The Devil's Piano

By Tom Morrison

Seventeen year old Augustus DuBois is called upon, with
his local militia members, to help stop the Rebel secession
at the fi rst battle of Bull Run. When this fails, the war begins
to stretch out and Augustus decides to extend his enlistment
to try to help fi nish the task. At the siege of Petersburg
Augustus and two of his companions are captured and sent to
the Andersonville prison. Here he sees and experiences mans
inhumanity to man regardless of which side he is on. He hears
the quandry of the prison commander whose calls for aid
fall on deaf ears. After escaping the prison, Augustus and his
companions join general Shermans forces on the infamous
March to the Sea. The war ends and after some serious soul
searching, Augustus makes a decision that sends him back into
the South. The book explores the issues of responsibilty and
chain of command and whether the victors can set the rules
and write the history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479720125

Tom Morrison

Entrepreneur and antiquarian, over-schooled and under-educated, polyglot, grammatically challenged in four languages, pedant in one. At the barricades since birth in a St. Louis Catholic orphanage. Schools, war enlistee, universities. Uncultivated amateur expatriate in France, Austria, Germany and Spain with an extended coda in Malibu. Self-indulgent. Only ambition...writing, making money in the shortest time possible, and causing no pain in the parade. Loves Vermeer. France. Flaubert. Ibiza. Heller. Collects 18th and 19th century Ninos Jesus, same periods polychrome wood sculpture of Saints, and antique Yoruba Ibejis. P.S. Aims to delete modifiers attached to innocent nouns or verbs. Friend of Fowler. A challenge to be funny on a verbal diet.

Book preview

THE DEVIL’S PIANO

Tom Morrison

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Morrison.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

AUTHOR BIO

DEDICATION

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When my sister Lynn showed me copies of letters written by Augustus DuBois during the Civil War, the seeds of this book were planted. Augustus was my mother’s grandfather and an inmate at the Andersonville prison. Thanks also to my lifelong friend Dolph LeMoult for his guidance and editing help. In addition, my daughters Kathleen and Juliet have helped support my efforts along with my wife Barbara. To my children and grandchildren, I hope you enjoy the story.

I love you all.

CIVIL WAR PRISONS

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PROLOGUE

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The gallows stood out starkly against the bright November sky. The crowd was restless and a low murmur hummed in the air like the sound of insects on a warm summer day. But the chill in the air told you that it wasn’t summer.

As they started to bring the prisoner through the gathering, the murmur rose and shouts of Devil, Murderer, and such began to fill the air.

I stood on the outskirts of the crowd and scanned the assembly for familiar faces. I had followed the proceedings in the newspaper and now that I was here, I thought I might see some of the men I had known in the prison camp that was overseen by this man.

As the prisoner mounted the steps to the platform I could see that his right arm was still bothering him. He held it, bent, in front of his body as his left arm swung free. He seemed smaller than I remembered but maybe it was the distance. The men on the platform waited until he cleared the steps and then went forward to surround him. They moved his right arm around behind his back and crossed it with his left. The two arms were tied together and he was moved to the center of the platform to stand on the trapdoor. A black hood was placed over his head and this was followed by the noose which was left to drape down behind his back and then curve upward to where it was secured to the top of the gallows.

A silence settled over the gathering. The three men stepped back and stood with their hands at their sides, almost at attention. I couldn’t see the man who would spring the trapdoor as he was located below the gallows and was shielded from my view by the crowd. Time seemed to slow down. The trapdoor opened with a clang and the body dropped through. It fell about five feet before it came to an abrupt halt. It bounced once, settled and began to twist slowly in the cool air with the head cocked at an angle that told that the job had been done.

A noise erupted from the crowd and cries of Justice and Revenge could be heard. Henry Wirz, the commandant of the Andersonville prison and the only man tried for war crimes in the Civil War, was dead.

As I stood there I thought back to how it had all started and how I had come to know this man.

CHAPTER ONE

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My name is Augustus DuBois. I tuned the piano in hell. Not the hell you’re thinking of, a hell called Andersonville.

