Hiram's Hope: The Return of Isaiah

By Max Terman

Near the conclusion of the Civil War, a sick and dying Isaiah Rinehart of the 82nd Ohio, captured with other comrades at Gettysburg, is left for dead at Andersonville, the infamous Confederate prison festering in the war-torn back country of Georgia. Leaving Isaiah behind, his heart-broken comrades limp out of the filthy, putrid stockade and head for home. Upon arriving in Ohio with a broken body and a guilt-ridden mind, Isaiah's friend Hiram Terman, struggles to regain his life from the savagery of the Civil War and 17 grinding months as a prisoner of war. He is a man without hope.

Hiram's Hope: The Return of Isaiah tells in vivid detail how Isaiah survives, not only Andersonville but the harrowing journey to Vicksburg where he again faces death on the ill-fated, overloaded riverboat steamer Sultana. Max Terman weaves a story around this tragedy on the Mississippi with the Lincoln Funeral Train, a woman left at Andersonville, and a veteran’s struggle to recover his life as threads in an intricate tale about the last days of the American Civil War. It is a story of men pushed beyond human limits, of survival, of faith tried and tested, and how one man helps another find hope. At a Veterans Reunion in 1913 the men of the 82nd Ohio meet again. The bonds are as strong as ever as their cheers resound over a reunited country and a people set on the path to freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Max Terman
• Release date: Aug 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310463709

Max Terman

College professor emeritusAuthor of four books

Book preview

Other books by Max Terman

Earth Sheltered Housing: Principles in Practice (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company)

Messages from an Owl (Princeton University Press)

Hiram’s Honor: Reliving Private Terman’s Civil War (TESA Books)

These books are available in print at most online retailers.

Reviewer comments about Hiram’s Hope:

The work is simply outstanding! What a wonderful job of weaving the threads together! I like the epilogue/reunion - that was a nice touch bringing them back together.

—Scott Mingus, Civil War historian and author

I couldn't stop reading. Your book is riveting; an honest account of what life was like for those who endured the Civil War. This is pure cultural history. This is what brings history alive.

—Bonnie St. James, Civil War curriculum writer

Hiram’s Hope is built upon the author’s excellent base of historical research, including William Marvel’s work on Andersonville; James W. Elliott on the movement of prisoners from Andersonville to Vicksburg; and Chester Berry, Alan Hoffman, Jerry Potter, and Gene Eric Salecker on the Sultana. For those familiar with Andersonville, POWs, and the Sultana, Hiram’s Hope is historically credible, and deepens our understanding of these major events, in this reader’s opinion.

—Dan Reigle, Cincinnati Civil War Roundtable

I love the story. It really holds your interest and brings the time in history to life.

—Carrie Zeidman, book editor and artist

The book is very well-written with a strong story line, highly believable characters, and realistic dialogue and settings. I especially appreciated Isaiah’s witness to his faith.

—Mike Marshall, Sultana documentary filmmaker

Max Terman’s books put faces and hearts upon peoples’ suffering sacrifice and personal healing renewal. Each reader will not be left unchallenged.

—Dennis O. Rinehart, United Methodist Clergy, retired

…seeing Andersonville through the eyes of one of your prisoners was like seeing it for the first time. Your books have allowed me to paint the picture in my mind rather than just study troop movement or read casualty reports.

—Randy Terman, Civil War enthusiast, descendant

…the author of Hiram's Honor: Reliving Private Terman's Civil War, seems to have another hit on his hands. Huzzah!

—Meg Thompson, Civil War historian

Click here to read two full reviews

HIRAM’S HOPE

The Return of Isaiah

EBOOK SMASHWORDS VERSION

The Sequel to Hiram’s Honor: Reliving Private Terman’s Civil War

MAX R. TERMAN

Copyright © 2014 by Max R. Terman

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TESA BOOKS

Hillsboro, Ks. 67063

Comments and requests for permission should be addressed to:

Max Terman, 1350 Indigo Rd., Hillsboro, Ks 67063

[e-mail]

Cover image: Explosion of the steamer Sultana (Library of Congress). Jim Dingman, design consultant.

