Diamond Duty: Diamond Destiny, #1

By Dan Verner

In the spring of 1861, nineteen-year-old Caleb Dillard leaves his bride of a few months to fight for the Confederacy with the Eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment, but his part of the war only lasts ten minutes as he and some of his comrades are captured near Fairfax Courthouse and put in the Old Capitol Prison. There he not only experiences hardship and camaraderie with his fellow soldiers, but also learns to play baseball, a game the Union soldiers brought with them during the war. Caleb's team plays the guards, other military teams,and even some local professional teams, including the Washington Nationals.

 

Caleb's team rapidly improves, but then he becomes involved in a plot fostered by a wealthy war widow from Georgetown. Her schemes put him—and his family—in danger, and Caleb must make difficult choices while managing to survive. Diamond Duty will appeal to baseball fans and Civil War buffs alike, and readers will find the same warmth of characterization and steady pulse of events in this book that they found in Dan Verner's Beyond the Blue Horizon series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eLectio Publishing
• Release date: Apr 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781632133014

Book preview

DIAMOND DUTY

Dan Verner

eLectio Publishing

Little Elm, TX

www.eLectioPublishing.com

Diamond Duty

By Dan Verner

Copyright 2017 by Dan Verner. All rights reserved.

Cover Design by eLectio Publishing.

ISBN-13: 978-1-63213-301-4

Published by eLectio Publishing, LLC

Little Elm, Texas

http://www.eLectioPublishing.com

5 4 3 2 1 eLP 21 20 19 18 17

The eLectio Publishing creative team is comprised of: Kaitlyn Campbell, Emily Certain, Lori Draft, Court Dudek, Jim Eccles, Sheldon James, and Christine LePorte.

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Publisher’s Note

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This is for the staff and volunteers of the Manassas Museum,

who work diligently to ensure that we all learn from the past,

and so are less likely to repeat the mistakes of bygone eras.

Chapter 1

Ended before It Was Begun

June, 1861

I should have knowed we was in trouble when I heard yellin’ from over the hill.

I was with a bunch of fellows from my outfit, thirteen of us, and we was down in a kind of swale where we couldn’t see nothin’, and all of a sudden we looked up and all these Yankees was standing there pointing their rifles at us. We weren’t no fools, so we dropped our weapons and surrendered ourselves. I was captured right then at a place called Fairfax Court House and my war was over after only ten minutes. If you look at it a certain way, it was over before the big war began at Manassas about a month later. We dropped our rifles, as I said, and allowed ourselves to be herded like cattle by one fellow who looked to be about my age, which is nineteen. We headed south, toward the railroad and a place called Fairfax Station where we was put in this big old pen.

Well, how do you like this? I said to my friend Adolphus.

I don’t, he answered. I didn’t plan to spend the war in some sort of prison camp.

Do you think we should try to escape? I whispered.

Where do you plan to go? Night’s coming on, and you don’t have a map or a light and our friend there would be more than happy to shorten your life if you try to run. No, sir, I’m going to sit here and see what happens. Maybe some opportunity will turn up.

I have to explain about my friend Adolphus Lee Custis. He is always thinking an opportunity would turn up, and it usually did—for him. Now, me, I don’t have a bit of money, live in a log cabin, and make a living, if you can call it that, by doing odd jobs, mostly carpentry around our settlement in the back woods. But Adolphus, he comes from Richmond, and his family is related somehow to the Lees and he has a whole lot of education. He talks that way because of all that book learning he has had. He can’t help it, see? Adolphus wanted to be a preacher and was studying in something called a seminary when the war came along. Me and him enlisted together in General Lee’s army and struck it off right good. We’re about as opposite as two fellers can be, but we get along real good. You wouldn’t think it, but it’s true.

So, anyhow we joined the army and learned about army ways, how to march and drill and keep ourselves healthy. Keeping ourselves happy was up to us, and you may be certain we found a lot of ways to do that.

Since I’ve told you a little about Adolphus, I suppose I shouldn’t go any further with my story; I should tell you about myself. My name is Caleb Dillard, and I am in the 8th Virginia Infantry Regiment from Leesburg, and I come from over in the valley up in the mountains past Winchester. I just got married to a pretty little girl named Laurel Elizabeth, who was the schoolmarm at our little school, although we had to struggle to convince folks that she could be married and a school teacher. She told one woman that she was still the same person as she was before she was married. My Laurel knew how to take up for herself, all right. And she kept her job, although we did have a pretty scary meeting with the school committee.

I am an orphan. My parents died from some disease when I was sixteen, and since I was an only child, I took over their farm and ran it as best I could. I could have stayed with an elderly aunt in Lynchburg, but you know how old people are and you know how young people are. With the advice and help of some neighbors, I did fairly well with my farm and was sittin’ pretty good when I met Miss Laurel at a camp meeting. My folks were big on going to church, and while I didn’t care too much about it then, it was a good place to meet young ladies.

We courted by walking through the woods and sitting by the river, maybe having something to eat and just talking, you know, as young couples do. I asked her to marry me a month after we met, so sure was I that she was the one for me. She was one of twelve children, the oldest, and her parents were happy to have her taken off their hands. They figured one less mouth to feed. They treated her something awful, making her do as much work as they could get out of her. I don’t know why they did this, but their loss was my gain.