I was born on November 10, 1843 in Rochester, New York. My father, Andrew, was a harness maker and my mother, Elizabeth, was a school teacher. She also taught piano to some of the local children. My birth was a difficult one and my mother was told to stay in bed for the last two months of her pregnancy and after I was born she was in bed for two more months to recover. She lost her job as a school teacher and from then on she earned money only as a piano teacher. Growing up I was schooled at home by my mother so I could help my father in his harness making business. I learned all about leather: how to cut it, how to sew it, the proper way to cure it and many other things. I had my own set of tools that included an awl for punching holes in the leather, a set of needles for sewing and a palm. A palm looks like a glove without fingers. It has a circle of hardened leather, about the size of a large coin, in the center of the palm. This is used to push the needle through the leather. It is just like the thimble that seamstresses use when sewing.

The other thing I learned was how to tune a piano. My father had learned to do this so he could help my mother and not have to pay to get it done and I learned by watching him. When first starting to be a piano tuner it may take hours to tune the whole piano as there are 88 separate keys on a standard keyboard. I was born with an ear for tuning and by the time I was fourteen years old I was able to tune a piano as well as my father. Because of the difficulty my mother had with my birth she was never able to have another child. We were a close family and although we were not rich, we lived a happy life.

I had joined the local militia when I was 16 and had done drilling once a month with the other men who formed this group. There were no threats to our local community and the monthly militia meetings had become more of a social gathering than military exercise. Our local commander was the mayor of our city and he also owned the biggest tavern in town. We would drill for an hour or so on a weekend and then we would all go to the tavern and discuss battle strategy; or maybe we would talk about the weather or the crops or the local gossip or politics.

In 1861 the talk turned to the possible secession of some of the Southern states from the Union. Abraham Lincoln had been elected President and his views on slavery were well known. The Southern states had been afraid that he was going to abolish slavery and by February 1861 seven states, led by South Carolina, had gotten together and formed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln said that they were not allowed to leave the Union and in April, when he tried to send supplies to a federal fort, Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina the local militia opened fire on the fort and caused it to surrender. War was declared between the North and the South and four other states joined with the states that had seceded. The battle lines were drawn.

At the end of May 1861, our local militia, Company F of the 7th New York Regiment, was gathered and sent to Washington, D.C. to help form the army which would be used to try to bring the seceded states back into the Union. I was 17 years old. My parents weren’t happy with this turn of events but I looked on it as an adventure. We were all sure that the war would not last long and the South would realize that they couldn’t prevail against the North. We had many more people and factories to make equipment and they were mostly farmers. Our enlistment was for ninety days and we all expected to be back home by the end of the summer.

When we arrived in Washington, the Army decided to give us some additional training. I had experience as a harness maker and could also play and tune pianos. I had brought my harness making tools and my tuning hammer and tuning fork with me. I figured I would end up in the cavalry or in the band. The Army, in its wisdom, put me in the artillery. We trained for a month on how to load and fire a cannon. The cannon we used was a 12 pounder called the Napoleon after the famous French leader. It is a smooth bore cannon that fires a variety of projectiles. The main one is the 12 pound ball which gives the cannon its designation. It can fire this ball accurately about a mile at its standard aim of 5 degrees above horizontal. It can also fire exploding shells and canister shot. The range of these last two was less and were used on troops that were getting close to your lines of fortification.

Our training began with the formation of batteries which consisted of six guns, all of the same type. Each gun was operated by a team of eight men. There were three additional men assigned to the gun crew, two drivers and a corporal in charge of them. The drivers handled the horses that drew the gun and the caisson limber which carried the ammunition and powder charges. This was the position that I was assigned with another man named Bill Eaton. We were also trained on the various positions of gun crew so we could fill in if any of the crew were killed or wounded. I wasn’t in the cavalry but as a driver I did have contact with the horses that pulled the equipment and my harness making skills came in handy at times.

Each gun in the battery had two six horse teams to pull the gun and the caisson that carried the ammunition. These horses were generally of second quality as the best horses were used by the cavalry. Pulling a cannon or a fully loaded caisson limber was hard work as these each weighed close to 4000 pounds. The life expectancy for these horses was only about eight months.