With the exception of historical figures and members of the Terman family, all characters in this novel are fictitious, and any resemblance to living persons, present or past, is coincidental.

This book is dedicated to the memory of

those who endured Andersonville and the

tragedy of the Sultana.

"I have looked over its 25 acres of pitiless stockade, its burrows in the earth, its stinted stream, its turfless hillsides, shadeless in summer and shelterless in winter — its walls and tunnels and caves, its 7 forts of death — its ball and chains — its stocks for torture — its kennels for bloodhounds — its sentry boxes and its deadline — and my heart sickened and stood still — my brain whirled — and the light of my eyes went out. And I said, ‘Surely this was not the gate of hell, but hell itself.’ And for comfort I turned away to the acres of crowded graves and I said, here at last was rest, and this to them was the gate of heaven."

— Clara Barton

"The place named Andersonville won distinction as the one spot on the North American map where war was more hideous to look at than any other spot that could be named."

"A man going there died a dirty and lingering death; or killed himself by crossing over a line where guards at once put a bullet through him for attempting escape; or lost his mind; or by slim chance issued forth to freedom somehow with a woebegone look and a wild animal stare in his eyes."

— Carl Sandburg

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul.

And sings the tune

Without the words,

and never stops at all.

— Emily Dickinson

"Civil War carnage transformed the mid-nineteenth century’s growing sense of religious doubt into a crisis of belief that propelled many Americans to redefine or even reject their faith in a benevolent and responsive deity."

— Drew Gilpin Faust

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness

has not overcome it."

— John 1:4-5 NIV

Andersonville Prison from the southeast (Library of Congress).

INTRODUCTION

Having just published Hiram’s Honor: Reliving Private Terman’s Civil War, a novel and first person account of my ancestor’s experiences with the 82nd Ohio in the American Civil War, I looked with anxiety at my Civil War ancestor’s pension files just acquired from the National Archives. It had taken ten years of research and I thought I had the complete story. I was wrong. His struggles after the war rivaled those during the conflict. This story also must be told but what about the story told in Hiram’s Honor?

What would the belated discovery of these one-hundred and two pages of government documentation reveal? Did I get the battles and prison accounts right? Were my dramatizations of Private Terman’s war correct? Although they would have different names, did he have close comrades like the faithful Isaiah and skeptical Seth that helped him through the struggles?

In these faded pages I found letters and testimony from Hiram, his Civil War comrades, doctors, neighbors, and an arresting account by my great grandmother, Priscilla Terman, Hiram’s stepmother. She said that Hiram was a good boy, stout and hardy when he enlisted in the cause to save the Union in December 1861. She did not recognize him when he limped into view at her front door upon his return on a cold day in January 1865.

He left for a war so underestimated in its ferocity that it swamps the understanding about how such a flood of blood could have inundated our country. Present estimates put the human cost of the Civil War at over 750,000 and the numbers keep rising even 150 years later. That war, while preserving a nation and freeing a people, had a high price, the multitudinous dead plus the numerous suffering survivors. For those who made it out of Andersonville and other prisons, the wounds festered deeper, inflaming the heart, infecting even the soul.

Reading through the pension papers, I came upon two of Hiram’s letters to a comrade and the testimony of Hiram to a pension examiner. I was afraid they would cast a shadow by revealing inaccuracies in Hiram’s Honor but the pages shone like beacons of confirming light. With a few exceptions that I will detail at the end of the book, my account of his Civil War experience was essentially correct, so much so that I was taken aback at how close Hiram’s Honor agreed with his testimony and letters.

Captured at Gettysburg along with his best friends, Hiram survived seventeen brutal months as a prisoner of war, ending up at Andersonville and Camp Lawton in Georgia. He was eventually released (having to leave behind his friends) and boarded a Union ship at Savannah. From there he went to Annapolis to recover and then was furloughed and put on a train for home in Ohio. At Annapolis, he was, in the words of the pension examiner, contrary, and did not seek or receive documented medical care, a fact that would haunt him later in his quest for a pension.

When he eased his battered body off the train at the railroad station in Shiloh, Ohio in January 1865, Private Terman was nervous and plagued with digestive, heart, kidney, and muscle problems produced by starvation and the multitude of diseases that fumed and festered in prison camps at the end of the war.

