safety of the river for a narrow stage road leading into the dense pine forests.
Two days later, to the rear of a 20-mile column, the men of Company C sense the worse. Rushed ahead along with the rest of the regiment, they bear witness to an army in flight: Banks’ force that has marched headlong into an unanticipated Confederate juggernaut. Thus, at Pleasant Hill, another battle occurs with the Potters in the thick of it. Stubbornly, their regiment defends its ground in the face of overwhelming odds. Sylvie is slain and Susha is captured. Almost immediately, her true gender is discovered, and because this complicates her status, she becomes lost within the maze of Trans-Mississippi bureaucracy.
Yet as Susha wastes away in a parish jail, a ray of hope arrives. Her case is remanded to Maj. Singleton’s bureau. But instead of receiving Susha into custody, John and Frank take her under their care. After acquiring for Susha proper clothing, they ride to Shreveport and settle her in for what could be an extended stay. John is careful to keep her from public curiosity and to see that she stays busy. And fearing that his tragedy may remind Susha of her own, he speaks of Henrietta as if she remains among the living. For all practical purposes, the bureau gains a third member.
Meanwhile, the Red River Campaign drags on into a bitter stalemate, thus adding more confusion to Susha’s cause. Eventually, John enters upon a surreptitious plot to return her to Iowa. From Francis Simmons, he purchases a household slave who will guide Susha to the safety of Vicksburg. Sadly, because John’s contradictory orders are sending him away from Shreveport to gather civilian testimonies of Union outrages, a burgeoning friendship comes to an end.
With some difficulty, Susha reaches Vicksburg. And far to the south, after ordering Frank back to Shreveport, John rejoins his old cavalry brigade. Finally, at Yellow Bayou, the last battle of the campaign, he leads a desperate charge, only to perish by a well-directed volley from by a certain Iowa regiment.
ACT IX
Two years later finds Susha residing at her brother-in-law’s farm, where she raises her child, the posthumous son of Sylvie. In response to a belated letter sent to Maj. Singleton, she receives one from Georgina Shackelford. Disturbed by the news of a double tragedy, Susha is reminded of her own loss. Yet she’s soothed by the child cradled in her arms, Robert Sylvetus Potter, who is the very image of his father. Indeed, Sylvie does live on, and should do so beyond the span of his young mother, the former private who fought for the cause of union.