We married in early May, 1860, and the church ladies helped both of us with the wedding. One woman took down a black suit her husband had gotten too big for, and another fixed her own wedding gown to make it fit Laurel. These were some good people. We had a nice little wedding with some pies and apple cider and then we had our honeymoon in my cabin. That was fine with us. There was always work to be done, and we set ourselves to it. I had companionship and someone to share the work. Marriage agreed with me.

That winter was a hard one, but somehow, we got through it. We began to hear of increasing rumblings about trouble between the northern states and the southern ones. Now, I ain’t much for politics, but I do believe that the federal government should not tell the states what to do, and that was the basis for my joining up with the army. I don’t know about slavery. We couldn’t have afforded slaves anyhow, and I think I would have trouble owning a human being. I don’t know how you could look someone in the eye and then treat them the way we heard some slaves were treated. It was a complicated thing, but I made my choice and signed up with a local regiment. A lot of fellas my age and older were doing this. There was almost a kind of fever about it, and we were convinced we would lick the Yankees and be back home in three months. If any of us had had any idea how long the war would drag on and how horrible it would be, I don’t think any of us would have joined. Of course, we didn’t and so things were set in motion.

Our regiment was organized in May of 1861, and we took the train to Fort Henry at Culpeper Court House. There we learned about soldiering and then joined the Confederate Army of the Potomac under General Beauregard. We got news that the Federals were planning to attack the railroad junction at Manassas Junction, so we loaded onto trains and got there ahead of them. We set up positions and waited.

A bunch of us was sent toward Fairfax Station to see what we could see, and ended up getting captured, as I have told you. And that brings me back to my story. That was how my short war and long imprisonment began.

Chapter 2

The Old Capitol Prison

June, 1861

A couple of Unions showed up about dark with some fatback and hardtack. We had to ask for water. I think they didn’t want to give it to us, but we was all new at this business of being a soldier, and they changed their mind and gave us a bucket with all kinds of things floating on it. Alphonso said he wasn’t going to drink from it, but I told him he had to or he would get sick. He told me he would get sick if he did drink it. Sometimes I think he was different to be different.

We laid down in the mud to try to get some sleep, of which there wasn’t much to be had, when we was awakened by the screeching and hooting of a locomotive about two in the morning, to judge by the moon. The engine backed into the station not thirty yards away from us. What it was doing going backwards I don’t know except maybe they didn’t have no place to turn around in. It stopped, and all these bluebellies jumped out of boxcars and hightailed it over the hill. Where they were going in such a hurry, we never found out, but then our guard who I nicknamed Sonny, and a couple of other soldiers who were with the train, told us to get into one of the box cars. There weren’t but fifteen or so of us, so there was plenty of room. After a minute or so, the loco started up, headed in the right direction for them, I supposed, but taking us to who knows where.

Where do you suppose they’re taking us? I whispered to Adolphus.

Where do you think? To prison, you can bet. And why do you keep whispering?

I pulled my sleeves down over my hands, the way I do when I’m uncomfortable or embarrassed. It just seems the right thing to do.

Well, no one cares what you’re saying, so speak up! It’s annoying to have to try to hear you over all this noise.

As I’ve said, Adolphus was a good fellow but he could have a rough hair every once in a while.

We jolted along for about an hour and finally crossed a long bridge and there was the Capitol building to our right, white under the moon and about halfway complete. We drew closer, and the train stopped, and we was invited to climb on wagons for the next part of our journey. After a little while being pulled through the streets with a lot of people up at that hour, staring at us like they’d never seen anyone from Virginia before, we ended up at a three-story brick building not far from the Capitol. This was to be our home for the remainder of the war, if nothing changed. I hope it did, but didn’t think it would.

Well, said Adolphus, there’s no place like home.

I started singing, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home—

My friend put his hands over his ears. "Stop it! Stop it! Who told you, you could sing?"

Well, my daddy was the song leader for our church.

He sure didn’t pass his gift along to you.

All right . . . no more singing . . . at least not around you.

Or around anyone else. I want both of us to survive this war.

The young private who herded us into the pen at Fairfax Station opened the gate to the wagon. Get out and look smart! No fooling around! I’m serious!

He was so young and so earnest it struck me as funny. I started laughing and others joined in, and that got him to going.

Stop laughing! I have a gun and I’ll use it! Stop it now, I say!

After we calmed down, Adolphus addressed him as he climbed out of the wagon. My good fellow, something merely struck one of my comrades-in-arms as amusing. No harm was meant. This is a difficult circumstance so we had best make the most of it. Like I said, Adolphus had a different way of talking and looking at things. Heck, he even looked and acted different. Maybe that comes from having too much money. I know I’ll never find out about that myself.

We filed into the front room under the eyes of Sunny Jim (a name I gave our guard. I think his real name was Frederick), and there sitting behind a long table were four Union officers with a little man whose job was, I suppose, to record our answers to questions. As it turned out, the first officer asked us about our military affiliation and things like that. The second had the scribe take down personal information and the third gave us a quick physical exam. The fourth was a chaplain, Lieutenant George, who asked if he could