On his legs were open sores. His face, shoulders and arms barely had flesh, and he was damaged inside as well. Still reeling from the savage society of Andersonville, he was obsessed with his surroundings, wary of other people. Any wrong food caused him to bloat, swell up, and eventually vomit to relieve the pain. Movements caused him to grimace, his muscles igniting in pain.

What would be the fate of the quiet, dutiful soldier described in Hiram’s Honor? Could he find peace? Could he find hope? Who would help him?

Here is the theme of this novel — a soldier’s search for himself and how his friend, Isaiah, left behind at Andersonville (who survived more suffering than even Hiram, including the Sultana disaster), helped him in that journey. While different in style and with more fictional characters than Hiram’s Honor, my desire is that Hiram’s Hope accurately portrays what it might have been like for Hiram, his friends, and other associated people at the end of the Civil War — particularly, after Andersonville.

Like Hiram’s Honor, Hiram’s Hope is based on real historical events such as the last prisoner exchanges at Andersonville, the explosion of the Sultana, and the Lincoln funeral train. Unlike Hiram’s Honor, Hiram’s Hope is not a chronological first person rendition of my ancestor’s experiences. It is rather a wide-ranging narrative interweaving Hiram and the return of Isaiah from Andersonville. The Sultana highlights the story. This heartrending, under-reported tragedy deserves this attention as it is arguably one the most calamitous events in the American Civil War.

A document from Hiram Terman’s Civil War pension files.

CHAPTER 1

The Explosion of the Sultana

(Eight miles north of Memphis, 2 a.m. April 27, 1865)

A flash of light, his body spinning in the darkness, a glimpse of the rainy night sky followed by the stinging slap of the water’s surface and the numbing grip of coldness.

Oh, Lord, I am in the river, sinking! I can’t breathe — must get to the surface! Isaiah stretched his neck, his stunned arms and legs slow to move in the icy cold waters of the Mississippi River. His lungs screamed for air, demanding his legs to kick. A thumping, crackling sound permeated the swirling cold darkness as Isaiah moved to the surface. He coughed as if he were expelling his insides; oily water ejected out from his mouth, nose, and ears. He gasped the cold night air as if it were life itself. He sank again, rising, spitting, and wiping the greasy water from his eyes. The dirty water stung the burned skin on his neck.

Off in the distance the Sultana, the over-crowded paddle wheeled steamer loaded with Union prisoners from Andersonville and Cahaba prisons blazed like a fireball in the darkness. The waves of the cold river, swollen by torrential rains and a massive snowmelt upstream, stretched endlessly into the distance, its brushy, tree-lined shorelines covered by the highest water levels in a decade.

Consciousness flowed fully back into Isaiah’s mind. He looked around and realized that he had been blown off the boat by an explosion. The officer’s coffin on which he had been forced to sleep on the crowded deck was bobbing off to his right, its hinged lid opened by the impact with the water. The corpse’s head and arms draped over the side and the dead man’s embalmed face stared at him as if asking — Did we make it alright?

As Isaiah treaded water, the coffin sank below the surface, dragging the officer, recently killed in a guerilla attack outside Vicksburg, to his final, if unplanned, watery grave. Air bubbles escaping from the coffin burst to the surface and gurgling, played his final benediction.

Isaiah wiped his throbbing eyes, trying to push the blurriness aside to focus on the disaster about a hundred yards away. The fire grew in size, its blazing light revealed people running along what remained of the boat decks, others cried in anguish as the flames covered them, some jumped off flaming like fireflies. In the water around the dying boat, heads bobbed like hundreds of apples in a huge tub. Above the hissing and crackling of the flames, Isaiah could hear screams — horrible pleas for help from men, women, and yes, children. Oh God, what other glimpses of hell are you going to give me—first the war, then prison, and now this? No more, Lord, no more!