Our battery consisted of 67 men, including the officers in charge, and 72 horses. The men were mostly from the western part of New York State and the Finger Lakes region so we began calling ourselves the Lakers. My best friend in the unit was Walter Eckert. He was a surveyor from the small town of Canandaigua near Lake Canandaigua. He had learned surveying from his father and had also gone to school to learn some advanced mathematics and astronomy which helped him in his chosen profession. He was five years older than me and about the smartest fellow that I had ever known. Walter was assigned the position as gunner number four whose job it was to put the friction primer into the vent hole and pull the lanyard which set the primer off causing the powder charge to ignite and explode. Usually the sergeant in charge of the crew was responsible for aiming the gun but when our sergeant learned that Walter had been a surveyor he began letting him do the aiming in addition to his job of firing the gun. Walter quickly became known as Deadeye as his ability to aim the gun made us the most accurate of the crews and the envy of all.

As we became trained, it was possible to load and fire the gun twice in a minute. With six guns in the battery we would pound the enemy with twelve shots every minute. The noise was very loud and continuous and most of us took to stuffing our ears with cotton to keep from going deaf. Our routine and jobs depended on our being alert and watching what was happening around us as we could not hear any spoken commands.

Also, when the gun was fired, it would recoil backward several feet and would have to be repositioned after every shot. This re-sighting was the main reason that the rate of fire was only two shots per minute.

While this was going on, the drivers were concerned with keeping the horses together and making sure that the ammunition chests were open and accessible, that fuses were ready and that the water buckets for the sponging of the barrel were full. This last task was the reason that Walter and I became friends.

During one training session, Walter had placed the friction primer in the vent hole and when he jerked the lanyard he didn’t step back far enough and a jet of flame from the hole set fire to the sleeve of his jacket. He must have had some powder from previous primers on his sleeve because it flared up and looked like a torch. I had just refilled the water bucket for the sponge and was getting ready to hang it in its place on the side of the cannon when I saw Walter on fire. I instinctively threw the water at the fire and this gave Walter a chance to get his jacket off and stamp it out on the ground. From that day forward we were close friends.

When our training ended at the end of June, we were all issued the standard uniforms of artillerymen. These were handsome uniforms of blue with red trim and the insignia of crossed cannons. The eleven men that were responsible for our cannon had become a close knit team and these uniforms were the final piece that bonded us as one. We were all dependent on each other and looked on each other as brothers united in a cause. And the focus of our attention was our cannon. We cleaned it and polished it and treated it with a tenderness that one would reserve for a close friend. We even gave it a name. After much deliberation and discussion we decided to name our gun Betsy.

We had argued for days over a name and had finally decided on Betsy in honor of Betsy Ross who had created the first flag of the United States of America. This would serve to remind us that we were fighting to maintain the Union.

So here we were; the Lakers with their gun Betsy and with Deadeye doing the aiming and firing. We were a proud team and were anxious to try our skill in a real battle. And we didn’t have long to wait.

CHAPTER TWO

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There were Confederate troops stationed at a small town in Virginia, about twenty miles south of Washington, called Manassas. In the middle of July we received orders to advance on the town and engage the enemy. It took two days to organize the troops and equipment for the march. When we left for the town the narrow roads quickly became crowded with men, horses, wagons and equipment. The going was so slow that we had to make camp after going only about twelve miles but the weather was warm and pleasant and the spirits of the men were high. We were on our way to engage the enemy and we were confident of a quick victory.

That night in camp there was singing and laughter and most men were too excited to sleep. It wasn’t until well after midnight that things seemed to settle down. I was lying in the grass under a starry sky and thinking of what was before us. We had been trained to shoot a cannon and had become quite proficient at it. But this was on a range and without anyone firing at us. What would it be like when the enemy was shooting at us and shells were exploding all around. How would we react? My job was mainly with the horses and I wondered what they would do? They had become fairly used to the sound of our own cannon and didn’t try to run away, but what would happen if an enemy shell exploded in our midst? I finally fell asleep without any of these questions being answered.

We were awakened at about four in the morning and told to have breakfast and be ready to march in one hour. As the other members of our crew began making fires to brew coffee and cook some bacon and beans for breakfast the other driver, Bill Eaton, and I went to see about the horses and to hook them up to the cannon and ammunition caisson to be ready when the order to march was given. It took us about twenty minutes to get this done and when