Isaiah closed his eyes and began to sink. Calmness came over him as he said a final prayer. Images of home came into his mind as he dropped into the depths of the cold river. His angelic mother surrounded by a halo of light, went to the door and opened it. Hiram Terman stood there, his skeletal thin frame holding the Bible Isaiah gave him before Hiram and his friends left the dying Isaiah at Andersonville. As Hiram handed the Bible to his mother, she turned, looked to her right. There stood Janie. No, I will not die! Immediately the warm light departed and was replaced by the cold, muddy water of the Mississippi and the clanging, crackling sounds of the burning Sultana. Isaiah clawed his way back to the surface and thrust his arm out of the cold grip of the river. His hand felt the rough bark of a floating tree.

CHAPTER 2

A Lamb of Lincoln (near Shiloh, Ohio, January 1865)

The Civil War was almost over. The great waves of armies had clashed and battered, and only a few storms still swept the seas of the soon-to-be reunited Union. Those whirlpools of death, the prisons, had finally released their suffering hordes and these men began to wash ashore.

Who are you and what do you want? Priscilla reached for a greasy iron skillet that was near her on the stove. The drawn, skinny man at the door looked at her with sunken eyes and a hurt expression that, despite his strange appearance, almost made her cry. He shivered as a gust of winter wind slammed shut the thick wooden door behind him.

Priscilla, I am Hiram — back from the war. He coughed and grimaced as he tried to make his way to the sturdy round table and rough-hewn chair in the center of the kitchen in the small house. Hiram’s father John Terman rented the diminutive structure that sat on the edge of a patch of woods just outside the small settlement of Rome, Ohio, five miles southeast of the village of Shiloh.

Formerly named Salem, Shiloh was renamed after the battle of Shiloh that occurred in 1862. The name means ‘place of peace’. It now received bruised warriors, not only from its namesake, but from all crisis points of the terrible storm. The man strained to speak as Priscilla lowered the skillet which hung close to her side.

I’ve had it pretty rough — changed a lot I guess. Sorry I scared ya. Didn’t know you wouldn’t recognize me — do I look that beat down?

Priscilla Terman was a thin, angular woman, once pretty but who now possessed a weary look produced by years of worry and grueling work. Her tired eyes now scanned her long lost stepson, her mouth opened, stretching skin, outlining high bony cheeks.

In 1845 at the age of seventeen, she married Hiram’s father John after his first wife died, some thought from overwork. With the help of her husband’s grandmother, a Blackfoot Indian who died in 1864 at the age of 102, she raised his three motherless small children, including Hiram, who was then three. Before the Civil War began in 1861, she had three more children of her own who now moved close to her, staring wide-eyed at the strange man who just came back into their lives.

Lord have mercy, Hiram. Is that really you? She put the skillet on the table, moved closer and put her hand on his head, letting it slide down his cheek, searching for that remarkable sunrise of a smile she remembered about Hiram as a boy. Her fingers instead picked up a tear that refused to be held back. Priscilla swallowed hard and began to speak to her long-lost stepson. We knew you was captured at Gettysburg. Some woman there sent John a letter — said you and some other boys was at gunpoint right outside her window. But we didn’t know what became of you after. Didn’t know if you were dead or alive — suspected you was at a place like Andersonville.

She examined Hiram closer, hunting for something else to say. Comforting, compassionate and Christian words would not come. Priscilla had grown up in the church, once proclaimed to be a Christian woman, but the trials of life had swamped her faith and it had drowned or at least become submerged. Now she wished it would resurrect for she began to cry, frightening herself and the children and causing Hiram to rise from his chair, wipe his face with his bony hand, and turn away. As he cleared his throat, his chest began to heave, making speech difficult.

I hate to ask — I know you are already cramped in this house — but I got nowhere else to go. At that moment, his father John opened the door and stomped off the Ohio snow from his boots. He looked up and gasped.

Who’s this? He drew closer to the walking skeleton standing in his kitchen and looked long into the shallow eyes, eventually he discovered his son. Although John had a young wife and small children, he was now a resentful old man. He also had been a regular church attendee but now seldom went — claimed the hypocrites who refused to bury his Indian grandmother in the church cemetery, now owned the halls of faith. The sight of the Blackfoot’s grave marked by a triangular pile of round, smooth stones by the edge of the yard daily fueled his anger and disillusionment at others and himself.

Never able to acquire much wealth from farming and share cropping, he moved around from place to place, dragging first one family then a second from one ragged edge of life to another. The constant uprooting no doubt weakened his first wife Katherine.

When Hiram left for the war, John was almost relieved, one less mouth to feed but also one less pair of hands to work the fields. Then the children from Priscilla were born. More mouths to feed and no help from his Indian grandmother. Would the demands of life never end? Now this!

Never having known his mother and now without his beloved great-grandmother, Hiram was uncomfortable with the man before him. Even though both shared the same blood, the relationship was cold as the winter outside the door. Hiram knew he presented a problem — the old man’s expression was unmistakable. Here was another mouth to feed and a sick boy to nurse — and from the looks of him for a long time.

They looked at each other for an uncomfortable interval, each man looking away when the centers of their eyes met. Eventually the old man stretched his hand toward the shoulder of his son.

Hiram, my God, what did those damn Rebs do to you? Hiram flinched, not ever having heard profanity from his father before. When his hand touched his son’s sharp fleshless shoulder, John withdrew it gently, fearing even the weight of his arm might do damage.

Father, I have some money from my mustering out and I can pay my way. I got nowhere else to go and am in pretty bad shape as you can see.

John Terman’s face eased up and the worried look faded, indicating his mind was now searching for a solution. He looked over to his wife Priscilla who was comforting her children. That this needy person before them could pay for his keep even relaxed them.

Well John, I suppose Hiram could move in with Charles and we could put great- grandmother’s bed back in the corner. Charles looked up at his mother with a pained expression, said Ah, ma and went to pouting like only a nine year-old farm boy can execute.

Charles, hush up, he’s your own kin and look at the shape he’s in. Not a word from Charles, just a look of injustice and discontent.

I hate to put the boy out, said Hiram as he looked at Charles sulking in the corner. Maybe I could pay him. Charles looked interested and straightened as he looked at his father.

How much did the government give you Hiram? asked John as he gave Charles a look that squelched Charles hopes of getting any money from his strange stepbrother.

About a hundred dollars, said Hiram, somewhat shaken by the insensitive conversation and lack of parental concern for his condition. My God, the only friend I got here is old Shep and he almost bit me thought Hiram as he remembered coming up on his old canine playmate.

The dog was something to be reckoned with and the Terman family depended on him for protection. A deep reverberating growl and toothy, bone-chilling snarl told any person valuing his life to come no closer and leave the premises. Every long term resident of the area knew of this animal and only family, confirmed friends, ignorant strangers, or those convinced of their virtue (and Shep’s ability to recognize it) dare venture onto the farm.

When Hiram approached, Shep growled, barred his teeth, and slowly approached, wanting to attack but holding back. Perceiving something strange and yet familiar in this thin man, Shep fell back confused as if his senses had betrayed him. Recognizing his owner, the tail then wagged followed by another peculiar habit of this unique animal — playful tripping and dodging. Hiram would have fallen, perhaps in his condition hurting himself on the frozen ground, if he had not remembered Shep’s antics and side-stepped.

Where do you have your money? asked John.

That was it; the limit of tolerance was reached. Somewhere where I can get it and nobody else! A cold clarity descended on the conversation followed by a stony silence.

Could I please have something to eat and a place to lie down? asked Hiram with a voice that was near begging. I will pay for my keep and not take anything from you or the children.

Hiram, what kind of food do you want? asked Priscilla.

Soup or broth with some bread for now — my stomach heaves up heavier food, said Hiram as he looked for where Charles had set up his great-grandmother’s old bed.

Through there in the corner, said Charles, now warming up to this man who stood up to his father.

After eating, Hiram pulled himself up from the chair and began making his way to Charles’ room. He was surprised by three pairs of hands that braced him. The children, including Charles, helped him to the bed.

To Hiram, his great-grandmother’s old frame bed, humble as it was, beckoned like an oasis in the desert. In its simple comfort, body and soul reconciled, and a deep and unrelenting sleep ensued, nourished by fond memories of the old Indian woman who had taught him so much.

Hiram slept for three days, waking only to eat a spoonful of broth and to make his way to the outhouse, again helped by the children.

Gradually Hiram’s strength began to return